Unofficial and Deniable

11

He was woken late Sunday morning, with a hangover, by the buzzing of his entry-phone. He draped a towel round his waist and went to his front door. ‘Yes?’ he said into the apparatus.

‘Sorry, did I wake you?’

Harker’s heart seemed to miss a beat. ‘I was just getting up.’

‘I’ve got a letter for you,’ Josephine said. ‘I was just going to slip it into your mailbox, then I remembered my earrings.’

‘A letter?’

‘Of apology, for flouncing out like that last night. I was very boring and girlie and rude and unfair and I apologize, you’d done nothing to deserve that. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ Harker smiled. ‘And you weren’t any of those things.’

‘May I come in, just to get my earrings?’

‘Of course.’ Harker pressed the button and hurried back to his bedroom. He pulled on a bathrobe and ran his fingers through his hair. He dashed into his bathroom and took a swig of mouthwash. As he re-entered the living room Josephine was crossing the courtyard. He opened his front door wide. ‘Good morning.’

‘Hi.’ Josephine entered, her brow a little lowered, half-smiling. She seemed even more beautiful. ‘Sorry again.’

‘Nonsense. Sit down, I’ll fetch your earrings.’

‘I won’t stay. Here’s your letter.’ She held out an envelope. ‘Please don’t read it until I’ve gone in case the earth really does swallow me up.’

Harker smiled and put the letter on the dining table. Oh, he didn’t want her to stay, he didn’t want to destabilize his resolution, but he had to be polite. ‘Would you like some coffee?’

She hesitated. ‘If you’re having some.’

‘Actually I’m going to have a beer. I was up until dawn.’

‘So was I, must have drunk a gallon of wine. Re-editing my bloody book, I feel like death. It’s far too intense and flowery. But …’ She looked at him almost pleadingly. ‘It’s not a heap of crap, is it?’

Here we go again. Harker wanted to take her in his arms and tell her Harvest would be the luckiest house in town if it could publish it – but he had to stick to his guns. He turned for the kitchen. ‘No.’ He opened the refrigerator, took out two bottles of beer and reached for glasses. ‘And don’t, repeat don’t,’ he said as he re-entered the living room, ‘edit out the flamboyance and the floweriness.’ He handed her a bottle and glass. ‘Leave those decisions to your editor. Just cut out some of the repetition.’

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?

‘What?’ Josephine asked. ‘What’s the other thing?’

‘Nothing,’ Harker smiled.

‘What?’

‘No, it’s unimportant.’

‘Please.’

‘It doesn’t matter. Well, as that’s decided why don’t we go upstairs and have a decent bottle of champagne to kill the germs in that beer?’

Josephine took both his hands and squeezed. ‘Thank you for helping me!’ she said. ‘I’m so excited. But I think I’d better fly now, I’ve got so much work to do if I’m going to take full advantage of your help, you’ve got me all fired up. And I can tell by the twinkle in your eye that if I stay for a bottle of celebratory champagne we’ll end up in bed.’ She pointed her finger to his nose: ‘Platonic friendship only!’

He grinned. ‘Absolutely. So let us seal the deal with that bottle of champagne.’

12

They had a lovely time that long hot summer of 1988.

Mostly she slept at his place. Before dawn she crept out of bed so as not to wake him, pulled on her tracksuit, shouldered her small backpack, donned her crash-helmet, tiptoed out, unlocked her bicycle and set off up the quiet canyons of Manhattan. She rode the sixty blocks to her apartment as fast as she could to get the maximum benefit from the exercise while the air was comparatively unpolluted. Soon after sunrise she was at her desk, chomping through an apple and two bananas as she peered anxiously at her computer screen, marshalling her thoughts, picking up the threads from last night. By lunchtime she had done about a thousand words: she changed into a leotard, pulled a tracksuit over it, stuffed some fresh underwear into her backpack and rode her bike flat out across town to her dance class at the Studio: for the next forty minutes she pranced around with thirty other women of various shapes and sizes in a mirrored loft, working up a sweat under the tutelage of Fellini, a muscle-bound bald gay who volubly despaired of ever making a dancer out of any of them. For the next half hour she had her first conversation of the day while she showered before adjourning to the health bar for a salad and colourful dialogue about boyfriends, husbands, bosses, work, fashions, waistlines. By two-thirty she was cycling back across town to knock out another five hundred words. At four-thirty she permitted herself the first beer of the day to try to squeeze out another two hundred words. At about five-thirty she hit the buttons to print and telephoned Harker at his office. ‘The workers are knocking off, how about the fat-cats?’

