Strange Allure

by Susan Lewis

  John held out a hand and Eddie, the treacherous beast, trotted happily over to lick it.

  ‘I’ll bet you’re a wow with children and old people too,’ Carla remarked.

  ‘I’ve had my moments,’ he confessed, his dark eyes simmering with laughter.

  Carla tore her own away and looked at his publicist, Lionel, whose resemblance to Bart Simpson was so striking that she’d almost laughed when they were first introduced. Avril could have warned her! ‘I got your fax this morning,’ she told him. ‘The interview schedule’s looking extremely good, but unless I’ve misread something, on one of the days you seem to have John in Newcastle and London at the same time.’

  Lionel was leafing swiftly through his paperwork.

  ‘I can answer that,’ Avril piped up. ‘The Newcastle interview’s for radio, and is being done down-the-line from the BBC, just prior to a recording for some afternoon show at Broadcasting House.’

  ‘I see,’ Carla responded, looking at the fax again, and when their drinks arrived some five minutes later she was still putting Lionel through his paces with all the points she wanted clarified.

  Then Avril took over, and Carla watched John’s handsome features settling into a scowl of concentration as Avril talked him through the three-page document she’d just handed him. Most of the details had been provided by Carla, and consisted of everything from how the first series had been devised to anecdotal material on the six locations they’d featured. On a scale of need-to-know it was probably way over the top, but better that than leave him with egg on his face over something that could have been avoided.

  As they progressed she listened to his several questions, most of which were points of clarification, though some, she realized, were just to tease Avril, whose responses were, well … To put it kindly, Avril and John Rossmore seemed to have quite a rapport going, and Carla was just hazarding a guess as to how long it might be before the connection became physical, when she was brought up sharp by an extremely important point that she had failed to cover.

  ‘What do I say,’ he was asking, ‘if someone wants to know why the series is only going out now, when it was shot a year to eighteen months ago?’

  Carla floundered, as all the real reasons rushed in to fudge up her excuses. How could she have overlooked this? It was unforgivable.

  Avril, being the great publicist she was, came sailing right in with, ‘You simply tell them that there was a bidding war for transmission rights, and that by the time it was resolved the season had been missed. But everything’s been updated to reflect next season’s rates.’

  Carla was impressed. A gross inflation of the truth, but certainly one she could live with.

  John was noting it down.

  Lionel said, ‘Do we need to go over the locations you’re featuring for the next series at this point?’

  ‘No,’ John answered. ‘Carla and I still have to discuss that, and I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m starving, so why don’t we make the menu our next point of focus?’

  As they spent some time trying to decide between celery and Stilton soup, braised lamb shanks, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, or tiger prawns in garlic, Carla idly fondled Eddie’s ears while noting John Rossmore’s apparent oblivion to the attention he was still attracting. And it was plenty, for all the other tables in the large oak-panelled room were now full to overflowing, as was the snug bar that was adjacent, leading her to suspect that word had gone out for miles around that John Rossmore was at the George. Though not a bit convinced by his oblivious act, she had once again to hand it to him, for she’d yet to detect any trace of vanity, nor had she managed a glimpse of the infamous ego. Of course, the man was a gifted actor, everyone knew that, which was what made her so mistrustful of him. And what she was witnessing now, albeit in subtle ways, she realized, was his innate skill for taking charge, which, in less silky terms, was a presumption that everyone would always fall in with what he wanted just because of who he was.

  Still, it would be downright childish of her not to order just because he’d suggested they should, so after choosing the lamb shanks, and a packet of pork scratchings for Eddie, she was about to move on to the next point on the agenda when he and Avril suddenly took off on a voyage of discovery, wondering who they might know in common, while trying to recall the odd occasions they’d met before, and showing Carla once again that she was not calling the shots here. Which was precisely why she hadn’t wanted him on board, because a power struggle with celebrity was worse than an exercise in total futility, since the entire world was so damned impressed by fame that mere mortals such as she were completely trampled in the rush to the glory.

  When she repeated this to Avril, in the car on the way back, it was quite some time before Avril could stop laughing.

