High society Read online

  ST HILDA’S CHURCH HALL, SOHO

  The early-morning meeting of Soho Alcoholics Anonymous was normally finished by eight o’clock. Many of the people who attended it were busy professionals who had work to get to. The current session was already overrunning, but nobody seemed minded to leave.

  ‘Backstage at the Brits was the usual bollocks. They’d given me the second biggest dressing room after Elton John, so I knew immediately that Emily had been right about the Yanks — they hadn’t turned up again. Bastards. I don’t know what’s more pathetic, that they care so little about pissing us off or that we care so much when they do it…Actually, I reckon the saddest thing is that they don’t even care that we care that they don’t care. They just don’t give a toss about what we think either way. We might as well be Bela-shaggin’—rus or Iceland or whatever. And we invented the Beatles! But that’s all just ancient history now, in’t it? The Yanks are back in charge and that’s the way it’s going to stay. Everybody wants to crack the States. That’s the one, in’t it, the only one.

  ‘I’ve got seven Brit Awards and I’d swap the lot for one Grammy. I’ve headlined the MTV Europe Music Awards for three years in a row now, but I’d happily go bottom of the bill if they’d just knock off that one little bastard word ‘Europe’. The proper MTV Awards aren’t called MTV USA, are they? No, because everybody knows where they’re at. It’s like with American email addresses. We have to put ‘dot uk’ at the end of ours, but not them, everyone knows where they live. Bastards.

  ‘I might get there. I keep trying. I really thought I’d scored when I went on Jay Leno a few months ago. Leno hugged me in hospitality and said I was a star. But then Pammy Anderson walked in and I realized I was only a star to Jay Leno until a real one came along.

  ‘I couldn’t believe Pammy Anderson, incidentally. I mean, those knockers are just stupid, aren’t they? She’s deeper than she is long, that bird. I reckon her nipples were at the bar before the back of her arse was through the door. Doesn’t do it for me at all, that. I couldn’t raise a smile.’

  Tommy basked in the laughter of the assembled recovering addicts. An audience was an audience to him. It didn’t matter whether it was ten thousand kids at the Birmingham NEC or a tight ring of screw-ups in a church hall in Soho. Tommy always rose to the bait.

  ‘Anyway, the good thing was that with no Yanks or U2 turnin’ up, I was unquestionably the second biggest star in the house after Elton. I mean, I had outsold him about fifty to one on our last albums, but it’s about longevity, in’t it? So respect and all that. He’s queen of England is Elton. Everybody knows that. They’d put a little astroturf garden with a picket fence an’ all outside his dressing room, which in my coked-up state I thought was the funniest thing I’d ever seen, particularly when I pissed on one of his trees. I could see that the Manics were dead annoyed that they hadn’t thought of that first. Good thing, I reckon. If they’d pissed on Elton’s tree it would have been some sort of political protest. With me it was just a laugh.

  ‘Backstage it were the usual set-up: concrete hangar, Portakabin dressing rooms, a Hard Rock Cafe in the middle and a sponsored bar, which meant of course that the beer was shite. Decent beers never sponsor poxy backstage bars, because they don’t have to. You never see Stella giving their nectar away, or Boddingtons, do you? And what beer was it? What else but the ever-present, ever shite Budweiser! The beer with the best ads and the worst tae in the world. Fook American beer! No, really, I mean it. Fook American beer. Why does it have to be so sweet’? Because everything Americans consume has to be sweet, that’s why. I’ve been to Disneyworld, mate. They have M&Ms on their fookin’ Coco Pops!

  ‘Anyway, there I was in me Portakabin screaming for someone to find me a decent beer and feeling dead bored, and the thing is that when I get bored I get randy. Well, you do, don’t you? What’s more, as of the incident at the traffic lights on Brixton High Street, I was officially single again. On top of which, I’d just got on an E that the A and R people had given me. They thought that was terribly funny, by the way: an E from A and R. I said, ‘Yeah, and an F, U, C and a K from me.

