Ambition Read Online Free PDF

compromise they became; an inferior man would cast doubts on their hard-won status. Sexually speaking, successful women had become fussy eaters.
    Men, on the other hand, learned early to make the best of things. They had a dream girl, but until that came along, their hormones urged them to look on the bright side. There were no female
counterparts of such pragmatically obscene sayings as ‘Who looks at the mantelpiece when you’re poking the fire?’ and ‘All cats are grey in the dark’. Long before they
graduated to the stapled
smorgasbord
of the centrefold, they learned to appreciate the cheap and cheerful girls of the downmarket end of so-called adult books (which might be more
accurately described as magazines for masturbating juveniles). They learned sexual compromise: she’s got cross eyes, but great legs! No teeth, but look at the tits on it!
    They were lucky, Susan thought as she lay on the bed. Every time she considered leaving Matthew, she only had to look at him to realize what a bargain he was. He was handsome, successful,
intelligent and solvent; she couldn’t settle for anything less. She’d just have to wait until she could get something more.
    The phone rang and automatically she reached across the bed to answer it.
    ‘Ignore it,’ begged Matthew, raising his head for a minute before carrying on where he’d left off.
    She ignored him instead. ‘Hello?’
    ‘Susan?’
    ‘Who is this?’
    ‘This is Tobias Pope. I was wondering whether you would like your job back. Or even your dead boyfriend’s job.’
    A whimpering noise escaped her, which was more than Matthew’s mouth had achieved in a quarter of an hour. What could she say? Yes sounded pathetic, no sounded suicidal. She was literally
speechless.
    ‘Hello? Are you there, Susan? Speak up, girl. Do you want the job or don’t you?’
    ‘Yes,’ she said sulkily.
    ‘Good. I’ve booked a table at Le Drive for ten; actually I’ve booked all the tables. Can you be there in time? If not, I’ll ask someone else.’
    ‘I can be there.’
    ‘Good. I like black dresses. Make sure you wear one.’
    She gaped into the vacant phone.
    ‘Who was that?’ asked Matthew softly. Oh, he’d stopped. She hadn’t noticed.
    ‘A friend.’ She swung her legs gracefully over his head, got up and walked over to her wardrobe, throwing open the door and gazing at her row of clothes without seeing anything.
‘A friend and benefactor.’ She grabbed at a black Rifat Ozbek and pulled it over her head. Snatching up her Mason-Pearson hairbrush and her Etienne Augier briefcase, she ran down the
stairs.
    At the front door it occurred to her that she hadn’t said goodbye to Matthew. She yelled it up the stairs. But it was a big house, and she couldn’t be sure he’d heard her. And
she didn’t have any time to waste.
    ‘Punctuality! One of the great virtues!’ Tobias Pope smiled at her across the table as though she was the entrée and he planned to have her flambéed
in brandy. ‘And so much more important than all those milk-and-water so-called virtues like honesty, decency and loyalty. On the contrary, I call those vices: soul-sapping things only to be
indulged in by those who’ve cancelled their subscription to the human race. Don’t you agree, Susan?’
    ‘Absolutely.’ She looked at his face with interest; it was an unmistakably American face of the type that can be traced from Mount Rushmore to American soap opera patriarchs. It was
stubborn, obsessively individualistic and it led with its jaw; his hair was a shade best described as Pentagon Pewter, and his eyes were bright blue, too blue, bright and beautiful in his
weather-beaten and wolverine face. They looked unreal, transplants stolen from a screen idol, and they made her uncomfortable. She pretended an interest in the decor of Le Dive, done out in the
matt black and lacquered red of a designer opium den; those colors which the rag hags predicted would be replaced by pastels every