'He was probably a top fund manager in a former life,' said Jane sardonically.
'Well, funny you should say that, because it turns out that he was in this one. According to Mummy, Big Horn's originally a barrow boy from Bethnal Green who went to work for a merchant bank in New York. He used to get the biggest bonuses on Wall Street until it all got too much and he burned out and went to live on the reservation in Nevada where Mummy met him.'
'No!' said Jane. 'So Big Horn's a Cockney?'
'Yes, and he's a film star now as well,' Tally said.
'Three Christenings and a Hen Party
is finished but Brad decided at the last minute to reshoot some of the christening party scenes with Big Horn as a guest. Brad thought he would add a certain—'
l
je ne sais Iroquoi?"
butted in Jane.
'Exactly,' giggled Tally. After all, as Brad said, look what a big, silent Red Indian did for
One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest'
Entering the
Fabulous
office the next Monday morning,
315
Jane found Tosh shrieking with laughter at something white-faced Tash had just said.
'What's the matter?' asked Jane.
Tosh screwed up her face, evidently unable to speak fa mirth.
Tash looked agonised.
'Good weekend?' pressed Jane.
'No,' burst out Tash. 'I've had the most
ghastly
weekend actually. I was staying with the Uppe-Timmselves when my hostess came into my bedroom without knocking to have a bedtime chat with me and caught me
peeing
in the sink. It was
beyond
embarrassing.' She crimsoned at the memory.
Tosh exploded once more.
'You should have told her it was part of your yoga routine,' said Jane.
'Yes, well, sadly one never thinks of these things at the time, does one?' said Tash. 'But as I said to her, if you don't provide en suite bathrooms for all your guests, what else can you expect? I mean, who wants to walk miles down a draughty corridor in the middle of the night in the pitch black looking for the lavatory?' She looked at Jane in anguish. Jane tried to appear sympathetic and not catch the eye of Tosh. The giggles bubbling up in her throat would certainly damage the fragile
esprit de corps du bureau
she had managed to establish in Victoria's absence.
'Speaking of outside lavatory arrangements,' drawled Tosh, rubbing a hand roughly over her streaming eyes, 'did you see Champagne D'Vyne at the runway protest on the news last night? She's
beyond,
isn't she? Said she was passionate about green belts, particularly the ones you get from Mulberry.'
'Yes,' Tash joined in, glad of the distraction. 'She's
316
certainly the first environmental protester I've ever seen who gets her entire wardrobe from Voyage. And apparently Michael) ohn have to send a stylist down to Gatwick every week to give her hair that fashionably tangled look. Hilarious, isn't she?'
It's all very well for her to try and save the planet,' remarked Larry, 'but I'm not sure she's on the same one as the rest of us in the first place.'
Talk of Champagne and holes reminded Jane again of the one she had left on the
Fabulous
cover. Jane had considered many options over the past few days, but no one seemed quite right. Except Lily Eyre, and Victoria had already vetoed her. Still, thought Jane defiantly, if Victoria was going to go swanning off round the minibars of Europe and leave someone else to run her magazine, she would have to take the consequences. Deciding, for once, to act on instinct, and before she could change her mind, Jane picked up the telephone, dialled Lily Eyre's agent and offered her the cover and an interview.
'Lily Eyre's going to be our next cover,' Jane told the rest of the staff at a features meeting that afternoon. Lily Eyre's people had accepted with alacrity and Jane had briefed one of her best and wittiest freelance writers to interview the actress. Her stomach felt tight with mixed apprehension and triumph as she thought about it. It was a bold move, but there seemed no reason why it would not pay off.
'But what about her ankles?' asked Tash doubtfully. 'Aren't they supposed to be dreadful?'
Jane shook her head, trying not to stare at Tash's own distinctly solid lower calves. 'They're fine,' she said reassuringly. 'Right, ideas. Anyone got any?'
There was a silence.
