Hot Breath Read online

  So I had always known that George and I would stay together. And in spite of occasional lustful musings I had never been tempted to put my body where my brain had been. Never, that is, until now.

  I looked at the woman sitting opposite me. To my surprise she was reading, with every appearance of enjoyment, the weekly women’s magazine in which the serialisation of my last book was currently appearing. When she laid the magazine down in order to dab her nose with a tissue I saw that she was well into part three of Love’s Dying Glory. She continued, turning a page with an air of rapt involvement. Her breathing was adenoidal and a faint smell of eucalyptus emanated from her.

  Dear reader, I thought, what would you do if you knew that the person facing you was the author of that stirring tale of wild passion? And again what if you knew that she was planning to lay her GP at the earliest possible opportunity?

  The situation was quite titillating. When I got off the train at King’s Cross I was in such a semi-erectile state that I suspected I had a funny walk.

  Not funny enough to be unrecognisable, though, for just beyond the ticket barrier I was accosted by a breathless Robbo Makepeace.

  ‘Harriet!’

  ‘Robbo, hallo! Actually I’m in the most awful hurry.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said, as if pardoning me for some embarrassing solecism. ‘I just wanted to tell you there’s an extraordinary meeting of the Toms committee on Friday.’

  When, I thought, were the meetings not extraordinary?

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘give me a ring and I’ll try to make it.’

  ‘It’s pretty much a crunch situation, I’m afraid,’ Robbo added weightily. ‘We could finish up with no fupbore for the lads.’

  ‘Fupbore for the lads’ was the hallmark of Robbo’s creed. In the face of squalid argument, calculated cheating and just about every other shade of unsportsmanlike behaviour, he persisted in the view that the ‘ Toms existed to provide a competitive outlet for the stalwart British virtues of fair play, loyalty and team spirit.

  ‘I will try and come,’ I reassured him. ‘And now I really must dash.’

  As a result of my exchange with Robbo I arrived at Era Books a touch late. After the usual undignified wrangle about my identity with the security-conscious receptionist I rose in the lift to the second floor.

  I emerged to find a small selection of Era’s hypers, hustlers and harpies assembled to greet me in the lobby of the main office.

  Beyond them the FBI of secretaries and editorial assistants slaved away in a series of glass and plywood corrals.

  The greeters comprised Vanessa; Christopher Lazenby, sales director; Marilyn Drinkwater, publicity; and Tristan Whirly-Birch, PR man extraordinary. There was about these slightly tarnished products of the public school system an air of gentility gone to seed, and nobility corrupted, such as may be observed in photos of Mittel-European royalty disporting in Paris nightclubs. Publishing seemed to eat gently raised and expensively educated young men and women for breakfast, and to regurgitate them in a still recognisable but spoiled form. It seemed odd that the scions of good families, especially the female ones, should be so possessed by the idea of publishing as an okay thing to do. It appeared to have the seal of uppercrust approval. The editorial office of Era Books sounded like nothing so much as a busy day at the Royal Show. And yet a more rancid hotbed of avarice, hypocrisy and moral turpitude would have been hard to find.

  There was no doubt that these special characteristics found their apotheosis in Vanessa and Tristan, both skilled and viperish practitioners of the publishing arts.

  Now Vanessa stepped forward and took my arm as if I were simple or infirm, or both. It was one of the many small ways in which she contrived to make me feel a hayseed.

  ‘Bless you, Harriet,’ she gushed through a miasma of Desert Breeze. ‘How I wish all our authors were as obliging as you.’ She had a way of implying, or perhaps I just inferred, that my co-operativeness was somehow dull and demeaning.

  She also invariably made me feel that my ‘good’ clothes, donned expressly for the occasion, were further evidence of my bucolic background. Not for her any special effort. In spite of the rolling acres in the shires which were her heritage, Vanessa exuded street-wisdom. Today, along with the inevitable laced boots and rolled-down socks, she wore a pair of scarlet long coms, complete with buttoned back panel for frostbite-free defecation. These were topped by a Fair Isle cardy slung round the shoulders, and a humbug-striped ra-ra skirt. She was parlously thin, and her blonde hair was teased away from her face in a style which suggested that her toe had just been stuck in a live electric socket. But she was just beautiful and well-bred enough to rise above the breathtaking nastiness of her toilette.

