Eating Crow (9 page)

“But you need a plot to start with and before you came along I’d never had one. I’d sat for years listening to boys talking themselves up and all the time wanting to know what was true and what was false. I wanted the vital intelligence. You gave it to me. You made me a man and I went and behaved like one.”

I swallowed hard. Looking at Jennie’s face now, I suddenly had a memory of her standing in the gloom of that basement coffee bar, those books clutched hard to her chest for protection. I blinked and felt a tear begin to roll down the side of my nose. The moment was so intensely real. So true.

I went on. “None of that is an excuse, though. It’s just”—I sniffed as another tear rolled down to join the first—“my feeble attempt to explain to you what happened that morning. I will never excuse myself. You were right to be upset. You had every right to be furious.” I took one more gulp of air. “I’m sorry, Jennie. I’m so terribly, terribly sorry. For everything.”

There was silence. Eventually she said, quietly, “Have you finished?”

I nodded and mouthed a “Yes.”

She clapped her hands together and the spell was broken. “Marvelous. Bloody well done. Excellent. Really very excellent.” She jumped up and stopped the camera. “Would you like a tissue? Glass of water? Anything?”

“Well, a glass of—”

“Be a dear and fetch it yourself while I sort this out. Shelf above the sink over there.” She pulled out the minidisk and scrawled something upon its label in felt tip.

“Oh, and Marc,” she called across the room, “could I have a phone number for you? Mobile? Pager? Anything?”

I gave her my mobile number and she wrote that on the label too. She led me to the apartment door and said, “Listen, I’ve got a couple of calls to make and so forth, but you can find your way out, can’t you? Yes, of course you can.” She clasped my hands in hers. “Look, Marc, thank you for coming. It was great. Really. I do appreciate it. And you know, I’ll call you, very very soon. Okay? Yes? Great.”

And suddenly I was standing outside on the street again, trying to work out exactly what had happened.

T
hree days later I was invited to see Hunter in his office. He was leaning against the edge of his desk, legs outstretched, heels dug into the carpet to brace himself, as if this were the only way for a man of natural authority to hold a meeting. He waved me to a chair in front of him and, in a single continuous movement, slapped the two sheets of paper that he was holding with the back of his free hand.

“Just reread your column.”

“Yes?”

“Marvelous stuff. It will set the agenda. Force a debate.”

“Thank you.”

“Get them talking about us.”

“Which is what we want.”

“Precisely.”

“Good. I’m pleased because it means a lot to me. Emphasizing the positive is an important move, I think.”

“Hmm.” Hunter shuffled the sheets of paper.

“We ought to encourage our other critics to go the same way. Why tell people something’s rubbish when there’s so much good stuff out there?”

“Yes. Of course. Up to a point.” He looked over my shoulder and out through the glass office walls behind me, surveying the newsroom for signs of inactivity.

“How do you mean, up to a point? Don’t you think we ought to stop being rude for rude’s sake? I thought you liked the column. You just said …”

He fixed me with a worryingly sudden smile. “I love the column. I adore the column. It will make a huge splash and you will be terribly famous. The thing is, we think there might be a way of getting two hits from it.”

“How so?”

“A touch of recidivism perhaps?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Here’s the great Marc Basset telling us about all the things he loves, and then, a few weeks hence, when you’re ready—no rush—you visit a restaurant that’s gut-rottingly awful. A gastric pit.”

“Then I can’t write about it.”

“No no. That’s the thing. You do. Suddenly, a flash of the old anger illuminates the page. You wanted to be positive, but the truth is, there’s too much awfulness to be ignored. It’s your duty to expose it… and so on.”

“Hang on. You’re making my head spin. You want to run this new column with the intention—the
intention
—that within a few weeks I should go back on my word and slag things off again?”

“That’s the way to force the agenda.”

“That’s the way to alienate the readers.”

“Marc, old chap, you’re a terrific writer. Bloody funny. All my girlfriends love you. But you need light and shade, rough and smooth. Too much of the same and you become bland.”

“I’ve just written a column announcing the death of negativity—”

“So we get a Second Coming. Hurrah!” He waved the papers above his head in mock celebration. “The readers want their critics to be critical. That’s what they expect.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t do it. I can’t lie to the readers.”

“No one’s asking you to lie.”

“I can’t mislead them. Once we publish this column I will be duty bound to stick to the spirit of it. If you insist that I do otherwise, I’ll just… I’ll just… I’ll just have to quit.”

