Ambition (20 page)

‘Really?’ She looked at him very coldly for a long time. She heard more and more of this New Man-ifesto these days, and she liked it less on each hearing. It was called moving the
goalposts in any language, and it stank of personal grudge and moral duplicity. She smiled, sugar and strychnine, and said softly, ‘Well, you lot shouldn’t have made it look like such
fun, should you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean I didn’t see men running home in droves from offices at lunchtime and banging on the doors of their houses shouting to their wives that they’d seen the light and from
now on wanted to express their spirituality through the creative medium of dusting. No, they were out having five-martini lunches and shagging their secretaries. You lot loved the marketplace just
fine until we got interested too – then you throw up your lilywhite hands and tell us how dreadful it is. Too late, buster! This fucking concern is just
another way of telling women what
to do
. Well, don’t worry about us. Yes some of us will get ulcers, and some of us will crack up, and some of us will screw up our domestic situations, and some of us will end up at forty
with a cat and cook-in-the-bag cod in parsley sauce dinner for one and wonder if it was worth it. But more women will be happy, and more women will be fulfilled than ever before in the history of
frigging personkind! Because IT WAS OUR CHOICE! We had the freedom to choose not to swallow the shit you offered to choose us tied up with a Valentine’s heart. You think women were happy
before? Contented with their lot? Isn’t it funny, then, that for the first time in recorded history, the incidence of mental illness and suicide amongst men has overtaken that of women? All
those happy housewives, why were they cracking up left, right and centre? Who’s stuffing Valium? Not me – some Godforsaken housewife, that’s who! And you see them! So don’t
stand there preaching at me that having a career may be damaging to your health!’

‘Have you quite finished?’

‘Almost. Try this. Try saying
blacks
instead of
women
. Try telling blacks they shouldn’t go after material success because, oh, I’ve been there and it’s
all empty and meaningless! You see how phoney that sounds? It’s called
keeping the niggers down
. And you’re not doing that to me, or to any other woman!’ She finished at
a yell. He looked at her, amazed. ‘So there,’ she said weakly. She wasn’t in the habit of revealing this much of herself to Matthew. She felt almost naked. It was definitely the
most she’d said to him in a good three years.

He looked at her, amazed. ‘I didn’t realize you felt so strongly about feminism, Susan.’

‘You don’t realize how I feel about anything.’ Tears of self-pity caressed her kohl. ‘No one does.’

‘You’re never here for more than fifteen minutes in a row. What am I supposed to do? Buy his and hers cellphones and talk about our relationship on our way to work and
squash?’

‘That would be better than
this
.’

He threw open the fridge. ‘Look, Susan. Look at this. This is emblematic of our whole relationship. Tell me what you see.’

She stood up and peered. ‘I see two lemons, a bottle of Chablis and some penicillin.’

‘That penicillin is houmous, Susan. Bought two weeks ago at M&S. It’s the only food we’ve had in the house for the duration. The rest has been tandoori takeaways for me and
expense account for you. It’s got to stop, Susan.’

‘But why, Matthew? Why is a relationship based on how many hours one or another of the parties spends slaving over a hot stove? You’re not just being emblematic here. You’re
being fucking medieval, boy.’

‘Susan, Susan.’ He sank to his knees on the other side of the table. I don’t want a housewife. I want
you
. Can’t you be a career girl
and
my
Susan?’

‘No, baby, no. I can’t be your Susan. I can’t be anyone’s Susan any more, not even my own. I’m Susan Street, and I belong to no one and everyone.’ She thought
about what she’d said; it was probably meaningless, but it sounded good. Sort of like late-period Marilyn Monroe. She shook herself. ‘Why don’t you go and put some Jellybean
on?’

She heard him in the next room, mumbling and fumbling with the sound system. Eventually Adele Bertei’s achingly beautiful voice slunk into the room and wrapped itself around her like a
cat’s cradle made of silk.

She heard Matthew moaning as the sublime dance track faded. If it wasn’t white, male and answered to the name of Knopfler, he wasn’t interested. How could she possibly be expected to
perform sexual acts with a man who liked Dire Straits? It was perverted and unnatural.

At the back of her Dayrunner, she found a bridge scorecard. Could she . . . ? No, he’d never pry. He might be a doctor but he had ethics, poor bastard.

