Suckers

by Anne Billson

  I'd met Ruth's grandfather once. He had struck me as a senile old codger, but before the war, apparently, he had been something of a mover and shaker in artistic circles. Then the Brownshirts had come along and put a stop to his career by smashing his Stradivarius and most of the bones in his right hand. Friends and colleagues had urged him to leave Germany, and so he had, but he had not gone far enough. He had survived, but only just; his wife, parents, sister, and three out of four of his children had not been so fortunate.

  I didn't like the turn our conversation was taking. 'What do you mean, highly strung?'

  Ruth continued to play with her hair. 'You know what I mean. You always know a lot more than you let on, Dora. People are changing.'

  'Like who?'

  'Like Lulu. When I saw her the other night, she acted like she hardly knew me. It was like she was a different person.'

  'Maybe she'd had her nose done.'

  This was a low blow, and Ruth ignored it. 'She was sort of... blank.'

  I relaxed. 'Well, that's nothing new. Lulu's always been a bit of a bungalow, in case you hadn't noticed. Not an awful lot upstairs there.'

  'No, it wasn't like that at all,' Ruth said. I realized she was blinking back tears, and for a horrible moment I thought she was going to cry on my shoulder. Ruth snivelling all over me was the last thing I needed. But she shook it off and got a grip on herself. 'Some of the people here tonight are good friends, people I've known for years, but they're different, too. Like they're all caught up in something exciting, and they're not telling me about it.'

  'Invasion of the Body Snatchers,' I cackled. 'It's the Pod People!'

  Ruth suddenly looked very cunning. It was the expression she wore whenever she was about to get someone else to pay for the cab they'd been sharing. 'I think you know more than you're letting on again. I think maybe it's not entirely unconnected with what happened to you and Duncan when we were at college.' She looked meaningfully at my little finger. 'You never did tell me how you lost that.'

  'Yes I did,' I sighed. Ruth had tried this ploy on a number of occasions. Normally I didn't rise to it, but now I was getting impatient. 'I told you, I was chopping paper.'

  'Ha!' Ruth exclaimed. 'That wasn't what you said at all. You told me you'd shut it in a car door. And you told Jack you'd caught it in the spokes of someone's motorbike. You told someone else it was an accident with a blender, and only last year you were telling Maureen it was a genetic defect common to descendants of an ancient Cornish tribe. You've got a different story for every occasion, haven't you, Dora?'

  I didn't much care for the idea of them all comparing notes behind my back. 'Ruth,' I said, 'have you any idea how boring it is to get asked the same bloody question over and over again? Oooh, what happened to your little finger? It drives me nuts.'

  'I know it does. That's why I stopped asking about it. But I'm asking you now - what really happened?'

  'You wouldn't believe me if I told you.'

  'Try me. It was Duncan, wasn't it? What did he do to you?'

  She'd missed the target completely.

  'I know you both changed,' she persisted. 'Something happened, something really big. Duncan went to pieces, he just dropped out. And you... you went all religious.' She paused and stared at me. 'Like now. You've gone religious again, haven't you? I really like your earrings, Dora. And what about all that junk around your neck?'

  I looked down and saw I'd been threading a rosary between my fingers, winding it round and round, like a set of worry beads. 'This is a fashion statement,' I said. 'I'm going through one of my neo-Gothic phases.'

  'Like hell you are.'

  I took a deep breath. 'All right, I admit it. Duncan and I had an affair.'.

  'Oh, we all know that,' cried Ruth. 'Tell me something I don't already know.' She slid the window open, threw what was left of her cigarette into the street, and then, without asking, helped herself to another.

  'Let me tell you about my grandfather,' she said, settling down again with a Once upon a time sort of voice. 'He used to be a ladies' man, he used to be very romantic. I've seen photos, he was quite good looking. And during the twenties, he fell in love with this movie actress (this was silent movies, of course). She was never very nice to him, in fact I think she was rather a bitch, but he was nuts about her, and later on, after the war, when he was on his own, he hired some detectives to track her down. He thought maybe she'd gone to America and changed her name. I think perhaps he was hoping they would get married or something, that she would finally recognize him as her soulmate and fall into his arms. Anyway, he paid for all these investigators, and do you know what they found out?'

