In Bed with Mr. Plantagenet

by Deanna Maclaren

  ‘Eugenie, you are going home. Start putting together everything David’s told you about Art. Everything. However trivial. At some point in the night, a taxi will arrive with the tranny and my notes on what I’ve been able to find out. When that arrives, please call me. Doesn’t matter what time. I just need to know you’ve got what you need.’

  It was going to be a long night.

  She wished Andrew had let her go with him to the hospital. Now she had to sit at home and wait. And Eugenie hated waiting.

  It was getting on for four when Eugenie heard the taxi. She was about to go downstairs, but the caretaker was already at her door. He was wearing a tartan dressing gown.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said ‘You were woken up.’

  ‘That’s all right, Miss.’ He handed Eugenie a package. ‘Driver said it was urgent and I saw your light on, so I thought I’d better bring it straight up.’

  And Christmas was coming, Eugenie thought, and a fat tip would be expected.

  She sat at her desk, and opened the package. She found a tranny, and a full sized colour print of a young man in a hospital bed.

  She stared at him in horror. ‘You poor sod! Oh Christ. What did they do to you?’

  They’d obviously gone for his eyes, because they were now heavily bandaged. His face was completely swollen. They’d beaten him, quite literally, black and blue.

  Eugenie turned to Andrew’s notes. There was a message for her. Nice handwriting, she noted.

  ‘Eugenie, obviously you keep my name out of this and write it as if you had been the one who was there.’

  ‘They had chains, that mob. They smashed Art’s glasses into his eyes, and then made a hash of his face. Duty Sister Margaret Prior, 33, told me they got the blood off first, and then it was a very delicate operation removing the splinters of glass from his eyes. One of the junior nurses was so distraught she had to be sent out of the room. The room has heavy curtains which will be drawn to protect Art’s eyes when the bandages come off.

  ‘Norman Carter was sitting next to his son. A big, beefy man in his late forties, holding Art’s left hand, staring at his boy in stunned disbelief. Art wasn’t responding. Margaret said the doctors had ordered heavy sedation to give Art’s body a chance to heal. Art was wearing just a pair of blue shorts. When you’ve got a broken arm and severely bruised ribs, pyjamas are not a practical option.

  ‘Norman Carter turned to me. ‘They haven’t caught those bastards. What I want to know is, Where’s the fucking Law? Where’s the fucking Justice?’

  Clean it up, and there’s your cover-line, Eugenie realised. She also realised exactly what Andrew Millard had done for her. The lawyer, as lawyers often do, had understood exactly what the journalist needed.

  ‘Andrew,’ she said down the phone. ‘You’ve written my story for me. It’s wonderful.’ Wonderful? God, she’d made it sound like a fey fantasy. As if Santa’s elves were flying in at any moment, to save the day.

  But heck, Eugenie excused herself. It’s 4.30 in the morning. And I’ve got a story to put together by daybreak.

  Andrew was saying, down the line, ‘I just said what happened. You’ve got all the colour, family details I assume.’

  Eugenie had sifted through David’s orange file, and decided to censor any mention of Frieda, and Art’s obsession with her breasts.

  ‘Andrew when you talked to Mr Carter, who did you say you were?’

  ‘His lawyer.’

  ‘But he can’t afford you!’

  ‘There’s nothing to afford. I’m doing it pro bono. For free. I told him we have a reserve budget for deserving cases. And once all the hacks get hold of this, and TV, the Carters are going to need professional protection.’

  ‘This budget business is baloney. Why are you doing it, really?’

  ‘Because I am pissed off defending crooks, and nursemaiding daft divorcees having another crack at the ex-husband who is now shacked up with some moronic model. I want to do something that makes a real difference to someone’s life.’

  He sounded on the edge of exhaustion. ‘I’ll let you get to bed, Andrew. But just tell me. How did you get that film developed?’

  ‘Eugenie, the City of London, to a large extent, doesn’t sleep. Not Saturdays, not Sundays not at all. Because printers have to work fast through the night getting the lawyers’ documents ready. And photos have to be ready too. Near my office in the City there’s a guy who specialises in the photographic side. Makes one hellava good living ‘cos he’s a total, insensitive bullet-head who’s completely impervious to all the blood and gore.

  ‘Now, you’ve got a long night writing your story. Good luck.’

  ‘Thanks, Andrew. And well. Thanks.’

