Herring Girl Read online

  She shrugs off her cardie and drapes an embroidered shawl round her shoulders. Then, imagining Laura’s raised eyebrows, throws the shawl on the bed and drags the cardie back on. Damn.

  Obviously it doesn’t matter a jot what she looks like. Things were over between them years ago. When she decided to take things into her own hands. Before Shenley. Before India. Before Tibet. But he has an unnerving way of looking at one with those shrewd grey eyes, of assessing one’s appearance according to some criteria of – what? Success? Desirability? Interestingness?

  She picks up the shawl again. With her latest book in limbo, she feels she needs all the support she can get.

  Footsteps coming up the stairs two at a time make her whirl round.

  ‘So this is where you’re hiding,’ he says.

  He’s smaller than she remembers – he’s always smaller than she remembers – and somewhat balder, as one might expect. But otherwise little changed: the same reddish curls, the same outdoors complexion, the same fiercely bitten nails.

  ‘You said you were coming tomorrow,’ she says accusingly.

  ‘Would you still have been here?’ He picks up her walking boots, knotted together by the laces, and lets them swing from one finger.

  ‘I was just sorting out a few things,’ she says primly, quelling an urge to shove him out of her room. She doesn’t want him peering at her things, her life.

  He puts an experimental arm through one of the straps on her rucksack. ‘God, I remember this thing. Even empty it weighed a ton. Fucking antediluvian. Didn’t it belong to a long-lost uncle or something?’

  ‘Long-lost cousin.’ She takes it from him and places it back on the bed. ‘No doubt you’ve acquired something rather more sophisticated for your sorties to remote areas.’

  He grins at her. ‘You know me. State of the art.’

  ‘What are doing here, Ian?’

  ‘Just looking up a dear old friend,’ he says, still smiling.

  ‘I’ve never known you do anything without an ulterior motive.’

  ‘How about some supper? I’ve booked a table at the Grand, but we can go somewhere else if you’d prefer something less formal.’ He wanders over to the window. ‘God, this view is fantastic. You can see half way to Oslo. Place must have cost you a fortune.’

  ‘Actually it had been languishing on the market for some years before I bought it,’ she says, pressing the last of the clothes firmly into the rucksack. ‘The damp put people off, I think. That, and all the boarded-up council houses. Not to mention the marauding gangs from the Meadowell estate. But as I had no car to worry about and very little worth stealing, I wasn’t as deterred as some might have been.’

  ‘It all looks pretty upmarket now.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Well, we have Messrs Wimpey and Bryant to thank for that. And a generous committee in Brussels. Regeneration is a marvellous thing.’ She moves to the door.

  ‘You look well,’ he says, crossing his arms and leaning against the window frame.

  ‘Don’t insult my intelligence, Ian. I’m fifty years old and I smoke forty a day. Now kindly vacate my bedroom and come downstairs.’

  ‘Those things will kill you, you know,’ he remarks, unabashed, following her down the stairs. ‘Assuming the diet doesn’t get to you first. Are you still surviving on Ryvita and boiled eggs?’

  Mary steers him back outside. ‘You’ve met Laura, I assume? And this is Ben, who’s been helping me with some research.’ She glances down the street. ‘Though our Mr Skipper appears to have departed.’

  ‘Cool bike,’ Ben remarks as Ian settles onto the Coca Cola crate and stretches out muscular freckled legs.

  ‘It was a birthday present to myself last week. I thought I’d bring it up north to take it through its paces. Russian titanium frame, Time carbon forks. Light as a feather. Shimano XT gears.’

  ‘Ian’s a television film maker,’ Mary explains. ‘At least I assume that’s still how you’d describe yourself?’

  ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t been following my career.’

  ‘She’s only got five channels,’ Ben says pityingly. ‘She misses everything.’

  ‘What kinds of film do you make?’ Laura asks, bustling out with glasses and a bottle of red wine. ‘That gin was finished,’ she informs Mary, ‘so I took this from the rack under the stairs.’

  ‘Popular science documentaries mostly. Brain function, drug-induced states, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Coo-ol,’ comments Ben again, clearly smitten.

