Pattie studying microbiology at university didn't even elicit a blink from Sharon. I could have said she'd studied embalming and facilitated the preservation of Tutankhamen and got the same disinterested reaction. After I'd castigated her for repeating every word I said she'd stared morosely over my left shoulder, as if studying a creature from another dimension that only she could see. For what seemed like an age there was silence except for the usual boloney coming from a Friday night drinking crowd. Finally she blew out her cheeks and said in a tone so flat it would have enraged my long-dead drag-queen of a singing tutor.
'Maybe this Mary found time on her hands if she was retired and thought Pattie might read it for old time's sake.' It doesn't matter how morose she appears, when Sharon's fishing marine life beware.
I decided to feed her the merest morsel.
'No, she knew she was dead.'
'She knew she was dead?'
'The play was addressed to me personally.'
'Addressed to you personally?'
'You're doing it again! Repeating me!'
'Possibly it's because you use words so eloquently Ant, did you think of that? Perhaps you should be writing them instead of selling them.'
'Pretty sure I can do better than half the submissions I get.'
'So many strings to your bow yet to be pulled.' She looked at me almost critically and then added sarcastically: 'Twang.'
This isn't Sharon as I know her. But perhaps there's been a transformation during the four month hiatus. What hasn't changed is that when Sharon's mind is set one could find more malleable slabs of concrete. Her reputation for being difficult if she feels like it comes through the door five minutes before she wafts in herself. You're more likely to unscramble a Rubik's cube with a blindfold than get her to talk about something when she doesn't want to. She asked me more about Mary and I played hard to get, having resolved not to elaborate on my phone call with Pattie's ex-tutor if Sharon wouldn't explain her four months' silence. There were significant details I'd yet to reveal. But Sharon was characteristically evasive and so we tussled for a couple more hours juggling small talk and anecdotes like two old lags bemoaning current circumstances (Convid et al) and reminiscing on the best years of their lives long since consigned to history.
Time out: If ever I was asked about the best years of my life I would be torn between the years on acid and other nefarious substances from leaving school until my first job in the West End in 1974 when I dumped the mind altering substances because I was playing a lot of guitar and screwing up and the time with Katie Pecksniff after we met in 'Jericho' until we got married - after the marriage it was a disaster. I suppose I should include joining Pattie Regan Associates in 1982 but that was more an intellectual memory which, although it was stimulating, didn't have the visceral excitement of sex, drugs and rock and roll. (Well rock musicals anyway, 'Jericho' in particular.) Postscript: In my defence, as someone who vowed never to get married, I only wed Katie because she would have had to have gone back to the States after the run in Jericho otherwise and we were having great fun at the time. It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of good fortune has all the joy taken out of life when he takes himself a wife. The fact that we lasted about ten years is more a testament to us being apart for at least half that time as Katie was still shagging - sorry acting - all over the place. Sharon's bra in my Frog Eye was just the excuse she needed to leave. Ironically that was one of my rare infidelities (well nearly, since we failed to consummate) compared to Katie's dozens. (I speculate but Katie's Dozens sounds like the title of a decent play or movie.)
Around eight o'clock we meandered into Sheekey's' Oyster Bar in St. Martin's Court still talking trivial drivel. Sharon was moaning about another client - she'd been through twenty - this one with curious sexual peccadilloes including stimulation by being wrapped in aluminium foil. Makes my long dead bondage fantasies positively pedestrian. What a boring life I must have led. Finally, exasperated by what said client liked to do with his member whilst wrapped in foil, I banged on the white tablecloth and insisted on talking about the elephant in the room.
'What elephant is that dear?' Running her eyes down the hors d'oeuvres on the menu. (I presumed Sharon was picking up the tab since a single oyster in this place will set you back a fiver and a plate of fruits de mer about fifty knicker. The price of the caviar won't so much make your eyes water as have them fall out.) Sharon looked up from her menu and cocked her head to one side as if repeating the question about the pachyderm.