  ‘Anyway, like I say, suddenly I was feeling totally randy and although there was plenty of birds around I decided that I fancied having a crack at Lulu. I’ve always fancied Lulu and I reckon she still looks top even if she’s fifty or whatever and also she looks like she likes a laugh. I mean, she’s always on Ab Fab, in’t she? She’d come to the ceremony with Elton, I think, or else she had a single out or was getting an award for having such a great arse for a granny…I don’t know. The point was she was wearing fantastic tight leather trousers, so I went straight up to her and told her she was pulled.’

  SAMANTHA’S FLAT, ISLINGTON

  Hello, darling? Can you hear me? I’m on my mobile.’

  Peter Paget felt a great sickness in his stomach. What was he doing? What was he doing’}

  This was madness. Sheer lunacy. And yet…yet…He could not deny himself. Peter hated lying to his wife more than anything, almost. It burdened him with such guilt that sometimes he felt that he would be unable to get out of bed in the morning and he knew that the sickness in his stomach would prevent him from eating all day. Yes, he hated deceiving Angela almost more than anything…But not more than he would hate to have to give up the reason for his lies.

  ‘Yes, there’s been an adjournment. It was pretty rough, couldn’t believe the hostility. Did you watch it on the Parliament Channel? Well, yes, of course I knew you would…So you thought I was good?…Well, I can’t deny I was pleased with it too…With any luck there’ll be a good chunk on the news. It was absolute bedlam outside the house. The newspaper people just sort of swamped me. It was incredible. I’ve never felt like a star before, strange but…well, exciting…But the questions they asked were so ignorant they beggared belief, made it sound like Barry Leman and I want to distribute heroin in school playgrounds. People are so scared. They can just about stomach talking about legalizing dope, but the minute you start using words like crack and heroin they run for cover.’

  Basking in the happy memory of that invigorating media scrum, Peter almost forgot the sickness in his stomach. He was proud of himself, he had done well. He loved using words like ‘crack’ and ‘heroin’. They sounded so uncompromisingly realistic. He wondered whether he could risk calling heroin ‘smack’, but held back. Angela Paget’s bullshit detector was very finely tuned and she would instantly detect his posturing. Peter had once been part of a select committee visiting an army base and had accepted the offer of a combat jacket and beret to wear for the duration of his visit. Angela had never let him forget the resulting photograph that appeared in the local newspaper. He smiled at the memory.

  He should be at home. He ought to go home. This was their day. Angela had practically written half of his speech. This was the first day in years when they could genuinely celebrate Peter’s career together. As they had done on that wonderful first night he had been elected to Parliament. This should be their night. He should go home.

  ‘The PM has summoned me to his rooms tomorrow morning to explain myself, as if I didn’t make myself quite clear in my speech…I’m quite sure that the Chief Whip will be pushing the boss to chuck me out, but so what? The bloody party’s never going to promote me anyway. I’ve got as much chance of making a difference outside it as I have in. More, in fact. What they don’t understand is that I actually care, I mean really care, about what I’m trying to do. Principle, you see, they just can’t get their heads round it…I almost think I might do better outside Parliament anyway.’ Across the room Peter Paget’s parliamentary assistant removed her jumper to reveal the pale blue brassiere beneath. Paget was momentarily distracted.

  ‘I’m sorry, darling, I didn’t catch that, it’s this stupid mobile…Threatening phone calls? What do you mean? To you? To the Lemans? Well, I don’t see why you need me to come home because of that…’

  Again that pain. His wife was worried. She needed him. She was alw
ays there when he needed her. He should go to her. Now…

  But what good would he do? It had only been a phonecall. In fact, it had only been a phonecall to someone else. They were not even the ones being threatened. She didn’t need him. If she really needed him, he told himself, he would go.

  His parliamentary assistant’s hips wiggled as she pulled the smart little pinstripe skirt down over her thighs, gathering her tights along with it. How smooth and flawless her skin was.

  How young.

  It had been nearly two months now, seven weeks of tortured deception and frantic passion. Peter knew that while he might possibly continue to deceive his wife, he could no longer deceive himself. This was no moment of madness, no potentially forgivable stupid sex thing. This was a relationship. An affair. A proper, drawn-out, cliche of an affair.

