by Ray Connolly
"Hello."
Recovering from the surprise, he smiled, before a shadow of anxiety crossed his face, as though he was half-expecting a reprimand but not knowing why.
"Come on then. Jump in!" she ordered.
He looked around. Behind him two youths of about the same age were approaching, watching him. Whether he was pleased that they should see him getting into a car, or grateful to have a car to get into when they appeared, Kate couldn't tell. But quickly he slipped in alongside her.
Putting the car into gear, she pulled away down the street. "Happy birthday."
Only now did he smile. "Where are we going?"
"Where do you want to go? It’s your birthday. You choose."
She'd invited his mother, Maria Elena, along, too, but had been told she had to work between four and midnight, so they celebrated alone at Burger King in Westfield, the shopping mall in Shepherds Bush. It was Jeroboam's choice.
She'd never known him so chatty, gallant almost. Carefully he advised her of the best buys on the menu, going through the different relishes included with each item, warning her away from the Veggie Whopper and Chicken Pick-'Em Up, recommending the Flamer or perhaps Junior Whopper if she wasn't very hungry.
Together they sat in a booth as he opened his birthday card (it showed a footballer, the only one in the shop she could find which wasn't either garlanded with flowers or sexually suggestive) and, for the first time, she began to see a future for him. He'd heard they needed trainee porters at the Wellington Hotel, he confided, as he sucked a vanilla shake. He thought he might like to do that.
Ignoring the detail that he didn't look strong enough to spend his days lifting suitcases, she encouraged. "Perhaps you should write and apply for a job."
"Will you help me?”
“Of course I will.”
She’d taken the precaution of buying a small chocolate cake, and, despite glares from the counter staff, she pulled it from its box and laid it before him. "I think we'll have to imagine the sixteen candles," she said.
"That's all right. I'll imagine blowing them out, too." And closing his eyes he blew softly.
It was the first joke she'd ever heard him make, and for that moment she saw him as his mother must, the funny face rounded into an expression of dignity. "Did you make a wish?" she asked as he opened his eyes again.
He nodded, and then smiled wickedly to himself.
She pretended to look stern: "Perhaps it had better be a secret then."
He giggled some more. She’d guessed right.
When he’d finished eating most of the birthday cake, she led him through the mall into PC World for his present. Now he became reticent, and she worried that he might have visited this shop before under different circumstances.
He lingered long over the decision, going from one model to another. But when the choice was made he stuck to it. She might have guessed: the one he chose was the cheapest. It had everything he would need, he insisted. "If I have a fancier one and the boys on the estate get to know, they might come and steal it," he tried to reason, though she didn't believe him. He was used to a bargain. His mother hadn't brought him up to extravagance. So Kate bought him his first computer.
“And it isn’t just for playing music or games,” she warned. “If you’re going to get a job you’re going to have to learn how to use it properly.”
His eyes were warm with gratitude.
She knew she was spoiling him. But everyone needed spoiling at some time in their life: Jeroboam probably more than most.
She spent the evening finishing her Observer book review, and then found herself trying to decide what music to listen to. She looked through several CDs, but she was, she knew, delaying the inevitable. The only decision to be made was which Jesse Gadden album to play. She chose River of Ghosts. It had been his first studio album.
Pouring herself a glass of wine she studied the photograph on the front of the accompanying booklet as it played. It showed a black horse dressed as for a medieval tournament, chainmail covering its chest and quarters, one bright red eye staring defiantly from behind a cloth head mask. It was a disturbing image and she moved on to a picture of the singer himself, a bleached, ghostly figure, wrapped in what looked like a cloak and standing in a mist. Manufactured romanticism, she said to herself, so easily achieved with soft focus photography, a filter, make-up, lights and dry ice. Show-biz marketing!
On the CD the high, delicate voice was singing something about a “ringed circus of dreams”, where “ponies were painted and love untainted”. She listened more carefully and then found the place in the lyric sheet. “Where toys were real and never came undone, with broken words from some hell-bound nun.”
She shook her head. No wonder he kept the freaks on the internet busy.
Greg Passfield called just before ten. They hadn’t spoken since the party after the Hyde Park concert, and he’d just heard on the rock grapevine that Jesse Gadden was about to break his silence and do a TV interview with her. “This is wonderful, Kate. How did you get it?”
“I don’t know. He seems to have chosen me.”
“Really! What’s he up to now, I wonder!”
“Can’t it just be that he finally wants to unburden himself to his fans?”
She could hear Greg almost smiling down the phone. “Come on, this is rock and roll we’re talking here. Those guys never give you anything for nothing. Good luck.”
Chapter Eleven
October 1:
She hated herself for caring, but as she drove to work before dawn through the empty London streets she was puzzled. Gadden had been keen to see her, had virtually pursued her, yet a full week had passed with no further attempt to make contact. It shouldn’t have bothered her, but it did, and not just because of the interview. He’s a rock star, you idiot, she told herself, as she drove across Blackfriars Bridge. What do you expect? He probably visits a different woman every night. She was being pathetic, but she couldn’t help herself. He was so unlike anyone she’d ever met before.
