A Certain Chemistry (22 page)

You won’t be surprised to discover that George’s signing was nothing like this at all. The shop was simply churning with people. There were far more than could fit inside. The pavement was completely blocked by those waiting to be let in; they were craning their necks and regularly pushing themselves up onto tiptoes to see over heads and deeper into the shop, desperate for a glimpse to sustain them until the big moment. A couple of police officers were there. One was talking into his radio, and I wondered whether there was going to be some trouble with the crowd causing an obstruction—the police officially intervening because of such a problem was just the kind of unfortunate event about which the McAllister & Campbell publicity department would be overjoyed.

It was simply idiotic that all these people had turned up just to see George. What was actually
annoying,
though, was that they were preventing me from getting in to see George. I tried the line “Let me in, I work for the publisher” on the people at the door, but they weren’t convinced enough to let me pass. (Though I admit that, when they asked the question “And what are you here for?” I really ought to have come up with a better reply than “It’s a secret.”) In the end, I couldn’t think of any other option but to phone George’s mobile. Fortunately, she had it on and she sent someone out to get me.

She
was
sitting behind a table with a pile of books stacked to one side, but nothing else matched my vision—as I knew it wouldn’t where she was concerned. She was a celebrity, not an author. Instead of customers being repelled, they all wriggled to get next to her. Not simply out of competition to get their book signed first, but out of a raw desire to be closer to her, physically. While maintaining their places in the queue, they still shuffled and leaned and pressed to be as near to her as they possibly could be at any given moment. Those who’d reached the front and were standing there—
with
her—exchanging words, smiled. All of them. Male and female, young and old: as soon as she looked at them directly—personally—they smiled. And it wasn’t even a smile of pleasure, I don’t think. It seemed reflexive—I reckon if you’d asked them
not
to smile when she looked at them, they really couldn’t have managed it. It was an offering to her, an offering that they, unconsciously, felt compelled to make. It was creepy. Something else that was creepy was standing beside her: Fiona.

It’s not at all unknown for the area sales rep to go to a signing with an author, I knew, but I didn’t imagine that the head of publicity would go along (and on a Saturday too) very often. Fiona had obviously awarded herself the job. I could just see her saying, “We need to show George that we’re giving one hundred percent, so I think
I
should accompany her.” Meaning, really, that she wanted to stand there beside her: “Look. Georgina Nye—and
I’m with her
—I must be pretty great too, then, right?”

I didn’t want to get in the way, so I walked over to stand with Fiona, behind the table. (As I passed George, she flicked her eyes up at me and smiled. Just for a fraction of a second, but it was enough to make something in me start to hum.) Fiona looked at me evenly as I approached and said, “Hello, Tom. What are you doing here?,” her intonation wavering uncertainly between contempt and suspicion.

“I just thought . . .” I began, but as I started to reply, she took several steps back away from me. This somewhat threw me. It was rather like those scenes in Mafia movies where they’ve arranged to have someone killed: they meet, nothing overtly threatening, but then the one who’s organized the hit steps back, because he knows someone is about to appear and rake the person he’s talking to with machine-gun fire. Would Fiona have me killed simply because I’d turned up unexpectedly at a book signing? It was certainly the kind of thing that would be good to have on her CV if she went for a publicity job elsewhere. I glanced over my shoulder, quickly scanning the crowd for Joe Pesci. Fiona stared at me and wordlessly folded her arms—adopting the traditional “Well—I’m waiting” stance. It finally became clear that she just wanted us to stand farther away from George so that the book-buying public couldn’t hear what we were saying. (The implication of this, naturally, being: “Because, Tom, I judge it highly likely that you’ll say something inappropriate.”) I sighed to myself and walked forward to where she was now standing.

“I just thought”—if Fiona had any sense of humor
at all,
she’d have taken another several steps backwards at this point; she didn’t—“I’d drop in and see how it was going,” I said.

Fiona nodded. Then, still nodding, said, “Why?”

“Why not?”

“Good point. I mean, it’s not busy at all, is it? Why doesn’t absolutely everyone who fancies dropping by wander in?”