  ‘Well, of course it’s upsetting if Laura Leman has had a threatening call, but I’m sure it was just a hoax, Angela. These things almost always are. Some crank doesn’t like Barry and wants to make his life unpleasant…I mean, he is investigating police corruption, for God’s sake. Those people are proper hard men…I really don’t think there’s any reason to be scared…You haven’t had a call, have you? Well, then…Look, I can’t just drop everything. I’ll come home as soon as is humanly possible, all right? I promise…’

  The tiny triangle of Samantha’s G-string looked exquisite against her beautifully waxed groin. What there was of the flimsy garment was of the same colour and expensive material as her bra. She smiled at Peter as she ran her thumbs around the frilled waistband. No one had ever bought her such nice underwear before. In fact no one had ever bought her underwear before at all. She was only twenty-three. Her boyfriends at university had spent their money on beer. Their idea of erotic bedroom attire was seeing her in their rugby shirts.

  Peter reminded himself that he must dispose of that receipt. It had been some time since he had bought Mrs Paget any underwear. He would, though, he really would. Soon.

  ‘…It’s just there’s so much work to do on this bill. I’ll get through it as fast as I can. Samantha has agreed to stay back and help, which is amazing of her because there’ll be no extra money, but she believes in this thing as much as I do. As much as we do. This is the defining moment, darling, I’ve lit the blue touch paper. I have to be here on the ground to see it through. Yes, yes, I knew you’d understand. Thank you, darling.’

  Peter Paget turned off his phone.

  Samantha joined him on the bed. ‘You were like a lion today, my darling. You thrilled me. You made me hot inside.’

  He closed his eyes as she kissed him. Angela need never know. The kisses made him giddy. Or perhaps it was the speed with which his life was changing. Only a few months before he had been so very depressed, with a career that was going nowhere and a happy but increasingly unexciting marriage. All his promise wasted, all his hope behind him, facing the featureless prospect of an extended middle-age watching his daughters grow away from him and his wife grow old.

  Now suddenly everything had changed. He had ached after Samantha from the moment she had come to work with him. Simply ached. She had clouded his thoughts utterly, his desire for her finding some place to intrude on every single waking moment of his life.

  It was not that he did not love Angela. He did love her, truly. But he wanted Samantha. He was obsessed.

  Nonetheless, Peter Paget had never dreamt that he would end up putting his marriage at risk. He knew that his marriage was safe. Of course it was safe. Why would a beautiful twenty-three year-old woman like Samantha, a woman who turned heads in every corridor that she walked along, be remotely interested in him, a tired, slightly balding man of almost twice her age? It was nonsense. His peace of mind might be utterly ruined, but his marriage at least was safe.

  But Peter Paget had been wrong. Nothing was safe. It turned out that Samantha wanted him just as much as he wanted her. Why, he did not know, but she did, and one day she had told him so.

  ‘The way you’re looking at me, Peter,’ she had said when they were alone together in his office. ‘I think you’re imagining me naked.’

  Peter had been too stunned to reply. He had not needed to.

  ‘You don’t have to imagine, you know…’

  And so had begun this insane affair, which he hated and loved in almost equal proportions. Almost.

  And alongside this extraordinary and unexpected madness had come his great chance. His opportunity to break free from the confines of his unfulfilled career and make the world a better place. He had given a stunning parliamentary performance, he was on the front page of the Evening Standard and no doubt would be on all the other papers in the morning. His ideas were being debated on every radio chat show, his name damned and deified in the space of two callers, and he was having an affair with a beautiful, intelligent young woman who thought him a god and proudly undressed in front of him.

  Peter felt himself reinvented, a man reborn. He returned Samantha’s kisses. Enjoy it. You deserve it.

  THE DOG AND DUCK, SOHO

  Detective Sergeant Archer collected the pints of lager from the bar. He had not paid for them — policemen tend not to pay for things when going about their manors, not in Soho, at least. A perk of the job. And why not? What small business owner is going to charge his protector for a sandwich or a pint? Of course the girls in the doorways of Dean and Wardour Street knew that for some policemen gratis entitlement went beyond a lunchtime snack. Some policemen expected sex and money too. The girls in the doorways knew that some policemen ought to be locked up. Detective Sergeants Archer and Sharp were two such policemen, but of late their cosy world of casual corruption had felt a chill wind blowing through its dirty streets. A commander from Dalston, an ex-Drug Squad detective, had been tasked with investigating his old colleagues. He had been very public in his assertion that corruption existed. He seemed to be getting close to naming names.

