The Warning Bell

by Lynne Reid Banks

  Tanya had not told Maggie about this, which indicated that her conversation with Jean had been pretty harrowing. But she chewed over Oliver by the hour.

  ‘How dare he! Yes, that would just suit him, wouldn’t it, if I were in a different profession. A good steady income to bridge his out-of-work patches!’

  ‘Tanya, I don’t think he’s even thought of that. He just wants to help.’

  ‘Oh! Has he been getting at you behind my back?’

  ‘No!’ lied Maggie. ‘Of course not. I just don’t see that he’s done anything so awful.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t like him!’

  ‘Well, to be honest I like him a bit better now.’

  ‘Now that he’s come over to your side and is trying to push me into some bloody boring, un-me job —’

  ‘Trying to help. Trying to get you to face facts —’

  ‘Shut up, Maggie! I don’t notice you facing any of your facts!’

  ‘What does that mean, if anything?’ asked Maggie, getting heated despite her best intentions.

  ‘Do you think you’re going to be able to muddle on like this for ever? At least I haven’t got a child to worry about! At least I’m viable on my own!’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Well, I’ve got this flat — I could get six pounds a week for your room —’ She stopped cold, but only for a moment. ‘No. I don’t mean that. I know very well I need you as much as you need me and that no stranger would stand for me, let alone pay me.’

  ‘Yes, they would. Tanya —’

  ‘Shut up, Maggie,’ she said again, but in an entirely different tone this time. She was looking at Maggie sideways, a sheepish, appealing look. ‘Don’t take me up on every word just now. I’m not myself, you know I’m not.’

  ‘Okay. But, love, I am aiming to get out of here and stand on my own feet. I want you to know that.’

  ‘I don’t want you to go. I’d go crazy without you. Crazier, that is.’ Now she turned her head and looked straight at Maggie, and then suddenly gave her a hug. ‘God, I’m rotten. I’m a lousy bitch. I think I really am half-mad at the moment. I haven’t set foot in a theatre for six weeks and it’s killing me —’

  ‘I know. Don’t apologise. It’s amazing the living arrangements are working as well as they are. I don’t take them for granted for a single moment.’

  ‘Nor do I, Maggie,’ Tanya said with utter sincerity.

  A little later, Maggie mentioned that Ronnie Makepeace had invited her to go down to ITN that evening and watch the news go out.

  ‘What made you say you’d go?’

  ‘I want to. It’ll be interesting. Besides, he invited Matt to go and he’ll like it.’

  ‘He’ll probably be as bored as I would.’

  ‘How can it be boring? News can never be boring.’

  ‘You wait and see. Maggie —’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did you find him attractive, that fat young-old man?’

  ‘Ronnie? No. Nice. Not attractive.’

  ‘How do you manage?’ Tanya asked curiously.

  Maggie didn’t have to ask what she meant. She sighed.

  ‘What you’ve never had, you never miss.’

  ‘God!’ exclaimed Tanya. ‘What a dreadful thing to say, after seven years of marriage! I wish I could find you a nice chap.’ Maggie said nothing. She wished so too. But Tanya’s life was drawing in around her. She seldom went out except to the shops; she seldom saw anyone. It was as if, now that she was no longer an actress, she felt naked, and insecure, and ashamed to show herself.

  Ronnie was waiting for Maggie at the reception desk of ITN, which was on the seventh floor of a huge building on the corner of the Aldwych and Kingsway.

  ‘Luckily it’s a light news night,’ he said, ‘I’ve got time to show you round before the rush starts. Hallo, young man,’ he said avuncularly to Matt.

  ‘Hallo. Will we see Robert Ottaway?’

  Maggie stared at her son. So far as she was aware, he never watched the news.

  ‘Ah! Are you a fan of Bob-the-newscaster or Bob-the-four-minute-miler?’

  ‘Four minute miler,’ said Matt shyly.

  ‘Well, you’re in luck. He’s on tonight. Come and meet him.’