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'There's this artist I read about,' said Tash hesistantly. 'She's the daughter of the Earl of Staines and she makes papier-mache' lamp bases out of prostitutes' telephone box calling cards.'
Another silence.
'Well,' said Jane brightly, determined to be encouraging, we
do
need to beef up the arts side. You're certainly on the right track, Tash.' Albeit stuck in a siding on a branch line, she thought to herself.
But the message seemed to be getting through. The staff seemed to be trying a bit harder, and were even venturing into areas of the newspapers other than the horoscopes.
'Have you seen this?' said Tosh a day or so later, proffering a copy of a recently-launched literary magazine. '
The Scribblers
main interview this month is with a writer called Charlie Seton who they're raving about as the new James Joyce.'
Jane raised a sceptical eyebrow.
'He's sex on a stick, apparently,' sighed Tosh. 'I only know because a friend of mine works there. She says Charlie Seton's just
gorgeous.
Just
amazingly
good-looking. Oh, and really, really talented, of course,' she added quickly.
Amused, Jane looked closer at the piece. 'Eton, Oxford, bedsitter in Soho,' she read. It was, as Tosh said, great
Fabulous
material. Jane squinted at the picture of the author. It was very heavily art-directed, so much so that beneath the scribbles and pasted-on cutouts of lightbulbs and lips, it was impossible to see what Charlie Seton actually looked like.
'I thought I could go and interview him this morning,' suggested Tosh.
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Jane looked at her sternly. Tosh knew perfectly well she had a mountain of beauty copy to rewrite. 'Sorry,' said Jane. Tosh's face went into freefall. 'You're much too busy. You've got that piece about the new blue lipsticks to tidy up.' Tosh pushed out her bottom lip.
Unmoved, Jane picked up the magazine and read the piece again. Was it, she wondered, worth giving Charlie Seton a call? He might make an interesting piece. And the bits of his face that you could see looked reasonably promising.
Hell, I deserve it, thought Jane. I'll go and see him myself. I don't get to pull rank very often. In fact, I don't get to pull
anything
very often.
'Busty Models' read the badly-written sign on the shabby Soho door. Walking slowly up the other side of the street, Jane looked at the very young, sunken-eyed girl in a black PVC waistcoat and miniskirt lounging against the doorframe. She was chewing languidly and obviously waiting for business. She didn't
look
very busty, Jane thought. But then, with her scraped-back, lifeless blonde ponytail and greyish skin, she didn't look much like a model either. She was, however, looking suspiciously at Jane.
Jane couldn't blame her. She had been wandering up and down this street for the last ten minutes at least and still hadn't been able to locate Charlie Seton's flat. Because he was a writer, she had assumed that he would be in the garret. But as she peered up to the crumbling second-floor windows with their cracked windowboxes containing long-dead plants, it occurred to her that writing by the light of a red bulb might be difficult. Jane cleared her throat and crossed the litter-strewn street towards the girl in PVC.
319
'Does a writer called Charlie live round here?' Jan asked.
The girl carried on chewing her gum. 'No,' she said 'There's no one called Charlie round here.' She spoke somewhat surprisingly, in the pleasant, enunciated tones of a vicar's wife.
Jane turned away, disappointed. She was in the wrong place, obviously. Odd, because this had definitely been the name of the street. That, evidently, was that then. She began to walk away.
'But there
is
a writer round here,' the girl called after her. Jane turned. The girl was chewing her gum, grinning. 'Down there in the basement.' She pointed beneath her feet. 'Say hello from me.'
Jane quickly retraced her steps. She bent slightly and peered down into the lighted basement window directly below, whose top four inches were exactly level with her ankle. The room inside was lit by a single bulb. Cigarette stubs overflowed from an ashtray all over the desk below the window, and a rumpled duvet covered a mattress on the floor. Papers, both newsprint and manuscript, were scattered everywhere. Yes, it looked like a writers room. If she inclined her head slightly to the right it was just possible to see the back of a T-shirted figure sitting at the desk. Charlie Seton was obviously hard at work.
