by Paul Kelly
James Lederer ignored the protest and introduced himself accordingly, inviting himself into the flat before Maya had a chance to ask him in.
“This won’t take long, Madam,” Lederer announced as he dropped his briefcase near a chair in the lounge before he sat down and Maya remembered that she had seen his face recently, shortly before she was discharged from the hospital
“I couldn’t agree with you more, buster,” she replied casually, “You’ll be out of here before you can count to ten. Now make it quick and don’t muck about. I don’t have long if you have … and before you ask, I don’t serve teas or coffees during the day, so don’t ask…”
Lederer stroked his chin and looked about the room.
“Nice place you have here, Madam. Do you live alone,” he asked, knowing that his remark would make the lady standing opposite him come out with some form of obscenity or other and she did.
“Don’t be so fuckin’ smart with me, buster. I know why you’re here and you know why you’re here, so let’s get on with it and don’t piss about.”
Lederer could tell at this point in the conversation that he had met a lady of charm and grace, but he refrained from telling her.
“Alright then, we’ll begin,” he said and Maya sat down, but Lederer smiled at her before she had another chance to speak … as he made his request.
“I don’t suppose you would be making a cup of tea or coffee about this time, Mrs. Broomfield, would you?” he enquired and she closed her eyes, making some remark which he was unable to hear, but by her face he knew the answer was NO ... Definitely NO ... It came with an obvious hissing sound.
“Get on with it,” she insisted and he smiled sardonically
“I would like to know a little of what happened on the evening your friend, William Bright called to see you and found your other friend here trying to throttle you.”
“You don’t beat about the bush, do you,” remarked Maya, “I suppose you’ve been seeing Billy-Boy and he has given you his side of the story. Well whatever he has told you it was all action on his part. My friend, as you call him, Mr. David Brigham was trying to get something out of my eye and this little trouble shooter barged in and hit him across the shoulders with something from my kitchen. Well, I ask you. Do you call those good manners?”
“Is that where you got your black eye from and the bruises on your cheek . . . not counting those marks at the lower part of your neck.”
“Bloody observant of you,” Maya snapped. “That was a different incident ... Nothing to do with Billy-Boy,” she barked as she pulled her dressing gown up closer around her chin… “and besides,” she continued, “ I had another inquisitor round here earlier and he asked the same questions. You’re like a couple of bloody parrots, if not as bloody amusing, I might add.”
“So you won’t mind if I ask you again then, will you?”
“Get on with it.”
“Alright . . . I’ll get right to the point if you insist. What is your relationship with Will ... Billy-Boy Bright?”
Maya raised her eyebrows and crossed her legs.
“No use telling you he was just a friend … is there . . . especially now that you’ve seen him yourself. He was my lover. ... There you are. We made love together and he couldn’t get enough, but that’s nothing new. It’s quite common these days for people to make love ... or don’t you already know that?”
James Lederer lowered his head when Maya make that comment, but he treated it with the contempt that he, as a gentleman, knew it deserved . . .
“Your lover, you say, Mrs. Broomfield. Isn’t that rather new ... when you consider his age in comparison to your other lovers, is it not?”
“Nothing like a bit of fresh, Guvnor,” she sneered as she looked at him. “You want to try it sometime,” Maya giggled as she spoke.”
“I would be obliged if you would stick to the questions and leave the other gestures and opinions out of it …particularly as you insist on being so rude.” Lederar snarled as he closed his eyes in disgust and he knew his patience was running out.
“Oh dear,” Maya snarled as she threw back her shoulders, “we are easily offended now, aren’t we? You sound like a bloody Prima Donna, you do.”
Lederer ignored her last comment and went on to his next question.
“You must have realized how inexperienced this young man was when you met him, so why did you continue with this affair?”
“Ask him, Mate ... He was gagging for it when I met him. Didn’t need much to turn him on ... Went for it … like a bull in a china shop … he did, but it was getting too hot in time … Too tiresome by far …”
“Did he live with you ... in this flat?”
