Authors: Susan Howatch
Tags: #Psychological, #Romance, #Suspense, #General, #Fiction
Heartbreaker (7 page)
VII
“Carta!” exclaimed Nicholas, startled. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realise Lewis had anyone with him.”
“I dropped in to see Alice. She asked me to visit your study and remind you what she looks like.”
As Nicholas smiled warily I saw he was having one of his days when he looked younger than forty-nine, a trick he pulled off easily as he was slim and tall and moved with such a peculiarly self-assured grace. His looks varied. Sometimes, when he was tired and not bothering to project the power of his personality, he looked both middle-aged and nondescript, but at other times he could be so arresting that heads would turn as he walked by. He had pale brown hair and pale skin, and his pale grey eyes could look blue whenever he wore blue jeans and a blue clerical shirt (his favourite office uniform). His pallor, which failed to reflect his excellent health, could be judged either striking or creepy, depending on how far he had turned up the wattage of his charisma. He could so easily have been a shady wonder-worker, using his gifts in the wrong way, but he was meticulous about operating within orthodox frameworks; he used to say the Church of England kept him honest.
“Are you all right, Carta?” I suddenly heard him ask.
“No, but I’ll live. I called in to talk to Lewis about a problem connected with Richard Slaney.”
Nicholas instantly became alert. “Richard Slaney?”
“Yes, I’ve got myself mixed up with the prostitute he was seeing.”
“But how on earth did you meet him?” said Nicholas amazed, in no doubt at all about Gavin’s gender.
VIII
“So you did know Richard’s secret!”
“I heard about the homosexuality,” said Nicholas, avoiding all mention of his source although I thought it had to be Moira. “But nobody mentioned a prostitute.”
“The information was top secret. He’d been seeing this upmarket hustler called Gavin Blake who operates from a flat in Austin Friars. Gavin’s straight. Richard was hopelessly in love with him. Bad scene.”
Nicholas sighed. Then he sat down and said: “I’m very sorry indeed to hear that Richard was in such a painful situation.”
“To make matters worse,” I said acidly, “I’ll tell you that this man Gavin Blake’s behaviour’s outrageous and I loathed him—which means I’m fighting to deny he’s the sexiest piece I’ve seen in a month of Sundays.”
Both men laughed. “Well done!” exclaimed Lewis, and Nicholas murmured to him: “How many other people do we know who could be so honest with themselves?”
“Skip the gloss, Darrow!” I snapped. “I’m a basket case!”
“The odds are it’s Gavin who’s the basket case. This sounds like a man who comes on strong to hide a chronic lack of self-esteem.”
“You can’t be serious! His ego’s monumental!”
“Then why’s he renting out his private parts? Would
you
rent out your private parts to a bunch of wealthy lesbian businesswomen?”
I recoiled. “Well, no, of course not! I mean, no offence to lesbians, but—”
Lewis gave a snort of laughter and at once said guiltily: “Sorry, my dear, but I always enjoy seeing liberals flounder in the quicksands of political correctness.”
“My point, Carta,” said Nicholas, “is that you wouldn’t rent out your private parts to anyone, male or female, and that’s because your self-esteem is such that you feel you deserve more from life than a career as a sexual punchbag. After all, we’re not talking about sex for pleasure here. We’re talking about a hard slog built around physical abuse, and if the sex is contrary to the orientation then we’re talking of emotional abuse too.”
“Then why’s Gavin doing this?”
“That’s the big question.” Turning back to the door again he added: “I must go upstairs to Alice, but come and tell me more about Gavin sometime.”
“I’ve finished talking about him,” I said. “I don’t even want to think about him any more.”
But I did think about him. As I walked home I thought: what’s he doing at this moment? What kind of home did he go back to? How long’s he been living with this “manager” of his, the woman he was so keen to deny was a pimp? And what does “living with” mean in this context anyway? When he used that phrase did he just mean they shared the house? And if he didn’t mean that—if they’re lovers—how does she cope with him screwing everything in sight?
The questions slithered around in my mind, coiling and uncoiling themselves like serpents in a pit, and after a while I had the odd feeling he was thinking of me at that moment, just as I was thinking of him— although that was a ridiculous idea since I had no talent for ESP.
When I arrived home the phone was ringing. “Darling,” Eric said, “I had to call—I didn’t want to go to bed without saying sorry for that stupid quarrel. Look, what exactly happened with that tart you mentioned? You seemed so abnormally upset—”
“No need to worry, he’s past history.”
