Caroline Graham - A Ghost in the Machine

“We had our first meeting today.”

“Really?” Dennis felt rather disappointed. As the new company’s financial advisor he had hoped to be present at this. “How did it go?”

“It was so exciting! We didn’t talk about money, of course, because you weren’t there, but Kate’s worked out a brief advertisement that should be in The Times on Monday. And we decided on the company’s name. Excuse me.”

Benny took a break to finish her turbot and drink the rest of her wine. Dennis, entertained by all the “we’s” waited, smiling.

“Obviously we had quite a list and, I must admit, some were a bit out of the way. But eventually we got them down to three. The Pierrot Press, which was Kate’s suggestion, Fireproof Books from Mallory—”

“I like that,” interrupted Dennis. He recalled newsreels showing towers of flaming books in countries under the rape of tyranny. “That’s good. Fireproof Books.”

“It is,” agreed Benny, “but Kate thought not everyone would understand the sym— Um…symbols…”

“You mean they might take the title literally?”

“Exactly. So anyway, what happened was…” Benny squirmed with embarrassment and delight. She could hardly speak and her next words seemed to be squeezed out against their will. “They chose mine.”

“ Benny! ”

“Yes, they did.” Her face shone, radiant with success. She nodded her head. “Mine.”

They sat beaming at each other, equally thrilled. Dennis said, “Well?”

“I thought of it because they’re all over the orchard in the spring and Carey was very fond of them. Also there’s a lovely watercolour in the library that Kate thinks we could use as our trademark. So we’re going to be called…the Celandine Press!”

“This should be champagne.” Dennis poured them both some more wine. “How clever you are, Benny.”

Benny felt her face go all hot and prickly. As far as she could remember no one in all her life had ever told her she was clever. “Tomorrow we’re going to start looking at equipment. Computers, printers and suchlike.”

“On Sunday?” Dennis was disappointed. Tomorrow would have been the ideal time to have a talk with Mallory.

“Places are open every day now,” said Benny. “They’ll bring me back, then they’re going home for a couple of days to start packing up.”

“I see.” A couple of days wasn’t long. He would try to ring Mallory before they left. Set a definite time. “Would you like some chocolate tart?”

“Yes, please.”

After Dennis had served the tart and Jersey clotted cream in glass bowls shaped like waterlilies he put his own dish down on a little side table.

“The thing is…erm…I have this friend.”

“Oh, yes?” Benny, tucking carelessly in, now had a little brown and cream moustache on her top lip. “This is truly scrumptious.”

“Written a novel.”

“What sort of a novel?”

“Historical, I believe. Does that sound like the sort of thing the Celandine Press would be looking for?”

“Anything that has literary merit, Kate said.”

“As to that…” Dennis seemed uncertain.

“Don’t worry,” said Benny. “You know what they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained. What’s your friend’s name?”

Dennis stared at her.

“So I shall know who to look out for.”

“Walker.”

“Get him to send it in,” said Benny, “and I shall give it my personal attention.”

In the end Polly did not change the money she owed Billy Slaughter into cash to ram down his trousers and up his nose. She recognised this impulse now for what it was – a childish “sucks boo” born of rage at her previous impotence. Also, if she tried it he might hit her.

There was, too, the question of prudence. Polly remembered sitting at a shared table in the LSE Brunch Bowl a while ago when an anthropology student read out a news item from his paper. Apparently someone was being mugged every three minutes night and day in London. They all laughed when he added: “You’d think the stupid sod would move to Brum.” But it wouldn’t be funny, Polly thought now, if it happened to you. Especially if you had several thousand in cash about your person. So she decided to pay her debt with a banker’s draft.

Of course she had not been able to wait, as her father had suggested. She had rung the only number she had the very next day, only to be told that Mr. Slaughter was in the country and would return after lunch on Monday. The person speaking sounded just like some crusty old retainer in a crusty English play.

Polly had been surprised at Billy’s address. She had imagined him hanging out somewhere really flash. At the top of a high tower in Canary Wharf with a Porsche in the garage or over the water in a converted Docklands warehouse. Maybe even at Montevetro, the gorgeous Richard Rogers building, shaped like a gigantic slice of glass cake, sparkling and glittering on the river at Battersea. But he lived at Whitehall Court, Whitehall Place. A few minutes from the Cenotaph. Central, sure, but how dull.

Polly asked around to see if anyone had heard of the place. She drew a blank with one exception. An old Etonian reading Philosophy and Economics. Apparently his uncle, a retired admiral, had a flat there. Handy for his club in the Mall, and the House of Lords. Always grumbling about the service charge, which he swore was higher than his daughter’s mortgage.

Polly walked there from Embankment Tube station. The vestibule to the apartments was richly carpeted in pale rose and full of flowers. Polly, about to go straight through, was stopped by a porter who enquired about her business. A telephone call was made to confirm that she was expected and she was directed to the lift.

Making her way down the long, thickly carpeted corridors past cream and grey marble pillars and panels of beautiful stained glass Polly, in spite of herself, began to feel impressed. And it was so quiet. Minutes from Trafalgar Square and you couldn’t hear a mouse squeak.

Then, way above her head, Polly heard the lift door clash to and the mechanism start whirring. Waiting, she recalled the novels of John le Carré. Surely this was exactly the sort of discreet, anonymous place that civil servants and their masters, their moles and droppers of notes into hollow trees would gather to trade and betray. Somewhere a stone’s throw from the nation’s seat of power. A place where no one knows your name. And suddenly it didn’t seem so strange that Billy Slaughter should be living here.

She came out of the lift into another long, dimly lit corridor running into deep shade at the very end. Then a heavy door was opened, flooding the space with light. Into this illuminated area stepped a man in evening dress. He raised a hand and called something that Polly didn’t quite hear.

She stepped out, walking the walk. He watched her coming on. She wore a soft dress, tiny navy dots on cream with a flirty skirt that swished and swirled above her dimpled knees. She stepped out swinging her hips, her long tanned legs making confident strides. Her pretty, pink-toed feet nonchalantly balanced on four-inch heels tied around her ankles by narrow strips of glittery stuff.

How do women do it? mused Slaughter, admiring Polly’s swagger. How do they stay up there? As she got nearer he went back into the flat. Polly, who had been afraid there might be some form of physical rapprochement , was relieved. She wouldn’t put it past him to try to kiss her. Or sneak a crafty arm around her waist. He’d got enough cheek.

The interior of the flat was a further surprise. The room into which she followed Billy was furnished like the sitting room of a country house. The dark green Knole sofa was well worn, as were several armchairs. Diamond-paned bookcases were crammed with what appeared to be much-handled books. There were several small oil paintings, mainly landscapes, but two showed fine, elegant horses standing in formal gardens in front of playing fountains. Some framed pencil sketches of dancers hung on the opposite wall. A clarinet lay on a low table beside a stack of scientific journals and next to a glazed blue dish holding ripe apricots.