Full of Money (6 page)

This hope died. The actual steaming rapport between them in the broadcast . . . steamed. And the trouble was that, obviously, it would look to anyone impartial, or partial in the way Pellotte and Dean would be partial – yes, it could look as though Rupe might not keep himself exclusively for Dione Pellotte. Her father would not like this, and nor would Dean. Based on that Gideon exchange, Edgehill thought Dean could be very dutiful and slaughterous in the interests of Pellotte's daughter. For Dean, the words ‘Pellotte's daughter' might have holiness, and he'd be ready to wipe out anyone who failed to show them proper reverence, or seemed to: for instance, Rupe Bale doing lust exchanges with Priscilla on fucking TV – well, not quite fucking, but in the vicinity.

Early drinks in Hospitality had to be the right amount to loosen performers up, without making them rat-arsed and incoherent. Too little meant the panellist stayed pedantic, dull, mealy-mouthed, clichéd,
idée fixée
. Too much . . . Oh God, too much could bring blather even woollier than the standard blather of an arts programme. There might be physical threats; cursing; walkouts; the disintegration of basic grammar, syntax and word forms; spittle. Edgehill had wondered whether Priscilla Sandine was alcohol-powered now and, if so, would top-ups make her more vividly and engulfingly hormonal later?

The company had brought Edgehill over from Sport to give to arts what they called ‘an emphatic yet wise popularity'. After all, TV soccer kept its hold on supporters. Now, very, very now, he wanted Sandine at the right tipple level to help keep a wise hold on
A.W.I.R.
's bit of audience, ‘right' meaning chirpy, but not hungrily homing in on Rupe's zipped bulge.

This evening, they'd discuss an exhibition of Far Eastern floral art at the Whitechapel Gallery;
The Royle Family
, a BBC satirical TV programme; a new Abel Vagrain novel,
The Insignia of Postponement
; and a revival of an Auden-Isherwood play,
On the Frontier
. Heavyish? So, before the On Air light glowed, trickle the correct number of liveners into the panel gaggle. A live show got liveners. Until the Sandine treatment, Bale had looked as if he
needed
a livener. But Rupe never did touch alcohol before a programme. Even a mouthful made him slurred.

Nellie Poignard, the burly, energetic, intuitive, cheery head of News and Current Affairs, had looked in to Hospitality before the programme on a brief visit. She held a glass of gin and bitters.

‘How are things in the homeland, Larry?' she asked.

‘Whitsun? Serene.'

‘Something terrible is going to break on the estates, I know it. Oh, we get news stories all right from Whit and Temperate Acres, but I constantly feel we're only nibbling the edge.' She sipped.

People from other departments often appeared for a free drink or two before the programme, and sometimes Edgehill also invited prospective panellists to come and acclimatize themselves. ‘What am I missing, Larry?' she said. ‘You'd know things from the inside.'

‘What things?'

‘Things.'

‘I commute from and to, and that's about it,' Edgehill said. Or this was how he wanted it. The kerbside meeting with Pellotte and Dean didn't add up to news – the kind Nellie understood. Nor did rumours from Udolpho.

‘Occasionally, I just drive about on both estates, no real objective, no purpose, Larry, but trying to absorb a bit of the atmos, the undercurrents, the omens.
Something's
hatching.
Something's
going to happen. We've seen turf battles, like the one where dear Gladstone Milo Naunton died, leaving poor Bert Marsh widowed. There'll be more. Ordinary people might get caught up.'

‘Apocalypse not quite now?'

‘Bad. Yes, it looks calm on both estates, I admit. Horribly, falsely calm. I might see the famous BMW going about its happy, time-honoured business, reg ADP 12, celebrating Adrian David Pellotte's ownership, but also his fandom of the twelve Anthony Dymoke Powell novels in
A Dance to the Music of Time.
Dean Feston will usually be at the wheel. He's had a long out of clink spell.'

‘Disappointed? No news interest?'

