Incarnate (6 page)

“Can’t you let me in for a moment? No need to have everyone listening.”

Just then Roy looked out of the room he was sharing with Ben. Roy was the sound man, small and rotund, given to showing her photographs of his prize budgies and his children. “Were you knocking?”

“Not for you.” Ben glared at him until he closed the door. “Well?”

“Whatever it is, please keep it short,” Molly said, and stepped back. “I need my sleep.”

He eased the door shut like a thief but stayed by it, holding up his empty hands as if that showed his intentions were harmless. His blue jowls looked freshly shaved, his moustache and his sleek hair just combed. “I wanted to thank you for getting us here in one piece. Thank you properly, I mean. You’re a damn good driver—and it was a damn good interview.”

“All right, Ben, you’ve thanked me.” She was wary of what “properly” might mean. “Good night now. I’m going to be driving tomorrow, remember.”

“No need for the cold shoulder, though, is there? You’d think I was your assistant instead of the other way round.”

He reached back to support himself against the wall, and she saw how drunk he was. “Damn it, that isn’t what I wanted to say. You make me so nervous sometimes I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“Tell me at breakfast. Now if you’ll just—”

“Look, this is what I wanted to say.” He sidled against the door, perhaps for balance. “You aren’t really happy, are you? Tell the truth.”

“I’m as happy as I can be under all the circumstances.”

“Just what I thought. You can’t work with someone as closely as I’ve worked with you without getting to know them.” He ran his fingers around the neck of his polo shirt, revealing a tangle of damp hair in the hollow of his throat. “I know you better than you know yourself.”

“Yes, well, we won’t talk about that just now. I think we both need sleep.”

“Still the cold shoulder?” His hands had let go of the shirt and were working in the air. “You don’t need to pretend with me. You’re lonely and unhappy and so am I. There now, I’m baring myself to you.”

“Ben, for God’s sake go and call your wife and talk to her. I’m sorry, I can’t help you. Go and bare yourself somewhere else.”

“She once said that. The bitch said that to me. Not twice she didn’t.” His face had turned red and ugly, and now she saw why he’d been dragging at his collar: an erection was struggling in his trousers. “You aren’t like that,” he said, and lurched at her. “Not really, or you wouldn’t have let me in.”

He was fumbling in his trousers to give his erection room. She sidestepped as he reached her, and he sprawled over the footboard onto the bed. It took him a while to flounder round and face her, one hand still down the front of his trousers. “It’s a joke to you, is it?” he spat.

“It’s no joke, Ben. It’s far too sad. Now please just leave.”

“Make me.” He heaved himself to his feet. “You started this, you can finish it.”

“That’s enough, Ben. The end.” Her legs had begun to shiver, but she gazed at him without moving. “And I shouldn’t try this with whoever you get to replace me.”

“Threats now, is it?” He let go of the footboard and toppled backward on the bed. “Let me tell you, I could replace you just like that.”

“You’ll have to. I’ve had an offer.”

She had never heard anyone grind their teeth before. “Is this another of gay boy’s bright ideas?”

“Don’t you realize how much he regrets suggesting I should work with you?” She went to the door and held it open. “Good night and good-bye.”

She couldn’t tell how much of his anger was deliberate, but it was visibly exciting him. “Time you learned a few manners,” he snarled as his excitement jerked him to his feet and drove him toward her. “I’m not so difficult to get on with.”

She could tell he meant to slam the door and lock them in. If he had been an anonymous rapist, she would have kicked him in the crotch, but having worked with him was irksomely inhibiting. “Don’t be stupid, Ben,” she said icily. He turned away and at first she didn’t know why he demanded, “What is it now?”

“I thought I heard someone calling,” Roy said.

“I don’t think it matters now. Ben was just leaving.”

Ben turned round at last, having concealed his erection as best he could. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said with furious gentleness.

“Possibly.” She locked the door behind him and flopped on the bed, and found she was shaking with laughter. How could she have taken so long to make up her mind about Martin Wallace? She was almost grateful to Ben for tonight, for helping her decide. She felt immensely relieved and sleep came as softly as the whisper of snow at the window.

