The Enemy of the Good (12 page)

The opening hymn was
The Lord Is My Shepherd
, and she relished its
familiar
cadences. Her last visit to church had been at Beckley the previous
Christmas
, when so many of the carols had been in medieval French that she had asked, only half-frivolously, if they were subject to an EU directive. She smiled at the recollection before sitting for the address, feeling a rush of compassion for Clement as he squirmed beneath the Dean’s plaudits. During the second hymn, the Dean escorted her father behind the altar, from where their
disembodied
voices rang out like airport announcements. After offering a prayer of dedication, her father drew back the curtain so discreetly that she longed for the resounding crack of a champagne bottle. She stared at the window, keen to inspect the cause of the controversy, but the sun was so bright that the glass looked molten and the design was obscured.

Subsequent events occurred too fast for her to be sure of the sequence. She heard – or, rather, saw – a smash when a stone shot through the glass.

‘Is there a doctor… anyone… a doctor?’ The Dean’s voice, shocked from its neutrality, filled her with fear for her father. She ran out of the pew, stumbling as her heel caught on a time-worn memorial, and entered the chapel to find him lying covered in splinters like a felled shop-window dummy. Her instant assumption, more reflex than thought, that he must be dead was belied by a faint moan. She stood transfixed as a quartet of doctors hurried to his aid, while a dentist, doing nothing to confound the profession’s reputation for perversity, offered himself in reserve.

‘The ambulance is on its way,’ an official shouted, just as the doctors agreed that it was safe to lift the patient on to a chair. A palpable sense of relief spread through the onlookers, pierced by a loud scream from Karen, whom she calmed with a shake and a hug.

A pack of ghouls descended on the chapel, hovering behind the rail as though distance ensured discretion. A photographer with fewer scruples snapped furiously at her father, who sat like a deposed monarch, a glass splinter the sole relic of his crown. An indignant choirman saw off the photographer but failed to spot the choirboy who was taking pictures on his mobile phone. She was about to object when she was called on to console Carla, whose attempt to rescue the fragments had been thwarted by an overzealous policeman.

The ambulance crew arrived, exuding a welcome air of professionalism. She was relieved by her father’s reluctance to lie on the stretcher although, with her own legs threatening to give way, she would have happily taken his place. The Dean led the procession through the cloisters like a party of monks spiriting away an ancient abbot at the Reformation. They reached the close where, to her dismay, they found themselves face to face with a handful of pickets. It beggared belief that any of this ragged bunch, who lowered their voices in deference to the stretcher while keeping their placards defiantly raised, could have thrown the stone. She longed to confront them with the innocent victim of their violence but suspected that, given their loathing of his views, they would regard it as divine providence. Meanwhile, their primary target eluded them, making straight for his car. She followed suit and,
stopping
only to collect Carla, Karen and Frank, set off for the hospital.

The radio came on along with the engine, bringing a stream of stories about a Hindu riot in Kashmir, a suicide bomb in Baghdad and a victory for the Religious Right in their advocacy of ‘intelligent design’ in Ohio. It felt as if the attack on the window were part of a wider struggle, although she was unable to determine quite what it was or on which side she stood. Then a lorry pulled out ahead, forcing her to focus on the road.

At the hospital she sat with her mother and Clement while her father was examined. The wait dragged interminably and she was desperate for a cigarette, but the fear of being found wanting kept her rooted to her seat. She attempted conversation, only to find that, having skirted the broken glass in the cathedral, she was treading on more here.

‘Don’t worry, Ma, he’ll be fine. The wound’s superficial.’

‘Nothing’s superficial at eighty-two, darling. Not even shock.’

Silence descended again, although now her apprehension was tinged with guilt, which she sought to deflect on to Clement for his blatant disregard of other peoples’ feelings. She longed to make him see that, rightly or wrongly, not everyone thought the same way as he did. He professed to be a liberal but he was just as doctrinaire as any of his critics. Not content with having made religion a seaside sideshow with his cut-out Christ, he had made it a
locker-room
peepshow with his nude one.

‘You don’t realise that some people take their faith seriously,’ she said, as he tore into the fundamentalists.

‘Yes, and I’m one of them,’ he replied, ‘I just don’t take it simplistically.’

After an hour, a junior doctor with a painting-by-numbers smile came to tell them that he had removed all the glass from her father’s skull and sent him down for an X-ray. The news that, on his return, they would be able to take him home reduced her mother to tears. Clement moved to hug her, leaving Susannah feeling painfully left out, until her mother’s mention of Mark
readmitted
her to the family circle, albeit a circle of grief. She caught Clement’s eye and was comforted to know that they shared the same image: of a brother dying not in the clinical efficiency of a Midlands hospital but the teeming chaos of Mumbai, with no one but a consular official by his side.

