Beautiful People (10 page)

    She was tall, pale, and glacial, with a long neck, shoulder-length dark hair with a reddish sheen, and very straight shoulders. She had rather hooded eyes and lips—coloured in a dry-looking red lipstick— that seemed always to twist slightly with amusement or disdain.

    How he preferred Georgie's warmth, immediacy, and excitability, even if she had her brittle and fragile moments and, at times, could seem rather unhinged. Unhinged, Richard knew, was how some of his colleagues saw her, and possibly this had been another brake on his progress. Laura, with her icy poise, had more of a power- wife air. On the other hand, she had also managed to produce the two Faugh boys, which Richard felt he would not wish on anyone, even Hugh.

    Many of his young constituents in the housing estates were the sort that only a mother could love, and the fact that no mother ever had only deepened the problem. That such boys and girls were hard to like was no surprise, and Richard, knowing something of their history, treated them with the sympathy all but the hardest cases deserved. But Ivo and Jago's history was one of unremitting privilege, exposed as they had been and were being to the finest teaching and most beautiful environments. None of it seemed to have rubbed off on them however.

    From outside, a tinkle of laughter (Georgie) followed by a cannon- like boom of mirth (Hugh) dragged Richard reluctantly back into the here and now. Georgie had ushered the guests out in the garden to enjoy the warm weather. She had spent some considerable time earlier arranging glasses, nuts, wine-chiller, and corkscrew at just the right angle on the white, cast-iron garden table, the sort, along with the rest of the furniture, that either scraped the patio or put his back out whenever Richard tried to move it.

    Richard, having spun out for as long as possible hanging Laura's wrap in the cloakroom, now had no further excuse not to join them. He descended the steps slowly, sensing this would be his last chance to relax or enjoy anything.

    It was a beautiful summer evening; the warm air was heavy with scent from Georgie's beloved wisteria, snaking along the wall dividing their garden from the neighbours in a discreet mass of lilac flowers and pale-green leaves. The unmown lawn—too late, Richard remembered this was supposed to have been his job—actually looked lush and lyrical in the lowering sunlight, whose yellow glow intensified the youthful green leaves of the old apple tree that stood towards the back of the garden and cast such a useful shadow in the summer over anyone lounging there with the Sunday papers.

    As he crossed the lawn, Richard noted with dislike Faugh's big, tall form, clad, as indeed Richard himself was, in the standard upper-middle-class summer uniform of pale-blue shirt and lightfawn trousers, albeit a more expensive version than his own. This big Faugh form, one hand thrust into a pocket, but not so deeply so as to obscure an obviously expensive watch, was rocking back and forth in appreciation of one of its own jokes or observations.

    "Ha, ha!" boomed Hugh, nodding his big head with its thick black hair. Next to him, Georgie in her white kaftan was evidently engaged in fanning his wonders to a blaze with which even he was satisfied.

    Surging up within Richard came an urge he had not experienced for the last half century at least. The almost overwhelming desire to spit. Firmly suppressing the compulsion, he walked up to the group with a smile.

    "Family Values!" Hugh was orating. "In the end of ends, it's what it all comes down to: Family Values!"

    Richard joined in. "I couldn't agree more. The thing is, what does it mean?" He turned to Hugh. "How would your interpretation of family values be a solution to, say, the increasing problem of bad pupil behaviour in schools, particularly those in poor areas?"

    Hugh swilled down half a glass of Frascati before answering. "Well, it's obvious. We must look to the mothers and fathers to take responsibility. Discipline questions are not something the schools can be expected to solve all by themselves."

    "Yes, I'd agree with that," Richard said, nodding seriously.

    "We must go back to the parents."

    "Absolutely."

    "And sterilise them."

    Richard Fitzmaurice choked on his white wine. "What?"

    "Just think about it." Hugh smiled calmly. "If all women of social classes C, D, and E were sterilised, they could screw whatever drug addicts and wastrels they fancied, and the country and community wouldn't have to tolerate the resulting destructive, disruptive, and invariably stupid offspring." He grabbed a handful of nuts from the table and shoved them in his mouth.

