by Hazel Osmond
O’Dowd went careering on; his eyes alight as if scenting his quarry.
‘My old guts are never wrong. When Cressida scores a Yank, Jennifer will be the first to know and we’ll be the second because by then we’ll have become Jen’s very special friend.’
‘You don’t mean “we”, do you?’ Mack said.
‘No, well done. I mean “you”.’
‘Forget it, give it to someone else.’
‘Can’t,’ O’Dowd shot back, ‘you’ve got the perfect qualifications. You know how these things work, but you’ve slipped off the radar, no one remembers your name or your face. And as for some big-shot freelancer? No way. One of those suddenly goes haring off, it’s going to make the rest suspicious about what they’re working on. Whereas you can get yourself up there, and who’s going to miss you? Mack Stone … my little “Mack the Knife”.’
Mack flinched as much at the chummy tone as at his old nickname.
‘Don’t be modest, my son, before you screwed your career up big time, those brown eyes of yours used to really get people to open up. You’ll get this Jennifer to trust you.’
‘No.’
‘Really? Got so much work on you can afford to turn this kind of money down? Heard you spend your time on little bits and pieces for the local rags – “George and Rita Celebrate their Golden Wedding” stuff.’
O’Dowd made it sound as if that were akin to peddling heroin.
‘And you’re in debt; cards maxed out, the lot. Think about it, Mack. You’ll be well paid for this job … I’ve written the figure down in that file. Plus expenses on top … and if you pull it off, who knows where your career will go – you’ll be back in demand. You’ll have struck pay dirt.’
‘I’ll also be dragged through the courts, might even get put away.’ Mack got to his feet. ‘So stuff it, and stuff all that threatening garbage about Phyllida. If that had been real, you’d have hit me with it straightaway. It was just bait to get me here, wasn’t it? I wish you luck with your shitty little plan. I hope her brother tears your head off just before Cressida’s lawyers rip your liver out, or what’s left of it. I can’t believe after all that Sunday Screws stuff you’re still playing this game. Well, I’m not. I don’t grub about in other people’s lives. I’m not a bloody saint, but I’m not going back to that.’
Mack moved to the door and already had hold of the handle when he heard O’Dowd get off the sofa and come up right behind him. He could feel his breath on his neck.
‘You sanctimonious little shit,’ O’Dowd whispered, ‘what – you’re suddenly above all this? You used to lap up all that stuff: the backstage passes, the inside stories.’
Mack forced himself to turn around and look right into O’Dowd’s face, smelling the coffee on his breath.
‘I should never have worked for you or this paper, I—’
There was a moment when Mack thought that O’Dowd was going to headbutt him, but he simply jammed his face right up close to Mack’s.
‘You’re not going to ruin this for me. Cressida Chartwell’s got it all. Box-office gold, real talent, heart-shredder. If we break this story before the rest, it’ll be worth whatever anyone chucks at us, whatever Cress and her lawyers heap on our heads. I can think about retiring. Get myself somewhere hot.’
‘That’ll be Hell, will it?’ Mack said, his neck aching from the effort of keeping his face from touching O’Dowd’s. ‘I’m going. Get someone else’s nuts in the vice this time.’
It would have been a great parting shot if O’Dowd hadn’t said softly, ‘You heard of Sir Teddy Montgomery, my son?’
That was when Mack knew this was going to be very, very bad indeed. He watched O’Dowd saunter back to the sofa.
‘You should have agreed to this when I was trying to be nice,’ he said, ‘when I thought we should bury the hatchet because of how we’re going to have to work as a team.’ O’Dowd patted the cushion next to him. ‘Now you’re going to have to let Uncle Gordon tell you a scary story.’
Without registering having moved, Mack was sitting next to O’Dowd. The room seemed overheated suddenly, devoid of air. He was in a beige, carpeted, airless trap and Phyllida had put him there.
As O’Dowd himself would say, ‘I’ve found your Achilles’ heel, my son.’
His insides felt as though he were about to be dropped down a well.