“He?”
“We’re talking of a rent boy who’s been exploiting one of my friends, but I shan’t be seeing him again, I promise you . . .”
I sincerely hoped that this wasn’t a prime example of wishful thinking.
But it was.
CHAPTER FOUR
Gavin
What makes the simple act of shaming or blaming people complicated is the knowledge that they each had a specific history, and the more we know about it the easier it becomes to understand why they did what they did.
Godless Morality
RICHARD HOLLOWAY
I’ve got Ms. Shaggable on the hook! Frosty-Puss is becoming Hotsy-Puss. At Richard’s flat I had her steaming so hard that she pretended to drop her bag so that we could be on all fours together scooping up the chick-knacks, but I kept my hands off her because I want to make her boil, not just steam. So I put on a Caring-Nineties-New-Man act, earnestly apologising for my pushy pre-fuck pitch—and okay, maybe I
had
been coming on a shade too strong, but she’s still dead keen, that’s obvious, so dead keen that she discloses she lives in the City. I always knew I could cut out that bloke of hers with one hand tied behind my back! If he’s a typical writer and soaks up the booze he’ll have trouble getting the equipment to work, and the odds are he has no idea how to turn in a grade-A performance anyway. Elizabeth says it’s sad how so few men do.
After I slip Ms. Shaggable into a cab I sink into my XJ-S and breathe: “Phwoar!” Then I check my face in the mirror. I look good. Everything’s looking good. Even my boring H-reg XJ-S looks good, though it’s much too has-been for me. The client only sent it my way because he’d hoped to make twenty-five grand selling it at auction and the highest offer he’d received was fifteen-five. So he turned it over to me instead and wrote the whole fiasco off as a tax loss. Thanks to the recession, the luxury car scene’s collapsed, and sometimes I long to go out and pick up a Lotus, my dream machine, for peanuts, but even peanuts cost something and I want to put away as much money as possible in my Cayman Islands bank account.
Angling the jaded Jag out of that tight parking space near Richard’s flat I head south towards my home.
Home is one of a row of large double-fronted Victorian houses on a main road south of the river and less than half a mile from Lambeth Bridge, which is one of the gateways to that glitzy postal district SW1. But our postal district is SW11, and when Elizabeth bought her house years ago the borough of Lambeth was pretty slummy. Even now it’s not exactly SW1, but she’s seen the value of the house shoot up during the property boom of the late eighties.
The front garden’s been paved to provide three parking spaces, one for my XJ-S, one for her Toyota and one for Tommy’s cheapo rattle-bag. The house is divided into three too. There’s a basement flat for Tommy, who’s Elizabeth’s minder, and above this are four floors: raised ground, first, second and third. The main part of the house above Tommy’s flat isn’t formally divided up but in practice it operates as two duplexes. Elizabeth has the raised ground and first floors while Nigel and I share the second and third.
Nigel’s my valet and Elizabeth’s housekeeper. He’s in charge of all the domestic arrangements and makes sure I’m properly fed, watered and housed, with clean clothes always in the closet. He doesn’t cook for Elizabeth, but he shops for her and makes sure the cleaning-dodo doesn’t OD on endless cups of tea. Although he and I share the upper floors, he’s under strict instructions not to get under my feet, so when he’s not busy doing his job he keeps to his room at the top of the house. When he first came I hated him, didn’t want him around, thought he was disgusting, but Elizabeth insisted that I’d reached the stage where I needed to have my domestic life taken care of, and she pointed out that Nigel was willing to work for a pittance as he knew he’d have trouble finding a job elsewhere.
Nigel’s a sex-offender. I’ve never asked him for the full story, don’t want to know. All I do know is that he used to be a dresser in the theatre but was nabbed by the police after a production involving child actors. When he came out of jail he spent some time hustling in Leicester Square and got picked up, poor sod, by a couple of the Big Boys from Asherton’s Pain-Palace, but luckily Asherton discovered he could cook so Nigel escaped from the dungeon to the kitchen. In the end Asherton traded him to Elizabeth in exchange for a black pre-op transsexual who had tried to find work at Norah’s escort agency and was willing to do anything for money. Norah, who’s Elizabeth’s business partner, doesn’t employ trannies, either transsexuals or transvestites. “It’s a question of class, my dear!” she flutes, as if her idea of heaven is to run a brothel staffed by princesses of the blood royal. Silly cow! I often wonder how Elizabeth stands her, but they’ve been friends for years.
