Kissing Toads (9 page)

An apport came flying out of nowhere. I jumped, the sound recorder jumped, and the cameraman swore, presumably because he didn't get a shot of it, but Ash fielded it neatly, completely unperturbed.

‘What was it?' I demanded, slightly shaken but determined not to show it.

‘A farewell gesture.' That wasn't what I meant, and he must have known it, but he had slipped the object into his pocket. ‘Before we go, I would like a private word with the older members of the family. I'll see you outside.'

We had obviously extricated all we could from the situation, so I waited by his car (a new-look VW Beetle in silver).

When he appeared, I asked: ‘What was really going on in there?'

‘Do you care?'

That stung. That's the worst of something like VivaTV: it deadens your reactions. He was accusing me of lacking compassion, and I felt he was right, though I had no idea what I was supposed to be compassionate about.

‘Of course not,' I snapped. ‘If I was a caring person, I wouldn't be in this job.'

He didn't smile. He never smiled. ‘It was the girl,' he said. ‘Teenage hormones. And she was jealous of the second wife and her two stepbrothers. She chose that way of expressing her feelings.'

For a minute, surprise wiped out my animosity for him. ‘How did you guess?'

‘The rug. She'd looped a string through a hole behind the fringe. She'd managed to pull the string out, but I saw the hole. It's an old trick.'

‘And that last missile?'

‘That was easy. You were all watching me, not her. She turned aside and threw it over her shoulder. She'll have done that several times, though not for the camera. The house was on her side; it's old and dimly lit. Easy.'

‘If you were so sure,' I said, ‘you should've exposed her when we were filming.'

His lips thinned. ‘I wouldn't do that to her. If you feel I'm in breach of contract, don't pay me.'

I
really
hated him. I hated his unruffled coolth, his know-it-all superiority, his elfin cheekbones. I even hated his compassion. He'd shown me what I had become, and I didn't like it at all. And he was a bloody psychic investigator, one of the Madam Arcati brigade, a professional phoney. It was totally unfair.

‘We'll pay you,' I said. ‘I'll see to it. You were quite right not to . . . Just don't mention it to my producer.'

He gave a brief jerk of the head, maybe a nod. ‘Worried about your job?'

I shrugged, trying to match his cool. ‘My contract's short-term. By the way . . . what was it she threw? The thing you put in your pocket?' Vulgar curiosity, but I wanted to know. Otherwise it would nag at me in the bath.

‘It was a pendant. A heart, in agate or jasper. I gave it back to her. I should think it was quite expensive.'

He didn't look gratified by the offering. He was probably used to poltergeists throwing hearts at him. I mumbled routine thanks, and he got into the VW and drove away, leaving me with a disagreeable feeling that I didn't really want to analyse. Let's face it, I'd made a bad impression. I'd come across as cheap, flip, cold-hearted, and though what Ash thought wasn't important, the root cause bothered me. In such a short while, had VivaTV made me one of their own? On
Behind the News
we'd covered serious issues, we'd cared. Well,
I'd
cared; I couldn't answer for Kyle any more. He'd seemed to care, at any rate, though he used to say that if you threw your heart in the ring every time sooner or later you'd break it. But that was just surface toughness, his way of coping with all the pain we saw. On VivaTV there was no pain, just the quiet desperation of people who will do anything for a moment on the small screen. Yet somehow I felt soiled by it, by the way we exploited their thirst for a little immortality. I was becoming someone I didn't like, and a phoney psychic researcher, of all people, had made me see it. So of course I didn't like
him
.

The world of glamour gardening was looking more attractive by the hour. After all, you can't exploit a plant (can you?) and a lifelong rock icon is way beyond being used by anyone.

It was only later that evening that I remembered we were going to use a psychic researcher on
The Lost Maze
. But on television, spurious experts are two a penny, and the chances of the Major picking the same one were surely small to non-existent.

Or so I hoped.

