Death of a Unicorn Read online

  ‘How lovely. That’s a word I’ve never come across except in crossword puzzles.’

  ‘It is a word which has ruined lives.’

  ‘I suppose so. But it’s nothing compared to the Halper side of you, is it? That must be fantastically strong. If we had a baby I wonder whose face it would have.’

  ‘Mine, of course. That’s why we’re not going to.’

  ‘I think we’d get a slightly yellow Millett. You can see this piggy nose in the Long Gallery, snuffling out under wigs and over ruffs for generations. Even old Lely couldn’t do much about it.’

  ‘The Halpers would win all the same.’

  ‘Got you!’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Whatever you say you’re secretly proud of your family.’

  ‘My family is still alive, in me.’

  ‘It won’t be much longer unless you start doing something about the next generation.’

  ‘Haven’t you noticed? My grandfather did quite enough to let me off the obligation.’

  ‘You’re scared of losing to the Milletts. I bet you . . .’

  ‘Don’t be a fool.’

  ‘I’m serious, I think. I mean . . . you see, I’ve been wondering why you let me bully you into coming out here. You’ve hated it, haven’t you? I think it might be your way of telling me what you think about me and Cheadle. That it isn’t worth it, I mean. I ought to get loose from it and do something else with my life. Like . . . Do take those beastly specs off. I can’t see what you’re thinking.’

  ‘I am thinking that if you say anything more about babies I shall boot you out.’

  Booting me out was a running joke, though the possibility of it being true always gave me a slight kick, and him too, I think, reminding us of the tricky balance we’d set up and the certainty that we were going to fall off the wire one day—though when it happened it was not going to be anything like this.

  ‘I’ve thought of a new and thrilling revenge,’ I said. ‘I shall picket your bridge club and proclaim the story of my wrongs on a sandwich board.’

  ‘The police will move you on.’

  ‘Policemen eat out of my hand.’

  This was part of the game. B enjoyed fending off imaginary attacks on his power-bases, though he was incapable of producing the mildest leap of fantasy in response to my flights. We might have gone on for some time if a car hadn’t drawn up behind us and blared its hooter. B drove forward, found a turning-place and reversed into it. As the other car came by I saw that the driver was the boring property developer, Henry van Something, with whom I’d had to put up all through an endless dinner party a couple of evenings before. He waved to us and drove on.

  ‘Are you selling it to him?’ I said. ‘I couldn’t stand that.’

  ‘There’s a syndicate. It’s quite a big deal.’

  ‘Worse still.’

  I woke in the middle of the night and knew without reaching out to feel that B wasn’t there. Normally he willed himself asleep in two minutes and slept all night, turning once as if he was a chop being fried. I lay for a while, listening to the distant whisper of the sea, then got up and went out on to the balcony. He was leaning on the rail in his pyjamas, staring out towards America. There was no moon, but lots of stars above and fireflies in the garden. Apart from them sea and land were pitch black and it was nothing like as warm as you’d expect a tropic night to be. I slid my arm up under his pyjama top and ran my fingers over the knotty muscles below his shoulder-blades. He seemed not to notice.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I said. ‘Just money?’

  ‘No. There’s enough of that. Or there would be. It’s in the wrong place.’

  ‘Can’t you move it?’

  ‘I thought I could. Been setting it up for years. But now . . .’

  ‘Because of Mummy?’

  ‘Partly.’

  ‘Can’t you just buy her off?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘I had an idea. It came to me in my sleep. Would you mind if I bought her off?’

  ‘A hundred and twenty thousand pounds?’

  ‘But would you let me?’

  ‘Up to you. But I’m not going to lend you the money.’

  ‘I know. But I could sell my sapphires.’

  He grunted.

  ‘They’re insured for two hundred and fifty thousand,’ I said. ‘I know you don’t get as much as that, and just as sapphires they aren’t worth it. It’s Mary’s stone makes the difference. But I thought if you helped me find someone to buy them we might get enough. We could make it a condition they didn’t tell anyone for a couple of years. I can go on wearing the replica if I have to. Would it help? Would it make any difference?’

