Ambition

by Julie Burchill

‘Don’t fight it, bach – there is no life after black. It’s a rag hag’s con trick to keep you buying junk of many colours that you don’t need. She who is tired of the little black dress is tired of life.’ She looked around impatiently. ‘Speaking of which, I feel like getting drunk. Shall we make a night of it?’

  ‘I’m seeing David at ten. Sorry.’

  ‘S’OK. Androna! Thirteen martinis, please. Ta.’ She looked at Susan boldly, daring her to say something. She didn’t. ‘So what was New York like?’

  ‘Very tall.’

  ‘And what did he make you do?’

  ‘Something you’d approve of.’

  Zero sat up straight. ‘Dykes?’

  ‘A whole lot of them. Anonymously. In a bar.’ She leaned closer. ‘I hung from the ceiling.’

  ‘Good God, girl.’ Zero stared at her.

  ‘Don’t tell anyone.’

  ‘My lips are sealed. You’ll have to feed me my martinis by drip.’

  ‘And that’s not all. She was there.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Her. His girlfriend. Michèle.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Either that or she’s got a dyke double.’

  ‘Inside every faithful girlfriend there’s a raging dyke dying to get out. The quiet ones are the worst, too. That’s what I always say.’

  ‘Frequently.’

  ‘Well – game, set and match, isn’t it, bach? And you from Nowhere-on-Sea and all.’

  ‘It would seem so. I’m going to tell him tonight. Postcoitally. And I’ve got proof. She’s got a birthmark. How would I know about that if I was bluffing?’

  ‘Well, congratulations. That’s fantastic.’ Zero drained one of her glasses. ‘And the rest of your problems?’

  ‘I’m waiting for Irving and Lejeune to make their next move and while I’m not exactly looking forward to it like a child to Christmas morning I feel better about it now they’ve shown me their hand. I’m seeing Moorsom tomorrow and presenting him with my fait accompli. And there are only two tasks to go. Things are looking better.’

  ‘Well.’ Zero raised her third glass. ‘Here’s to you, bach. And may all your troubles be curable by penicillin.’

  ‘You did what?’ hissed David Weiss, springing naked from the bed.

  ‘I saw Michèle. This weekend.’

  ‘In New York?’

  ‘No, in Sainsbury’s. Of course in New York.’

  ‘What were you doing in New York?’

  ‘I was taking a break. Getting away from it all.’

  ‘You were snooping, you mean.’

  ‘I certainly wasn’t,’ she said primly. ‘It was complete accident, coincidence, or whatever you want to call it, that I ran into her.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In a bar.’

  He laughed. ‘You’re lying. Michele hates bars. She doesn’t drink.’

  ‘I never said she was drinking. I never said it was a drinking bar.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ He narrowed his eyes at her. ‘What other sort of bar is there? What sort of bar was this?’

  ‘It was a dyke bar,’ she said, looking straight into his eyes.

  He picked up the TV and threw it at her. She jumped off the bed and it missed. He caught her by the throat and slapped her face twice. ‘You EVIL cunt!’ he shouted.

  She was too exhilarated by her power to be frightened. ‘I saw her! I’m telling you, it’s true! I saw her birthmark!’

  He let go of her and pushed her away, moving backwards. He was looking at her as if she had attacked him, as if she was armed and dangerous. He knew that there had been a switch, and that she had the power now. He looked like a victim. ‘What birthmark? You’re lying.’

  ‘Shall I describe it to you, David?’ Naked and beaten, she felt as though she was wearing six-inch heels and had just had a long all-body massage. She felt great. It was called being in control, and it wasn’t at all overrated. ‘On the left thigh, very dark, in the shape of a pineapple. About – this big.’ She held up a thumb and forefinger a little way apart.

  He fell back on to the sofa and, with a loud groan, put his head in his hand. ‘Get me a drink. Scotch. QUICK!’

  She poured a triple J&B at the bar, feeling like a nurse; it struck her that she was so used to doing nothing for men that even fixing a drink for one made her feel self-sacrificing. She took it to him and laid a hand solicitously on his glossy black hair. Now she had him, she was going to be extra nice to him. She was going to be nicer to him than any woman had been to any man in the history of the world. And it would mean more because she was doing it completely of her own free will. ‘Here’s your drink,’ she said softly.

