Ambition

by Julie Burchill

  ‘Susan?’ He was banging on the door. ‘What’s that smell? What’s going on? What’s happening to us? We’ve got to talk!’

  ‘Just go away, Matthew. I’m sick. You can’t help me. I’m sick.’

  ‘I’m sick of you!’ she heard him yell before he burst into tears. She turned on the taps, fell to the floor and curled up on the bathroom mat. She dreamed about hearts, bleeding, running around the office of the Best like chickens with their heads cut off.

  The next day she lay on the floor staring at the ceiling until she heard Matthew’s Renault pull away. Then she got up and looked at herself in the mirror. She looked old. She cleared the designer ashes from the bath, cleaned it, poured half a bottle of Badedas into the water and lay there, concentrating on keeping her mind blank. When it didn’t work she slipped down under the foam and stayed there until her lungs felt they might burst.

  Her instinct to survive pushed her up to the surface, as it always had in even deeper and hotter water than this. She rinsed herself, dried, dressed and took a taxi to the Best.

  It was half past one when she arrived and, as she had anticipated, the usually busy office was doing its daily midday impersonation of a high-technology ghost town, a Marie Celeste furnished by Amstrad. She wandered through the open-plan room listlessly.

  As she neared her office, she became aware that she was not alone. She could hear the unmistakable sound of copious computers going through their sleek, sinister paces and of tickertape spilling from mechanical mouths – and it was coming from her office. She ran to the door, pressed her face against the glass and gasped.

  Tape lay strewn across desks. Computers flickered insinuatingly. Even as she opened the door, the clatter began to cease. Soon everything was silent and she stood in the middle of the room, looking round in a daze.

  A computer in the far corner caught her eye. It beeped, flickered, and was blank. Then, for a split-second, it flashed her a message.

  HAVE A NICE DAY, LOVE, CONSTANTINE.

  NINE

  Susan was listening to Question Time and looking at the frantic jumping pulse at her wrist when Oliver Fane put his head around the door. He was smiling broadly, so obviously he had some bad news for her.

  ‘Ah, Sue . . . I’ve just been in with the jolly swagman. He’s got his billabongs in a bit of a twist, it seems, what with your pal Moorsom and his enquiring mind. Apparently he wants to see you ASAP.’

  ‘Thanks, Oliver.’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  ‘Sue . . . ! Sit down.’

  ‘Hello, Bryan.’

  He nodded at the radio. ‘D’ja just hear that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s not good copy, is it, Sue?’

  ‘Not really, Bryan.’

  ‘It’s not good copy at all.’

  ‘It’s just a question in the House, Bryan—’

  He held up a hand. ‘Sue, we’ve had this conversation before, I seem to remember. The point is that this would seem like a minor irritant to you and me because we’re minor players and haven’t got much to lose.’ Speak for yourself, Abo. ‘But to a man like Pope, with so very much to lose, this sounds like the opening shot in a major offensive. All this talk about South African gold and the American stranglehold; it’s not exactly good publicity, Sue. There’s a very xenophobic streak on both the left and right in this country, an all-party thing like hanging – except the MPs go for this as well. Especially when it comes to so-called foreigners buying up previously British media interests. It’s not just the Best and the publishing company – Tobias has great plans for your little island. Cable TV, films, the whole works.’

  ‘I’m aware of that, Bryan.’

  ‘I just got off the blower to him, Sue. D’ja know what he said? He said, “Tell that stuck-up little chit that if she doesn’t put the screws on her boyfriend fast, I might get sick of taking stick from that half-assed little island of hers. And if I do, there isn’t going to be a paper for her to be editor of.” Is that clear?’

  ‘Crystal.’

  ‘He means it, Sue. It’s not bluff. Face it, the world’s his oyster and good old Blighty’s hardly the pearl. He could be doing his business’ – and here Susan noted grimly and inwardly that this was also a metaphor for the process of elimination – ‘in Oz, or Nippon, or Lat Am. He’s doing this country a favour by doing business here.’

  ‘It’s a sort of Marshall Plan for millionaires, Bryan, isn’t it?’

