‘You can undress again if you like,’ she said in Paul’s general direction.

  ‘Orgies don’t start before four,’ he told her, making out her remark had been friendly, which hadn’t been how it had struck Roy.

  As if choked to have missed five minutes of Lady C’s company, Paul said, ‘Why on earth didn’t you let me know you’d be in town today?’

  She waved a limp hand. ‘Thought I’d drop by on the off chance of a party.’ She faked disappointment. ‘But it’s just a couple of friends.’ A pause. ‘Except you,’ she told Gemma. A very long silence before she added, ‘Step-sisters are family really.’

  Roy had started to sweat; his palms were moist and he could feel droplets forming in the small of his back. Any moment now she might say, ‘Roy told me about you and Gemma, Paul.’ But instead she sat back looking round.

  ‘My goodness, Roy,’ she laughed. ‘What a lot of space for one person.’

  ‘How about your little place?’ he asked, trying to make it sound cheerful. Seemed to work, because she smiled back and said something like, funny she never thought about that. He became intrigued by a long paper parcel, next to her on the sofa. Then, remembering the last time, he asked if he could get her anything to eat. She put her head on one side, and said, ‘A bit early for breakfast?’ A difficult silence; then she smiled at him warmly, ‘Do you know, I haven’t heard your latest record yet.’

  ‘Haven’t you?’ he asked, feeling slightly better; it’d just come to him that if she’d meant to tell Paul, she’d have done it ages ago. Then came another thought: the words of Getting Clever were total killers for the present situation. He pulled a face and said, ‘A bit stupid really … you not liking pop. I’d forget it.’

  ‘You’re too modest.’ She smiled very attractively, and murmured, ‘I can’t believe you haven’t got hundreds of copies here.’

  Paul was looking bothered. ‘You sure you haven’t heard it, Elly?’

  Eleanor studied her knees, which were elegantly crossed. ‘You don’t exactly bring your work home, Paul … unless I’m somewhere else.’

  ‘But what about the radio?’

  She smiled. ‘I spend hours listening to Radio Caroline.’

  ‘Quite so,’ muttered Paul. He pursed his lips. ‘Better dig one out, Roy.’

  Not much later Roy sat squirming, as he heard himself singing on the best hi-fi gear money could buy (fantastic definition):

  ‘Did you let that crazy chick steal your guy?

  Was she kinda quick and slick and awful sly?

  Did you lose your pride, lose your money,

  Didya wanna hide and cry some honey?

  Oh, baby that’s so sad …’

  The only good thing was the loud fast beat, which made the words hard to catch on a first hearing. But the way Eleanor’s little black shoe was tapping gave him a new idea. She’d heard the goddam thing before. Christ, she had. A dead certainty, the way she slowed down in rhythm at the end of each line.

  ‘So you’re hooked on love, and haven’t a hope,

  When life gets sad it ain’t no joke … No-oh-oh-o-o-oh.

  And everyone else is getting the action,

  Nobody digs you, not a fraction … No-oh-oh-o-o-oh,

  But listen to me baby, really gotta listen,

  Don’t be a sucker; life’s a competition …’

  As the drum kicked into the title line, she was actually smiling. She’d heard it all right; which looked like meaning she’d come deliberately, when Paul and Gemma were here together, just so she could breeze in and ask to listen to the disc, so they’d all feel …? Exactly what, he couldn’t imagine. Like why had she wanted him here, and not just the other two? The theme lyric had just started; high-pitched, sly, a bit mocking. Lady C could certainly put a new slant on things.

  ‘The name of this game is getting clever,

  Gotta make it now, or you’ll make it never,

  Getting tough today, and not tomorrow,

  Laughing away that pain and sorrow,

  Taking whatya want by getting clever, clever, getting

  clever,

  clever, clever, getting

  clever.

  If your life’s fulla crap, then start again,

  Nobody else but yourself to blame.

  Clever, clever, getting

  clever.

  Success in this world is all synthetic,

  To fail to learn is just pathetic … yeah,

  Clever, clever, getting

  clever.’

