News Where You Are

by Catherine O'Flynn

  Andrea looked at him for a moment and then burst out laughing. He liked her laugh – it was a deep, open giggle that always made him laugh too, though in this case the effect was slightly more disconcerting.

  When she’d stopped, she said: ‘You’re a regular funny guy.’

  He shrugged, having no idea what was funny, but unwilling to rebuff the compliment. He didn’t like pretending to be something he wasn’t, but he thought he could save letting her know for another time. He was almost sure there would be other times.

  Mo had finished her comic now and was waving half-heartedly out of the window at a large poodle who was in turn ignoring her.

  She moved forward in her seat to speak. ‘Dad, there won’t be anyone in the building, will there?’

  ‘What building?’

  ‘The one we looked at. When they demolish it. There won’t be any people still inside?’

  Andrea gave Frank a warning look before saying. ‘You asked me that the other day. Do you remember what I said?’

  ‘You said there won’t be. You said they emptied it months ago, but I just thought what if a homeless person went in there to shelter from the rain? Or what if some little boys went in to explore? Or what if one of the people who worked there realized that they’d left their umbrella and they went back to get it?’

  Frank answered. ‘But no one could get in. You saw it – there are big high boards all around, and the men will go and check last thing before they demolish it. Buildings get demolished all the time and never, ever in all the time I’ve been doing the news has anyone ever been trapped in the building.’

  ‘What if a pigeon flew in the window, or a dog jumped in?’

  ‘There are no stray dogs in town, and a pigeon could just fly straight out again.’ Frank thought for a moment. ‘Do you want to come and watch it being demolished? You’ll see then and you can stop worrying.’

  Straight away he realized he’d said the wrong thing. Mo’s face was horror-stricken. ‘People watch it being demolished? But what if it falls on them?’

  ‘It won’t fall on anyone. The people have to stand a long way away, and the men are clever; they know exactly which way the building will fall.’

  Mo was shaking her head. ‘Don’t go, Dad. Mom, tell Dad not to go. It’s dangerous. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to see it.’

  Frank looked at Mo’s eyes in the mirror. ‘That’s okay. We won’t go.’ He suddenly felt as if he might cry. He reached back and squeezed her leg. ‘I don’t really want to see it either.’

  7

  Mustansar the transport correspondent was walking past Frank’s desk when he reached out and grabbed the sandwich packaging littering his work surface. ‘Frank, quick, without thinking, what are you eating?’

  Frank looked at Mustansar. ‘A sandwich.’

  ‘Yes, yes, but what’s the filling?’

  Frank thought for a moment. ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Excellent. That’s what I wanted. So, just on taste – what are you eating?’

  Frank took another mouthful and chewed slowly.

  ‘What can you taste? What’s the filling?’

  Frank thought hard. ‘Wet and cold?’

  ‘Ha!’ shouted Mustansar louder than was necessary. ‘That is not what it says on the box! This is what I’m talking about. That woman. What’s she doing to our food? Has she got a syringe down there that sucks out flavour? Can anyone distinguish cheese and coleslaw from tuna mayonnaise? Or does it all come from the same vat of cold porridge that she ladles into damp bread every morning? And do you know the best of it, my friend? We pay her! We actually give her money! We are fools!’

  Julia was seated at the next desk and looked up. ‘To be fair, I don’t think she actually makes the sandwiches – they’re just bought in along with the rest of that snack-bar crap. At least in the old days of the staff canteen you could get some fresh vegetables.’

  Mustansar wrinkled his nose, but Julia didn’t seem to notice. Frank took another bite of his sandwich. ‘I don’t mind them; they fill a gap.’

  Julia shook her head. ‘You’re wasting your time, Mustansar. Frank’s exactly the reason why there has never been a revolution in this country. A deluded peasant, happy with his gruel. If you want a nice sandwich, go down to Entice, they do beautiful stuff – freshly baked bread, locally sourced vegetables, all organic ingredients.’

  Mustansar pretended to consider it for a moment before saying: ‘No, fuck that. I’m off to McDonald’s. Does anyone want any real food?’

  Julia sighed and returned to her screen. Frank asked Mustansar for an apple pie and went back to scanning the stories ahead of the morning’s production meeting.

  It looked as if the lead was going to be a hospital story. West Birmingham was apologizing to a patient for the distress caused to him when he overheard staff laughing about his weight and referring to him in offensive terms. Frank had watched the package already. It included an interview with the man, who said that whilst he acknowledged he was overweight he didn’t expect to overhear members of staff laughing about it like children. His central message was that members of the caring profession should be more caring and professional. Frank found it hard to argue with that, but worried that by appearing on the evening news the man was exposing himself to more unkind comments. Viewers could be quite cruel; Frank knew all about it.