  He sighed. ‘Sometimes you’re a bit too clever for your own good, Sue.’

  She wondered if there was an equivalent phrase in any language other than English; probably not.

  ‘The thing is, I’ve been talking to a member of the staff who shall be nameless—’

  ‘—nameless and blameless, Sue. Company loyalty, that’s what Oliver’s got.’

  ‘Really? I thought they called it rimming.’

  ‘One and the same, aren’t they?’ He sighed. ‘Look, Oliver’s been talking and he says you and Moorsom were very close – not just lunch, but orchids. Men don’t send orchids to casual acquaintances. Oliver says you were confidantes, probably lovers. What’s it to be, Sue? And make it the truth.’

  She looked at her hands, thin and white with torn cuticles and red knuckles. She could use a hand job. Rephrase that. ‘We were confidantes. He felt pretty isolated at Westminster, as I did here. We came from similar backgrounds.’ She looked at Bryan half-beseechingly, half-defiantly. In the past, reference to her working-class origins had made a lot of people back down, gagged by guilt. Flexing her roots, Zero called it. Bryan O’Brien wasn’t so soft.

  He sighed. ‘Don’t try that, love. I was brought up on a sheep station in bleeding Wagga Wagga. When I used to play with me John Bull printing set, they thought I was going queer and took me to the sawbones for an anal examination.’ His face went hard. ‘Confidantes.’

  ‘Yes.’

  OK. I’m not asking you to tell me anything. But I’m going to tell you something, and if you’ve ever been told anything remotely like it before, I want you to nod. OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Oliver says there are a few Moorsom stories on the statutory rapevine. True or false?’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Tarts, isn’t it? Male or female? How much under-age?’

  ‘I can’t think under pressure, Bryan.’

  ‘Then you’re in the wrong game, love.’ He picked up his phone, called his secretary’s number. ‘Yas, step inside for a mo, and bring your pad.’ He looked at Susan dismissively. ‘Maybe a day off will refresh your memory, Sue. And remind you how it feels to be unemployed.’

  In her room she grabbed her raincoat and her leather envelope and then just stood there, poleaxed. What was she supposed to do now? Get on to Joe? Threaten him? Get hold of Rupert? Pay him? Resign?

  ‘Hello,’ said David Weiss from the doorway. He came in and closed the door.

  She didn’t even feel upset, she was too preoccupied. Love was a luxury, but her career was real life. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Susan, I want to explain.’

  She sighed. ‘Don’t bother, David. You wouldn’t be able to find the words and I wouldn’t be able to find the time. And I shouldn’t have to remind you of this, as you’re the boss, but it’s very unprofessional to talk over personal matters in office hours. Amateurish, some would say. Typical of an overgrown little rich boy who’s never had to hold down a job on merit and graft in his life, some would say.’ She picked up some papers from her desk and rustled them vaguely. ‘Go away, I’ve got a problem.’

  He didn’t go away. He sat on the edge of her desk and looked at her. ‘Two heads are better than one.’

  ‘Yeah, but go and tell that to some poor bastard with two heads.’

  They laughed. She sat down in her chair. ‘Since you’re interested, and as you’re the boss, I’ll tell you what it is. I’ve got a career/conscience dichotomy.’

  ‘A dichotomy sounds like some sort of surgery Zero would have.’

>   ‘Cute. Well, this is just a normal, everyday case of putative blackmail. A while ago Mr X tried to blackmail Mr Y and I stopped him. But now I’m being asked to blackmail Mr Y with help from Mr X so that Mr Y will stop asking sticky question in the House about the intentions, honourable or otherwise, of your sweet silver-haired old pappy. Comprendez?’