  He groped for the glass. ‘What’s the name of this place? Who runs it? I’ll kill the bastard.’

  Patricide, how handy. But much too news worthy. ‘I don’t know its name, it was very discreet. The club equivalent of the LBD. Somewhere on the Upper West Side, but I couldn’t begin to remember where. I don’t know New York well.’

  ‘Who took you there?’

  ‘A friend.’

  ‘A dyke?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then she must know the place.’ He grabbed the phone and thrust it at her. ‘Call her now.’

  ‘I can’t ask her to reveal this just so you can go round and burn the place down, David. That’s not ethical. I thought you had ethics.’

  He laughed nastily. ‘I feel like I’m the only sucker in the world with ethics. I’m pretty fucking sick of carrying them when every other bastard in the world is traveling light.’

  That he considered himself to be weighed down with principles while so copiously and enthusiastically betraying his fiancée with her struck Susan as rather self-deluding, self-dramatizing, self-regarding and totally American – an innocence that bordered on psychopathy – but she let it pass. ‘David,’ she said gently. ‘Your argument is not with some poor dyke running a bar and trying to turn an honest buck’ – a novel description of Tobias Pope if ever there was one – ‘but with your fiancee. Who was not dragged in off the street by the Dyke Patrol, but who went there of her own free will and in a similar manner undressed and hung from the ceiling naked as the day she was born, for all the world like an Allen Jones chandelier.’

  He threw his Scotch at her, glass and all. She dodged ‘I’m losing my mind here, and you’re making funnies! Get me another one.’ He grabbed the phone again. ‘I’m gonna call her.’ He fumbled at the dial and waited.

  ‘Michèle?’

  Pause.

  ‘Yeah, it’s me. Listen. I know this sounds weird. But it’s best if I come right out and say it, Someone’ – he looked daggers at Susan – ‘told me they saw you in New York this weekend. In a dyke bar. Naked. Hanging from the ceiling.’

  Pause.

  ‘Yeah, I know how crazy I sound. But this person described your birthmark.’

  There was a very long pause. Susan walked over to the bar, poured herself a shot of J&B, drank it, lit one of David’s Camels, put it out and used the toilet. When she came out, the pause was still pregnant.

  Finally it reached gestation, and David gave a blood-curdling scream. ‘You WHAT? You were LONELY? Christ, you BITCH! You CUNT! You! DYKE! I TRUSTED YOU, YOU, YOU BITCH! HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?’ He slammed down the phone and stared at Susan, breathing heavily. Finally he said, ‘It’s true.’

  She nodded happily. ‘I told you.’ She went towards him. He held out his hands, palms towards her. He didn’t look angry or violent any more, but he did look repelled. ‘Keep away from me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Keep away from me and get dressed and get out of here. You have completely eviscerated the admittedly shaky foundations that my life has been built on for as long as I can remember. It may not have been perfect, but it was all I had to call my own, the only thing that didn’t belong to my father. Now it’s all gone, thanks to you. Get out! And tomorrow, in the office, and forever, don’t speak to me. I never want to speak to you again.’r />
  He collapsed on the sofa and began to cry.

  ‘I thought I told you I never wanted to speak to you again,’ said Moorsom in the House of Commons tearoom the next day when Susan flung down between them on the table like a gauntlet a copy of The Face, bearing a cover photograph of Rupert Grey peeping flirtatiously over the top of red framed, heart-shaped Lolita sunglasses and sucking milkshake foam from the end of a pink candy-striped straw.

  ‘I know the girl who did the shoot,’ Susan said casually. ‘You wouldn’t believe what he got up to with that straw later. Well . . . maybe you would.’

  Joe Moorsom looked at the magazine the way a man on a kill-or-cure diet looks at a cream cake. Then he picked it up and thrust it into her bag ‘So?’

  ‘Do you know how Rupert made it big, Joe?’

  ‘I imagine he opened his mouth for someone influential,’ Moorsom sneered. ‘That’s what they all do, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’re all in showbusiness, Joe. You open your mouth to advance yourself and so do these poor starlets. But with Rupert here, it was only a promise to open his mouth. A promise to me, if I could get him where he wanted to be. So I introduced him to a friend of mine, who Svengalied him. Geddit?’

