Connections (12 page)

“You're rotten in the mornings aren't you? It's right what they say. You have to live with people to find out about them.”

Unmoved, Fleur persisted, “So – what were you doing?”

“Seeing justice done. Ask no further questions.”

“Was it to do with Vanessa?”

“Will you be after knowing what I heard on the news today?”
he said in an Irish accent. “Them hideous Iraqis, or is it the other ones, are after getting themselves an atomic bomb. Now what do you think will be the consequence of that?”

“So you're the Masked Avenger of the Yarborough Estate, are you?”

“Ah, though, doesn't it put it all in perspective, somehow? All the petty little things we worry about and there's all these pagans with the power of life and death over us.”

“You're a real shithead, Dominic,” said Fleur.

“No, all you're thinking really is I'm not as stupid as I look. People like you like to think people like me are stupid. People like me go along with it somehow, to protect you. Or where would you all be?”

“In the middle of naked class war,” she said.

“I'm off down to the Yarborough to sort out the funeral with Joe and Ellen,” he told her, “for when the coroner's done.”

As he was turning away from the front door a motorcycle courier in a helmet came along the walkway and handed Fleur a letter. Dominic stopped to watch her open it. Inside was a note on paper so thick it was almost cardboard, headed with an address in Eaton Square. “Dearest Fleur,” it read, “I'm so pleased Valentine Keith managed to get in touch with you. Can you dine with us on Thursday week at eight? Dickie will be back by then – just a few friends. Do say yes. Dickie is dying to meet you and get to know you better.” The letter was signed “Sophia Jethro”.

“Fuck,” said Fleur, dismayed.

“Bad news?” enquired Dominic sympathetically.

“Do you mind – oh, forget it,” she said, stuffing the letter in her dressing-gown pocket.

“All right – all right,” Dominic said pacifically.

The postman arrived and handed her another letter, which she opened while Dominic again looked on. The letter summoned her to a three-week computer course, beginning after Christmas, which was good news, Fleur thought, but not good enough to pay the mortgage.

Dominic had spotted the familiar DSS heading. “The barmaid
at the Findhorn left suddenly,” he reported. “Both parents sick in Ireland. Why don't you ask Patrick for her job?”

“Thanks, I will,” Fleur said. “I'll go now.”

Dominic left and Fleur got ready quickly and dashed across the road to the Findhorn Star. The landlord was behind the bar, looking gloomy. He gave her the job. “Start this evening?” he asked.

“Right,” she said.

“Horrible business up on the Yarborough last night,” he mentioned.

“What happened?” she asked.

“A nasty beating-up,” he told her.

“Tsk, tsk.”

She returned to the flat where there was a message from her mother: “Fleur, darling I can't catch you. The answer's yes.” She rang Jess. “I need some advice,” she said.

“Is it that next-door neighbour of yours again? If so, don't tell me anything,” Jess said crossly.

“No.”

“All right, but you'll have to meet me in Peckham. There's a problem with
Martin Crux
and I've got to be there.” Though she was mournful about her failures, Jess had actually also developed and packaged two successful series which had been sold to commercial TV: one a game show which practically ran itself, the other
Martin Crux,
a series of hour-long shows about a priest-detective.

Fleur made her way to a housing estate in Peckham where, on a large area of concrete surrounded by large tower blocks, the cast and cameras were assembled with many of the locals herded together behind metal barriers, looking on. The actors playing the estate's residents, Fleur noted, looked a lot glossier than the real thing. Martin Crux, played by a curly-haired actor in jeans, a black leather jacket and a dog collar, was running across the courtyard. The director stood behind a camera and Jess was leaning against the wall of one of the tower blocks, looking on and talking into a mobile phone. As Fleur approached Jess, the actor playing Martin Crux, having done his dash across the concrete, was returning camerawards, discouraged, to do it again.

Fleur joined Jess against the wall as something thudded down the rubbish chute behind them. It started to drizzle.

