‘Shall I call room service for you?’ David asked.
Nick shook his head and, raising a hand, smiled a goodbye. David, taking his cue, gave a small sigh and left.
Nick got up and made himself another drink, but without the dry ginger this time. When David took the trouble to look him out after the show, the pressure was really on. Usually David kept well clear of everyone else’s troubles, but when he did make the decision to get involved then he did it wholesale, in full Jewish mama mode, complete with exhortations to eat and doctors armed with vitamin shots.
The problem had begun in Chicago, on the morning when Nick had failed to put the bourbon bottle away. It had started like any other day on tour, that is bleakly, with a homogeneous hotel room, a nagging hangover and no reason to get up. He’d read for a while, a fashionable and impenetrable novel, then turned on the TV to watch the news. A South American coup, an earthquake in Turkey, a mugging. The mugging was particularly vicious; a young female lawyer attacked and left for dead outside her New York City apartment. By New York standards it wasn’t such a special story and probably would never have made the national news if the girl hadn’t been the daughter of a senator, yet there was something about the story that affected him. Perhaps it was the girl’s picture – she was very pretty – or because she was about to get married, or because she lived just a block away from his and Alusha’s old apartment. Perhaps it wasn’t anything to do with the mugging at all. But suddenly he found himself holding onto his pillow as if it were a life-belt and he were in danger of drowning, which in a sense he was. When the despair threatened to close over his head, he forced himself out of bed and into a cold shower and paced the room and tried to fight his way out of it until, with an almost laughable inevitability, he reached for a drink. There wasn’t a thing he didn’t know about himself at that moment, not a shaft of self-knowledge that didn’t turn in him, but it made no difference. At that moment there was simply no other way to save his life. The binge lasted two days.
Since then he’d regained some sort of hold on things. Each day had become a precarious walk along a precipice, a contest to maintain his consciousness a notch or two below the critical level without actually falling over the edge. But there were still the dangerous days, the days when he lost his fear of heights.
Another knock came on the door. Mel or Joe, or a message from an acquaintance perhaps. He didn’t move; there was no one he particularly wanted to see.
The knock came again, a gentle but insistent tap. Giving in with bad grace, he got up and, drink in hand, went to the door. A girl stood there, most definitely familiar, yet out of context, so that he couldn’t immediately place her.
Reading his expression, the girl’s smile faded a little. ‘You didn’t suggest a time,’ she said, holding an envelope up in front of her face.
‘Ahh.’ Recognizing his own scrawl, the memory came stumbling back. ‘Of course …
Daisy
…’ He touched his head in apology.
‘I thought I’d better come straight away,’ she said. ‘In case you were racing off somewhere.’
He stood back to let her in. ‘Racing? No … No …’ He gave a low chuckle. ‘Where I was going, it wasn’t fast.’
‘This is the second time,’ she said, walking through to the sitting room and surveying the lavish decor, ‘that you’ve forgotten me, I mean.’ She turned and gave him a jaunty grin. ‘But I won’t take it personally.’ Then she laughed, and he realized that, for all her self-assurance, she was nervous.
‘Have a drink,’ he said.
‘No thanks.’
He drained his glass. ‘Well, I think I will.’ He waved her towards a seat while he went to the drinks corner.
‘I met your manager in the lobby,’ she said. ‘He got me through the security people and told me to come straight up. I hope that was all right.’
‘Sure.’ So that was it, he thought with a flash of annoyance: David exercising his good intentions, pushing female company his way. Next thing he’d be organizing social evenings.
Daisy sank into a deep chair, falling back with a small sigh, before straightening up and sitting rather stiffly on the edge of her seat.
He added some dry ginger to the bourbon and took another look at her. When had he last seen her? In London? Scotland? His memory of that time was poor but he seemed to remember her as pretty and fresh-looking, rather a one-off. She looked different now. Bedraggled, her hair hanging round her face in tight damp curls, and scruffy-looking, with her old denim jacket and worn, mud-splattered trousers.
‘I was so sorry about your wife,’ she said, her voice very clear. ‘I wrote. I don’t know if …’
There had been hundreds of letters, but he remembered seeing her name, remembered reading something, though he couldn’t recall what she had said.
‘Thanks. I got it.’ He sat down opposite her.
