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‘Anyone else?’ said Jack tersely. Silence. As usual, none of the producers had a clue. They always leave it to Sophie, our new researcher. She’s just out of Oxford, ferociously ambitious, and as sharp as broken glass.
‘Sophie, are you prepared to help your clueless colleagues?’ said Jack.
She consulted her clipboard, tucked her hair behind one ear and pushed her wire-rimmed glasses up her nose.
‘There’s a report out today on drug-taking in schools,’ she began crisply, ‘and there’s another appeal being launched to save Bart’s. I see from the publishing catalogues that a new biography of Boris Yeltsin is published this week, so I’ve put in a bid for the author, and of course the shortlist for the Turner Prize is being announced in three days.’
‘Excellent,’ said Jack. ‘Anything else?’
‘Yes, I’ve spoken to Peter Greenaway’s publicist and I’ve set up an exclusive interview pegged to his new film. We’ve also got another special report coming down the line from the Edinburgh Festival.’
‘Good,’ said Jack. But Sophie hadn’t finished.
‘There’s been yet another resignation at the Royal Opera House; and I’d like to draw everyone’s attention to a very interesting new survey on the declining popularity of marriage,’ she went on enthusiastically. ‘The statistics show that marriages have fallen to an all-time low, so I thought we could get Minty to compile a report on “the myth of wedded bliss” – it’s an absolutely fascinating subject, you know-’
Jack opened his mouth to intervene, but Melinda got there first:
‘How can we possibly ask Minty to do that?’ she enquired indignantly. ‘The poor girl’s just been JILTED!’
My face reddened and my bowels shrank. Bloody Melinda. Stupid cow. Then, to my horror, Melinda stood up, and placed two fat, richly bejewelled hands across her vast stomach.
‘I’d like to say that I think we should all be vewy kind to Minty,’ she announced, ‘because she’s just been thwough something tewwible. Something weally, weally, humiliating. And I just want to say, Minty, that I think you’re VEWY BWAVE!’ She had finished. She sat down and beamed at everyone, as though expecting a round of applause.
In the embarrassed silence they all looked at the floor, while I tried to remember when Melinda’s maternity leave was due to start. It wasn’t that long now. Two or three months? I couldn’t wait. And then I looked at her again and I thought, Amber’s right. She’s right about the horrors of pregnancy, and here was the living proof. Melinda’s fat, bare legs were veined like dolcelatte; she needed iron girders in her bra; short and plump to begin with, she looked as though she’d swallowed a tractor tyre. Particularly in those defiantly tight maternity clothes she sometimes wears. Today a skimpy T-shirt was stretched over her epic bulge. ‘Let Me Out!’ it read. No, let me out, I thought. And she’s a really terrible broadcaster. She can’t say her ‘R’s, for a start. And she makes so many fluffs – it’s appalling. You could stuff cushions with them. I mean, she’s always mis-reading her script. Spoonerisms, in particular, abound. Here are a few she’s slipped up on recently: ‘Warring bankers in the City’; ‘The shining wits of New Labour’; and twice now she has managed to mispronounce the ‘Cunning Stunts’ theatre company, despite extensive practice beforehand. We all cringe – and the letters of complaint that we get! But it’s all water off a duck’s back to Melinda. She thinks she’s marvellous. The cwème de la cwème. Well, she’s certainly rich and thick. I mean, who but Melinda would have welcomed David Blunkett into the studio with the cheery salutation, ‘Hello, David! Long time no see!’ But if there’s the slightest whiff of criticism of her, she goes bleating to Uncle Percy. In the end, that’s why everyone tolerates her. We simply have no choice.
‘Vewy bwave,’ she muttered again, then gave me an earnest sort of smile.