Her father’s arrival saved her from sinking into depression. His head was as heavily bandaged as for a farce. Her mother echoed the doctor’s
prescription
of rest, insisting on an immediate return to Beckley. While Clement rounded up the canteen contingent, Susannah fussed over her father,
extracting
his promise to take things easy over the coming weeks. When everyone was assembled, she took her leave of her parents and, feeling that more had been shattered than the window, bustled Carla into the car.

However late she had gone to bed, Susannah aimed to be at her desk by eight. It was her private time, when she could make plans and study
proposals
without having to field calls from clients and questions from staff. This morning, despite the memos and faxes piled in her tray and the email locked in the deceptive blankness of her monitor, she needed a chance to take stock. After the dramas at the cathedral of which she had been a mere onlooker, it was crucial to remind herself that in her own world she was a player. So, doubly grateful for her solitude, she ran her eyes down the rows of posters for past and present projects and the shelves of awards for successful campaigns. She picked up the endearingly misspelt invitation from Precious to spend a weekend at a health farm and, for all that the prospect of stripping off in front of a taut and tattooed rap queen filled her with terror, she relished the token of respect.

The events of the previous day preoccupied her and she was anxious to check up on her father. She began to dial Beckley, before realising that at
half-past
eight her parents might still be asleep, so instead she called Clement for whom she felt no such qualms. Reaching his machine, she left a message of support with a promise to ring back later. Then, switching on her computer, she scrolled through the stack of email that had accumulated while she was at Roxborough. At the top was one from Wilson Tierney’s New York
management
asking for reviews of his recent UK tour, evidence that her strategy of selective quotes had failed. Wilson, who had split from Alice’s Kitchen not long after she left Chris, had been her very first client. He had kept faith with her throughout his glory days and, even though his star had waned, his picture remained in pride of place on her wall.

She searched for his file in growing frustration, regretting that she had ever been persuaded to have the room feng shued. She extended her search to the outer office, where she found no one but Matt, whose files, along with the rest of his life, were electronic. Although she was fond of Matt, she was never wholly at ease with him. Like the rest of the team, he haunted media hotspots, cultivating admen and journalists, but he did it all online. Despite the lip-service she paid to the new technology, she feared that it was leaving her behind.

She strolled to his desk and glanced at his screen, her dread of discovering something unsavoury allayed by evidence of a late-night/early-morning
conversation
with one of his contacts in LA.

‘Anything interesting?’

‘He claims to have all the dope on the judges for the Grammies but it’s already been leaked to the
Enquirer
. Oh, and you’re not a fan of Brendan O’Neal, are you?’

‘Do I look like a fourteen year-old schoolgirl?’

‘It seems he was rushed in to Cedar Sinai last night for treatment for a gerbil enema.’

‘Gross!’

Susannah shuddered and returned to her desk, answering email until she was summoned to the ten a.m. conference. She knew that several of the staff, including Matt, saw it as a whim they were obliged to humour but, schooled in her father’s methods – the ‘Just call me Edwin,’ addressed to the humblest curate – she set great store by such consultation. Stubbing out her cigarette, she took her seat at the table of three women and eight men. Her early
defiance
of the conventional wisdom that her own sex made the best PRs had long been vindicated. Not only had her gravest crisis – slit wrists and a police inquiry – occurred when a female assistant refused to see that an ageing rock star’s ‘I love you’s’ were as routine in his bed as in his lyrics, but her
happiest
working relationships had been with men. They had repaid her trust and, while she would never have dreamt of abusing theirs, she enjoyed the gossip about ‘Susannah and her boys’. She broke into a smile, which was instantly erased by an image of herself twenty years hence as a sharp-tongued,
chain-smoking
harridan, wearing ever chunkier jewellery, and dyeing her hair some fairground colour in a vain attempt to stop the clock.

‘Shall I fetch you a Perrier, Susannah? You’ve gone red,’ Alison, her
assistant
, asked.

‘I’m just hot. And, no, it’s not my age, Marcus,’ she said, gazing at her newest recruit who, given his youth and inclinations, doubtless regarded any woman over thirty as menopausal.

She turned her attention to Adrian, who announced that he had finished the pitch for the
Reveille
trainers campaign and hoped to run it past her during the morning.