  ‘Hallo, Vanessa,’ I said. ‘Hallo, Chris.’

  ‘Hi,’ said Chris. In this small gathering of the literati only Christopher Lazenby was not out of the top drawer. As befitted one who had to soil his hands with commerce, Chris was a rough diamond, with breakfast-food vowels, personalised jewellery, and the Zapata moustaches which had been all the go fifteen years ago but were now the stamp of the young exec estates of Potters Bar and Borehamwood. He was also the only Eran who still admitted to enjoying business lunches. While others toyed with crudités and grilled sole, Chris slurped thick soup and wiped up gravy with bread. His backside strained against its chainstore trousering, and his fitted pink shirt parted slightly in the interstices between buttons, revealing a glimpse of well-filled gut.

  ‘Morning, Marilyn.’

  ‘It’s so nice to see you, Harriet.’

  Marilyn Drinkwater was a smart, but colourless, woman approaching that dangerous corner in her career when exciting potential becomes annoying garrulity. Her looks were of the pale pastel variety which are only attractive in youth. Now in her late thirties, she looked as if Brenda Tunnel’s mother-in-law had spent the night clinging to her jugular.

  ‘I hear you’ve been having a pretty hectic time at home,’ she remarked as the five of us set off in the direction of the conference room, Vanessa’s hand still beneath my elbow.

  ‘Yes, it has been, but then when isn’t it?’ I replied obligingly, and the Erans glanced at each other with warm, collusive approval—I was such a nice author.

  Tristan, who had been silent till now, remarked: ‘We think you’re going to like Vince.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Oh yes, yes,’ they chorused.

  ‘Then I expect I shall.’

  In the conference room Tristan held a chair for me and I sat.

  ‘That is an enchanting brooch,’ he said, studying my left lapel. His proximity was as fragrant, fresh and deadly as a bunch of belladonna. His face was round and bland, his hair smooth, his collar stiff and his tie wide; all combined to give him a humpy-dumptyish appearance. He was said to have impressed the Great Man of Era Books almost at once with a publishing acumen quite staggering in a mere strip of a lad (Tristan was twenty-five). But the truth was he was so rich, so landed and so gentrified, and consequently so utterly without scruple, that he could have sold tonic wine in Jerez.

  ‘Isn’t it pretty?’ I agreed. ‘My husband gave it to me on our anniversary.’

  This was the unalloyed truth but I only mentioned it for the effect I knew it would have on the Erans. All four of them assumed expressions of almost pained admiration.

  ‘God,’ said Marilyn in reverential tones, ‘it’s good to meet someone with a happy marriage.’

  On the long wall opposite, the paperback cover of Love’s Dying Glory had been pinned up, presumably as a compliment to me. It depicted Victoria Principal, Richard Gere and Al Pacino in Regency attire. Gere and Principal were locked in a muscular embrace while Pacino looked on with an air of saturnine disapproval. In the background was a galleon, apparently moored on the heads of some men fencing in frilly shirts, and a Moorish castle with a few date palms rising from the surf. All in all it was an excellent distillation of the work it was to enclose.

  ‘Like
it?’ asked Vanessa.

  ‘It says a lot about the book,’ I said.

  ‘That’s what we think,’ agreed Chris. He made a sweeping gesture with his left hand. The hand was adorned with digital watch, identity bracelet, wedding and other rings, and a Marlboro cigarette. ‘We’re putting your name over the title on this one, in red, and the title itself in the same red, but shiny. Like catches the light.’

  ‘Nice,’ I said.

  ‘You haven’t heard the half of it!’ shrilled Marilyn. ‘We have such plans for you.’

  ‘Gosh.’

