He went over to her the second morning and smiled.
‘Excuse me, but can I help you with that shopping? It looks very heavy and those steps seem pretty treacherous to me.’
She flushed, clearly embarrassed.
‘Oh – no, no, it’s perfectly all right. I’m fine.’
‘Well, I don’t think it is. Look – come on, just to the front door. It’s all right, I’m not some kind of mugger, I promise I won’t try and come in.’
‘Well – it would be nice. Thank you.’
‘These steps are a death trap,’ he said, kicking at one of them; a shower of plaster fell onto the one below.
‘I know. We’ve tried to get the landlord to fix them, but he never does. He never fixes anything, as a matter of fact, the place is a tip inside.’
‘Going to be worse when you’re trying to get a pram up and down the steps.’
‘Yes, well, we won’t be here then. We’re looking for somewhere else, but landlords don’t like babies, so we may have to – sorry, you don’t want to hear all this.’
‘Yes, I do. Don’t be silly. I’m very sympathetic as a matter of fact. My sister’s in the same fix. She and her husband have been trying to find somewhere for months, they live up north, Manchester way.’
‘Really? Well, I suppose a landlord is a landlord. Out for all they can get. And babies put other tenants off.’
‘Seems so. Look – I think I’d better come clean. Johnny Barrett, Daily News. Your friend Eliza Shaw told me about you.’
She looked alarmed. ‘Oh – goodness. I thought – Eliza said you’d decided not to do the article after all.’
‘I had. But to be honest with you, seeing what my sister’s going through made me keen again. I really think these people shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it. It’s not right. Look, you wouldn’t like to tell me a bit more now, would you?’
‘Oh – I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t want to get into trouble and while we’re still living here—’
‘Of course not, but like I said to Eliza, no names.’
‘Really?’ Her large grey eyes met his. ‘It would be completely anonymous?’
She was very pretty, he thought. And very vulnerable.
‘Completely. And you’d only be one of several stories. Look – there’s a café down the road. Why don’t I take you there and you can tell me all about it.’
‘Rob? Rob Brigstocke?’
‘Yup, speaking.’
‘It’s Eliza Shaw here. Look – if that job’s still going, I’d really like to talk some more about it.’
‘Oh – right. Well – well, yes, we haven’t found anyone else yet. Got a couple of people to see, but – how about lunch?’
‘That’d be very nice.’
‘Good. Thursday? Berkeley Grill, one o’clock. I won’t be late this time.’
It had come to her suddenly, as she lay awake night after night in an agony of resentment and misery that she really could not miss out on the perfect career move any longer, just to please him; pleasing him seemed absolutely impossible.
And there was no way he could actually stop her, after all.
‘Matt, hi. It’s me.’
‘Oh – Gina. Hello.’
‘You don’t sound very pleased to hear from me. It’s been a while.’
‘No, no. I am … sorry. I – well, yes, of course I am. How are you doing?’
‘I’m doing pretty well, thanks. Very well, actually. Which is why I’m ringing you.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Yes. I’m looking for new premises. To open a second shop. I thought you might be able to help.’
It annoyed him when people thought he was a sort of glorified estate agent.
‘Gina, I don’t handle that sort of thing. Sorry.’
‘Oh – OK. I just thought—’
‘Well, you thought wrong,’ said Matt shortly.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Gina. Her voice was sharp; it cut through Matt’s misery.
‘No, no, I’m sorry. Got a few problems at the moment.’
‘Anything I can help with?’
‘’Fraid not. No.’
‘Well – you know where I am, Matt. If you need me.’
It worried him that he knew where she was. He hoped nobody else did.
Jack Beckham told Barrett to stay after the evening conference. He was holding the first draft of his article.
‘There’s not enough here,’ he said, ‘too much sentimental claptrap. This isn’t fucking Woman’s Own. What’s this girl’s name, for a start?’
‘I – said I wouldn’t give that.’