You see, the fact is, she likes me. That’s the awful part. Probably because she relies on me to write her cues. She’s useless, you see. Especially when it comes to current affairs. For example, she thinks Bosnia Herzegovina’s the Wonderbra model. Nor is she much better on cultural things. In May she astonished Ian McEwan – and all of us – by describing him as ‘one of Bwitain’s finest Shakespearwean actors’. Anyway, because she’s so hopeless, she’s forever asking me for help. And though I don’t like her, I’ve always obliged. Why? Because I’m nice. That’s what everyone says about me. ‘Minty’s really nice.’ ‘Why don’t you ask Minty?’ I hear them say. ‘She’ll help you,’ and, ‘Oh, just take it to Minty.’ ‘Oh, no, Minty doesn’t mind,’ they add. But actually, Minty does mind. Minty minds rather a lot. That’s what nobody realises. And though I smile and nod, inside I’m in a rage because, recently, I’ve started to realise that I’m fed up with being nice. The fact is my colleagues exploit me. They really do. And it’s beginning to get me down. Wesley’s the worst. He never edits his interviews down in time, and then he rings me from the studio half an hour before he goes on air and says he’s way over and please would I come and cut six minutes out of this feature, or five and a half out of that, and so I stand there, with my heart banging like a drum, slashing tape against the clock. I could really do without the extra stress, but somehow I can never say ‘no’.
‘Vewy bwave,’ muttered Melinda again. And then her eyebrows drooped theatrically, and she flashed me this compassionate smile.
But I was determined to salvage my pride. I was determined to keep my vow. I was determined not to cave in. I was determined, determined to come through.
‘I’m perfectly happy to compile that piece about attitudes to marriage,’ I said stiffly. ‘Why on earth would anyone think I’d mind?’ They all shifted uncomfortably in their seats.
‘OK, then,’ said Jack, ‘do it, and we’ll run it tomorrow. But don’t forget Citronella Pratt.’ Damn! Citronella Pratt! I’d forgotten. Quelle horreur – and on my first day back.
‘Do I have to?’ I said, backtracking. ‘I’d rather chew tinfoil.’
‘I’m afraid you do,’ said Jack. ‘You know how it is.’
Yes, I do. You see there’s one thing I don’t like about working in commercial radio and that’s the constant concessions we have to make to our sponsors and advertisers. For example, Mazota cars advertise regularly on London FM and, believe it or not, this affects our news priorities. Balkan massacres, Middle Eastern airstrikes and catastrophic earthquakes are wiped off the bulletins if there’s anything about road pricing, or taxation on company cars. It’s sickening, and I suppose it’s corrupt; but we just have to live with it and remember that old adage about the piper and the tune. And Citronella Pratt, a right-wing housewife with a column in the Sunday Semaphore, falls into this category too. We often interview her for our programmes. Not because we admire her brain, which is mediocre, or her views, which are venomous, but because her husband is the chairman of Happy Bot, the nappy manufacturer which sponsors our weather reports. So to keep Mr Happy Bot happy, we have to interview his wife. And she would know if we used anyone else, because she listens to us all the time.
‘Sorry about that, Minty,’ said Jack, as the meeting broke up. ‘Just a quick Citronella soundbite will do.’
I went over to my desk, which had been borrowed during my absence and left in a terrible mess. I began to clear up, then realised that someone was standing over me. It was Wesley and he looked distraught.
‘Minty, I’d just like to say –’
‘What?’ I said, as I took my portable tape-recorder out of the top drawer.
‘I don’t know how he could do that,’ he went on miserably, shaking his balding head. ‘How could anyone do that to you?’
‘How could anyone do that to anyone?’ I said quietly, as I slotted in a clean cassette.
Wesley stood a little closer. ‘You’re so wonderful Minty,’ he whispered.
Oh God, no. No, not this.
‘You’re so attractive …’
Please. No. I’d forgotten that my newly single status meant that I’d be fighting off boring old Wesley again. When I was with Dominic he’d at least had the decency to stop.
‘I know you rejected me before,’ he went on, with a martyred air, ‘but I just want you to know that I’m still here for you.’
‘Thanks, Wesley,’ I said disinterestedly, as I plugged in the microphone. ‘Testing, one, two, three, four, five. Hey, who’s been using my tape-recorder? The batteries are almost flat!’
Wesley had now perched on the edge of my desk as I did my best to ignore him.
‘Dominic wasn’t right for you, Minty,’ I heard him say as I put in four new Ever-Readys. ‘And look how he’s let you down.’
‘I’m not discussing it,’ I said, rather sharply. ‘Anyway, I’ve got far more pressing things on my mind, like this feature, which I have a day to prepare.’ I got out my contacts book and turned to ‘M’ for marriage. Wesley glanced round the office to make sure he couldn’t be heard.
‘I’d do anything for you, Minty,’ he murmured, ‘you know that.’