‘Okay, want me to pick up something?’

‘I’ll pick up a couple of steaks.’

‘I’ll get ’em, just you ride carefully, please.’

By six-thirty she was pedalling downtown to Gramercy Park, zipping in and out of traffic. She let herself into the apartment complex, locked up her bicycle in the archway and strode across the courtyard to the rear building. She let herself into his ground-floor apartment. ‘I’m home …’

It worried Harker, her riding that bicycle in rush-hour traffic: he didn’t mind her cycling in the early morning, but New York traffic in the evening gave him the willies – and she rode so fast. Once she did have an accident, skidded into the back of a braking car, took a bad fall, sprained her wrist and was nearly run over, but she was only concerned about her goddam bike. He offered to fetch her every evening in his car, he even offered to have a cycle-rack fitted so she could take the machine with her and cycle back to her apartment in the morning – but no, she insisted she needed the exercise both ways, ‘after all we drink.’

‘You’re in magnificent condition; go to a gym if you need more exercise.’

‘Gyms are so boring. Aerobic classes are boring. But riding a bike is a little adventure each time, you see people and things. That’s why I like dancing, expressing yourself in motion, letting it all hang out …’

She was in very good condition but, yes, they did drink a good deal. Like most soldiers, Harker was accustomed to heavy drinking to unwind, and now that there was no combat he could unwind as much as he liked. Similarly, like most writers, Josephine drank to unwind.

‘I spend my entire working day alone, without colleagues, without anybody to talk to except myself, nobody to seek advice from, and by the end of the day I’m pretty damn sick of myself and I want a bit of fun.’

Josephine redecorated Madam Velvet’s dungeon, installed subdued lighting, put plants around the Roman-style whirlpool bath, scattered imitation bearskin rugs on the cement floor, stocked the ornate bar, filled the prisoners’ cage with colourful imitation flowers; she even hung some kinky whips, chains and leather boots from the ringbolts in the wall. She brought in two armchairs, a television set with a video-player – and, in the corner, some more up-to-date gymnasium equipment. In one piece of daunting machinery the manufacturers had managed to squeeze every artefact for the torturous development of the muscular system.

‘Everything you can get in a well-run gym, but in the privacy of your own home, to quote the advertisement.’

Harker looked at the gleaming contraption. ‘Is it safe?’

‘Don’t you like it?’

‘Shouldn’t it be fenced off to protect visitors? Shouldn’t we be wearing hard hats like those politicians on television? What’s this costing me?’

‘It’s your birthday present!’

Every day he worked out before going to Harvest House; and he found it a turn-on to watch her sweating on the machine. He bought himself a mountain bike like Josephine’s and on weekends they rode in Central Park and around Manhattan Island, sometimes across the Hudson River into New Jersey. In the fall they took a week off work and rode into upstate New York to see the riotously beautiful autumn colours. They rode almost five hundred miles in seven days and when they returned to Manhattan they were so glowing with health they did not want to stop.

‘Then let’s not. Let’s say to hell with work and just keep going all the way to Florida …’

That night, lying in the hot whirlpool bath in Madam Velvet’s dungeon, sipping cold wine, she said, ‘Know what I want to do one day? Have a farm. Maybe only twenty acres, but in beautiful country like where we’ve just been, with a tumbling stream and some forest and pastures for grazing a few horses and a cow or two, and a big pond for ducks and geese who’ll all have names, and a few chickens to give us eggs. And the horses will be mares so we can breed good foals, and we’ll have a tractor so we can grow alfalfa for them. And we’ll exhibit our animals at the livestock fairs and win prizes.’ She smiled. ‘I love New York, it’s so stimulating, but really I’m a country girl.’ She added, ‘Our house won’t be very big, more like a cottage really, because I don’t like housekeeping, but it’ll be very pretty. And my study will be upstairs, so I have a view of the pastures and the pond while I write.’