  Next was the expected sentencing later that day of a man found guilty of throwing a pan of hot oil over his wife’s head. Footage from the trial showed a small man in a tracksuit covering his face with his jacket. A picture of his wife before the assault showed a woman with tired eyes and the ghost of a smile.

  Next an uneasy gear change into a light-hearted story about obesity in pets and a canine gym that had opened up. It was a quiet day. Or, as Julia put it, ‘A load of old bollocks.’ The difference between a busy news day and a quiet one had a big impact on people’s lives. Today was lucky for the doggy gym, which on another day would have gone unreported; unlucky for the wife abuser.

  Through the years Frank had started to detect patterns and recurrences in the news. The same things happened over and over with little regard for originality. Sometimes he’d feel sure that he’d presented certain items before; sometimes he thought he remembered entire programmes. The faces changed but the stories were the same. Another sick child hoping to get an operation abroad, another old couple swindled out of their life savings, another bare paddock of neglected horses. Sometimes he almost anticipated them. Like counting cards and knowing when to expect the next king. The different incidences became compacted in his mind to form generic news staples and the faces merged to form the composite face of a local news victim. He had not, though, become desensitized. Whilst he recognized the patterns, he still appreciated, albeit hours after the show, the pain, or the loss, or, very occasionally, the joy in each story. He remained, he hoped, despite it all, human.

  He was interrupted by a call on his mobile. He took it out of the office. It was Cyril.

  ‘Aye, aye, Cap’n.’

  ‘Hi, Cyril.’

  ‘Anything in the net today?’

  Frank wasn’t sure when the fishing metaphors had started, but he didn’t think they made these exchanges any easier to bear. ‘Not really, Cyril, sorry.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Frank. It’s been a week. Toss me a sprat.’

  Frank closed his eyes and tapped the bridge of his nose with his finger. It had been a week. It didn’t seem that long to him. A new joke was due. For a little while a few months back Cyril’s calls had become less frequent and Frank had briefly held the hope they were dying off, but now they were back to at least once or twice a week. He gave up the obvious victim.

  ‘Well, there’s something about a gym for dogs …’ He couldn’t go on; Cyril was giggling at the other end of the phone.

  ‘A gym for dogs? You’re having me on! You couldn’t make it up!’

  Frank sighed. ‘No, I don’t suppose you could.’

  �
��Oh, Frank – people, eh? Barking mad.’ Another gale of laughter. ‘This is a goldmine. Let me go away and have a think. I’m getting possibilities already. I’ll get back to you in an hour – on the dog and bone!’ He was laughing helplessly.

  Frank rested his head against the wall. ‘Cyril, remember, just something subtle,’ but Cyril had already hung up.

  *

  Frank picked up the local paper in the hope of finding a new lead to suggest at the production meeting. He had leafed through over half of the pages before something caught his eye. The body of a seventy-nine-year-old man had been discovered sitting on a bench on Smallwood Middleway. The police estimated that the man had been there for two days before anyone noticed he was dead. The man was named as Michael Church and the police were appealing for information. Frank reached for his notebook to take down the details. The newspaper carried a photo of the man. It was a poor-quality passport-style image, taken presumably from his bus pass. It showed an old man in a V-neck jumper and shirt leaning slightly to one side, neatly parted hair, red cheeks and piercing blue eyes. Frank lifted the paper closer and stared at the image. He recognized the man. He quickly read through the article again. The name meant nothing to him, but he knew he had seen those eyes before. They were unusually large, giving an almost comic look of mock-innocence to the face. He tried to think where he had seen Michael Church before.

  Julia noticed him peering at the paper. ‘Found anything of news value at all?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The paper, Frank. Impossible though it seems, is there anything in there of more pressing import than cross-trainers for dogs?’

  Frank looked again at Michael Church’s face. Completely unknown, dead for two days already. ‘I suspect nothing that Martin would consider newsworthy.’

  Julia went back to typing and Frank continued to look at the old man’s eyes. He felt his blood moving more quickly through his body. Perhaps this time he could do more than simply lay flowers.

  8

  ‘ “Call the banker! Call the banker!” ’ cried Henry, his eyes shining. ‘Is that it? Did I get it right?’

  Frank shook his head. ‘Sorry, no, that’s someone else.’

  Henry punched his open palm. ‘Ooh – you’re good. You’re too good for me. Give me another go. Here we are now, how about: “It’s good but it’s not right!” ’

  Frank shrugged his shoulder. ‘No, sorry. Wrong again.’