‘Then please let me get on with my work,’ I replied. But he didn’t seem to hear.
‘I’d even leave Deirdre for you.’ Oh no. Not that again.
‘I don’t think you should,’ I said with uncharacteristic firmness as I picked up the phone. ‘In fact, Wesley, I strongly advise you against any such course of action!’ Wesley looked a bit shocked at my spiky tone of voice, and, to be honest, it surprised me too. I wouldn’t normally have been so sharp, I realised, as I began to dial.
‘Deirdre’s just not very …exciting,’ I heard Wesley say. This was true. They were a perfect match. ‘But you’re wonderful, Minty,’ he droned. ‘You’re so clever, you’re such fun –’
‘Leave me alone please, Wesley.’
‘You’ve always been the girl of my dreams, Minty,’ he whined, with a wounded air. ‘Why won’t you give me a chance?’
‘Because – Oh, hello, is Citronella Pratt there? – because I’ll never give anyone a chance, ever again.’
In the long run I was grateful to Jack for making me come back to work. I had very little time to think about Dominic as I rushed round London that first day, collecting material for my feature. I interviewed two couples who preferred to cohabit; a divorcee who refused to remarry; a woman who was happily single, and a spokesperson from the marriage charity, It Takes Two.
Then, with a sinking heart, I went to interview Citronella Pratt. I’d left her until the end, so that I could truthfully say I was short of time. I always sit there, like a prisoner, an expression of polite interest Grip-fixed to my face, while she drones on about the success of Mr Happy Bot, or the new car they’re buying, or the wonderful villa they’re doing up in Provence, or the prodigious progress of the infant Sienna.
A pretty girl, who I knew to be the nanny, opened the door of the Pratt homestead in Hampstead, a rambling Victorian house in a road leading up to the Heath. ‘Leave us, please, Françoise!’ said Citronella, as though the girl were a lady’s maid. And this surprised me, because Citronella often fills up her column with guff about her ‘miracle nanny, Françoise’, and how she’s better than anyone else’s nanny, and about the lavish gifts she bestows on her as an inducement to stay. Last week she bragged that she’d given Françoise a top-of-the-range BMW – there was no sign of this, however, in the drive.
We went through the toy-strewn hallway to the ‘study’, which resembled the childcare section of my local Waterstones. Books on child psychology, baby care and pregnancy lined the walls from floor to ceiling. This, they seemed to declare, with territorial emphasis, was Citronella’s field of expertise. I glanced at her as I unravelled my microphone lead, and wondered yet again at the gap between her photo-byline and the reality confronting me now. The girlish image in the photo, chin resting beguilingly on steepled hands, bore little resemblance to the pneumatic, late thirty-something woman with grey-blonde hair and beaky nose who sat before me now. I also found myself reflecting on the power of patronage. Citronella had never been a journalist, and had nothing very edifying to say; but her views on women chimed with those of her reactionary editor, Tim Lawton. They had met at a dinner party six months before, and so impressed was he with her poisonous opinions about her own sex, that he had taken out his cheque book and signed her up on the spot. And so Citronella had become Goebbels to his Hitler in the war he was waging against women. Her pieces should have been headlined ‘Fifth Column’, I always thought, as week after week she set out to demoralise successful, single females. She wrote of boats leaving port, and of women left ‘on the shelf’. She wrote of the ‘impossibility of having it all’. Men, she had once notoriously opined, do not want to marry career women in their thirties. In fact, she went on, they do not want to marry women in their thirties at all. For thirty-something women, she explained, are no longer attractive, and so men – and who can blame them? – naturally want women in their twenties. In her piece the following week she had bragged that the twelve sacks of hatemail she had received were simply ‘proof positive’ that she was right.
When not using her column to persecute single professional women, Citronella likes to boast of her own domestic ‘bliss’. ‘In our large house in Hampstead …’ her pieces often begin. Or, ‘In our corner of Gloucestershire …’ where the Pratts have a country house. Or she will rhapsodise about the joys of motherhood as though no woman had ever given birth before. I adjusted the microphone and pressed ‘record’ with a heavy heart.
‘I do think it’s so sad that marriage is going out of fashion,’ she said, sweetly, as she smoothed down her sack-like dress. ‘When I think how happy my own marriage is –’ Here we go, I thought – ‘to my wonderful and, well …’ she smiled coyly, ‘very brilliant husband …’
‘Of course,’ I said, as I surreptitiously pressed the ‘pause’ button, and remembered the hen-pecked little man who had carried her bag at our Christmas party.