O’Dowd was leaning back again, his groin thrust forward as if demonstrating he was the dominant male. ‘Hear old Phyllida has good days and bad days. Real shame.’ There was a theatrical sigh, ‘Your mum was a belter of a journalist in her day. Hell of a looker too. This Sir-Teddy thing will probably be the final straw.’
Mack was frantically leafing through all he knew about Sir Teddy Montgomery, personal friend of the Windsors and regular visitor to No. 10. Until his death six months before he’d been seen as the archetypal Establishment gentleman. Except that papers found after his death proved that for all of his fifty years in the public eye he’d been passing defence information to the Russians.
The country had been apoplectic with rage and the media had thrashed about trying to find someone they could blame for him getting away with it scot-free, but it was beginning to look as though good old Sir Teddy had been acting alone. With his wife long dead and no children, the public couldn’t even lash out at them.
There was a dangerous vacuum of retribution out there, just waiting for someone to fill it.
‘Hey. Quit dreaming,’ O’Dowd said. ‘Turns out that during the summer and autumn of 1982, good old Sir Teddy Montgomery had a hot and heavy affair with a woman and kept quite detailed diaries about it. Called this other woman his soulmate. Said he trusted her with all his secrets. When this woman ended the affair it left him broken-hearted – so broken-hearted that he couldn’t bear to throw the diaries away.’ O’Dowd shook his head. ‘Silly man. Never know where they’re going to end up if you do that.’
‘With a scumbag like you.’ Mack swallowed down the disgusting taste that was suddenly in his mouth.
‘Correct. And you know what? As I read old Teddy’s diaries, I started to wonder whether he told this soulmate of his about those jolly Russians. That would make her as big a traitor as he was. Her life wouldn’t be worth living if the story got out.’ O’Dowd made a mock-sorry face. ‘Of course, when I say “her”, I mean Phyllida.’
Mack could feel the edge of the well through the soles of his shoes.
He tried to make the accusation go away, juggling dates and probabilities in his head to prove to himself that O’Dowd was wrong. But Phyllida was out of the same mould as Montgomery: Home-Counties family, good boarding school, Oxford. Their paths would have crossed.
‘You’re lying. You’re a lying, fat, bastard,’ Mack said, more vehemently because he knew he was on shaky ground.
‘I’ll admit to the “bastard” and maybe the “fat”, but in this particular case, my old son, I’m not lying and I can prove it.’ O’Dowd paused. ‘There are some lovely intimate bits about his lover in the diaries; old sod waxed quite lyrical about her appendix scar—’
‘Lots of women have those.’
‘And another quite distinctive scar low down on her back from landing on some corrugated iron when she was a girl.’
Mack thought of the wavy scar to the left of his mother’s spine.
‘Then Teddy, the old goat, gets a bit naughty. Lots of details about how she could never keep quiet when they were—’
No. No. No.
When Mack and his sister were young they had giggled over the sounds their mother made in the bedroom with their father. Later, it had become a huge embarrassment; particularly when the noise had been lavished on a succession of ‘uncles’ who had passed through their lives.
Tess said Phyllida sounded like a particularly leaky lilo and someone was trying to pump her up.
O’Dowd laughed. ‘Sir Teddy said she sounded like a particularly leaky lilo and someone was trying to pump her up.’
Mack felt hi
mself falling, could see the fetid water at the bottom of the well.
‘You’re a liar,’ he said, louder this time. ‘You’re telling me Phyllida worked alongside the best journalists in the country and nobody noticed this affair?’
‘Takes a person who knows all the tricks to be able to play them herself. You know how bright and devious your mum can be. And we know Sir Teddy could keep a secret, sneaky sod, he took his to the grave.’
What have you done, Phyllida, what have you dragged us into, Tess, Joe, the girls, me?
‘Of course, you could ask her about it, but I doubt you’ll get a straight answer, even if you get her on a day when she can talk sense. And remember, once I fling the mud, it’ll stick.’
Mack was flailing around in that stinking water.
O’Dowd bent down and fished out an A4 brown envelope from his briefcase before placing it delicately on Mack’s knees.