She wrote TASKS at the top and 1 2 3 4 5 6 down the side. Then she wrote:

1. KING’S CROSS. Tattoo.

2. RIO. Three girls, three boys.

3. SUN CITY. Two men.

Three down, three to go – not bad for a girl from Nowhere-on-Sea who was neither nowhere or at sea where many better born or bred girls would have been carted off to the funny farm by now.
Break her, would he? She laughed out loud.

Matthew came back into the kitchen and stared at her like Gary Cooper in
High Noon
.

‘Would you kill Katharine Hamnett?’ she asked him conversationally, scanning her Hs.

‘Would I what?’

‘Kill Katharine Hamnett. Is she a dead number, do you think? You know – Stay Alive In 85. On The Breadline In 89? Over And Done In 91?’ She giggled. ‘A dead insert, or
what?’

He shook his head wonderingly. ‘Susan, all day I am faced with people who may die if I don’t make the right decision. Your toughest decision today has been whether or not to tear a
name from your Filofax. Is it any wonder we can’t talk any more?’

‘So what do you want me to be?’ she sneered. ‘A
nurse
? So you can overwork and underpay me and condescend to me when in actual fact I’m carrying twice as much
responsibility as you? You’ve read one too many hospital romances, Matthew.’ She laid down her pen. ‘Let’s stop talking in Want Ads. You’re not annoyed because I do a
more flighty job than you. You’re annoyed because I earn more than you.’ She began to count down silently: five, four, three, two—

‘That’s it!’ Matthew screeched, banging his fist on the table and running for the door. ‘I’ve had it! You ALWAYS say that! This time I’ve had it!’ The
door slammed, and he flashed in a blur of blue tracksuit past the window. She laughed, and started on the Js.

Susan sat at a window table within the cool monochrome depths of Le Caprice and watched with fascinated horror as Caroline Malaise pushed and pulled at her heart-shaped steak
tartare.

‘Look at that,’ she said. ‘Toby sent me one on my twenty-first. With a man from Securicor. It was Valentine’s Day . . .’

‘Yes?’ Susan had never had a happy relationship with meat and, with this one act, she was to remain a vegetarian for the rest of her life.

‘Yes. He said, “It’s all meat, Caroline.” And I do see his point. Your heart
is
a piece of meat, isn’t it? Wouldn’t you rather someone was straight
with you rather than try and kid you your heart was made of Belgian chocolate?’

‘Actually, I think I’m going to have to be boring and go for the Belgian chocolate. How’s Candida?’

‘Not doing too well, poor thing.’ Caroline spoke about her sister as though she was a herbaceous border. ‘Toby’s record company majordomo has decided they’re a
novelty act, and a bad one, and he’s put them on “ice”, I believe is the term. It means he won’t release their records but neither can anyone else. If you want my honest
actual, they were silly to let Gary go.
Obviously
Toby’s going to get the best deal for himself, isn’t he? But I do think it’s rather mean. Candida’s only a sprog.
She’s
spitting
blood, apparently. Do
anything
to get back at him.’ She picked an orchid from the table and began to tear it with the precision of a shredder and the
passion of a psychopath. ‘Susie, who’s Joey Moorsom?’

‘He’s an MP. Labour. Why?’ She was only marginally less surprised than if Caroline had asked her who the president of North Yemen was.

‘Toby’s not very fond of him, is he? Why?’

‘He doesn’t think Tobias should be allowed to buy into media here. What with Sun City and all.’

‘Well.’ The steak tartare and Caroline’s fork were doing a very good impression of a fast day at Pamplona. ‘I do see his point. Don’t you?’ She sighed.
‘An American just bought my pa’s place in Somerset. These fantastic old people we’ve looked after for years in the cottages . . . out they go. He’s building what they call a
theme
park.’ Caroline looked up and her eyes were full of tears, or Badoit, or the Napa Valley Chardonnay they’d drunk with their sorrel soup. ‘Out goes Nanna, and in
comes a killer shark. Toby says I’m being silly. What d’you think, Susie?’

‘That certainly sounds like the American way.’

‘Toby said it’s called progress. Progress! That sounds like the name of a stream engine . . . ! What time is it, Susie?’

‘Quarter to two.’

‘Oh.’ Caroline brightened. ‘My medicine. I’ll just be a minute.’

Like an optical illusion by
Vogue
, the slender blonde in the brown wool was replaced by a tarantula in tulle, its dark red hair cut in an ear-length power bob, its green eyes glinting
with gossip and greed.

‘Hello, Ingrid,’ said Susan resignedly.