  ‘Joe Moorsom?’ David’s brown eyes looked even more bovinely startled. ‘You’ve been told to blackmail him?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Greymail, maybe. Maybe I’ve been on the purple press too long; I call pressure blackmail and sex love.’ He looked at the floor. ‘The thing is, it’s not just a second-league celeb and a twenty-two-year-old rentboy we’re talking about here. The boy was fourteen years old at the time. Chronologically. Spiritually he qualifies for a free bus-pass. And Moorsom, I don’t know if you know this, made his name speaking out against the abuse of children – especially sexual. He’s sponsored by a very traditional union and he has a wife and two children who are adored by press and public. He’s very good at his job and the next step is a position in the Shadow Cabinet. It all adds up to such an awful lot to lose that I guess Bryan thinks he’ll back off at the first hint of it all coming tumbling down. And of course, as his friend, I’m supposed to drop the hint. Like BO.’

  ‘And you find that immoral?’ he asked seriously.

  She looked at him sharply. ‘Get serious. I don’t speak American. I don’t know what immoral means, unless you’re talking about war and starvation. I just think it’s a bad career move. He’s my friend. And he’s going places.’

  He thought conspicuously. ‘Listen, you’re right about observing office hours. But can you meet me for a drink after work?’

  ‘Isn’t Bunny in town?’

  ‘No. And neither is my father, so we’ll both be free, won’t we? Can you?’

  ‘OK. The Kremlin Club, you know it?’

  ‘I joined last week, but I haven’t been there yet.’

  ‘Have you got a treat in store.’

  The Kremlin Club served only vodka – twenty-two types. The menu was written in Cyrillic script. The waitresses wore high boots, grey uniforms and Red Army caps. The Red Army Choir sang rousing patriotic songs. And no one on less than 50K a year was allowed to join.

  ‘This is a great place,’ said David appreciatively, looking around. ‘We have nothing like this in New York. It’s a very European sense of irreverence. I can dig it.’

  Susan sniggered into her Stolichnaya. Why did every American, no matter how young or beautiful or rich or clever, speak as though they’d gone into a coma in 1973 and only just woken up? They dug things, had hassles and downers and then got mellow, whereas English people liked things, got busy and sad and then cheered up. It was a perfectly adequate language. She supposed that their massacre of it was some sort of misguided attempt at establishing linguistic independence; they were still-bridling from being a colony, as young West Indians born in SW2 learn to talk the pidgin patois of islands they have never seen as an act of self-definition.

  His corny speech made her feel better. David Weiss wasn’t such a bargain, despite his looks, money and ten inches of the best kosher salami this side of Bloom’s deli. ‘Were you ever a hippie?’ she asked him accusingly.

  ‘I’m only thirty, for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘Come on. The Sixties lasted well into the Seventies in your neck of the woods.’

  ‘Well, I did have a pair of Frye boots.’

  ‘Oh, God.’ She wriggled down in her chair and glared at him across the hammer-and-sickle-shaped table. ‘I’m not with you.’

  He laughed, then frowned. ‘Susan, we’ve got to talk.’

  ‘That’s another Americanism. It means – we’ve got to analyse.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t go in for public navel-gazing. Svetlana, you can put another double in there when you’re ready.’

  He waited until the waitress had brought fresh drinks, then leaned across the table. The red metal tip of the sickle seemed about to run him through; he didn’t seem to notice, he was so serious. ‘I think that what happened between us could use a little analysis.’

  ‘I don’t.’ She stirred her vodka with her finger. ‘But then I’m an analysis-retentive.’ She sniggered at her pun. ‘OK, you want an analysis of what happened between us. Here it is: you’re a very good fuck.’

  ‘I don’t mean we have to talk about what went on in bed. I mean we have to talk about what happened afterwards.’

  ‘Do you by any chance mean your long-distance swooning and spooning with a certain boss-eyed rich bitch?’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘I must say, she has a very smooth upper lip – going by your photograph, that is. But then, they get electrolysis on their thirteenth birthdays, don’t they? Like English girls get ponies?’

  He shook his head wonderingly. ‘Susan, this isn’t worthy of you. You’re acting like a bitch.’

  ‘Oh, really? Isn’t it funny that when a woman acts like a human being, when she shows anger, pain and ambition, they call her a female dog? Female dogs don’t act that way. Men do, though. People do.’