  *

  By eight thirty on Sunday morning, Eugenie was in a taxi on her way to work. Garrick Street was littered with paper hats, streamers, broken Christmas crackers, burst balloons, crushed red and silver baubles, all the debris of Saturday night’s revelry. As Eugenie stepped gingerly into all this from the cab, a young man came weaving along the road, clearly still drunk. He was carrying a single gold sandal.

  ‘Cinderella!’ he cried, flinging himself on one knee in front of Eugenie. ‘Will you marry me?’

  Eugenie and the taxi driver burst out laughing. ‘Sorry, handsome prince, but I’m already spoken for.’

  ‘Shit. That creep Buttons again.’

  The entrance to 22 Garrick Street was barred by an upside-down Christmas tree, its roots shrouded in damp, red crêpe paper. Eugenie shoved it out to join the debris in the street, and made her way upstairs.

  Revel was already in the office, on the phone to the printer. Eugenie knew it was the printer because Revel used more expletives to him than to everyone else put together.

  ‘No, you listen to me, cock. We are not, repeat not, running with the fucking Agriculture Minister in the fucking turnip field. I am pulling the front page.’

  Silently, Eugenie placed on his desk her copy, a photo of a boy in his school blazer, the tranny, and the glossy, full sized picture of Art in hospital. Revel looked at it, and shuddered. ‘Fucking Christ.’

  He went back to the printer. ‘I just hope those turding drones you employ have actually got some balls because the new cover’s gonna make them throw up…What do you mean, I can’t pull the front page? I want a new cover and space inside for a Special Report by Evie Dare. We’ll dump the Gardening…What do you mean, I’ll lose my fucking printing slot? Lose it to who? Lean-to-Weekly? LEAN -TO FUCKING WEEKLY? If that’s a real publication, my prick’s a bloater. What do you mean, it’s got a higher print-run than Stet? This is a class publication, matey boy, and you can just tell Lean-to-Weekly and it’s sister publication Lawnmower Gazette exactly where they can shove their fucking slot because I am taking priority.’

  As he was speaking, Revel was reading Eugenie’s copy. Usually it wasn’t her job to write the headline on her articles, but today, following on from Norman Carter’s, ‘Where’s the Law? Where’s the Justice?’ Eugenie had written, ‘How Does England Treat Its Heros?’

  ‘The picture above is of Arthur Norman Carter. Art, to his friends. It was taken by Stet photographer David Plantagenet when Art was a carefree schoolboy at London’s Wembley Grammar.

  ‘For a view of how Art looks today, aged 21, take another look, if you can bear to, at our front cover. Horrific, isn’t it?

  ‘It all came about last Saturday night when Art was passing a pub called Crocodile in London’s West End. He saw a damsel in distress, being molested by a gang of yobs. Art charged to the rescue. The girl was able to get away, but Art ended up in the Middlesex Hospital intensive care unit.

  ‘I went to see him not long after he was admitted…’

  Revel read to the end. Then he read it again. He laid down his green pen.

  ‘Terrific. Spot-on terrific. How the fuck did you get all this?’

  Eugenie shrugged, modestly. ‘Oh, you know…’

  ‘You look as if you’ve been up all night.�
�

  ‘I was.’

  ‘Well cut off home. Get some kip.’

  ‘What about your editorial? It’ll need typing.’

  He grinned. ‘I’ll get Rhoda along to type it. Give her something to do. She gets bored in Barons Court.’

  Eugenie had been astounded to learn where Revel’s flat was. Barons Court was, to her, just a stop on the Piccadilly Line. What the tourists sensibly called the Blue Line. Eugenie had never imagined that anyone actually lived at Barons Court. It was just off the featureless Cromwell Road with its dingy hotels. Eugenie couldn’t imagine anyone living there, either, but she’d been told a lot of these places were retirement hotels run by resentful men who would have preferred commercial travellers, spending money in the bar, rather than creeping old ladies bartering for a postage stamp.

  ‘Revel, I’d like to go and see Art on Monday. It’s what David would want.’

  ‘Good idea. Where is Mr Plantagenet at the moment?’

  ‘He’s in Peking.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ Revel nodded sagely. ‘Pandas. That’s what they have in Peking. Anyway, you take some time off.’ He sat back in his chair and let out a long sigh. ‘Gonna be some anti-climax, isn’t it, with the next issue, revisiting those goons in the turnip field?’