“We’re not talking about everyone. It’s just me. I’m not going to make any difference.”

“Hff.” She gave a tiny, bitter laugh. “That’s what people say about cars and the ozone layer.”

“You drive that big, blue cabriolet thing, Fiona—I came here on the bus.”

“Jesus—I was just speaking metaphorically. I don’t give a shit about the fucking ozone layer, do I? I was simply using that as a comparison.”

“Oh, right,” I said placidly. She really was very easy to wind up: I can’t imagine why I used to think her so unassailably cool and imperious. Maybe she was losing it, or perhaps it was that I’d matured as a person. Whatever. Either way I didn’t have any desire to argue with her; all I wanted to do was hang around until George had finished. I changed the subject.

“The reviews have been good,” I said. “You must be pretty happy with the way it’s all going.” I used a kind of congratulatory tone, hoping she’d pick up that I was being positive in a general way—a way that very much included her—rather than merely implying I’d done a good job with the writing. Fortunately, I don’t think the idea that good reviews were anything to do with me even crossed her mind; my role had ended with delivery; everything beyond that was down to her.

“Yes,” she replied, noticeably loosening. “It’s been a book that’s resisted pigeonholing . . .” This, I must make it clear so you don’t misunderstand her meaning, was said with a concerned frown. A book that resists pigeonholing is Marketing’s worst fear. In fact, if an editor gave someone in Marketing
two
pigeonholing-resistant books in a single year, he’d probably find himself up in front of an industrial tribunal on a harassment charge. The bulk of Marketing’s job is concerned with actively pigeonholing a book as comprehensively and narrowly as possible; they must convince everyone—the booksellers and the public—that it’s
precisely
the same as whatever other book has recently been a huge success. Fiona continued, “but I’ve actually made it work for us. What we’ve got, effectively, is
two
books, and everyone is pretending to buy one of them—the feminist treatise—so they can read the other—the showbiz autobiography. We’ll be number one for
weeks
. I bet they’ll use what we’ve done here as a model for celebrity autobiographies for the next two hundred years.” I waited for her to follow that final sentence with a smile or something, but, nope—she really meant it, apparently.

“Good work,” I said, not caring about anything but when George would be finished. She continued to sign books and exchange a few words with the public for what struck me as a creeping age. The event had been designed to run over by half an hour so that George could visibly insist on continuing when it was announced that the signing had finished. This she did, but finally, amid much moaning from the punters, it had to be brought to an end because George “had another engagement.”

Fiona escorted George to a room beyond the public area of the shop, and I went along with them. George then had a little chat with the staff. I glanced at my watch and tried to calculate how long these courtesies needed to continue before, without anyone being offended, they could all just piss off so I could fuck George like a howling, maniac coyote.

“Well,” Fiona cut in at last, “I’m afraid you have to leave now, George. The cab’s waiting to take you.”

“Oh, okay, thanks,” George replied, and then she turned to me. “So, Tom . . .”

“George,” I replied with a broad grin.

She held out her hand. I looked down at it; I thought that she was perhaps showing me something, that it was swollen from signing books, maybe, or, I don’t know, that she’d had a tattoo done. Then I realized she was holding it out so that I could shake it.

She might as well have simply punched it into my face.

Never mind that, just a few hours ago, we’d been on intimate-enough terms for me to keep needing to lift my head up slightly in order to be able to take a breath—even excluding that, this was an unmistakable personal rejection. At the edge of my vision I saw Fiona widen her eyes with surprise and then allow herself a smile.

Men and women kiss each other’s cheeks in publishing—it’s how we know we work in a creative field. You don’t have to be great friends or anything—it’s just like saluting in the army or the strictly defined forms of address used in parliamentary debate. It’s what separates us, as a community, from people who slaughter pigs for a living or work in building societies. If you don’t like someone very much, you might just kiss the air, or only one cheek, or even simply walk away. You don’t
shake their hand,
though. Christ. Why didn’t she just pull a disgusted face while poking me with a stick?

In a mute daze, I didn’t reach out and grab her hand so much as simply watch my own unrelated-to-me arm do it on autopilot.