  'I have no idea.' I tried to suppress a yawn. This was turning into a mini-series.

  'Nothing!' exclaimed Ruth. 'He stopped looking for her. I think he'd resigned himself to never seeing her again, he thought she was dead, but then one day - completely by accident - he ran into her. In Paris.'

  'Well!' I said, glancing at my watch and wondering when-she was going to get to the point. I wanted to go back downstairs and check on Duncan. 'It's a small world.'

  'But, the funny thing was,' said Ruth, 'it couldn't have been the same woman, because she looked exactly the same, even after all those years. Or perhaps it was her daughter or something, because when Grandpa introduced himself, she froze him out. Said she'd never heard of him.'

  'So he made a mistake.'

  Ruth shook her head. 'Grandpa didn't think so. He thought it was the same woman.'

  'Yes, but that was... what? Twenty-five, thirty years later? He's an old man. The war messed up his head.'

  I wondered where all this was leading. Then Ruth said something which made me sit up and pay attention. 'The thing is,' she said, 'he had film of her.'

  'He did?'

  'He was besotted. Just one reel - he stole it from the studio. And after the war, he tried tracking down the rest, but it was all lost or destroyed.'

  'So what was the movie?' I asked, trying not to sound too interested.

  'Oh, nothing famous. It wasn't even finished - she had an argument with the director. The same guy who did Pandora's Box - have you heard of that?'

  I said yes, I'd heard of Pandora's Box. Quite a lot of people had.

  'Well,' she said, 'he wanted her for the main role in that too, but she was still mad at him, so he hired that American actress instead, the one with the hair. Anyway, the reel Grandpa stole was from this film called Rotnacht.'

  'Rotnacht,' I repeated, trying to stop my face from taking on a lean and hungry look.

  Ruth was observing me closely. 'Heard of it?'

  'Never.'

  'Neither had Charlie. If there was anything to know, he'd be the one to know it. Anyway, Grandpa said this lookalike was hanging around in Paris with an American woman.' She looked at me as though I ought to know what she was talking about. I shrugged and shook my head.

  'She was blonde,' she said, still looking at me in that strange way. 'And very beautiful. Her name was Marguerite.'

  I shrugged again. 'I've no idea. You tell me.'

  'I'm talking about Duncan's mother.'

  This was not what I'd been expecting. 'You're kidding.'

  'Marguerite Pearson Fender. That was her name. I've still got the cuttings somewhere.'

  'What the hell is this? You've kept a file? On Duncan?'

  'No, but he keeps cropping up in all these other dossiers. Or his parents do. Grandpa collects things. Some of it on suspected war criminals. Other stuff on... this woman.'

  'I see. Your grandfather is really Simon Wiesenthal. And this woman is Martin Bormann in drag.'

  'No, of course not,' Ruth said crossly.

  'Anyway, I thought Duncan's father was a painter.'

  Ruth squinted at me. 'Don't pretend you don't know.'

  'I don't know,' I protested. 'This is all news to me, and I'm not sure what you're getting at. What about this film - does your grandfather still have it?'

  Ruth said no, he did
n't have it any more. 'It disintegrated. The pieces turned to dust.'

  'God, I'd have given anything to see it.' The words slipped out - I hadn't intended to sound quite so bursting with curiosity.

  'You do know something, don't you? Come on, Dora, tell me what happened with you and Duncan.'

  'Nothing happened. Except we bust up.'

  'It was this woman again, wasn't it? This Clara Weill? Grandpa used to call her Veilchen. And he used to tell me stories, like this one by Gogol, called The Viy, and he said Gogol had known her too and had written this story about her. It used to scare the shit out of me. Do you know what I'm talking about?'

  'No,' I lied. The story was in my Roger Vadim's Book of Bloodsuckers. 'The Russians were never on my reading list. What's it got to do with anything?'

  'You never met Duncan's parents, did you? No one did. They died when he was little. Tell me, how much do you actually know about Duncan?'

  This was ridiculous. 'I know a damn sight more about him than you do,' I said, feeling a sudden surge of anxiety. I wanted to get back downstairs so I could pick up Duncan and take him as far away from that house as possible. 'I've had enough of this,' I said, getting to my feet.