  ‘Ian and I studied PPP together at Oxford,’ says Mary, picking up her glass and swallowing three quick large mouthfuls. She takes out her pack of Gitanes and places it on the bench beside her like a talisman.

  ‘Mary was a terrible swot,’ Ian says.

  ‘She’s still a terrible swot,’ says Laura.

  ‘Whereas I sold my soul to the devil and joined the Beeb.’ He takes a sip of wine and turns to Mary. ‘I read your paper on “The treatment of phobia via hypnotic regression in three cases suggestive of reincarnation”,’ he says, reciting the title with care. ‘Absolutely fascinating. I thought the way you considered alternative hypotheses was quite disarming. Took the wind right out of my cynical sails.’

  ‘I’m a clinician, Ian, not some New-Age evangelist. Just because a phenomenon appears to be paranormal doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be subject to scientific scrutiny.’

  ‘So you wouldn’t mind me filming one of your hypnosis sessions?’ The grey eyes meet hers in a challenge, and she understands that this is the reason for his visit.

  ‘Do me!’ cries Ben. ‘I used to be a herring girl called Annie,’ he says, words tumbling out. ‘The doc thinks she died in some horrible way, so we’ve been researching her on the Internet and that.’

  Ian laughs. ‘Would you like to be on the telly, Ben?’

  ‘Wow! That would be so cool!’

  ‘Ian, stop it!’ Mary snaps. ‘It’s not fair to tease the boy like that.’

  ‘Who says I’m teasing?’ he says. ‘It sounds like he’d be perfect for the pilot of my new series.’

  ‌Chapter Seventeen

  2007

  ‘I haven’t agreed, you know,’ warns Mary.

  They’re sitting at a corner table in the ornate dining room of the Grand Hotel. Ian’s tie-less, a rumpled linen jacket draped over the back of his chair; Mary’s in one of the three heavy silk salwar kameez that she always wheels out on such occasions, purchased in Delhi nearly thirty years ago for a risible handful of rupees.

  ‘You agreed to supper. That’s a start.’

  ‘Well don’t go assuming it’s the thin end of any wedge.’

  A waiter appears and performs a brief obsequious pantomime: shaking out starched napkins, placing warm rolls on side plates with silver tongs, pouring iced water into outsized glasses.

  ‘I’m afraid this wining and dining lark’s rather wasted on me,’ Mary comments when he’s gone. ‘My palate stopped developing at the scampi-and-chips-in-a-basket stage some time in the seventies. Though Laura’s been trying to reform me in recent years, bless her.’

  ‘Why do you keep drawing attention to your age?’ Ian asks. ‘Are you afraid I still fancy you?’

  ‘Fancy? Now there’s a word one doesn’t hear very often these days.’

  ‘I do, actually, for what it’s worth. And you look stunning in that Indian get-up. But that’s not why I came to see you.’ He leans forward. ‘Mary, I’m dead serious about this documentary series.’

  ‘Obviously,’ she says noncommittally, wondering when she can decently excuse herself for a Gitanes: once they’ve ordered, she decides, and opens a weighty leather-bound menu to move the proceedings forwards.

  ‘I’ve been thinking for ages about producing a really intelligent examination of paranormal phenomena,’ Ian is saying. ‘Round up some decent scholars and use a few four-syllable words for a change. Address the issues properly, from all points of view. Scientific, philosophical, theological.’

  ‘The
ological? You surprise me.’ In the past he’d always been scathing about what he referred to as ‘God bothering’.

  ‘Why not? There are some fascinating issues. Could Jesus really rise from the dead? Is there such a thing as the soul? Is the Dalai Lama reincarnated?’ He gestures for the wine list. ‘Your paper’s a perfect example of the approach I want to take. Starting with an ostensibly paranormal phenomenon – a case of stigmata, for example, or a poltergeist haunting – I want to examine all possible explanations.’

  His white shirt’s open at the throat and the cuffs are unbuttoned, as though he’d been interrupted while getting changed, by a telephone call or an idea that demanded to be written down. When they were together she’d found his distractibility both endearing and exhausting.