'The bloody great one from India outside the Taj Mahal with huge floppy ears, a trunk to rival Rasputin's penis and a tendency to fart so heavily you'd hear it in Kathmandu and smell it in Hyderabad.'
'Was Rasputin especially well endowed then?'
'Check it out, it's preserved in pickle in some museum in St. Petersburg.'
'Pickled penis eh? I'll go in my lunch hour on Monday.'
'Four months silence!'
'Have you heard about Joe Bachelor and his rant against anti-vaxxers? I've had to lie and tell him I've had the poisoned dart. I imagine I'd lose half my clients if I didn't fib.'
'I don't want to talk about Joe Bachelor.'
'He's still pushing the damn things despite having Covid. How it would have been so much worse if he hadn't had the jab. That tosspot fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down.'
'Sharon!'
'Fancy Pattie reading microbiology. Takes all sorts. So what else did this Mary have to say for herself? ' She was back studying the menu as if our conversation was of no consequence.
'I'm leaving if you don't do something about this bloody elephant.'
'What do you want me to do? Find it a zoo?'
'Right.' I got up to go.
'Jerome Tickler got back in touch. He wanted me to speak to you.'
I sat down again. The waiter must have seen the smoke rising from my head because he detoured to another table. 'You phoned me because Tickler got back in touch? I don't believe you.'
'But he did.'
'You only got back in touch because of a business transaction? What happened to friendship? I can't believe you're that mercenary.'
'Well nobody's perfect.'
'Yeah, and you're nobody and so you're perfect. I've heard that gag before.'
'I've missed you for pity's sake!' She delivered the line with such show stopping volume that our neighbouring diner nearly choked on his Lindisfarne oyster before regurgitating it. I was silent. In our business a showstopper is often greeted with a round of applause (hence showstopper, geddit?) but I wasn't going to do that because she may have punched me for being sarcastic. Rarely for me, I had no rejoinder.
'Tickler was just the spur that pricked the sides of my intent.'
'Can we dispense with the Macbeth references?'
'You said the M word, you fool. You know we're going to get food poisoning now don't you?' I gave Sharon such a withering look, indicating my displeasure that she was trying to wheedle out of the explanation again. She got the hint. 'The night we fell out I'd just had some really bad news. Your preposterous reasoning that my dad was somehow responsible for the war in Iraq was just too much to bear.'
I should have seen that coming; that it was all my fault. 'I concede it was a ridiculous stretch but, as I recall, I was smarting from you suggesting I should be put out to grass for losing sources. Sources that were beyond my ability to lose but were related to Pattie's death. Paradoxically you then went on to ridicule the possibility that said death was suspicious because Pattie might have been killed.' Bit embarrassed that my knee jerk reaction was to mitigate my behaviour rather than to enquire what Sharon was referring to. Thought I'd better steady the ship. 'What bad news?'
'My baby sister in Keswick. Gemma. She'd had a heart attack,' she said looking down at the menu again to avoid my gaze.
'What?' I was taken aback. Sharon's only forty nine. Gemma can't be more than forty four, forty five. 'Why didn't you tell me?'
'I didn't tell anyone. Except Genevieve who had to reorganise the office and find some pretence for my absence. I've been trying to run my business from the Lake District for the past four months. My staff were told I was suffering from exhaustion and to lie to clients about where I was. The States, Australia, whatever. It's not uncommon for me to be unavailable. And if it was crucial and couldn't be done on the phone or Zoom I'd come back for the day.'
Sharon rarely spoke about her little sister. Her brother Michael of course, but then he was in show business. (Actually it's Michael Junior, since Mike Ronson was his dad. I've always found that American tendency to give your son the same christian name as vain, if not hideous. Hideously vain in fact. But then Michael - Junior - was born in New York as Mike - Senior - was on Broadway at the time.)