  'Wait, don't go,' she said, but I turned my back on her and stomped downstairs.

  The room was so packed that it seemed to have a living, breathing life of its own, everyone except me part of a homogenous whole which was throbbing along to its own irresistible rhythm. All the non-smokers had suddenly produced packets of cigarettes, and the air was thick with fog and loud voices. Whenever I tried to move one way, the tightly packed mob would propel me in the opposite direction, until I grew dizzy with frustration. I searched in vain for Jack or Charlie or another familiar face, and eventually I spotted Duncan. He had scarcely moved since we'd last spoken, except that Francine had disappeared and been replaced by another woman. Duncan was squinting at her, as if that were the only way he could see one girl instead of two.

  I began to elbow my way towards him, and the tide changed and I suddenly found myself pressed up too close and unable to step back. 'Hey,' I said in his ear, 'I think we should go home now.'

  The woman twisted round to look at me and smiled. 'Don't go,' she said. 'Things are just warming up.'

  'It's too hot for me already,' I said. 'Duncan?'

  'I'm waiting for Lulu,' he said bullishly.

  'Lulu's not coming,' I said. 'Ruth was telling porky pies.'

  He looked outraged. The woman wrinkled her nose as if I smelled bad, and said to Duncan, 'You should stay, you know. We'll have a really good time later on.'

  'He's got a headache,' I said, grabbing his arm. For a moment, the woman looked as if she were going to step between us and sink her teeth into me, but I waggled my crucifix at her and she didn't flinch. So she wasn't a vampire. At least, not yet.

  'Who do you think you are?' she sneered. 'The Pope?'

  'We can't go home,' wailed Duncan.

  'Yes we can,' I said. 'I don't think we should stay another minute. Honestly, I really think we should go.' I had an irresistible urge to get him as far away as possible from Ruth. He was too far gone to raise any further objections as I led him in the direction of the front door. Someone whispered, 'Shall we dance?' and two or three people tried to detain us and start tedious drunken conversations. I managed to squirm free, but Duncan kept stopping to chat, and needed constant prodding and pulling. I looked around one last time for Jack, hoping he might offer us a lift to W11, but neither he nor Roxy were anywhere to be seen.

  At the very last minute, Ruth materialized out of nowhere and stood guardian-like in front of the door. 'You're leaving?'

  'Looks like it.'

  She tried stalling us. 'Have you seen Charlie?'

  'He was messing around with the tapes.'

  'Not any more,' she said. 'He's gone.'

  Duncan snapped out of his daze. 'You told me Lulu would be here.'

  'She said she would come,' Ruth said. 'It's not my fault she hasn't turned up.' She checked her watch, and I thought she was going to say it was early days yet, there was still plenty of time for Lulu to arrive. But she didn't.

  'Charlie must be somewhere around,' I said. 'Look, Ruthie, we have to rush. I'll call you.'

  'Please, Dora. Call me tomorrow. There are things we've got to talk about.'

  'Yeah, yeah,' I said. 'Bye now.' I yanked the door open and booted Duncan out into the night.

  'OK,' she said, seeming to shrink back into the room. The party noises swelled, and then the door closed and the sound was instantly reduced to a muffled wassail.

  We walked down the road, our breath turning to vapour in the cold night air. Duncan was concentrating hard on placing one foot in front of the other. The roads were busy, but this part of the world was strangely empty of pedestrians, not like Notting Hill at all, though we heard what sounded like the distant howling of teenage jerks on the rampage, animal noises echoing through the underpass. As we trudged down the Archway Road, the wind at our backs, there was a sudden screech of tyres, followed by a loud metallic crunch on the road behind us, but we didn't stop. We kept on going till we spotted a cab.

  Chapter 5

  Duncan annoyed me by babbling about Lulu all the way home. Why hadn't she turned up? Hadn't Ruth said she'd be there? Why hadn't she phoned? Everyone liked the ads on TV, but wasn't Multiglom exploiting her, driving her too hard? He was worried, really he was. No one had seen or heard of her for days. 'Ruth saw her in Gnashers,' I reminded him, and then I told a tiny lie. 'Ruth says she was fine.'

