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My usual breakfast was yoghurt and banana. Here it was porridge and boiled eggs. Compulsory. By the time I’d eaten it I felt so weighed down I thought I’d never lift myself off the chair. And the coffee … the coffee came from a bottle that looked like gravy browning and tasted like it too.
To make it worse, because Mrs Brown worked mornings in a post office, Peggy and I, who apparently didn’t have to be in work until half an hour later, had to do the washing up.
‘You can wash,’ said Peggy, handing me the porridge pan, with its burnt-on bits. ‘It makes sense for me to wipe up and put away because you don’t know where anything lives.’
‘You could show me,’ I said, but knew as I said it, there wasn’t much point.
Do you want to know what I think of the 1950s so far? Well porridge pans really piss me off. Non-stick hasn’t been invented yet. Neither has washing-up liquid, just disgusting green soap. You have to scrape the congealed porridge off with a knife and then, the real horror is when you have to scoop great blobs of it out of the plughole. That is so disgusting.
And Peggy. Peggy is a pain. Pisses me off even more than porridge pans. I am trying really hard to be nice to her and smile a lot (for the cameras, which I haven’t found yet) but it’s really tricky.
‘Are these clothes all right for work, Peggy?’ I asked.
‘Very suitable,’ she said.
‘Do your clothes make you itch?’
‘Of course not,’ she said, but with such a filthy expression that I’m sure her knicks were stuck up the crack of her bum too. ‘Come on. Time to get a move on.’
She handed me an Oxo tin. An Oxo tin? What was I meant to do with that? I must have looked blank because she said, ‘It’s your sandwiches, for your dinner.’
Off we went. I don’t know how they’re doing it, but it’s very clever. Of course, Peggy led the way. (The more I think about it, the more she must be part of the team setting the challenge.) We went through some narrow streets and across a market square. (It’s clearly a film set.) There was very little traffic, just a few old cars. ( The sort they always have in period films.) And a delivery boy on a bike. (They always have that as well.) And there was a milkman with a horse and cart. (Which I thought was taking it a bit far really, but that might have been the one with the camera in it, so I gave the horse an extra nice smile.) The shops were small with crowded little windows, a bit drab, but the streets were very clean. No pizza boxes or burger trays. (Shows that it must have been all pretend.)
‘Is it far to The News?’ I asked, wondering how we’d get to the industrial estate.
‘No,’ she said. And that was it. No chatty girly conversation. In fact, nothing. Right, thank you, Peggy. But I remembered my winning ways and smiled and tried again. Tricky, because she was walking quite fast and I was struggling to keep up, and not just because of the shoes.
‘Have you worked there long?’
‘Five years.’
‘So what’s the editor like then?’
At this she went a bit pink and turned around to face me. ‘He’s a wonderful man,’ she said vehemently. ‘Wonderful!’
Bit of a giveaway wouldn’t you say?
But now we were at The News. Not just off the ring road. It was right in the centre of town. And the funny thing was that it looked just like the old pictures we have hanging at reception in the industrial estate. A really old timbered building, with leaded windows. There were some big gates at the side, leading into a yard where I could see old-fashioned delivery vans. I don’t know how they did it, but it was very clever.
As soon as we walked in through the door, Peggy changed character and was as nice as you like. Smiles and ‘Good mornings’. She led the way upstairs.
Well, it was a newspaper office, but not as I knew it.
The place was chaos. A warren of small rooms, each one crowded with heavy wooden desks piled high with papers. The windows were small and grubby, and almost obscured by heaps of papers and files. There were papers everywhere. Piles of yellowing newspapers, on the floor, in corners, on windowsills, blocking doorways. Health and safety would have had hysterics. Especially as there was also a thick cloud of smoke. Everyone seemed to be smoking.