The cameras stopped turning. The director and the cameraman were evidently discussing the rain. Jess bounded over. There was an argument. The director yielded and the actor took up his position and started running again. Jess came back to Fleur and said, “That lame bugger. He thinks he's Scorsese. And now he's being put off by a little bit of rain. We're three weeks behind already. I was two hours – two – on the phone to him last night. You're well out of this, I can tell you.”

The actor was coming back. He bent over, holding his knee, protesting to the director.

Once again, the actor ran, not exactly limping but certainly favouring one leg. When he got to his mark he sat down on the wet concrete clutching his knee.

“Lunch!” Jess shouted. “Sam!” she called to one of the cameramen who was passing, the camera wrapped up against the rain, “Where's to eat round here?”

He told her and gave her directions. They went to Jess's car. “I don't know how he does it – wherever you go Sam knows the best place to eat. Plus he could direct this film better than bloody James.”

“I watched two of this
Martin Crux
series,” Fleur said.

“People love it. It's the high moral tone, all these dilemmas. Of course,” she mused, “if they commission another series he'll have to get laid.” In the restaurant was the actor who played Martin Crux with his boyfriend. A star-struck waitress stood by for their order.

“Hi, Charlie,” Jess said.

“Don't let him cripple me,” he appealed.

“Don't worry,” she said grimly.

She and Fleur sat down and she asked, “What about the dosser?”

“Shut up,” Fleur told her.

“I knew it,” Jess said. “You've done it again – had sex with him. What are you doing? You're not the sort for rough trade.”

“Look, Jess,” Fleur said, “there's been a tragedy to start with.
A death. And I'm not even going to talk about it. This is what happened.” And she told Jess about Valentine Keith's visit and the invitation to dinner from Sophia Jethro, who, she supposed, was her stepmother.

As she spoke Jess's expression became calculating. “You'll have to get your hair done,” she said. “Have you still got that ecru lace dress you had for the awards?”

“You're saying ‘go'?” Fleur questioned.

“Of course. What have you got to lose? You really ought to meet your own father. Play your cards right and you can get him to pay off Verity's creditors, and if he takes to you, you and I can go into business together if Debs sells up. I've got a nice little series, costume, sort of Eliza Doolittle thing—”

“Lord, Jess,” Fleur said, upset and impressed at the same time. “I come to you for advice and emotional support and before I know it you're putting together a package.”

“Bollocks to emotional advice and support, Fleur,” Jess told her. “You knew when you came I wasn't Lambeth Social Services. Your father's taken the trouble to find you. If he wasn't rich and well known, would you be giving me all this? I don't think so. I think if he was a poor man with a bad leg living in a council flat you'd be round there cooking his dinner in a flash. You're hesitating because Dickie Jethro's wealthy and your parents have brought you up to think there's something wrong with large sums of money. Here's a chance to improve your life. It's an opportunity, not a moral dilemma. Some people,” she concluded grimly, “would be glad.” She dug into her food.

“The Me Generation speaks,” Fleur said. “It hasn't crossed your mind that this man dumped my mother, pregnant at nineteen, when she wouldn't abort me. Now he's back, hooray, I'm supposed to welcome him with open arms.”

“Fleur!” Jess exclaimed. “It may be remorse. Maybe he wants to do the right thing. You could give it a chance. There's nothing wrong with money, you know. Look at you, in that council flat, getting closer to bankruptcy every minute. Think of your creditors. Let him pay them,” she said cunningly, “and Ben might come back.”

Fleur thought of Ben and the restoration of their old life together. “How can I take it on those terms?” she asked.

“Tell me when you've heard the offer.”

“What about what he did to my mother?”

“You've only heard one side of the story,” Jess said. “Eat up.”

“You're saying my mother didn't tell me the truth,” Fleur protested.

“How do I know?” Jess asked. “Do you? Even the best people don't always tell the full story about things like that. Half the time they don't know it themselves.”