Mike - Junior - of course started Sharon's agency with her before running off to the circus, Cirque du Soleil to be precise. He was a terrific athlete and acrobat. When he got too old for that he tried his luck in Hollywood as a stuntman but broke his ankle stepping off a pavement (sidewalk) and is now in Scotland with his wife and kids. He met his wife in Cirque du Soleil, she was a trapeze artist until she was let go (God that was awful!) They run a circus school now near Edinburgh. With loads of cunning stunts I should imagine.
Very wisely Sharon's sister Gemma eschewed show business and married a hotelier who now runs a very upmarket guest house in the Lake District near Keswick.
'What happened?' I asked, which was a pretty dumb question.
'I dunno Ant. She had a heart attack.'
'I'm so sorry.'
'I've mostly been running my business from the Lakes after cooking full English breakfasts for disgruntled Japanese English Literature Association members whose Social Secretary had got Charlotte Bronte country confused with the Lake District or Spotted Dick for a pissed off Patagonian Beatrix Potter Appreciation Society who felt short changed because Jemima Puddle-Duck was not going to be dancing Swan Lake at an attraction they had booked.'
'Jemima Puddle-Duck don't do Swan Lake? How crushingly disappointing.'
'We never actually said she would.'
'How'd they manage to get it so wrong?'
'The receptionist cum marketing manager cited poetic licence and creative advertising and then blamed the language barrier saying it was easy to confuse ducks with swans. She was Lithuanian and no-one understood her anyway.'
'Sounds like Manoel in Fawlty Towers.'
‘Don't really think there's much similarity between the Lithuanian accent and the Spanish one.'
'You know what I mean.'
'They've got Wordsworth, they've got Keats, Coleridge and Ruskin but no, they have to market Jemima Puddle-Duck and Peter bloody Rabbit for pity's sake.'
'I take it the Beatrix Potter books didn't feature in your childhood.'
'Not bloody likely. I was on ''King Lear'' by the age of five.'
'Why are you cooking breakfasts anyway, don't they have a chef?'
'He resigned when Gem's husband told him he couldn't run a bath let alone a restaurant. This after a guest complained there was so much garlic in his Coq Au Vin it could have killed all the vampires in Transylvania. To which the chef replied not if one of them's in his restaurant eating his chicken.'
Sharon's attempts at levity only emphasised her sadness.
'Sharon, once upon a time you called me your best friend. Why couldn't you tell me?'
'We'd fallen out. Like an old married couple.'
'To be honest I felt hard done by.'
'Granted, I was out of order. It wasn't just the news about my sister. I was upset about losing sources as regards Pattie because I was just beginning to be convinced by you that Covid was a conspiracy. I thought that Martin might uncover something or that Tanya had some insights she'd gleaned at The Guardian and now that they'd dumped her - '
'Hang on, in Brighton when I came down that Sunday you talked about a crisis being an opportunity on a dangerous wind. That what was happening was criminal.'
'Yes, but I baulked at the idea that it was an orchestrated worldwide conspiracy.'
'The night we fell out you belittled the fact that some of us didn't believe Pattie killed herself.'
'I know. It was a knee jerk reaction. I was confused about Gemma, pissed off about Tickler crying off, Martin going, Tanya not available. Maybe I cut my nose off to spite my face.'
'So what's your thinking now?'
'When it gets so close to home you revise your perspective. '
'How do you mean?'
'Gemma had her heart attack five days after her second Covid shot. I'm absolutely convinced it was caused by that.' I was taken aback that Sharon was so certain. No maybes. She hadn't had the jab herself but she said she was just being cautious. She had up until now ridiculed my thinking that it was deliberately designed to cause damage. 'Though trying to persuade Gemma and her family that the jab probably caused it was a waste of time.'
I felt vindicated, but I wasn't going to say anything.
