cowardly ‘don’t call me, I’ll call you’ line, and gently shooed her out of there ASAP.
This is what should be on the front page, the complete and utter lack of childcare for busy working parents, I find myself silently ranting while Ruth thunders on. Now she’s rolling up her sleeves – always a bad sign with her, means a row is never too far off – and spouting on about a recent survey indicating the tiny minority of Catholics who now are fully paid-up members of the PSNI and the general unfairness of it all and how it’s setting the whole peace process back a full decade.
That’s another thing about Ruth; she’s superb at what she does, but never in your life have you come across anyone carrying as many chips on their shoulders.
Anyway, Kian O’Sullivan, sports editor, former Irish rugby international and something of a lust object among just about every female P.A. up and down the building (who I happened to know have collectively nicknamed him Don Draper), playfully fires a rolled-up ball of paper over at her. Then in no uncertain terms he tells her to shut up and demands to know why sports always gets considered last on anyone’s list of priorities when we’re blocking out tomorrow’s paper.
‘Because people only really care about sports results on a Sunday after all the Saturday games, you gobshite,’ growls Robbie in his twenty-fags-a-day voice, but coming from him that could be deemed a term of affection.
‘Seriously Eloise, you have GOT to listen to me on this!’ Ruth is almost screeching to be heard over the racket, waving a fistful of notes in front of her, like that’s going to catch my attention. ‘It’s front page stuff and if we don’t run with it, make no mistake, The Chronicle will and then it’ll be my head on the block, won’t it?’ On and on she spews, thumping her fist off the table in angry frustration now.
Meanwhile out of the corner of my eye, I’m dimly aware of everyone looking to me, waiting on me to call the lot of them to order, like some overly strict school headmistress whose class has sensed that she’s a bit distracted and is now all acting up accordingly.
‘Eloise?’ says Seth Coleman from directly across the table, de-latticing his fingers, slicking back the lank, greasy hair and giving me one of his unblinking, lizard-like stares. Very disconcerting, if you’re not used to him. ‘We really do need to wrap this up. Tempus fugit.’
I hide my irritation and point out that we haven’t heard from our finance editor yet, throwing the floor open to Jack Dundon, a bespectacled, grey-haired, grey-skinned, softly spoken guy with a background as an award-winning economist; someone who rarely shines at these meetings, but who’ll consistently come up trumps and turn out impeccably researched stories written in language readers can grasp, unlike those on some of our rivals’ finance pages, that you’d nearly need a Harvard master’s in finance to get your head around.
He draws the air of experience deep into his lungs and addresses the now silent room. The European Central Bank have announced an interest rate hike of half a per cent, is his calm opener, which mightn’t exactly be the sexiest lead story at the table, but it’ll affect hundreds of thousands of mortgage holders and so therefore it has massive bite. On and on he goes, giving me the freedom to let my thoughts take me back to my more pressing concerns and back to about noon today, when in sauntered a slightly more promising candidate for the job of nanny/lifesaver.
But when I say ‘slightly more promising’, all I mean is she was young, reasonably well groomed and at least had the courtesy to turn up for the interview appropriately dressed, even if her eye make-up did happen to be the exact colour of bright yellow hazardous waste. Trouble was, she had precious little experience in childcare and when I asked her why her CV only had one reference on it, her answer was that she was really an out-of-work actress and thought this would be a nice little earner until her big break arrived.
‘I mean, it’s only minding a kid, isn’t it? Besides, I’ve loads of nieces and nephews and I know I’m well able to handle it,’ she coolly informs me. ‘And the reference I have is good, my auntie went to load of trouble to write it for me. Oh, but by the way,’ she added, hammering a further nail into her own coffin, ‘if my agent rings about an audition, then I’ll need time off. Plus I don’t work evenings after seven p.m. or weekends. And I should probably tell you that I already have my holidays booked for the first two weeks in June, I’m going to Spain with my boyfriend, so that’s out as well. I assume that’s all OK with you?’
It’s not often I’m at a loss for words, but on this occasion I was. I didn’t answer, couldn’t. Just sat there staring at her in disbelief thinking, ‘next!’
And the piece de resistance? Just after lunch (which in my case is rarely more than a cereal bar wolfed down at my desk between phone calls, and that’s if I’m very lucky), Rachel buzzes into my office to say the final candidate the agency have available to start work is now waiting patiently at reception. I stride out of my office to greet her, praying, just praying that this one will look not unlike Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins, act like a firm but kindly Angela Lansbury in Bedknobs and Broomsticks and keep perfect law and order in my house when I’m not there as strictly as Emma Thompson in Nanny McPhee.
Initial reaction was positive and for once, my stomach didn’t sink at the sight of what was waiting beside Rachel’s desk for me. Mrs. Adele Patterson was sixty-something, with a grey perm so tight it looked like someone had accidentally poured a tin of baked beans over her head, wearing a coat that looked like it was made out of the same upholstery they use on bus seats and laden down with two Marks and Spencers grocery bags. But she was the only candidate who actually looked like an actual proper nanny, wise and calm and experienced, someone you’d unhesitatingly trust your child with. Plus she at least looked me unflinchingly straight in the eye, doing me the courtesy of coming straight to the point.
‘I don’t work in other people’s houses,’ she told me straight up in a no-nonsense style that I at least respected, even if what she’d just said made me break out in an anxiety sweat. ‘You’re welcome to leave your daughter, Lily isn’t it? Well, you can drop her to my house at nine in the morning, no earlier, and I’m strict about collection time too, no later than six o’clock in the evening please. That’s quite a long enough day for any child, believe me. And for me too, I might add. I’m not getting any younger, you know.’
‘Mrs. Patterson, I’m afraid … Well, the thing is that’s going to be a problem. What I need, you see is … Well, let’s just say that there might be the odd evening – just the occasional one, that’s all … when I could possibly get delayed getting home from work, so I really am looking for someone who’s prepared to live in, at my house, which is very comfortable, by the way … It’s in Rathgar,’ I tack on hopefully, like this’ll make a difference.
‘Makes no difference to me if you live in the penthouse suite of the Four Seasons, love,’ she snapped back, sounding shell-shocked at the very suggestion and getting pinker in the face by the minute.
‘Well, I would be paying premium rates, of course, and we can always negotiate a day off for you …’ I exaggerated, astonished at the sheer brazenness of my lie.
Day off? I think. Elka got one day off in the past year and that was on Christmas Day. And even at that, she still had to take Lily for a few hours in the afternoon while I dashed into the office to check the layout for the Stephen’s Day edition of the Post.
But my back is to the wall here, and short of Mrs. Patterson producing references that implicate her in the massacre of a school full of small children, she’s hired.
‘Then I’m very sorry to waste your time, Miss Elliot, but I’m afraid this is just not going to work out, simple as that. You see, I take care of my two grandchildren at home as well, so either your little girl can stay with me daytimes only, with collection strictly no later than six p.m., or that’s it. I’m not here to bargain with you or to offer you any other alternative. And what’s more, I’m going to have to leave now: as it is, I had to ask a neighbour to look after the other children for me so I could get into town to meet you.’
OK, it was at this point that I got desperate,