Chapter 3:

King of the Castle

I went up to Scotland with the advance guard, to establish a beachhead and dig ourselves in. Crusty Beardstandard was already there, smoothing the path for his team, or possibly smoothing the superstar for the path, I am not sure which. My experience of makeover shows was non-existent, but I was certain few subjects received this level of prenatal consideration: when you are dealing with a rock icon, the rules change. I made a private resolution that
my
rules, at least, wouldn't change at all. I wasn't going to be thrilled, I wasn't going to be overawed. At most I might be mildly impressed if the occasion called for it. I hadn't chosen this job, it had been chosen for me, and while it might be a big step up from VivaTV it was several steps down from
Behind the News
, despite Dick Ramsay's toupee. I was used to real suffering, real courage, life in the raw. A rock star, no matter how famous or infamous, was a lightweight to me.

Crusty picked me up at Inverness Airport in a Range Rover from Hot God's stable and we drove west to Dunblair. A good deal of scenery of a Scottish nature spread out or reared up on either hand: green slopes dotted with sheep or cows, both decidedly shaggy, bristling stands of fir and pine, rocky heights nudging skywards, the tallest drizzled with snow like white icing on a pointed cake. Crusty kept up a gentle flow of conversation, or rather information, as he drove, filling me in on the set-up at the castle and, I sensed, on any areas where tact and diplomacy might be required. (Most of them.) I hoped I would remember it all, but I was distracted by the passing landscape. Despite a tingle of nerves at the prospective challenges of the job, I couldn't help feeling a little as if I was going on holiday. Maybe it was the beauty of the surroundings, the luxury of being met at the airport by someone who would do the driving, the fact that I was finally escaping the clinging memories of Kyle. Ahead of me lay, not the seedy drama and hopeless tragedy of too many news stories, but more luxury in a romantic castle, and filming that would focus principally on plants. What trouble could I possibly have with a plant? I set minor worries aside and sat back to enjoy myself.

Eventually the trees parted, a sunbeam sliced down between stravaiging clouds, and we saw the mirror-flash of light on water.

‘Lochnabu,' Crusty told me. ‘We go through the village first, then up to Dunblair. It's at the northern tip of the lake; you'll get a view of it in a minute.'

The road swooped down towards the shore; the trees drew back. I could see more of the loch now, a silver tongue of water perhaps two and a half miles long, with a small jetty at one end where a couple of boats were moored, and, above it, on a sort of promontory, a castle. I glimpsed a sturdy tower, grey battlements, extraneous turrets, a cluster of pointy roofs. Even at this distance, it was everything a castle should be.

‘It's beautiful,' I said.

‘Bit of a hotch-potch,' Crusty responded. ‘The oldest parts go back nearly seven hundred years, but over the centuries almost every incumbent added a turret or two in the fashion of the time. It was all rather tumbledown when HG bought it, but he's spent a fortune on restoration. Totally faithful to the original building on the outside, of course. Inside . . . well, he's installed central heating, and done a lot of work on the plumbing. Used to be pretty Victorian.'

Victorian? Victorian was good. I'd had nervous recollections of a longdrop loo I'd seen once in a medieval tower, where you sat on a hole at the top and your output splashed all the way to the bottom. The thought of Delphi's reaction to such amenities was the only thing which had kept me from voicing my fears.

‘Décor's a tad . . . erratic,' Crusty was saying, on a note I identified as self-restraint. ‘HG let his latest loose on some of the rooms. Spanish model, late thirties, admits to twenty-nine. Her name's Basilisa; don't call her Baz. The locals have dubbed her the Basilisk – inevitable, really – but don't use it in HG's hearing. He's left her behind on Mande Susu for the moment – that's the island – but I daresay she'll turn up some time. Doesn't like the Scottish winter. Doesn't like Scotland at all, I expect, but she'll come home to be on TV.'

‘She wouldn't have acting ambitions, would she?' I enquired, my heart sinking.

‘Bound to,' said Crusty. ‘They always do.'

Shit. As soon as she heard about the historical re-enactment there would be two of them after the starring role. My holiday anticipation deflated like a pricked balloon. ‘Oh God,' I said, forgetting to maintain my cool. ‘Will we have enough beautiful heroines to go round?'

