Kissing Toads (5 page)

‘What friend?' I asked warily. Crusty's friends are a mixed bag.

‘God,' said the Major.

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘God.'

GOD????

Not . . . surely not . . .
the
God? Hot God, otherwise Godfrey Jakes, the ultimate veteran rock star. Sixties rebel, seventies superstar, eighties alcoholic, nineties comeback kid, millennium icon. You know his story – who doesn't? It's like the stories of all the other rock stars rolled into one. Critics say he should have died, it would have been more in keeping with his image, but instead he lived on, giving endless farewell concerts, updating his wives every season. He'd started as Hot God and the Fallen Angels, then moved on, going solo, going mega – shooting up, snorting up, trashing cars and hotel rooms, spawning headlines like ‘
HOT GOD HELLRAISER
' and ‘
AMERICAN BIBLE-BASHERS BAN GOD
'. A kiss-and-tell feature a few years back had only put a gloss on the halo, claiming ‘
GOD
'
S ROD STILL HOT
'. He'd taken a liability name like Godfrey and abbreviated it into his biggest asset. Never mind his music: the guy was a PR genius.

Lately, I'd read he was doing the recluse act, which only works if you are a HUGE star. Otherwise people just ignore you.

Now, apparently, he was into gardening.

‘He's really keen on it,' Crusty said. ‘Been boning up on everything. Wants to get involved. I took him to meet Jennie.'

Crusty took Hot God to meet my
mother
? Naturally, she's a big fan – she's got a stack of his old albums a yard high – but the idea was still shocking, even embarrassing. Caviar and mashed potato. Glitz and grits. Had he been bored, or merely patronising? Had she blushed and gushed – Mummy, whose face is too weatherbeaten to blush and who only ever gushes over plants? Unthinkable.

Of course, they
are
nearly the same age. Come to think of it, he must be older . . .

‘I thought you might like to present,' Crusty went on. ‘Jennie said you were at a loose end.'

I am
not
at a loose end. I'm a star. Stars don't do loose ends. They have things in the pipeline, exciting new projects, people angling for their time and attention. But Crusty is of the old school, as they say. He just isn't clued up.

But never in a million years was I going to turn down the chance to work on Hot God's briar patch.

Unfortunately, he also wanted Mortimer Sparrow, the housewives' pin-up, he of the faux-rustique accent and relaxative manner. I wasn't eager for the reunion. Morty is an inveterate bum-patter and tit-fondler who, when I started on
Earth Works
, had thought he could jump on me just because we were colleagues. I didn't need him, didn't fancy him, and said so, which hadn't helped our professional relationship. How someone as cool as Hot God could admire Morty . . . Which just goes to show that even superstars can be as dumb as ordinary people, only on a bigger scale.

I had protested at the inclusion of Morty but had to give in, so I sort of felt Crusty owed me a favour. Not that I would put it like that, naturally. I do tact, whatever people may say. But the designated producer was due to bunk off on maternity leave at the crucial moment, and the Major hadn't appointed a replacement yet. It wasn't Roo's field, but what she really needed was a complete change of scene.

Sometimes, things just come together. Fate taking a hand. I felt this was one of those times.

Roo spent the week after her departure from
Behind the News
going back into the office to pick up things she had left behind (five times), having lunch with people who might be useful but weren't (three times), and getting incredibly depressed (all the time). I took her to my health club and to a theatrical party with Alex, but at the former she tried to drown herself in the jacuzzi and at the latter she spent the whole evening talking to the only gay guy there. Shakespeare once said something about how you should grapple your friends to your soul with hoops of steel (sounds a bit like bondage to me), but my hoops were beginning to show the rust. Meanwhile, Crusty Beardstandard got back to England on Saturday, had tea with my mother on Sunday (I'd already enlisted her support for Roo), and on Monday I met with him at the Rip-Off Café.