  ‘How many programmes do you have planned?’ she asks.

  ‘I’ve got funding for a one-hour pilot on BBC2. If that goes well, they’ll put up the money for a six-part series. After that, who knows? It depends on the ratings.’ He rips his roll apart and reaches for butter, white cuff trailing across the table.

  ‘And you want this pilot thing to be about reincarnation.’

  ‘Yes. I want to kick off with something everyone can identify with. What if we have all been here before and will be reborn again after we die?’ He’s leaning towards her again, radiating passion; she can imagine how effective he must be in meetings at work.

  ‘How much research have you done?’

  ‘Enough to know that you’re the obvious protagonist. I want a professorial figure with some real academic clout, someone the viewer can trust.’

  If only he knew, Mary thinks wryly. Aloud she says: ‘Am I supposed to be flattered?’

  ‘Seriously, Mary, this whole field’s full of fucking charlatans and New-Agers. You should see the cable channels. So-called shamans and charismatics. Dodgy sound effects and voodoo lighting. And what’s the name of that guy who wrote the book about groups of souls reincarnating together over and over like some kind of study group? Insists some medium channelled Jesus to tell him about it, for fuck’s sake.’

  ‘Robert Schwartz – yes, his claims do seem rather far-fetched. But for what it’s worth, the notion that two or more souls tend to reincarnate in tandem is well established in the literature.’

  ‘Whatever, screwballs like Schwartz do your cause a disservice.’

  ‘I didn’t realize I had a “cause”,’ she says.

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘As I said before, I’m a clinician, not an evangelist.’

  ‘Oh come on, Mary. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t jump at the chance to argue your case on the telly.’

  ‘So it’s a “case” now, is it?’ She smiles; she’s enjoying this sparring with him. It’s just like old times. And the idea of a documentary is starting to intrigue her.

  Seeing her smile, he leans back in his chair. ‘It would be one in the eye for your critics,’ he says and takes a bite of his roll.

  She stiffens; what does he know about her critics? ‘I’m not sure my critics watch much television,’ she remarks mildly.

  ‘Everybody watches television. Stephen Hawking watches television. The fucking Pope watches television.’

  ‘I’m not agreeing—’

  ‘But?’

  She toys vaguely with her roll. ‘But I’m curious as to how you’re planning to structure this pilot episode. If I’m to be the protagonist, won’t you need an antagonist to present the counterarguments?’

  ‘That will be me, obviously.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘My dear Mary, are you honestly telling me that you don’t know what I’ve been up to for the past five years?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ She’s telling the truth, and is surprised to see how deflated he suddenly seems. ‘I watch the news, when I can find where they’ve moved it. And various grisly detective things. And I’ve been enjoying Dr Who – despite its absurd take on the reincarnation theme – and that witty Buffy series when it was running, on the occasions I remembered to switch it on. But that’s about it.’

  ‘So you’ve never heard of Mind Games.’

  ‘I listen to the wireless sometimes.’ Now she’s teasing him.

  ‘Mary, Mary,’ he sighs. ‘Contrary as ever.’ Then, beckoning the waiter: ‘Shall I order us some wine? Red or white?’

  ‘You choose.’

  ‘Have you decided what you’re going to eat?’

  She hasn’t, and the urge to smoke makes it hard to concentrate on the food on offer. She scans the menu and chooses at random: some steak or other with some kind of terrine thing to start.

  A pricy bottle of red appears and is duly rotated for inspection, uncorked and tasted. For a moment Mary sees them as if from a distance: a striking couple, of indeterminate age; the russet-haired man expensively dressed, slightly dishevelled, energetic and intense; the woman – possibly Asian – reticent in head-to-toe indigo silk, with a heavy dark plait draped forward over one shoulder like a stole. We look interesting, she thinks. The notion amuses her so intensely that she laughs aloud.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘This place makes me feel slightly hysterical.’ She pushes her chair back. ‘I am going to go outside now for a few minutes to have a cigarette.’