‘Overegg the pudding,' Crusty suggested, with the unflappable calm which, I was beginning to guess, was the secret of his success. Most people in television are very flappable, existing on a roller coaster of neuroses. Dylis, for instance, had flapped like a banner in every breeze. ‘Plenty of history out there to re-enact. What is it they say in government? Sex it up. Sure Nigel will be happy to help. Women in period costumes with lots of cleavage – did wonders for Jane Austen. Can't hurt us.' Beneath the Edwardian whiskers and old-fashioned gallantry he really was nobody's fool. I was suddenly very anxious not to let him down.

‘We're going to have problems with some of these people, aren't we?' I said candidly, realising too late I sounded naïve. On location with a small team in Slovenia, Slovakia, or even Doncaster, people-problems with colleagues had been the least of my worries and temperament took second place to professionalism. Here, all too obviously, it was going to be different.

‘Doesn't matter,' Crusty said with the single vision of the true obsessive. ‘Only the garden matters. The dramatic stuff – that's trimmings to broaden our audience. But the garden's the star.'

‘What about HG?'

‘He'd agree with me,' Crusty breezed.

Ah, well. Everyone has their blind spot.

We drove through a small, rather dour-looking village, stone houses hunkered down in anticipation of bad weather, inhabitants, sheepskinned and wellied against the climate, who glared at us with the traditional hostility of natives everywhere (or possibly because they knew what was afoot and were madly curious). Then on to a twisty track, recently resurfaced, which bent this way and that to skirt ridges and duck trees. Gate posts loomed ahead, and Crusty braked while another, even more hostile, individual came and glared, though in an official sort of way. Then the gates opened and we drove the last half-mile to the castle.

Close to, the conglomeration of styles resolved themselves into Gothic Fantasy constructed on and around a solid keep of medieval origins. Bits of the keep were attractively crumbled and had been left as such; the effect was rather like a strangler fig, a parasitic tree which entwines and overgrows the host until the latter is completely smothered. Despite that, it was gorgeous, and I forgot my resolution to be only mildly impressed. This was Dunblair, not its owner. I could let myself go.

While I stood gawping, two people emerged from the castle to deal with my luggage: a sandy-haired man of thirty-five to forty with an engaging grin who proved to be the butler, and a gawky youth with acne whom I labelled as a hired lad from the village.

‘Dorian Jakes,' Crusty said by way of introduction.

Oh.

Poor boy, I thought instinctively. It must be bad enough to be an awkward teenager with spots, without having an iconic celebrity dad to live up to. I smiled kindly at him – at least, I hoped it was a kind smile – causing him to drop my shoulder bag so abruptly I wondered if I'd grown vampire teeth. The butler had gone ahead, so Dorian was deputised to take me to my room, a lengthy trek during which I attempted conversation and he stuttered in reply. In a gallery which should have been hung with cobwebs and ancestral paintings, I came to a dead stop. This was evidently the Basilisk's handiwork: sheepskin rugs dyed magenta, a Dali lip sofa in cerise velvet, zebra hides on the walls.

‘My God,' I said in undiplomatic horror.

Reassured by my reaction, Dorian lost his stutter. ‘My stepmother did it,' he said. ‘She's awful.' And, after a pause: ‘She's much too young for him. It's so embarrassing. He ought to stop marrying young models and settle down with someone his own age.'

So much for living up to Dad. I'd got it wrong again. I'd underestimated the modern teenager's capacity for embarrassment.

‘Perhaps she makes him happy,' I suggested tentatively.

He made a gesture somewhere between a shrug and a head-shake. ‘She only married him for his money. You'd think he'd be smart enough to know that.'

‘Fame,' I said. ‘For some women, that's a big aphrodisiac.'

‘Oh no. She couldn't
like
sex with him, could she? He's frightfully old. She just uses it to get what she wants. Actually, I think she likes boys. You know, really
young
boys. Like, she's a sort of paedophile. She came on to me once.' He shuddered at the memory.

‘Did you tell your father?'

‘Of course not. She said she'd tell him I was making it up, and he'd believe
her
, and I knew it was true. That's what they do, isn't it? Paedophiles? That's how they control you. Only I couldn't . . . I couldn't do it. I mean, she was all thin and bony and sort of predatory, like a praying mantis. It was disgusting.'