“Whenever you’re free.”
“I am today if that’s any use.”
I feel driven by the situation, but I don’t see how this can be bad. “What about now?”
“Now would be stupendous. Where?”
“Where we met?”
“Nowhere better. When?”
“As soon as I can walk to it if you like.”
“I’ll be there,” Hannah says and rings off.
The identity parade on the bridge has disappeared along the towpath, beside which fragments of ripples resemble a digital message. I take a moment to prepare a neutral smile for Paula before handing her the phone. “Thanks for that,” I feel bound to say.
“Any time, Graham.” This seems unlikely, and she takes the receiver so loosely that I’m afraid she’ll drop it. I have to keep hold while she says “Was that someone anybody shouldn’t know about?”
I feel as if she’s using the receiver to capture my hand. “Anybody such as who?”
“Graham.” She shakes her head—I could imagine she’s testing her hairdo for stiffness. “Christine,” she says very much in the tone of a rebuke.
“Good heavens no. Not a bit of it. Absolutely not, believe me.”
Is this too much? Paula scrutinises my face for a protracted moment before grasping the phone. I’m turning away when she says “Graham.”
It sounds like the threat of a reprimand. That’s at least one too many, and I’m ready to respond along those lines as I confront her. “Don’t you think you deserve a sweet today?” she says.
“If you do.”
I could have made that less ambiguous, but I feel guilty, all the more so as I reach in the glass bowl like a child taking a reward for having told the truth. I grab a mint striped like a beetle and leave Paula’s office without glancing back. I’m unwrapping the humbug as I reach Christine’s desk. “Can you spare me till tonight?” I murmur.
She blinks at the cellophane I drop into her bin as if she thinks it’s intended as some kind of token. “What’s Paula’s idea now?”
“Nothing to do with her,” I say and lower my voice further. “I’m meeting somebody you know about.”
“Good luck,” Christine says under her breath, “if that’s what you want.”
She means I’m not supposed to be superstitious, of course. A lift is waiting beyond Shilpa’s desk, and I suck the humbug as the floors climb by. As the lobby doors glide apart I step into the sunlight, which is so fierce it almost seems to weigh me down. Then my teeth meet through the carapace of the mint with a crunch that resonates through my skull, and a cold sharp taste fills my mouth as Kylie Goodchild’s boyfriend steps into my path.
12: Near The Water
Wayne is wearing shorts patterned like a chessboard and chubby trainers and a T-shirt hardly large enough for him. While his broad chest and brawny arms seem designed to impress, his stomach looks like the product of many a Frugoburger. His eyes are even redder than last time, and I smell herbal smoke on his breath as he demands “Where you going, boy?”
I’m about to enquire what this has to do with him when I realise that his lurch at me has reopened the automatic doors at my back. He must think I’m retreating, but I won’t do that from him. “Nowhere at all,” I assure him.
“Waiting for the bouncers to see me off again?”
As Wayne glares past me the guard calls from his desk “Everything all right, Mr Wilde?”
“Nothing I can’t handle, Charlie, thanks.”
When I step around Wayne the doors falter open before shutting with a padded thud. He darts ahead and turns on me, walking backwards. “Don’t want to talk to me, right?” he says not far short of my face.
“I’ll talk to anyone,” I retort, but I don’t need Hannah Leatherhead to see me in this kind of argument. She’s just a few minutes away, and the prospect makes me ask “Shouldn’t you be at school?”
“Want rid of me as well, do you?” By way of explanation he adds “They’ve thrown me out of that fucking place.”
“Anyway, I’ve an appointment. You’ll have to excuse me.”
“I won’t be doing that, boy,” he says as if he’s determined to reduce my age to his and glances at a group of office workers who are taking a smokers’ break. “Think I can’t talk if there’s people about? Have another fucking think.”
“I’m sure it would take more than that to shut you up.” At least I’ve thought how to avoid encountering Hannah in the street. “I’m going down by the canal,” I inform him. “Then you can swear all you like.”