  He was silent so long I thought he’d stopped listening.

  ‘You’re certain they’re yours to sell?’ he said.

  ‘Daddy left them to me outright. They’re not entailed or part of the Trust or anything.’

  ‘Odd.’

  ‘I’ve always thought he wanted me to feel I had something of my own which I could do what I liked with. I wasn’t a complete slave to the house.’

  ‘I suppose it’s a possibility. I told you it was only part of the deal your mother proposed?’

  ‘You don’t have to explain. Jane told me. That’s nonsense. We may look alike but we’re not swaps. Jane thinks so too.’

  ‘So do I.’

  He said it without thinking, a casual comment on a side-issue to the main business, but it was a fantastic relief to hear. I put my head on his shoulder and leaned against him. Both our bodies were chilly with the night air, but as the warmth came back between us I persuaded myself I could feel him beginning to relax.

  ‘It might be a possibility,’ he said at last. I’ll have to sort it out. Would your mother stay bought?’

  ‘Oh, I think so. Provided she didn’t find out where the money really came from. She isn’t a complete crook.’

  VIII

  Sergeant Sawyer was scowling in his booth as usual, the lift juddered up in the same old way, and there was the regular pile of Monday manuscripts waiting to be read on my desk. Rather than face them I went off to the middle room to say hello. When Tom looked up to ask if I’d had a good holiday he sounded perfectly normal—only slightly guarded when I asked how things were going. We arranged to have luncheon at El Vino’s and I assumed he would tell me then.

  The first real sign that I got that things were different was from Nellie. I’d skimmed through a dozen manuscripts, even direr than usual because writers who’d stopped trying, convinced that Jack Todd had a personal vendetta against them, were having another go—many of them actually said so in their covering letters. Depression had already set in when Nellie came through the swing doors.

  ‘The Editor would like to see you, Mabs,’ she said.

  She spoke as though she hardly knew me. She didn’t ask about my holiday. She sounded as though she was struggling through a miserable dream.

  ‘Oh, Nellie, I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘I dare say we shall get used to things.’

  I had to give the door a shove to force it over the pile of the new carpet. Elephant grey, I saw. And yes, white walls, Swedish chairs, stainless steel floor-lamps; linen curtains. No Buffets on the walls, though, but cartoons, new ones, including several blondes-in-bed-with-rich-old-men. Mr Naylor was sitting behind a huge, flat-topped, fake-antique partner’s desk, reading next Thursday’s magazine.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said and went on reading. He kept me waiting five minutes, at least. Some pages he merely glanced at, others he read for a while before turning on with an impatient flick I wondered if he’d asked me in to say he had no more use for me. He put the paper down as if he’d found what he was looking for and stared at me through his beady little spectacles.

  ‘I’m told you come from a posh kind of home,’ he said.

  ‘I suppose . . . well, yes.’

  ‘What do you make of this?’

  He smacked the magazine with t
he back of his hand. I had to stand to see where he’d got it open. The Round, of course.

  ‘It’s surprising how many people read it,’ I said.

  ‘Your kind of people?’

  ‘And ones who like to think they are. I used to, when I could. You’re a bit ashamed, but it’s sort of addictive.’

  ‘You didn’t find it totally balls-aching?’

  ‘I’m not actually equipped . . .’

  He slammed the desk with his palm to stop me.

  ‘Having ink slung at me I can take,’ he said. ‘Being picked up on the way I talk I can’t.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . .’

  ‘This is my magazine. It has to be the way I want it. I’ve got to be able to tell my staff what I want in my own language, uncensored, right? If I start trying to mince along like you and Duggan I’ll end up running a magazine full of masturbating little articles about getting the lawn-mower to start.’

  ‘Yes, I see.’

  ‘I’m glad you see, Margaret.’