I chose the Rip-Off because I know Crusty likes it, though I don't. It has scenic views over the river, glass and steel minimalist décor and film-starlet waitresses. The food is as minimalist as the décor and very, very expensive – a single plover's egg with a stick of asparagus, or one raviolo parcel drizzled with a sauce so subtle it has virtually no flavour at all. You know the kind of thing. They once served me a
fritto misto
which included two langoustines battered
in the shell
. How the hell was I supposed to eat that? Peel off the batter, get the langoustine
out
of the shell, then reunite the two? (I sent it back.) I go to the Rip-Off quite often, naturally, because it's very trendy, but I still don't think much of it. Of course, it's frightfully good for your figure, because the portions are so small.

Crusty was there before me, drinking prosecco. He's known in television as a Character and he looks the part, on account of the upright carriage mentioned earlier, a hint of Edwardian side-whisker, and that solid portliness that comes from a lifetime of good lunches, probably followed by port. Only the well-off become portly; the poor just get fat, usually on junk food, but portliness implies high-priced high living (and port). Crusty also has the resulting cerise complexion, set off by his white hair and currently deepened to a sort of beetroot-bronze by the Caribbean sun.

As soon as we'd ordered I began to explain about Roo. I hadn't been sure what to say about the Kyle affair, but I had to give him her reasons for dumping
Behind the News
and, anyway, Crusty is awfully chivalrous, despite decades in television.

‘She wasted years on that show because of Kyle,' I said. ‘She effectively put her career on hold to work with him, and now he's married this slapper out of the blue and she's left high and dry.
He
should be the one to quit, but of course she did, because she's so honourable.'

Honourable
is a good word to use with Crusty. It presses all the ex-army buttons.

‘Poor child,' he said. ‘I seem to remember meeting her at your mother's place . . . ten, twelve years ago? Quiet little thing, rather pretty. Nice manners.'

‘That's her.' Well, she
does
have nice manners, except for the lapse with the cut crystal, which I totally approved. I don't like cut crystal either.

‘Trouble is, it'll be a tough job, dealing with . . . well, a lot of difficult people.' Surely he didn't mean
me
? ‘People who won't necessarily get along. A nice girl like her, she mightn't have the thick skin, the requisite resilience . . .'

‘Roo does tough,' I insisted. ‘She's worked on location in war zones, with guerrillas shooting at her.' More or less. ‘And she's naturally diplomatic. She'll be really good with Hot God.'

‘Jennie spoke highly of her,' the Major conceded. ‘She said your Roo's one of a kind.'

‘She is,' I averred, dropping my voice to do sincerity. I mean, I
was
sincere, but on television you learn it isn't enough to feel emotion – you have to
sound
as if you feel it. And I
am
a proper actress. I do
all
the emotions. What was it Dorothy Parker said? The whole gamut from A to B.

‘Better see her,' said Crusty.

We were home and dry. I knew he'd love Roo.

Chapter 2:

The Road to Dunblair

How do you tell your best friend you don't want to work with her?

When we were kids, and Delphinium decided she was going to be a star, I was variously cast as her agent, her assistant, her social secretary – sidekick, confidante, whatever. I was thrilled to be included in her life on a long-term basis, but deep down I knew I had to go my own way. How far her career choices influenced mine I don't know. Delphi wanted fame and fortune at any price and television was the obvious route; I didn't have her hunger for stardom, but there's no doubt her ambition, and her belief that every goal was attainable, had its effect on me. When at sixteen I told my father I was going to work in the news media, he was nervous, considering it beyond my range, but to Delphi and her family any endeavour was possible. She and Pan took my future success for granted, and even Jennifer Dacres was carelessly supportive, saying whatever was necessary to allay my father's fears. My dreams of supreme producerdom had shrunk over the years as such dreams do, but they had never included a switch from covering the big issues to the world of TV gardening – and I had never, ever contemplated producing Delphi. I love her, but she's a spoiled egotist who sees life from a single viewpoint and thinks that giving an inch means losing a mile. I knew instinctively that she was every producer's nightmare.

I couldn't possibly say so.