“I won’t just be fucking swearing.”
I don’t know if this is a threat or a boast about his vocabulary. As he swaggers down a ramp to the canal I’m made aware how short his legs are. His scalp looks like a translucent dome preserving the black roots of his hair. I don’t know how any of this can have appealed to Kylie Goodchild, and I catch myself wondering how I may have struck her. On the towpath Wayne swings around to demand “Why’d you say you never saw Kylie?”
“With no disrespect to the young lady,” I say, which makes me sound like my grandfather, “I didn’t think I had.”
“You’re disrespecting me as well,” Wayne says and rubs the name on his neck until the skin turns red. “You’re making her sound like any other fucking tart.”
Rather than argue I stride past him. As he overtakes, crowding me towards the water, I say “Tell me what I should remember about her.”
“What’s she got to do with you?”
Is this possessiveness run wild? With an effort I say “We want the same thing as her parents, don’t we? To find her safe and sound. If you tell me what to look for I can put it on the air.”
Ahead the towpath is deserted apart from a small gathering of the homeless, who are sitting on the stone edge with their feet in the canal. While one woman sucks on a bottle of wine her companions glance up as if they think we’re on our way to join them. She looks away when Kylie’s boyfriend narrows his eyes as though he wants to squeeze them redder still. “What stopped you copying her picture if you wasn’t meant to know what she looked like?”
“I hadn’t thought of describing her then. Never mind, it doesn’t matter.”
Wayne grinds his knuckles against the name on his stubby neck. “What fucking doesn’t?”
The woman hoots with laughter and tips the dregs of wine into her mouth before shying the bottle into the canal. “If you can’t be bothered giving me the information,” I tell Wayne, “I expect the police can. Do we know how the investigation’s progressing?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Wayne says, and his skin twitches his eyes thinner.
Was I ever this irrational at his age? His fierce grimace prompts me to ask “Aren’t you fond of the police?”
“They’re the law. They fucking think they are, any road.”
“They’re more likely to track down your girlfriend than Frank Jasper is.”
“Never mind trying to make out he’s useless. He found you and nobody’s forgetting.”
“Do you really believe that? I thought you were a little more intelligent.”
“Stop sounding like a teacher or you’ll be in the fucking hospital.”
“Aren’t they on your list of friends either?” A backward glance shows me that the drinkers are out of sight around a bend in the canal. We’re alone all the way to the bridge at Oxford Street, but I’m not about to put on speed—I won’t have Wayne thinking I’m afraid of him. “Believe me,” I say, “Frankie knew about my photograph.”
“Don’t call him that. He’s not your friend, and I saw Marg give him Kylie’s book.”
“Can you honestly say you watched him every single minute after that?” When the boy’s lips work as if he doesn’t know whether to spit or speak I say “Remember you’re dealing with a professional.”
“I know you’re one of them. You got us thrown out of your show before Frank had a chance to say about your photo.”
“Ah, so now you
’re saying he did know about it in advance.” As Wayne bares his stained teeth I say “It was nobody but you who got everyone thrown out, Wayne.”
“Don’t you fucking try and pass it on to me.”
We’re nearly at the steps up to the bridge. “I’ll leave you here,” I tell him.
“I’m not done with you, boy. Nothing like.”
Suppose I shove him in the murky water? It’s my impression that he’s capable of doing that or worse to me. If he attempts to block my way he’ll end up in the canal, and I won’t be caring whether he can swim. I’m readying myself for a furious lunge when he glances up the steps. “Fucker,” he mutters.
He may have me in mind or the policeman who’s tramping down from the street. “Better not find out you’re hiding any other shit,” Wayne advises me before he dodges under the bridge.
“I’d nothing to hide in the first place,” I call after him. The policeman watches me until we pass on the steps, and I give him the kind of wearily amused look adults share about children. Perhaps he thinks responding would be unprofessional, since his scrutiny doesn’t falter. I’m tempted to send him after Wayne, if only to make it clear where his attention ought to be, but I don’t need the police to help me deal with teenagers. I just hope Wayne knows I’m equal to him.