One stray fag end in that lot …
Peggy was leading the way along a narrow corridor of bare and battered floorboards. Then she led me into an outer office, hung up her coat and knocked reverentially on an inner door. ‘Good morning Mr Henfield.’ She was almost simpering. ‘I’ve brought Rosie Harford.’
Richard Henfield looked exactly like his photograph. That was a nice touch, I thought, well researched. Middle-aged, specs, moustache and pipe. Nice eyes, weak chin. ‘Ah yes, you’re with us for a few weeks.’
‘Apparently,’ I said with a winning smile. There must be a camera in here.
‘So tell me what you’ve done.’ He leant back in his chair and stared at me. It wasn’t a particularly nice stare.
‘Well, after my degree, I did a post-graduate diploma in journalism and worked on a weekly paper for a while. For the last few years I’ve been a general reporter, then on the business desk, and now I’m a features writer, specialising in social and consumer issues.’ Smile again.
‘Well, aren’t you a clever little girl,’ he said, gazing at my boobs.
Really! My fingers itched to slap his pompous, patronising, sexist face. But smile, Rosie, smile. I smiled.
‘Better see what you can do then,’ he said, standing up to put his arm around my shoulders – not nice, he smelt of stale tobacco and sweat and half-digested meat. Didn’t the man shower? – and led me back along the corridor and into one of the crowded smoky rooms, where an oldish man in a trailing overcoat was sitting with his feet on the desk reading a paper, while a woman talked on the tele-phone. Two other men were picking up their coats as if on their way out.
I ostentatiously removed myself from Henfield’s arm. That smell was taking reality TV a bit too far.
‘Is Billy about?’ asked Henfield.
‘Assizes,’ said the man, hardly lifting his eyes from the paper. Seeing me, his beady eyes lit up too and he gave me and Henfield his attention.
‘OK Gordon,’ Henfield said. ‘This is Rosie. She has a degree and a diploma and knows all about business and social issues.’ He said it in a sarcastic, mocking tone.
‘Very fancy,’ muttered the woman behind him, putting the phone down and lighting a cigarette.
‘She’ll be here for a few weeks and no doubt she has many talents to reveal,’ he leered. ‘And a lot to show us.’ He and Gordon gave each other knowing glances and then both looked me up and down, when, thank God, Peggy came along simpering, ‘There’s a phone call for you Mr Henfield,’ and off he went.
‘Smarmy bugger,’ muttered the woman. Promising. Then looking at me, she added, ‘I’m Marje, by the way. Well, let’s see what you can do then.’
‘Anything,’ I said, all keen and eager and desperate to get stuck into a decent story.
‘Kettle’s over there,’ said Marje. ‘No sugar for me, two for him’ – pointing at Gordon who’d gone back to reading the newspaper – ‘and the cups need washing. Down the corridor at the very end and don’t wait for the hot water, because there isn’t any.’
Did I have a sign saying ‘skivvy’ stuck to my forehead?
Gordon was the News Editor. When he’d stopped eyeing me up and down he had decided I was barely worth considering. ‘You’d better follow Marje around for now,’ he said as he took his tea without a thank-you. ‘She can show you the ropes. There’s a couple of golden weddings in the book. You should be able to manage those between you.’
Golden weddings! I hadn’t done those since my early days on the weekly. But off I went dutifully with Marje. We had to walk to the old people’s houses. There seemed to be only one van for the staff, and the photographers used it all the time. Reporters had to walk.
Marje strode briskly along.
‘Have you been on The News long?’ I asked, with the little breath I had left. She was setting a cracking pace and I was struggling to keep up.
‘Since the war,’ she said. ‘I was on the switchboard and when all the men got called up there was only me and old Mr Henfield left, so I started doing everything.’
The war again.
‘Young Mr Henfield, the one who’s editor now, was in the army. And Gordon and most of the others. John, the Chief Sub Editor, was in the RAF – got the DFC but he never talks about it. The younger ones weren’t, of course. Billy and Phil were just a bit too young, lucky for them. But they’ve done their call-up and their fifteen days since.’
