Authors: Michael Dobbs
It was a warm early summer’s evening outside but it felt a little cooler than she had expected. A draught, almost. It tickled. She was glad of the heater nearby. She stood in the pool of light thrown by the overhead
lamp like an actress or an operatic star, barely aware of the audience seated in the shadows around her but feeling the intensity of their concentration and appreciation. All eyes were on her and she was lost, relaxed in her own innermost thoughts, responding to the solitude and peace.
It was scarcely surprising, therefore, that none of them paid the slightest attention to the far end of the hall, which in any event was in deep shadow. It was the end of the hall which opened onto scrubland, overlooked by nothing, and it was here Oscar Kutzman had been busy. That afternoon, armed with no more than a glass cutter, he had waited until he was sure no one was around and deftly removed one of the small panes of glass, replacing it with plastic film. Later that evening, after the art class had gathered and the curtains had been drawn to guard against the prying eyes of the Boys’ Brigade meeting in the church next door, he had been able to remove the film and cautiously draw back an edge of the curtain to allow a full and uninterrupted view of the entire hall. And it was a calm evening outside; only the slightest draught.
That girl reporter had been right. He could see the lot from here, and they’d even pre-lit it for him. Not ideal conditions for photography, but he had worked in far worse.
They met at Goodfellowe’s favourite restaurant in Shaftesbury Avenue shortly after ten. He’d hoped that by keeping away from her, isolating himself from the charms he knew had such an effect on him, he
might have been able to put his feelings for Elizabeth in perspective. No chance. They continued to torment him, along with all the other emotions over which he had lost control. He wanted not to want her, it would make life so much simpler. But as soon as she glided through the door, tall and elegant, and smiled for him, it started all over again.
They had much to catch up on – or, rather, she did, since Goodfellowe did most of the talking. He had become like an ancient knight sitting by the campfire on the eve of battle, doubts banished, full of nervous energy, keen to share, and like all Irish women she was trained to listen. And to pour. She sensed he needed calming, slowing, anaesthetizing against himself and his fire-eyed enthusiasms.
‘Isn’t it possible,’ she enquired after she had listened to his analysis, ‘that Corsa is publishing these attacks on The Earth Firm and the rest simply to boost circulation, like any other newspaper?’
‘It’s more than that,’ Goodfellowe responded, trying to transfer a helping of fried seaweed to his plate and missing. ‘Not just maximum sales, but maximum damage. These stories could have been published at any time, but I think they were printed when they could do most harm.’
‘So why does Corsa loathe The Earth Firm? Or Wonderworld? Even the coal industry? What’s the connection?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Perhaps it’s simply a macho male thing. Too much testosterone. Screwing them simply because they’re there.’
‘You’ve been reading too many parliamentary thrillers.’
‘You think there’s logic mixed in with all the Corsa loathing?’
‘Maybe it’s not so much who he hates, but who he wants to help – apart from himself. The Earth Firm story was clearly designed to help the Government.’
‘But who was helped out by the others?’
‘That’s what I’ve been asking myself.’ He licked the sticky remnants of seaweed from his fingers. ‘Great brain food,’ he muttered appreciatively, while she refilled his glass. ‘But Government can’t be the common link. Not in the case of Wonderworld. Certainly not with the entire coal industry.’
‘So?’
He dug his chopsticks into a bowlful of noodles as though ransacking them in search of inspiration. ‘It’s power. But not political power. He doesn’t give a stuff about politicians. For him they’re just hired hands.’
‘It’s not politics. It’s not sex. What’s left?’
‘Money. That’s what matters to Corsa. It’s warfare all right and he sends his editors in like the Marines. But the target is commercial, not political.’
‘Yet how does Corsa gain commercially from attacking something like Wonderworld?’
‘Because whenever some unfortunate bastard gets staked out in the sun there’s another lurking in the shadows waiting to pick his pockets. Losers, and winners. And you can bet that whoever won from staking out The Earth Firm or Wonderworld or the entire coal industry is a good friend of Freddy Corsa’s.’
‘Corsa has friends?’ She was having trouble with the concept.
