Mean Spirit

more than its editor, ever meant to be commercially successful?

The phone rang. Marcus fumbled it wearily to his ear.

‘Bacton.’

‘Marcus, it’s me.’

He stiffened. ‘Where are you? Have you seen her?’ His head burned, his eyes and nose filling up.

‘I’d have called earlier,’ Underhill said, ‘only the car broke down.’

‘Piece of bloody tin.’ Mopping his eyes with a handful of tissue. ‘Are you telling me you haven’t even got there?’

‘Oh, I got here all right.’ She sounded unhappy. ‘Looks like I’ll be spending the night here.’

‘With Persephone?’

‘Yeah. I feel so privileged I could weep.’

‘How-?’

‘She’s OK. Kind of. I don’t know too much yet, and I don’t think I want to. You wanna speak to her?’

‘What?’

‘You want me to bring her to the phone when she-?’

‘I … is she there now? Is she with you?’

‘She went to the john, so I took the opportunity to call you. She’ll be back in a couple minutes, if you-’

‘No,’ Marcus said, panicked. ‘I don’t want to speak to her like this. Tell her you couldn’t get through. Tell her the line cut out. Tell her-’

‘Marcus, you’re really in some kind of awe of this woman, aren’t you?’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘Listen, I can see the dangers. I’m trying to resist is all. I’ll call you tomorrow when I leave. Uh, tape Cindy for me, would you?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake-’

‘You don’t have to watch it, just press the damn button. Eight p.m.’

Marcus snorted and got off the phone, fearful of Persephone returning.

What was the matter with him? Why was he glad that it was Underhill, rather than himself, who was spending the night under the same roof as Persephone? Was it just the flu or was he losing his bottle?

Marcus sat down behind the blank computer. He didn’t even know how to turn the thing on.

Malcolm, the bull terrier, waddled over and stood looking up at him, a possible glimmer of pity in his psychotic eyes. How long before it was just the two of them again? Underhill was thirty-one years old and not unattractive. And an American. Had she got a proper work permit or whatever was needed? How long could she be expected to stay in a remote elbow of the Welsh border, where the idea of an eligible batchelor was a man with two tractors?

And when she left — within the year, if he was any judge — how could Marcus possibly fake the racy prose of Alice and bloody Meryl? How could the magazine ever again revert to Question of Telepathy between Budgerigars Posed in Lanarkshire?

‘IT’S THE NATIONAL LOTTERY … LIVE!’

Marcus winced, reached for the remote control.

‘AND COULD THOSE BIG-MONEY BALLS BE IN SAFER HANDS … THAN THE BEJEWELLED FINGERS OF THE GLAMOROUS, THE SENSATIONAL …’

Marcus stabbed in panic at the sound button, which failed to respond.

‘… CINDY … MARS …’

Why was it now impossible to buy a bloody television set with a row of bloody knobs on the front?

‘… LEWIS?’

Marcus recoiled. The entity wore a tight black, angle-length dress glittering with a thousand sequins. Earrings dripping almost to its shoulders. Bangles the size of manacles hanging five to each skeletal wrist.

The studio audience — tickets presumably handed out free to anyone who could provide the correct answer to the question: Are you a greedy, moronic prick? — responded to this vision with whoops and whistles and crazed shrieks, and Marcus sank back in his chair, feeling — if that were possible — slightly more ill.

Half the nation, it seemed, now lived in a drugged dream, from Lottery night to Lottery night, convinced that they deserved to be millionaires.

‘How’re you, my lovelies?’ Mars-Lewis’s arms flung wide, bangles jangling. ‘All right, is it?’

Marcus growled. The numbers on the video recorder appeared to be turning satisfactorily. He could switch off the television, couldn’t he?

‘And before we go any further … no … stop that now, come on … just listen, lovelies, let me just tell you that tonight’s jackpot winners will share … are you ready now …? A grand total of … SEVEN AND A HALF MILLION POUNDS!’

The audience keeled over with what sounded to Marcus like narcotically enhanced rapture. He shook his head slowly. How the hell could bloody Lewis have let himself become associated with this nauseous exhibition of mob avarice?

Money, of course. Tonight’s fee was probably ten times what the man — Marcus was almost certain Lewis was a man — had earned in an entire summer season of bottom-of- the-bill cabaret on Bournemouth Pier. And about ten thousand times what Marcus had ever paid him for an article in The Vision.

‘Now, I must show you this, see …’ The creature looked furtive, producing a fold of paper. The syrupy Welsh Valleys accent became more pronounced as it acquired a confidential wheedle.

‘Came today, it did. Signed jointly by the Director General of the BBC and the Managing Director of Camelot, organizers of the Lottery. Just listen to this. Dear Ms Mars-Lewis … Ms! There’s progressive.’

The response to this, accompanied by the creature’s arched eyebrow, suggested that several hundred people had spontaneously soiled themselves.

‘Dear Ms Mars-Lewis. Moderately accepting though we are of your personal manner and general deportment …’ Lewis sniffed and smoothed his dress ‘… we are bound to express dismay at the attitude of your avian associate …’

Uncertain laughter, as the cretins pondered possible meanings of the word avian.

‘We feel the continued and unwarranted cynicism exhibited by the bird is not in the spirit or indeed the best interests of the National Lottery as we see it, and unless there is a radical change we intend to take a hard look at the terms of your contract.’

Lewis lowered the paper and looked glum.

‘Oh dear. Well, now, despite what you see, I’m not as young as I was … And I’m not a rich person.’

This was true enough; the creature apparently wintered in a rusting caravan in Tenby.

‘The DG now, he has a terrible long memory. And I have to think of my future, isn’t it? Which is why I’ve come to a decision. I’ve decided, I have, that from now on I shall have to work … alone.’ Lewis straightened up, nose mock-heroically in the air. ‘I shall be … a solo artiste.’

To which the audience produced a passable simulation of a tragic Greek chorus.

‘What else can I do?’ Lewis shrieked in torment. ‘What can I do?’

The camera backed up to reveal a large, pink suitcase splattered with airline stickers. A muffled squawk seemed to emanate from within.

‘You can start by getting me out of this bloody scented boudoir, you old tart!’ screeched Kelvyn Kite.

‘Definitely not. Your services are no longer required. You can sign on in the morning.’

‘You’ll regret this, Lewis!’