  Matt grinned and gave a little hop of excitement. Maggie, bemused at this evidence of her son’s private enthusiasms, gave his hand a sympathetic squeeze, but he at once took it from her grasp and walked ahead of her after Ronnie, who led the way into a huge square room full of desks, partitions and very busy people. The place was a blaze of light and a riot of sound, mainly mechanical — typewriters and tape-machines clicking continuously — but there were also voices and footsteps and a general air of strongly motivated, efficient action. Maggie looked round as she moved through it all. It was just as she might have imagined a television newsroom if she had ever tried to. She liked it. She liked the bustle, the feeling of purpose, and something else: she felt this room was some kind of fountainhead, a source, a kernel. It gave her a sensation that was the precise opposite of what she had so often felt in Nigeria. It had a quality of intensity not unlike what one felt in the theatre.

  Tanya would like this, Maggie thought. She wouldn’t be bored. No one could be.

  Ronnie was solemnly introducing her small red-haired son to a smallish, red-haired young man with a likeable monkey-face and a warm, crooked smile. He had a desk to himself and seemed to be in the midst of piles of paperwork, but nevertheless he took time out to chat to Matt in a man-to-man fashion.

  ‘I don’t get in too much serious running these days, except when a policeman comes up here and asks me to run down and move my car…’

  ‘Could you beat Roger Bannister?’

  ‘I doubt it! Are you keen on running?’

  ‘I don’t know — I’ve never tried.’

  ‘Well, try. You’re the right shape.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘I should think so. Just put on trackshoes and run, a bit further every day. Do you live near a park?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, then, you’re in luck. Are you going to watch our bulletin?’

  Matt gave Maggie a look of confusion. She nodded. She herself was one big smile, like Tolly’s body-smiles, of pleasure at this encounter — Matt standing there so straight, his shyness melting, and the famous young man speaking to him so kindly and yet so unpatronisingly…

  ‘Well, keep your fingers crossed for me. I make mistakes sometimes.’ He gave Ronnie a wink.

  Matt asked solemnly, ‘What mistakes?’

  ‘Well,’ said Ottaway, ‘the other night instead of saying “Royal Horse Artillery” I went and said, “Royal Arse Hortillery”. At least,’ he added, ‘I said it at rehearsal. Now I’m terrified every time it comes up that I’ll say it on transmission.’ Ronnie and Maggie were laughing; Matt, innocent of the word ‘arse’ (he always said ‘bottom’) was baffled. Bob Ottaway shook his hand again and Ronnie led them away, still chuckling.

  ‘Super chap,’ he said. ‘No side whatever. Look, these are the AP and Reuters tape machines, where a lot of our input comes from…’ He tore a strip of tape off, glanced at it and handed it to Matt. ‘There now, you can tell your grandchildren you were the first to learn the historic news that the Queen Mother opened an old people’s home today…’ Matt stared at the tape, frowning. Ronnie was moving them on. He showed them the various news desks, subs’ table, script-writers’ corner and eventually the reporters’ area near the windows.

  Until that moment, Maggie hadn’t let herself know exactly why she had been so eager to come, but when she was introduced to a woman in her mid-thirties called Jennifer who was soon leaving to go abroad, it clicked.

  She looked at the woman closely. This one had never been an actress. She knew that at once. This woman was of another species altogether: deep-voiced, calm, effective, yet without any flamboyance or that trace of exhibitionism that characterises stage people; Tanya had an overdose, but even Maggie, in her quiet way, had s
ome of it.

  ‘How do you like working here?’ she asked casually.

  ‘It’s been great fun, but it was just one — of those things,’ replied Jennifer, laughing somewhat enigmatically.

  ‘Who’s going to get your job?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. Whoever it is, I wish him luck.’

  ‘Him?’

  ‘Oh, sure. One female around here is enough for the trivia. They’ll get another man.’

  Ronnie coughed uncomfortably.

  ‘No, no, nonsense,’ he said brusquely. Jennifer cocked her eyebrow at him, gathered up her coat and said, ‘I’m off. Don’t let them cut my mother-of-ten-in-a-council-flat down to nothing, will you? By the way, she’s not RC. She’s just the old lady who lived in a shoe.’ She gave them a salute and clacked away on high smart heels.

  ‘The old lady who lived in a shoe?’ repeated Matt.