‘ …then I grieve for the women today who will never know such happiness. Now, I have many single women friends,’ she went on. I did my best not to look surprised. ‘And of course they’re very brave about it all. But I know that their cheerfulness masks tremendous unhappiness. It’s so sad. Are you married?’ she asked.
This took me aback. My heart skipped several beats. ‘No,’ I managed to say. ‘I’m single.’
‘But don’t you want to marry?’ she enquired. She had cocked her head to one side.
‘Not any more,’ I said casually. ‘I did once.’
‘Why? Did something awful happen to you?’ she enquired. Her tone of voice was soft and solicitous. But her eyes were bright with spite. A sudden fear gripped my heart. Did she know what Dominic had done to me? Perhaps she’d somehow heard, on the grapevine. It was sensational, after all. Everyone would know. My skin prickled with embarrassment and I felt sick to think that I would now be the subject of a kind of awe-struck gossip:
‘– Did you hear what happened to Minty Malone?’
‘– What?’
‘– Jilted.’
‘– Good Godz!’
‘– On her wedding day.’
‘– No!’
‘– And in the church!!’
It was all too easy to imagine. I fiddled with the tape-recorder while I struggled to control myself. I mentally counted to three, to let the lump in my throat subside, and then I managed to speak. ‘Nothing happened,’ I said with nonchalant discretion. ‘I just don’t want to marry, that’s all. Lots of women don’t these days. That’s why I’ve been asked to do this piece.’
Citronella composed her features into a mask of saccharine concern, then smiled, revealing large, square teeth the colour of Cheddar.
‘But don’t you think you’re missing out on one of life’s richest treasures?’ she pressed on, softly, as her quivering antennae probed for my tender spots. I darted behind my bullet-proof glass.
‘My opinions in this are irrelevant,’ I pointed out with as much cheery bonhomie as I could muster. ‘I’m just the reporter,’ I added, with a smile. ‘I’d like to know what you think.’ I pressed the ‘record’ button again and held the microphone under her double chin.
‘Well, I do feel very sad,’ she went on with a regretful sigh – ‘sad’ seemed to be her favourite word – ‘when I look at women of my own generation who have had, yes, admittedly successful careers, but who now know that they will never marry or have children. Whereas my life is just, well, magical.’
‘But people marry so much later these days,’ I said.
‘I don’t think that’s true,’ she said.
‘It is true,’ I said, with a toughness which, again, felt unfamiliar. ‘According to my research,’ I continued smoothly, ‘the average age at which men and women marry has gone up by six years since 1992. And the fastest-growing group of new mothers is the over thirty-fives.’ This piece of information seemed to irritate her, but I pressed straight on.
‘However, the fact remains that the number of weddings has dropped by 20 per cent. I’d like to ask you why you think there’s this new reluctance’ – I thought of Dominic – ‘to marry.’
‘The problem is,’ she began confidently, ‘that there’s such a chronic shortage of single men.’
‘I’m afraid that’s not right,’ I corrected her confidently. Though despite my new boldness, my heart was beating like a drum. ‘There are actually more single men than single women.’
‘Oh. Oh …Well, let me put it another way,’ she said. ‘There are so few single men worth marrying. That’s the problem. It’s awfully sad. In my own case, well, I was very lucky. I met Andrew, and apparently, he was just bowled over.’
‘I can imagine,’ I said. I even smiled. She smiled back.
‘And so, just seven years later, we were married, and we’ve been blissfully happy ever since,’ she went on smugly. ‘Terribly happy.’
This was getting me down. So I stood up.
‘Well, thank you very much for your time,’ I said with professional courtesy. ‘I think I’d better be getting back now.’
‘But are you sure you’ve got enough material?’ she enquired.
‘Oh, yes,’ I replied. ‘Plenty.’
‘Did you know that the Fred Behr Carpet Warehouse is having a half-price sale?’
‘A half-price sale?’
‘Yes – a half-price sale. Isn’t that incredible?!’
‘Incredible! Half-price, did you say?’
‘Yes that’s what I said – half-price. Imagine! That’s 50 per cent off!!!’