  ‘The bloke’s dangerous because he’s stupid. And he’s stupid because he thinks it fucking matters that we cream a few bob off here and there. Better we have it than the bastards who push the stuff, eh?’

  ‘He’s got an agenda. This is political. He wants to use us as an example to push his poxy legalization theories that him and his fucking MP have cooked up. He wants to say that if the drug laws are turning the cops bent then they have to change.’

  ‘But that’s just bollocks. There’s always been bent cops. It’s a tradition.’

  Tell me something I don’t know.’ There’s no way he’s going to pull it off, surely?’

  ‘Not in a million years.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. Even the Home Office are talking about decriminalizing skunk.’

  Toe in the water, window dressing, a sop to the liberals. It’ll pass.’

  ‘I just can’t believe it. A copper, one of our own, trying to legalize drugs. That’s betrayal, that is. That’s turkeys voting for Christmas, that is. Commander Barry fucking Eeman deserves what he gets.’

  ‘Yes, and he needs to get it soon.’

  ‘Exactly. Did you see that article he posted on the internet? ‘The only coppers who are making progress in the drugs war are the bent ones.’’

  That’s going to fill the public with confidence, I must say.’

  ‘Problem is, he can prove it. He’s been digging very deep. He knows what goes on. It’s like Countryman all over again. And he’s feeding everything to that MP mate of his. Our fucking business is getting discussed in Parliament!’

  ‘Paget? He’s a nonentity, a backbencher. Who’ll listen to him?’

  ‘Well, it was always going to be a nobody, wasn’t it? No one with a snowball’s chance of getting into power is ever going to say what Peter Paget’s been saying, but anyway, Paget ain’t the issue. Nobody is going to get drugs legalized in a million years. Our pensions are assured in that area, no sweat. Leman is the issue, because he’s putting the spotlight on us. He needs to be told in no uncertain terms to mind his own fucking business.’<
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  ST HILDA’S CHURCH HALL, SOHO

  I can’t remember the last time I were knocked back when I tried to pull a bird, but Lulu was ever so nice about it. She said she was very flattered and all that but she’d just had her hair done, besides which she reckoned that once she got them leather trousers off she’d never get ‘em on again. So we had a laugh about it and I told her she was a top bird and she told me I was a right naughty young man so everyone was ‘appy.

  ‘Still, it was a knockback and I must say I did feel a bit of a twat when she turned round and buggered off as fast as she could back behind Elton’s picket fence. I suppose it should have been a wake up call, but when you’ve had a shedful of booze, about twenty noses full of charlie and a whole tab of E and all you’ve eaten is three Hard Rock chips nicked off a passing plate, you ain’t very receptive to reality checks.

  ‘So there I am, staggering around the backstage hospitality area trying to chill and looking for someone to pull, when suddenly the paps are all over me because they’ve realized that I’m looking pissed-up and lairy, and Emily, my betrothed, is nowhere to be seen. The press is supposed to be controlled backstage at the Brits, you know, stick to the music and no snapping the bird stars in their knickers (although most of them bird stars only wear knickers these days). There’s supposed to be rules and journalistic integrity and all that. However, if the UK’s number-one recording artist who is supposed to be happily engaged to a lord’s daughter tries to pull Lulu in full public view, word gets around sharpish, so I was fookin’ inundated. ‘What’s happened to Emily, Tommy?’ they were all shouting. So I says, ‘I dropped her, the engagement’s off!’ Well, that was it. Bang! They went crazy. Guaranteed Brits front page and I hadn’t even been trying. Whatever poor sod won best newcomer that year was not going to make it into the papers, because once more I was the story of the Brits. ‘Why’d you do it, Tommy?’ they shouted. ‘Because I didn’t like her voice,’ I said. ‘It were grating on me nerves, and anyway I’ve gone off tattooed birds.’