‘Thanks for the ticket,’ she said.
He gestured that it was nothing. He didn’t ask if she’d enjoyed the show; she’d probably tell him anyway. Most people did.
‘I enjoyed the show,’ she said.
‘Aha.’
A slight pause. She was smiling at him. It was a generous smile, candid and full of goodwill. ‘What about you?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Did
you
enjoy it? I mean, presumably you don’t sometimes.’
Well, there was a question. Lighting a cigarette he pretended to consider for a moment, although there was only one possible answer. ‘Not a lot,’ he said baldly.
‘I didn’t think so.’ Aware that he might take this the wrong way, she laughed to soften the impact.
He decided to take it the wrong way anyway. ‘Why would you think that?’
‘Well – you seemed – not quite there. At the beginning anyway.’
He experienced one of the rapid mood swings that characterized his bourbon evenings. ‘You’re right,’ he said abruptly. ‘I was lousy, and it showed.’
But she wasn’t having any self-pity. ‘Not lousy, and it was only at the beginning,’ she said firmly. ‘Up till “Long Nights”. After that you were terrific. Particularly in the slow numbers.’
He almost argued, but got up to get another drink instead.
The bourbon bottle was beginning to look more empty than full. Normally he left the bottle on the side, to maintain some degree of control, but for convenience he brought it across and stood it on the table between them. ‘Sure you won’t have one?’ he asked, speaking with care so as to get the words out right.
She gave a slow shake of her head. Apart from the smile, her expression was unreadable.
He gulped at his drink. He always gulped when he was with strangers; something to do with nerves. ‘So how’s your campaign going?’ he asked to change the subject. He didn’t terribly want to hear, in fact it was the last thing he wanted to talk about, but she would be expecting him to ask and he wanted to get it over with.
‘Oh, one step forward, one step back,’ she said lightly. ‘Usual thing. You know.’
He wasn’t sure he did know. He pushed himself to say: ‘I thought people were coming round. More aware. What with all the scares.’
She considered for a moment. Her back was still ramrod straight as if she were sitting in a hard-back chair. It gave her the prim look of a school teacher. ‘The public can only take so much,’ she said. ‘They’re already frightened rigid by the greenhouse effect and the holes in the ozone layer. The idea of being poisoned on a daily basis is altogether too much for them.’
‘Well, you can see why …’ He lost his thread – or perhaps whatever it was hadn’t been worth saying – and buried his nose in his drink.
There was a long pause; he was aware that he had run out of conversation.
‘Perhaps I’ll have a drink after all,’ she said. ‘Coke if you have it.’
‘Sure.’ He got up and went over to the side. He took a Coke out of the fridge and began to pour it. He misjudged the flow and some spilt down the side of the glass onto the tray. As he picked up the glass to dry it, it came into contact with a bottle and made a loud clink.
Well, that hadn’t taken long. Things were happening fast tonight.
He was aware of her eyes on his back. He took a breath. Concentrate, Mackenzie, get it together.
He carried the drink carefully back to the table. He sat down and watched her sip at the Coke. There was another pause. He wished he could say something appropriate, but his brain was thick and treacherous.
She flicked a thoughtful glance at him, as if she were plucking up courage to launch into something difficult and wasn’t sure what sort of a reaction she’d get. Of course. He realized then: she would hardly have gone to all this trouble if she hadn’t wanted to ask him something. Everyone wanted something. He decided to get it over and done with.
‘So what is it you want?’ he asked.
That took her by surprise. She dropped her eyes and gave a nervous grin, as if he’d caught her out in some trick. Her approach, whatever it might be, was not well planned.
‘Well …’ She took a deep breath. ‘I could give you all the usual junk. You know – about wanting to get you involved in the campaign. The standard celebrity stuff, about needing your support on the publicity front and all that. Or …’ She tipped her head to one side and gave him a sidelong grin, half embarrassed, half amused. ‘Or I could come right out and tell you what I really want.’
He fiddled with his glass. ‘Let me guess – a benefit concert.’
‘A concert?’ She was genuinely surprised. ‘Well, I suppose – I mean, we wouldn’t say no. Not if you were offering.’
She had such a gracious way of putting things. He stubbed out his cigarette and lit a fresh one. ‘So what is it then? That you want.’
