‘Because it is not appropriate for me to deal with personal management. Sandra is a very caring, efficient agent. She will look after everything we discussed for Peter.’

‘But I thought we had an understanding, you and I . . .’

‘Of course we do, my dear, and a very warm understanding it is, if I may say so. But as head of the firm, I must be careful to stand above the interests of individual artists in order to resolve any conflict, should one arise. Do you understand? If ever there is something on your mind that Sandra cannot satisfy, you must get in touch with me and I will sort it out. But I cannot take day-to-day responsibility for managing what I hope will be a most propitious career. You do appreciate my position, don’t you?’

She appreciates all right, bedraggled and mouselike, with no cards left to play. I am tempted, in masculine ways, to console her, but that would not be good business. So I sip my drink and she gulps hers, slipping out into the night with a mumbled farewell and just enough dignity to refrain from offering me a kiss. I feel appropriately sorry for Eleanor, but that’s the music business. You give the rough and dispense the smooth, as the situation requires. Only fools and artists are ever on the receiving end.

Chapter 11

11

Time’s Up

Ever anxious about missing connections, I have spent many a wakeful night waiting for the alarm to go off, unable to take a sedative for fear of oversleeping. Renewed as I am, I am not sufficiently rearmed to face the threat of Myrtle’s wrath should I fail to catch the first train. So I set the bedside alarm for six forty-five and the TV set to come on at seven with the wakey-wakey news on BBC 1. That should give me plenty of time to shower, pack, have breakfast and catch the nine-seventeen to King’s Cross from the station across the square.

The night is restful and the news undisturbing. In the Gulf, they are counting the cost of war and uncovering atrocities. The defeated Iraqi leader vows defiance. The Americans swear they will strip him of weapons of mass destruction. A human-rights activist warns that punishing the Iraqi regime will inflict unjust suffering on millions of innocent citizens.

As I return from the bathroom wrapped in a towel and rubbing my torso, the transmission switches to a Tawburn studio for three minutes of local news delivered by a mop-topped girl with a severe case of adenoids, or what might be a pungent sub-regional accent. ‘Police in Oldbridge,’ she begins, chilling my steaming skin, ‘are investigating an incident early this morning when a camper-van plunged off the A821 at the entrance to the town. Police divers have been called in to search for the driver, a middle-aged man who appears to have been alone in the vehicle. Roger Middleton is on the scene. Roger?’