  And during the reprise of the opening lines, she jumped up, caught Paul by the hand, and they were … wait, off with the shoes … dancing (if that was the word for the dire hard-rock routine she was slamming into; nobody kicked out that way since Little Richard quit stomping). Had to, just had to mean she’d been practising. She spun away from him, and flopped down on the sofa, laughing to herself.

  ‘You can have that cake you feel like eating,

  See right through their lies and cheating … Yeah,

  Clever, clever, getting

  clever.

  So don’t act small if you wanna be huge,

  Don’t sell yourself and be a stooge …’

  But suddenly it was over, Paul had taken off the arm, making out that Eleanor had heard enough to get the general ‘flavour’; but though he said it without raising his voice, Roy could tell he was fuming underneath. But Paul wasn’t too easy to make a fool of; and every moment he seemed to be getting himself together more, so that when he asked her what she’d thought of it, he just sounded politely interested.

  ‘Very nice … of its kind.’ She mimicked a cockney accent, ‘I’d say definitely a hit.’ She hummed a few notes, and then said naturally, ‘I like the way the “clever, clever” chorus bits echo and carry on into the next words.’ She turned to Roy, ‘Did you get that effect on your own?’

  She reminded him of the Queen opening a factory. ‘They did track-overlay; some phasing … had a good producer.’

  ‘I thought it was smashing.’

  Roy hadn’t seen when she’d picked it up, but she’d got the parcel on her knee and was starting to strip away the brown paper.

  ‘You’re quite a dancer,’ said Gemma, ignoring Eleanor’s paper stripping.

  ‘I expect you’re much better,’ Lady C replied, as she finished her task, revealing a long leather case.

  ‘Actually, Elly,’ Paul started in a low firm voice, ‘that’s not a joke I’d recommend.’

  ‘Joke?’ she asked, flipping open the case.

  From where he was sitting, Roy’s view was obstructed, and he didn’t see the shot-gun till she’d taken it out and snapped open the breech. Everything in slow motion … Gemma’s hands going up to her mouth; Paul staring as if a million volts had just ripped through the floor; Roy’s stomach bunching so hard he half-gagged.

  Then Paul moved (fast, but too slowly). Eleanor closed the breech sharply, and he froze. Then a whisper from him, but very steady, ‘Let’s have it, Elly.’ He held out both hands, like a suicidal rozzer facing a bank-robber.

  A pause; two, three seconds? Then a sudden double-take from Eleanor, who looked round in horror. ‘God, Paul, how awful … I was just showing you the breech action.’ Appealing smile. ‘I had it fixed … don’t tell me you can’t remember me taking it in?’

  Gemma let out a funny kind of sigh, and slumped forward taking deep breaths as if she’d been running. Long silence. Roy’s relief started to turn sour. ‘No theatricals intended?’ he asked.

  Eleanor looked interested. ‘You mean life as drama?’ She made a face. ‘Too clever for me. Much more Paul’s and Gemma’s line.’

  ‘That’s right,’ burst out Gemma. ‘Crude and brutal … that’s the effect you wanted.’ Her voice breathless, cracking.

  ‘Oh?’ Eleanor eyed her attentively.

  ‘The kind of piss-awful melodrama where someone scares shit out of everyone with a gun that turns out to be a cigarette-lighter.’ Gemma’s voice shrill but wobbling back to normal.

  Eleanor inclined her head, thinking about it. ‘You mean like in a bad West End play?’

  Next moment, Roy leapt clean out of his chair as the gun blasted off; Paul was on the ground; Gemma screaming; and a large art nouveau vase had flown apart like a bomb had detonated inside. Silence that would make a morgue seem noisy. Roy didn’t catch the precise moment Paul got hold of the gun; but he saw him kick it away and dive on Eleanor’s handbag.

  ‘Curtain,’ murmured Eleanor. Nobody else could speak. As Paul moved away with the bag, she said gently, ‘Nothing in there, my dear, not even a cartridge … only brought the one.’ He flung it across the room; took a step towards her; stopped. The very second Roy was sure he’d lay her out cold, she turned to Gemma. ‘Normally I leave the happenings to you and Paul.’ No answer. Gemma was shuddering so hard, Roy could hear her teeth chattering. Eleanor smiled at him. ‘No funny remarks, Roy?’