‘It sucks that they’re making us bid for it,’ Matt said. ‘They saw what we could do on the Shaughnassy tour.’

‘Different worlds,’ Adrian replied.

‘Are you sure it’s worth the hassle?’ Davinia asked. ‘There’ll be no chance of any other trainers for two years, when I know for a fact they’re considering us for the new
Nike
.’

‘I’ve sweated blood over this,’ Adrian said. ‘Ben Dutton swears it’s in the bag.’

Susannah expressed faith in both Adrian’s work and his relationship with Dutton, before asking Verity for an update on the aftermath of the Diorama launch.

‘There’s no more talk of a skin graft,’ she replied to general relief. ‘The company have upped the compensation. Signs are she’ll accept.’

‘Amen to that!’ Susannah said. ‘Meanwhile, remember the golden rule. From now on, if anyone asks for a circus theme, make it clowns not fire-eaters. And keep them away from the punch!’

Further damage limitation was required when Robin reported the savage review of the Furry Joists concert in the
Telegraph
, adding that he had already had their irate manager on the phone.

‘What did he expect?’ Susannah asked. ‘I warned him Henty would pan it. He always loathes their stuff. But Jake insisted we invite him. So what exactly does he want us to do?’

‘Get the guy sacked,’ Robin replied.

‘You’re not serious?’

‘He said he’d call back.’

Seconds later the phone rang, prompting claims that the office was bugged. ‘It’s Jake,’ Alison mouthed to a muffled cheer.

Susannah wound up the meeting and took the call at her desk. After
listening
to the manager’s catalogue of complaints, she offered an equally forthright reply. ‘Whether or not you choose to use us again, Jake, is entirely up to you, but I’ve no intention of taking the matter further. Being two minutes late after the interval is hardly a sackable offence.’

‘If you won’t do it, I’ll find myself a PR who will.’

‘Then you’ll find yourself a bad PR.’

Extricating herself from Jake, she embarked on the endless round of phone calls that made up her day. Contrary to the popular belief that she flitted from business lunches to champagne launches to opening night parties, she spent more time on the phone than a telesales operator. She did manage, however, to grab a moment between the editor’s assistant at
Tatler
and an editorial assistant at
Vogue
, a distinction indicative of Precious’s equivocal status, to ring home and ask after her father.

‘He insists he’s fine,’ her mother said. ‘He’s grumbling because I’ve made him spend the day in bed.’

‘Isn’t that a little drastic? I’m not suggesting he go for a five mile hike, but – ’

‘I’m worried. It’s hard to put my finger on what it is exactly, but he’s not himself.’

Susannah tried to reassure her mother, angry with herself for noticing the click of her incoming email and even angrier when, more in her clients’ world than her parents’, she advised her to ‘give him his head’.

At five o’clock, she drove Marcus and Davinia to Woking to see the Atlases, a troupe of male strippers for whom they had been invited to pitch. Although at first mildly amused by her passengers’ ribaldry, she began to dread the
non-stop
innuendo, wondering how much mileage they could extract from signs for
concealed entrances
and
heavy loads
. Worse was to come when they reached the theatre to be greeted by Mandy, the company manager, a bosomy
twenty-five-year-old
with acne scars. Her pretensions were painfully exposed as she led them to the hospitality suite for ‘a light repast in line with the evening’s entertainment’. Given the conversation in the car, Susannah half-expected coq au vin and spotted dick but, to her relief, found falafel, taramasalata and hummus. ‘Atlas,’ Mandy helpfully explained, ‘was Greek.’ Davinia and Marcus fell on the snacks with the relish of those for whom free food was still a novelty. Meanwhile Mandy outlined the Atlases’ many attractions, from customised merchandise to obsessive fans.

‘What marks them out from the competition,’ she said, ‘is that they’re not heterogeneous.’

‘Hetero
geneous
!’ Davinia repeated as Marcus looked up from the olives.

‘We have a black Atlas and a half-caste… that’s a mixed-race one. We even have an Asian Atlas, which is a first. Most of them find it hard to bulk up,’ she added confidentially. ‘What we want, as I’m sure Gaz and Tel have told you, is to take the group up-market. We have an image problem. In a word
tacky
! The appeal is still mainly to socio-economic groups C and D. The boys deserve better.’

‘We do indeed,’ Marcus said.

‘I meant the Atlases,’ Mandy replied with a nervous laugh. ‘You and me, Suze – you don’t mind if I call you Suze, do you?’

‘Be my guest.’

‘She has no side, our Suze,’ Marcus interjected.

