Buying Time

by E. M. Brown

  “Hold this while I have a quick shower,” Samantha said, passing the joint. “And help yourself.”

  Ella watched the lithe woman step into a shower cubicle. She took a hit, felt dizzy and sat down on a chair, staring at the actress’s blurred outline through the glass.

  “You’re probably wondering,” Samantha called out above the noise of the water, “what Sam Charlesworth, star of many a West End hit way back when, is doing slumming it in an extended run ofPuss in bloody Boots?”

  Ella’s head whirled. It was a while since she’d last indulged. “Not at all.”

  “Since you asked for a candid interview, warts and all, I’ll tell you. There’s precious little else being performed, these days; I love acting, and I need the money.”

  “It must be galling – that there’s so few serious plays being performed, I mean?”

  “Galling isn’t the half of it, darling. It’s a crime. The public don’t know what a serious play is. Pinter? Churchill? Poliakoff? Who’re they? And Shakespeare? Do you know when the Bard was last performed at London?”

  “Go on?”

  “Three years ago, darling. What do youthink of that?”

  “What do you expect, with Westminster full of career criminals?”

  Samantha poked her head from the shower. “I’m so glad we’re on the same wavelength, Ella. But then I knew we would be. I Googled you before I consented to be grilled. Pass me the towel.”

  The actress stepped from the shower and dried herself; Ella had to look away.

  “What I don’t understand, though,” Samantha went on, “is why someone who usually writes polemic and political articles for ScotFreeMedia wants to interview a washed-up has-been ‘starring’ – I laugh! – in a third-rate panto? Then I had it: you want to know what a jobbing actor really feels about the political situation south of the border.” She peered out of the towel as she dried her hair. “Look, I’ll tell you on one condition: anonymity. I don’t like myself for the stipulation, but I want to work in this town, and there are people out there who’d make damned sure I never trod the boards again if I started bad-mouthing certain ministers-of-the-arts-who-should-remain-nameless…Comprenez-vous?”

  She pulled on a pair of tight-fitting faded jeans, buttoned a white blouse, and looked at Ella enquiringly.

  “I’ll be honest with you,” Ella said, taking a long pull at the spliff and passing it to the actress. “I’m going to do a fluffy celeb-piece for SFM’s entertainment strand, and if you want I’d be more than happy to do a more serious article about being an actress in today’s political climate – source anonymous, of course.”

  Samantha quirked her lovely lips and peered at her. “I sense a ‘but’ coming. But… you want something else, hm?”

  Ella nodded. “I’m writing the biography of Ed Richie, and I’m interviewing everyone I can who had anything to do with him.”

  Samantha closed one eye theatrically and drawled, “You’re interviewing all his women? How long have you got, darling?”

  Ella smiled. “As long as it takes,” she said. “And I quite understand if you don’t want to rake over the past. I’ll still do the other pieces, but I’d be grateful…”

  “No.” Samantha leaned against the dresser and folded her arms, peering through the smoke rising from the joint. “No, I’m quite happy to talk about Ed. On that score, I have quite a lot to get off my chest.”

  “I’m very grateful, Samantha.”

  “Please, it’s Sam,” the actress said. “Hokay. I’m famished, and I could kill for a drink. Let’s go.” She pulled on a fake sheepskin jacket, wound a long knitted scarf around her neck, and led the way from the theatre.

  Le Moulin Bleu was a steamy, atmospheric cafe-bistro tucked down a nearby sidestreet, the haunt of students and the odd nostalgic French diplomat and business-person.

  “Would you believe,” Sam said as they seated themselves at a tiny, marble-topped table, “that this place was trashed when England lost to France in the quarter-final of the last World Cup?”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Ella said.

  Sam recommended the French onion soup followed by ratatouille, accompanied by sparkling white wine.

  “So… Ed,” Sam said.

  For the next hour, as they ate, Sam told Ella all about her first meeting with Ed Richie, and their subsequent affair. “It came at the right time,” she said. “I’d been single for a year, and I think I was looking for someone. And then this handsome, intelligent man walks into my life.”