‘Allies, then. Money men. This mystery group of backers the newspapers have talked about. Waiting to get in on the action after the Press Bill goes through. Maybe they’re getting a bit of the action up front.’ It fitted, he knew it was right, but Goodfellowe’s elation immediately subsided into a frown. ‘Still doesn’t tell us who they are. Could be anyone. Absolutely anyone.’
‘Maybe I can offer a clue.’ Elizabeth’s lips puckered thoughtfully. ‘I belong to the Indulgents. It’s a small dining club of restaurateurs who get together to gossip and be disgraceful. We had an excellent little gossip last week about Freddy Corsa.’ The lips moved from side to side as though performing sentry duty. ‘He’s dined in three of the restaurants recently with the same woman. Something of a feature. An attractive and very senior oil executive named Diane Burston.’
‘She’s well known, a player of substance. She’d make an excellent member of any consortium.’ He picked up a final stray piece of seaweed from the tablecloth. ‘Tell me, what were they at? Business or pleasure?’
‘Are there different types of sin, Tom? With those people surely it’s all the same.’
‘Elizabeth,’ he whispered, ‘you are a remarkable as well as very beautiful woman.’
‘Tom,’ she smiled in surprise, ‘what has brought that on? Business or pleasure?’
‘I almost forgot,’ he stumbled, reaching into his
pocket. He withdrew a small leather-bound edition of poetry by Yeats. ‘Not particularly valuable. Something I found in the Charing Cross Road. While I was thinking of you. A sort of good-luck charm, I thought. It seems to be working already.’
She blew him a small kiss, the lips no longer puckering to one side but pointing straight in his direction. It had become a very special moment for Goodfellowe. He ordered a new bottle of wine to celebrate. And as he relaxed, his conversation turned to more personal matters, feelings he had difficulty in articulating but which now, with her encouragement and the benefit of wine, he attempted to explain to her. Feelings he had tried to bury. Of loneliness. Of his overwhelming sense of duty, which he still confused with love. Of how his life had become dominated by all its forms rather than its substance. He talked and shared, explaining not only to her but also to himself. Outside, the first thunderstorm of summer was turning the streets into dark rivers but, as she poured the wine and he poured out his heart, he didn’t even hear it.
‘The forms of life are important to me, Elizabeth. I owe responsibilities as well as love to Sam and Elinor. And I could have met those responsibilities simply by saying yes to Corsa and to Lillicrap. It was the easy way out. But it would have left me emptied inside, and what goes on inside a man – the passions, the ambitions, the very personal comforts – surely they matter too?’
‘You’re asking that question of an Irish girl?’ She poured once more, wanting to encourage him.
‘I’ve been alone for a long time now. And I found a simplicity in loneliness which got me through my days, if not the nights. Then you came along and spoiled it. I tried to hate you for it, for walking into my one-dimensional world and ruining it, but that didn’t work so I decided I had to start fighting back. Listening to the man within. Even poor Elinor recognized it. You can’t love me, she said. And she was right. I want to love her, I should love her. But I can’t. All I can do is my duty to her. Form without the substance. I need something more.’
‘What do you need, Tom?’
‘I need you, I think. At least I need to find out whether I need you. Do I make sense? Sorry, I’m not very good at this. Out of practice. Think I’ve drunk too much. But I need to open up my one-dimensional world, Elizabeth. And what I feel for you has had an extraordinary effect in broadening my horizons.’
‘Broadening your horizons? Back home that’s called lust. Are you propositioning me, Tom Goodfellowe?’
‘Think I am.’
‘And about bloody time.’
‘I feel a bit of a fool.’
‘Ah, but you’re a passionate fool. An Irishman at heart.’
He began to laugh, rather wearily. ‘Trouble is, old duck, I needed a bit of Dutch courage to blurt it all out.’ He looked at his oft-emptied glass. ‘I think I’ve overdone it.’
At a nearby table a waiter was gesticulating to the
diners. ‘One hour taxi. One hour taxi,’ he shouted as the gutters outside overflowed. It was almost two a.m.
‘Well, if you think I’m walking home in that cloudburst, you truly must be drunk.’