    It was at this point that Georgie returned with another two bottles. "Sausages!" she hissed at Richard, her eyeballs rigid with meaning.

    Torn from the argument, still churning with indignation, he looked at her uncomprehendingly. What did sausages have to do with anything?

    "Sausages!" Georgie squealed, her grip tightening painfully on his forearm. "In the kitchen. Nibbles."

    "Oh. Right. Er…yes. Okay." Still coursing with most unhostlike feelings, Richard fled to the kitchen for the honey-glazed sausages. He found them on the butcher's block in a gold-and-white Meissen bowl that struck him as rather too grand for mere bangers.

    "Here comes my honourable friend!" Hugh declared loudly. "With the sausages, ha, ha! I'm peckish."

    Georgie turned. Her welcoming smile was only half-formed before it disappeared into a worried frown. "You've forgotten the dip!" she hissed. "And the napkins! The ones with the fleur-de-lys pattern."

    Richard fled back into the house, taking the bowl of sausages with him. "Hey!" Hugh called after him in alarm. "Leave the bangers, old chap." But Richard, pretending not to have heard, had gained the house by then.

    The sausage victory, he now discovered, was a Pyrrhic one. He lingered over the napkin hunt as long as he decently could. Finally, with dips and the requested fleur-de-lys finger-wipers, he emerged to find Georgie waxing lyrical about the Tuscan farmhouse they had rented for the holidays. Richard instantly felt the tremor in his knees and feet that always meant danger, a feeling that increased as Hugh turned towards him, his large white teeth gaining a bloody-red flash from the sunset.

    "Jolly decent of your wife to ask us to Italy with you, old chap. We'd love to come with you—as your guests," Hugh hastily added, with emphasis.

    The sun chose this moment to finally sink behind the neighbours' wall, and the evening suddenly felt dark and cold. The aghast Richard hardly noticed, absorbing as he was the fact that Hugh had used the time he had spent looking for napkins to make further progress in his life's work of securing complimentaries. Far from demonstrating there was no such thing as a free lunch, Hugh had now abundantly illustrated the fact there was such a thing as a free holiday too.

A frown creased Arlington Shorthouse's tanned, lean, and strangely elastic face. Behind his thick lenses with their distinctive heavy black frames, the small grey eyes narrowed with annoyance. He shifted his short body irritably in his chair. As well as cross, Arlington felt tired. It was only seven in the morning, but it had already been a long day.

    Arlington worked twenty-four seven, three-sixty-five. He was always open for business. Even, quite literally, on the operating table. He'd tried to take calls once while having his appendix removed, but the surgeon had snatched away his mobile. Arlington hadn't been back to that hospital since; the surgeon had obviously been in the pay of a rival studio.

    Arlington cleared his throat and drummed his fingers irritably on his desk. He hated it when the studio made turkeys; they felt like a personal failure. And the people who were in them made him feel the same way. They made him feel small, a sensation he particularly hated as Arlington was indeed small. Very small. Short by name, short by nature. "Pocket rocket," the fourth of his six wives had called him, immediately before finding herself in the middle of one of the most acrimonious divorces in show-business history.

    Arlington had tried to conquer his small height the way climbers try to conquer Everest. He had tried big hair, lifts in his shoes, even hats. Chairs, in the end, were the only satisfactory answer: while everyone else in his office had to sit on seats at a level normally associated with nursery schools, the throne-like construction behind Arlington's burr-walnut desk had special padded cushions to raise him to a comparatively towering height. As the effect was lost whenever he stood up, Arlington sat on this chair behind his desk for entire meetings. He was careful to drink little beforehand. Comfort breaks severely compromised his status.

    From the summit of his chair, Arlington could look out across his meeting room like the commander of a tank. He did so now, and those present stiffened in response. There was about the room, with its grey carpet, grey smoked-glass walls, and framed maps of the world showing the cities in which NBS's films had opened and what the box office takings were, an air of the war cabinet. And this was appropriate, as to all intents and purposes, a war room was what it was. Arlington regarded himself as being in a permanent state of hostilities with all the other studio heads in the world and anyone else who dared to challenge him.

