A Class Apart

“Try Bermudas and a bowler,” she had snapped, and hung up.

Still, the pop star she had gone to interview had been a nice enough guy. Waiting around the sets of pop videos could be eternally dull business, but he had seemed to keep his cool. Which was more than she could say for that pompous bitch of an agent of his. Jenneen had made a mental note to cut her out of the film altogether, with the exception of the “up the nose” shot she had had no difficulty in persuading the cameraman to do. With that sourpuss edited out Jenneen felt sure it would be a good film. And that was what Jenneen Grey was about – making good films.

When she had first come to London at the raw age of twenty-two, and had thought herself so very grown-up and sophisticated, it had come as a brutal shock to hear her Northern accent being so mercilessly mimicked by the grand researchers and reporters she had worked with then. She had been unable to laugh along with them, knowing that despite their laughter, their cruelty and snobbery was real. In the end, deciding that if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, she had invested part of her then meagre salary in elocution lessons. She had been a good student, and within a year had virtually discarded the broad Yorkshire tones. Only when she was angry did she sometimes slip back into them. But not often.

She laughed to herself now, to think of how eager she had been to please everyone in those days. It had seemed so important then. But things looked very different now, standing where she was, so near to the top of the tree. Bill Pruitt, the editor of the afternoon show she presented each week, was determined that she was going to make it to the very top. It was almost nine years ago when he had first asked her what it was that she really wanted.

“The truth?” she had said.

“Mmm,” he nodded. “The truth.”

“Promise you won’t laugh?”

He had smiled. “I promise.”

“I want to be famous,” she announced, quite calmly, but her eyes were burning.

“Famous?”

“Yes. Famous. But not only famous. I want to have earned my fame for the good, entertaining and necessary programmes that I make,” and she had blushed at how trite he must have thought she’d sounded.

And now, all these years on, she was almost there.

Bill had warned her about keeping a squeaky clean reputation, telling her that it would be for her own good, as well as the good of the TV station. But that was something she had not handled quite so well. Not that anyone knew about her private life; at least, not yet, but she didn’t know how much longer she would be able to keep it out of the press.

Wearily she pushed her feet into her slippers, and went into the kitchen to collect the cocoa she had made. She looked at her watch then picked up the telephone and dialled Ashley’s number. No answer.

Jenneen wondered if she should go round there. But Ashley had said something about working late so there was probably nothing to worry about, Ashley would be at the office, burying her pain in paperwork.

Jenneen, Kate and Ellamarie had spent the whole of the previous day with Ashley, trying to make some sense of what had happened. They had all quite genuinely believed that Julian was as crazy about Ashley as she was about him, and now they each blamed themselves for having got it so wrong. Ashley had spent most of the day in a daze, and Jenneen had known that it had been as much from lack of sleep as from losing the man she loved. The most bitter blow of all was that it had happened now – only two weeks before Christmas.

Jenneen leaned back in her chair and, curling her feet under her, let her filming notes fall to the floor as she began to think about Christmas. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this year, just for once, she could meet someone she really liked. A man who was just waiting to meet a woman like her. Petite, blonde, very feminine, so her friends told her, and with a quick tongue that never ceased to surprise even those who knew her. It was laughable at times, to see people’s eyes widen in disbelief when they had tried to manipulate her into doing something she disagreed with. Her mild and affable face belied the sharp brain behind, and the quick response of her tongue could send people reeling. But Mr Right, well, he would love her for her complexity. He would make her feel secure, protected from all those vicious tongues at the studios. He would make her feel loved. Funny though, but try as she might, she just couldn’t imagine it – or him either, come to that.

A car door slammed outside, breaking her reverie. Dismissing her romanticism she retrieved her notes from the floor. As she began to read she heard footsteps crunching up the steps outside. Automatically she tensed. “Please God, don’t let it be my bell that rings,” she breathed.

But she already knew. It was almost as if she could smell him.

The bell rang. “Go away,” she hissed, “please God, please, make him go away.”

Slowly she got to her feet and walked over to the window. Pulling back the curtains an inch she peered down into the street below. Sure enough, there was the beaten old Audi parked right outside, and oh God, there he was, looking straight up at her. What a fool she had been to look out.

The bell rang again, more insistently this time.

Without speaking on the intercom she pressed the buzzer to release the door downstairs. Pulling open her own front door, she went back into the sitting room to wait.

