(1989) Dreamer

  Lucy yawned. ‘Yah, Bit heavy.’

  Sam glanced around at some of the girls, walked past Ken’s waxwork with its fresh Daily Mail and went up the three flights of stairs to his office. She rapped on the door and went in.

  It was more like a lair than an office. Clients did not come up here; they were seen down in the basement with the snooker table and screening theatre and the full up-front image. The office under the steeply sloping caves was plain, simple. A comfortable sofa, two easy chairs, the walls covered in framed photographs of awards, of location shots: Ken in action, waving his arms, stabbing a finger, sitting in a chair, reflecting in the shadow of a crane dolly, Ken shaking hands with or issuing orders to a plethora of personalities, mostly minor familiar faces from the commercials on the box, and a few more famous ones, like Orson Welles, Robert Morley, Frank Bruno, John Cleese. The right-hand wall was dominated by a movie poster, a gaudy yellow and green high-tech mish-mash.

  ‘ADLANTIS! THE LOST WORLD OF THE 20TH CENTURY!’ proclaimed the title.

  Ken had nearly lost his house because of that movie. Three years ago, when she’d first joined him, it had been touch and go. Cash flows, projections, interminable meetings with his bank manager that he reported to her, quite openly, afterwards. He’d been bust. Seriously bust. Over two million in the hole. He’d spent it on his dream, on his burning ambition, on his big break into the movie business. He’d put all the money he had and all the money he could borrow, hocked everything, the house and all, for his big break.

  ADLANTIS! THE LOST WORLD OF THE

  20TH CENTURY!

  Five thousand years after civilisation is wiped off the face of the earth by thermo-nuclear war, primitive life starts up again on the planet earth . . . Centuries later, Ignav Flotum IIIrd, a Borodovian monk on an archaeological dig, discovers an old tin can . . . Convinced this is a time capsule deliberately left behind by another age it is opened in grand ceremony . . . to reveal . . . a television commercial director’s showreel. From this reel a picture of late twentieth-century society is gradually pieced together. They conclude that since most of the movies only run for thirty seconds and the longest for only one minute, the concentration span of twentieth-century man must have been extremely low, thus contributing to his downfall, in spite of the clear socio-economic messages portrayed by these movies.

  The movie had never been completed, and Ken had always been slightly evasive about the reasons. Sometimes it was because the leading actor had been a raving egomaniac. Sometimes the weather had been to blame. Sometimes the pressure of the executives from the studio that had partnered him but had never come up with all the dough they had promised. But mostly, she felt, it had never been finished because he had lost heart in it long before the money had ever run out. He promised to show her what there was of it, one day, but she wondered if he ever really would.

  At least his house had been saved, his huge Victorian house on the edge of Clapham Common filled with weird objects, things he had collected, suits of armour, bizarre pictures, a tumbledown miniature Roman temple folly in the garden. He loved the house, had put years of thought and effort into making it something stunning, wild, with a Byzantine bathroom and medieval dining room and Baroque drawing room with a minstrel’s gallery. Crazy, nuts – but stunning. The house had the space to take it without the styles clashing. The furniture was beautiful. It was a fun place. He lived in it on his own, from choice. His divorce had been a long time ago and the wounds had been deep. There were girls around, sure, always someone in tow, some bright young hopeful, more intelligent than the average but kept at a distance, kept at bay, kept out of his heart which was a strictly private place.

  He was sitting behind his desk reading a letter, looking as if he had just got in, his denim jacket still on and a scarf hanging around his neck. He glanced up and smiled. ‘Got my jelly baby?’

  ‘Jelly baby?’

  ‘From Nicky’s party. You promised.’

  ‘Oh – shit – I—’

  ‘What time’s the casting session meant to start?’

  ‘Nine-thirty.’

  ‘Anyone here yet?’

  ‘Some of the talent. No one from Saatchi’s.’

  He looked at her. ‘Christ, you look terrible. Are you OK?’

  She nodded and swallowed hard.

  ‘How did the party go?’

  She turned away, wishing she hadn’t come up here now, not wanting him to see the tears. She gazed at a photograph of Ken on his hands and knees, trying to show a sheepdog how to eat its food. She heard his intercom buzz sharply, then again. It gave a longer more insistent buzz and then was silent. She heard it buzz in another office, somewhere else in the building, and then she felt a hand lightly on her shoulder.