“Thanks for all the work you’ve done,” she said. “I really appreciate the effort you’ve put in and the time you’ve taken to get things right.” I wasn’t listening. At first I wasn’t listening because I was too shocked by the completely unexpected insult of having my hand shaken, but this faded. I noticed that George wasn’t just holding my hand. While my hand remained in hers, her thumb was gently stroking my wrist. And when, realizing this, I raised my eyes, I found that hers were there to look into them unwaveringly. She was trying to be very formal and distant for the people there, while making it quite clear to me how she felt. This was a fantastic relief. And
tremendously
exciting—everyone watching us but unaware of our feelings. This was
great
.

Oh, and it was also not working.

That’s to say, I think it was working with regard to the few bookshop staff who were there, but Fiona had begun to peer at us with a curious expression on her face. I don’t know whether she’d picked up something in our body language too, or whether she actually caught sight of George wooing my wrist, but I glanced across at her and saw that her former expression of schadenfreude had given way to suspicious peering. I hastily pulled my hand away from George’s and said, “Well—keep in touch!” as you would to a couple from Goldalming you’d met on holiday.

Fiona stepped forward and, placing a guiding hand on George’s arm, said, “We’d better get to that cab, George,” while giving me a penetrating stare. They left together, briskly, but just beyond the doorway, where no one else could see, George glanced back at me and mouthed, “I’ll call you.” I grinned delightedly and raised my hand. Fiona looked back at this point, so I turned it into a little wave to her that was the single most unconvincing thing since the dawn of the universe. She looked at me, at George, at me again, narrowed her eyes, and then continued to the cab.

Maybe she thought something suspicious was going on, but she couldn’t know precisely what it was, much less have any proof of it. And anyway, even if she did, what could she do about it?

I started to make my way home but had to stop and return to town again. Luckily, I remembered in time that I’d told Sara I needed to buy a few things, so it’d look odd if I came back without anything at all. Back in town, I ran into the two nearest shops and hurriedly bought a packet of antidiarrhea tablets and a Swiss Army penknife, then returned to the bus stop energized by my narrow escape.

Actually, I also bought a packet of cigarettes and a lighter.

I smoked half a cigarette while waiting for the bus to arrive—smoked it nervously. I held it down by my side in between drags, in the schoolboy style. My eyes darted around; I was fearful of being spotted by someone who knew Sara. It was an edgy and uncomfortable experience, smoking that cigarette . . . yet, curiously, one that I preferred to the idea of not smoking it.

When I got back home, Sara heard me opening the front door and shouted from the kitchen, “Tom? Is that you?”

“Yeah.”

She remained out of sight. “Georgina Nye in a cab yesterday, then, eh?” she called. “Already at it like rabbits in the backseat, so God knows what went on in her hotel room . . .”

My response to hearing this wasn’t emotional, or even broadly psychological; it was overridingly physical. I don’t want to go into specifics.

I stood in the hallway, completely still apart from a slight wobbling at the knees, staring at the doorway into the kitchen. I felt as though the kitchen itself had spoken through its open-doorway mouth. Sara was no mere mortal now; she had been transformed into a vengeful spirit, a disembodied force that communicated with mankind via the oracle of my kitchen. Something was wrong, though. No, hold on, that’s ambiguous; what I mean is that something wasn’t right. There was an awkward juxtaposition—elements of this didn’t fit together properly. I don’t know whether my silence made Sara poke her head out and look at me, or whether she was attracted by the deafening, wet thud that was the sound of my stomach turning over with fear. Whatever it was, her face appeared in the doorway and I saw what it was that was making the situation feel as though it had been incorrectly assembled. She was grinning. That had been what felt curious about her words—they’d been delivered with a playful, laughing tone. Now, the thought that Sara had discovered my infidelity and found it amusing did wander through my mind, but it found nowhere to stay. Every respectable synapse slammed shut its door and drew its curtains at the approach of this insane, pestilent concept. Sara standing there, tutting and ruffling my hair, as she said, “Been fucking Georgina, then? Och, you wee lovable rogue, you” wasn’t a picture that stayed in focus for very long. So, I was at a bit of a loss here.