She hesitated. He noticed her eyes, which were hazel with very clear whites. For the first time since she arrived her expression was entirely solemn. ‘Money,’ she said.
He almost laughed. Most people when they wanted cash, which was often, usually approached the subject casually, as if money was so much garbage that just happened to have attached itself to him and which he was only too glad to be rid of. But Daisy Field said the word with the spiritual reverence of the dispossessed.
This, or something else about her, made him smile. He studied his glass for a moment. ‘Daisy Field. There’s a name.’
If she was disappointed in the sudden turn of the conversation, she hid it well. ‘It wasn’t my parents who had the sense of humour,’ she said. ‘It was my schoolmates. Deeply original, they were. You can guess the sort of thing – Potato … Corn … Turnip … There wasn’t a field they didn’t try on me. I gave as good as I got, of course, but it made no difference. We called a truce at Daisy. To tell the truth, I didn’t mind too much.’ She made a face. ‘Anything was an improvement on the original.’
‘Which was?’
She gave a cat-like smile and shook her head. ‘Can’t say it. Too shy.’
It occurred to him that she was far from shy, and that no one got anything out of Daisy Field that she didn’t want to give.
‘This money, what do you want it for?’ He had to concentrate to get the words out right. That came from forgetting to eat, a mistake he made two or three times a day.
‘A research programme.’
‘What kind?’ he asked.
‘To investigate a pesticide called Silveron,’ she said, launching earnestly into her subject. ‘Or to be precise, an insecticide. It’s been on limited sale in Britain for about a year, and it’s due to be introduced here soon. We suspect it’s unsafe. It’s already caused serious problems.’ She told him about some workers at a production plant in Aurora, Illinois, how they were seriously ill, how Morton-Kreiger, the manufacturers, were denying any link with Silveron. There was something about the way she talked, a breathless urgent quality, that made the story sound both convincing and a little unlikely. He remembered their car journey in London all those months ago, and how disturbingly simple she had made everything seem to him then.
‘This programme,’ he said. ‘What would it give you at the en’ of – ’ He took another shot at it. ‘At the end of the day?’
‘Oh, evidence of toxicity, evidence of carcinogenicity,’ she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. ‘Evidence that would get the chemical banned.’
‘Can’t the government people take care of that?’
‘Oh, they won’t do anything,’ she declared derisively.
‘Not just like that. Not until we push some proof right in front of them. These new products have a momentum all their own, you see – tests, approvals and launches – and once the bandwagon’s under way, it just keeps rolling. You have to produce a bombshell to even begin to stop them.’ She gave what looked like a shiver and pulled her arms closer to her body. ‘At the moment it would only be our opinion against the manufacturer’s, and the way things are, that ain’t going to stop anything. Our word carries about as much weight as …’ She blew out her lips. ‘Well, the paper it’s written on.’
‘Recycled.’ He thought that was quite good, particularly for this stage of the evening. Daisy’s face lit up and she laughed, a light dancing laugh full of amusement, and he flattered himself that it wasn’t just politeness. The evening began to look up; he was glad she had come.
‘How d’you know they’ll listen? The gov’ment people.’ He heard the thickening of his speech, the slurring of his words.
‘Oh, our work’ll be done under the strictest scientific conditions. They’ll have no choice.’ Her jacket had fallen slightly open, and he saw a dark crescent of damp down the front of her T-shirt. Through his not inconsiderable haze, it dawned on him that she was sitting so stiffly because she was soaking wet, and that it must have been the air-conditioning that made her shiver. He pulled himself forward in his seat. ‘You’re wet,’ he said.
‘I
am
a bit. No, not a bit – ’ That laugh again. ‘A lot!’
‘Give me your jacket,’ he said. ‘I’ll put it to dry.’ After a moment’s hesitation, she took the jacket off. Somewhere in the process of getting to his feet, reaching for the jacket and turning towards the bathroom, he had to reach suddenly for the arm of the chair. He shot a quick look at her. Diplomat that she was, she was showing a sudden and absorbing interest in the carpet. But she’d noticed all right, and he minded about that. He always hated anyone to see him in this sort of condition. Anyone being outsiders, people who wouldn’t make allowances, people who would judge him.