by Ray Connolly
“Yes. And why?”
“That’s for us to find out.”
“Perhaps it’s just incredibly boring.”
“Most people’s are. On the other hand most rock stars buy their mothers nice detached bungalows at the seaside. He has no mother, we know that. But what happened to her? Why is he so alone? No-one gets through childhood without being influenced, so, is there someone in his past who helped shape him, or who can shed light on him? If there is, let’s find him or her. And then there are all the millions he gives to charities and the hospital he’s planning to fund in Ireland. It’s for children. Maybe there’s something there, too.”
Browne, famous at WSN for committing everything to computer, typed rapidly into his laptop.
For ten further minutes they talked about the kind of programme they had in mind. Then, just as suddenly as he’d begun, Browne snapped the laptop closed. “Okay. Leave it to me. I’ll come up with something, don’t worry.”
Kate finished her drink. “Good. I’ll see you tomorrow then.” She got up.
He pulled a silly face. “Pity you don’t fancy me. We’d make a great team.”
He was so brazen she almost laughed. “I’m sure I’d be a disappointment.”
Already though, he’d had another thought. “That American girl…Beverly. She’s a Jesse Gadden fan, isn’t she? Maybe I should talk to her. She’s pretty.”
“Maybe you should,” she said, and left him to his alternative plans. Surely Beverly would never be so stupid.
Chapter Nine
September 24:
Her phone began ringing as she was closing her front door. She hurried to get to it before her voicemail cut in. “Hello?”
“Hi.” The voice was breathy. “It’s Jesse.”
“Oh! Yes! Hello!” She was, she knew, trying to sound as casual as possible. She’d met and interviewed kings, killers and presidents without qualm, but with Gadden every word seemed to come out sounding gauche.
“’Hello’,” Gadden mimicked, putting on an English accent. “Look, er, I was wondering...”
“Yes?”
“Can you cook?”
“Cook?” She felt the slightest breath of panic. “Well, I know how to use a microwave.”
“I’ve known women in Cork work miracles with a microwave. If I were to come over tonight could you perhaps work a small miracle for me, d’you think?”
“You want me to cook something for you?” Jesse Gadden had just invited himself to dinner.
“Do you have a problem with that?”
“Er...no. No, of course not.” It wouldn’t have occurred to him that she might have other plans for the evening. She had, but she’d just changed them.
“I mean, if you’d rather we went to Pizza Express…that would be all right, too. I just thought it would be easier to talk about the interview at your place.”
“Here will be fine.” Already she was visualising a practically empty fridge, wondering if she had time to run to the supermarket.
“Right! See you in a minute.”
“A minute?”
But he’d already hung up.
She dashed up the stairs to change. As she was pulling on fresh jeans and one of the sweaters she’d bought at the weekend, she spotted the black Mercedes through her bedroom window. It was parked about fifty yards away down the road. Had Jesse Gadden been waiting for her to arrive home from work?
She was cleaning her teeth when the bell rang. Spitting out the toothpaste, she hurried to the door.
He was standing holding a ragged bunch of sunflowers that looked as though they’d been too long without water. “I saw you watching me,” he said.
“I’m sorry, I was just...” She’d almost apologised for having spotted him before she stopped herself. It wasn’t she who’d been spying. “It’s a distinctive car. I mean, being so long and black. It looks as though it should belong to a South American dictator or someone sinister…” Then, thanking him for the flowers, she led him inside.
She’d been hoping he would wait in the living room with a glass of wine while she recced the fridge, but, after being complimentary about her home and paintings and the various photographs she’d taken around the world and had framed, he followed her downstairs to the kitchen. Suddenly it felt very small as she manoeuvred around him trying not to bump.
Taking off his jacket, he offered to help. She didn’t let him. Instead he opened the wine while she got the glasses out. All the time his eyes followed her, bright blue magnets, which, no matter how she tried, she couldn’t ignore.
If he realised she was nervous, he didn’t betray it as he went through her fridge, pulling out ready-to-serve lasagne and tortellini, and helping himself to a bunch of shrivelling grapes. Hopefully, she thought, he’d be so used to people losing their sense of direction in his presence he’d take her stumbling conversation for normal behaviour. But, God, why was she behaving like this?
In the absence of anything else they decided upon a mixed selection of pasta, with salad and some left-over cheese, and whatever remained of the grapes after he’d finished with them. But by now he was studying her CD collection. She frowned. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be judged on her taste in music. Then:
“Oh yes!” A yelp of approval.
“What’s that?”
“Neil Young. After The Gold Rush.”
“Ah...” A short-term boy friend who made documentaries on eco-systems had left that just before they’d drifted apart. She hadn’t played it since. “You like Neil Young?”
“Oh yes. I wasn’t aware of him until Kurt Cobain alerted me. He was a big Neil Young fan. He loved that line of his ‘Better to burn out than fade-away’. That’s pure rock and roll!” He grinned. “Then I began playing his early stuff.” And, as he selected the track, a piano gave way to Young’s high, reedy voice. “Well, I dreamed I saw the knights in armour coming, saying…”
Dutifully she listened with him.
