Getting Home Read online

  ‘Such a waste.’ She threw down her spade at last. ‘All the boring ones with no scent. And he’ll never keep that Iceberg, it gets black-spot.’ Dave nodded in sympathy. The client claimed to be a martyr to hay fever and had insisted that they use only scentless varieties of rose.

  ‘What can you do if people have these allergies?’ Wearily, Derek turned off the hose. ‘We’re giving him what he wants. The customer is always right. At least he agreed to have the mint walk.’

  They were all very taken with the mint walk, one of Stephanie’s best solutions to the problem of fragrance without pollen. It was to be a part of the paving, a decorative band of cobblestones interplanted with creeping aromatics, tiny, fragrant little leaf mats which would tolerate occasional bruising as people walked on them and released refreshing perfumes into the air.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed, picking up her spade again. ‘The mints – where are they?’

  Dave looked at Derek. ‘Haven’t they come?’

  Derek looked at Dave. ‘Don’t look at me, I’ve been here with you all morning, I don’t know.’

  ‘Well,’ Stephanie said reasonably, ‘I know I confirmed the delivery, so they should be here. Why not check with the housekeeper?’

  The mints had not been delivered. A call to the nursery established from a hysterical assistant that the driver delivering their plants had fallen asleep at the wheel and crashed on the 31 when still two hours away from the city.

  ‘Hell,’ said Stephanie, and she stamped her foot. The boys flinched. Stamping and profanity were quite out of her character.

  ‘Steady,’ suggested Dave.

  ‘Don’t steady me,’ she retorted.

  ‘Hey, enhance your calm, Steph,’ Derek cautioned her. ‘Don’t lose it over a few little mints.’

  ‘I’ll lose it if I damn well want to,’ she asserted. ‘This job has to be finished today. Where are we going to get two dozen prostrate mints in Westwick on a Friday afternoon?’

  They were temporarily silent, then Dave said, ‘There’s that mad place down in Willow Gardens.’

  ‘What mad place?’

  ‘Gaia – you mean Gaia, don’t you? Sort of nursery place with the falling-down fence and that woman with huge hair?’

  ‘That’s the one.’ They giggled. ‘But she does have some unusual things; she might have what we need,’ Dave allowed. ‘Although the place is kind of crazy.’

  ‘Well, call them up and ask,’ Stephanie ordered, starting to feel tired. ‘If they’ve got them I’ll go over and get them right now, while you start sweeping up.’ Talking to the boys about missing Stewart was pointless; they seemed to think that sex was the problem, and cruising the Wilde At Heart on Saturday night would fix it.

  Dave pulled out his phone and made the call. ‘Yess!’ he reported quickly. ‘She’s got mints.’

  ‘Tell her I’m on my way,’ Stephanie directed, heading for her car.

  8. A School of Art

  Cleanliness had been the business of West wick for more than a century. Long after the river became a scummy, soup-thick vein of liquid waste, its tributaries still ran clear down Alder Bottom and Hel Vale; long after the city had smothered itself in stench and smoke, fresh breezes blew about Oak Hill. There had been laundries there, the highest land convenient to the city; old prints. showed the slopes festooned with lines of white sheets drying in the clean air, billowing vineyards of purity whose weekly harvest was carted back to houses in town.

  History fixed things so that the cleanliness connection became almost karmic. The washing machine was invented, the laundries disappeared, the streams were buried in storm drains. At Oak Hill a power station was built to blacken the air with its emissions. But coal tar was a by-product, which made soap manufacture cheap, so by the thirties, barges were fetching tons of Goodie & Hazard’s Daybreak Household Bars and Acorn Shoe Cream from their Helford works, where the one-time laundry maids clocked in and thanked progress for rubber gloves.

  The Channel Ten building on the river at Helford had risen from the rubble of an old soap warehouse, a fact which The Boss decreed should be stressed in the corporate image. ‘Cleanliness is next to godliness,’ he observed. ‘This is a dirty world and people like to know we’ve got God on our side.’ The windows were enhanced with turquoise metal grilles; the boardroom had a fine view of the river and the helicopter pad built on the old wharf.