  ‘My feeling is,’ announced Tristan, ‘that we need to play up your domestic circumstances more. It’s incredible how you manage to write with the children about, and a houseful of pets and so on.’

  ‘The children are quite big now,’ I reminded him. ‘It’s not that difficult to write.’

  ‘I still think it’s a useful image,’ he persisted, addressing the others now. ‘ We want more pictures of Harriet at home with her family and her animals.’

  Amid the general murmur of assent I thought of Declan and Damon; of Gareth playing snooker and Clara wired for sound; of Fluffy and Spot and the misanthropic Stu; of Brenda and Robbo and (be still, my erogenous zones) of Dr Ghikas. And I was not sure that the sum of these disparate parts was quite the rural idyll which Tristan clearly envisaged.

  ‘Will you have some coffee, Harriet?’ enquired Vanessa. The plain, ruminating secretary raised her head above the foliage on the far side of the glass partition.

  ‘Thank you, that would be nice.’

  ‘Lucinda—some coffee please!’

  The tapir ambled off to fetch refreshments, and as she went, Vince Priddoe arrived. He was a tiny man in a cream suit and a light blue roll-necked pullover. There was no hint of dangling corks, nor of tubes of the amber nectar thrust into the hip pocket. On the contrary he embodied the sporty quasi-California chic which every smart man was currently trying to achieve. I had little doubt that his diet was fibrous and fat-free, his body trim and at a peak of cardiovascular fitness, his sex-life varied and caring, his mind expanded by frequent energetic social intercourse with minority groups such as authors and women (and sometimes, as now, both at once), and his leisure time spent productively.

  Vince’s hand when he shook mine was smooth, cool and tanned; his teeth when he smiled gleamed in capped splendour; and he smelled of the kind of unguents which are sold by Americans with Italian names who fly about in Lear jets. I felt like an unmade bed. I could not in a million years see myself on an author tour of the Antipodes with this paragon of self-fulfilment.

  ‘Harriet—’ he gave my hand a little tug as if trying to draw water out of my mouth—‘let me take a good look at the woman who gives so much pleasure to so many people.’ As an opening gambit this made my gorge rise. But I mumbled something suitably self-effacing and at Vanessa’s instigation we took our places round the conference table. The tapir brought coffee, and I stirred in milk and sugar. Vince took his black, with pills, and asked in addition for a glass of water.

  ‘And how about this,’ he said, gesturing at the cover on the wall. ‘That has to be the most striking cover of the year. Are you pleased with it, Harriet?’

  ‘Oh, delighted.’

  Vince turned to the assembled Erans. ‘ I think I just have to get Harriet over to Australia, they’d love her over there. Tell me, Harriet, have you ever been down under?’

  ‘No, I never have.’

  ‘It’s a wonderful country, Harriet,’ said Vince. ‘It’s a big country, and a wild country, and one you ought to see.’

  ‘They read there, too, contrary to popular belief,’ said Chris. ‘The figures—’

  ‘My countrymen,’ announced Vince firmly, overriding Chris’s interruption, ‘have a tradition of plain speaking. They know what they like, Harriet, and what they don’t like, and they let their preferences be known. I don’t mind telling you I’m proud of that.’

  ‘Admirable,’ I said. It was clear that Vince Priddoe, with all his manifold virtues, was utterly without a sense of humour. I became even more certain that my first visit ‘ down under’ would not be undertaken in his company. As the others talked I let my mind return like a homing pigeon to images of Dr Ghikas—his tweed suit, his thick lashes, his lonely bed …

  ‘… need at least ten days,’ Tristan was saying. ‘And I imagine that once Harriet has made arrangements to be away it doesn’t make much odds whether she’s away for two days or two weeks—would I be right, Harriet?’

  In the space of a few minutes the Australian scheme appeared to have fleshed out alarmingly. I pressed the panic button.

  ‘Normally you would be,’ I said. ‘ But my husband’s away for the whole of this year, which does complicate things. I very much doubt,’ I added firmly, ‘that a tour of Australia would be on.’