    Mitch Masterson was among those present. He was at the boardroom table, his large, plump bottom crammed uncomfortably into one of the diminutive chrome chairs beneath the unusually low, black-ash table surface. He was trying hard not to look how he felt, like a dad at a kindergarten parents' evening. Mitch didn't have kids, thank God, nor did he want them. His clients were his children, although not in the nice way that sounded. They were like children in the sense that they were unreasonable, endlessly demanding, spoilt, violent, prone to screaming and tantrums, and could not be trusted to behave.

    She had a meeting with the head of the studio, her ultimate boss, Mitch was thinking, and was she on time? Was she even in the building? The hell she was. Great start, he thought, trying to shove his fat and trapped legs into a more comfortable position below the tiny table. He looked at the other men doubled painfully up on the miniature furniture for support, but they stared back at him coldly. Arlington Shorthouse's lieutenants, they clearly knew, like everyone else, that if you wanted to make it big at NBS, you had to think small.

    "I'm so sorry Belle's late, Mr. Shorthouse," Mitch assured him, the pain in his voice in every way reflecting the pain he felt physically. His awkward sitting position meant that cramp was now paralysing his leg. It had also totally creased and screwed up the new Armani suit he had bought for the meeting, inside whose lined interior he felt great patches of nervous sweat spreading from beneath his armpits. He'd put a Hollywood-power-meeting level of deodorant on as well, but it hadn't seemed to make the slightest difference.

    Arlington Shorthouse ground his veneered teeth and stared at his burr-walnut desk. He tried to still the panic that was rising within him at the thought of all the time he was losing: whole seconds, entire unfilled minutes that he would never get again, and which, no doubt, his rivals at other film companies were using to streak ahead.

    The desk was no comfort however. It was grand, with its green leather top and scrolled gilt handles, and it was even historic, being the desk that all the presidents of the company had used before him. Legendary film stars had signed contracts here. Douglas Fairbanks had even scratched his name in the leather. Belle Murphy had signed here too, and a contract of historically huge proportions. Arlington felt sick at the memory.

    He looked at his Breitling watch and scowled. She was fifteen minutes late now. No one was ever fifteen minutes late for Arlington Shorthouse. No one was ever one minute late for Arlington Shorthouse.

    Something had to be done about Belle Murphy. And would be, today, here in this room, by these people. Arlington, skimming over the wretched Mitch with his cold grey eyes, appraised his henchmen.

    Nearest to him, at the end of the black-ash conference table, sat a dark, handsome man in a red, striped shirt. Arlington's battleshipcoloured gaze raked approvingly over Michael J. Seltzer, NBS's Head of Creative. He was young, good-looking, smart, determined, undoubtedly gifted, and sitting ramrod-straight in his chair, completely focused on the moment. There was a lot about the Head of Creative that reminded the company president of himself at a similar age.

    Next to him sat Chase McGiven: young, restless-looking, and thin-faced, with burning eyes and fashionably cropped dark hair. As NBS's CEO of global communications, he'd come up with some interesting thinking about Belle Murphy. Very interesting thinking indeed.

    Yes, thought Arlington. There a lot about Chase, as well, that reminded him of himself at that age. Not wanting to waste a second, always some plan on the go, some scheme buzzing in his head.

    The final member of the trio was Bob Ricardo, NBS's Head of Finance and the sharpest guy in the business. He looked sharp too, Arlington thought, with his pointy nose, bristly grey hair, surgical-looking rimmed glasses, and sharply cut grey suit. Bob sat upwards, stiff and alert. In front of him was a large calculator with oversize keys next to a floppy, white book open to display columns of figures. Yes, Arlington thought. Bob was ready. He had an eagerness about him that reminded the studio head of himself when younger, although that couldn't be right because Bob was more or less his age.