‘I know nothing about gardening,' I said, hedging.

(Sorry about the pun. It was unintentional. Horticultural puns spring up like – well – weeds.)

‘You don't actually have to garden, stupid,' Delphi said impatiently. ‘Good God, you don't imagine I do, do you? Only think what it would do to my nails. We have dogsbodies for all that – researchers, runners, that's what they do. You're a producer: you just produce. It'll be the same as
Behind the News
only you'll be in charge, nobody will be trying to kill you, and there'll be no Kyle Muldoon. And instead of a refugee camp in Africa or a brothel in Budapest we'll be staying in a fabulous castle in Scotland and hanging out with the most famous rock star of all time. What more do you want?'

I not only hedged, I fenced. I walled. I built small balustrades and ducked behind them.

‘It's just . . . I've got the chance of something with News 24. I have a contact there . . .'

‘
News 24
? No one watches that!'

‘I do.'

‘Yes, but you're not a typical viewer. Typical viewers watch soaps because their own lives are so boring, and gardening shows because they never garden, and cooking shows because they never cook, and reality TV because it's completely unreal. Everyone knows that.' She was, of course, perfectly right. ‘Nobody
watches
the news. They just have it on.'

I didn't argue.

‘It's a wonderful opportunity . . . I'm so grateful . . . but . . .'

‘You're determined to be difficult,' Delphi concluded. ‘It's because you don't want to accept favours, isn't it? I know you're always having scruples about things. If someone offered you a diamond necklace worth a hundred thousand pounds you'd probably turn it down because you didn't approve of conditions in the diamond mines. Look, you can't afford to have scruples in television. And I'm not doing you a favour: you'll be doing me one. I'm being totally selfish about this. I'd much rather work with you than anyone else.'

Oh shit.

‘Maybe Major Beard-Trenchard won't like me,' I suggested hopefully.

‘Of course he will,' Delphi said.

Major Beard-Trenchard did like me, alas. I liked him, too. I knew I'd met him years before, but I had only a hazy recollection of a flourishing moustache on a large pink face; memory had exaggerated the moustache, though not much. He was, as Delphi had told me, a Character – there aren't that many left in television nowadays – one of the old school, probably Eton, though the ex-Etonians I've come across from the younger generation are mostly arrogant rich kids adorning assorted merchant banks. Anyway, Crusty Beardstandard – I couldn't help thinking of him as Pan's nickname – was courteous rather than merely polite, thoughtful, kindly, faintly avuncular. I don't know what Delphi had told him, but he evidently considered the job mine already, and his principal concern appeared to be whether I would be happy in it, and if there was anything more he could do to look after me. Senior executives do not normally treat producers as if they are fragile beings in need of TLC, and I would have been darkly suspicious of whatever Delphi might have told him if I hadn't realised that this would be Crusty's customary attitude to any female in his employ. However, since his company is pretty successful he must expect high standards in return, and instead of saying the job wasn't really what I wanted I found myself assuring him I could handle it.

Afterwards, I clung to the hope that News 24 would come up trumps. I hadn't signed anything yet with Persiflage Productions and there was still time to back down if something else developed, but my back-up funds were limited and I needed work (and pay) as soon as possible. That's how life goes: you make your grand dramatic gesture, and then you're stuck with the more mundane consequences, like how to eat and pay the mortgage. Delphi has a grandparental trust fund to take her through a lean period, but my family weren't trust fund material. Time passed, and I waited by the phone in vain, succumbing to idiotic fantasies that my next caller might be Kyle, not News 24, telling me he'd made a mistake, was getting an instant divorce, wanted to be with me again. In the event, I didn't hear from either of them. The telephone is the ultimate watched pot: it never boils (or rings). Ever. I finally called the BBC myself, to be greeted with ums and ahs and murmurs of cutbacks. No job. I thought about suicide all over again, but it was no good: the prospect of working with my dearest friend might be scary, but it didn't drive me to wrist-slashing despair. I rang the Major's PA and braced myself.