“He did for a time, after I got to know him better. I don’t let any Tom, Dick or Harry into my flat until I know the characters better. You must understand that by now and anyway, I don’t think he got on too well with his old lady, but I couldn’t put him up at the weekends, I have conferences and lectures and things every week end, you see.”
Lederer grinned. He liked Maya’s term about not having any Tom, Dick or Harry in her flat ... Maybe not Tom or Harry, but plenty of the other it seemed however he ignored his thoughts as he continued his questions.
“Would David Bingham be one of your students at these lectures … Mrs. Broomfield?” he asked and Maya sneered as she wet her lips but she did not answer Lederer’s question as he continued. “You say William Bright …er Billy-Boy lived with you at the flat for a time ... Not at weekends of course, we understand, but what exactly do you mean by that?”
“Just what I said, Guvnor . . . You can understand English can’t you? ... Not at weekends, I said and not at weekends is what I bloody meant. Well anyway, it got so hot that I asked him to move out ... That was only a couple of weeks ago. Look time’s going on and I have places to go . . . People to see . . . Can’t you get a move on?”
“I won’t be very long now, but I would like to know what you meant when you said that things were getting too hot. Surely in your relationship with this young man, things could never get TOO HOT?”
“Yes, they did.”
“Why?”
“WHY you ask ... well, I’ll tell you why, buster ... yes, I’ll bloody tell you why ... He wanted to marry me. That’s what. Told me he loved me and that he wanted to have kids with me . . . children he called them …and spend the rest of his life with me. Now how bloody stupid do you think that was? He was only a kid, himself for God’s sake.”
Lederer became very interested at this juncture in the conversation and wished the lady didn’t have to see all these people she spoke about, nevertheless, he wasn’t going to let her go ... Not just yet.
“I would have felt extremely complimented if I was a lady and a young handsome man made that suggestion to me,” he said and Maya threw back her head and laughed.
“You could join a circus if that happened,” she sneered.
“So you told him to leave the flat because of this proposal, is that it?”
“Yes, that’s precisely IT … so why don’t you sod off now and go home to your wife … or whatever…”
“But you surely must have missed his company in that time when he left the flat, so why did you ask him back again?” Lederer asked, trying to lead Maya Broomfield into a trap as he ignored her suggestion that he should ‘sod off’ …
“Where did you get the idea that I asked him back to my flat? I didn’t. Yes, I missed him ... a bit ... I missed his fuckin’ about an’ that.”
“You were in love with him, were you not, Mrs. Broomfield?”
Maya Broomfield drew back when she heard that remark.
“I was in love TWICE in my life before … TWICE, I say ... or so I thought and look where that’s left me now. No, I don’t believe in love any more. Sex, yes, but not love. Billy-B
oy was a good sex toy and I enjoyed that. What woman wouldn’t with such a young stallion in her bed?”
“Did you want him for that alone?”
“Well, he did play the violin very nicely ... Yes, he was good at that too and we passed a few happy hours with him playing the violin when we weren’t doing other things.” Maya rolled her eyes when she said that. “I suppose I’m more of an actress than I think I am,” she said slowly “I did have feelings for the boy ... well the young man. He wasn’t a boy any more after we went together. I always knew he was too young for me, but he made me feel young, you see. A woman doesn’t like to think she’s getting old; getting past it, if you know what I mean. No woman wants to feel like that and Billy-Boy made me feel young again. He was my favourite lollipop.”
Lederer was actually beginning to understand how Mrs. Broomfield could feel by this time, even if he had to take exception to her favourite sweet. ... He had seen Billy-Boy and now he had seen his other love and where he could sympathies and understand how Maya felt, he failed to understand how William could say he was in love with her. She was attractive enough for sex, but love with such a great age difference between them seemed to him to be almost obscene.
