Ghosting by Jennie Erdal Read Free Book Online Page B

lost its impact. At home in Scotland, there were two small children and a baby, the centre of my universe. But in the London office I never mentioned the fact that I was a mother. I was at pains to fit in, and I sensed that talk about children would not be wise. I therefore pretended to be someone else, someone I was not.
    There were two others who didn't belong, at least not in the social élite, but they were both men and usually worked in a separate building. One occupied the role of chamberlain, treasurer of the household, a trusted aide-de-camp and a magician with figures. He was a cultured man, shy and sensitive, as different in character from Tiger as it was possible to be. The other was a member of the Old Guard who had access at all times to the throne. His distinctive Cockney voice was peppered with glottal stops and unaspi-rated aitches, and he always referred to Tiger as The Chairman, which had the ring of His Worshipful Highness or His Sublime Majesty, being charged with the same reverence. In days of old he would have been the chief courtier. As it was, he served as Tiger's eyes and ears, his spy-master, and though he behaved as if he were one of the gang, his loyalty to the throne was absolute. If ever anyone complained that Tiger was being unreasonable, he would listen for a while, drawing heavily on a cigarette, and then solemnly recite. “Look ‘ere, ‘e's The Chairman and wha’ ‘e says goes.”
    Loyalty was in fact prized above all else. Loyalty meant, among other things, plenty of fawning at the feast and not questioning any policy decision. Some members of staff were inefficient andoccasionally unprincipled but, provided they were loyal, their jobs were usually safe. Tiger himself would sometimes say “I know she fiddles her expenses, but she's very loyal;” or perhaps, “She drives me mad—she's always talking on the telephone, but on the other hand she's very loyal.” In fact, he tolerated all manner of wild, anarchic behaviour; indeed he seemed to relish it. Tales of wayward conduct amused him and he would often exclaim, in squeals of delight, “My girls are delinquents! They are hooligans!” Once during a book launch party at an exclusive club on Pall Mall, one of Tiger's girls, something of a free spirit, was caught urinating in a wash-basin in the gents. Despite a grovelling apology to the club, a lifetime ban was imposed on the publishing house and its staff. Tiger was mortified, or affected to be. For weeks on end he would say to everyone he met, “CAN—YOU—IMAGINE?” He gave the same stress to all three words and thumped them out in turn on the table. “Peeing in the basin! She's a
complete
liability. She will
ruin
us!” But after a perfunctory rant against her character, he always finished by saying, “But, you know, I love her! She's so loyal!” Unsurprisingly, it was disloyalty—a potent and protean concept— that was the unforgivable sin.
    After a while I discovered that the girls came and went with striking regularity. When I travelled to London to attend monthly editorial meetings, I would find that Cosima had been replaced by Nigella, or Sophia by Candida. There were new arrivals as well as bare survivals. And even occasional revivals, since it was not unknown for a girl to be recalled from the wilderness into which she had been so precipitately cast. Tiger alone had the power to pardon the condemned; no amount of special pleading by anyone else on behalf of the offender had any effect.
    In due course Lucinda left to marry an Earl and Sabrina was putin charge of a book club. She claimed never to have read a book— she even confessed this to the press—but it didn't seem to matter. It was enough that she had been the girlfriend of a member of the royal family. It was clear that Tiger's appointments policy was full of purpose and intent, and I soon began to notice interesting patterns in the hiring, and also in the firing, a rare but always dramatic occurrence. On