The Heart Broke In

by James Meek

  ‘Yes,’ laughed Ritchie, not sure what Val was talking about. ‘He writes poetry.’

  ‘You’re not going to let him read it out on camera?’

  It hadn’t occurred to Ritchie that this was a possibility. ‘Of course not,’ he said.

  In the silence that followed Ritchie watched Val use his knife to drive and scrape everything left on the plate, each tiny scrap, into one compressed lump on his fork, as if nothing further could be done until the plate was clear.

  ‘Catholic Marxist nationalists. What a lot of bloody nonsense,’ said Val. ‘He’s a thug who should never have been let out.’ Val looked up. His eyes were gentle and inquisitive. ‘What about you, Ritchie? What do you believe in?’

  Ritchie laughed, realised this wasn’t an appropriate response, glanced out of the window and said: ‘Fair play.’ He remembered what he didn’t like about Val Oatman. The editor was always likely to go off on one about morality. He would bore the pants off you if you let him.

  ‘If only there was some great umpire in the sky to raise a finger when your leg came between the ball and the wicket, eh, Ritchie?’ said Val. He closed his knife and fork like scissors and left them lying on his plate with the points towards Ritchie. He rested his fists on either side of the plate. ‘Maybe you think there is.’

  ‘I’m agnostic,’ said Ritchie gruffly. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a coffee?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Val.

  He got up, went to the door and called through. While he was gone from the table Ritchie ran his eye over the framed newspaper pages on the wall opposite. He saw now that at the far end of the room from where he was sitting there was no frame, just a printout or a photocopy of a newspaper page stuck to the wall with a bit of sticky tape. It looked familiar. It was hard to make out; it looked like a feature Val’s paper had run on Ritchie and Karin in the days of the band. Ritchie was no longer surprised by fame, but it seemed unlikely Val had put the article there to make him feel welcome.

  Val came back with the waitress. Ritchie saw that there was no sweet course. Val didn’t sit but stood looking down at Ritchie and the administration of the coffee. He had his hands in his pockets. He was blocking the light from the window.

  ‘I suppose it must be pretty comfortable being an agnostic,’ he said.

  Ritchie stirred his coffee glumly as the waitress left. Not even a biscuit!

  ‘But who’s there to remind you if you do something wrong? How do you even know what’s wrong?’

  ‘Those pages,’ said Ritchie, nodding at the wall. ‘What’s the criterion?’

  ‘Come and have a look,’ said Val. Ritchie got up and followed Val to a front-page story with a headline about a long-past Olympic Games. An athlete stood joyfully in front of the camera with a gold medal in her hand.

  ‘Now turn it over,’ said Val.

  Ritchie lifted the framed page cautiously from the wall. It had been hung from the corners in such a way that it could easily be turned round and put back with the reverse side showing. The reverse carried another page. It was another story about the same athlete, but from a few years later. This time, instead of the words OLYMPIC GLORY the headline included the words CHEAT and DRUG SHAME. Ritchie was going to turn the second page back to face the wall but Val said ‘Leave it. Look at the next one.’

  The next page showed a famous model on a red carpet, her broad smile accentuating her cheekbones as she turned to the cameras, not quite unlinking her arms with the Hollywood star who was her consort. He was pushed to the background, and looked at the model with yearning, as if realising that neither sleeping with her nor marrying her nor loving her would give him the quality she possessed that he wanted. Ritchie turned the frame over. On the reverse side was an even larger picture of the model, a grainy, blown-up shot that nonetheless revealed unexpectedly deep lines in her face as she hunched over a mirror sprinkled with white powder, a tube stuck up her nose.

  The third frame, which was only one away from the page with the story about Ritchie and Karin, held a story about an elderly English rock star famous for his Christian beliefs. When Ritchie turned it over, his hands shook.

  ‘Too much caffeine, Ritchie,’ said Val.

  The reverse of the Christian rock star story was blank, a smooth expanse of dark wood. Ritchie ran his palm over it.

  ‘Some people just go on doing the right thing all their lives,’ said Val. ‘I can’t see that space ever being filled.’ He smiled at Ritchie and turned the frame again so that the blank side was hidden. ‘Why don’t you go on looking? I have to make a call.’