‘You and me, if we’re bored of an evening, we can read a book or listen to some classical music or… or paint a picture.’ Davinia choked on a falafel. ‘But these women – the Cs and Ds – what do they have?’

‘
Etch-a-sketch
?’ Marcus suggested.

‘They have us,’ Mandy said, her smile wavering. ‘Which is all well and good. But we want to broaden our appeal. We want the As and the Bs. That’s why we’ve come to you.’

‘I hope we can help,’ Susannah said. ‘But it’s seven thirty. Shouldn’t we…?’

‘Hark at me: talk the legs off an iron pot, so my mother says. Don’t worry, we always go up five minutes late.’ Mandy led them back to the foyer, handing them passes to wear round their necks.

‘Atlas Security Pass,’ Marcus read out. ‘Access all areas.’

‘That’s all areas of the theatre,’ Susannah said dryly.

‘That’s right,’ Mandy said, ‘you’ll need them after the show. I’ve arranged for you to have a meal with some of the boys, if you have time.’

‘We’re night owls,’ Davinia said.

‘I think you’ll be impressed. They’re not what you might imagine. One’s a trainee accountant. Another’s a Christian.’

‘How does he square it with all this?’ Susannah asked, her interest
momentarily
aroused.

‘He says that God doesn’t mind so long as he keeps on his G-string.’

As they edged through the teeming foyer, Marcus faltered on finding that he was the only man in the audience.

‘I feel like the Pope at a bar mitzvah.’

‘Given the way some of these women are eyeing you,’ Susannah said
wickedly
, ‘it won’t just be the liver that’s chopped.’

The show was fast, slick and soulless. The music was so amplified and the audience’s yells so deafening that Susannah longed to fulfil Mandy’s fantasy of socio-economic group A and lie on a sofa listening to Schubert. She
wondered
whether the women were aping men, a verb that felt peculiarly
appropriate
, because they wanted to or because it was expected of them. It was as if the ideal of sexual equality for which her mother and her friends had fought so hard had been for nothing more than the right to shriek ‘Gerremoff’ as crudely as men. The irony was that the evening’s climax was a brutal
reassertion
of male power. Two bikers appeared astride their Harley Davidsons. After taking off maximum clothing with minimum effort, they called for a volunteer. Far from the usual unease at such requests, the entire audience, apart from Susannah herself and a strangely subdued Marcus, jumped up and held out their hands. Having selected their victim, the men flung her between them like a rag doll before thrusting down on her in a simulated rape.
Susannah
was appalled, not least to realise that no one else found it disturbing. The theatre resounded with screams of approval which grew even louder when three policemen strode on and, after subduing the bikers in a desultory
skirmish
, handcuffed them to their machines. They lifted the woman up but, far from helping her, they stripped off their uniforms, twirled their truncheons and took over from the bikers. The routine was greeted with tumultuous applause and, in an attempt to gauge its sincerity, she turned to her
neighbours
, a grandmother, mother and daughter, who all looked the same
indeterminate
age.

‘Did you enjoy that?’ she asked.

‘It was great,’ the mother said.

‘Lucky cow,’ her daughter added, while the grandmother was too overcome to speak.

At the end of the show, Mandy led them to a dressing room smelling strongly of patchouli. They were introduced to the four Atlases who were to join them for dinner which, whether because she no longer felt the need to stick to the Hellenic theme or from the lack of a suitable taverna, Mandy had booked at ‘the best Indian in Woking’. Stifling her distaste in deference to the anomalous Asian, Susannah made her way to a taxi, where she found herself wedged beside a Yorkshire Atlas with blond dreadlocks and thighs as thick as her waist. She was torn between irritation and arousal at his whispered admission that ‘I’m a sucker for older women’, toying with the prospect of a toyboy as he rubbed against her leg. His intimacies increased as he led her to the table where, after a brief discussion of the menu, the company split into four. She awarded Mandy full marks for skill, if not subtlety, at the handpicked choice of escorts: the Asian cowboy cracking jokes and popadoms with Davinia; the mountainous biker relaxing his guard with Marcus; the indefatigable Rock (‘by name and by nature’) paying fulsome tribute to her breasts. ‘36C,’ he judged, with unnerving accuracy. As the meal wore on and his conversational mix of paintball,
high-protein
diets and kung fu movies proved to be even less appetising than the curry, she realised that the price of a gym body was a gym mind. So when the incongruous cuckoo clock struck twelve, she announced that it was time for the London contingent to depart, to be met with diffidence (Davinia) and
brazenness
(Marcus) as they offered to make their own way home.