There was a message from Seb Browne waiting on her computer when she reached the studio at six. It read: “Got a couple of leads but Gadden's childhood is tricky to research from here, so I'm nipping over to Galway for a couple of days. And, since she's the nearest we have to a Jesse Gadden expert (unless you’ve now become one!), and can drive, I'm taking Beverly with me. Will be in touch, Seb.”
Kate sipped her coffee, irritated. “Chloe, doesn’t Seb drive?” she asked the agencies monitor when she arrived.
“Not since he lost his licence. Disqualified for twelve months.”
“Ah! Thank you.”
Okay, she thought, Seb would need a driver in Ireland. But did it have to be Beverly? According to a famous waggish survey conducted at the BBC the chances of seducing someone while on a trip rose in direct proportion to the distance you travelled. Abroad was always best, it said, but did Ireland really count as foreign?
Dismissing the thought, she picked up her copy of the morning’s running order, and made her way to the make-up department.
Robin Broomfield, his head poking out of a bib, nodded a curt good morning into the mirror as she entered. Behind him, Della Jordan, the make-up artist, was re-pointing his cheekbones with blusher. "Did you see the Guardian today?" he asked grumpily. The Friday morning papers were scattered around the room.
She had but, but following his look, Kate's eyes fell on the lead headline in the Guardian's media section. "Satellite news channels: can they all survive?” it read across a page of television screens showing the variety of English language channels, from CNN, Fox and Al Jazeera, to Russia Today and France 24. “Yes, more competition all the time,” she said taking the make-up chair alongside him.
“And maybe not for much longer,” Broomfield grunted. "According to the Guardian, the internet and bloggers are going to gobble us all up. Well, perhaps not before time.” Then, glaring unhappily at himself in the mirror, he added more quietly: "Perhaps a little bit more
around the eyes, d'you think, Della? Late night, last night."
Della, notionally deaf to any conversation between presenters in which she had not been invited to contribute, did as she was asked. She was a statuesque, black girl, whose own make-up was always flawlessly applied.
At that moment Kate spotted what was really upsetting Broomfield. Pictured in the Guardian's screen devoted to WSN was a large flattering photograph of herself reporting from Mombasa. That would have irritated. Robin saw himself as the face of WSN.
Still grumbling he stood up as Della finished with him. "Anyway, your turn. See you inside.” And pulling on his jacket, he strode off to the studio.
Kate winked at Della. He wouldn’t be trying to make her laugh this morning. But it was only as Della was putting a gown around her shoulders and she glanced again at the newspaper that she noticed the story on the facing page. It was about rock music and the internet. The photograph illustrating it was of Jesse Gadden.
"Della," she said as the make-up artist went to work. "Supposing you were going to interview Jesse Gadden, what would you want to know?"
Della's concentration on her work never faltered. "I'd like to know if he looks into a mirror when he says his prayers at night," she said.
He telephoned during one of the mid-morning breaks for sports news. Normally callers were told to ring back after the show, but no one refused Jesse Gadden.
"Just to let you know I'm watching you," he said quietly down the phone.
Surprised, she swivelled her chair away from Broomfield, who was contemplating the racing pages in the Daily Telegraph. She was unsure of what to say: "Sorry it's such a thin news morning." She wished he’d called her mobile.
"Don't be. I like items on the weather in Antarctica. It broadens the mind. We get it over in Ireland, too. Only we call it autumn."
Kate smiled. Environmental stories were regulars on WSN. They were cheap and offered great visuals.
Gadden was still talking. "Anyway, I’ve been thinking...what about the weekend?"
"The weekend? Didn’t they say ‘fine and sunny’? Anyway, you won't be able to blame me. I'm off after today."
"So we could spend the weekend together."
She was so taken aback she didn't answer.
"I have a house. In Cornwall…Haverhill."
"Er, yes, I know..."
"You'd like it. We could have a nice, quiet, normal weekend. It would give us chance to sort a few things out...map out areas…for the interview..."
"Twenty seconds, Kate," the warning came into her earpiece from the gallery. Everyone there would be watching her, even though they wouldn't be able to hear what Gadden was saying. This was a hell of a public way to be asked away for the weekend. Perhaps he’d intended that.
She glanced at the clock. "I have to go."
"I need an answer. Yes or no?"
"I can't talk now. We'll speak later."
"Yes or no?"
"I'm sorry, I..."
She was about to decline on the grounds that as she was soon to interview him it would be unprofessional to accept his hospitality, when he suddenly said: "Just say yes. Please." The plea came like a murmur from one of his records.
She glanced at the camera.
"Ten seconds."
"Yes, all right."
"Thank you," Gadden breathed. Immediately his tone became business-like. "We'll pick you up at four this afternoon then. See you later." And the line went dead.
Kate still held the phone.
"Well, Kate?" Broomfield was watching her. "Are you with us?"
"Sorry." She put the phone down.
The red light came on. Staring into the camera, and now pasting on his concerned expression, Broomfield began to read the next item from the Autocue. "A report published today predicts that within twenty five years butterflies could become extinct across much of Europe and North America... "
Another environmental story, thought Kate, and then wondered what she’d let herself in for.