She could hear his footsteps, taking the stairs two at a time. God, anyone would think he was eager to see her. The bastard! She hated him with such venom that at times it frightened her. She wished she knew what she had to do to get him out of her life, but short of murder, what else was there?

She heard the door close, and could feel the cold air he had brought in with him.

“Hello, Jenneen,” he grinned, taking off his coat and going to help himself to a drink. “Ready for bed?” he said, looking at her dressing gown.

She didn’t answer. She had nothing to say to him.

“Oh, I see,” he said, “bad day was it?”

Her eyes were fixed on the chair opposite so he sat in it. She turned away.

“Oh come on now, Jenn, you’re going to have me thinking you aren’t pleased to see me.”

She looked at him, taking in his short, cropped hair that used to be fair but was now a manky mousy colour, and the bloodshot grey eyes that darted about the room before they came to rest on her again. She shuddered as he slurped on the Scotch he had poured himself, then turned to pour himself a refill.

“Just say what you want and get out!” she snapped.

“Now, that is no way to treat an old friend, is it?” He took another large mouthful of whisky and gasped as it burned his throat. “Good whisky, Jenn.”

“It’s cheap, especially for you,” she answered.

“Dear oh dear, Jenn, now is that a way to speak to a friend who visits you so often, who cares about you like I do? A friend who so closely guards your little secret?”

No preamble, just straight in for the kill. She stared into the fire.

“Look, I’d be a little happier, Jenneen, if you’d be a touch more hospitable to me. After all, I am doing you a favour, you know, by telling no one.”

“No one would believe you, you scum!”

“Ah, but you don’t know that for sure, do you?”

“Get out of here. Go on, just get out of here. Get out of my life!”

He ignored her and began to play with the remote control of the TV set. After flicking through the channels he decided there was nothing he wanted to watch, so put it down again.

“I’m hungry, got anything in?”

“No.”

“You must have something. And I know you wouldn’t like to see me go hungry.”

Her lip began to curl. “You filthy, rotten bastard. You come here to blackmail me, and you have the fucking cheek to expect me to feed you.”

A dangerous glint flashed in his eyes. “Calm down, Jenneen. You don’t want to make me angry, now do you?”

“What the hell have you got to be angry about! You’ve got a damn nerve coming in here, taking my drink, demanding food, upsetting my life . . .”

“Stop right there.” He got to his feet and slowly began to circle her. “Upsetting your life, you say. That’s a good one. I have upset your life. Yet again, I am going to have to remind you just exactly what you did to my life.”

“Shut up!” she yelled.

“Oh, you don’t want to hear it, eh? You don’t want to be reminded of how with one vindictive statement you wiped out my entire career. Destroyed everything I had worked for. Shall I remind you what it was you said? Those words that were all over the papers the next day and annihilated a man and his future?”

“Don’t kid yourself, Matthew. You were all washed up long before I said what I did. You just wanted someone to hang the blame on. If it hadn’t been me, it would have been someone else.”

“I hadn’t been having an affair with ‘someone else’. No, I had been sleeping with you, Jenneen Grey. She who is an expert on men and their prowess in the sack. But of course I’m forgetting, you’ve had so many. How many was it last week, Jenneen? Five? Six?

She flinched, and turned to the window.

“More? Well, I don’t want to know. You sleep with whoever you like. As many men as you can get. Or women!” he added.

Jenneen closed her eyes. She had known it was coming.

“Lost your tongue?”

She didn’t answer.

“Pity you didn’t lose it that night you were interviewed on the Late Night Chat Show. If you’d lost it then, perhaps neither of us would be in the mess we’re in now.”

“Look, Matthew,” she turned to him, her eyes pleading. “You know as well as I do that you were sacked from the drama series because of your drinking. It was nothing to do with what I said. For God’s sake, if someone was destroyed every time a woman aired her dirty linen in public, there wouldn’t be many people at the top, would there?”

“You’re a liar, Jenneen, and you know it. I threw you over the night before that show. I threw you over! And your bloody ego just couldn’t take it. ‘Is he a good lover?’ you said. And then you laughed. I’ll never forget that laugh, Jenneen. ‘Is he a good lover? I’ll be truthful with you,’ you said. ‘He’s so pumped full of drugs or alcohol it’s like going to bed with a log that has a protruding twig in the right place.’ Isn’t that what you said?” He was shouting now and advancing across the room towards her. “Isn’t that what you . . .”