  In the end, such mirth started to get on Carla’s nerves. ‘It wasn’t that funny,’ she snapped. ‘In fact, it wasn’t meant to be funny at all.’

  ‘I know,’ Avril responded. ‘That’s what makes it so funny.’

  Carla turned to glare out of the window.

  ‘You don’t get it, do you?’ Avril said. ‘You just don’t get that it’s your own ego that’s having such a problem here. His is in check, but yours … Well, yours is like some pantomime dame trying to steal every show.’

  Carla’s lips pursed with annoyance, for there was a chance Avril had a point, and if she did, it definitely wasn’t one Carla liked.

  ‘What does it matter who the boss is, as long as your goals are the same?’ Avril said, steering the Porsche onto the minor road that wound for several rural miles through to Cannock Martin.

  Carla chose not to answer.

  Avril glanced at her, then, still smiling, she said, ‘So you’re off to Zanzibar.’

  Carla’s eyes closed and she inhaled deeply, as though to suppress what she really wanted to say. ‘Something else he’s managed to get his way on,’ she retorted.

  ‘But it’s a damned good idea. And if he can get Phoebe Marsh to play the black woman …’ She allowed a few seconds to pass, then said, ‘Look, I know Zanzibar’s going to be a tough call for you, so I’ve got to tell you, I really admire the way you’re handling it.’

  Carla looked at her in surprise.

  ‘Well, no-one at that table would ever have guessed you had any kind of issue wrapped up in the place,’ Avril told her. ‘And I have to confess, if I’d been consulted first, I’d have predicted you’d fight it all the way.’

  ‘I wanted to,’ Carla grudgingly admitted, ‘but he’s such a smooth operator he had me agreeing before I could even get my tongue round no.’

  For some reason Avril seemed to find that funny too.

  ‘You know,’ Carla said, trying not to sound peevish, ‘no-one would ever behave the way they do towards him if he weren’t famous and so damned good-looking. If he was just your regular Joe, as you Americans say, no-one would take any notice of him at all.’

  ‘Well, he wouldn’t be much good to us then, would he?’ Avril retorted.

  Even Carla had to raise a smile at that. ‘So,’ she said, once again looking at the passing hedgerows and glimpses of open fields beyond, ‘you seem pretty interested in him. Is it something you might pursue?’

  Avril’s eyebrows went up. ‘You never know,’ she responded, and brought the car to a stop in front of the cottage. ‘And now I can hardly wait to get down to the nitty-gritty of the weirdo ménage à trois you had last night with the focus of your universe and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.’

  Carla opened the door for Eddie to jump out. ‘You consider yourself such a wag, don’t you?’ she commented dryly.

  Avril grinned and got out too. ‘Think I’ll stay the night then drive up to London tomorrow,’ she said, as Carla let them in the front door. ‘I’m sick of staying in that hotel, and the agent’s not exactly outperforming herself on the flat-search front. But we’ll get there. Tea?’

  ‘Love some,’ Carla answered. ‘I’ll just check if there are any messages.’ />
  There was only one, from Sonya, who still wasn’t over the fact that a bric-à-brac stall at the school fête had kept her away from a lunch with John Rossmore. ‘Call me the minute you get in, you two,’ she said, ‘I want every detail. And next time, don’t you bother putting yourselves out, I’ll see him on your behalf and you can go and freeze your tits off in a field.’

  Laughing, Carla went to relay the message to Avril, but when they tried Sonya she’d obviously gone out again.

  ‘She’ll call us,’ Avril said, curling up in her favourite chair as Carla got the bellows to restart the fire. ‘So now, come on, what was the Rousseau thing all about last night?’ she demanded.

  Carla smiled and picked up her tea as Eddie joined her on the sofa. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I don’t think it was as much about Rousseau’s Discourse, as it’s about Rousseau himself.’

  Avril wrinkled her nose. ‘In that?’ she encouraged.

  ‘Well, Rousseau believed that man is born good, you know, by nature, but that as he grows up he’s corrupted by society.’