  ‘What happened, Sam? Is it the air crash? Is the shock hitting you?’

  She felt the tears running freely down her cheeks, and squeezed her eyes tighter, fighting. ‘It’s horrible, Ken. Oh Christ, it’s horrible.’

  ‘What’s horrible?’ he asked gently.

  ‘It’s happened again.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  She shook her head. ‘Another dream. I had another dream.’

  The intercom buzzed again and Ken answered it. ‘OK,’ he said, and put the phone back down. ‘Everyone’s here – we’ll have to get down. Want to tell me later? We’ll have a drink? This afternoon – after it’s over?’

  She sniffed. ‘Thanks. I’ll be down in a minute. Just have to make a quick phone call.’

  She opened the door.

  ‘Sam, don’t worry. Everything’ll be OK.’

  She nodded, unconvinced.

  ‘You haven’t really had a break for a long time – you even came in over the Christmas hols. Why don’t you take a few days off? Go away with Richard somewhere?’

  ‘I’m OK. Thanks.’

  ‘You need a holiday, Sam. Everyone does. Go skiing or something – have a break. Hey, I nearly forgot, I read this in a magazine and cut it out for you. It’s about dreams.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She took it and put it in her handbag. ‘I’m sorry I forgot your jelly baby,’ she said, then went out and down the stairs.

  Drummond was walking along the corridor, studying the label on a box he was carrying.

  ‘Hallo.’ He paused, as if trying to remember her name. ‘Sam,’ he added as if it was an afterthought.

  ‘Hallo, Drummond.’

  ‘Good weekend?’

  ‘Fine.’ She smiled wearily.

  ‘How’re the dreams?’

  ‘Dreams?’

  ‘Giraffes. You were dreaming about giraffes, or something.’ He frowned and stared at the label again, mystified.

  ‘I thought you’d said they don’t dream much.’

  ‘They don’t.’

  ‘I’d like to be a giraffe,’ she said, opening the door and going into her office.

  Smoke swirled around her, blue, thick Monday morning smoke, like mist. Claire seemed to need twice as many cigarettes on a Monday. ‘Morning, Claire.’

  Claire was concentrating on a script she was reading. Sam thought she detected the briefest nod, but wasn’t sure. She opened the window sharply to release the fumes, to release her irritation at Claire, then changed the paper in the blotter on her desk.

  ‘Good weekend?’ said Sam, trying to force some conversation.

  Claire glanced up for a second. ‘All right.’ Then read again.

  She wondered what Claire did in the evenings, at weekends. All she knew was that she’d had a boyfriend called Roger with whom she’d split up, and that she lived in West London. Getting her to talk about her private life was like trying to pry open a superglued clam. She glanced down at her thick pile of post. It would have to wait.

  ‘I’ve put the hotel details on your desk, Sam,’ Claire said suddenly.

  ‘Hotel?’

  ‘Leeds. The Castaway presentation. You’re doing it Friday week at nine in the morning. You asked me to book a hotel for the Thursday night.?
??

  ‘Oh yes, thanks.’ She quickly sifted through the post, the memos, costings to be done, the calls to be returned, checking for anything urgent, feeling tired and tensed up, wishing she had gone for her morning swim. Everyone talked about shrinks these days, about new stress ailments, yuppie flu: yuppie syndrome, she’d read somewhere. Maybe she had yuppie syndrome, whatever that was.

  She saw the plane flying into the mountain. The finger curling in the night. Edgar coming into the room with the gun. Something cold trickled slowly through her, like a finger tracing its way down a frosted window. She shuddered, and pulled out a phone directory.

  She found the number of Bamford O’Connell’s Harley Street practice, and dialled it. A brisk pleasant woman answered.

  ‘Is it possible to speak to Dr O’Connell?’

  ‘May I ask who’s calling please?’

  ‘It’s Mrs Curtis. I’m – we’re – friends of his.’

  He came on the line only seconds later, surprising her. ‘Sam?’ His thick Irish brogue was full of warmth.

  ‘I’m sorry to call you at work, Bamford. I wondered if it was possible to see you – professionally.’

  ‘That was a great evening last week.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You’d like to have a chat about something?’

  ‘Please. I – it’s about what we were discussing at dinner.’

  ‘What was that?’

  She looked at Claire, then down at her desk. ‘Dreams. I’ve had another. I—’

  ‘Would you like to come round to the flat this evening?’