  That was the first time he’d used his flat stage voice. Till then he’d had a neutral sort of accent, with only a slight nasal whine in it, and had sounded lively in a rather aggressive way. He’d really let me see he was angry, when he was. I assumed that this was the real Brian Naylor and the stage voice and personality were a defensive system. His behaviour with Jane hadn’t suggested that he really expected women to be attracted to him. And that business with the ink—he’d seemed quite likeable then, playing the butt and fall-guy.

  ‘That’s what I used to think about the paper before I came,’ I said.

  ‘And then you were converted? On your way to Damascus-on-Thames?’

  ‘Only partly. When we get it wrong it can be dreary. And sometimes it’s clever without being interesting.’

  ‘All right. What would you do with this?’

  He smacked his hand on the Round again.

  ‘Have we got to keep it?’

  ‘I have got to keep it. You look at the advertising pages sometimes, Margaret?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then you will have noticed that forty per cent of our income derives from selling various forms of kitsch, and snob-appeal tobacco and perfume and corsets and shoes to a pathetic bunch of social climbers. Until I can build up a less repulsive class of advertiser I have to stick with this shit. So?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ve thought about it, of courser I used to think you could just do what Mrs Clarke does but write it rather better, but you couldn’t. It’s really only lists of names, with a few adjectives. You could think up new adjectives, but they’d get dreary too after a few weeks. You couldn’t do what I’ve done with Petronella because that depends on the existence of this. The only other possibility I can see is to turn it into the other sort of gossip-column, lots of names still, but bitchy stories about them. That would be quite expensive. You’d need extra staff, and money to pay your informants. People don’t give dirt away when they can sell it. Remember, even doing it the way she does, Mrs Clarke has spent years building up her filing system. Honestly, I don’t see a solution.’

  ‘You’re going to have to see a solution, because you’re taking it over.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Oh, Margaret ?’

  ‘I mean no thank you, I suppose. I’d rather not, please.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’d hate to do it the way it is. The reason why people do read it is that somehow they feel Mrs Clarke loves it, and that comes through in spite of everything. Besides, I want to do other things. And on top of that Dorothy—Mrs Clarke—has been terribly nice to me. She hates what I write, but she couldn’t have been kinder.’

  Mr Naylor sighed, tilted his chair back and gazed at the ceiling.

  ‘Are you there, God?’ he said. ‘Dear God, sweet God in heaven, couldn’t you have sent me one teeny little professional to work with, instead of a load of whining amateurs? It’s not asking much, God, is it?’

  He hung balanced, listening for an answer, before letting the swing of the chair flip him forwards to stare at me through his silly little spectacles.

  ‘If you can’t do what I want, girlie, you’re no use to me,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  ‘So I’m stupid.’

  ‘If I tried to do what you want it would come out boring because I’d be bored with it. There are other reasons, but that’s what matters. I dare say there are things I don’t know I can do, but . . .’

  ‘How old are you, Margaret?’

  ‘Twenty-one, but . . .’

  ‘Just twenty-one, and so clever!’

  ‘Do you want me to resign?’

  ‘Oh, crap! This is just conversation. What you’re going to do now is sit down and get some ideas together about what to do with the Round. Give your manuscripts to Nellie and tell her to put rejection slips on the lot of them. Oh, and don’t waste time trying to tell me how la Clarke could jazz up what she’s doing. She’s out. Finished. Got that?’

  He snatched up the magazine and started to read another page. I left and went into the middle room. Ronnie was in, sorting through the review books. Tom looked up with raised eyebrows, somehow aware that I had news.

  ‘I’ve just offered to resign,’ I said.

  I got it wrong. It was meant to come out dry and whimsical, but a shake crept in.

  ‘Soon we’ll be able to start a rival rag,’ said Ronnie. ‘You, Dorothy, me. All we need is a backer. Coming, Tom?’

  ‘Ronnie, you’re not . . .’ I said.