Mack looked down at it as though it was a piece of excrement: brown envelopes, unless stuffed with cash, were never good news.
‘Romantic Sir Teddy Montgomery also kept a rather lovely photo of him and the woman. Have a look at it, Mack … though really no son should have to see his mother doing that to a man.’
Mack pushed the envelope off his knees and heard it land on the floor.
‘You liked my mother,’ he said. ‘How can you do this to her?’
‘All’s fair in love and circulation wars. And I have a duty to inform a betrayed public of my findings … unless –’ O’Dowd bent and picked the envelope off the floor – ‘unless I decide for some reason, not unconnected with a famous actress, to spike this story. Think about it, Mack, what Cressida gets up to is of global interest; it’ll make you, me, the paper, big money. The Montgomery story’s just a little domestic something that’ll soon be old news – except for Mongomery’s lover and her family, of course. No one will ever let them off the hook.’ O’Dowd did a shifty little side glance. ‘How old are those nieces of yours now?’
‘OK,’ Mack said, slipping under the water without any more struggle. ‘This Jennifer woman. Where do I start?’
CHAPTER 3
Jennifer tried to concentrate on what Mr Armstrong was saying and filter out the muffled laughter coming from the poetry section. Luckily Mr Armstrong was fairly deaf and would not realise that it pinpointed exactly where two other members of the library staff were hiding to enjoy another classic Armstrong performance.
‘Also, pet,’ he said, leaning against the counter and wetting his forefinger, ‘as well as the bad language, there are some scenes of a sexual nature on page thirty-four.’ He turned the pages of the book with the specially wetted finger until he reached the offending passage and began to read in a wavering voice: ‘Pulling her to his chest, he placed her hand on his iron-hard member thrusting against the confines of his rough, calico breeches and suddenly the two hard nubs of—’
‘Yup, that’s definitely sex,’ Jennifer cut in, and looked towards the poetry section, where Auden through to Coleridge was actually shaking.
‘Aye,’ Mr Armstrong said eventually, ‘shocking.’
He glanced down at the piece of paper in his hand covered with faint, spindly writing, and, as he did so, his stick fell off his arm, causing him to lean more heavily against the counter.
‘Would you like to sit down, Mr Armstrong?’
‘Aye, I would.’
Jennifer fetched a chair and settled him in it, lifting his carrier bag up off the floor and placing it gently in his lap.
‘So what’s next?’ she asked when she was back behind the counter.
‘Page one hundred and eighty-four – blasphemy.’ Mr Armstrong turned the pages torturously slowly, referring to his list from time to time, and Jennifer looked at the library clock, hoping that somebody would come in and give her an excuse to call Sheila and Lionel out of hiding. Not much hope of that: late-night opening and only an hour until closing time. The graveyard shift. The only voices Jennifer could hear were coming from the children’s section, a woman and a little girl by the sound of it. They must have come in when she was up in the office.
It was always a mistake, one way or the other, to come out of the office.
Mr Armstrong found the offending page and held the book up for Jennifer to read, obviously deciding that the blasphemous passage would sully him further should he reacquaint himself with it.
Jennifer scanned the words. ‘The character just says, “God’s Blood”, Mr Armstrong. He is a pirate.’
Mr Armstrong sucked his teeth. ‘Then, on page two hundred, more sex.’
The torturous finger-wetting and page-turning recommenced until he found what he was looking for.
‘Lord Percival Dennison feasted his eyes on Lady Cranleigh’s voluptuous form, from the milky mounds of her breasts to that place where he longed to plunge his …’ Mr Armstrong stopped and tutted and there was more pained sucking of teeth before he passed the book to Jennifer. ‘I’ll not read the rest.’
Jennifer glanced at the page and snapped the book shut. ‘Yes, easy to see where that’s going … so, anything more, then?’ She nodded at his carrier bag, hoping there was nothing else he considered improper lurking within it.
‘No, not this time. You’ll send a letter to the council?’
‘Of course. Would you like to see it before I send it?’
‘Why no, pet. I trust you.’