‘They follow their undiminished, undiminishable, dirty trade: delivering, collecting, punishing. In a different era these people would have been bank robbers. Drugs is safer, more profitable. Stuff goes up by a factor of what – 150, 160 by the time it's on the street in Britain from Colombia? Margins so huge it doesn't matter when they lose a stash through raids and seizure. If the police hit the luxury side, the trade goes downmarket for a while to the cheap, bulked-up additive stuff – more boric acid or hydroxyzine or tetramisole. And vice versa. Importers and wholesalers respond to fluctuations like any good entrepreneur. The traffic's unstoppable. They simply collect. Their minions do most of the risky stuff.'

‘The barons have time to pop up to London Retrospectives.'

‘They do that? Of course, they can occasionally turn brutal themselves. Think of Tasker. Self-protective.'

‘Nothing's proved there, I hear.'

‘Nor will be. They know how to arrange that.'

‘Arrange?'

‘Fix. And, listen, Larry, last time I saw Pellotte and Dean they were near your place,' she said.

‘Yes?' He thought he kept this sounding reasonably unruffled, despite feeling reasonably ruffled. ‘Bell Close – that's you, isn't it?' she asked. ‘The car sort of dawdling, surveying, casing.'

‘They get about.'

‘Do they bother you?'

‘They probably don't know me, or anything about me.'

‘No? Really?' Perhaps she'd heard about the Gideon road encounter. Wasn't it her job to hear interesting points from Whit, and from everywhere? ‘And then this murder – the reporter.'

‘He didn't live on one of the estates, did he?'

‘No, but he was sniffing about on both, so it's said. Provocative, Larry.'

‘Don't your people sniff about on both, too?'

‘
We
know the protocols. It looks as though
he
didn't.'

Nellie edged away. A girl from make-up had taken Rupe Bale back to their room for some adjustment to his get-up, hair or complexion. Priscilla Sandine, journalist, would-be film-maker, was suddenly alone. Edgehill had gone across to her. When she spoke it scared him. ‘What do
you
think, Larry? I was just asking Rupert – why don't we hear what happened
afterwards
to the Italian waiter in
The
Godfather
.'

‘
The Godfather?
A waiter? Afterwards?' Larry said. God, was she sozzled already? He might not want talk here in Hospitality about topics due on the programme later in case they grew stale, but
The
fucking
Godfather
, a twenty-five-year-old film and discussed over the decades inside out and back again?

‘Yes, afterwards,' she said. ‘Michael Corleone shoots the police chief and the Turk while they're in a restaurant. A waiter served them. What happened to him later? We demand a continuance.'

Her glass was not completely empty, but more empty than full. Enough? As to waiters, Edgehill knew he must get an immediate signal to Sacheverell Biggs. Sachev, from catering, had been doing arts hospitality for years, and Larry counted on him to judge when a refill for a guest's glass would be OK. Also, though, to judge when it might be catastrophic for a performer.

Sachev sometimes stood behind the small hospitality suite bar near the wall telephone, and sometimes circulated with bottles on a tray. He was moving about now on the other side of the room. Larry must get a clear, downright eye message to him: ‘
Dodge
Priscilla Sandine.' A feeling of responsibility for others was very strong in Edgehill. It would be neglectful and cruel to expect Rupe Bale and the others to cope with Sandine drunk on a live show. Keep her from the drink – from any further drink.

But Sachev had finished with the people over near the door and stepped towards Priscilla and Larry, the Glenlivet in pale, ample, friendly readiness on his tray, plus companion supplies. He turned his head aside for a second to pour for someone else, and broke eye contact with Larry. Then Sach came on. Larry sent him the NO BLOODY MORE FOR HER look. Too late. Much too damn late. Sachev certainly did finally note and totally understand Larry's order. By now, though, for Sach
not
to replenish Sandine's almost empty glass would be blatantly rude, an anti-hospitable snub, particularly as the almost empty glass got shoved towards Sacheverell in Mohammed-Ali-style, powerful, short-arm jabs; like what-the-fuck-fucking-well-kept-you-sonny-boy? She wanted what she wanted also from
The Godfather
–
a continuance.

Priscilla had taken the full glass unhurriedly to her lips and let it stay there an unhurried while, though Larry thought she had certainly passed the unhurried, savouring, small sip, connoisseur stage. The movement came from her sex depository. It was intended to show she had lips, in case this hadn't been sufficiently noticed, and that the lips exercised discrimination and persistence, and always knew to a t what they were sucking on. She spilled none of her drink. So, maybe not entirely pissed? Not yet.