  ‘Queue Here For …’ read a signboard outside the studio reception. The intention had been that the name of the programme currently needing an audience should be inserted in a window at the bottom of the sign, but the reception staff never bothered and the window was left empty. People queued all day anyway, mesmerised like cult devotees by the charismatic glow of television. Mostly women, mostly unemployed, very young or very old, they shuffled heavy-footed as a chain gang through a race of crush barriers, getting hot in the sun or wet in the rain, leaving the forecourt studded with chewing gum and littered with cola cans and cigarette butts.

  The Channel’s workers, down to the lowest runner, disdained even to mention the queue. The idea that their programme, however mindless it might be, went out to this underclass was impossible. These poor, stupid, ugly, ill-dressed, tattooed, sociopathic cattle were just live set-dressing, not representatives of the real audience. They went as embarrassedly unacknowledged as sexually transmitted parasites. What primitive sub-species would wait in line all day for the sake of making up a studio audience?

  The queue were misunderstood. They did not particularly want to be an audience; they wanted to see a stat. They did not know that the celebrity entrance was through the gated and guarded scenery dock at the other side of the building. Only Allie Parsons ran the gauntlet. out front every morning, and the geeking and gawping and twittering and truanting children asking for autographs lit her up like downtown. Kowloon.

  The end of the series was in sight. ‘In the autumn,’ Family First’s senior producer announced, ‘we’re going to be losing Daniel.’ The Himbo grinned a wide, hard, desperate grin, like Steve McQueen at the end of The Great Escape. ‘And we’ll be interviewing co-hosts over the summer.’ Each year, the agents heard him with less enthusiasm. ‘That Parsons bitch,’ one of them had said, ‘I wouldn’t let one of my clients work with her if she was the last pair of implants on TV.’

  ‘We want to introduce some new features in the next series,’ the producer announced to the team. ‘We need ideas. Audience research says we should be moving away from issue-based items to a more human—’

  ‘Real people, real lives,’ Allie broke in with impatience. ‘Feelings, not so much of the talky-talky junk. We need to put more of life on the screen, the tears, the pain, the anguish, the guilt…’

  ‘The embarrassment,’ suggested Daniel, insouciantly tipping back his chair.

  ‘And the laughter, of course’Allie waved her hands about as if to sculpt the desirable emotions from the air. ‘Love, warmth, stuff like that. What we need is more heart.’

  ‘Gossip,’ the senior producer elaborated, sensing a lack of response around the conference table. ‘We want to do more gossip. We’re going to be losing Watchdog completely, nobody goes for that consumer stuff any more. Environment will be restructured. Health Matters stays but we’ll turn it around to focus on personal stories, my life with motor-neurone, that kind of thing. There’ll be a style makeover every day, not just every week, and we’re going to invite viewers to actually make each other over so you’ll get say a kid giving her grandma the look he thinks she ought to have, or the secretary dressing her boss; whatever.’

  ‘Are there still secretaries?’ asked Maria, the one-time weather girl, with delicacy. Miraculously confirmed as a permanent researcher for the next series, she was staking out her turf.

  ‘Plus – this is the big one, folks,’ Allie recaptured their attention with a sweep of her pen, like a conductor gathering up an orchestra, ‘we’re going to start a lead feature strand focusing on real women with real problems, stories, tragedies.�
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  ‘And there’ll be a tarot reader on the sofa with Allie giving the spiritual perspective on every guest’s dilemmas.’ The producer nodded to his star with pride, inviting admiration for her selfless sacrifice for the sake of the programme. There was a silence. ‘Humanity, that’s what this is about,’ he urged, ‘Next season. I don’t want anyone coming in here with an idea that hasn’t got a human face on it. Now, if that’s clear …’

  ‘Dumbing down,’ said the junior researcher, throwing down his pencil with disgust. ‘I thought we were dragging our knuckles in the dirt already.’

  ‘Lightening up,’ the producer pleaded. ‘Our audience are hard-working, decent people. They deserve to be entertained.’

  ‘If they’re so hard-working,’ Daniel enquired, smirking at his own acuity, ‘how come they’re watching TV all morning?’

  ‘We shouldn’t act like it’s a crime to be unwaged. And working in the home is a viable life choice for women with small children,’ put in Maria.