  Duncan sat bolt upright. 'Gnashers? Hey, let's go there right this minute.' He leaned forward to speak to the cab driver, but I pulled him back. 'No,' I said firmly. 'You've had quite enough wild socializing for one night.'

  'But what if she's there?'

  'She won't be. Not now. Models have to take care of their skin, otherwise they start looking ropy. No late nights, no boozing, no drugs. Lulu's too old to get away with anything like that.'

  'But she's only twenty-five. Only a baby.'

  'Old for a model,' I said. 'Your place or mine?'

  We went, as usual, to his place, which had soundproof walls and floors. That way I avoided the Krankzeits and got something approaching a good night's sleep, give or take a drunken groping session.

  I sensed there was something missing as soon as I walked in. Duncan went to the bathroom while I prowled around, trying to figure out what it was. And then it hit me. Or rather, it didn't hit me like it should have done. 'What have you done with the garlic?' I asked him when he came back.

  'Ooh, I chucked it away,' he said innocently. 'It was stinking the whole place out.'

  'No, it wasn't. And that was your protection. I put it there specially. You can't just throw it out.'

  'There's some in the kitchen.'

  I stared at him in disbelief. 'You threw it out because you thought Lulu would be coming back with you tonight, didn't you? And you didn't want her thinking you'd lost your marbles.'

  'Maybe.' He shrugged and got out the half-full bottle of VSOP and poured himself a large measure. He didn't ask if I wanted one, so I went over to pour my own.

  'You're a fool,' I said. 'I bet you're not even carrying the crucifix I gave you.'

  'So?'

  'What happens if you run into Violet or one of her chums? What then? You'll be dog meat, for Godsake.'

  'Now who's the paranoid one?' he taunted. 'I thought the bloody vampires were supposed to be confined to Multiglom.'

  'That's only the headquarters.' The crucifix earrings were heavy; I took them off and massaged my aching lobes. This thing is getting out of hand. It's getting big.'

  'What are you talking about?'

  'Only that she's building a fucking empire. Bellini's just the beginning. What we're talking about here is a multinational corporation with fingers in hundreds of different pies: publishing, drug companies, breweries, God knows what else. She's running industries.'

  He looked at me scep
tically. 'She couldn't do that. Not Violet. Not on her own.'

  Fragments of all those conversations I'd had with Grauman thirteen years ago reared up on their hind legs to taunt me. 'But that's just it. She's not on her own. We're not talking Bram Stoker any more, we're talking Vampire City.' I was aching with exhaustion, but I didn't want to go to sleep because everything was suddenly falling into place. It was so obvious, I couldn't understand why I hadn't seen it before. The Multiglom floor guide with its list of names: Micromart, Pharmatex, Deforest... Satellite broadcasting, architects, design groups. I wondered whether there were also banks, lawyers, estate agents...

  'What would she want with a brewery?' asked Duncan. 'She never drank beer.' He saw I was shivering. 'Are you cold? Want the fire on?'

  'I'm OK,' I said, then I decided I wasn't OK after all. I was covered with goose pimples and my teeth were chattering. Duncan put his drink down and took one of my hands between both of his, rubbing it briskly to get the circulation going. 'You're like ice. Do you want to borrow a jumper? No, tell you what, why don't you have a long hot bath? Then afterwards I'll make some cocoa.'

  'I'll have a bath if you'll have a bath with me.'

  The suggestion amused him. 'And we have to talk about Multiglom in the morning,' I said.

  'Yes, yes,' he said, and went into the bathroom to start the hot water. I went into the bedroom to get undressed. I put on Lulu's pink towelling bathrobe and wiped my makeup off with some of her cleansing lotion.

  'You look better without make-up,' Duncan said as I went back into the living room. Men always said that; they liked the natural look, though they didn't seem to care if it was achieved by unnatural means. I leaned over to kiss the back of his neck. 'Your lips are chilly,' he said. 'Come round here.' He sat me down on his lap and slipped his hands beneath the bathrobe to massage my skin. I was starting to feel deliriously warm and cosy when the entryphone made a noise like a sick sheep.

  'Bugger,' he said.

  'Don't answer.'

  'Have to,' he said, tipping me off his lap. He went out into the hallway and said something into the intercom.