‘Fifteen days?’
‘Yes, you know. Two years’ national service and then fifteen days every year for three years. Don’t they do that in America?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said vaguely, too fed up to argue about this American business. ‘Something very like.’
I was really getting into this 1950s thing. It was almost as if I were really there. But it was a bit worrying that everyone else seemed to have done so much research. Maybe they’d had more notice than I had. That wouldn’t be hard. Ah well, I would just have to wing it. Tricky though. I was trying to get my head around the fact that the war had only finished ten or eleven years ago, because that was as if, well that was as if it had been finishing just when I was doing A levels. Weird.
Walking along, I could see bits of the present town but not many. I had to say that the TV company had been very thorough. You could almost believe you really were back in the 1950s. There were so many more shops, for a start, lots of little ones. Lots of butchers, a couple of bakers. No candlestick-makers, but a fishmonger, two bookshops, lots of tobacconists, a wool shop, toy shop, baby clothes, another couple of chemists, a china shop, a couple of ironmongers. No supermarkets, but grocers’ shops like Home and Colonial, and Liptons … To be honest, it all looked a bit run-down.
Then I could smell it … coffee. Proper coffee …
‘Oh Marje, can I really smell coffee?’
‘Probably Silvino’s is just around the corner.’
‘Silvino’s?’
‘Italian coffee bar.’
‘Oh glory be. We haven’t got time, have we? Just for a quick coffee. I’m longing for coffee …’
‘No time, sorry,’ said Marje and I had to ignore the tantalising smell as we hurried off to the first golden wedding. Nice couple. (Recipe for happy marriage – he always tipped up his pay packet on a Friday night and she always had a hot meal ready for him.)
Luckily, George the photographer turned up to take their picture when we were there. He was only a young lad, in a baggy suit that looked far too big on him, but he seemed to know what he was doing. And he had the van, which meant that Marje and I could squash into the rickety front seat and get a lift to the next golden wedding couple. Eric and Bessie had met in the church choir, still sang in it. They said the secret of a happy marriage was never to let the sun go down on a quarrel. Bessie looked smug and Eric tried to pinch my bum. Randy old goat.
I suppose they were all extras. There seemed to be an awful lot of them. I didn’t realise that the TV company had such a huge budget. Still, I suppose when they did the Castaway series they took over a whole island for a year, so a big film set for a few weeks would be comparatively cheap. Looked very real though, fair play.
Afterwards, while George went off on another job, Marje and I walked back to the office and I remembered about my Oxo tin. I opened it carefully. Inside was a brown paper bag. It smelt of candles and polish and a musty under-the-stairs sort of smell. Inside that was a sandwich made with doorsteps of good white bread, filled with something that smelled a bit odd. I took a tentative bite and tried to work out what it was. It had a sort of fishy taste. Sort of. A bit like cat food.
Then I remembered my gran’s kitchen cupboard, those funny little jars. Fish paste. I was eating a fish paste sandwich. I suppose it made a change from M & S’s poached Scottish salmon with dill mayonnaise and watercress on oatmeal bread. And the bread was nice.
Then Marje had to show me how to type up a story.
What a chew! There was this mucky black paper, carbon paper, that made a smudgy sort of copy. You had to put three pieces of paper together, with two bits of carbon between them, and roll them into a typewriter. The typewriter took for ever. It was so heavy. You really had to bash the keys. And I kept forgetting to push the thing that made it go to the next line, so I kept typing on the roller instead of the paper. And you couldn’t delete mistakes!
‘Bet you wish computers were invented,’ I said to Marje.
‘Computers? Why?’ She looked at me blankly. She was very good at pretending to belong to the 1950s. I think she must have been one of the testers rather than a competitor.
‘Well, you know, quick and easy to type, correct your mistakes, spell check.’
‘Spell check?’
‘Yes, it corrects your spelling for you.’