  Ritchie watched Val walk to the far end of the room, take his mobile, dial and begin talking too quietly for Ritchie to hear. He kept his back to Ritchie. Ritchie went straight to the printout of the story about him and Karin. On the floor underneath it, Ritchie saw, was a framed front page about a politician, as if the printout had only just been taped up in place of the article usually hung there. Ritchie skimmed through the printout but he knew it by heart from when it had come out twenty years earlier. He glanced over at Val, who was still talking. Licking his lips, Ritchie lifted the paper a fraction away from the wall and, turning up the corner, bent his head to see if there was anything printed on the other side.

  ‘Oh, just pull that off the wall, I only put it up this morning,’ Val called, and went back to his phone conversation.

  Ritchie’s heart hammered. He tugged the sheet of paper and it came away from the wall. He turned it over.

  Ritchie had been a passenger once in the back seat of a car whose driver had lost control at speed on a dual carriageway in Scotland. The car had spun off the road, across the central reservation, across two lanes of oncoming traffic and down the embankment on the far side. In the end no one was hurt, but Ritchie had been aware, in the seconds of spinning, that he might be about to die. He didn’t scream, shout or swear. It seemed to him that his heart rate barely went up. What he remembered from those moments was an intense curiosity about the exact way he would suffer. He wanted to experience everything, to see all there was to see of the landscape he would be smashed into and the movements of the various high-speed metal boxes that would intersect in collision. He was aware that there was another Ritchie slumped inside him, boggle-eyed and slack-bowelled with terror, but this Ritchie was the captive of this unworldly other Ritchie, this shy, fascinated, inquisitive little boy trotting forward in the worship of his new hero, his own fate. Yet the fear, in the end, was stronger, since despite his curiosity, Ritchie never understood what was happening. He was never able to put all the elements together, the speed of the oncoming trucks, the sound of their horns, the shriek of the tyres, the words of the driver and the other passengers, the number of spins, the moment of tipping when the car dived over the edge towards the trees. Now, Ritchie couldn’t sort the words on the front page in front of him. He saw his own name in the headline.

  SHEPHERD

  Then in the same headline

  CHILD SEX

  His eyes ran to the first paragraph of the story and he saw ‘arrested’ and ‘allegations’. He read the word ‘allegations’ several times. He went back to the beginning.

  PROBE

  Top TV producer and former Lazygods lead singer Ritchie Shepherd

  Accurate, he thought.

  Shepherd, 40, was visited by detectives

  Was he forty? How old it looked, printed. How strange that they called them detectives, such a quaint word.

  At the £2.5 million Hampshire mansion

  Three million, he’d paid, money down, and a bargain it had been. Tasteless people lived in mansions. He was not tasteless.

  SHEPHERD

  HELD IN

  CHILD SEX

  PROBE

  Yes, he thought. It really does say that! How extraordinary!

  where he lives with his wife, former Lazygods co-star Karin Olsson, and their two children.

  Who was this man, this monster, who had children and had sex with a child? He m
ust never be allowed, thought Ritchie.

  Shepherd, son of murdered special forces hero Captain Greg Shepherd, was taken to Paddington Green police station in London and held overnight.

  How ashamed that man’s father would be. That man Shepherd was him. But it was not him yet.

  ‘I’m not sure about the headline,’ said Val, who had come up beside him. ‘People might think it was about somebody who looked after sheep. Of course that would bring in the perverts, which would mean extra readers. What do you think?’

  Ritchie looked round. Val lifted his chin, smiled and raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Are you publishing this?’ said Ritchie.

  ‘Look,’ said Val, pointing to a space just below the paper’s masthead. ‘There’s no date.’ He frowned at Ritchie. ‘I’m surprised to hear you ask that. You haven’t been arrested on child sex charges. Or have you? Did we miss a story?’

  ‘This is in very bad taste,’ said Ritchie.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Val. ‘Is that what you want to say? You don’t understand why we’ve done this?’

  ‘I can think of a couple of reasons, both unacceptable.’