‘Well you need to give it, OK? And we need facts and figures, and I’ve told you, we certainly need the name of the developer, and a quote from him. Otherwise, we could have made it all up.’
‘Yeah, but—’
‘Look, I’ve told you, I’m trying to make a star journalist of you. I thought that was what you wanted, when you came down from that one-horse town. Maybe I was mistaken, maybe—’
Johnny Barrett said OK, and that none of that would be very difficult. And told himself that he had done his best to protect Heather, after all, she hadn’t been stupid and she had certainly known she was talking to a journalist.
Now, the developer.
‘Eliza, hello, it’s me, Heather. Look – I thought I’d better tell you, I talked to that journalist after all. He turned up at the house and – well, he was really nice, just like you said, and he bought me a coffee and I quite enjoyed it.’
‘Right. Did he say when it might go in?’
‘No, he didn’t. But he did promise not to put any names or addresses in and—’
‘Good. Well I’m glad you told me, that’s great. I’ll try and get round later in the week, have to go now. Take care.’
‘Johnny Barrett? This is Eliza Shaw. Look, I hear you talked to my friend.’
‘To Heather, yes.’
‘I wish you’d rung me first. I did want to be there.’
‘Not necessary, Eliza. I don’t know why you thought you needed to be. She’s very bright. Very sweet.’
‘Yes, OK, but – you won’t put her name in, will you?’
‘Now what was the deal, Eliza? And what do you think I am?’
‘A member of Fleet Street,’ said Eliza. ‘Please don’t, Johnny, please.’
‘You’re insulting my integrity,’ he said and rang off.
Susan came into Matt’s office with a typed list.
‘What’s that?’
‘You asked me to find some low-rent flats, Mr Shaw. I’ve got a few, all very nice; shall I leave them with you?’
‘Oh – yes, please. Thanks, Susan.’
Perhaps this was what it would take to please Eliza, at least a bit, show her he wasn’t all bad, break the awful frozen impasse. Although why he should want to, he didn’t know. She so clearly despised him and everything he stood for …
Barrett’s third call revealed the name of the landlord of the Clapham terrace, and of the developer who had bought the freehold.
‘And here’s a thing,’ said his informant, ‘it’s a subsidiary of Matt Shaw’s company. Probably a tax dodge, very clever.’
‘Matt Shaw? Are you quite certain about that?’
‘Course. Ask him, why don’t you?’
‘I think I’d better not,’ said Barrett.
‘Hello, Louise. How you doing?’
‘Oh – pretty well. We seem to have got planning permission on the new hotel. Nice story for you, we’ve seen off the arty brigade.’
‘Yes? Well, not for me this time. Look – just checking something, is SureFire Development an offshoot of Matt Shaw’s company?’
‘Yes, it is. But it’s perfectly legal, nothing worth writing about. Why?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ said Barrett. ‘Just doing a round-up, you know.’
‘Louise? Eliza. Look have you heard from your friend Johnny Barrett lately?’
‘Funny you should say tha
t, but yes. About an hour ago. Asking me—’
‘Asking you what?’
Louise told her.
‘Oh Christ,’ said Eliza. ‘Jesus Christ.’
‘OK,’ said Jack Beckham, ‘this is pretty good now. Well done, Barrett. We’ll make a journalist of you yet. Lawyers seen it?’
‘Yup.’
‘Because it is strong stuff.’
‘Yeah, I know. But they said as long as there was no doubt about the landlord – and it’s definitely him, and anyway, I got a quote out of him—’
‘Good. We’ll run it tomorrow. With a trail on the front page. Now – this crap about Covent Garden. Can you believe it, they want to turn it into some kind of fancy shopping area, with cafés and jazz bars. The old porters’d be turning in their graves.’
Eliza even tried to get through to Jack Beckham; it was no use. The story was just too good.
Matt was out that night at a dinner. She sat at home with Emmie, feeling increasingly sick. At eleven o’clock, she called the cab service she and Matt used and asked them to go and get a first edition copy of the Daily News from Waterloo station.