  ‘Very clever. I imagine he’s very grateful to you.’

  ‘I’ll say.’

  Moorsom looked at her resentfully. ‘It looks like I’ve landed on Mayfair and you’ve got the set.’

  ‘That’s about the sum of it.’ She could feel internally what the cliche meant about your heart soaring. ‘Rupert has agreed formally to speak exclusively to the Sunday Best about your statutory rape of him.’ Moorsom winced. ‘If you don’t give me a guarantee that you’ll stop asking questions.’

  ‘I see.’ He looked at his hands. He thought how disgusting they looked; soft, clean, pink. His mother’s hands had looked more masculine, more calloused than his. He wished he had become a miner and never left his village. He wished he was dead. ‘How do I know that the little whore won’t go off and tell another paper anyway?’

  ‘He won’t. He’s not the brightest boy on earth, and he’s still quite concerned about the fact that he tried to blackmail you. Remember that scare I threw into him for you? It stuck. This is just part of a bargain between us.’

  ‘I see.’ He was playing with his teaspoon and for time. ‘What if I stand my ground?’

  ‘That’s up to you, Joe. If you want your union, your wife, your children, your constituents and your party to know that you, Joe Moorsom, champion of children’s rights, are the ex-sugar daddy of Rupee, the sensational seventeen-year-old singing sexpot sissy, you’re in luck.’ She sipped her tea. ‘If you don’t – well, like you say, Joe, you’ve landed on Mayfair and I’ve got the set. And hotels.’ She couldn’t help smirking. ‘Stand your ground this time, Joe, and you’re very likely to be wiped off the board.’

  Question Time came and went that week, and Joe Moorsom’s usual denunciation of the Pope empire was conspicuous by its absence. In her office, Bryan O’Brien looked at her calculatingly. ‘You did well Sue. You did do this, didn’t you?’

  ‘I cannot lie, Bryan.’

  ‘I doubt that.’

  FOURTEEN

  Susan swirled the Czech & Speake bath oil in her Delafon bath and settled back with a bar of their state-of-the-art grey soap. She looked around at her Zehnder radiator, Schneider cabinets, Cerabati tiles and White House towels and sighed. Her bathroom was the one room of the house in which she felt at home; probably because Matthew never used it, having his own downstairs. If an Englishman’s home is his castle, she thought, a career girl’s bathroom is her refuge.

  Through the double-locked door she could hear Matthew moaning on about the state of the fridge, his favourite conversation piece these days. It was now used so little she had taken to keeping her cosmetic lotions in it, making them refreshingly cool on the face, head and body. Matthew had just come across the Camilla Hepper watercress deodorant, lettuce moisturizer and avocado face cream, and the Body Shop banana conditioner, strawberry body shampoo and pineapple facewash. He had tried to eat the facewash for breakfast, thinking it was yoghurt that Susan had put there in a rare fit of culinary nurturing, and was none too pleased. ‘It’s bloody typical,’ he was shouting.

  She put her fingers in her ears and slid under the water. The house vibrated with the slamming of the front door and she came up for air. She thought again how lazy it was of her to stay with Matthew when she had so little time for either his triumphs or his problems. But she didn’t want to live alone; there was something horribly Seventies about it, unless you were a gorgeous dyke with a fan club of lovers. It wasn’t swinging for a heterosexual to be single any more; once you got past twenty-five and were still unattached, you didn’t look glamorous – but as though you’d been sexually tried and rejected by a generation, as Guy Bellamy said. She needed a man around to change fuses and plugs (she still wasn’t sure what the difference was, or even if there was one) and to take out the rubbish. What on earth was the point in feminism if you still had to take out the garbage at the end of the day?

  A subtle buzzing disturbed her thoughts. It was coming from the Schneider cabinet, which she had left ajar, and it sounded like her battery-operated toothbrush. But how could it turn itself on . . . ?

  As if to give her a clue, the toothbrush bounced down from the shelf and hung twinkle-toed in the air.

  ‘Lejeune!’ she screamed.