  “Love at first sight?”

  “Certainly wild attraction. And it was mutual. The love came later, but not much later, say a couple of months after I moved in. It was pretty wild. We seemed made for each other. He was a bright cookie, and I was no slouch. Our politics meshed. We both loved theatre and books… And the sex. Jeez.”

  She went on, explaining how she felt about the man and describing their time together. Ella smiled as she listened, and it was as if Sam were describing her own feelings, in the early days, for Kit Marquez.

  “It was a very equal relationship, Ella. He really loved me. I hope that doesn’t sound corny.”

  Ella shook her head. “In his novels, his portrayal of women is exceptional. But…”

  “Go on.” Sam lodged her chin on her hand, watching Ella.

  “I can’t claim to have known Ed Richie at all well, but I sense a contradiction. For all his ability to write about strong women, why was it that he couldn’t find someone who would remain with him? I’ve read his journal, and read the pieces about him in magazines and the better papers… and it seems that his life was just one long series of affairs.”

  “One thing” – Sam reached out and touched Ella’s hand – “he might have had lots of affairs, but he never cheated on any of his women.”

  “As far as you know, surely?”

  “No, I knew Ed. He was an honest man.”

  Ella tried not to smile. “Sam, he was a man –”

  “Don’t give me any of that sisterhood bullshit, Ella. Credit me with a little insight into someone I lived with for three years. Ed didn’t cheat. That’s not to say he was perfect, far from it. He could be surly and uncommunicative at times, and damned sarcastic, and he flew into rages… But he didn’t look at another woman while he was with me.”

  Ella nodded slowly. “Okay. So… why didn’t it last? And why were there so many other women down the years? At a conservative estimate, going from what people have told me… I’d say that he lived with at least twenty lovers in around thirty years.”

  Sam was silent for a time, staring at her beer. At last she said, “Ed wasn’t easy to live with. He was… uncompromising. He had his routines, his writing routines, and woe betide anyone who tried to change things. He didn’t suffer fools gladly, and he had no time for anyone not of his political persuasion. Also… Look, the fact that he had so many lovers, one after the other, suggests to me he was searching for something, and never finding it. I once asked him about this, towards the end. I… I kind of sensed his dissatisfaction in our relationship. You know how it is, that terrible, nebulous sense that’s almost impossible to define, when you know that something isn’t right but you have absolutely no idea what to say in order to fix it?”

  “You felt that?”

  “It was just before I landed a part in Dark Heart, the crime drama that was big back then. So I got the part and went away to shoot it for a month, thinking that that was all it would take – a few weeks away to allow me to think, to look back and assess our relationship.”

  “And did you come to any conclusions?”

  Sam frowned. “Well, I did wonder if Eddy was happy with me. He seemed to be pushing me, goading me.” She shrugged. “But I was confused… I realise that this might be no more than self-justification on my part. You see, I met someone on the set, someone I’d known for a couple of years as a friend. And…” She shrugged. “There was no going back to Eddy, after that. I… I’m not proud of how I ended
it, Ella. I should have… We should have sat down and talked honestly, but… I wanted out. And at the back of my mind I was telling myself that Eddy would be okay, he’d find someone else pretty damned quick, as per usual. But, no, it wasn’t honourable. I… I came back that day, told him I was leaving, and off I went.” She shook her head. “No, I’m not proud of myself, Ella. I’d do it differently, now.”

  “You never saw him again?”

  “Never. I saw him being interviewed on TV – this was after his novels became best-sellers, and do you know, I was pleased for him. Really pleased. And of course I read the books.” She smiled. “I even thought I recognised myself in one of them. Jessica, the posh sculptress in Endeavour’s Harbour.”

  “And five years ago…?”

  “I read the newspaper reports, saw the TV coverage.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. I was shocked, but not as shocked as I thought I might have been. It was years since we’d been together…” She fell silent, then asked, “Do you have any idea what might have happened to him?”