  At the Middlesex Hospital, Eugenie was told to report to the Lady Almoner, who was vetting everyone who asked for Art.

  ‘He’s not supposed to have visitors,’ the almoner said. ‘He has to be kept quiet. No excitement.’

  ‘I appreciate that,’ Eugenie said, thinking quickly. ‘I really just wanted to pop in on Mr Carter. See if he’s all right.’

  ‘Are you a friend of the family?’

  ‘Yes! Yes I am.’

  The Lady Almoner handed her a visitor’s badge and instructions on finding her way to Intensive Care. When Eugenie arrived, a man in an iron-grey overall was just leaving. His badge said Maintenance.

  Eugenie inspected the Duty Sister carefully, wondering if Andrew had fucked her, and whether he still was. Norman Carter was still sitting by his son’s bed, holding his boy’s left hand. Art’s right arm was bandaged and in a sling. He lay motionless. Having seen Andrew’s heart-rending shot of him, Eugenie had thought she was prepared, but the sight of Art sickened her. Helpless, his black and purple face was now turning yellow. Sickening. How ironical, she thought, that David would never introduce me to his best friend, and now I’m seeing him for the first time and he’s all bandaged up and bruised and battered.

  Art’s father was looking at her expectantly.

  ‘Mr Carter, my name’s Eugenie. I was – am – a friend of David Plantagenet’s. He used to call me Marigold.’

  Norman Carter shot to his feet and grasped her hand. ‘You’re Marigold! Well, well. He could never stop talking about you. Where’s he got to now?’

  ‘He’s in Peking.’

  Norman Carter sat down again, and reclaimed his son’s hand.

  ‘How long are you staying here, Mr Carter?’

  ‘Long as it takes. I’m having his spare glasses sent in so soon as these bandages come off, he can see. One of the things that drew him and David together, that they both wore specs. Nurses have been very good. Fitted me up with a bed over there, so I can stay overnight.’

  ‘What about food?’

  ‘It’s, well, hospital grub. You could paper the wall with the mashed spud, but it’s something to do, isn’t it? I usually eat Art’s as well. And the Sister brings me a Mirror from the staff room.’

  ‘What about clothes? Do you need some spare things? Or pyjamas?’

  Ten minutes later, Eugenie was running down the road to Marks and Spencer. She bought Mr Carter pyjamas, a blue and white checked shirt and some warm socks. She suspected he needed underpants as well, but had been too shy to ask.

  In Boots she found some disposable razors, a packet of Baby Wipes and a roll of soft, blue toilet paper, having noticed that the Middlesex hospital only supplied the shiny Izal variety that was hard on your bum. And finally, Eugenie stopped at a bakery and bought Art’s father a big bag of sticky Chelsea Buns.

  That night, Eugenie watched Revel staring at her from the television screen. He was wearing his spotted bow-tie to appear in an advert, paid for by Tony.

  ‘When I launched Stet magazine, I was determined to present the thinking public with a serious political and literary magazine. If you’d told me then that I’d be responsible for editing a sensational Shock Issue, I’d never have believed you. But it’s happened. The one and only Shock Issue of Stet hits the streets tomorrow, with a special report by Evie Dare.’

  Revel repeated, ‘Stet. Shock Issue. Tomorrow.’

  The dramatic effect was, Eugenie considered, slightly marred by the next advert being for Park Drive fags.

  As Revel had predicted, Stet sold out on Tuesday. Revel told the printer to reprint. The printer refused. Revel fired the printer. They arranged to meet that evening for a drink at a pub called, appropriately, the Cock and Bull.

  Revel came back jubilant from his lunch at El Vino’s.

  ‘They’re all fucking furious. Grilling away at Tony and me. How did you get all this, Revel? Contacts, dear boy, I said.’

  Tony grinned, and the pack rounded on him. ‘What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in the Caribbean.’

  Tony said pompously, ‘Naturally, with a story as big as this about to break, I hastened back to support my editor.’

  ‘Oh, shove it up your arse, Tony.’

  ‘Main thing is,’ Revel told Eugenie, ‘we’ve kept Araminta right out of it. Tony’s really desperate about that.’

  But on Christmas Day, to Eugenie’s amazement, Lady Barbara Charles was filmed arriving at the Middlesex hospital, her arms laden with presents in Harrods wrapping, clearly labelled, To Art with love.