Opened it, shaking so hard, and gulping with fear, that it took long minutes to find the feature.
The property feature: across two pages.
‘Millions Made from Misery’, it was called; and underneath that, in only slightly smaller type, ‘The landlords who make lives hell’.
It was after midnight when Matt got home; he’d been to a trade dinner and been made much of. It had soothed his damaged ego, made him feel less of a failure: in fact, rather the reverse.
He’d expected Eliza to be in bed but when he walked into the drawing room, as she insisted on calling it, holding his nightcap of whisky and ginger, she was sitting on one of the sofas.
‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Hello. You’re up late. Emmie all right?’
‘Yes, yes, she’s fine. Fast asleep. Matt—’
‘I’ve got some news for your friend by the way, the one who hasn’t got anywhere to live. Found her a couple of very cheap flats. In good buildings.’
‘Oh, God,’ she said and then, ‘that’s very – very good of you.’
‘Yes, well, it might help to persuade you I’m not actually the devil incarnate. What is it, you look as if you’ve seen a coachload of ghosts.’
She was holding something: a newspaper.
‘What’s that, then?’
‘It’s tomorrow’s Daily News. I – I sent out for it. There’s something in it. Something you won’t like. And – oh, here, read it—’
He read it; it didn’t mean very much at first, just words on the page. Until he came to a name: a familiar name. And an account of how the owner of the name had made millions – and the methods he employed to enable him to do it.
He put the paper down, very slowly. ‘Well?’ he said.
‘Matt, it was my fault. I didn’t realise it was anything to do with you. But I told the journalist about Heather and the other tenants, I just didn’t – didn’t think, I tried to get it stopped but – I couldn’t, I’m so, so sorry.’
‘You bitch,’ he said, ‘you stupid, arrogant little bitch. You think you know it all, don’t you, with your fancy friends and your fucking oh-soimportant career. You really do despise me and what I’ve done, don’t you? And now you’re rubbing my nose in it. Very attractive. Have you ever considered that everything, everything you have, including that fucking pile down in the country you care about so much, is down to me?’
‘Matt, no, no, I don’t despise you, that’s the last thing I feel, I think it’s amazing what you’ve done, I admire it so much—’
‘So much you publish a lot of filth about me, and the people who work for me.’
‘I didn’t publish it Matt, don’t be ridiculous. I just – just—’
Her voice tailed off.
‘You just alerted your Fleet Street friends to it, said do write about this, it’s shocking, isn’t it, what my husband gets up to, isn’t that about the size of it?’
‘No, no, Matt, it isn’t, I had no idea it was anything to do with you, how could I have …’
‘It was my business, though, wasn’t it? The business you look down your aristocratic nose at. Have you even thought what this might do to me, me and my colleagues and my clients, come to that? How it will diminish me, do me harm?’
‘Yes,’ she said, very quietly, ‘yes of course I have. And I’m sorry—’
‘Oh, you are? Well, that’s mighty good of you. You ruin me professionally, we won’t go into the personal damage, and all you can manage is tell me you’re sorry—’
‘Matt! Of course you’re not ruined. You’re being ridiculous. It’s very unfortunate, of course it is, and I’m terribly sorry. But it will be forgotten in a couple of days, you know it will. You’re over-dramatising things and—’
She stopped. He had walked towards her: his face was white, his eyes black pinpricks in it, his mouth working almost as if he was going to cry. ‘Don’t you tell me I’m being ridiculous,’ he said, ‘just don’t. How fucking dare you?’ And then very, very slowly it seemed, he raised his hand and hit her hard across the face and then again, knocking her head from side to side.
‘You bitch,’ he said finally, and there was a break in his voice, ‘you stuck-up, arrogant little bitch.’
There was a long silence, while Eliza stared at him, disbelieving what had happened, shaking not with fear but shock; then she recovered herself, pushed back her hair, faced him down.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘so there we have it. Is that the best you can manage, knocking your wife about? And I had hoped to have civilised you a little. But you’re still the same ignorant working-class boy, aren’t you, Matt? In spite of all your millions.’