By the time she came off air at mid-day the entire office seemed to know that Jesse Gadden had called. Chloe Estevez shook her head in giggly mock despair. “And you aren’t even a fan! What a waste!”
At the foreign desk Ned Swann was unusually quiet.
"I shouldn’t really have taken the call during the show," Kate told him as Chloe went off to a sandwich bar. "They were probably fuming in the gallery. But this interview is important to me….and probably to him, too.”
Ned snorted scornfully “You think? So why doesn't he just do it, instead of all this pratting around?"
"He's a rock star. You know what they're like."
Ned’s voice rose. "No, I don't know what they’re like. And neither do you. You're a foreign correspondent….not a …." He didn’t finish.
Kate was surprised at his sudden irritation. Ned, a former war correspondent himself, and now in his late fifties, was known to be hard on some of his reporters and contacts scattered around the world, but he’d never been anything other than protective of her. "I was a foreign correspondent," she snapped back. “But not, it appears, any more.” Then, turning away, she checked her messages and logged off. "No word from Seb Browne or Beverly in Ireland, I suppose?" she asked the stand-in secretary, dropping her voice.
The girl shook her head.
"Oh, well, they know where to reach me.” And throwing a tentative "Have a nice weekend" over her shoulder, she left the office.
Ned ignored her.
Jeroboam rang while she was ironing her shirts for the trip, a check call about a lesson they’d planned for the Saturday afternoon.
“I’m sorry,” she apologised. “Something’s cropped up. I have to work. I have to go away.”
He didn’t speak. He never did when he was disappointed.
“We’ll do it next week. Promise. Can we make another time?”
“All right.”
“By the way how’s the computer going?”
“It’s good. I’m teaching myself to do it. It can correct the spelling.”
“That’s right. Excellent.”
The boy didn’t add anything further, although she could hear his husky breath down the phone.
“So, do you want to make another plan? Would one night next week be all right? Do you want to call me when I get back?”
“Yes,” said Jeroboam. “Bye!” And he hung up.
She returned to her ironing, irritated about something but not quite sure what. She was on to her third shirt when she realised. Jeroboam had made her feel guilty. “That boy…” she murmured.
Then smoothing a final silk shirt across the ironing board, she set to it with a purpose.
Chapter Twelve
She saw the horses first, a dozen or more, lean and handsome, cantering around the field at the edge of the estate, nervous at the clatter of the rotor blade. But then, as the helicopter tilted and turned and began its descent into the wooded valley, came the garden, the maze, the tennis courts, the orchards and lawn and finally, at the top of an avenue of fat oak trees, the house. Haverhill.
She couldn’t not smile. It was just so big, a white Palladian palace, complete with columned portico and elegant side wings. History changed little. Two hundred and fifty years ago newly rich entrepreneurs from London and Bristol had commissioned the building of such homes to display their wealth and sophistication. Today these houses belonged to the latest generation of the suddenly rich, young men who played guitars.
She’d expected to travel down to Cornwall by car and with Gadden, so it had been a surprise when Stefano, the driver, had delivered her to the heliport in Battersea. “Jesse went on ahead,” he’d explained as he sat up front with the helicopter pilot. In the back with her was a muscular, silent, dark boy he’d introduced as Kish, his assistant.
She spotted Gadden just before they landed. He was at a first floor window of the house, standing half hidden by curtains, the evening light rinsing his hair and features in a blood red wash. But then he turned away
at the last minute, as though, while waiting for her to arrive, he’d turned to talk to someone.
Half a dozen young people were the first to greet her. As the helicopter landed they came hurrying from the house out on to a terrace and across the wide lawn, waving and laughing. They’re doing everything but sprinkle rose petals in my path, she laughed to herself, as she thanked the pilot and jumped down.
Then there was her host making his entrance, entirely in black as usual, tripping down the steps of the main house and past a shining herd of expensive cars as the welcoming members of the Glee Club parted obediently before him.
“Imagine! Kate Merrimac in my house!” he virtually sang as he led her inside and the staff returned to their chores.
“I’m very pleased to be invited,” she said, putting her bag down in the square hall and looking around at the perfect proportions. “Wow. It’s…pretty impressive.”
“I think so. Would you like a quick tour? No admission fee.”
And, without waiting for an answer, he led her past moulded friezes in white on the blue walls of what he called the “morning-after room”, with its marble fireplace and paintings of rural idylls, and on to the tapestries and dark oak of the library. “Please note the collection of antique, leather bound copies of Rolling Stone,” he joked, “with all that bollocks they write in them guaranteed unread. And then there’s this room. Not exactly Versailles, but we did our best.”
They were in a hall of mirrors. From every angle she could see him smiling at her, his long black hair shining, his eyes merry with mischief. A white grand piano stood in the semi-circular bay of the window.
“And this would be…?”
“The Imagine room, what else?” Then stepping across to a panel he revolved it to reveal a large, fifties Wurlitzer juke box on which electric flashes of red, purple and green clashed biliously with each other. “Isn’t she wonderful?” he grinned, stroking the glass dome. “No iPod or YouTube or anything in the kingdom of rock and roll heaven will ever be as beautiful to me as this.”