“I know perhaps I shouldn’t say this,” Maya went on,“ and I don‘t want you to misinterpret what I say, but Billy-Boy was the first beautiful man I have ever been with and I don‘t want you to go telling him that I said that ... understand? … Cos if you do, he’ll need a ten gallon Stetson for his bloody head … won’t he? Men are not usually described as beautiful, I know that, but Billy-Boy was. I remember thinking, when we first met, although I hadn’t actually planned things the way they turned out. I remember thinking one night when he was lying beside me, breathing heavily and I looked at his face in the moonlight. His eyelashes swept his cheeks they were so long and dark. Many a girl would give anything to possess eyelashes like those ... and I could see the light down of a moustache on his upper lip, just above his sensual lips ... with his mouth half open as he snored lightly. Yes, Billy-Boy was BEAUTIFUL and no mistake. I thought then as I pulled the sheets back and watched him breathing. He had a fine ’V’ shape of down of hair on his chest that reached right down to his naval ... well, I’ll go no further than that. ...‘Where … Just where have you been all my life lad?’ I remember asking and I would wrap my legs around him, to keep warm and to know that he was mine. Can you understand that, Mr ... Mr ... Sorry ... What did you say your name was again?”
Lederer knew he didn’t have a very common name, but neither did he think it was that difficult to remember, but Mrs. Maya Broomfield was on some sort of a love trip from the way she spoke and he excused her bad memory as he told her again that his name was Lederer ... James Lederer, but he refrained from telling her he was baptised with the name of James, Francis Matthew Lederer. ... She certainly would have made a field day of that, he thought.
“Foreign then, are you?” the lady asked and Lederer shook his head, realizing it was perhaps too much for a dentist lady of her ilk to know that Lederer was pure English.
“I think I might draw a close to the questions now, Mrs. Broomfield,” he said, thinking it might be too tiring for the lady to continue, but to his surprise she didn’t agree with him. Her attitude to questioning had suddenly changed
“No need for that,” she said and her eyes were bright, “I’m getting quite used to this game we’re playing. Go on ask me more, but don’t get too intimate. There are some things you’ll just have to guess, darling ... If you know what I mean?”
Lederer raised his eyebrows in surprise, wondering just what would constitute an intimate question for the lady who sat preening in front of him. Had he been a younger man, he would have left that flat PRONTO, but as he was an old married man with several children, he felt he was quite safe ... nevertheless, Mrs. Broomfield drew her chair up closer to his and freshened her lipstick.
“You’re not too bad looking yourself for your age, buster. Did ever anyone tell you that?” she smirked and Lederer knew she was having him on; playing with his interests but he was having none of it.
“You haven’t told me how you met this young man, Mrs. Broomfield?” he went on ignoring her admiration or whatever she thought it was she was inferring …
“Now that’s for me to know and for you to find out ... Isn’t it?” she replied curtly and Lederer’s mouth tightened when she said that. It was obvious he was getting tired of this stupid manner of a conversation; Very tired of it indeed.
“Mrs. Broomfield, I would appreciate your sticking to the questions without these silly answers. That is not going to get you anywhere. Surely you must realize that . . .”
Maya Broomfield shrugged her shoulders and pushed her blonde fringe back from her forehead, showing just a slight hint of her darker hair underneath
“Didn’t realize you were so touchy, darling,” she said and started to lick her lips which seemed to give the impression that at least she was put out by the way Lederer turned on her.
“Now then,” he said, “I have to ask you again… how and where did you meet young Mr. Bright?”
“On a motor-bike, seeing as you ask,” she said sharply and Lederer was about to attack her again for what seemed to him to be a stupid answer, but she insisted again. “I have a motor-bike ... A Harley Davidson actually and I was coming home to London from Southend where I had been to a conference ... and you can check that out if you like. I still have the receipts for the hotel bill there.
“This was on the Friday evening when it was very wet ...?”