‘That’s handy if you can’t spell. How does it do it?’
‘Um, I don’t know really. But that’s before you start on the internet.’
‘The which?’
‘Internet. You can find anything you want to know in seconds. About anything. Facts, figures, famous people, shopping. You can go on the internet, find things and buy them.’
‘How does it do it?’
‘I don’t know, but it’s wonderful. And—’
‘You don’t know much, really, do you?’ said Marje, lighting another cigarette. ‘Especially about spelling.’ She turned back to my chaotic-looking copy and carried on swiftly marking up my mistakes. Most of them weren’t actually spelling mistakes you understand, just typing mistakes from using the heavy typewriter.
‘That computer thing must have rotted your brain. Here,’ she handed my piece back to me, ‘you’d better type it again or the subs will go mad. See you in the morning.’ She picked up her string bag of shopping and went home to cook supper for her husband.
I typed up the golden weddings again and, because there were no messengers around, and because I was curious, took it along myself to the subs’ room. The subs, all men, were smoking pipes or cigarettes and sitting around a long table, marking up the copy ready for the printers. As soon as I walked into the room I had that feeling you get in some offices – as though you’d walked into a private club and you’re an outsider. Horrid.
One of the men looked up from the piece of paper he was writing on and whistled at me. Another sat back in his chair. Soon all the men, six of them, were sitting staring at me. The first said, ‘Well, well, what have we got here? Hello girlie, who are you?’
‘Rosie Harford. I’m here for a while as a reporter and features writer.’
‘Features writer eh? We used to have one of those, but the legs fell off,’ said one young man. They all laughed uproariously as if he had made the wittiest remark ever.
Another older man leant across the desk. ‘Well Rosie, you’ve certainly got rosie cheeks. Rosie by name, rosie by nature. If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?’
More sniggers.
‘Watch yourself,’ I said. ‘That’s sexist language.’
They looked shocked for a moment and then the laughter started again. Slowly at first and building up as each man joined in more noisily than the one before.
‘Sex, is it?’ said one, looking around with a broad grin at the others. ‘Well, if you’re offering.’
‘No I am not,’ I said and banged the copy down on their desk, ‘and certainly not with you.’ I turned to walk out.
‘Will you just look at that,’ one of the men said to my retreating view. ‘A backside like two eggs in a hanky.’
I slammed the door but could still hear their laughter through it. My face was bright red. Pigs. Idiots. Stupid ignorant men. Bugger! I realised it was probably a test, to see how I’d cope. Well, I’d really blown that, hadn’t I?
Flustered and feeling stupid, I went back into the newsroom. At least it was nearly going home time. Gordon was there, talking to another man. A tall man with sleek blond hair, standing with his back to me under the yellowing light at the far end of the newsroom.
I recognised him instantly even in the shabby unfamiliar clothes. I would have recognised him any time, anywhere. The set of his shoulders, the angle of his head, the gesture with his hands as he explained something to Gordon. Oh, I knew them all. I didn’t need a second glance. I knew that body almost as well as I knew my own.
Will!
I was so happy I nearly let out a yelp of excitement and only just stopped myself running up and flinging my arms around him. I thought my heart would leap right out of my body with joy and relief. Here, in the middle of whatever strangeness was going on, and those stupid sniggering subs, I knew how much I needed him. With Will here, everything would be all right. He would turn the nightmare into an adventure. It would be a game, a laugh, a great story. Us two against the world. Suddenly it stopped being something strange and slightly sinister. Already, in that split second, it had started being fun.
It was all so wonderfully familiar, so reassuring. If Will was here, then I could cope with anything, from sexist subs to fish paste sandwiches, scratchy underwear and no showers.
‘Will!’ I said, going towards him. ‘Will! Thank God you’re here!’
Will looked around. He looked surprised. He looked straight at me. And he absolutely blanked me.
Will looked at me as though he’d never seen me before in his life.