Matt said no more, simply turned and walked out of the house.
Several hours later, and extremely drunk, he turned up at Gina’s flat.
He sat drinking black coffee, telling her everything, all the ugly brutal truth as he saw it.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said, and two tears rolled down his face. He brushed them off, embarrassed. ‘Sorry.’
‘It’s OK.’
She just seems to want to destroy me. She hates me. And I – I – sorry …’
‘Matt, it’s OK. Really.’ She went over to him, put her arms round him, stroked his hair.
‘Perhaps you should think about divorce,’ she said.
Chapter 50
He had apologised, of course. The following day, his face white and set, unable to meet her eyes, while studying her face for the damage he had done, genuinely ashamed and remorseful, had said he was sorry, that he should not have done it. He asked her if she was all right; she said she was. And that was the end of the conversation; it had not been referred to between them again. And he was still quite clearly ferociously angry with her, in spite of the remorse.
She felt very odd about it, confused, shocked. To have behaved so badly that it induced violence and from someone who had once loved her so much; it had clearly been very bad, that behaviour, and the blows something she had deserved, had almost earned.
She could not tell anyone, anyone at all; could not admit to any of it, simply said she had fallen down the cellar steps, to explain her swollen face and mouth, her black eye, and struggled to bury the memory and the fear – and the shame.
It haunted her, the memory, she lived it over and over again; it rose up not only in the night but harshly and unexpectedly during the day, as she drove her car, stood in the shower, walked down the street, threatening her, an excursion into another place, dark and ugly, where she could never have imagined herself to be.
It had not made her afraid of him, she felt instinctively he wouldn’t do it again: and she knew he would never ever hit Emmie. He was simply not a violent man. Which made her own shame worse.
She had no idea what to do next; reconciliation seemed impossible, continuing as they were worse. She felt helpless, susp
ended in time, moving through the days in a senseless, confused lethargy. It was very frightening. Life as she knew it was lost to her.
Matt, struggling with conflicting emotions of his own, shame, shock, almost unbearable anger, was also hugely fearful of the effect of the article on his business and his professional reputation. But the property community saw the story for what it was, as they viewed it at least, a gross distortion by the media, heaped upon their already unpopular shoulders, presented as they were as pariahs of society, impenetrable obstacles placed between decent people and the housing they deserved. And the public simply read, digested and then moved on into their own mantra that they were all the same, these developers, but there was nothing you could do about it, and went on their way.
But his sense of betrayal at Eliza’s hands remained deep and bitter.
For the first time, Eliza was grateful for their lack of social life; there were no embarrassing comments to be endured at dinner parties at least. Sarah of course had seen it, and called her to say carefully that she was sure it was all lies and that Matt would never do such awful things; and Charles’s reaction was very similar.
‘Jolly hard on old Matt,’ was all he said to Eliza and slightly duplicitously, she agreed.
The person who suffered most from the article was Heather; frightened and angry at Eliza’s betrayal as she saw it, she refused to allow her into the house when Eliza arrived on her doorstep the next day.
‘You promised, Eliza, you promised me. You said there would be no names, we wouldn’t be identified. I thought we were friends—’
‘Heather, we are friends, please don’t say that.’
‘That man lied and lied to me and you told me—’
‘Heather, I know he did and I’m so, so sorry. I told him to leave you alone, I told him I didn’t want him to do the story—’
‘Well, why didn’t he leave us alone then?’
‘Because – because the press doesn’t work like that. They’re all sharks, they can’t be trusted and—’
‘But you’ve worked with these people. So why tell him about us in the first place? And how did he know where we were? Did you give him this address?’
‘No, of course not. Well – well – I told him you lived near Clapham Common. And that it was a terrace of big Victorian houses. I suppose after that he just did a lot of legwork. Watched you coming out, recognised you from my description—’
The Decision Page 58