  Like a dog hearings its master whistle, the brush bore down on her and dive-bombed into the bath. She screamed. It rose up, dripping, and dived again, landing between her knees. She felt it wriggling upwards, and grabbed it with both hands, It was surprisingly strong. Holding on to it firmly she jumped from the bath, shoved it into the toilet and closed the lid. She sat on it until the buzzing stopped. Then she ran for the door, unlocked it, slammed it and double-locked it from the outside. Then she collapsed on the bed, laughing hysterically. Assault by a sex-crazed toothbrush! At least Lejeune had a sense of humour.

  Which was more than you could say for David Weiss. Ever since she had told him the one about the flying dyke and the birthmark, he hadn’t said a word to her. Which is why she was so shocked when he came into her room that day, closed her door and leaned against it.

  ‘David!’ She jumped up from her desk. Half in surprise and half, she had to admit, to give him the full benefit of what she was wearing: a beautifully cut, witheringly conservative Nicole Farhi houndstooth skirt topped with a shocking off-the-shoulder black leather jacket by Karen Boyd. The combination of rebel and executive was completely original and, she thought, irresistible.

  He looked at her, and she was pleased to see his throat move with agitation. But he didn’t come closer and his voice was cool. ‘I’m sorry to have to bother you, but I’ve heard some news which I think might affect your future with this paper. And as managing director, it would be petty of me to keep it from you just because of our personal differences. You’ve done a lot to make this newspaper into the success it is today, more than anyone now that Charles Anstey’s dead.’

  She didn’t like this; it was too respectful. It was already sounding like an obituary. She sat down. ‘What is it?’

  ‘There’s going to be a rather embarrassing story about you in the Commentator some time over the next couple of months.’

  ‘Really?’ So here it was.

  ‘They’re in the last stages of putting together a series called “While The Cat’s Away: Public Virtue And Private Vice”. It’s going to be about how half a dozen public figures with an interest in morality, or who are used as an example to others, comport themselves after hours. They’ve been following a politician, a bishop, a senior civil servant, a minor member of royalty, a marriage guidance counsellor and a muck-raking journalist. I’m afraid that journalist is you.’

  ‘What have they been doing, employing detectives?’

  ‘Something like that. Some regular guy to do the legwork. A few photographs taken with a hidden came
ra. And they’ve got Constantine Lejeune.’

  She brazened it out. ‘That’s a little end-of-the-pier for the high and mighty Commentator, isn’t it?

  ‘I guess they’re trying to be a newszine, like all of us. Anyway, it’s going to be in their new supplement. You’ve got to admit, it’s a very daring and clever idea. And the inclusion of the MP and the civil servant do give it a certain subversive clout.’

  ‘Oh yes, it’s a fucking brilliant idea,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Why don’t we trail it for them on our front page? We don’t want anyone to miss it.’ She examined her nails. They lay on her desk still in their little plastic container. ‘I hope their lawyers are ready, willing and able. Because they’re certainly going to get sued puce.’

  David shrugged. ‘Whatever you think of that guy Lejeune’s shtick, there’s no denying he found those bodies. People trust him. He’s obviously got a gift of some sort.’

  ‘Yes, for self-publicity.’ But she didn’t believe it. She knew there was more to Lejeune than clever PR.

  ‘I hear they’re pretty confident. Challenging this sort of thing can often be very unwise unless you’re one hundred per cent in the clear. And who is, these days?’

  She sighed. ‘David, spare me another lecture on the decline of the West. PLEASE.’

  His jaw tightened. ‘I wouldn’t waste my breath. But I think you should know that challenging something like this is a tricky business and only one outcome is sure: that you’ll attract ten times as much publicity to what they say than if you ignore it.’

  She tried to be patient. ‘David, if I don’t deny this, I’m saying it’s true. And if it’s true, how can your father give me the editor’s job and hope to get that fucking cable franchise he wants so much?’

  ‘What are you scared they’ve got on you, if you don’t mind me asking? I mean, I’m sure everyone knows that you’re a complete and total slut by now. Word travels fast, Susan.’

  ‘Thanks.’ What am I so scared they’ve got on me? That I killed my last boss. That’s I’m whoring for my present boss, who has had me tattooed with the word SOLD, and that I’ve sucked and fucked with men and women, black, white and café au lait, on two continents. And that’s just the story so far. ‘I’m not scared they’ve got anything on me,’ she said defiantly.