'This whole Covid thing has made me hate my business,' she continued. 'Gradually people's true colours are being revealed and I'm revising my opinion of a lot of them. Gemma had her heart attack after her second vax so you can imagine what invective I'd like to spew in Joe Bachelor's direction. But I can't afford to lose him, even if he is depriving a village somewhere of their idiot.'
'I'm pretty much sick of writers too. I joined Notso hoping to get some idea of why Pattie and Kieran had a meeting in her offices at midnight. I've got nothing though. Nada.'
'That's why I think you should meet Tickler.'
'Really?'
'Despite your preference for fellating a rhinoceros with venereal issues.'
'How is Tickler connected to Pattie? Or Kieran?'
'He's not.'
'So - ?'
'You'll get a sense of the inner workings of government.'
'There's nothing to suggest that Pattie's demise has anything to do with government. We're not going to know who would have wanted Pattie dead until we can discover what she knew.'
'He wants to see you.'
'I find that hard to believe.'
'He's going to know a lot about cover ups. He was in the fray leading up to Iraq. He's going to know what really happened to that weapons inspector who died mysteriously.'
'He's not going to tell me anything!'
'Martin's pretty good at manipulating the truth from people. When's he back from Copenhagen?'
'Christmas.'
'Then the team's back together.'
'What do you mean? What team?'
'Okay, not exactly a team.'
'Who are you talking about?'
'The sources I was pissed off about you losing when we fell out.'
'I didn't lose anyone!'
'Okay Ant, don't let your fragile ego get in the way.' Sometimes Sharon can be more exasperating than trying to say eleven benevolent elephants very quickly when you're drunk. (There's that elephant again.) 'There's you, me, Martin, Tickler, if he'll play ball - '
'Tickler's got bugger all to do with Pattie!'
She ignored me. 'And Tanya Parker.'
I paused. I know Tanya wanted to meet me and then cancelled because of a hospital thing but I wasn't sure about her. Leopards and spots come to mind. 'I don't know. She was a full blown card-carrying Covidian even if she did try to speak to me in The Bay Tree.'
'She phoned me last week. She'd just got out of hospital. She knows she's vaccine damaged - '
'Once a Guardianista always a Guardianista.'
'You're not. And you used to read it religiously. I seem to remember it parked behind the steering wheel and probably mocking the fact I was wearing dungarees when we were grappling in your Frog Eye thirty years ago.'
'Okay, point taken.'
'She's been cancelled. You're the one who told me that. She's gamekeeper turned poacher. Enemy of my enemy, remember?'
'Why's Tanya phoning you?'
'Because I got Tessa to represent her. Tess liked her play.'
'What? Springtime for Harry?'
'Yes. She thought it was funny.'
'It's not supposed to be funny. '
'Nor's Joe Biden falling up the stairs of Air Force One, but there you go.'
'You want to use Tanya.'
'I want to be friends with her. But, yes, I want to milk her for everything she's got. Listen, I know you're further down the rabbit hole than me and Martin is way further than you but I know there is something in all this now. I always knew something was up but I just couldn't buy world conspiracies. But with all this vaccine crap coming out…my sister has a heart attack, Tanya has myocarditis. Come on Ant, you started me on all this.'
Sharon was firing me up again. Which seemed weird after being persona non grata for four months. 'Okay, then if we're a team, even though Martin, Tanya and Tickler don't know they're on it and, in fact, don't know each other - '
'Figure of speech Ant.'
' - then there's a new member we need to consider.'
'Yes?'
'Mary Barton.'
'What, because she was a lecturer at Pattie's university nearly fifty years ago?'
'No, because when I phoned her the first thing she said before we got to discuss her play was that she was sorry to hear about Pattie. I asked if she was an avid theatre follower and she said no but she had followed Pattie's career because she once taught her.'
'So?'
'Because she knew she was something special. They hadn't been in touch since Pattie left university and then, just before last Christmas, Pattie phones Mary up. Why would you do that after nearly fifty years? And why would she mention to Mary "Eyes Wide Shut", which apparently she did?'