Free Men from the Boys by Tony Parsons Page B

fabulously unmoved.
    ‘And what?’ he said, his pale features set in stone. ‘Some fancy title makes you too important to get a cup of tea for the talent?’
    The silence of the mortuary lab. And then Marty laughed. And Blunt and I smiled, relieved to hear something, anything, to break that awful silence.
    ‘Just pulling your chain,’ Marty laughed, standing up to offer his hand. He could ingratiate himself with management when he felt like it.
    ‘We need to talk about the direction of A Clip Round the Ear,’ said Blunt, regaining his composure, remembering his power. ‘If you can find a window for me.’
    Marty nodded briskly.
    ‘Let me get my coat and I’ll see you in my office,’ he said.
    The young man looked startled. ‘Now?’ he said, glancing at the big old-fashioned clock. It was way after midnight. Marty and I smiled at each other.
    ‘Son,’ he told Blunt, ‘this is not a nine-to-five job.’
    The three of us left Broadcasting House and walked down to Mayfair through empty city streets that I had known all my adult life. The streets around here never seemed to change. But I knew that I was changing.
    ‘When you’re thirty you want to be free,’ I told Marty as we crossed Berkeley Square. ‘But when you’re forty you want to belong.’
    Marty nodded. ‘There’s a little minx from Vilnius that I’ve been seeing,’ he guffawed. ‘I wouldn’t mind belonging to her for an hour or two.’
    Then he slapped me on the back, and turned to bark at Blunt, who was trailing behind us, worried about what he was getting into.
    But I really believed it.
    Ten years ago I longed for a life that was limitless and free, even though – or perhaps because – I knew I would neverhave it. But now, on the edge of forty, I just wanted my family, and roots, and to belong. And I thought that was typical. But Marty was the kind of man who, even at the edge of forty, wanted to belong to a Lithuanian pole dancer.
    We came through the door of the Pussy Galore and a young woman in a nightdress took Blunt’s arm.
    ‘Want to party?’ she said, her accent curiously American, yet ripe with some former Communist hell. ‘Where you stay? Want to dance? Want to party?’ She leaned in, all close and conspiratorial. ‘We party at my place…’
    Blunt stepped back as if she had a gun.
    ‘Maybe later,’ I told her, and put my arm around him, steering him away from the hungry eyes at the bar.
    Marty had gone on ahead of us. He had a girl clinging on to each arm and some manager was whisking him off to the VIP area. His office.
    ‘What is this place?’ Blunt said, his voice quivering with a heady cocktail of fear and distaste.
    ‘It’s not what it was,’ I said. ‘Nothing like. Come on.’
    We hurried downstairs into the blackness of Hades and Marty’s office – a cosy VIP cubbyhole behind a red velvet rope. There was a former heavyweight boxer in black tie guarding the rope. He lifted it gently to allow Marty and the girls to enter. We quickly followed him, as if it was the last lifeboat on the Titanic.
    Marty sat smothered in girls.
    A song was playing that sounded like a beautiful heartbeat. It was the one where he says to the girl that he is not loving her the way he wanted to. That one. It’s good, I like it.
    Blunt and I perched on the end of the curved sofa like maiden aunts at a Roman orgy. Blunt stared at Marty Mann with appalled eyes.
    ‘Ten years ago this place was quite chaste,’ I told him, because I felt I should say something. ‘Full of local girls who wanted to be models and actresses. Doing a bit of lap dancing so they could pay the rent until they became Dame Judi Dench.’
    We turned our heads tracking a burst of hysterical laughter. The two blondes had removed their nightwear and were unfurling themselves all over Marty’s grateful face in nothing more than a little strategic dental floss.
    ‘Now it’s full of girls who are from out of the neighbourhood,’ I said. ‘That’s one of the