Absurdly aware of her smart little herringbone suit and brand-new high-heeled ankle boots, Jane went through the open front door
of the scruffy building and descended
the stairs at the back of the passageway. She tapped at the battered door at the
bottom. The paint on its ancientsurface was so blistered and cracked it was possible to see
every colour it had ever been. Jane counted burgundy, mustard, bilious green and diarrhoea brown before the
320
door creaked open to reveal Charlie Seton.Only it wasn't Charlie Seton. It was Tom.
'Tom!' croaked Jane. 'Tom!' she squeaked, fumbling for the right words to convey the explosion of excitement, confusion and hope that had just detonated within her. She gazed desperately from one to the other of his eyes. She felt like a bad actress in a straight-to-video romantic turkey.
'What an amazing coincidence,' she gasped eventually in strangled tones. The film seemed to have switched to
Brief Encounter.
'You see, I've come here to interview you. Isn't it hilarious? From the magazine.'
'Oh,' said Tom. 'Of course. Right.'
So far he had conspicuously failed to gather her up in his arms and murmur 'At last, my love, I've found you' into her neck. Jane wasn't sure what film he was in. Something inscrutable, perhaps one of those tortuous coming-of-age-in-eastern Europe sagas that win all the Best Foreign Language Film Oscars. Still gazing intently into his face, Jane felt dizzy with the almost overwhelming desire to shout 'Do You Still Love Me?' from the rooftops.
What she actually said was, 'What are you doing here?'
'I came back,' Tom said simply. 'New York didn't work out exactly as I expected. Look, why don't you come inside?'
'Why didn't it work out?' asked Jane, following him into the room which looked even scruffier from inside than it had from the pavement. There was no furniture apart from the mattress, the desk, a rickety chair and a sink at the back with a shelf over it.
'I suppose you could call it a misunderstanding,' said Tom, smiling faintly.
Jane's heart started thumping with terror. A woman.
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She might have known the dead hand of the Manhattan blonde would be involved. 'Girl trouble?' she croaked bravely.
'No!' laughed Tom. 'Not at all. My agent here sent me over there to work on the script for the new
Godfather
film. I was thrilled. It sounded like a dream come true.'
'So what went wrong?'
'Well, when I got there,' Tom said, rubbing his hair ruefully, 'it turned out the agent had misheard and I was expected to write the script for a cartoon about a mafioso fish called the Godfather. Not
quite
Robert De Niro.' He lit a cigarette.
Jane giggled and felt sufficiently emboldened to probe further. 'But why have you changed your name since you came back? And why,' she was unable to stop herself blurting out, 'didn't you get in touch with me?'
'I haven't changed my name,' said Tom. 'Charlie Seton is the name I write under. Always has been. My
nom de plume!
So that explained why she could never find him in the bookshops, thought Jane. 'And in answer to your other question,' he said lightly, 'I didn't really see the point in coming round to see you at the flat in which you live with your boyfriend. Cup of tea?'
'But ... I don't. I mean, I do. But he doesn't. Any more. That is.' A slight frown furrowed Tom's forehead. Jane wondered if he had understood her. The second cue for him to gather her into his arms and whoop . . . passed. They were still, it seemed, in different films.
'Why did you move in here?' Jane asked awkwardly, feeling so
Brief Encounter
her throat ached. Of all the ecstatic reunion scenarios with Tom she had imagined, she had overlooked the possibility of this one.
'It's a good place to write.' Tom filled an old Russell
322
Hobbs kettle at the sink. 'A real slice of old Soho. It's very stimulating.'
Jane's thoughts automatically flickered to Busty Models upstairs. She wondered
how
stimulating, exactly.
'Although,' Tom added, reading her thoughts, 'you have to be careful when you live below Busty Models. Looking up at the window is distracting. Most of the girls who work that pavement don't wear any underwear, and I can see straight up their skirts from here.'