A little way off from Sandine and Edgehill, Tom Marland, who would direct the programme tonight, must have caught bits of
The Godfather
conversation, or monologue, and looked terrified. How would she react on camera? Sandine wrote a books column in one of the broadsheets – good, sensible articles. Marland and he had agreed she deserved a run-out on the show. Mistake? Priscilla was an unpredictability.
Some
unpredictability could be good for a TV show. Too much might sink it. At least that know-all prick Rex Ince wasn't on tonight's panel and liable to increase the hazards: Ince with his dud impishness and ludicrous jacket. Sharp-chinned Selina Mysan and those massive Bedlam chuckles didn't feature this evening, either.

Bale had just returned from his supplementary visit to make-up, and Edgehill recrossed the room to him. ‘I saw you and Priscilla enjoying each other's company. Full of vim and so on, isn't she?' Larry said.

‘Sandine? Oh, yes. She's great. Intuitive. And so on, as you say. We sat in the stalls together at
On the Frontier.
' He sipped the safe drink. His mood seemed to sink again. ‘What do you make of those fucking slaggings off, Larry?'

‘Which?'

‘You know. Me pilloried,' Rupert said.

‘Where?'

‘The heavies.'

‘
Have
they pilloried you, then?'

‘You've seen the stuff. You get a clippings service.'

‘I don't recall it, and I wouldn't give weight to that sort of thing, anyway.'

‘What about upstairs?'

‘The boardroom? Nobody's mentioned bad reviews to me.'

‘If I get drubbed in the papers, it reflects on you, Larry. Ultimately, Flo Tait, as Head of Programmes, is going to ask what you think you're doing.'

Get him off this theme. He has to be confident in the studio.
Bale had a youthful face under brown curly hair kept short and, yes, could usually go into instant likeability when the cameras came on. Nothing must endanger that.

He went for a final pre-programme pee. Nerves. Natural enough. Priscilla Sandine may have been watching him and Edgehill from elsewhere in the room, and approached Larry now. She had finished with
The Godfather.
She took another good sip of her drink. ‘You've been trying to comfort Rupe, have you?' she said. ‘He's had a bit of a critical bashing lately, poor duck. And perhaps there are other worries, too. He'll have a life of some sort off screen.'

‘Yes, we all have that.'

‘His might be . . . well, stressful.'

‘Is it?' Had she heard something?

‘I'm asking – is it?' she said.

‘I wouldn't know.'

‘As producer of the show, shouldn't you? Didn't I read he lives on Temperate?'

‘So?'

‘Probably not entirely restful.'

‘Where is? It's not significant.' No? But he said: ‘As producer of the show I produce it. That's the lot.' He might have said to her, instead: ‘
Yes, he does have a life outside the studio and you could easily add to its threats and stresses tonight, if on-screen you look as though you're about to flash cleft at him and, incidentally, at viewers, of whom there are one or two – three, actually – who might dangerously resent this – your flashing at Rupe, that is.
'

Edgehill didn't, couldn't, say it.

‘I've always thought Rupert a terrific chairman,' she said. ‘He helps make
A Week in Review
so consistently brilliant.'

‘Well, yes,' Larry said.

‘But he needs someone to bring him out of himself a bit more on air, don't you agree? Tap his potentiality. Sex him up. Unencumber him.' She drank some more.

Oh God, she drank some more.

‘I think we should let Rupert set his own pace,' Edgehill had said hurriedly, though he hoped without obvious panic. ‘People have come to expect a certain, very recognizable style from him. We mustn't interfere.'

Meaning,
you
mustn't interfere with it, you hazardous, presumptuous, well-shod, nicely barbered, piece of arse. Edgehill had to ask himself, whom would Pellotte and Dean blame if Sandine did try to sex Rupert up on-screen? Who picked the people and shaped the show? Who oversaw the drinks supply? Answer: the programme's producer, L. Edgehill, known familiarly to Pellotte as Larry, but this did not guarantee everlasting mateyness or safety.

‘Style?' Sandine said. ‘Well, yes, he has a style. And to a degree it works. But we could up it a notch or two, I feel. We need to get his blood moving, don't we, Larry?'