‘Hello darling. Having a Hers lunch?’

‘Looks like it, doesn’t it?’

‘It most certainly does. I also have sightings of you with Susie Douglas at the Kremlin, Lynne Franks at the Western World and that awful little bleached blonde clit-licker at the Groucho.
What have they got, darling, that I don’t?’

Apart from brains, looks and talent? Not a lot. She shrugged. ‘Oh, Ingrid . . . all business.’

‘Funny business, if I know that little clit-tickler.’ Ingrid leaned ravenously across the table. ‘Who’s the blonde? Not Caroline Malaise?’

‘Yes.’ She saw Caroline come up behind Ingrid to her table.

‘Really! How d’you know her?’

‘I’m Toby’s London girl,’ said Caroline, smiling down at Ingrid as if she was a long-lost, much-loved Nanna. Obviously her medicine had hit the spot. ‘Well, I was
until he met Susie. He wants us to be
friends
, I think.’ She giggled. ‘I think it’s called the Pasha Syndrome. All the world’s a harem.’

Susan looked down at her plate in mute horror.

‘Can you join us?’ Caroline was saying to Ingrid. ‘Sorry, I don’t know your name. But you have beautiful hair.’ She traced the line of Ingrid’s bob to her
cheek and giggled. ‘Do you remember what colour it said on the packet?’ The narcotics were having a disastrous effect on her inhibitions which, to judge by the eagerness with which she
had shed her clothes for the moving camera during her brief career, had been subterranean to start with.

‘I’d love to.’ Ingrid grabbed a chair in a split-second and sat there between them, grinning triumphantly from one to another. Yes, the bush telegraph of the media was going to
have a pretty busy afternoon once Ingrid got back to the
Commentator
office. ‘But I can only stay two ticks. I’m with a fascinating man.’ She giggled. ‘I think you
know him, Sue. Well, he knows
you
.’

‘Oh, who’s that?’

‘Over there at the corner table.’ Ingrid turned back to Caroline and started talking to her about polo. Who was she kidding? Caroline was such a very urban Sloane that the only polo
she knew about was a mint with a hole in it.

Susan looked across the room. The man was about forty, sipping red wine and smiling at her. He was handsome, if you liked small, greasy Latinos with skin that made the Rocky Mountains look like
chiffon velvet and teeth like fluorescent strip lighting. As he held her eyes, he raised his right hand and, still smiling, drew his forefinger across his throat.

It was Constantine Lejeune.

‘Let me get this straight.’ Zero bounced excitedly on a banquette at the Vendome. ‘Pope’s got Joe Moorsom,
and
Gary Pride,
and
Caroline Malaise and her sister and her band,
and
Washington Brown on his case, all wanting him looking like twelve tins of cat food. And you’ve got Constantine Lejeune on yours
who’s now teamed up with that superannuated debutwat Irving. And now your old pal Moorsom’s sore at you, and so are Bryan and the boss because you couldn’t get round Moorsom for
them. And to complicate matters, you’re in
lurrrve
with the kosher sausage, who won’t play ball because he’s got this girl in New York who makes Mother Theresa look like
La Cicciolina.’ She shook her head sympathetically, but couldn’t control a smile like a bacon slicer. ‘What a fucking old mess you’ve got yourself into, bach.’

‘I need a Negroni.’ Susan looked around for a waitress.

‘I need a Negress.’ Zero giggled.

Susan hadn’t seen her so happy in weeks. ‘Thanks for the sympathy, Zere.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Well, what can I do?’

‘For a start, quit hanging out with heteros. They’re nothing but trouble. For now – forget the fuck and the faggot, they’ll keep. Lejeune’s your big problem. Do you
have any more stuff you can counter him with?’

‘No, we used everything Serena gave us. The sex
and
the stock market.’

‘What exactly are you frightened he’ll do?’

‘Something much bigger and nastier than alarms and computers going bleep in the night. Psychic things.’

Zero made a noise.

‘I
saw
it, Zere, you didn’t. He can
do
those things.’

‘Bollocks.’

Susan hesitated. ‘But it’s something else. I’m afraid he’ll cook something up with Ingrid.’

‘Come
on
. “Girl Wonder In Sex Slave Seven In A Bed Romp With Pope”. It’s a great headline, but it’s hardly the
Commentator’
s cup of Earl
Grey.’ Zero sniggered. ‘They’re not the
Best
, you know.’