  ‘Tell me about Mind Games,’ she says, by way of apology, when she comes back. The shot of nicotine has made her feel sharper, more focused. Less giddy. She spreads her napkin demurely over her lap and picks up her glass.

  He picks his up too and chinks it against hers. ‘To old friends,’ he says, smiling into her eyes. Then, taking a breath: ‘OK. A summary. Mind Games was a longish-running series I fronted, ostensibly about the tricks the mind can play on us. It started out as a short run of programmes looking at the efficacy of various therapies for different types of mental illness. What made it different was the fact that I decided to try out some of the treatments myself – including the so-called therapeutic drugs.’

  ‘Risking life and limb for the sake of your art.’

  ‘Hardly,’ he says. ‘But it went down well and established me as a bit of a celeb amongst the chattering classes. So a second series was commissioned, where we diversified into other mind-altering substances. Cocaine, LSD, marijuana, heroin.’ He looks at her. ‘Nicotine,’ he adds pointedly.

  ‘With you still in the role of test pilot?’

  ‘Correct. The Jeremy Clarkson of the pharmaceutical world. The idea was that I’d go into each experience with a completely open mind, then discuss the implications with a panel of experts. So your punter gets the vicarious hit of watching someone they know get off their head on ecstasy or crack, plus the intellectual thrill of debating the intricacies of endorphins, placebo effects and legalization.’

  ‘I’m sorry I missed it,’ she says. She means it; it sounds interesting.

  ‘If I’d known, I’d have brought along a boxed set of the DVDs.’

  ‘What’s a DVD?’ she deadpans.

  ‘You are priceless.’

  Their starters arrive: small artistic heaps on enormous plates dribbled with intensely pigmented sauces.

  ‘So what’s your role in the new series? You can’t manufacture your own stigmata.’

  ‘I play the agnostic, investigating on behalf of the viewer. The idea is to focus on specific case studies, get a bit more raw human interest into the series. So with Ben, I’d get to know him on screen, visit his house, di-dah-di-dah, do a bit of that library research he was talking about. Film his sessions with you, of course. Then I’d try to find out whether reincarnation’s the only explanation for his knowledge of this herring girl.’

  ‘So you’d discuss hypnotic suggestion, cryptoamnesia, subliminal perception, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Exactly! All the issues you raised in your article.’

  Mary thinks about the paper she was planning to write about Ben’s case; how she’d hoped it might re-establish her credibility. How much more powerful would a documentary on BBC2 be?

 
‘How serious are you really about this?’ she asks cautiously.

  ‘Totally and absolutely. Never been more serious in my life.’

  She looks at him: so forceful and persuasive, so bent on her agreeing. And though every instinct tells her to run a mile, she can’t help being tempted.

  ‘What about its effect on Ben?’ she asks.

  ‘You heard him. He’s dying to be on telly.’

  ‘What he wants and what he needs aren’t necessarily the same thing. He might well change his mind when he considers the implications – and I can pretty much guarantee that his father will refuse permission.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about him.’ Ian waves a dismissive hand. ‘I’ll film him too. That usually does the trick. Everyone wants to be on telly.’

  ‘As easy as that, is it?’ Where she had been amused earlier, Mary now finds this comment slightly repellent – especially as it now appears to apply to her too.

  ‘Come on Mary, have a heart. I really need this new series.’

  ‘Oh?’ She raises her eyebrows. There’s an edge to his voice that wasn’t there before.

  ‘If you must know, my back’s absolutely against the wall at the moment,’ he admits. He drains his glass and reaches for the bottle. ‘The ratings were pretty iffy with the last series, so the suits have cut my budget to the bone. If I don’t hit pay dirt with this pilot, I’ll be banished to BBC4.’

  ‘Wherever that is.’

  He pushes his plate away. ‘The documentary graveyard. Where they show all the worthy stuff no one wants to watch. First step on the road to oblivion.’ He rubs his eyes; he looks tired. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I’m a bit frazzled. Too many broken nights with the baby, too many rows with Christina – too many fucking finance meetings.’