  ‘No option. You know, there is a certain stimulus about getting the sack. New opportunities shimmer. Mirages, no doubt, but it gives one the illusion of being young and starting out afresh.’

  ‘But why on earth?’

  ‘Political incompatibility. I am a red under the bed.’

  ‘But we’re not a political magazine!’

  ‘My dear Mabs, Knitwear Weekly is a political magazine. And Mr Naylor appears to be something of a Cold Warrior. I should be very interested to know whether any of Mr Amos Brierley’s funds come originally from Washington.’

  ‘What an extraordinary idea! You mean the American secret service, whatever it’s called, paying for Bruce to draw this week’s blonde-in-bed?’

  ‘With Ronnie under it,’ said Tom. ‘You haven’t made it clear, Mabs, whether you are actually staying?’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘I appear indeed to be chained to this rock.’

  ‘So do I, I suppose.’

  ‘You Andromeda, me Prometheus.’

  ‘I don’t think they were chained to the same rock.’

  ‘Not as normally depicted. An opportunity missed, in my opinion. Andromeda, of course, was only required to expose her outer surface, with a wisp of gauze by way of parsley, whereas Prometheus displayed his inward parts, as if for haruspication. It gives a new meaning to the phrase “according to my lights”.’

  He was juggling with language as usual, but only from habit. He sounded desperately gloomy, whereas Ronnie, by contrast, had seemed decidedly cheerful. I would have liked to ask Ronnie more about his theory that B might be getting funds from the American government, but I always felt I had to be very careful about even mentioning B in the office in case I let something slip. It was funny that Mrs Clarke had said something a bit along the same lines, as though it was a mystery in the City where B’s original money had come from. I wasn’t looking forward to meeting her, though really I knew there was nothing to be afraid of.

  In fact when I got back to my desk I found a note on it in Mrs Clarke’s purple ink, asking me to come to her room. I found her standing at her commode with the top drawer open, walking her fingers along a row of filing-cards. She picked one out before turning to me and smiling as if nothing had changed.

  ‘I hope you had a pleasant holiday,’ she said.

  ‘Beautiful, thanks.’

  ‘I always enjoy Barbados, but I do not think I would choose to begin there.’


  I hadn’t told anyone I was going to Barbados. I’d let people think it was Bermuda.

  ‘I was expecting something a bit junglier,’ I said.

  ‘I find the social life there a little peculiar. They have their own ideas about things.’

  This was certainly true of Mrs Halper, though perhaps not in the way Mrs Clarke meant. I made an agreeing sort of mumble.

  ‘I think I shall spend more time in the islands now,’ she said. ‘Have you been told that I am leaving the magazine?’

  ‘Yes. I’m terribly sorry, Mrs Clarke . . .’

  ‘My dear, I wish I could say that I do not blame you at all.’

  ‘Honestly, I think everything would have happened exactly the way it has if I’d never set foot in this place.’

  ‘In my opinion you have allowed yourself to become an instrument in the hands of a wicked and odious man.’

  ‘I don’t think he’s odious right through,’ I began. Then I realised she wasn’t talking about Mr Naylor. She glanced down at the card she was holding. It was covered in her curious code of symbols on both sides. It had come from near the left-hand side of the top drawer of the commode, roughly where the ‘B’s must be.

  ‘A man who is prepared to betray his country and to defraud his own mother . . .’ she said.

  ‘Please, Mrs Clarke,’ I interrupted. ‘I think you’re wrong. I met . . . but that isn’t the point. I just can’t talk to you or to anyone here about it. It’s a completely separate part of my life. I promise you I never talk to him about anything that happens in here. Never. So I’m afraid that if that’s why you asked me to come and see you I shall have to go away.’

  I was just managing not to shout. Mrs Clarke looked at me for a moment, turned and put the card away.

  ‘I must tell you that I believe you to be very sadly deceived,’ she said, ‘and that you will live to regret it. But I will respect what you say. No, I wanted to talk to you about the future of the Social Round. I understand that you are to take it over from now on.’