“Stop it!” she cried, hating the way he worked himself into a frenzy of anger.

“I was the leading man in that drama, Jenneen, I was on the brink of becoming a national heartthrob. OK, it sounds pathetic, but it pays the bills. And you destroyed it all in one night.” He stood over her, the smell of whisky on his breath sickening her.

She clenched her fists. “How much do you want this time?”

Matthew eyed her with hatred, as if he might strike her, but then the anger seemed to subside and he relaxed a little. “That’s better,” he said. “You pay. That’s right, you pay.”

“How much do you want? Tell me, how much?”

“I will,” he said, “when I’m ready. Now I’m hungry, go and make me something to eat.”

Jenneen went into the kitchen and began to pull out the pots and pans. She could hear him in the sitting room, helping himself to another drink. She wanted to cry, but she knew it was no use. For months now she had pleaded with him, begged him, to leave her alone. But he kept coming back. Shouting at her, abusing her with vile language, and sometimes beating her. Every day she lived in terror of the hold he had over her. Dear God, if only she hadn’t gone to the party that night. Was it as long ago as two years? It was the night she had first met Matthew.

As the evening wore on, her escort, sensing her disinterest, became engrossed in someone else, and feeling miserable and lonely, Jenneen sat in a corner, sipping whisky and biting back the tears of self-pity that often come before an attack of flu.

She couldn’t remember now how she had got talking to the woman, or much about their conversation. But whoever she was, the woman seemed kind and friendly, and genuinely interested in whatever Jenneen had to say. They laughed a lot, she remembered that, and they agreed a lot too, but what about, Jenneen couldn’t, or didn’t want to remember.

It must have been midnight, maybe even later, when Jenneen finally tried to stand up to leave. But she’d drunk more whisky than she’d realised, and she fell back onto the settee, giggling. The woman laughed softly, and asked if she could help.

Jenneen looked around for her escort, but he had disappeared. “Typical!” she thought to herself, and then suddenly she started to cry. The woman seemed quite startled at first, but placing an arm round Jenneen’s waist, she led her from the room. Vaguely Jenneen remembered being led up the stairs, hearing the woman whispering soothing noises, telling her that she was far too ill to go home tonight.

She didn’t recall protesting, but like a child she allowed the woman to help her out of her clothes. Jenneen didn’t know even now, how many times the woman had kissed her before she became aware of what was happening. But she didn’t stop her. The woman’s lips were soft, her hands cool and gentle, tenderly soothing the loneliness from her body. There were no rough hands on her breasts, no heavy bulk pushing against her. Only warmth and comfort, and a sensual feeling she had never experienced before. And then she was moving her own hands. Touching, exploring, and wondering at the strange softness of the skin, the light smell of perfume, the silky hair that fell across her face.

How much later was it when the door opened? Hours? Minutes perhaps. She looked up to see a man standing over the bed, watching them, a smile curling his lips, and a glass in his hand. She didn’t know him then, but it was Matthew Bordsleigh, an as yet little known actor. The woman lying beside her seemed pleased to see him, and not at all embarrassed. She invited him to stay and watch, and he did. Jenneen never knew what possessed her to go through with such an “act of perversion”, as her family would have called it. And Matthew Bordsleigh sat on a chair in the corner, quietly sipping his Scotch, never taking his eyes from the naked female bodies writhing before him on the bed.

It was more than a year later when she next saw him. They recognised one another, but could not immediately recall where they had met. Jenneen had so determinedly pushed the night of the party to the back of her mind that she never thought of it any more. She was too ashamed.

It was Matthew who remembered first. Her reaction was to deny it. It must have been someone else. Don’t be ridiculous, she’d been sleeping with him for the last two months hadn’t she? How could she possibly have gone to bed with another woman? Would a lesbian behave in bed with a man like she did with him? But he insisted, until finally Jenneen admitted it. He laughed at her crushing humiliation, telling her not to mind about him, he was a liberated guy, and no, he wouldn’t dream of telling anyone.