Elizabeth used to run the escort agency at one time, but she’s always liked to keep several irons in the fire and when her psychic healing business took off in the eighties she delegated the running of the agency to Norah, her second-in-command. Elizabeth’s still got her stake in the company, of course, and after the collapse of her psychic healing business in 1990 she took a hand in running the agency again, although since my career reached the stratosphere she’s gone back to delegating everything to Norah. Norah lives across the river in Pimlico, the shadow side of mega-rich Belgravia. She’s a lesbian who likes to dress in pink, and her two chihuahuas have jewelled collars. Disgusting.
But luckily I don’t have to see much of Norah. Elizabeth does drag me to the Pimlico house for Sunday lunch sometimes, but at least the roast beef’s always good. Even the chihuahuas agree on that.
Having parked the XJ-S on its pad in front of the house I spring out, grab my bag from the boot and gaze for a moment at the night sky. There are stars up there somewhere beyond the neon glow and if I were at sea I could pick out the constellations. I freeze, remembering my times at sea with Richard and shuddering as the shock of his death hits me again.
Unfair. Not right. No God. Nothing. The only philosophy worth a shit is “Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die,” and that’s why money’s all that matters—it’s because with money you can live it up before the big wipe-out. I’ve got a lot of money saved in my Cayman Islands bank account and I’m going to have more. (Isn’t it great to have an account in a smart tax haven like the Caymans? I mean, how upmarket can one get?) Then in two years’ time I’m buying a boat and sailing off into the sunset—with Elizabeth, of course. She’ll be ready to retire then herself. The collapse of her psychic healing business two years ago was really traumatic for her, and if I hadn’t been doing so well I think she might have retired at that point, but my success perked her up, gave her an incentive to keep going. She still misses the psychic healing, though. She’s made a mint from her leisure industry interests, particularly her 1970s chain of massage parlours (forcibly taken over by foreign pond-life in 1980), but it’s the psychic and the occult which really switch her on. It’s how she got hooked up with Asherton, who runs a weird pseudo-religious secret society in addition to the S&M group which would make the vice squad’s hair curl.
As I get out my keys to open the front door, I wipe the memory of Asherton in case I start having flashbacks, and I focus instead on how brilliant it was when my business took off. I admit I needed Elizabeth to help me in the beginning, but after the first few clients were established my reputation spread at the speed of light all by itself. Then Elizabeth only had to put my career on a well-organised business footing and watch the money roll in. Most leisure-working’s done in the West End, but next door in the Square Mile of the City where the streets are paved with gold there are all these rich gay blokes who roost there every day of the working week and are usually much too busy to want to run all kinds of risks out west with God knows who. I offer them absolute discretion and top-class skills in AIDS-free upmarket surroundings right on their office doorsteps. Of course they’re happy to pay big money! They think I’m terrific value and they’re right.
The best thing of all is that I’ve got control over my life. I’m young, I’m fit, I drive a luxury car, I shop where I like, I shag the sexiest chicks, I look good and feel great because I’m a smoke-free, drug-free zone— apart from alcohol, but I’m smart enough to go easy on the booze. Elizabeth thinks I’m wonderful. I’m never letting her out of my life, never, she’s mine for always. My amazing success is all due to her, and now life’s fantastic, life’s sensational, in fact there’s not a single bloody cloud on the horizon.
Opening the front door I walk into the hall and dump my sports bag by the stairs to take up later. The living-room door’s ajar and Elizabeth’s talking to someone, but I know she hasn’t invited guests so I assume she’s on the phone.
I glide in, hoping she’ll tell me how sexy I’m looking, and my muscles are tightening at the thought of a hot hetero snog after all the boring contact sport today with the sad sacks who can’t hack it with women. But nemesis awaits. Maybe I even deserve it for that knee-jerk put-down of the blokes who fuel my bank account, but whether deserved or not, this is where I get my comeuppance. For Elizabeth isn’t on the phone. She’s entertaining an unexpected guest, and the guest is none other than Mr. Mega-Monster himself.
It’s Asherton.
I stop dead. My mind goes blank. No more thoughts about how wonderful it is to have control over my life. All the hairs on the nape of my neck are standing on end and my heart’s banging at the double.