‘Fine, and you know, Mr Armstrong, what I was saying last time, about you perhaps being a bit more careful concerning the books you choose if strong language and, um, physical interaction offends you?’
Mr Armstrong looked up at her from under his brows, and she ploughed on, picking up the book he had just laid down and looking at its cover.
‘For example, the title of this one – Plundered by Pirates – it should have warned you off really.’
‘Warned me off? How?’
If it had been anybody else, Jennifer would have thought they were pulling her leg, but Mr Armstrong’s eyes were devoid of humour. A faint tang of soap and toothpaste lingered about him.
‘Well, “plundered”, particularly in historical novels, is often used to describe the act of –’ Jennifer had another run up at it – ‘when a man forces himself, um, upon a woman.’
Mr Armstrong studied her intently and then shook his head.
‘Well, I dare say it’s a modern thing. We never had that when I was young. We were Methodists.’
In the poetry section, Jennifer heard several books thud to the floor.
‘Why not try some poetry, Mr Armstrong?’ she said, very loudly.
‘Ooh, no,’ Mr Armstrong’s eyes were wide. ‘Poets. They’re the worst.’ He looked down into his lap, rummaged about in his carrier bag and then produced two more library books. A little more scrabbling and he had a library card in his hand. ‘Put these new ones through for me, will you?’
Jennifer took the books: Lust for the East and The Hidden World of the Victorian Gentleman. She might as well have the chair permanently bolted to the counter ready for his next visit.
‘You’ll tell them to reply directly to me. The council?’ he said, getting slowly to his feet.
Jennifer nodded and handed him his books and his ticket and, when he was ready, his stick. She wondered which poor soul at the county council got the job of answering Mr Armstrong’s complaints.
‘Right, I’ll be away then.’ He moved slowly towards the exit.
Jennifer followed him and pressed the large button on the wall that had been fitted to make it easier for the old or frail to open the door. It had not been an unqualified success, even in this, its second incarnation. The first button, simply round and black, had flummoxed most of the older users, who had viewed it as some kind of knob that had to be turned. Consequently it had only lasted a matter of days. The council had dispatched another mechanic with a new button, square this time, and with the word ‘Press’ upon it in large red letters. This had solved the problem for those whose sight was still g
ood, but it was not unusual to find some poor soul looking wistfully at the door and waiting for somebody else to get it open for them.
Mr Armstrong’s approach was to jab the button with his stick.
‘I forgot to ask,’ he said, pausing on the threshold and causing Jennifer to leap for the button to stop him getting battered by the door as it tried to close. ‘That brother of yours, Danny, how’s he going on?’
‘Not getting a lot of sleep. Louise’s teething.’
‘And your dad?’
‘Fine, he’s hoping to get some good lambs through this year, off one of his new tups.’
Mr Armstrong’s laugh was wheezy. ‘That’ll give those Lambtons a run for their money.’ He gave Jennifer a sly glance. ‘You and young Lambton back courting?’
‘No,’ Jennifer said, more quickly than she would have liked. In the past it had always irritated her when people assumed that she and Alex Lambton were naturally destined for marriage, as if, like both families’ sheep, putting them together would make a stronger breed. Nowadays there was a new set of reasons why putting Alex and her together made her irritable.
‘We’re friends these days, that’s all, Mr Armstrong.’
‘Aye, well, you don’t want to leave him waiting too long. Not with your …’ Jennifer felt that he was rummaging around in his mind as he had rummaged in his carrier bag, looking for something that he knew was in there, but he couldn’t quite grasp.
Eventually his face brightened. ‘… affliction,’ he said, catching hold of the word and bringing it up into the light.
Jennifer put her head down, took a deep breath in and then looked back up at Mr Armstrong. He appeared oblivious to how she might feel about what he had just said.
She was tempted to take her hand off the button so that he would have to make a quick exit. Instead she just waited and watched and waited as he plodded off.
When she got back to the desk, Sheila had reappeared, along with a shame-faced Lionel.
‘Thanks,’ she said and hoped they wouldn’t notice that she was genuinely upset under her playing-to-the-gallery eye-rolling.