  Claire stopped reading and listened, without looking up.

  ‘Is it possible to see you privately?’ Sam felt herself getting flustered.

  ‘Sure, come here, see me here. Is it very urgent?’

  Yes, it’s urgent as hell. ‘No, I—’

  ‘If it’s urgent, I could try and make a few minutes today. Otherwise, Thursday morning, twelve o’clock. I’d have a bit more time then.’

  ‘Thursday would be fine. Thanks, Bamford,’ she said. ‘I really appreciate it.’

  As she went out of the office and closed the door, Claire turned around and smiled.

  Sam went down the stairs slowly, thinking. The entrance atrium was packed with girls now, there was a babble of chatter, a haze of smoke and perfume, a small dog yapped excitedly and the switchboard was warbling while Lucy ignored it, phone to her ear, deep in some personal conversation. The front door opened and a man came in, fast, determined, pushing his way through the throng of girls, staring straight at Sam, walking towards her, striding; a great bully of a man dressed in black with a hood over his face, his eyes barely visible through the two thin slits.

  She felt her legs buckling and a cold flushing sensation in her stomach; her head spun. She crashed against Ken’s waxwork, saw the newspaper crumple and thought dimly, Damn, he’ll be annoyed, as she stumbled, grabbing the cold, icy cold hand for support, felt something give, felt the whole arm tear away at the shoulder, and she staggered forward holding the hand as if it was a child she was taking across a road, staggered forward holding the hand with the severed arm attached to it, through the horrified faces and the screams of the girls, bounced off the wall, off Lucy’s white Cadillac door, as she tried to stop, to back away, to turn and run from the man with the black hood and the eye slits, but she kept stumbling forwards, through the girls that were backing away open-mouthed . . . smart, pretty, beautiful girls staring at the arm, wide-eyed with horror, then her feet ran into each other and she fell forwards, making a slight whinnying sound.

  Help me. Get me away from him. Oh Christ stop staring, don’t you understand?

  He was standing over her, in baggy black trousers and a grimy jacket and a black balaclava against the cold. He was holding a crash helmet in one gauntleted hand and a jiffy bag in the other, which he dropped as he knelt down to help her to her feet.

  ‘Orl right, doll?’ he asked. He smelled of leather and tobacco and a faint hint of hot engine oil.

  ‘Fine, thanks – I . . .’ She stood swaying, staring blankly around at the silent faces that stared back, listening to the yapping of the dog.

  ‘Ssh, Bonzo! Quiet!’

  ‘Sam! – Gosh, Sam. You OK?’

  ‘Yes, I—’

  ‘Ken Shepperd Productions?’ said the man in the balaclava, holding out the jiffy bag. ‘Need a signature.’

  Sam stared down at the severed arm on the floor, at the sea of faces, at the crumpled newspaper. She picked up the arm and carried it back to the waxwork. ‘Lucy, if you’ve got a moment . . .’ She was conscious she was talking slowly, almost as if she was sitting on the ceiling, looking down at herself speaking. ‘Perhaps you could nip out . . . and get a new Daily Mail .’ She peered inside the shirt-sleeve and saw the jagged hole below his shoulder. She put the arm limply in his lap, then turned and went down the stairs to the basement.

  16

  The water hissed and spat; she felt the rush of heat in her nostrils, and rivulets of sweat running down her face and her body. She glanced at the thermometer, which was still rising, leaned back on her towel on the hard wooden slats and breathed in the scorching steam that was thick with the smell of pine.

  ‘Any more?’ Rowie stood, holding the small wooden bucket, naked and running with sweat too, her ginger hair matted to her head, her breasts hanging down, a hint of sag, of droop. She would have to be careful, Sam thought, she could easily run to fat. Was beginning to show signs already: her freckled skin was looking creamy, slightly puffy, around her neck, her arms, her thighs, and the great ugly stretch marks that seemed to be getting more noticeable.

  Rowie. Partner in crime through five years of school. Sam had been chief bridesmaid at Rowie’s wedding; she’d been flung the bouquet and caught it, and the superstition had come good. She’d met Richard and they got married eight months later.

  Rowie. Life had come easy for her. Boyfriends, marriage, children, four of them, no effort. Everything progressed for her, straight, easy, linear; took life as it came and it had always come good.