  ‘Just … not a bad twist,’ he sighed.

  ‘Sodding bitch,’ choked Gemma, hands jerking like a puppet’s.

  ‘I know it was mean, but … frankly I’ve had enough of you.’ She scrumped up the brown paper into a ball. ‘Not that I’d touch you with a pair of tongs, you understand.’

  Paul put the gun back in its case and crossed the room to pick up Eleanor’s bag. He walked like he was having trouble, all stiff, but he seemed over the blind-fury phase. He dropped the bag on the sofa and said, ‘In future when you’re angry with me, I’d rather you took it out on the one person who actually deserves it.’

  Eleanor looked back; very solemn. ‘How noble, darling. I’m sure Gemma’s entranced by your stiff upper-lip.’

  If Paul was a cool customer, when he said why didn’t they go home and talk about it, Eleanor was the ultimate. She told him nicely, ‘no’ because it concerned the four of them. He and she would definitely be through unless he lopped Gemma off the Exodus pay-list. ‘I suppose a divorce might force you to sell those shares … which could affect his chances?’ She jerked her head in Roy’s direction. ‘And I don’t suppose the film would go ahead if we were wrangling in court … Bad news for Matthew?’ She sat back gracefully.

  Paul had been rooting about in the drinks cabinet, and handed a glass of brandy to Gemma. He said, ‘Let’s see how we feel tomorrow.’

  At last his cool seemed to catch her somewhere painful. ‘Did you know the gutter press went to Daddy about you and her?’

  ‘I’m sure he dealt with them very efficiently.’

  ‘Oh yes, he’s had plenty of practice … isn’t that what was on the tip of your tongue?’ Her voice all choked and furry.

  Paul said he was sorry and went on saying it. Then, ‘Best for both of us to sleep on it and see where we are tomorrow.’

  ‘You come back with me now, Paul … or that’s the end.’ A deep sob bursting out. ‘And never see that nymphomaniac again.’

  ‘You’ll let her say that?’ cried Gemma.

  ‘Any suggestions for stopping her?’ Paul sounded just about at the end of his chain.

  Gemma rounded on Eleanor. ‘I’ve only known him since my teens.’

  ‘I can’t help that.’

  Gemma seemed to think of answering, but then did a tottery turn and stumbled to the door. As Paul took a step, Eleanor caught his arm. Paul seemed ready to sprint; then did a slow turn so he didn’t have to see Gemma going.

  Next thing, Roy was the one running after Gemma. She sure as hell shouldn’t get near her Lotus till she’d taken a breather.

  Alone together, Eleanor said gently to Paul, ‘You’re going to have to share more with me.’ He did not answer. After several seconds, Eleanor’s expression changed from severity to troubled tenderness. ‘How could you have thought so little of me … to know me … and expect me to come grovelling?’

  His voice hardly audible, ‘I didn’t expect that.’

  She met his eyes. ‘We’re staying married Paul. You do understand that?’

  ‘Yes, Elly,’ he murmured with a ghost of a smile. ‘I understand perfectly.’

  11

  The morning after, Paul was sitting in his Wilton Crescent house, absent-mindedly watching television. The programme (addressed to ‘colleges and schools’) was a member of that increasingly popular family of socio-biological hybrids sired by The Naked Ape. The night before, he and Eleanor had made no serious attempt to navigate the murky waters now separating them. For his part, Paul was still reluctant to set out, in case a misjudged word or sentiment raised an emotional gale, too fierce to give any raft of reason the slightest chance of survival. Eleanor might have felt the same; since, after breakfast, she had taken herself off to wash her hair.

  Being resolutely determined not to lose her, Paul considered a measure of appeasement inescapable. So what could he offer Eleanor without humiliation? To stop seeing Gemma? To abandon Roy? To have nothing to do with the film from now on? Plainly, in order to salvage anything, he would have to agree to part company with Gemma; so agree he would, reluctantly, and under threat (but knowing, that short of twenty-four hour surveillance, enforcement would be impossible). On Roy’s behalf, he would definitely make a stand. With the film, he would agree, if pressed, to try to persuade Matthew to cut him out. Believing it most unlikely that Matthew would agree, he felt relatively safe.