He kept his promise, but it did not stop him suggesting distasteful threesomes from time to time, and Jenneen grew to hate him for it. But she carried on seeing him, not really knowing why. She should have been warned when she first noticed that his drinking was becoming a problem. The night he threw her over he was more drunk than she had ever seen him before. They argued, and she tried to stop him from having any more, telling him he was making a disgusting spectacle of himself. He laughed at her, saying she was a one to talk about disgusting specatcles. And then he hit her. The first punch didn’t hurt much, but the second did, and the third, and the fourth. How many times he hit her she couldn’t remember, but the pain she could. Finally, he stormed out, shouting obscenities over his shoulder, and telling her not to expect him back. It was a blessed relief.

The next day she was to appear as a guest on the Late Night Chat Show. As the new presenter of the afternoon features programme it was important to promote herself, as well as the programme. She had to wear dark glasses, and her mouth was badly cut inside. Nevertheless, she was determined to go through with it. It was only when she was in the make-up room before the show began that she realised the full extent of what he had done to her face. The eyes looking back at her from the mirror, normally so calm and blue, were purple and red and swollen – she looked hideous. He had spoilt her first appearance on television. The very thing she had worked so long for. She should have been carried away with a sense of achievement, bubbling over with euphoria to have realised her dream, but he had taken it away from her. She hated him. She hated him with a growing vengeance, and swore that she would get back at him somehow. She didn’t realise then how soon that would be, or how much it would cost her.

“You’re taking your time out there.”

His voice brought her back to the present, and she felt her fingers tighten on the knife she was holding. How she would love to push it into him. To see the look of horror, of disbelief, and then agony. To see him fall dead at . . . She shook herself. She must pull herself together, get a grip. She’d find a way out of this somehow, but that wasn’t the answer.

She went into the sitting room and slammed down a plateful of food before going to sit on the settee. He sauntered over to the table and sat down. She could hear him eating, and the sound grated on her nerves. She looked at the bottle of whisky that was sitting on the floor beside the fire. It had been full when he’d arrived, now it was half empty. But she didn’t care. Hopefully it would kill him. Yes, she’d give him money if that was what he was going to spend it on.

Eventually she heard his knife and fork go down, and then giving a heavy sigh punctuated by a stomach-curdling burp he leaned back in his chair and picked up his Scotch. For a while he said nothing, only looked at her. Any minute now he would tell her how much he wanted. She would go to her handbag, or maybe her chequebook, hand over whatever he asked for, and then he would go. It was the easiest way.

A smirk twisted his face and she wondered how she could ever have found him attractive. His teeth were stained with tobacco, his face swollen with drink, and the once athletic body was beginning to sag.

“Take off your dressing gown,” he said, picking at his teeth.

She ignored him.

“Did you hear me? I said, take off your dressing gown.”

“Drop dead!” She got to her feet intending to leave the room. Quick as a flash he was behind her, pinning back her arms. She didn’t have time to marvel at how a man as drunk as he was could move so quickly before he had pushed her onto the floor. Towering over her she could see the gleam in his eye.

“Take it off!” he snapped.

Knowing that it would only be the worse for her if she didn’t do as he said, she slowly began to undo the buttons. She turned her head to gaze into the fire, trying to disassociate herself from her own body. He waited, looking down at her, until all the buttons were undone. Then, taking her by the arms, he yanked her to her feet.

“That’s all!” he said. “If you’d only learn to do as you were told you’d make life a lot easier for yourself, Jenneen. Now, fifty pounds, cheque or cash. I don’t mind which.”

Realising that he was not going to rape her after all, she was so overcome with relief that she almost ran across the room and fumbled in her bag for her chequebook. Her hands were shaking with anger and fear as she wrote the cheque.

He laughed when she handed it to him, then tucked the near empty bottle of whisky into his coat pocket and left.

Afer he had gone she sat in the chair for a long time, staring into the fire. Why had she let that woman take her to bed that night? But was it so bad to have been to bed with another woman? She shuddered. Of course it was. People where she came from thought women who did things like that were disgusting and contemptible. And if her mother ever found out, she would never be able to hold her head up again. And her father, she dreaded to think what it might do to him, or what he might do to her.

And her friends? What would they think? They’d never trust her again. If she greeted them with a kiss they would always be wondering, did she have more than a friendly love for them? She couldn’t bear it. She couldn’t bear to see everyone she loved turn away from her. To see that look in people’s eyes when she went into work. The sniggers and whispers behind her back. No, she had to tolerate Matthew’s abuse, it was the only way. She could only thank God that he didn’t know the full extent of her debauchery.