href="#litres_trial_promo">Twenty-Three
For a newspaper which went to such lengths to remind its readers of the forthcoming jollifications – ill-drawn holly wreaths garlanding the masthead on Page One, other pages adorned with large woodcut prints of Santas and sleighbells – the newsroom of the Riviera Express was decidedly lacking in Christmas cheer.
Above the sub-editors’ table some optimist had hung a dispirited-looking mistletoe twig, but since most of the desk’s occupants were too old or too ugly to kiss, as a gesture it seemed particularly hollow. Outside the editor’s office a despondent-looking fir tree was already shedding its needles, while from the darkroom came the sounds of Terry Eagleton murdering ‘Santa Bring My Baby Back To Me’. It wasn’t a nice thing to hear.
Betty Featherstone was sitting on John Ross’s desk, swinging her legs and listening to the old bore drone on about the glory days.
‘Ayyyyy…’ he said with a growl, ‘it was just aboot this time o’ year. The old King was dying, the worrld was waiting for the soond of muffled bells. Fleet Street had come to a standstill in anticipation. Ye’re too young to know the name Hannen Swaffer, but let me tell you, girrlie, he was the finest – the greatest columnist ever. Hannen Swaffer!’
‘Yes, I think I’ve heard the…’
‘So old Swaff was sent off to Buckingham Palace to find out how things were going. He came back to the office and told the editor: His Majesty must be slipping away. He didn’t even recognise me.’
‘Ha, ha,’ said Betty.
‘You say that, girrlie, but I can tell you don’t mean it.’
He was right. Betty was inspecting the run in her stocking, successfully dammed with a dollop of Cutex Rosy Pink nail varnish, and thinking about the WI Whist Drive report she had to finish before going-home time. Or rather, she wasn’t thinking about it, using Ross and his interminable meanderings as an excuse not to.
Nobody told her, when she joined the Riviera Express from school, it could be this dull – and in the fortnight before Christmas, too! All she had to look forward to for the rest of the afternoon was writing up the tide tables, sorting out the church brass-cleaning roster, and finally doing something about the Bedlington Crochet Club’s seasonal chef d’oeuvre, a knitted Madonna and child complete with manger, now lopsidedly adorning the font in St Margaret’s Church.
‘Ye jest don’ get the quality of writer down here, girrlie. Now Cassandra of the Daily Mirror – that’s quality for ye!’
As she half listened to the Glaswegian’s monody she struggled to think of an intro. How many thousand stitches, she drearily thought, would it take to make a knitted Madonna? Wait a minute – I could turn that into the New Year quiz!
‘Ye ever read his description of Liberace? So brilliant I know it by heart.’
‘Liberace?’
‘The singer, girrlie, the singer!’
Betty nodded absently. She was actually thinking about whether to take the train up to Exeter for the annual Pens ’n’ Lens Club party – though it usually ended, like all journalistic gatherings with added lubricant, in backstabbing and recrimination. She hated it, too, when people she hadn’t seen for a month or so asked after the wrong boyfriend. Betty got through men like a hot knife through butter, or it was the other way round.
Ross licked his lips and looked into the middle distance. ‘This deadly winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love,’ he recited. ‘That’s Cassandra for ye! Sheer genius! Ayyyy, girrlie, have you ever tried your hand at writing something like that? Ye ought, ye know.’
‘The chap who typed that got sued. And his newspaper. And his editor. Are you suggesting we put that kind of stuff in the Riviera Express, Mr Ross?’
The chief sub suddenly found something more interesting to occupy his time.
Just then a heavy thudding noise proclaimed the approach of Rudyard Rhys, bewhiskered editor of the Rivera Express, stalking down the office in his heavy brogue shoes. You could tell that he too had yet to catch the Christmas spirit.
‘Where on earth is everybody?’ he snarled, though he knew perfectly well – they were all off doing their last-minute shopping and his newsroom was a wasteland.
‘Where is my so-called chief reporter, Miss Dim?’
‘She went off with her handbag,’ said Betty disloyally. ‘Didn’t say where.’
‘Anything in the diary for her?’
‘No,’ said Betty even more disloyally. In fact, Miss Dimont had told her before lunch, ‘I’m going over to Wistman’s Hotel to see Mrs Phipps. Back much later,’ meaning opening-time. The newsgathering was over for this week, after all.
‘Well, I’ve just had a call from Sir Frederick’s office. He’s giving a constituency workers’ party and wants someone to cover it. Says his secretary forgot to send the invitation.’
‘That’ll mean the Western Daily Press turned him down. He always favours them.’
‘Rr… rrr!’ said the editor, who hated his more powerful daily rival.
‘Anyway, Judy knows him. I don’t.’
‘It’ll have to be you, Betty, it’s on in an hour. Take that young Skinner fellow along with you.’
‘I thought you said politics was beyond me,’ said Betty, trying to get a rise out of her boss.
‘Six o’clock, Con Club.’ Rhys stumped back up the deserted newsroom. There were days when he barely held control of his newspaper and his best response to the doubters was to retreat into the office and slam the door. That showed them.
‘Better slip on your party frock,’ drawled Ross over his shoulder, ‘Sir Fred likes a pretty girrl ye ken.’
He’s seventy-five if he’s a day, thought Betty with a shudder. On the other hand there were always young people eager to get on in politics hanging around his office and the party was sure to be fun. It solved the Pens ’n’ Lens problem, too.
‘I’m going to make the crocheted Madonna the New Year quiz,’ she said decisively as she picked up her handbag from the desk and headed for the cloakroom.
‘Ay ye would, ye would,’ uttered Ross shaking his head and talking to his desk. If only he could pop out now for a quick drink with old Swaff and Cassandra in the Old Jawbones, what things they’d have to say to each other…
‘He did the most unspeakable things with animals,’ sighed Mrs Phipps, flipping ash into her coffee and throwing her ancient eyes up to the ceiling. ‘Quite reprehensible. We had to send him away.’