“That’s right. Pissing down it was and this poor bloke was thumbing a lift in a lay by. Nearly skidded trying to stop for him, but all the Lorries and vans in front of me wouldn’t give him a lift and I felt sorry for him. Well it was pissing down, as you already know.”
“Yes, I do know that as a matter of fact, Mrs. Broomfield ... and what happened after that, when you arrived back in London?”
“Well, Billy-Boy said he had a weekly ticket for the underground and he could get into any station to get home.” Suddenly Maya thought the name she had given to William might have sounded peculiar to a stranger and she tried to explain. “That was what I called him when he told me later that his name was William. That was my father’s name and I didn’t like the name or my father so I decided I would call him Billy-Boy. Nice, isn’t it?”
“But you didn’t think that was a good idea, did you?”
“What do you mean? He liked the name,” she replied and Lederer shook his head.
“That was not what I meant at all. I meant that perhaps you didn’t think it was such a good idea that he could get into any underground station and get home on his own ... when you were looking for a friend for the night. Isn’t that more like it, Mrs. Broomfield?
“Well, bugger me,” she screamed as she ran her fingers through her fringe again and Lederer was tempted to answer her by telling her that he appreciated her offer, but that he neither had the time nor the inclination, however he thought it best not to stoop to Maya Broomfield’s level of humour as he waited for her to speak again.
“We were both soaked to the skin and I couldn’t let the poor sod go like that, could I? No ... I suggested he should come up to my flat and have a hot drink before he set off, as any decent Christian would and also that he might be able to dry off to some extent …and I wish you‘d stop calling me Mrs. Broomfield. My name is Maya. Everybody calls me Maya, even my patients at the surgery,” she snarled, but Lederer was more interested in other things.
“By taking his clothes off and giving him a bath towel?” suggested Lederer, ignoring her plea that he should use her Christian name, but Maya sneered at his comment again. She had a way of sneering that seemed to suggest that any conversation going on was totally boring and a waste of time.
“The bloke was dripping wet. I suggested he should go AFTER he went into m
y bathroom and dried himself off, hoping I might be able to dry some of his clothes on my radiator. Was that such a bloody crime?”
“No ... very admirable and most charitable I would say, normally, but to pull the towel away from him and turn the lights off ... Well that’s quite a different act of charity, don’t you think?”
Maya Broomfield jumped to her feet when Lederer said that.
“I never told you that I did that, did I? You’ve been talking to someone else about this, haven’t you? Somebody who hates my guts probably and would drop me in it,” she barked and Lederer knew he had slipped up and made the remark from some notes he had taken from Reggie Gardner’s interview with young Bright.
“I suppose that could have happened,” he said hoping to evade any further issue, but Maya Broomfield was quick to pick up on what he had said.
“It was my daughter ... my daughter Fiona, wasn’t it? You’ve been talking to her, haven’t you? She’s a bitch. I suppose she’s told you about the violin too, has she?”
“Do you normally tell your daughter the intimate details of your love life, Mrs. Broomfield?
Maya Broomfield turned her back on Lederer.
“She talks too much and sees more than she should. She could put two and two together and make six as far as I am concerned. I’ll show her when I see her . . . which is not very often. Not very much at all in fact, but when she does, her eyes are everywhere.”
“So you DID pull the towel away, Mrs. Broomfield?”
Maya Broomfield swung around and her eyes were blazing.
“Yes and I dragged him to the floor, ripped his pants off and had my wicked way with him. That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it . . . but he didn’t object as I remember. Oh no …quite to the contrary. He was gagging for it. If the boot was on the other foot and he had done that to me, it would have been classed as rape ... wouldn‘t it? So there, I raped him ... Are you satisfied? I did it, not he. The poor bugger wouldn‘t have known what to do anyway. I had to teach him everything ... EVERYTHING,” she screamed again, “but I’ll say this ... He was a fast learner.”