The Bulgari Connection (17 page)

I owe Ethel.

Ethel nurtured me and answered for me until my wits were back and I stopped the weeping, which was when, on Ethel's advice, I stopped taking the tranquillisers. We were locked up in our cells for sometimes seventeen or eighteen hours a day. The trick was, I learned, to think in terms of ‘we' not ‘me', and the authorities as ‘them'. The attempt to see yourself as apart, as some kind of specially sensitive and innocent victim of circumstances, was pointless. I'd been in with the M and M's, the murderers and molesters, the really spooky ones, for a couple of weeks, but they must have decided I was harmless and moved me out of that wing and in with the petty offenders, the ones who'd been through the magistrates' courts, not the High Courts: forty-year-olds in for brawling and seventeen-year-olds for shop-lifting lipsticks: lots for drug offences, and one seventeen-year-old with a month-old baby now in care, in for three months for stealing a prawn cocktail.
‘The magistrate had it in for me: I had him in the back of a car once, the filthy mean old git
.' We could look at TV, I got to know Richard and Judy well. We could go to cookery and childcare classes: everyone did their best but the sum of anyinstitution is always worse than the sum of its parts. The place smelt of urine and disinfectant and was never quiet: even at three in the morning sudden animal shrieks and bellows and wails would shake the air, born of rage or despair. There was a male guard everyone hated who did random strip-searching: he had a fleshy face and piggy eyes and a slack body and he'd look at us with contempt and desire, both. Ethel said, ‘Think of him with no clothes on,' which made me giggle. I owe Ethel all right.

All the same. When Walter and I went round to Tavington Road and asked Mr Zeigler for Harry Bountiful's tape of Walter's encounter with Doris he said he'd given it to Ethel to take round to me. And there was no sign of Ethel in the flat or out of it, and her suitcase was gone. And Walter said sadly he supposed she'd use it for blackmail. I'd rashly told Ethel the story of Walter, Lady Juliet, the portrait and the Bulgari jewels of Doris's desire. She had seen the portrait on the easel. And of course she already knew about Barley and Doris Dubois, from the time when we were both in prison and frankly I could talk about little else. She had told me that the cure for one man is another man and she had been right. Embezzler and fraudster Ethel might be, and an outcast of society, but she was wise and, I had thought, good.

‘She won't do that to me,' I said. ‘Not Ethel. She's my friend.' ‘Oh yes she would,' said Walter. ‘I know life, I know what people do. If they pray not to be led into temptation, it's because temptation is what they can't resist. My father told me that.'

‘Oh Walter,' I said. ‘You sound so old. Just like your father.' ‘And you're so young and full of hope,' he said, rather dryly. And I could see that if it went on like this I would lose him. He needed me to be worldly-wise.

‘Doris, listen to me,' said Barley to Doris over breakfast at Claridges. He had insisted on bacon and eggs with fried bread, sausages and tomatoes. She was horrified, but he said he had a hard day in front of him. Breakfast arrived, not on a large tray but on a trolley with heated plates and metal covers, which had to be wheeled into the room and served by waiters. ‘Are you really going on with this Leadbetter business? Because I have reason to believe he isn't going to win the Turner Prize, and you like me can afford to be wrong about a few things but not about everything. Just don't enthuse too wildly about him.' She studied him from beneath her fringe of wild hair. She had not had it cut recently. ‘Barley,' she said. ‘You know one or two things about art since I have taken you in hand, but not enough to know this. Who have you been speaking to? It could be that bitch Lady Juliet, who hates me; it could be your ex-wife Grace who's shacked up with next year's winner, Walter Wells. Or it could be Flora Upchurch.'

‘It's none of these people,' he said, but she was not a good person to lie to. He had lied to Grace with impunity, and though she had often known he was lying, she had usuallybeen prepared to accept his judgement, that the lie would do less harm than the truth. Grace could tolerate what Doris could not, that we all move in a world full of less than perfect solutions, of least worst options.

Doris yawned in a languorous way and said, ‘Darling, I know perfectly well that you had lunch with Flora at the Ivy, and that you chose not to tell me about it.'