  ‘Go on.’ Val was still smiling and his voice was soft and pleasant.

  ‘One reason would be illegal.’

  ‘Oh, interesting. Let’s come back to that, shall we? And the other?’

  ‘A joke.’

  ‘A joke!’ Val nodded and looked to one side. He took a step back and turned to stare into Ritchie’s eyes.

  Val raised his voice suddenly to a shout, almost a scream, so loud that Ritchie could hardly believe it came from a man’s mouth. ‘Do you have any idea what right and wrong is, Ritchie?’ Ritchie looked at him. ‘I asked you a fucking question, you weaselly cunt! Do you know the difference between right and wrong?’

  Ritchie’s mouth dropped open of its own accord.

  ‘Of course I do,’ said Ritchie. ‘You don’t need to –’

  ‘Don’t you dare tell me what I need to do, you fucking cunting piece of dogshit. You fat cunt. You sad, talentless fuck. You know what you should be doing when you’re talking to me, cunt? You should be on your knees. Did you make her go down on you, you fucking exploitative abusive cunt? Did you make her go down on you with your great fucking belly hanging over her? What kind of fucking apology for a man has to get a child to suck him off?’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ croaked Ritchie, and the astonishing thing was that the loudness of Val’s voice, the terrible fixity of his eyes and the violence of his language were weakening him, literally weakening him, making his limbs feel weightless and his body shudder instead of tensing for defence. When the most astonishing and silly thing of all happened, and Val came up to him and whacked him hard across the jaw with the back of his hand, it didn’t seem astonishing or silly, and nor did it that Ritchie slumped onto the floor and stayed there, half lying, half sitting.

  ‘Ask yourself why I’ve got this power over you. Go on, ask yourself, you cunt,’ said Val, looking down at him. ‘How is it that I can hit you and you don’t fight back, apart from the fact you’re a nasty coward who bullies little girls into having sex with him? It’s because you’ve done wrong. Now you know the difference. I can see you feel sorry for yourself. You’re imagining other people feeling sorry for you too, aren’t you? Look at poor little Ritchie, getting a hiding from that evil tabloid editor. Look at him hounded and his privacy invaded. It was you, Ritchie. You did this.’ Val’s voice became softer. ‘When you don’t believe, when you don’t have faith in powers beyond this world to judge you, this is what happens. You don’t believe in God, so when you cheat, and lie, and bully little girls, there’s nobody to punish you. There’s just me.’ He tightened his tie and smoothed it down. ‘That’s right, get up. Be brave. That must have been a dreadful experience for you. Mr Oatman can get carried away.’

  The sting in Ritchie’s jaw was clearing his mind. The sudden softness of Val’s speech, and a new gentleness in his eyes, was so welcome that he was grateful. He almost felt like crying. He filled with self-pity.

  ‘Why do you have to be such a sanctimonious cunt?’ he said.

  Val laughed. ‘That’s the spirit. Come and sit down. I haven’t got much time but let’s have a chat about things.’ He crumpled the page in his hands, walked over to the table and emptied the bowl of fruit. Oranges and nectarines rumbled across the varnish and dropped onto the floor. ‘Let’s see how good the smoke detectors are,’ he said. He took a lighter out of his pocket, put the crumpled ball of paper in the bowl and set light to it. It burned well and quickly, with a bright fierce flame. After a few seconds only black flakes were left in the bowl.

  Val looked up at the ceiling. ‘No sprinklers. If there was a fire here, we’d all perish,’ he said brightly.

  ‘Are you going to run it?’ said Ritchie.

  ‘As I think I said, we can’t publish a story that isn’t true. You haven’t been arrested.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘I’ve only got five minutes, Ritchie. Let’s imagine I know that you’ve been fucking some fifteen-year-old. Let’s imagine I run the story. You’re arrested, you’re put on trial, you’re publicly humiliated, you get put in the chokey, your marriage breaks up, you have to fight your wife for access to your children, you lose the mansion, the BBC repudiates you, you become TV poison; you’ve made your career on teenagers, but you’re not allowed near them any more, and nobody takes you seriously on grown-up TV; your film falls through because the man who killed your father is a good family man and doesn’t want to be interviewed by a child molester; and … well, I don’t know what happens after that, Ritchie. Were you going to say something?’