  On the television screen, a bald professorial type was standing outside a gorilla’s cage, making much ado of the fact that a life of eating and dozing would be intolerably dull to most humans. ‘By contrast,’ he claimed, over pictures of a children’s party, ‘humans are innately curious, driven in infancy to seek constant stimulation.’

  ‘Some of us keep seeking,’ Paul heard from Eleanor, who had just come in with a towel knotted turban-wise around her head. He was glad to laugh, and gladder still when she joined in. Nevertheless, there was much tension in the silence that followed her switching off the set.

  She was gazing at him with the blend of compassion and eagerness, he had long since learned to connect with impending exhortations. ‘Can’t you see how sad it is, my love? Clinging to old friendships … hoping they’ll give you back what’s over; when all they really do is take away the trust you and I could …’ She broke off, and took his hand.

  He looked away. ‘Isn’t that “nanny’s logic”, Elly? “If you play hide-and-seek before nursery tea, you can’t play Happy Families afterwards.”’

  On the brink of an angry rejoinder, Eleanor left the room. She returned with a hair-dryer. After working on her hair in silence for some moments, she asked Paul how he would keep in touch with Roy’s career without constantly bumping into Gemma. Paul explained she would give up her ‘consultancy’ at Exodus. His tone seemed to irritate her, since she said with asperity, ‘It can’t be unusual for wives to object to their husbands working with their mistresses.’

  ‘I’m sure not,’ he agreed. ‘Of course she’ll play no further part in the film.’

  ‘I was coming to that.’

  ‘Before you do,’ he murmured, determined to deal with Roy before tangling with the trickier business of the film, ‘I’d like to enter a plea for Roy … Don’t you think it’d be pretty putrid if I ditched him, just when things are starting to go his way?’

  ‘You mean your way … Oh, I’m sure he’s making pots, but I can’t say I’d like to have to sing songs as nasty as Getting Clever.’

  Paul reproved her gently for being ‘just a little self-righteous’. She turned on the dryer again, and gave him a blast of hot air, playfully, but painfully close to his face. ‘You know perfectly well,’ he told her sharply, ‘that most people in our social niche think rules were only made for other people … Take tax evasion, drunken driving, politicians doing more in Parliament for companies retaining them than for their constituents … and yet the same people are endlessly ratting on about waiters short-changing them, or …’

  ‘And all you’re interested in is showing-up hypocrisy?’

  ‘I was merely suggesting that Getting Clever’s no nastier than the private attitudes of half the people we know.’

  ‘I can’t accept that, Paul.’

  As she went on with her drying, Eleanor’s hair streamed out like a carefree girl’s in the wind; a sight made poignant by her unhappy face. ‘Won’t you ever see I’m trying to help you? All right … you’ll think it far-fetched, ridiculous … I don’t care. You’re like one of those silly experts who live with savages, and think because they’re only taking notes, they can’t be harmed by what’s happening under their noses … leaving sick children to die, eating corpses. Well it’s nonsense, Paul. Nobody’s that special.’

  ‘But nothing’s happening to me, Elly,’ he insisted, touched in spite of himself.

  ‘It’s just happening to Roy, is it? Poor, innocent, silly Roy.’

  ‘Not poor; not innocent; and anything but silly,’ murmured Paul, pacing over to the window and absently picking up a silver card case from a table.

  ‘What slays me,’ she declared, ‘is knowing you could do anything if you chose to … wonderful things.’

  He threw up the cardcase and snatched at it nervily. All that again … Suddenly she was on her feet; not touching any more; not tender; just very angry.

  ‘You humiliated me with that woman … and you’re going to make it up to me. Oh, put that bloody thing down,’ she shouted, as he tossed the cardcase from hand to hand. ‘Don’t you know what jealousy is? Have you never felt sick with it? Forsaken … now there’s an old-fashioned word … something for the Gemmas of this world to wet themselves over.’

  Paul said, ‘I don’t suppose she’s laughing today.’

  ‘I’m delighted to hear it … yes.’ She slapped the marble pier table hard enough to hurt her hand. ‘So what are you going to do for me?’ Paul remained silent. ‘Something to please me … show you still care?’ She looked at him expectantly.