  Ella sighed. “No. No, I haven’t. None at all. But I hope to find out, in time.”

  “If you do, I’d like to know, okay? Before it becomes public knowledge.”

  They ordered coffee, as the snow came down in incessant flurries beyond the plate-glass window, and Ella asked the actress about Ed Richie’s reaction when Sam had told him she was leaving.

  “What I’d like to know, Sam, is whether he was jealous?”

  “Any man who tells you they aren’t jealous, Ella, is a liar. Of course he was, but whether he would have been any more jealous had he known who it was I was leaving him for…”

  Ella looked at the actress. “You mean, it was someone he knew?”

  Sam smiled; she shook her head. “No, it was a woman.”

  Ella opened her mouth, but no words came out.

  “You’re shocked. Disappointed in me.”

  “Disappointed?”

  “That the well-known Sam Charlesworth, actress, is bisexual but never had the guts to come out and admit it? Well, guilty as charged. But you see, my mother was still alive at the time, and she was a strict northern Methodist. It would have killed her. And later…” She shrugged. “I was briefly married to a man ten years ago, and he didn’t knowabout my past. I suppose I could have come out after the divorce, but then Front came to power and repealed same-sex marriage, and things began to get nasty… So,” she said, staring Ella in the eye, perhaps challenging her, “so no, I wasn’t as strong as I liked to think, and I wanted to work. I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you.”

  Ella shook her head. “Jesus, Sam… I know how hard it is. And I don’t blame you for a thing, okay? Now let’s have another drink.”

  She was more than a little drunk, an hour later, when they left the bistro and stood facing each other. Snowflakes settled on Sam’s face, melted and turned to diamonds, glittering in the street lights. She was beautiful, and Ella felt a sudden clutch in her heart.

  “I was wondering…” Sam began, touching Ella’s hand. “My flat’s just around the corner. Maybe you’d like to…?”

  Something caught in Ella’s throat. “Thank you, but –”

  Sam waved. “But you have someone? That’s okay.”

  Ella squeezed the actress’s hand, relieved at being let off so easily. “I’m sorry. I hope you don’t mind? If we could meet again, to talk…?”

  Sam smiled. “Of course.”

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  They parted with a brief kiss and Ella watched the actress walk away through the quickening snowfall, her heart still thumping. She took a taxi to her cheap hotel in Earl’s Court, but walked the last half mile when the driver lost his way: she needed to clear her head, anyway.

  She hurried through the snow, thinking over her interview; she relived the sensation of drawing the laces from the woman’s bodice, and wondered what it would have been like to make love again, after so long.

  As she turned into the street where her hotel was located, she looked behind her, moved by some intuition – and she was right. A dark figure slipped into a doorway thirty yards back.

  Ella made it to her hotel, took the lift to her room, and locked herself in.

  She made a strong coffee, opened her laptop and began the first of two short articles about Sam Charlesworth.

  She was interrupted by the chime of her wrist-com.

  “Hope it isn’t too late?” Kit said, smiling out at her. “But I have something on that scientist you mentioned, Ralph Dennison.”

  “Go on.”

  “He graduated from Cambridge in ’81, then did a doctorate there. In ’87, he was snapped up by an independent research company in Oxford. He worked for them for twelve years or so, then left around the turn of the century.”

  “And then?”

  “Well, he fell off the radar for a while, then disappeared completely in 2010.”

  Ella blinked. “Disappeared?”

  “Vanished into thin air. Reading between the lines, it’s possible that he was snatched by the Chinese – or went of his own accord. He was always a bit of a Red, apparently.”

  “Christ, okay… What exactly did he work on?”

  “He studied natural sciences at Cambridge, and did his PhD in quantum physics at Oxford. The research team he worked with in Oxford was all very hush-hush – and oddly he published no papers during his time there. And according to a couple of people I’ve spoken to, he was a brilliant physicist who should have published reams of research work. Anyway, that’s it for now. I’ll keep digging.”