  ‘Yes, Daniel, you should really watch your attitude,’ Allie endorsed her. ‘Let’s not forget the men who choose to be active parents,’ she added, trawling the table for eye-contact. ‘I think men who’re committed to their role as fathers should have special recognition, don’t you?’

  ‘Ah – wit, information, gossip – the very stuff-of life,’ recited the senior researcher, with the earnest face h. always put on to camouflage irony.

  ‘Is that Shakespeare?’ breathed Maria, projecting admiration.

  ‘Mark Twain,’ he condescended.

  ‘Mark Twain! F-a-a-a-b! That is such a great idea. The Skywalker who fell to earth. What has he been doing since Star Wars? Do we know who his agent is?’ Allie prided herself on being a great motivator.

  ‘And we need ideas now to work on over the next few weeks,’ the producer reminded them. ‘Blood costs, as we know. These bleeding heart features are bitches to set up. There’ll be more work in the field. Our first show in the new format has to really knock their socks off.’

  ‘Aren’t we doing those lesbian mothers at sixty?’ Allie sat up in alarm.

  ‘Ricki Lake has them on an exclusive.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘In vitro, actually.’ Daniel was undeniably demob happy. Allie threw herself back in her seat in a spasm of despair. ‘Your penis will be in vitro if you don’t can it, Daniel.’ ‘If I can it, will you buy it?’ he threw back.

  ‘I have an idea,’ Maria announced, pulling a folder from her neo-Prada document case.

  ‘Maria’s got an idea for the new series,’ announced the senior researcher, wondering if this pushy meteorologist would be willing to advance her career horizontally. Shagwise, Family First was tundra and permafrost.

  Producing a clipping from the Helford & Westwick Courier, Maria cleared her throat, her voice rising with nerves. ‘There’s this woman – she’s thirty-two, one son, sounds very our market and she lives locally – whose husband has been kidnapped in the former Soviet Union…’

  ‘When was that exactly?’ Allie faked vibrant interest.

  ‘A couple of months ago.’

  ‘Oh.’ Subtly, Allie switched off her vibrancy and sketched a coma of boredom, miming old story.

  ‘He was on some trade delegation with four people – Western businessmen – and they were snatched by nationalist guerillas in this remote region and there’s been no news, no ransom demand, nothing. The poor woman must be just distraught …’

  ‘It’s not one of those places nobody can pronounce and nobody knows where it is, is it?’ The producer gave her a weary smile. ‘Foreign stories are a real turn-off.’

  ‘But she lives right here,’ Maria urged him. ‘Right here in Westwick. And in October, the United Nations commission on terrorism is due to report,’ she extracted another newspaper clipping, ‘so I thought why don’t we get this woman on the show with the head of the commission, and just have her ask what he’s doing to get her husband back?’

  ‘Great,’ said the producer, thinking tabloid.

  ‘Really great,’ said the senior researcher, thinking blow job.

  ‘Absolutely great,’ said the junior researcher, thinking that it might not be totally impossible for him to get a news contract next year after all.

  ‘Isn’t that a little tacky?’ Daniel demanded joyfully. ‘Some poor inarticulate housewife fronting up to a UN statesman?’

  ‘It’s putting a human face on international relations,’ said the deputy producer, anxious not to be left out. ‘I think that’s just what Family First ought to be doing.’

  ‘Melanie Griffiths!’ Allie blazed a delighted smile at Maria. ‘That’s who you remind me of! I’ve been trying to think of it all morning – Melanie Griffiths! In Working Girl. With the clippings and everything. Isn’t that just a f-a-a-a-b thing, everybody?’

  But the team had picked up the ball and was running too fast to be distracted. ‘So where exactly does this woman live?’ the producer asked.

  ‘Westwick,’ Maria confirmed, rasping her voice down to counter-tenor so she sounded as little as possible like Melanie Griffiths. ‘Somewhere called New Farm.’

  ‘Leafy Westwick, eh?’ The producer tapped his teeth with his pen. ‘Great. Allie – could you do some networking here? You must be neighbours.’