  Avril waited, then realizing that was it, she threw out her hands and said, ‘Oh well, that explains everything! I can’t imagine how I managed to miss the point.’

  Carla looked at her.

  Avril gave an ingenuous smile. ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ she said.

  ‘What Richard’s saying, as far as I can make out,’ Carla replied, ‘is that though he strives to be a good man, and believes himself at heart to be one, he is, of course, only human, and therefore susceptible to human weaknesses and society’s corruptions. In other words it’s a variation on the same theme as his email. In both cases he’s asking me to understand that though he gave in to Chrissie, and then followed the path dictated by society in marrying her, it hasn’t changed the way he feels about me.’

  Again Avril was screwing up her face. ‘My God,’ she murmured. ‘Either your powers of deduction are as convoluted as his messages, or I’m coming at life from the back of a cereal box.’

  Carla laughed.

  ‘Well, I suppose you’ve got to think like him if you’re ever going to understand him,’ Avril said, still looking as though her eyes might cross. ‘So, where do you go from here?’

  ‘I sent him an email telling him how I felt while I was reading the book, knowing he was reading it too … Believe it or not, it was quite a sexual experience … All right, we’ll move on past that, because I can see something rich is about to erupt from your plebeian soul again. I had a message from him this morning, which I answered, and now, well, I suppose I just wait for him to email me back again.’

  ‘God, it’s all so fraught with excitement, isn’t it? I don’t know how you stand it.’

  Carla’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘Well, don’t you want to see him?’ Avril asked incredulously.

  ‘Of course I do. I’m practically going off my head wanting to see him … But …’ She paused for a moment, wondering if she should confess how strange she found it that he hadn’t picked up the phone to call her, or had yet to express any desire to see her, but getting into that with Avril probably wasn’t going to be helpful. Nor did she want to tell her how sometimes she got the feeling she wasn’t alone in the house, especially when Richard had yet to say if it was his car Betty had seen outside. It was nonsense, of course, because no-one could get past Eddie, and anyway, why would Richard come in and then hide? He wouldn’t. But there was still the occasional sensation of another presence around her, and the only explanation she could come up with was that it was either her mother, or grandmother, which wasn’t an answer she was happy with at all.

  ‘But?’ Avril prompted.

  Carla looked up. ‘Of course I want to see him,’ she said, ‘but it’s kind of working this way too. At least for now it is. I mean, obviously it’s not perfect, but if we were to see each other, well, everything would take on a pace that we might not be able to control, and to be honest, after everything that’s happened there’s a lot to repair, and it suits me not to have to deal with it all right now. It’s enough to be in touch with him, to be able to communicate, and tell him things the way I used to. And having him in my life again, well, I just can’t tell you what a difference it makes.’

  ‘It’s no wonder I never go in for all this love shit,’ Avril grumbled. ‘I’d never hack it.’

  ‘You’d be surprised. Besides, every relationship’s different, and I don’t expect you’d go for the Richards of this world.’

  ‘Richards? Plural? Darling, he’s a one-off, and coming at it from the simplicity of my cornflakes mentality, all I can say is he must have been one hell of a shag to keep you hanging on like this.’

  Carla couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘he is.’

  Avril immediately made herself more comfortable. ‘Now you’re talking my language,’ she said. ‘So, hit the gas.’

  Carla was confused.

  ‘What makes him so fantastic?’ Avril cried. ‘Which notes does he hit on the way to the Hallelujah Chorus?’

  Carla was grinning. ‘I’m not telling you that,’ she said.

  ‘Yes you bloody well are.’

  Laughing, Carla said, ‘OK. Well, let me see. I suppose, to begin with, he’s tender and passionate. He’s always considerate. Very considerate. He’s got a way of making you respond to things … This is embarrassing.’

  ‘What? You haven’t even got to the bit where you take your clothes off yet.’