  Ella thanked her and cut the connection.

  So Dennison disappeared in 2010… but had met up with Ed Richie in Leeds in 2025, according to Richie’s journal.

  She wondered if it were merely a coincidence that Richie and Dennison, two university friends, had both vanished.

  She made herself another coffee and tried to concentrate on the article about Sam Charlesworth.

  From Ed Richie’s journal, 9th September, 2007

  TALK ABOUT KICKING a man when he’s down… Traverson axed Beat Up a month ago, citing falling viewing figures – even though it was nominated for a TV Guild award last Spring – and now Coromandel Cable has pulled the plug on CrazyMadLoopy… which was fun to work on. I’ve gone from having three shows running or in production, to one – the sequel to Catweazle, due to start filming next spring. I’m not getting desperate, just yet… The odd radio commission brings in a couple of thousand a year, but the big money is in TV. And it’s drying up. And my bloody agent is worse than useless. I need a serious talk to her about what she’s doing for me.

  From Ed Richie’s journal, 14th September, 2007

  IN A BID to try to earn a crust and pay the sodding mortgage, I approached Dave at the FT last week to see if they had any openings for reviewers. As luck would have it, they did. As bad luck would have it, the first bloody book they sent me was a reprint of Ballard’s Crash. My initial instinct was to contact Dave and say that I didn’t do automobile porn… But I decided to bite the bullet and read fifty pages before I had to put it down. So I Googled Crash + Ballard + reviews, and proceeded to cobble together four hundred words cribbed from online reviews. Ker-ching, three hundred quid better off.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  June, 2008

  RICHIE CAME TO his senses and wondered where the hell he was. Something was covering his eyes, rendering him blind. He reached up and touched a pad of soft material. He was surrounded by a constant droning, a vibration that conducted itself through his body, at once familiar and yet disconcerting. He felt a little woozy, as if with alcohol, but somehow knew he hadn’t been drinking. It was a different kind of wooziness, and he tasted no trace of alcohol in his mouth. He felt as if he’d been drugged.

  His first shocked thought was that he was being held captive somewhere, quickly followed by a more rational explanation. He pulled off the blindfold and saw that he was right: he was aboard a plane, the small window to his left showing a
n expanse of glittering ocean far below.

  Richie feared flying and avoided doing so whenever possible. When there was no other option, he dosed himself up on sleeping tablets and wore a blindfold for the duration of the journey.

  He tried to recall when had been the last time he’d flown anywhere, then remembered and looked around in panic. Sure enough, Marsha was sitting next to him, fast asleep. Digby and Caroline sat across the aisle, reading the Saturday supplements of the Guardian.

  So it was June 2008 and he was flying to the Greek island of Crete with his friends, and lover, for a two-week break. He felt no fear of being aboard the plane, this time – after all, he had survived the flight, hadn’t he?

  He’d jumped back five years. He was forty-eight, and felt better than he had for a long, long time. His body was not beset by the nagging pain of arthritis, and he’d lost a little weight since 2013, or rather had yet to gain it.

  He tried to work out how many relationships he’d gone through between 2008 and 2013. After Marsha was Liz, which had lasted for a year, followed by Hellena, which had been a brief, tempestuous affair of a few months; after that… the American, Susan, then Pam, and finally Hilary, before he’d met Sam in 2013. These women had lived with him at the barn for varying periods, but there had been other affairs in between which had never graduated to live-in status.

  Now he found himself re-living the very last days of his disastrous liaison with Marsha Mallory.

  The start of 2008 had been a bad time for Richie. Last year, two of his shows had been axed, and half a dozen proposals for one-off dramas, and the synopses for a couple of films, had all come to nothing. Digby had come to his rescue like the true friend he was, loaning him five thousand pounds and in June taking him, and Marsha, on holiday to Crete. Richie, overcome by Digby’s generosity, felt it would be churlish of him to refuse the break on the grounds of his fear of flying – he wished he could have gone without Marsha, though.