“When did you start to sing?” she asked as a French horn began a forlorn break in the song.
“What’s that?”
Boys and their records, she thought, just like Jeroboam. And she rephrased her question. “I know you’re supposed to have played every folk pub in Ireland before anyone noticed you, but before that, did you sing at school and parties, that sort of thing?”
Almost wearily the eager fan disappeared and the wary star returned. “And here was me thinking we’d be leaving the business until the coffee and After Eights.”
“We haven’t got any After Eights,” she returned.
But they did have candles, tall red ones, and the special offer supermarket claret wasn’t bad. And dinner was cosy, if, at first, careful, as Kate explained how she wanted to know about his childhood for background information, and he nodded and turned the question by asking about her family.
“You probably know all your uncles and aunts and stuff, do you?” he said, and almost before she realised she was telling him about her brothers.
He did that all evening, not rudely, just making it seem that her story was at least as interesting as his. It was exasperating, but flattering, and not something she was used to among the very famous who generally asked very few questions themselves. She knew what he was doing, yet somehow she felt compelled to answer. He was such a good listener, his eyes, as always, locked on hers when she was talking. Occasionally he would offer snippets of information about himself as encouragement, but generally of the negative kind. No, he had never been an altar boy nor a chorister, he told her. In truth, though the nuns, and, later, priests, had chastised him, he’d hardly ever gone to mass.
“Nuns?” she interrupted.
He grinned. “Nuns. You know, Brides of Christ. Engaged, at least. Well, going steady.”
“You were brought up by nuns after your mother died...?”
“And brought down by them, too, from time to time. I must have been a terrible disappointment to everybody who taught me. All I ever wanted was to play t
he guitar, write songs and make records. They didn’t see that as a fitting career for one of their little Christian soldiers.”
“Would you think I was a bit thick if I admitted I don’t always understand what your songs are about?” she asked, half wondering if this was being indelicate.
The blue gaze met her unblinkingly. “I wouldn’t think you were thick at all.”
“Yet lots of people obviously do understand them. At least they like to analyze and interpret them.”
“So I believe.”
“It would be fascinating in the interview if you could perhaps take us through a couple of them, give us your interpretation.”
He laughed. “What? And spoil everybody’s fun? No artist should be asked to interpret his own work. That’s for everybody else to do.”
It was a door closing in her face, but he did it with such charm. Then pouring more wine he swivelled the conversation back to her. Had she ever been tempted to write fiction, he wanted to know. A lot of reporters tried. “Or what about a memoir on being a foreign correspondent?”
She understood now why the cuttings were so flimsy. She was the interviewer hoping to do research, but he was asking the questions.
Did she get nervous on camera? he pursued. Had she made mistakes? What about regrets? And then there was Owoso? What exactly happened there that day?
“No,” she said. That was one thing she didn’t want to talk about.
He accepted that and the conversation moved to other things, but he’d opened a file of sadness in her mind, and later, long after the bottle of wine was finished and he’d forbidden her to open another, she mentioned the death of her father. He was immediately interested, asking to know what he did and how close she’d been to him.
“Close.”
“And did you see him when he was dead?”
She was surprised at the question. “Yes.”
“Tell me.”
“Why?”
“Just tell me.”
“It was a Sunday evening. I’d been to Devon for the weekend. My brothers had been trying to contact me but my phone had been out of range. My father…he’d suffered a cerebral aneurysm and his brain had flooded with blood. He was in intensive care. He died while I was on my way to the hospital.
“My mother and brothers were waiting when I got there. They looked blank, puzzled. I didn’t understand then, but I’ve seen that look many times since. It’s as though the bereaved are just realising that a part of their world has died, too, and that nothing can ever be the same again.” She stopped.
He waited.
After a moment she continued: “I wanted to see him. They left me alone. I just sat there.”
“And he looked peaceful?”
Kate shook her head. “He looked dead.”
It was after midnight when he left. He was, he said, going back to the studio to work. Time was pressing. He had a timetable to keep to.
“What timetable?”
“My timetable.”
She let it go. The matter of the interview had already been resolved. “I’ll discuss it tomorrow with Petra,” he said as he moved towards the door. “We’ll sort something out, dates and times, that sort of thing.”
“And the questions?”
“You decide. I’ll answer anything you want.”
“Really?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Can it be soon?”
“Pretty soon.”
“Why are you giving it all up?” she asked.
“What?”
“Getting off the merry-go-round.”
He hesitated, but didn’t reply.
“I mean, you’ll miss it, won’t you. Singing, playing, recording, the adulation. Why?”
His head rocked slowly from side to side. “It’s time.” Turning away his eyes fell on Jeroboam’s Bill and Harry book lying on the dresser. “Now what have we got here?”
“It belongs to a boy...a friend,” she explained.
He looked at the book, puzzled. “A boy friend?”
Kate thought about Jeroboam. “More than that,” she smiled, and then added: “He doesn’t like you.”
Gadden put the book down. “But you do, don’t you.”