Fleur, fork poised, brooded. Jess had taken her bike when they were twelve, wrecked it and denied everything – Jess had stolen her mascara on the night of a film premiere – Jess had, for God's sake, slept with Ben. She stood up. “Thanks. You've been a big help.”

“Sit down,” Jess commanded. “Fleur – if you had more respect for money you wouldn't be where you are today, living where you're living, facing the problems you're facing, having it off with someone half an hour away from a prison sentence. It's those superannuated hippies who brought you up. This is your father we're talking about. How many fathers have you got to throw away?”

But Jess had gone too far. Fleur walked out. She got a bus back to Cray Hill, cleaned her flat furiously and went to the Findhorn Star to start her shift. It was a busy night and she had to learn the job fast so she had no chance to think about the day's events.

She got home tired to find yet another long, silent message on the answering machine, and a further message from her mother and the last from Jess, saying, “Fleur – I'm very, very sorry. I'll ring tomorrow.”

She did, at eight thirty a.m. from the church where she was to start filming. “I'm putting a corpse on the altar,” she said. “Listen – I'm really sorry. I said too much yesterday, but I've set you up an appointment with Gervase in Mount Street. I'm putting the bill on Camera Shake's account.”

“Forget it,” Fleur said ungraciously.

“Look, Fleur – I haven't got long. Don't turn your dad down flat. At least give it a go – please.”

“I'm just worried about what my mother and father will think. They may see it as a betrayal, like a rejection.”

“They may, if you tell them. But think about yourself for a change.”

She wasn't saying anything Fleur hadn't thought herself. “I'll go,” she told Jess.

“About your hair—”

“No,” said Fleur. “It's warts and all.”

“Have it your way,” Jess said. “I've got to go.”

Fleur got her dress from an unpacked box and took it to the dry cleaner. She found the shoes which went with the dress. She was committed.

For a week Fleur existed quietly next to the quiet Simmons family and the mostly quiet flat in which Dominic and Joe lived. Neither of them was there very much.

Dominic came into the pub late one evening and waited for her to leave. As they walked back he told her that he and Joe had gone with Ellen to Vanessa's inquest that day. The cause of death had been a sudden embolism no doctor could have predicted and which couldn't even, with any certainty, be connected with the drug overdose. “The funeral's Saturday,” he told her. “Ellen says she'd like you to come, if you want.”

“OK,” Fleur said. “How is she?”

“She's got Vanessa's dad on her hands. He's been gone for years, but he's collapsed, so Ellen's got to look after him. She doesn't seem to mind, says it takes her mind off things.”

“Look, Dominic,” she said awkwardly, as they went up the steps, “don't come round tonight.” This was not what she really wanted, but she felt it wasn't good enough for Dominic to sleep with her, disappear, come back and sleep with her again just when he felt like it.

“If that's what you want,” he said.

“It's not what I want, but—”

“I can see there's not a lot in it for you.”

“I don't want anything,” she protested.

He said, “I can't handle this. If you don't want to, you don't want to. That's it.”

They mounted the steps in silence, and parted. Fleur didn't know if she was glad or sorry to have done what she had.

Next day she got her dress back from the dry cleaner and that
evening started getting ready. Jess had been right about her hair, long now and more or less all right with her normal clothes, but scruffy looking with the formal dress. When she answered the door she found Dominic outside with a bunch of roses and a silly grin on his face, which was wiped off when he took in her appearance.

He pushed the flowers at her and turned to go.

“Thanks – come in,” she said.

“Not if you're going out,” he responded.

“Come in,” she said. “Look. It's a family dinner – and look at my hair.”

“I see what you mean.”

He retreated to his open doorway and called, “Joe! Hey, Joe! Got a minute?”

Joe appeared and said, “What?”

“It's her hair,” Dominic said. “Got to go out – looks like a scruff.”

“Yes,” said Joe, appraisingly. Pale and stringy in his jeans, his blonde hair cropped short and close to his head, he looked more like the defendant in a case involving a stolen car than a fashion adviser.

“I can cut your hair,” he volunteered. “Ten minutes – just a tidy-up.”