“It’s a pity because you’ve done such a good job.” He stood up and walked around to sit behind his desk. He threw the sheets carelessly to one side like so many used tissues and studied his computer screen.

“I want to carry on doing a good job.”

“And you will, dear boy, you will. But perhaps for somebody else.”

Back at my desk I phoned Lynne on my mobile.

“I think I’ve just resigned.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, technically I think I can argue that Hunter sacked me. It was constructive dismissal.”

“It was that bloody column.”

“Don’t shout at me.”

“What did Hunter say, exactly?”

“He wants to run the column, but he wants me to go back on my word and start writing knocking copy again within a few weeks.” Off to one side there was a cheer from a group of my colleagues crowded around a computer terminal. I shoved a finger in my free ear to muffle the sound.

“And you refused?”

“Sorry. Say that again. It’s a bit noisy here.” I looked over at the huddle. A woman turned round. It was Sophie from the press office. The moment she saw me she tried to smother the broad grin on her face by biting her glossy bottom lip. I mouthed “What?” at her, but she shook her head and turned back to the group to whisper. They all turned to look at me. One or two appeared embarrassed to see me there, but others clearly thought it was the funniest thing that had happened all morning. I stood up and walked toward them, the mobile still pressed to my ear.

“I said, did you refuse to do what Hunter asked you to do? Marc? Are you listening to me?”

“Well, I…” One by one, as I approached, the crowd moved away from the computer, as if they had thought of something far better to do, until I had a clear view of the screen. A pixeled video was playing in a window: a man was talking directly to the camera, his face pink and blotchy. As I moved closer I could see streaks of tears running down his cheeks. The audio was too low for me to be able to make out the words, but I didn’t need to recognize the voice for I already recognized the face. The video was of me, apologizing to Jennie.

I said, “I’ll call you back,” and ended the call before Lynne could protest.

Sophie was the only one left standing by the desk. She looked sheepishly from the image on the screen and then back to me. “If you ask me, darling, it’s a lovely apology.”

I stared openmouthed at the image of myself peering into the camera. “How did it get onto—”

“Everybody’s got it,” she said quickly, as if this made it better. “Somebody down in marketing had it emailed to them and they emailed it up here and now …” I looked around the office, and as I turned, I sensed people ducking their heads down behind their terminals so as not to catch my eye. Somebody walked past and barked, “Great performance, Marc. Deserves an Oscar.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but he was already trudging away up the office. I pointed at the screen. “Everybody in the office has seen this?”

“Everybody in every office, by the sound of things. You’re turning into rather a cult figure, actually. Not that you weren’t one already.” Into my mind came the image often, a hundred, a thousand computer screens, all playing this self-pitying, tear-splattered video, this minor miracle of garish emotion and digital multimedia. How had it become an email? And now that it had been emailed, how many people in Britain had seen it? How many in America? How many in the world? I felt suddenly as if I were stalking myself from every humming computer terminal on this floor and the one below and the one above.

I leaned toward the computer and heard myself say, “I’m sorry, Jennie. I’m so terribly, terribly sorry. For everything.” The Marc Basset on the screen blinked a couple of times and then the image faded to black.

I phoned Lynne back.

“You haven’t seen anything of me on the Net, have you?”

“What?”

“Nobody’s emailed you anything?”

“Marc, talk to me. Did you refuse to do what Hunter told you to do?” She hadn’t seen it. Yet.

“I had to. It’s the principle of the thing. There’s no point me attacking people if—”

“Marc, do not use the
A
word.”

“—if I’m then only going to apologize to them.”

“Then stop bloody apologizing. Go back to Hunter’s office. Tell him he’s right. Tell him you want to file a different column. Get your job back. Get on with your life so we can get on with ours.”

“Is that all that matters to you? That I keep the money rolling in so we can keep having fun?”

“No. What matters to me is that you stop mucking about and get on with being the Marc Basset I know.”

“Or is it just that you don’t like the Marc Basset I’m becoming? Is that what it is? You want me to stay the way I was because you can deal with that.”

“Listen to yourself, Marc. Look at what’s happening to you. You’ve lost your job. You’re behaving as if you’ve lost your mind. And you know what, the way you’re going, you’re going to lose me too.”

“Hang on. There’s a call waiting.”

“What?”

“I won’t be a second.”

“Bloody hell, Marc, you can’t just expect me to …”

I put her on hold and clicked onto the other call. In less than a minute I was back.