She dreamed of an office where a young girl and a woman who looked prematurely gray were leafing through files of typed foolscap. “I don’t like any of them, Mummy. Let’s go home,” the young girl said, and as far as Molly could tell, they did. She was awakened by knocking at the door.

She groped for her watch on the bedside table. It was early morning, too early for apologies or for Ben at all. “Go away,” she croaked.

“It’s Roy. Can I have a word?”

She stumbled to the door and blinked at him. “I just wanted to say that if you don’t feel up to it, I’ll drive.” He glanced toward the room where Ben was sleeping and winked at her. “It gets pretty cramped in the back of the van. You might be better off going by train.”

She wondered how much he knew: enough for her to kiss his cheek. “Thanks, Roy,” she said, and he tiptoed away blushing.

As soon as she was dressed and had packed her overnight bag, she settled the bills at Reception and made for the station.

The rainy London streets were dazzling as tinfoil. Drying trees turned piebald in Hyde Park. Molly felt bouncy and free as she reached Ben’s office. She blew a kiss to the calendar girl as she sat at her desk. “You’re welcome to him,” she called, and set about the budget for the northern expedition. The less that still had to be done when he returned, the better.

She had almost finished when her phone rang. “Mr. Gould would like to see you,” his secretary said.

She shared a lift to the ninth floor with the head of Religious Programs, a balding, compassionate-looking man with a pop singer’s smile. Jake Gould’s secretary sent her straight into Gould’s office, a spacious, sparsely furnished room that smelled of sunlit leather chairs and tinny air conditioning. He sat forward as she came in, stretching his arms sphinxlike across the desk and displaying his gold cuff links. “Miss Wolfe.”

“That’s me.”

He frowned, though she hadn’t meant to be facetious. “I understand that all is not well between you and Ben Eccles.”

“It depends what you mean,” she said cautiously.

“I mean, as an example, a program underbudgeted by several thousand pounds. I mean leaving him and his crew to find their own way back this morning.”

So Ben had beaten her to it, by phone, of course. “The budget was based on information he gave me,” she said as calmly as she could. “And I had good reasons for coming back by train. For one thing, I was too tired to drive.”

“Do sit down if you feel the need.” He gazed at her while she did. “Are you finding the responsibilities of the job more than you bargained for?”

“Not the job, no. Just fending off Ben Eccles.”

“Of course one hears tales about him, mainly in the press.” His gaze grew keener. “One wonders who might have been gossiping, and why.”

“I don’t know why, but as to who, I should think it could be any woman who has ever been alone with him.”

Gould was unwrapping a cigar. The crackling of cellophane rasped Molly’s nerves. At last he looked at her again, as he shook out the match. “Well,” he said between puffs, “no doubt you know that Martin Wallace wants you. Frankly, on your present showing I don’t know what to tell him.”

“I won’t work with Ben Eccles.”

He applied another match and blew out smoke that seemed for a while to be endless. “How do you feel about working with Wallace?”

“I’d like to. Very much.”

“Much as you felt about working with Eccles, I suppose? How can I be sure you won’t let Wallace down?” Abruptly he ground the cigar into rags in the ashtray. “Well, it’s his responsibility. You’re clearly no more use to Eccles. But I give you fair warning,” he said, standing up to terminate the interview, “I shall be monitoring your performance.”

The next Molly knew she was at the lifts, knuckling the call button until her skin started to flake. At the fifth floor she shoved the doors aside and strode blindly down the corridor to Ben’s office. She hoped he was there and by God she would tear him to pieces. But the office was empty now that Martin and Leon were emerging.

Her rage drained away. She felt weightless as a dream of flying, and yet on the edge of something: one step and she might fall, not fly, fall and never wake. “Gould says we can work together,” she said.

“That’s great, Molly. I’m really pleased. Leon’s been telling me how good you are when you’re given the chance.”

“Pubs are open. I propose a toast,” Leon said, and Molly thought that a drink might be just what was needed to get rid of this vague apprehension that wouldn’t quite go away. Feelings like that were no use to her, they never had been. If she had dreamed of Martin, it must have been years ago.