It was a pretty thought. ‘Well,’ Harker said, ‘we can achieve all that, but what about my work?’

‘Well,’ Josephine said reasonably, ‘you’ll be able to do a great deal of your publishing work at home, of course, but our country place will be close enough to Manhattan for you to be able to drive down once or twice a week so you can keep your finger on Harvest’s pulse – that’ll be no sweat, particularly if you have a chauffeur. Daddy’s got two, neither of them have enough to do and he’s promised me the use of one of them if I move closer to him upstate.’

In the late autumn Josephine decided it was time to take Harker up to Massachusetts to meet her father. The country was beautiful. The gates to the Valentine property loomed up majestically against green pastures, a winding avenue of old oaks led up to an imposing mansion, the walls covered in ivy. Harker switched off the engine outside the ornate front door.

Josephine said, ‘Just be your ever-charming self. You’ve been in tighter corners than this.’

Harker expected the big front door to burst open, the old man to come beaming out. But no: the door was locked. It was a butler who opened it.

The library was the size of a badminton court, the walls lined with laden bookshelves, the big room divided by more bookcases; a mezzanine floor was above, equally lined and laden. Denys Valentine, about sixty years old, tallish, thick-set, grey-haired, handsome, stood in front of his big marble fireplace, before the crescent of leather armchairs, whisky glass in hand, and said with a self-conscious smile, ‘Josephine’s told me a bit about you, of course, on the telephone. It’s a pleasure to meet you.’ He gave a thin smile. ‘A great pleasure.’

Harker had been invited to sit down but he preferred to remain standing because his host was doing that. He knew he was being assessed and he felt on his mettle. ‘Equally, Denys,’ he said with a smile, and waited.

Denys Valentine cleared his throat, then said resolutely, ‘Josephine has indicated to me that you and she are … more or less living together.’ He cleared his throat again.

Harker resented this: he and Josie were mature people, for Chrissakes.

‘That’s true. But she continues to maintain her own apartment, where she works every day. We only see each other in the evenings.’

Denys Valentine said, with another thin smile, ‘And in the mornings.’

Harker looked at him, also with a thin smile. ‘That’s true, yes.’ He added: ‘And I’m confident I speak for Josephine when I say we are very happy.’

Valentine turned a steely eye on Harker. ‘But I am not happy. If you’ll forgive me for saying so.’ He paused. Then: ‘I don’t think any father likes his daughter living in sin.’

Harker had to conceal his smile. ‘Sin?’ He shook his head politely. ‘I don’t believe that’s how it is, Denys. To be happy, to be in love, can hardly be a sin.’

Denys Valentine looked at him. ‘Out of wedlock it is a mortal sin, I’m afraid, the scriptures are clear. “Cursed are the fornicators.” Quote, unquote.’

Harker had to stop himself smiling. What do you say to that? So he nodded politely.

‘Well, Jack?’

‘Well what, Denys?’

‘What are you going to do about it?’ Valentine paused, then went on, ‘To me it is clear. You must either desist or you must marry. Immediately.’

Harker looked at him with a twinkle in his eye. ‘And which of those two options would you prefer to see happen?’

Valentine shifted, then turned to the liquor cabinet. ‘How’s your glass?’

‘Fine at the moment.’

‘Please help yourself when you’re ready.’ He poured whisky for himself and said: ‘I want what’s best for Josephine. Clearly it is not good for her – for her immortal soul – to be living in sin. But alas that doesn’t mean that getting married is necessarily good for her either.’ He turned back to Harker. ‘I must be frank and tell you that I have great difficulty in reconciling myself to your previous career, Jack.’