  ‘You are insufferable,’ Carla laughed. Then, after a pause, ‘OK, what else can I tell you? Well, he’s got this way of touching you, yet not touching you … It’s hard to explain, but it can drive you nuts, believe me. And then there are times when seeing the way he’s turned on is … well, mind-blowing in itself. He’s so there when he’s making love. So with the whole experience …’

  ‘Listen,’ Avril interrupted, ‘I’m a picture person, OK? All this cerebral, spiritual stuff – that’s not me. Give me position, duration, size, technique, you know the sort of thing.’

  Carla’s face was aglow with mirth.

  ‘Start with size,’ Avril said helpfully. ‘What is he? A tonsil-pusher or a toothpick?’

  Carla exploded into laughter.

  ‘Does it touch the sides when he goes in, or do you have to start whirling your butt about like a Magimix?’

  ‘Stop!’ Carla cried, gripping her sides. ‘You’re outrageous.’

  ‘Come on. There’s got to be something that sets him apart,’ Avril urged.

  ‘All right, all right,’ Carla finally managed. ‘His thing is being tied up, hands and feet, and having you … Having you massage his body with yours, using these oils he gets in the Middle East.’

  Avril’s eyebrows went up as the corners of her mouth went down. ‘Mmm, not bad,’ she said. ‘Bit essence of esprit for us more earthy types, but I could live with it. And that telephone call is almost certainly going to be from my cousin, whose lousy timing is on a par with coitus interruptus.’

  ‘Hello?’ Carla said into the receiver.

  ‘Hi. It’s John Rossmore.’

  ‘Oh. John,’ she said, looking at Avril.

  Avril swooned. ‘Speak of sex and Priapus himself rings up,’ she murmured.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ Carla said, smothering a laugh.

  ‘Actually it’s Avril I need to speak to,’ he told her.

  Carla passed the phone over, then left them to it while she went to check on the email.

  As she waited to go online she could hear Avril chatting and laughing in the next room, and considering how sobered she now felt after describing her sex life with Richard, she could only feel envious of Avril’s amazing gift for not taking herself, or life, too seriously. Certainly Avril wouldn’t be here, doing this, Carla reflected sadly to herself, when she saw that there was no message from Richard. However, they’d already set a time and date for their next shared hours together, which, he’d insisted, should end in a climax for them both,
and not just for him, as it had last night, so maybe, for now, there was no more to say. It wasn’t enough though, damn it, for despite his consideration she’d still be alone when it happened, and though they’d shared sex like this countless times in the past, when he’d been away on location, this time around it wasn’t leaving her feeling quite so good.

  By the time she returned to the sitting room Avril had finished her call with John, and was now speaking to Sonya, assuring her that yes, as the programme’s chief administrator, researcher, organizer, accountant and dog-walker, she certainly would meet John Rossmore in the flesh, but as for anything more than that, she could just get in line, because Avril and a few hundred thousand others were in front of her. ‘And now,’ she finished, ‘I shall hand you over to our very own Olive Oyl.’

  Cuffing her, Carla took the phone and went back to the sofa. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Without getting into why, do you know where all my letters are from Richard?’

  ‘In your personal box upstairs,’ Sonya answered. ‘Why?’

  ‘Did I say let’s not get into why?’ Carla cried. ‘Anyway, they’re not there.’

  ‘They’re not?’ Sonya said, surprised. ‘I’m sure that’s where I put them. In fact I even tied a little ribbon round them, you know, like you see in the movies.’

  Carla appreciated that. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘But I promise you, they’re not there.’

  ‘Did you try the other boxes, just in case I slipped them into the wrong one?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘What about under the stairs? I put a few things there, I seem to remember.’

  ‘No. I haven’t looked there. But I will.’

  ‘Failing that, they can only be with your other things, in storage. Which reminds me, you …’

  ‘… need to pay the bill. I know. Don’t remind me. Are you coming over in the morning?’

  ‘When have I ever let you down?’

  ‘Actually, never. But we’re getting too deep now and there’s a tone on the line telling me someone’s trying to get through. Can I go?’

  ‘Gone,’ Sonya said, and rang off.

  ‘Hello?’ Carla said picking up the next call.