  ‘Doesn’t this husband of yours get leave?’ asked Vince, quite testily. ‘ I mean—’ he looked at Vanessa—‘when exactly is the paperback publication date?’

  ‘October—so exciting,’ said Vanessa. It was now the end of May. Suddenly the summer seemed extremely short. I had a sudden vision of Constantine Ghikas, bollock-naked and with everything at the high port, walking backwards into the sea while I lay on Bondi Beach trapped up to my neck in sand. It was not comforting. But when it came to the manipulation of Erans I was a wily old fox.

  ‘Australia sounds quite wonderful,’ I said, wistfully. ‘But I honestly couldn’t abandon the kids for that long, much as I would like to. I really hate to let you down over this—’

  ‘Nonsense! Nonsense!’ they all cried obligingly. Vince looked baffled.

  ‘Besides,’ Tristan added, ‘ you’re coming over to the Fartenwald Buchfest, remember, and that will be of tremendous value, even though it’s only for a couple of days.’

  ‘So you’re coming to Fartenwald?’ Vince brightened immeasurably. ‘Well, that is good news. I shall be there myself, so I shall be able to try my powers of persuasion on you again.’

  ‘You could try, Vince,’ said Marilyn roguishly, ‘but our Harriet is a family person, unlike most authors, and we wouldn’t want her any different!’

  Lord, how little they knew me. I shifted lasciviously on my hessian seat. My Bottom was without a doubt translated.

  As they chatted, and I stared at the cover picture on the wall opposite, my thoughts elsewhere, my conscious brain noted one thing. Al Pacino was wearing a wrist watch.

  I mentioned this at lunch which we took, fortuitously, at the Zeus, a Greek restaurant in Holborn. Vanessa tinkled mirthlessly.

  ‘You noticed! Don’t worry, we do know.’

  ‘Super.’

  ‘I should have pointed it out right away. There is quite a bit of touching up to do.’

  ‘What’s all this about touching up?’ asked Chris, leering over a forkful of mixed dolma.

  ‘The wrist watch.’

  ‘What a prize fuck-up,’ opined Chris.

  ‘Language, Christopher,’ rebuked Marilyn. ‘ There are ladies present.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  Marilyn turned to me. ‘Harriet, I do need to get your biographical notes up to date. Tell me what I should know, there’s a dear.’

  The lack of changes in my life embarrassed me rather. And the change which had occurred was not mentionable.

  ‘I’m a year or two older,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t look it.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Little did she know that I was no longer the well-balanced and wholesome scribbling housewife so beloved of the Erans, but a lust-maddened virago hell-bent on adultery.

  ‘… they’re teenagers, surely?’ she was asking. I caught her drift.

  ‘No. Well one is, sort of, just. They’re in between really.’ I considered my children for a moment—Clara, even thinner, more lovely and more waspish than Vanessa; and Gareth, nearly as big, just as greedy, and potentially more foul-mouthed than Chris. What, in God’s name, would they be like when they were teenagers?


  ‘She’s in a world of her own,’ observed Vince. ‘ Where were you, Harriet, back in Tudor times, with the old lutes strumming there?’

  ‘We’re all dying to read The Remembrance Tree,’ said Vanessa, as if for the first time.

  ‘I endorse that,’ said Vince. ‘You know, Harriet, it would be a great help to our people in Australia if we had some idea what you’ve got in store for us. People like continuity, readers want something to look forward to.’

  ‘Don’t badger the lady,’ said Chris, making a swiss roll of pitta bread and tsatsiki. ‘We all know it’ll be shit hot.’

  ‘Oh, we know that,’ agreed Vanessa, ‘but just the same, a few titchy hints would be tremendous …’

  ‘Yes, come on, Harriet,’ echoed Vince.

  As I launched into my by now finely tuned filibuster on the subject of The Remembrance Tree, I wondered why Vince should suppose that the constant repetition of my christian name would make him seem a nicer and more sensitive human being; when all it did was to confirm me in my opinion that he was an utter pillock.