I said, “Sorry about that.”

“Who was it?”

“Jennie Sampson.”

“What does she want?”

“She says she needs to see me urgently.”

“And you’re going?”

“Actually, there’s something important I have to talk to Jennie about too.”

“More important than your job?”

“Look, sweetheart, we’ll talk later tonight. Yes?”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Marc Basset. Who knows how long Jennie Sampson will want you for?”

She led me along great echoing corridors and deep into the building. As I trailed behind her I said, “Why did you do it, Jennie? Why did you do it?”

She shook her head and, without looking at me, said, “I didn’t. Honestly. You have to trust me on that.”

At a heavy wooden door she stopped, her hand on the handle. She leaned toward me conspiratorially so that the plastic pass which dangled about her neck swung out to meet me. Its brush felt curiously soft and intimate. She said, “Everybody here is terribly interested in you,” then she opened the door.

There were half a dozen people in the functional room. One was sitting at a stubby conference table with two others looking over his shoulder at a file which lay open in front of him, their own passes hanging loose over the first man’s shoulders. Another was messing about with a VCR that sat on a bulky cart with a large television mounted above it. In the far corner an older man, perhaps in his sixties, was standing by an open window exhaling smoke from a cigarette held close to the knuckle, so that he smothered his mouth with his long-fingered hand each time he took a drag. His winter gray hair was cropped neatly and the expensive weave of his expensive gray wool suit caught the light. Another, more disheveled man, who wore a whole garland of plastic cards about his neck, stood close by with his back to the window watching the room, although it was obvious the two had been talking while looking in opposite directions. As Jennie showed me in he pushed himself away from the wall in midsentence.

From behind me I heard Jennie say simply, “Stephen Forster, meet Marc Basset.”

“Mr. Basset, a pleasure, really, a pleasure. Come in, come in. Let me introduce you to …” He was looking back past me. “Or later, Jennie, do you think?”

“Recording first, perhaps?” she said.

“And then?”

“And then. Exactly.”

“Splendid. Yes. Come this way, Marc. Guest of honor up here, I was thinking.” He patted me on the shoulder as he led me to a seat by the window while he took the top of the table. From here I could see that a small digital camera had been connected to the video, the lens turned away from us. The others in the room took their places. Only the man at the window did not move. He gave me a considered half smile and then turned back to exhale over the rooftops, as if my arrival had interrupted a great thought. A fierce rush of blue-gray smoke slipped from his lips through the window. He put out his cigarette on the outside windowsill, flicked the stub across the rooftops, and then in an elegant movement that immediately made me feel clumsy, took his seat at the other end of the room. In the middle of the table, covered by a crisp white cloth, lay what looked like a tray.

Forster said, “Let’s get started. First we’ll have a look at Jennie’s tape again just to remind ourselves why we’re all here today.” Everybody muttered in the affirmative. “Joe, could you do the honors?” A younger man in jeans and loose tartan shirt at the far end of the table reached over to just below the television and pressed a button.

I recognized the camera a split second before I heard Jennie’s voice on the tape saying, “Can you see a little red light on the front, just below the lens?” And then there was my face, worryingly massive and greasy on the television screen, squinting into the lens. I gasped and Jennie grabbed my hand. “Don’t worry,” she whispered. “It’s all going to be okay.”

I could not see how any of this would ever be okay. Sure, I had done a bad thing all those years ago. I had betrayed Jennie’s trust. And perhaps she had recognized, in the intensity of my apology, some of the profound pleasure I had gained from my recorded confessional. But was it really fair to humiliate me like this? Did that justify setting up this “meeting” so she could grind me deep into the dust? I wasn’t sure which was worse: the video being emailed anonymously across the world or me being forced to sit here in this room where the ordeal was so intimate and enclosed.

Up on the screen, my face three feet wide, I was saying, “We don’t need to pretend, do we? I am, I hope, mature enough to be able to say it without embarrassment.” Everybody leaned toward the set, desperate not to miss a word. I remembered what was coming next. I closed my eyes and heard my recorded self say, “You took my virginity, which was a gracious and lovely thing to do …” Voices in the room muttered: “Oh, well done.” “Terrific, excellent.” “Spot-on.” I opened my eyes again and looked at them. If this really was a setup, it was a peculiar one. I looked over at Forster, who threw me an avuncular wink before turning his attention back to the screen.