  ‘I feel guilty,’ she once confided to Sam. ‘I don’t know why I have such a nice life.’

  There was always a storm somewhere, or a disaster or a tragedy, waiting to happen, but so far it never had. The only glitch had been discovering her third child was dyslexic, and that was being sorted out.

  Sam looked at Rowie’s body again. You are running to fat. Good. Hooray. Great. You’re going to be plump and waddly in a few years’ time.

  Christ.

  She felt a wave of shock at the malevolence of her thoughts. Did she wish fatness on her? Disaster? Was she really fond of her or jealous as hell? She stared down at her own body, good firm breasts, just right. They wouldn’t get limp and saggy. She looked at her thighs and her legs, firm, skinny almost, like her wrists.

  It must be like fucking a skeleton.

  Richard had said that once about an anorexic-looking model who had walked past them on a beach. Did he think that of her too? Christ, it was hard to get the balance right.

  A great fat shapeless hulk of a woman in a bathing hat came into the sauna, gave a surly nod and studied the thermometer.

  Don’t you dare put any more water on, Sam thought, watching her. Great tree-trunk thighs, a Mr Bibendum stomach and breasts like empty sacks. She had no bum at all, just the huge flab of her back which ran into her thighs; shapeless, as if God had dumped her on earth without having finished making her.

  I don’t ever want to look like that. No thanks. Skinny lib.

  They plunged and shrieked and showered and the Big Hulk followed them, dampening their chat to nothing in particular. Sam showed Rowie where her leg had got burned from the careless waxing, and Rowie told her they’d taken the kids skiing over Christmas and she’d got a bruise on her bum that had only just gone. Then they dressed and went and helped themselves to gazpacho and tuna salads filled with beanshoots and pulses and nuts and seeds and other strange things neit
her of them recognised which would probably make their stomachs fizz and rumble all afternoon, sat down in a quiet corner, free now from the Big Hulk, and clinked their glasses of organic apple juice together.

  ‘Cheers!’

  They each smiled.

  ‘Gosh, it’s been ages,’ Rowie said.

  ‘Since before Christmas, actually. Not since September.’

  ‘September? That long?’

  ‘Before the hurricane. I’m certain.’

  ‘Time. I don’t know what happens to it. New watch? It’s wonderful.’

  ‘Richard gave it to me – to improve my street cred.’

  ‘It’s gorgeous. God, you know what Suzy said to me last Saturday? She said, “Don’t come shopping with me, Mum, you ruin my street cred.” Eleven. She’s only eleven!’

  Sam grinned. ‘You can blame it all on commercials.’

  Then there was a silence. A long flat silence in which all her thoughts began to pile up and cut away her elation at seeing Rowie again, and crush her down. Rowie split open her granary roll and dabbed a piece in her gazpacho, like a nurse swabbing a wound, thought Sam suddenly, and shivered.

  ‘How’s Richard?’

  ‘Oh, he’s . . . you know. Fine. Busy, I—’ She shook her head, staring into Rowie’s face the way she might have stared into a mirror.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Rowie, as she saw the trickle from Sam’s eye, and heard Sam make short jerking sounds, her face contorted as if someone was pulling a wire tight around her neck.

  They sat in silence while Sam tried to compose herself. She split open her roll as well, dunked a piece in the soup and felt the fierce taste of onions and tomato and garlic in her mouth.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  Sam picked up her spoon and poked around in the soup bowl. She hadn’t talked about it; not to anyone. Because . . . because it made her feel such a fool. Maybe Rowie knew anyway and was just being nice? Everyone else did; the Pearces and the Garforth-Westwards and the Pickerings and the . . . shit, oh shit, oh shit. She looked up.

  ‘The boys – Roddy and Guy and that lot – have a shoot in Scotland the first week in January, every year. Richard always goes with them. He went off this year as usual, except two days after he’d gone, at six o’clock on a Sunday evening, I got a call from the police. I thought they were phoning to tell me he was dead or had an accident. It was horrible. They gave me the registration number of his BMW and asked who owned it.’ She stared intently at Rowie’s puzzled face, then jammed her elbows on the table and leaned forward, feeling better now she was actually talking about it. ‘His car had been parked on a double yellow line outside a hotel in Torquay since Friday evening. They’d towed it away and it hadn’t been claimed, so they’d been worried it had been stolen.’ She gazed quizzically at Rowie.