  Eugenie rang that evening. ‘You’ve blown it! What the hell for?’

  ‘It was Minty,’ Babs said. ‘I kept the papers away from her, but then her brother showed her Stet and all the others. She was so upset, kept on and on that she must see Art. She’d never forgive herself. So we set up a diversion to let the cameras focus on me while she slipped in the back door.’

  Ah, the invaluable back door. Eugenie had heard that the one at El Vino’s was practically wrenched off it’s hinges by people fleeing from maudlin drunks.

  ‘Where is Minty now?’

  ‘Still at the hospital. They’ve togged her up as a nurse.’ Babs giggled. ‘Looks quite fetching, actually. Not allowed to do any real nursing, of course, so she’s mending the paper-chains in the wards. She brought Art in a little reindeer wearing a little red bobble hat on its antlers.’ She went on, ‘I do wish you’d have come round to us for Christmas. I don’t like to think of you on your own.’

  ‘I’m perfectly all right, Babs, thanks.’ Andrew had gone home, to Galway. His brothers and their wives had planned a three-day celebration.

  Christmas Day was a Monday. It drizzled. Eugenie went for a walk by the Embankment. Then she came home and sang along to Slade, and their number one hit, Merry Christmas Everybody.

  The Middlesex hospital brought in a top security firm, headed by a tough Glaswegian, to keep the Press out. Suddenly, the nation, and therefore the Press, couldn’t get enough of Arthur Norman Carter, the hero who was Art to his friends. Frieda helpfully supplied the Press with snaps of Art. Quite a few contained another boy, but Picture Editors cut him off, as he was obviously of no importance.

  Frieda, platinum blonde curls tumbling down to her jutting breasts, was seen on the television News arriving at the hospital with a small, frightened-looking woman who Eugenie took to be her mother-in-law, Mrs Plantagenet. Mrs P.

  Stupples Road was sticking together.

  But as soon as the journalists had seen Babs, they were on the case. Sir Anthony and Lady Barbara Charles, no less! And didn’t they have a daughter with a lah-di-dah name? Araminta. That was it. Araminta Charles. So the game of Find the Lady was over. She’d been Art’s damse
l in distress. Why else would Babs Charles be visiting Art at the Middlesex, and laden with Christmas presents?

  When the scrum descended on the Charles’s Belgravia residence, they found Shelagh (primed by Eugenie) on the doorstep. A golden vision. Her hair was the colour of butter, her cheeks, her eyelids, her smiling mouth were all gold. She was wearing jeans and gold sandals and carried two pots of paint.

  ‘Hello Press boys,’ she purred, conveniently ignoring the fact that half the ‘boys’ were women. ‘I’m the decorator. My name is Shelagh Lynton-Browne. I’ll spell it, shall I?’

  Eugenie, watching the TV with Andrew who had just returned from Galway, laughed out loud. ‘When I was at school with her, she was plain Sheila Brown.’

  ‘No, I’m afraid I have no idea where the family have gone,’ Shelagh was telling the reporters. ‘Of course, they have a yacht…’

  The reporters heaved a collective sigh, aware that tracking down anyone on a yacht, at sea, was practically impossible. Unless, of course, the owner actually wanted to be found. This enabled the owner to act outraged at pics of topless beauties spread-eagled on the sundeck.

  But in chilly Belgravia, the reporters had one more mission. They needed to get inside the house, to try and snatch a photo of Araminta from the mantlepiece.

  ‘Probably the piano,’ they argued sagely. ‘Bound to be a piano, a grand, and the mantlepiece will just have a couple of candlesticks. We’re not talking about your suburban front room, old fruit.’

  Already, they’d contacted Benenden, where Princess Anne had gone to school, St Mary’s, Ascot, and Roedean where Eugenie had played cricket. What they really wanted was a pic of Minty dressed for sport, in short shorts. In London, they tried St. Paul’s, but Araminta Charles was known to none of them. What they all forgot was Godolphin and Latymer, which Minty had attended for seven years. But because this school was known for its academic achievements, not sport, the tabloids wouldn’t have got the picture they craved.

  As Shelagh rang the Charles’s bell, one of the reporters surged to stand beside her. She affected to be jostled. The lid flew off one of her paint tins, smothering the reporter in Butterscotch Gloss.