13: Wine With A Wag
The Dressing Room feels like an outpost of the Palace. It’s a few hundred yards away on Oxford Road. Floor-length curtains are tied back on either side of the long polished bar, behind which footlights magnify the shadows of the acrobatic topsy-turvy bottles on the wall. When I step out of the glaring sunlight I have to blink to be sure Hannah Leatherhead isn’t in any of the booths furnished with theatre seats and overlooked by mirrors surrounded by light bulbs, or at one of the circular tables around which upholstered stools sprout like fungi in a pantomime. She isn’t at the bar either, where the barman and his ogrish shadow move to greet me. “Same as ever, Mr Wubbleyou?”
He always seems to be understudying the comedians whose posters and photographs are among the multitude that decorate the walls. “You must be psychic, Benny,” I tell him.
“Cobber’s Piss it is.” He pours me a large glass of New Zealand white and leans across the bar. “Here’s another one you can’t put on the air. What do you call a Pakistani that’s been run over by a steamroller?”
“I wouldn’t dare to guess.”
“A flat pack,” he says much louder than he asked the question. “Eh?”
He laughs into my face until I feel compelled to respond with a guilty titter. “Lord help us, Benny, where did you dig that up?”
“Made it out of my own head,” he says with a reproachful look.
I stop short of remarking that it’s nothing to be proud of, and he’s eager to add “What do Muslims buy their dinner in the street off?’”
“I’ve a terrible feeling I’m about to hear.”
“The Allah cart,” he says with all the pride of a father displaying a photograph of a favourite child. “Eh?”
“That’s dreadful even for you, Benny,” I tell him, apparently to his delight, and take refuge in a corner booth.
Three girls around a table are sending texts from their phones and saying rather less to one another while they sip drinks in lanky glasses. A rapid tapping like a woodpecker’s belongs to a young businessman busy at his laptop. An elderly man with a stick at his side keeps reaching for a tankard in between drawing lines of various colours around words and phrases in a newspaper. Beyond him the street door is outlined by sunlight, which shivers whenever a bus goes by. I’m letting my gaze drift across the display on the walls outside the booths—posters for plays that saw their final curtain long ago, portraits that I could imagine have been browned not just by age but by the historical cigarette between the actor’s lips or elegantly elevated with two fingers, comedians feigning lugubriousness if they aren’t owning up to their offstage selves—when I see Frank Jasper.
He’s between a picture of a clown with an ambiguous mouth and a group portrait of seven dwarfs. Though this suggests he’s little better than a circus act, I’m infuriated to find him here at all. What has he written above his autograph? I lurch out of the booth and shove my face close to his as I read his flamboyant script. For everyone I’ve read and everyone I have to… I can’t help feeling this could be aimed at me. Whatever sound it provokes me to make, Benny calls “Nothing like a laugh, eh, Mr Wubbleyou?”
“Nothing like one is right” I’m still glaring into Jasper’s glossy eyes as I say “How did he creep in?”
“You’d have to ask the management. I’m just the lad that mans the pumps. Better than pumping a man, eh?”
“Seriously, Benny, I don’t think he does anybody’s image any favours.”
As I speak Jasper’s face takes on a saintly radiance. I’d be enraged by the idea that he’s forgiving me, but the glow like a spotlight comes from the street, along with a crescendo of traffic. “He’s never messed up your image, Mr Wubbleyou,” Benny says.
I’m about to ask whether he heard Jasper on my show when a new voice asks “Is this about your picture, Graham?”
It’s Hannah Leatherhead. She’s wearing a white lace blouse and a beret of the same material, and equally white slacks that emphasise the generous breadth of her hips. Her face is broad as well, and the tips of her auburn page-boy hair seem to indicate her wide although slightly tentative smile. “What do you think I was saying about it?” I wonder aloud.