‘My apartment is just round the corner.’
‘Now isn’t that a coincidence,’ she laughed mischievously. ‘But so much for lust. Seems to me it’s not so much a case of you inviting me home, but me getting you home.’
Happy, clutching, soaking, with him trying to provide shelter for her beneath an old menu card, they had scuttled the short distance back to his doorway in Gerrard Street. Outside lay a pile of Sunday newspapers which had already turned to papier-mâché. ‘Whoops. Completely forgot I was supposed to be reviewing the newspapers in the morning.’
‘All the more reason for you to get a few hours’ sleep,’ she chided.
‘Guess I’ll have to make it up as I go along.’
‘Is that the passion or the review?’ she whispered. He declined to answer.
So they had dripped their way up the stairs, fumbled with his keys, and arm-in-arm had poured themselves inside his apartment. By the door, the red light on his answering machine was blinking belligerently. Twenty-one messages. This had happened once before when an automated message machine on call-back had pestered him all day, mistaking his number for a fax line. He took the phone off the hook. He wasn’t in any fit state to be disturbed.
‘Bath, kitchen,’ he pointed out to her. ‘Barry
Manilow tapes,’ he added, waving at the stereo system. ‘My little vice, but only ever in private,’ he confided, swaying a little.
‘Anything else to declare?’ she enquired, trying to stifle a giggle.
He became instantly maudlin, taking her hands. ‘Only that I haven’t been in the arms of a woman for more than four years and I can’t wait to sober up.’
‘And in the meantime?’
‘You,’ he waved at the bed on its mezzanine platform. ‘Me,’ he pronounced, flopping across the small sofa. Smiling, she leaned down to kiss him, but already he was asleep.
He was dragged back from the depths of senselessness by the insistent rasping of the intercom. The cab had arrived.
‘Damned lies! It can’t be,’ he squealed, shaking his watch in disbelief, unable to accept it was already six fifteen. ‘Ten minutes,’ he shouted to the driver. He was nearly twenty. Elizabeth watched in amusement from the bed-platform above as he scuttled about the apartment trying to balance haste against modesty, a scramble perforated by a bout of drawer-rattling indecision as to what colour shirt to wear, and all the while battling to plaster down hair which spoke eloquently of the night on his sofa.
Finally he stood at the door, breathless. ‘I’ll be back by nine. Be here?’
‘Get lost, Goodfellowe,’ she smiled.
He had hoped to find another set of newspapers in the cab but the back seat was empty. The aerial
had been wrenched away, the radio was inoperable and the driver spoke unintelligible West African, so Goodfellowe had spent the journey tucking in his shirt and conducting further hostilities with his hair. By the time he reached the studios he felt uninformed, but almost fit.
‘Mr Goodfellowe. Brilliant! So good of you to come.’ An agitated young executive had swung open the passenger door and was hopping from foot to foot like a fire walker.
‘My pleasure.’
‘Thought you wouldn’t make it. We tried to call last night. Several times. Really quite brave of you, in the circumstances.’
‘What circumstances?’
The hopping stopped, the legs suddenly grown leaden. ‘You haven’t seen the newspapers?’ It was a comment offered in awe.
‘Not had a chance. Not yet.’
The television executive uttered a very bad word he had learned at public school and placed his hands together, putting them to his face as though reciting the rosary. ‘I think you’d better come with me.’
Inside, in a small private room, away from the other guests who were gathering for the morning programme, they sat him down with a cup of muddy tea and a copy of the
Sunday Herald
.
Below the screaming headline was the photograph of him with Jya-Yu. It seemed, more than ever as he
studied the photo once again, that they were engaged in a passionate lip-spreading kiss.
The future of Tom Goodfellowe, the former Minister who was recently found guilty of drink-driving, was thrown into further doubt yesterday when it was revealed he was having an association with a Chinatown vice girl. Police sources confirmed that Pan Jya-Yu, 18, was recently arrested on suspicion of prostitution and drug handling. She also attacked her arresting policeman. She has since accepted a caution – effectively pleaded guilty – to possession of a restricted substance, believed to be an Oriental sex drug.