  He raised his hands, palms towards her. ‘Listen, if you’re going to get into some militant feminist thing—’

  ‘Feminist? Because I’m annoyed that you misled me? I think you’ll find that an aversion to being conned far pre-dates feminism. I think you’ll find that men have it, too.’

  ‘Susan, Susan.’ He caught her hand. ‘Why are we talking about men and women when we should be talking about us?’

  ‘To ignore what men have done to women since the dawn of time is to forget your history. And to forget your past is to become a slave to the future.’ She hiccuped, pulling her hand away and signalling to Svetlana, who was really a Beck from Bushey called Belinda Bellman. Susan didn’t know quite what she meant, but she liked the sentiment and the way it sounded. She was nearing that stage of drunkenness when anything, even the Shipping Forecast – German Bites Pharaohs: Silly – seems profound. ‘You lied to me,’ she accused, pointing a shaky finger at him.

  ‘I didn’t lie to you at all. I didn’t say I didn’t have a girlfriend back in New York. If you think back, you’ll remember it was you who dragged me into that john.’

  ‘And you fought me off like a crazy thing, as I remember. Five times in two hours.’

  He sighed wearily. ‘Of course I didn’t fight you off. You’re a beautiful girl.’

  ‘Is that the only reason you slept with me? Because I was beautiful and there? Like climbing a mountain?’

  ‘It’s a new town to me. I was lonely.’

  ‘Do you love me?’ she pleaded.

  ‘Susan, I adore you.’

  ‘But do you love me?’

  ‘Susan, I don’t even know you. I met you yesterday. What do you want me to say?’

  ‘Lie to me. Why stop now?’ She looked into her glass. ‘Tell me about your girlfriend.’

  ‘Why do girls always say that?’

  ‘You tell me, Dr Freud.’

  ‘OK.’ He took a long pull at his strawberry vodka (the big girl). ‘She’s twenty-six. I’ve known her since we were in our early teens. She went to Bennington and she majored in English. She speaks six languages and she’s a sculptor. She likes sushi, skiing and Sade. She’s a very nice girl.’

  ‘Is she good in bed?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m going to answer that.’

  ‘That means no.’

  ‘It means nothing of the sort.’

  ‘It means no. OK, so she’s bad in bed. Which is convenient for you. Because it gives you an excuse to put it about all you want and still you can say to yourself, “Oh, it’s just sex with these others. It doesn’t threaten what I have with her.” Isn’t that what you think?’

  He nodded.

  ‘God, men are predictable. David, sex is the biggest threat there is to everything. It’
s brought down governments and empires. It can surely send your little lovenest in the sky crashing down to earth. David, sex isn’t going to the prom – sex was never safe. The only safe sex there is is masturbation. When there’s more than one person in the bed, sex is always potentially dangerous. It was believing that sex could be safe, that it could be used as a playpen like those stupid American fruits thought, that made it literally fatal.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Don’t you? Don’t you understand what I mean? I’ve got a sexually transmitted disease.’

  His eyes were enormous. ‘What?’

  ‘It’s called love. I love you.’ She was drunk now, on her own lack of shame as much as Stolichnaya.

  He looked as if herpes might be a preferable option. ‘I’m not sure if that’s a good idea.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, I’ll ask you first next time. But answer me something. Do you love your girlfriend?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said quietly.

  ‘No, you don’t. Because if you did, you wouldn’t sleep with anyone else. It’s simple as ABC.’

  ‘Are you telling me I’m the only man you sleep with?’

  ‘Since I met you? Yes.’

  ‘Are you going to stop sleeping with my father?’

  She hesitated. ‘That depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  She wavered. ‘Lots of things.’ Why on earth had she told such a stupid lie in the first place? To hurt him, of course. It hardly added to her youthful glamour to appear to be fucking a white-haired senile delinquent.

  ‘Let me ask you something, for a change.’ His face looked different; he was angry. She had hit him in a soft spot, the mental equivalent of his testes, his Achilles ache, with that analysis of his half-hearted love for Michele Levin. ‘You put out for me, and for my father, and for that guy who died. Do you always put out just for the top guy at the newspaper? Or do you fuck the messenger boys between main courses?’