“Pardon me, that was intrusive. I won’t mention it again.” She glances around the room, presumably in case anyone heard her referring to the photograph I signed for Kylie Goodchild. “Where are you sitting?” she says, and almost as immediately “Let me buy you another drink.”
Though my glass is far from empty, Benny says “I’ll bring it over.”
“I’ll have the same,” says Hannah.
I see him think better of using his name for it. As Hannah sits across from me in the booth he brings us two glasses so nearly full that the feat looks theatrical. “Settle up when you’re done,” he says. “Is she fond of jokes, your lady friend?”
“Benny,” I warn him.
“I wasn’t going to say you’re one.” He keeps up a reproachful look while he says “I was only going to tell her why they call it windaloo.”
“They don’t, Benny.”
“No offence, eh? A bit of fun never did us any harm,” he says to Hannah. “I think Mr Wubbleyou’s scared to have me on his show.”
“I don’t believe he’s scared to have anybody on.” As he ambles back to the bar she murmurs “I wanted to tell you how impressed I was with the way you dealt with Frank Jasper.”
“Well, thank you. Some would disagree.”
“They must only hear what they want to hear.” She sips her wine and says “So what’s your game plan, Graham?”
“Which game is that?”
“Your career. Where do you see yourself in say five years?”
“National radio wouldn’t be bad. Maybe television if they think I’ve got the face for it.”
“I’d say you had an honest one, and I’m not often wrong. I just wonder if you couldn’t put your skills with language to more use somewhere else.”
“Don’t tell anyone,” I say and drain my first glass. “Even my girlfriend doesn’t know, but I’m working on a novel.”
“You won’t want to reveal your plot, I suppose.”
“You could say it’s about appearances. How nobody’s what they seem to be, even to themselves.”
“Any publisher in sight?”
“I don’t want anyone to see what I’m doing till I’ve finished.”
That’s true even of Christine, but I feel guilty over telling Hannah about it before her. As I make a start on my second glass Hannah says “Some of the writers Derek’s had on his show say that too.”
It’s my cue to ask “How do you find Mr Dennison?”
“He’s the man for the job.”
&nbs
p; This is even more unwelcome than it’s unexpected, and I try to douse my feelings with a drink. “You’re happy working with him, then.”
“I wouldn’t work with anyone I wasn’t. Are you ready for another? This is my treat.”
It seems increasingly less like one, and I can’t find anything to say while Benny brings me a third glass. Having also given me a solemn look—for all I know it may mirror my expression—he says “Is it time for a joke yet?”
“I’ve had enough for one day, thanks.”
Not much of the remark is aimed at him, but it appears to fall short of Hannah. As he carries off my empty glasses I say “You weren’t thinking of some kind of competition for Dennison.”
“I don’t think I’m with you, Graham,” Hannah says and adopts a hopeful smile rather too reminiscent of how Benny waits for a laugh. “We don’t go in for those at the BBC.”
“This one.” I let go of the glass to jab a thumb in my general direction. “I mean me.”
“You’re the competition, that’s true enough.”
“And I take it that’s how you’d like me to stay.”
“Not exactly, Graham. Wouldn’t you like to develop your skills as an interviewer? The ones we heard you using on Frank Jasper.”
“I could suggest it to our new owners, I suppose.”
“What’s your instinct about them?”
“None to speak of till I meet them.”
“Sorry, I should know by now you don’t like to give away too much.” Hannah abandons her attempt to prompt a smile and says “Do you think they’ll let you be all you want to be?”
“I’ll find that out, won’t I?”
“If you’re happy with how things are progressing that’s completely fine, Graham.”
I’m starting to feel as though, having lost my way at some stage of the conversation, I’m wandering ever further from it. I don’t know whether a drink will help, but down it goes. “And if I’m not?” I wonder.
“Then I’m here.”
I won’t let myself be tempted to assume too much—I may already have fallen into that trap. “Well, so you are.”
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