Those Whom the Gods Love. Clare Layton
I’ve commissioned, with a photograph of you at the top; not some virtually anonymous piece that won’t carry any weight with anyone. Why not do Harbinger’s piece as Jane Bloggs? He’s had a free ride on me so far.’
‘Because Rano knows it was me he sent.’ Ginty assumed Maisie was being deliberately obtuse. ‘Come on. I’m not nearly famous enough for you to mind whether it’s my name at the top of the column or not.’
‘Don’t sell yourself short. You’re not exactly unknown. After all, you were on the radio, talking about rape, only the other day.’
‘So, you heard that, too, did you?’
‘Of course. I always listen to Annie Kent. Her guests give me a lot of ideas. You don’t have to look sick, Ginty: you were great. I don’t happen to agree with you, but that doesn’t matter.’
‘A lot of people think it does.’
‘Ah,’ said Maisie, grinning as she stubbed out her cigarette with the force of someone squashing a cockroach. ‘Now I understand. You’ve been getting hate mail already, have you?’
Ginty nodded. ‘Well, hate e-mail anyway. I left this morning before the post arrived.’
‘That’s the price of being successful. As a journalist, you will always piss someone off. I’ve told you before that you have to learn to take it. So, no: you can’t use a pseudonym.’
‘This isn’t about taking flak from readers, Maisie. I loathe that, but I’m learning to cope with it. What scares me is what Rano might do to me if I write too sympathetically about his victims.’
‘Oh, don’t be absurd. He might conceivably read your Sentinel interview, but he’s not going to open a women’s mag like Femina. Even if he did, he’s not going to worry about it. Ginty, for Christ’s sake! He’s fighting a war out there. Risking his life. That’s rather more important, you know.’
‘Of course I do. But you’re underestimating him. He went out of his way to tell me he had plenty of friends and supporters in London.’ Ginty shivered. ‘One of them’s even rung me up. Already.’
‘You’re making far too much of this.’ Maisie sounded brisk. She lit another cigarette. ‘Look here, I want the piquancy of a cosy makeup-and-boyfriend writer tackling a subject that really matters to women. It’ll show the world what Femina is about.’ Maisie blew out another thin stream of smoke, watching Ginty through it. ‘Besides, Gunnar Schell is famous, and so is your mother.’
‘That’s not fair.’
Maisie laughed, tapping off the ash. ‘Come on, Ginty, get real. You want a career in serious journalism. You may get it. You’re beginning to show signs of writing well enough and, through your parents, you’ve got access to some good contacts. But at the moment it’s their celebrity getting you read. Don’t get so cocky you forget that.’
Cocky! Ginty thought. If only.
For years she’d been trying to teach herself to operate without approval, but she hadn’t got very far. She still couldn’t stop herself believing that all criticism was real and justified, even though compliments were never more than kind lies.
‘Listen, Ginty, I know you had a tough time out there, and I was worried about you every time I saw the news. But you’re home now, and safe. That bastard Harbinger should never have involved you with a man like Rano, but the experience will help you. Use what you felt – all that fear – and write me a blinder about his real victims. You’ve got two weeks. OK?’
Why did I ever start this? Ginty asked herself. ‘I don’t know that I can, Maisie. Not if you insist on having my name on it.’
‘That’s your choice.’ Maisie got to her feet. ‘Go away, and think about whether you want real work. If you do, write up the article as we’ve agreed. If you don’t, send me a cheque to repay your expenses and go on your way. But don’t come back wanting me to publish anything else in the future because I won’t. OK?’
‘You’re all heart, aren’t you, Maisie?’ The friendly message on the answering machine might never have existed.
‘It’s a tough business. I’m prepared to help you. But I won’t be messed about. You’ve already chucked photography. Think very carefully before you chuck journalism, too. Now, I must get on. Can you find your own way out?’
Ginty opened the heavy glass door that led out into the maelstrom of the editorial floor. Against the clatter of talk, phones, printers and photocopiers, Maisie’s voice was very quiet, but Ginty heard every word.
‘And don’t forget those women you interviewed. If you don’t write this piece, their voices won’t be heard. I’m not sending anyone else out there. Don’t you think you owe them anything, all those rape victims you persuaded to talk?’ Maisie’s voice was like a rasp. ‘And the children – the survivors anyway – who are going to grow up hated by their mothers. Don’t you owe those children anything?’
Ginty was changing for dinner with Harbinger. She’d had a shower and was standing in front of the long mirror at the back of the wardrobe door, surprised to find that she looked exactly the same as usual. Her eyes were a little bigger and her mouth a little tighter, but that was all. It was peculiar. Here she was, fighting her way out of the iron suit, expanding with every moment of freedom, and looking like the same gentle midget she’d always been.
She pulled the clingy black dress over her head and rearranged her short brown hair with her fingers so that it lay in feathery points around her face. She outlined her brown eyes with smoky shadow and lengthened the lashes with mascara, but she left the rest as it was. It was too small to take much paint.
The dress seemed a bit too gloomy, so she dug out a beautifully made, very plain, silver torc Gunnar had given her years ago to replace a glittering diamanté choker he’d disliked. The choker had been a seventeenth birthday present from her first boyfriend, and she’d loved it until Gunnar explained why it wouldn’t do.
‘Flashy jewellery is vulgar, Ginty; it rarely shows a woman to good advantage. Particularly not one with freckles.’
She couldn’t remember what she’d done with the choker, but now she wished she’d kept it. Tonight would have been a good time to wear it. Catching herself wondering whether the laughing boy in the newspaper photograph would have liked it, she told herself to stop being so sentimental. Whatever he looked like, he was a rapist, and he’d killed himself rather than face the consequences of what he’d done and make it right.
‘Never give up, Ginty,’ Gunnar used to say at every opportunity. ‘Once you’ve taken something on, it’s cowardly to abandon it half-way through. Cowardly and irresponsible.’ Now, of course, she understood why he’d wanted to drum that lesson into her.
Time to go, she told herself, wondering whether to check her e-mails before she left the flat. No, she’d ignore them; the phone messages that had been waiting when she got back from Maisie’s office had been offensive enough. She bent down to check that she’d pulled out the iron’s plug from the wall socket.
Often in the past, usually when she’d got to the far side of the Hammersmith roundabout, she’d become convinced that she’d left the iron switched on and hot. She’d always rushed straight back to deal with smouldering cloth or gouts of flame, only to find the plug well away from the socket and the iron itself cold. These days she didn’t let herself come back, but it seemed mad not to make sure everything was safely off before she left the house.
‘Fear is a weakness, Ginty, and the weak are a burden to themselves and everyone around them.’
But perhaps, she said to Gunnar in her mind, answering back for the first time in her life, it’s the fearless who