And instead of being angry, and barely waiting for the last of the room-service staff to leave, she dragged him to the bed and was so enthusiastic and sudden in her lovemaking that he did not have time to be apprehensive, and performed to her evident satisfaction, and his own great relief, before he had time to think, or worry. ‘How did you know?' he asked.

‘No-one goes to the Ivy for secrecy,' she said. ‘They go to be seen.'

‘Flora only wanted me to warn you about Leadbetter,' Barley said.

‘No she didn't,' said Doris. ‘She wants her job back. Well, she can have it.'

Afterwards she wanted to go down to Bulgari to hurry them up about her necklace, but Barley, emboldened by his protein and fat-rich breakfast, said he couldn't spare the time, and added as an afterthought that she was not to go down there to give Jasmine Orbachle a hard time. ‘Otherwise what?' asked Doris, eyes narrowed. ‘Otherwise nothing,' said Barley, prudently, thinking he had got away with quite enough for one day, and so he had.

Doris went straight to the studio instead of spending the morning on the phone and shopping, which put her in abad mood. When she got to reception there were two visitors waiting to see her. A plain, spotty woman who had obviously nothing to do with the arts or the media, and a rather glam man from abroad with a camel hair suit and a gold tiepin in the shape of Concorde. They introduced themselves as Ethel and Hashim and said they would like a word with her in private. Doris said she was very, very busy and perhaps they could make an appointment. They said no, it was in her interest to see them now. They were wearing the security badges given out at the front desk so Doris assumed they had at least some kind of clearance. She took them through into the studio, and on to the set. She had found in the past that if you spoke to bailiffs – her spending habits had in the past led her into some financial difficulty – on set, that is to say in the world according to TV, with its great dim-vaulted ceilings above slung with gantries, its brilliant, hot artificial lights below, duck-boarded electrical cables tripping up the unwary, and then (cynosure of all eyes) the glowing harmonies of the set itself: the glossy table, unnaturally clean, the comfortable armchairs, and the sense of the whole world watching – that they lost the thread of what they were after, and would often simply stumble from the place in search of reality and sanity, leaving Doris in peace.

She had a feeling that these two betokened trouble, though exactly what she could not be sure. Perhaps to do with something going on at Wild Oats? The architect and designer were balking at the deadline of December twelfth, now only two weeks away, and she had made her lawyer write stiff letters to them, explaining in no uncertain terms that according to the terms of their contract – yes, certainly in the small print, but surely they read the small print? She always did – if they did not finish in time they would get no more money at all from her, and would be obliged to remit such funds as she had alreadypaid over to them. And that since also, under the terms of the contract, if they brought in new builders they were obliged to pay any excess from their own pockets, they would be best advised to put pressure on Belgradia Builders to deliver.

Barley was going to be sixty on the twelfth of December and she loved Barley and would give him a birthday to remember.

But her horoscope in the
Daily Mail
had warned her against any extreme action in defence of the righteousness of her cause, saying the velvet glove was always better than the iron fist, and though Doris had never before found this to be the case, she rather trusted the
Mail
‘s astrologer and so was going a little prudently. She was hopping mad about Jasmine letting her down and pretty sure that Flora had had a hand in it, and totally enraged that Barley had taken Flora to the Ivy so sneakily but she had been very velvet-gloved about it all.

Had she not? The
Mail
would be proud of her. And she would be velvet-gloved with this pair too. People out of the blue, events that surprised you, were often sent by Fate, she found, either for good or bad. The Bulgari people had stood out against her wishes, which had certainly surprised her, but see how it had led to her encounter with Walter Wells and the revenge on Lady Juliet which she had in mind. If you couldn't achieve an effect one way you could in another. She must remember to confirm with the Manhatt. Gallery that they would be there to film a week before Christmas. She kept her promises. Walter Wells would be famous by next Spring, and as enamoured of her, Doris, as Barley had ever been. She would see how the Opera Noughtie project worked out before she decided whether or not to keep Barley on as a husband.

These days it didn't do to be seen to have affairs: this was the age of openness, secrecy was a no-no. You could achieve legitimacy in your sex life, and variety as well, so long as you paid off the lawyers.

‘This is Hashim,' said the one who called herself Ethel. She looked vaguely familiar. ‘He is a member of the Royal Family of Jordan. He is descended from the Hashemites, from which the word assassin comes.'