  Twelve stern faces were now accusing Allie of failing to get a story. ‘If I had time to get to know my neigh-bours …’ Petulantly, she shuffled papers, playing for time. Then she launched the last offensive. ‘Catch up, guys. I mean, come on. We all know her. She’s even been on the show – it’s that wispy woman who did the dumb garden for children a couple of years ago, remember? The one who got all those complaints about toxic paint and allergic leaves and stuff?’

  ‘Leggy,’ muttered the senior researcher.

  ‘And of course I’ve talked to her, but …’ she laid one hand to the heart region of her chest, ‘she’s so fragile, and just devastated by this whole thing. Really, my instinct is to protect her. I’ve tried talking to her, of course I have, but she’s just not the type, you know what I’m saying? She’d dry. I think she’d be a disaster, frankly.’

  ‘If she’s so fragile, won’t she just crack up and cry and stuff?’ Daniel was learning the pleasure of settling scores. ‘Make’em cry – isn’t that our motto?’

  ‘She didn’t dry when she was doing that garden thing,’ the senior researcher remembered.

  ‘Oh, but I really had to coach her,’ Allie parried. ‘She did OK in the end, but not fab. And this is different, she’s just all in a heap right now and she withdraws, you know what I’m saying? Withdraws and clams right up. I just can’t see it working …’ She opened her eyes wider than wide, trying to evoke the terror of inarticulate silence which gave every talk show worker sweaty palms at three seconds to transmission.

  Maria braced her shoulders, resolved to seize her day. ‘I hope I’m not out of line saying this, but maybe if she was approached by someone she didn’t know …’

  ‘Good idea,’ the senior researcher nodded with vigour.

  Allie was cornered. It was clear that she now had only two options: get Stephanie on to that sofa or give away her job. ‘I will try again,’ she promised, keeping her hand pressed to her breast. ‘We are kind of friends, you know, the way you are through your children. I can talk to her again – but it ain’t gonna be easy. No, no. We should think about this. The child’s from a previous relationship, I’m not sure they’re even married … Do we want the show to get into that kind of morality?’

  ‘What we want is for our viewers to know how it feels when terrorists kidnap the man you love,’ the deputy producer gave no quarter. ‘I don’t see the moral thing matters. Who’s to know, anyway?’ His implication was that Allie was the only person in the room with a direct line to the gossip magazines.

  ‘The viewers would really empathise. Serial monogamy’s the way of the world.’ Three months into his second marriage, the senior researcher smiled down Maria’s neckline; yu
p, Melanie Griffiths it was.

  ‘Oh, well.’ Allie handed her files to her secretary and prepared to leave. ‘If that’s everything?’

  Outside the building, she waited by her studio car until Maria appeared, on her way to lunch with the senior researcher. ‘Great idea, Maria,’ she waved the girl over. ‘Can I say something to you? Kind of a woman thing?’

  ‘Mrs Parsons, I do hope – I mean, is this kidnap story difficult for you at a personal level …’

  ‘Not at all. Being professional means you just can’t let that kind of stuff get to you. I just wanted to share something with you.’ She lowered her voice but kept it cosy. ‘I really believe in mentoring new staff, you know? I haven’t had a chance to really tell you how thrilled I am you’re joining the team. It’s so important to me that we should all be really close and really work together, you know?’

  Warily, Maria nodded. Allie put her arm around her shoulders and walked her along past the curious eyes of the queue. ‘I notice you’re still doing all that good-girl stuff? Smiling all the time, apologising when you make a point – you did it right then?’ Maria wiped off her smile and rearranged her lips in a self-determined crimp. ‘Now, you may have noticed television is still a bit of a boy’s club, which is why no one will tell you this except me. That kind of making nice can really poison a woman’s career. The boys just won’t take you seriously. Forget assertive – hell, in this kind of office, you should really be aggressive.’

  ‘So – you mean – I don’t need to rethink my hair?’ Maria copied the senior researcher’s irony screen and tried baring her teeth just short of smiling.

  ‘Humour!’ Allie punched her playfully at the shoulder. ‘All right! That’s just what I mean!’

  She raised her arms to the heavens, what-can-a-poor-woman-do? ‘Be one of the boys, speak out, blow your own horn, don’t be afraid to scrap a little. All that good-girl routine went out with padded shoulders. OK?’