  Ronnie grinned. ‘The one who had so many children because she didn’t know what to do. Come on, I must go up and watch some rushes and you can come too. The editor’s not here tonight. When the cat’s away!’

  ‘What cat?’ asked Matt in the lift. It was all getting a bit much for him.

  ‘It’s just a saying, darling.’

  ‘Where are we going now?’

  ‘To see some films.’

  He perked up at this, but for him the actuality was disappointing. It was relays of uncut news film relating to news items as varied as cricket in New Zealand and a strike in a car-factory in Dagenham, all of it, from a child’s point of view, as dull and incomprehensible as mud. Maggie, however, found it thrilling, and listened alertly to all the technical talk going on around her about lead-ins, shot-lists and footage; she watched Jennifer’s overburdened council-house mum, actually not out of concern for the poor worn-out creature but to see how Jennifer had handled her. The interviews all interested Maggie. At one point there was film of a young man speaking straight into the camera from outside Transport House.

  ‘Is he reading something, or has he memorised it, or what?’ she whispered to Ronnie.

  ‘Just off the cuff, I think,’ Ronnie replied.

  Maggie sank back thoughtfully in her seat. You’d have to do plenty of homework. She’d never taken more than a passing interest in news and current affairs. She would go out first thing in the morning and order The Times, the Telegraph and the Manchester Guardian, plus all the posh Sundays and a couple of weeklies as well. She would put herself through a short crash-course without saying a word to anyone. In the meantime, she would cultivate Ronnie and keep her ear to the ground. Jennifer wasn’t leaving till the end of October. She had time, but not much.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  ‘Crumbs, mate,’ said Tanya, doing her Cockney bit, ‘Get a load of you! What are you all tarted up for?’

  She was lying sprawled on the orange settee, only now instead of looking like a green chameleon or a bird of paradise she looked dark and rather sinister, like a millipede. She wore a shiny black tunic and tight black trousers. Her hair was growing out of its henna red and the roots were unmistakably grey. She was not wearing make-up and this was, to Maggie, the most disquieting thing of all. She looked almost middle-aged.

  Maggie by contrast was — not tarted up in any actressy sense, but got up, certainly, to look her very best in a different way. She had studied the part of woman reporter and dressed it to the life. Her bushy dark hair had, for once, received the attentions of a skilled hairdresser, who had trimmed and tamed it into a neat but feminine cap. She wore a brand-new two-piece (bought with almost the last of Bruce’s money) in Swedish heavy cotton trimmed with black braid, fitting to waist and neck, with long, tight sleeves, and little buttons fastening closely enough to do justice to her bust without drawing attention to it. She wore small pearl earrings and a cameo. Her make-up had taken her half-an-hour. She had borrowed Tanya’s lip brush to make a perfectly clean outline, had done her eyes with extreme care to give a vibrant, understated effect, and powdered down her naturally high colour. She now felt that her appearance matched the immense amount of preparation she had put into her mind.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked Tanya, who had been told nothing.

  ‘To an audition.’

  Tanya slowly sat up and put her bare feet on the drugget. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Not for a part, Tanya. Don’t worry, I probably won’t get it, but please wish me luck.’

  ‘Tell me what you meant — an audition.’

  ‘It’s for ITN. To be a reporter on television news.’

  Tanya stared at her as if seeing her for the first time.

  ‘Ronnie Makepeace.’

  Maggie nodded.

  ‘You didn’t tell me a word.’

  ‘You haven’t been exactly inviting confidences lately.’

  ‘You might have forced it on me. It wouldn’t have been worse than finding out you’ve been keeping secrets.’

  ‘It’s not that at all! It was sheer superstition. Talk about it, hope for it openly, and you don’t get it. You know.’

  Tanya looked at her. Then she got up, crossed the room, kissed Maggie on both cheeks with dry, cold lips and said, ‘Good luck. I feel you will get it.’ She turned and walked back to the sofa and lay down again on her face.

  Maggie hesitated, then said to the still figure of the millipede among the flowers, ‘If I’m late, will you give Matt his tea?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Oh Tanya, I’m sorry. I’m sorry! But I can’t help it — I’ve got to. And it’s not the theatre.