6

I
T TOOK
all day to film the Heathrow introduction, since Martin seemed to think on film. After the last shot of the morning—of Martin descending by escalator into the international crowd—he said, “That’s enough of me, too much, probably. Let’s eat.”

He and the crew ended up in the airport snack bar. Planes turned ponderously beyond the double glazing and rose silent as clouds into the sky. “Maybe I shouldn’t appear in the film at all,” Martin said.

Terry Mace sat forward and his motorcycle jacket creaked. He was assistant to the cameraman. “What did you want to put yourself in for, anyway?” he said.

“Well, I’m in there whether or not you see me. I figured appearing in it would be taking responsibility for it, saying it’s my view of things. Maybe I’m too visible already.”

“What, because you were in
Private Eye
? Don’t let those buggers get to you. They’re just out to get MTV because a couple of the backers sued them years ago.”

“I guess they let me off relatively lightly.” But he sounded as if he wished he knew what he’d done to deserve their attack. (“News from Empty Vee: Leon ‘Call me Lane, love’ Bardin, winner of the Worst Program Title by a Gay Producer Award, is importing Martin ‘Instant Controversy’ Wallace, a film director with an international reputation for bothering needy old ladies and policemen doing their duty. What is the relationship between Lane Bardin and Marty the Menace? We think we should be told… .”) “Back home we have
the National Enquirer,”
Martin said.

“Just don’t let that shit put you off making the kind of film you make.” Terry brushed his long hair out of his eyes and stared defiantly at a woman who had turned to frown at him.

“Well, Terry, maybe you’re surer than I am what kind of film that is.”

“Right, maybe I am. I think your best film was
The Unamericans,
fantastically powerful. You ought to show up our police the way you did yours. About fucking .time someone did.”

Martin was smiling at his vehemence. “Aren’t your police pretty reasonable overall?”

“What? Tell Lenny Bennett’s mother that after the pigs got him in a cell and killed him.”

Molly spoke for the first time. “Well, that’s one version,” she said.

“Right, there’s the official version and the truth. No prize for guessing which one MTV broadcast. He died just up the road from them and they didn’t even go to investigate.” She had been trying to calm Terry down but had only infuriated him. “What do you think the pigs were going to do to a black militant who’d been criticizing them, after they got him in by planting explosives on him? Bake him a cake? I’ve seen the inside of one of those fucking cells. They could have worked on him all night, nobody would have heard him scream.”

The cameraman, Andy Butterworth, spoke low. “Watch your language, lad, or they’ll have you back inside.”

“I bet they’d love to. Didn’t even charge me in the end, just wanted to shut me up.”

Mace had been kept overnight in a cell for chanting slogans in front of the police station and buttonholing everyone who passed. “You should investigate them,” he told Martin. “You’ve got the power to make people look.”

“If you feel so strongly about it,” Wallace suggested, “maybe you should tell people yourself.”

“Think I haven’t been? Do I look as if I sit on my arse doing nothing?” He pointed to the badges on his jacket: Troops Out of Northern Ireland. Free Iran. “I’ve been playing a policeman in a street play about Lenny Bennett. We’d do it in front of the station if there was room. Make the bastards think Lenny had come back to haunt them.” He seemed about to say something but changed his mind. “You’ve got the power to take it into people’s homes,” he said fiercely. “Things won’t change unless they know.”

Martin had finished his lunch and looked restless. “Come on, lad,” Andy said. “Finish your milk and let’s get going. Time enough to tell folk how to make films when you’ve made a few yourself.”

After they had filmed a few impressions of Heathrow, Martin wandered for an hour or so before saying abruptly, “That’s it for today.” He was silent on the drive back. As Molly steered the van into Connaught Street for the car park under MTV she thought he seemed to be gazing at something inside himself.

His office was on the fourth floor, down the corridor from Leon’s. Its personality was mostly Molly’s: a calendar of English landscapes, an old percolator she had managed to fix, the binoculars she took whenever she drove into the countryside. He leafed through the reviews of
The Spin
she had brought him to read, but he was obviously ill at ease. He kept rumpling his already untidy hair, pinching the skin between his thick eyebrows.

“I’m sorry about today,” she said.

His deep blue eyes widened. “Why should you be sorry?”