  ‘I’m not a child molester. Don’t you dare call me that.’

  ‘As I said, time is short. What happens after that, I suppose, is that you try to earn a living touring. But you were never that talented as a musician, isn’t that right? Karin was the songwriter, the one they came to see. Now let’s imagine another way. That I know you’ve been fucking a fifteen-year-old, and I don’t publish it, and I don’t tell the police. That’d be concealing a crime. We’d be breaking the law, Ritchie.’ He stopped and gazed at Ritchie as if he wished he weren’t there.

  ‘I’m wondering,’ said Ritchie, ‘what you know about any of the things that may or may not have happened.’

  ‘It’s good that you’re not sure,’ said Val. ‘I like that. This is where I feel I’m doing the right thing. Setting clear boundaries. Helping you identify the point where you’ll get in trouble. But you know what you’ve done, of course.’

  ‘You invited me here.’

  ‘These are hard times for newspapers,’ said Val. ‘We’re fighting to survive. We can’t afford to let a good story go when we have one. Unless we have another story to take its place.’

  ‘About what, for instance?’

  ‘About your sister.’

  Ritchie’s fingertips squeezed the edge of the table. He couldn’t look at Val.

  ‘This is about you and Bec,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

  ‘Leave her alone,’ said Ritchie. ‘She hasn’t done anything wrong. She’s never hurt anybody. She’s a good woman.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Val. ‘She was a prize bitch to me. Did she tell you we were engaged?’

  ‘No.’ The return of his power to lie made Ritchie feel stronger. ‘You can’t afford this kind of pettiness,’ he said.

  ‘It’s nice to hear you’re loyal,’ said Val. He leaned forward, folded his arms on the table and lowered his voice. ‘If Bec is as good as you say she is, she has nothing to worry about from either of us.’

  ‘Either of us?’ Ritchie wrinkled his face. ‘Are you –’

  ‘Stop!’ said Val sharply. ‘Stop.’ He smiled. ‘I’m not sure what you were going to say, of course, but I couldn’t do it, I don’t suppose, unless I knew something about you that you wanted kept hidden from the public. Are you saying th
ere is something?’

  ‘I’m not saying that.’

  ‘Good. That’s good. Well, I can’t be sure, but I expect that in the next year we’re going to be one good story short. Just one. So if we don’t get one, we’ll have to use one we’ve been keeping in reserve.’

  ‘And if you do get one, the reserve goes in the bin.’

  ‘I suppose it will. If we get one in the next twelve months.’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ said Ritchie.

  ‘Whose sake?’ said Val, cupping his ear.

  ‘For God’s sake, my sister! She’s my own flesh and blood!’ As he spoke the words, certain they were true, a sense of horror and shame shifted in him, like a chick about to hatch, squirming in its egg. ‘She’s not a celebrity. She’s not … newsworthy.’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Val.

  ‘For God’s sake!’

  ‘Bring me what you can, Ritchie. You’re not in a strong position.’ He got to his feet. ‘I looked up the names of your children. I was surprised to see that your daughter was called Ruby. I was sure your little girl’s name was Nicole.’

  ‘Do what you like,’ said Ritchie. ‘I’m not going to be your snitch and spy inside my own family.’

  He went back to the studios and worked till seven, swamping the staff with excessive kindness and bursts of rage. They noticed that whatever anyone said to him, he didn’t listen. On the drive to Petersmere rain thickened the wind. He caressed his last words to Val like a gift he was bringing home.

  The trees were roaring in a storm when Ritchie got out of the car. The lights were on in the house, bright and steady inside each strong white window frame. He’d forgotten his keys and as he sheltered in the doorway, waiting to be let in, a gust splashed his back with rain. Karin opened the door with Ruby in her pyjamas close behind, barefoot, naughtily staying up late, and he walked inside to warmth and the savour of supper. He picked Ruby up and carried her to the table, her soft wrists cool on his neck. Later, away from his wife and children for the shortest possible time, he sent Val a message. Do nothing precipitate, he wrote.