Realizing that she’d been used as a pawn in their squalid feud, Judith felt sick.
“Danny, you know me. I’d never deliberately hurt anyone,” Bob pleaded.
“Yes Bob, I do know you and you’re a spiteful, jealous brat…Look what you did to me! You only noticed Ingrid because everybody else was raving about her beauty. Once you knew she was universally valued, like that gold ring on your finger, you had to have her and resented a poor man enjoying what you felt entitled to. If you could only get her on your arm, you thought, you’d be guaranteed more of the attention you craved but didn’t have the charisma to generate it yourself without going via people’s hi-fi systems. To you she was just another accessory, like all those ridiculous things you spend your money on. You’ve never been able to think for yourself, have you Bob? I used to think that the wrong people had all the cash, but now I’m not so sure. I think wealth is probably God’s compensation for people who have no imagination.”
“Yes, like self-righteousness is God’s compensation for being poor.” Bob retorted.
There was a hiatus before Danny chirped up again. “The point is I loved Ingrid as a person, not as an object. I loved her fresh, open mind. I connected with her like no one before or since.”
“Crap! Ingrid was your opportunity to inflict on someone else what you’ve had done to you. What were you at the time, thirty one? She was the perfect disciple — just eighteen years old, intelligent and naïve. At Last, you had a captive audience to rehearse your mother’s brainwashing on…somebody to make you feel the big man.”
“The way people who bought Squeaky Kirk records where a captive audience for your egotistical whining you mean?”
“Yes.”
Everything suddenly fell silent. It seemed that Danny had been fazed by Bob’s uncharacteristic humility.
“Prison’s done you good Bobby. Being forced to mix with the great unwashed has given you some character. You know, when you burst in tonight you actually made me laugh for the first time I can remember — that Che Guevara line and so forth. You wisecracked your way in here with all the insecurities and bravado of a young NED…a real person instead of the old, self-loving prick. Humour is born of adversity and I think you’ve encountered it for the first time in your life. Even addressing Fin as ‘Pinhead’ was positively affectionate compared to the way you used to ignore him.”
“Hah,” Bob laughed. “I had nothing to do but stew over my existence in that prison. What you said about my mother and nobody being good enough for me could almost have come out of my own head. Do you know, that four months inside was the first time I’ve ever really relaxed. It provided some peace and perspective. My whole life’s been a torment Dan, trying to be better than everyone, like she always told me I was. Of course, with dad away a month at a time on the oil rigs and her shielding me from him whenever he was home, I’ve grown up unable to accommodate criticism. That’s why I flew into a rage when that whore attacked my music. Did you know she used to be a classical cellist? I hated it when she told me that. You see, Dan, I’m the archetypal goldfish in a liqueur glass. That’s why I consort with prostitutes and have oddballs like Herman and Dickens tagging along. It makes me feel superior, like I’m supposed to be.”
“You…you were right too.”
“Sorry?”
“What you just said about me being a victim of my mother and using Ingrid as a captive audience so I could enjoy the sound of my own voice.”
“Well, we’re all victims of nurture, Danny. So what do you intend doing then? Are you going to the police?”
“That’s entirely up to you.”
“No it’s not at all! The balls are all stacked in your court. So what’s it gonna be?”
“I’ll keep quiet on condition that you sign all the Squeaky Kirk royalties earned since you were arrested over to me, before lunchtime tomorrow. Seven hundred and sixty grand should do the trick.”
Judith shook her tearful head in disgust. In the space of a minute, a man who’d spent a lifetime masquerading as a socialist had exposed himself as a phoney and a blackmailer, willing to profit from the attempted murder of a prostitute.
“You’re friggin’ joking aren’t you?” Bob laughed exaggeratedly, through a combination of disbelief and nerves.
“No. I mean, let’s face it, it’s only what you people should be paying in taxes anyway.”
“According to you people who have nothing to lose and everything to gain maybe.”
“Whatever. But what’s a hundred per cent worth in prison when you could be enjoying half of it in the fresh air?”
“How do I know you won’t hand me in anyway, after I’ve paid up?”
“Because I’d be incriminating myself wouldn’t I? With half your royalties in my bank it would be obvious there’d been blackmail and I’d be looked upon as badly as you. You know I’m a man of my word.”
“I did, yes. But how can you trust a man who, it’s just turned out, has been lying to himself for forty years. You do know you’re renouncing everything you professed to believe in?” There was another brief pause before Bob started talking into his phone. “Fergus?...Bob Fitzgerald…Fitzgerald! Fergus, I need a face to face…I know that but…I wouldn’t be bothering you unless it was an emergency…Half an hour…I really, really appreciate thi…hello?”
Light filled the hallway. Judith just about managed to conceal herself in the darkened bathroom before Bob marched out of Danny’s bedroom towards the front door, talking manically.
“It’ll be worth it to see you finally coveting cash and stripped of your self-righteousness. We’ll be morally indistinguishable and I won’t have moved an inch either way. You know what this means don’t you?” He turned to face Danny, who was now wearing an old white dressing gown, with pink streaks where it had been washed with coloured clothes. “It means I’ve won. I was right and you were wrong. We are all instinctively loners…self-interested individuals.” He rubbed his hands in glee. “Do thank the old lady downstairs for letting me past her as she came through the main entrance door.”
CHAPTER: 8
Danny turned from shutting the door to find a deeply hurt Judith standing in front of him.
“You used me,” she complained plaintively.
Ashamed, Danny looked down at the floor. “Yes, I did…and I’m truly, truly sorry.” Then he walked away, unable to look at her. As he entered the lounge, he passed Fin on his way out, but neither so much as acknowledged the other’s presence. The latter told Judith he was going to give her and Danny some time alone together, before retiring to his own bedroom.
Having taken time to recompose herself, Judith went into the lounge, where Danny was stood on the balcony in his dressing gown, looking up at the stars. She slumped down on the couch and stared at the faded area on the knees of her jeans, arms crossed, kneading her pink, lamb’s wool V-neck jumper with her fingers. After a couple of minutes, Danny started talking, but remained with his back to her.