‘How very interesting,' said Doris, casually. Did he carry a knife, a gun? ‘I did a programme on the art treasures of Jordan once, and quite magnificent they were. How can I help you?' ‘We'd like you to listen to this tape,' said Ethel. ‘I expect with all this equipment about you can sort that out. It's a tape of you and Walter Wells having a conversation, well, kind of, with you making all the running, and I don't think you'd want your bosses to hear it. Or your nice new husband, for that matter.'

‘I see,' said Doris, thinking fast. Her flat was bugged. Why? How? Who? It was routine enough for news-anchors and political correspondents, and no-one cared much, but arts presenters did not usually warrant such attention. Probably a private matter.

Grace? Possibly. Well, an eavesdropper hears no good of themselves. And at least she had got the old bat to sit up and take notice of something. ‘How much do you want for it?'

No point in beating about the bush. Barley would probably pay up, anyway. If the worst came to the worst she could accuse him of fancying Flora and say she was driven into someone else's arms by her extreme distress. Actually, she would hate it if there was anything going on, really hate it. She probably did love Barley, just a bit. It was odd how these things crept up on you. She could do so much morefor Barley than Grace ever could. Why couldn't Grace just accept it?

Hashim shifted in his deep armchair, the one designed to make guests feel helpless, and the gold of his Concorde tiepin caught the light and glittered. If he had been a guest Make-Up would have asked him to remove it before the show. But he wasn't a guest, he was a blackmailer. Sometimes it was a little difficult to remember what was real life and what was studio, and when one intruded into the other like this you could feel a trifle disoriented yourself. He was sweating a little, his dark eyes unreadable. She hoped he was emotionally stable.

Ethel was more sensible: she perched on the edge of her chair ready to take off at any minute and didn't sink back into it, as he did. Trust a man. She didn't think they could have got through security if they had guns or knives; the metal detector would have picked them up, but they were a bit dozy downstairs and who would like to stop a man with a gold Concorde tiepin if he walked round it not through it. The rich can pass through the eye of security more easily than the poor. And the Ethel creature could easily pass herself off as someone in accounts, and get waved through. She might even
be
in accounts, which could explain both why she looked familiar and had got through the checks. Personally Doris wouldn't trust her further than she would throw her – not far, because she was a good size fourteen – she was just the kind of mousy type who runs off with the Pensioners' Social Fund to go on some ghastly holiday in the Bahamas. That being the sum of her aspirations.

Ah-hah! Ethel Handy, of course she'd looked familiar. In all the newspapers a couple of years back. Headlines because of what the Judge had said: Lord Longue, the same Judge as had tried Grace for trying to kill her:
‘Much as I pity you, today's woman should be able to stand firm against blackmail. There is nothing to be ashamed of in nudity. It is something to be proud of
.' Well, unless you were a size twelve or above. But it had given the feature writers a field day. What is there left to hide? That you'd pay good money to hide?

‘We don't want money,' said the convicted fraudster, now. What little squinny eyes she had, poor thing. ‘All we want is for you to leave Walter Wells alone. You do anything more to upset my friend Grace and we're broadcasting this on the Internet, with copies to the regular newspapers. They'll love it.' Doris stretched out a hand to grab the tape. She couldn't stop herself.

‘You're welcome to it,' said Ethel. ‘We've got lots of copies back home. In fact we'd like you to keep this one. What was in the fizzy orange? Rohypnol?'

‘What was it Judge Tobias Longue said?' asked Doris, in control of herself again, and she leant back in her chair with her hands clasped behind her neck, as if unafraid of any attack. Body language was always important.
‘"Today's woman should stand firm against blackmail?”
He was quite right. She should. And I will. Do your worst. Broadcast and be damned.'

She was gratified to see Ethel looking mortified. ‘It's the way they say,' said Doris, openly yawning. Attack is the best form of defence. ‘A prison sentence doesn't stop when the gates clang open. Poor Ethel.' She smiled at Hashim. ‘Did you know your friend was a jailbird? Four years for a truly mean fraud? I hope the tiepin isn't real because she's only after one thing. Money. You'd better look after yourself. She's a monster.'