Asherton says: “Good evening, my dear!” and his sugar-and-cyanide voice is silk-smooth. Creamily he adds: “How attractive you’re looking! Isn’t he looking attractive, Elizabeth?”
“Ever so attractive,” says Elizabeth placidly, “but then he always does. Hullo, pet.”
I mumble a greeting.
“I hear you’re about to meet a very wealthy gentleman,” says Asherton tenderly, “and I’m hoping he’ll prove to be a suitable candidate for GOLD. You’ll make sure you’re particularly nice to him, won’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“There’s a double-slot tomorrow afternoon which has unexpectedly fallen vacant,” says Elizabeth to him. “I’ve offered it to Sir Colin but he says the appointment has to be next Tuesday and it has to be in the West End.”
“Ah, one of the cautious ones!”
“It’s a bloody nuisance—it means clearing the late shift. If only Sir Colin would take Mr. Slaney’s double-slot tomorrow at the flat!”
Asherton says idly: “What happened to Slaney?”
“Dropped dead, dear—and just after he’d promised the boy ten thou in stocks and shares! I was ever so miffed!”
Asherton looks suitably shocked at Richard’s lack of consideration. “My love, refresh my memory: why did you decide Slaney was unsuitable for GOLD?”
“Gavin reported that Slaney had zero interest in religion, and I could see there was virtually no spiritual awareness worth cultivating. The only thing Slaney worshipped was . . . now, what was it? Something very nonnuminous . . . Oh yes, his boat. He liked sailing.”
It suddenly dawns on me that if Richard left a legacy to the St. Benet’s Healing Centre—an idea which I know had occurred to him—I could be in deep shit. Word travels fast in the City, and wills get to be made public. I start to sweat. I’ve never told Elizabeth about Richard’s connection with St. Benet’s because she’s paranoid about the bloke who runs that place. She says he destroyed her psychic healing business. She says he came close to wrecking her entire life. She says she’ll never forgive him, never, she’d like to raze that church of his to the ground, she’d like to fire-bomb the Healing Centre, she’d like to crucify all Christians. Elizabeth can get very worked up if she feels she’s been hard done by.
“Gavin?” I suddenly realise Elizabeth’s sensed my anxiety. Shit! I’d better get my mental skates on PDQ.
“Gavin, what’s the matter? Why are you looking as if you’d forgotten to tell me Slaney was on the road to Damascus?”
In panic I spew out a spiel. “Oh, he still didn’t give a toss for religion! But apparently—and he only admitted this to me last week—he was feeling benign towards the Church of England. His daughter was having problems and his wife had taken her to a clergyman for counselling and the counselling had been sort of, well, successful, know-what-I-mean, so Richard—”
“What clergyman?”
“Uh . . .” I see with horror that I’ve got to come clean. If I invent an imaginary clergyman at the other end of London and word gets out that Richard’s left a hulking great legacy to St. Benet’s, she’ll be so livid with me for lying to her that anything could happen.
“Gavin!”
“Sorry, darling, just trying to work out how to break the news so you don’t get upset. You see, it was a City clergyman, a clergyman at one of those Guild churches which have special ministries such as healing—”
“I don’t believe I’m hearing this. Are you seriously trying to tell me that Slaney was mixed up with—”
“Oh, Richard was never directly involved with what’s-his-face! As I said, it was Moira Slaney who—”
“What was wrong with the girl?”
“Anorexia.”
“That means family therapy. Of course Slaney must have been involved with Darrow!”
“I tell you he wasn’t—he refused to go because he was afraid of being outed as a gay! He never even met Darrow, I swear it!” This is a lie, but if I can keep plugging the fact that Moira was the St. Benet’s fan, I might just possibly survive this braindead dive of mine into deep shit.
The next moment it dawns on me that Asherton’s been maintaining the deadest of dead silences, and suddenly I realise that he’s just as appalled as Elizabeth—although as far as I know he had no connection with the disaster of 1990 when the Reverend Nicholas Darrow, Rector of St. Benet’s-by-the-Wall and
bête noire
of the psychic con-trade, managed to close down the healing business which Elizabeth ran under another name out of a house in Fulham.
But before I can ask myself just why Asherton should be so gobsmacked at the thought of Darrow, Elizabeth stands up. Not a muscle of her face moves, but I know that what she minds most at this particular moment is not Richard’s tenuous link with St. Benet’s but the fact that Asherton’s seen she’s not in control of me.