‘Did you say 50 per cent? I just can’t BELIEVE it!!!’
‘Nor can I – 50 per cent off!! I just CAN’T believe it EITHER!!!
‘Nor can I!!! I just CAN’T believe it!!! I just can’t BELIEVE it!!!’
Personally, I can’t believe that our ads are now so bad. Lots of them are like that, presented as conversations between two increasingly amazed people. We used to have witty ads, ingeniously written mini-dramas brilliantly performed by famous actors. But now all our adverts are crap. The upmarket companies won’t advertise with us any more because they know our audience share is falling. Worse, we’re not even managing to sell all our advertising space, so our revenue’s way down. When the figures are good, we all know about it because the sales team go round with deep tans from their incentive holidays in the Virgin Islands or the Seychelles. But at the moment their faces are as etiolated as chalk or Cheshire cheese. Not that we see much of them. We don’t. They’re on the phone all day, pitching desperately. Occasionally they come into the Capitalise office and give us grief if we’ve put an ad on air in an awkward place. We hate it when they do that, though I thought they were quite justified in blowing up Wesley for broadcasting an ad for the Providential Insurance Company – strapline: ‘Because Life’s So Uncertain’ – during coverage of Princess Diana’s funeral. He didn’t mean to; as usual his timings were out and he was suddenly twenty-five seconds short. So he grabbed that ad because he knew it would fill the gap exactly. And it did. But the station got a lot of flak and Providential withdrew their account.
Wesley’d had lots of disasters like that, I reflected as I dubbed my interviews from cassette on to quarter-inch tape. The only reason he’d survived was because he’d been here so long he’s unsackable. It would cost them far too much to get rid of him. They just don’t have the cash. In fact, they don’t have the cash for anything here, least of all the new digital editing equipment; at London FM we still use tape.
‘Embarrassing nasal hair? Try the Norton Nostril Trimmer! –Removes hairy excrescences from ears, and eyebrows too! Has removable head for easy cleaning by brushing or blowing! Just £5.95, or £9.95 for the deluxe model. All major credit cards accepted, please allow twenty-eight days for delivery!’
I glanced at the clock, it was five to seven.
‘And now a quick look at the weather,’ said Barry, the continuity announcer, with his usual drunken slur, ‘brought to you by Happy Bot, the disposable nappy that baby’s botty loves best.’
I turned down the speakers in the office. I couldn’t work with that racket going on. I knew I’d be there all evening, editing, but for once I didn’t mind. In fact, I was glad, because it gave me no time to think about Dominic. I was oblivious to everything as I sat there at my tape machine with my headphones on, my white editing pencil tucked behind one ear. My razor blade glinted in the strip lights as I slashed away, lengths of discarded tape falling like shiny brown streamers to the carpet-tiled floor. I love the physicality of chopping tape. It’s so satisfying. Clicking a computer mouse on a little pair of digital scissors just isn’t the same. But that’s what we’ll soon be doing.
As I wielded the blade, a tangled mess of cast-offs and cutouts fell on the floor at my feet. Citronella Pratt sounded like Minnie Mouse as I spooled through her at double speed: ‘Very-happy – soawfulbeingsingle – terriblysad,pooryou – ohyesI’msohappilymarried – veryveryhappilymarried – Very.’ And I thought it odd that she needed to keep saying that, because I’ve always thought that happiness, like charm and like sensitivity, tends to proclaim itself. I salvaged one twenty-second soundbite from her fifteen minutes of boastful bile, then took my knife to the other interviews. Soon they were neatly banded up on a seven-inch spool, with spacers of yellow leader tape between, ready to be played out in the programme the following day. All I had to do now was to write my script. I looked at the clock. It was ten thirty. With luck I’d be home by one.
The office was deserted, everyone had gone home hours before. It had the melancholy atmosphere of an English seaside town in winter. I sat at the computer, and began to type. And I was just thinking how calm and peaceful it was and how the script wouldn’t take that long to do, and I was congratulating myself too on not crying or cracking up on my first day back, despite the emotional stress I was under, when I heard the sound of a newspaper being rustled. It was coming from Jack’s office. How odd. Who on earth was in there at this time? I opened the door. Sitting at his desk, at ten forty-five, quietly reading the Guardian, was Jack.
‘Oh, hi, Minty,’ he said.
‘Er, hi. You’re here late.’