  The audition was quite unlike any Maggie had ever done before, and not merely because no acting was involved. She had to sit at a desk under bright lights (one of them, like a third-degree lamp, seemed to strike straight into her eyes) with the dauntingly huge television camera shifting its monstrous bulk fractionally in front of her as if settling itself for the pounce. At a signal, she had to launch into a news bulletin, previously prepared by herself.

  Of course there was no teleprompter. She had been instructed either to read the bulletin, or have memorised it. So, she memorised it — the whole eight minutes. And the catch was, the news had to be fresh. She had written, learnt and repeatedly rehearsed the final bulletin only the day before, shut into her room from 9 a.m. till tea-time and in the landing bathroom late at night after Matt was asleep.

  Thank God for her rep-trained memory, her RADA-trained poise. Twice she dried up and twice she got out of it so smoothly that from an observer’s point of view, everything went like clockwork. Then, just as she thought it was over, the totally unexpected happened. The phone on her desk rang.

  She stared at it for a timeless second. Somehow she had assumed it was a prop. She picked it up, as she would have done on a stage.

  ‘The Prime Minister,’ said a voice in her ear, ‘has just had an attempt made on his life. A postal bomb. No more details yet. Programmes will be interrupted.’ The line went dead and so did Maggie’s brain.

  But it quickly revived. Was it true? She put the phone down, her face shocked. She turned back to the waiting monster-eye with its glimmering grey pupil and said, ‘Some extremely grave news has just reached us. Someone has tried to kill the Prime Minister by sending him a bomb through the post.’

  This sentence all but undid her. A mental picture leapt to her mind. The bomb, shaped like a Christmas pudding, gift-wrapped with just the sputtering fuse sticking out, was sitting on Harold Wilson’s breakfast plate next to his fried egg. ‘I wonder what this can be!’ he cried gaily, reaching out… Her face fought to break into a shriek of laughter. That battle with difficulty won, she found she had already said the bit about programmes being interrupted and that nothing untoward had happened.

  She still had a funny end-piece in front of her, and she nearly lost her head and read it — it was such a good one, she had combed yesterday’s Mirror to find it. But before she could commit this monumental boob, the bright lights went off, a grinning face appeared above the monster, and a disembodied voice
said, ‘Well done! Could you come through into the control-room, please?’

  It was over.

  Ronnie met her outside the control-room door, his cherubic face beaming.

  ‘Smashing,’ he said. ‘The editor’s delighted. You looked great on screen too — marvellously photogenic, aren’t you?’

  Maggie blinked. ‘Am I?’

  ‘Ever done any filming?’

  ‘Chance would’ve been a fine thing — no.’

  ‘Well, it’s my bet you’ll be doing plenty from now on. No, I shouldn’t say that, it’s not absolutely final, but you’re certainly well ahead of the field so far, and we’ve only two more to see.’

  ‘I thought Jennifer said they’d be looking for a man.’

  ‘That’s as may be. They — we — are looking for the best man for the job. And if you’re it, lady, you’re in.’

  Tanya knocked on her door at eight o’clock that night.

  ‘It’s for you — Ronnie,’ she said.

  As Maggie emerged, Tanya added, with a lipstickless ghost of one of her wide clown-smiles, ‘Bad news comes by letter, good news by phone.’

  Maggie rushed to the phone with a sense of something like panic. Could it be true? Could her whole life be on the brink of a fantastic change for the better?

  ‘Hallo?’

  ‘How does it feel to be ITN’s new girl reporter?’

  ‘WOW!’

  ‘What did I tell you? You can come in tomorrow morning to talk terms. Two months’ underpaid training trial and then a year’s contract. I’m not supposed to tell you this, but the sum you’ll be offered is £1,500 a year.’ Maggie gasped. ‘Well, and before you start making enquiries among your male colleagues, no, it’s not what the men get, and I personally agree that’s not fair, and if you put it to the editor that you’ve got a child to provide for, yes, he just might push it up to seventeen-fifty but no higher, so don’t press your luck, though he was very, very impressed with you. When will you come in?’