Lady of Hay

“Yet you bore him six children.”

“Not me, Nick. It wasn’t me, for Christ’s sake! Look, why don’t we go out? It’s a glorious night. Why don’t we go for a drive? A long drive. Do you remember once we drove down to Brighton. We could have a swim at dawn and then have breakfast down there-”

“Tell me about Richard de Clare,” Nick went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “Tell me about the handsome Richard. He turned you on, now, didn’t he?”

“Yes!”

Suddenly her fear and anger overflowed and she was yelling at him. “Yes, he bloody well did. He turned me on, as you put it. He was fun. He was humorous and good to be with. He wasn’t intense and competitive. He wasn’t a bloody chauvinist even though he was a medieval knight and an earl! He was a gentleman, Nick. Something you wouldn’t know how to be, if they exist these days, which I don’t think they do. And yes, he was good in bed. And in the bracken and anywhere else he happened to be! Very, very good. A hell of a lot better than you will ever be!” She stopped, panting.

In the silence between them the brown, spiced voice of Edith Piaf had begun to sing “Milord.”

Suddenly Nick began to laugh. “So we have the truth at last.” He went to the stereo and turned up the volume.

“ Allez, dancez, milord! My only consolation, milord , is that you are dead, milord ! Dead for eight hundred years! Poor Jo. Being screwed by a ghost! A fucking, imaginary ghost!”

He turned up the volume full, then gave her a mock bow. The sound blazed around the flat, reverberating off the walls, distorted almost out of recognition by the vibration of the bass notes. Jo clapped her hands to her ears.

After snatching his jacket off the chair, Nick slung it over his shoulder and walked to the front door, then he turned. “And you, Jo,” he shouted. “Are you a ghost as well? Think about it, my lady! Think about it!” He opened the door then strolled out onto the landing.

Jo hurled herself at the door and banged it shut, shooting the bolt and putting on the chain. She was shaking from head to foot. Then she staggered to the stereo and switched it off. Only then, in the sudden echoing silence, did she hear the furious hammering on the ceiling from the apartment upstairs.

23

The desk in Bet’s office was covered with slides. She looked up as Jo came in and grinned maliciously as she switched off the viewing box. “God! You look as if you’ve had a hard night. Coffee or medicinal brandy?”

“Coffee, please.” Jo flung herself down in the ocher armchair by the window, letting her bag fall to the floor.

There was a pot perking permanently in the corner of the office, slotted between the bookshelves and piles of magazines. Bet reached for a cup from the tray, filled it with black, unsweetened coffee, and handed it to Jo. “Are you going to tell me?”

“Nick and I had a fight last night.”

“So what’s new?”

Jo raised the cup to her mouth with a shaking hand. “He’s behaving so oddly, Bet. Not like himself at all.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised. You heard about the screw-up Jim Greerson made of the new Desco campaign? He commissioned some unknown to do the artwork, then I gather Nick wasn’t interested enough even to look at it, so Jim went ahead and approved it to show to Mike Desmond. Mike had fifty fits it was so lousy and ran screaming off to Franklyn-Greerson’s nearest competitor and had hysterics in their lap.” Bet scrutinized Jo’s face with cool amber eyes. “But you knew all that.”

Jo smiled wearily. “I knew the gist of it. Can I have some brandy in this coffee?”

Bet walked to her desk, opened the right-hand bottom drawer, and took out a full bottle of Courvoisier. “He didn’t knock you around did he, Jo?” Her eyes were resting on the fading bruise on Jo’s wrist.

Jo shrugged. “Only verbally last night.”

“You mean he has before?” Bet was vastly intrigued.

Jo smiled. “Not really, I suppose. Sorry to disappoint you, Bet. But he did frighten me. It was as if he’d changed personality completely. It can’t have just been business worries. Hell, I was around when he and Jim first went into partnership. They weathered all sorts of crises then and Nick just took them as a challenge. He wouldn’t let one thing like this change his whole personality!” She gave a little shiver. “He’s acting like someone possessed.”

Bet sat down on the chair behind her desk. She crossed her elegantly trousered legs.

“Do you still love him?”

Jo sipped her coffee. “God knows!”

“Then I suggest you leave the relationship to God for the time being.” Bet scrutinized the soft red leather of her ankle-length boots. “What about thinking about work instead? I haven’t seen your byline on the newsstands for weeks. You only appear to feature as the subject of other people’s articles these days.”

“Bet, I said I was sorry about that-”

“Forget it.” Bet put her elbows on the desk. “I want this story for W I A , Jo. The whole story, as it happens. Matilda’s life story. Not the romantic crap Pete Leveson was spooning out. I want the real version. The blood-and-guts reality. I want exclusive rights from now on. And I’ll pay. I want to serialize more or less as it happens. Right to the bitter end.”

“I don’t know if I’m going on with it, Bet.” Jo reached for the brandy bottle and slowly unscrewed it. “It frightens me so much. I was thinking of going back to Bennet and asking him again to help me forget all about Matilda. I went to Wales, to the places Matilda knew. When I got there I went into a regression spontaneously, without anyone there to hypnotize me. It was as if I were being taken over by her. I couldn’t stop myself.” She bit her lip. “I panicked and came home. It was terrifying, Bet. I couldn’t handle it. I could suddenly see the whole thing getting out of hand, see her life unrolling hour after hour, day after day, taking over my own existence-”

Bet’s eyes were shining. “Exactly! Jo, you’ve got to let it happen. Come on, don’t tell me you don’t want to do it. It’s the scoop of the year. I want to know what it feels like for a twentieth-century woman to go through the time barrier into the dark ages-”

“It’s hardly the dark ages, Bet. The twelfth century was a time of renaissance.” Jo smiled wearily. “And it’s not me who goes back. I am not conscious of myself as having any identity other than that of Matilda at the time. I only make comparisons afterward.”

“Then make them afterward!” Bet picked up a pen and held it in front of her with both hands. “Come on, Jo, it’s not like you to duck out of a challenge. Throw yourself into it. You said you had been to Wales?”

Jo nodded.

“Then go back. Go back now. Concentrate on the story. Don’t fight it. Take this hypnotist man with you if you want to. W I A will pay. I’ll draw you up a contract giving us exclusive rights. You can have three consecutive months. Maximum publicity, TV advertising-cover line, of course. It’s possible a TV series might come out of it-who knows? I’ll talk to one or two people I know at the BBC and see what they think. Come on, Jo. We’re talking about a lot of money apart from anything else.” She paused, giving her a sideways glance. “It’ll get you away from Nick for a bit. That can’t be bad either.”

Jo took a deep breath. “True,” she said. She was torn. The journalist half of her wanted to do it; it was the other half, the deep-rooted private half, which resented Bet’s intrusion, and that half of her was still afraid. She looked thoughtfully past Bet out of the windows toward the river. “What about the rest of my series if I agree?”

“We’ll do one of your other articles on its own if you’ve finished it. Drop the rest of the series for the time being. We can go back to them later.” Bet stood up. She walked around the desk and took the brandy bottle out of Jo’s hand. “Come on, I’ll take you out to lunch. You have to admit it, Jo, it’s a bloody good story. You’re too experienced a journalist not to see that. You once told me you’d like to have been a war correspondent, remember? Now is your chance to prove it. Okay, so you’re taking some risks, but think of the experiences you’ll be having.