John Davis - Unofficial and Deniable

She was looking at him from under her eyebrows, hanging on his words. It was hard to imagine this was the hard-bitten photo-journo who screwed her way to the front lines. In fact he didn’t believe that that was how she got there. ‘You really think so?’ She put the glass on the table, upended the bottle to her mouth and glugged down three big swallows, looking at him round the neck. She lowered it and breathed deeply. ‘Thank God … I believe you now, you weren’t bullshitting me last night. I know because that’s exactly the decision I reached at dawn – “Leave it to the editor”.’ She flashed him a grateful smile and stretched up her arms. ‘I’m so happy! ’

Harker wanted to get off this painful subject. ‘Won’t you sit down?’

‘No.’ She held up her hand. ‘I must fly.’ She turned and began to pace across the room, head down, holding her beer bottle. She waved a hand. ‘Neat,’ she said.

Harker stood by the sofa. He did not sit down because then she probably would do the same. ‘What is?’

She waved her beer bottle and paced back towards him. ‘Your apartment. Tidy. Suppose that’s because you were a soldier, soldiers have to be tidy, right?’

‘The army drums that into you, yes.’

Josephine paced back towards the window. ‘Like your mind,’ she mused. ‘You see things clearly. Put your finger on the essence straight away.’ She smirked. ‘You should see my apartment. Untidy as hell. Like my mind. A psychiatrist would make heavy weather of that, I guess.’

He would love to see her apartment. And into her untidy mind. She turned at the window, and pointed absently at the door behind him. ‘What’s through there?’

‘Madam Velvet’s.’

Josephine stopped. ‘Did you say “Madam”?’

Harker smiled. ‘Velvet. That door leads down to the basement. This apartment used to be Madam Velvet’s upmarket whorehouse. Speciality, domination and sado-masochism. One of my authors, Clive Jones, he works part-time for Screw magazine. Know it?’

‘Every New Yorker knows Screw magazine. Though nice folk like me don’t read it.’

Harker smiled. ‘Well, the first night Clive came around here he immediately identified this place as formerly Madam Velvet’s den for the kinky – he had come here some years earlier to write it up for Screw. There’re still some of her fixtures down there – the cage, a few ringbolts on the walls, the Roman bath. But she took the rack and whips and chains with her when she left. I just use it as my gym.’

‘How exotic. Can we go down and have a look?’

‘Sure.’ He turned for the door.

A staircase led down into darkness. He switched on a light and led the way. They descended a dozen stone steps, into a stone-lined basement the size of the apartment above. A neon light illuminated the scene.

A bare cement floor had a few scattered rugs on it: there was a cycling machine. In one corner was a tiled whirlpool bath, empty. In another was a pinewood cubicle, a sauna. Between them stood Harker’s washing machine. In the third corner was a brick-built bar with a curved wooden counter, a few wooden shelves behind it: the other wall was lined by a row of rusty iron bars, a prison-cage, the door open.

‘Wow,’ Josephine said.

‘And note the ringbolts on the walls, where the silver-haired sado-masochists liked to be chained up while Madam Velvet and her girls did their thing.’

‘What an extraordinary place … Do the whirlpool and the sauna work?’

‘Sure.’

‘You should replace that neon light with flickering candles. And have a water-bed on the floor. Wow …’ She turned and paced off across the dungeon, head down. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I fully understand that Harvest doesn’t want to take the risk of publishing a political book like mine – and I’m not asking you to change your mind. But …’ She turned and faced him across the dungeon. ‘But I would be terribly grateful if you read the rest of my book and gave me your opinion on it. Your advice.’ She explained wanly: It’s all in my humble letter. I mean I’m terribly fortunate to have you here in New York, not only a literary man with artistic judgement but somebody who knows Africa well and can correct me on historical detail.’ She appealed: ‘Is that a terrible cheek, after the way I flounced out last night?’

Harker smiled. He knew he should make an excuse and get rid of this problem once and for all – but he did not have the heart. Nor did he want to. He heard himself say, ‘Certainly, Josie.’ He added, to salve his conscience. ‘But you shouldn’t rely on my judgement alone – you must get a good agent, and take his advice above mine.’

‘Oh, great !’ Josephine strode across the dungeon, wreathed in smiles, and planted a kiss on his cheek. She laced her hands behind his neck and leant back. ‘Oh, I’m so lucky to have my own African guru!’ Then she stepped backwards and waved a finger: ‘But there’ll be no more girlish nonsense like last night – our friendship is going to be purely platonic. That’s the only thing I was right about yesterday, that’s why I was so angry with myself.’ Then she smacked her forehead: ‘Oh, I am an ass! I don’t mean I find you unattractive. On the contrary I find you very attractive. I simply mean –’ she waved a hand – ‘that it won’t be a problem again.’

Harker grinned. ‘A problem?’

‘ You know, getting all uptight about a simple thing like an injudicious one-night stand.’ She looked at him. ‘And,’ she said, ‘I insist on paying you a fee.’

‘A fee? ’

Josephine slapped her forehead again. ‘Oh God, that sounds terrible.’ She laughed. ‘No, not a stud-fee – an editorial fee! Your face! No – you’re going to be devoting many precious hours to my book and I insist I pay for your time. And thereby keep our relationship on a businesslike, platonic keel.’

Yes, he could be smitten by this woman. And, yes, as he wasn’t going to publish her book, couldn’t he pull this trick off, have his cake and eat it? He heard himself say, ‘And what if I don’t want your fee? What if it isn’t a businesslike, platonic relationship?’

She looked at him from under her eyebrows. ‘You mean if we become lovers?’

Harker grinned. ‘Well, you haven’t exactly got to commit yourself for life. It wouldn’t be hard to just sort of carry on from where we left off last night.’ Christ, what was he saying this for?

She looked at him solemnly. ‘You mean we should go back to bed now?’ Before he could deny it she made up her mind. ‘No.’ She held up a hand, ‘No, just friends. So I insist on paying you a fee. You’re going to help edit my book, I’m extremely grateful, I’m not going to endanger all that with emotional, messy, untidy sex stuff.’

Fine, so that was understood again, his conscience was clear – more or less.

‘I’ll help you with your book on two conditions,’ he said. ‘One, no fee. Two, you must tell absolutely nobody that I’m helping you. Not your friends, not your agent, not your publisher when you’ve got one – not even your father.’ Harker did not want Dupont learning that he had any access to her book or her.

Josephine said earnestly: ‘Do you mind telling me why not?’

‘Personal reasons – and professional. And there’s another thing I feel I must tell you.’

Then he changed his mind. As he was sticking to his decision about theirs being a platonic relationship he had been moved to confess to her that he had been less than honest about the Battle of Bassinga, that it was probably he who had shot her lover, that it was he who shot the fourteen-year-old boy with the wooden gun, that it was he, Harker, whom she had tried to kill and wounded so badly that he had been disabled out of the military, that he knew she had tried to commit suicide, that it was he who had plugged her wounds. But he stopped himself – why embarrass her by refuting the romantic version which she had given him, why mortify the woman by confronting her with her attempted suicide?