She didn’t answer. She’d expected him to telephone for his car, but instead he simply opened the front door, and, stepping out on to the steps, raised his hands, palms outwards. Down the street there was the muffled ripple of a powerful engine being started. Then the Mercedes slipped out from under the trees. Stefano was at the wheel.
Gadden turned back to her: “I’ll call you.”
“Right.” She was smiling, her hand out to be shaken, when suddenly there was the soft imprint of a kiss on her lips. And he was gone.
Even before the car had reached the corner of the street she was chastising herself. That’s quite far enough, she told herself, as she went back inside the house. What did she think she was doing, for heavens sake!
Going down to the kitchen she set about clearing the table and filling the dishwasher. But his presence in her home lingered and she found herself putting a Jesse Gadden album into the CD player. Seb Browne had said that it was the man’s voice he liked. She could understand that. It had an abandoned quality. As she scoured the pans she listened to the lyrics, “Waiting in the waiting room of life, making a plan, meeting the man, waiting in the waiting room of life…”, and wondered what the words really meant. If anything.
Chapter Ten
September 27:
"So, this spiritualist is addressing a hall full of people in a little country town in the Cotswolds." Robin Broomfield, WSN-TV's main anchor, fixed Kate with his glint of authority.
Kate's eyes flicked to the second digit of the studio clock. Broomfield was playing his usual trick of trying to make his occasional co-presenter break-up just before they went on air. He'd have to be quick. They were less than thirty seconds from transmission.
"Looking around the audience, the spiritualist says, ‘hands up anyone who’s ever seen a ghost’,” Broomfield continued. “About half the people in the hall put up their hands. ‘That’s very good,’ says the spiritualist. ‘Fifty per cent of you have seen a ghost. Now will those who’ve ever shaken hands with a ghost put your hands up.’ And this time about a quarter of the people put their hands up.”
"‘That’s astonishing’, he says. ‘Twenty five per cent of you have shaken hands with a ghost.’”
In her earpiece Kate could hear last minute preparations from the gallery. Nodding into the lens of the robot camera, she patted a renegade tuft of hair into place, straightened her back, and, sitting on the tails of her jacket, stared into the autocue. Ready.
Beside her Broomfield was unhurried. "So finally the spiritualist looks at the audience and says, ‘Now, how many of you have ever had sex with a ghost’. And he gazes around the audience, all of whom are shaking their heads. Then, right at the back of the hall a little old man puts his hand up. The spiritualist is amazed. ‘You’ve actually had sex with a ghost!’ he says, as everyone turns to look.
"Seven, six, five…” In Kate’s earpiece the technical co-ordinator was counting them in.
“‘Oh, sorry,’ said the old man, ‘I thought your said a goat’.”
For one second Kate smiled at the old joke, then, wiping her face clean of expression, lifted her head, and, as the red light came on, began to read: "Middle East talks come under a new threat as more violence erupts in Gaza; the White House finally comes clean on planting bugs in friendly embassies during the Iraq War; and polygamy, could it help us live longer? All this and more in this hour here on WSN-TV. But first, here's Robin with the headline news." And she handed over to Broomfield, now transformed into the grey-means-gravitas face of WSN-TV.
Though a news-gatherer at heart, Kate enjoyed occasional stints as anchor. In terms of concentration it was constant, keeping up with every twist of a running story, while listening in her earpiece to continuous technical information on talkback, her expression,
friendly, intelligent or concerned as the item dictated. But, it could be a secret battle, too, fighting Broomfield’s schoolboy mission to make his latest female co-host giggle on camera.
"You looked very happy today, Kate," Chloe said as she made her way back to her desk after the show.
“Happier still to get away from Robin’s jokes,” she replied. And sitting down at her computer she scanned her messages. She'd been hoping for some word from Gadden, or at least Kerinova, setting a date for the interview, but there was nothing. The only mention of him was a long list of suggested questions now on her screen from Seb Browne. Looking across the office she could see the producer alongside Beverly.
Noticing her watching, Browne picked up his phone. Hers rang almost immediately. "So what do you think of the questions?" he asked.
"They’re good," she said, browsing through them.
"We've got a few more leads on the childhood bit. Nothing on the mother yet, but a couple more schools."
"Anything interesting?"
"Not yet. We'll keep after it."
"Okay, but tread carefully."
"Of course."
Then, seeing her incoming call light flashing, she rang off.
The caller was Helen Walker at the Hammersmith and Fulham Youth Offending Service. "I thought you'd like to know that after talking to the record shop the police have decided not to press charges against Jeroboam," she said.
Kate was relieved. "Oh, that's very good. Thanks for letting me know. He'll be very pleased."
"A nice birthday present!"
Kate was surprised. "It's Jeroboam's birthday? Today?"
"You didn't know?"
No, she didn't know. Jeroboam was sixteen! That was virtually grown up.
He was one of the last to leave the school, and for a moment she was worried in case he was playing truant again. But at last he came shuffling around the corner, his head down, alone, looking, as always, as though he didn't want anyone to notice him. He didn't see her car at first, and when she leaned across and threw open the passenger door, he instinctively pressed himself back against the graffiti decorated wall.