  Henry looked shocked. ‘Balls! I was sure I had you then. Oh, wait there, wait there: “Hello, good evening and welcome.” Eh? Eh?’

  Frank wondered how long this might go on for. Every time he visited his mother, he spent some time in the residents’ lounge. The manageress thought he lifted their spirits. Andrea thought it was more likely that he drove everyone to their rooms for a nap. Henry recognized Frank from TV but could never place him, or possibly pretended not to. There was a diabolical glint in Henry’s eyes and an edge to his grin that led Frank to believe that Henry knew very well who Frank was and was mercilessly mocking him.

  ‘Oh God. Oh no. You’re not that insufferable little prick, are you?’

  Frank looked apologetic. ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Oh Christ. “Remember, don’t have nightmares.” What an utter shit! Is that you?’

  Henry was interrupted by Walter’s approach.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Henry, leave the man alone and give it a rest, will you.’ Henry immediately sidled off. Walter shook a box of dominos at Frank. ‘Fancy a quick one?’

  ‘Why not?’ Frank pulled up a chair to their usual table by the window. Walter distributed the tiles and hummed ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You’ with gusto. Sometimes Frank wondered if this was how it might have been had his father lived to old age. A quiet game of dominos, small talk about the weather, an easy companionship, but the image never quite rang true.

  His father had died at fifty-one in a room full of people. Standing in front of a screen, illuminated by the glow of a projector, he was pointing with a fine baton at his design for the headquarters of a legal firm when his arm suddenly jerked towards the upper part of the plan. The assembled partners focused their attention at the baton’s end and squinted to see what was now being called to their attention. They jumped in shock as the gentle whirring of the projector’s fan was abruptly drowned out by Douglas’s roar of pain, and he collapsed sideways, crashing through the screen, the pale blue lines of his design momentarily framing his stricken face before he hit the ground. He was dead before the ambulance arrived.

  Frank was eleven when his father died, but in truth Douglas had been absent throughout much of his life, his passion for his work taking up most of his time and energy. Frank and his mother stayed on in the house that Douglas had built for them, a modern two-storey flat-roofed home set on a gentle slope in Edgbaston.

  Even before his father’s death, Frank had noticed the way Maureen often seemed elsewhere in her thoughts. He had become aware as a young boy of days when his mother would watch the television without seeing anything, would ask him where he was going without listening to the answer or open cupboards and stare into them for minutes at a time. Some days she would be fine, but on others he would return from school to see her at her bedroom window, looking out at the sky, an expression of terrible loss on her face. As he grew older, he began to suspect that his mother was doing all this for his benefit – that he alone was her intended audience. Sometimes friends or work colleagues would visit and she seemed a different person with them, laughing and chatting. Whilst he believed she often was unhappy, and could even see that she perhaps had grounds to be so, he also felt that she wanted him to see her that way. It was a feeling he could never quite shake.

  Walter was winning as always. Frank wasn’t sure what Walter got from playing against someone so weak at the game, maybe just the novelty at his age of anything being effortless.

  ‘I saw your mother in here the other day.’

  ‘Oh, good. She does leave her room occasionally, then?’

  ‘Oh yes. She’s not in here all the time, but she comes down every now and again, and it’s always a pleasure when she does. She has such a sense of humour.’

  Frank had heard this many times. ‘Apparently yes.’

  ‘Yes, oh, she makes me smile. Very quick witted. Very dry.’ Walter laughed to himself. ‘You should hear what she says about the management here. “The Cabal” she calls them. I know she has her blue days. We all do. But on her good days she’s like a crisp, clean gin and tonic.’

  Blue days. Frank had always thought of them as purple. He smiled at the thought of the gin and tonic; it was a good description – sparkling and fresh. He saw that side of her very rarely now, but he knew what Walter meant.

  After Douglas’s death Maureen continued to work parttime at the local doctor’s surgery and had many friends and colleagues around her, but despite this she often spoke as if her life was almost over – referring to herself as old as far back as Frank could remember. At times her melancholy bordered on self-parody, descending into Eeyore-like gloom. Andrea asked Frank not long after they married if he thought his mother was depressed and Frank had said: ‘She’s not depressed; she’s just miserable.’

  But after retirement, whatever constituted Maureen’s condition – grief, depression, loneliness or just a predisposition to melancholy – was exacerbated by an increase in her alcohol consumption. Late in the evening, after she’d had a bottle of wine, Frank would receive phone calls from Maureen telling him that she didn’t think she’d live much longer, or that she wanted to be cremated not buried, and he would find himself ensnared in her circular monologues.

  Gradually the house became too much for her. She no longer had the energy or the will to keep the large windows and the parquet floors clean. More of Frank and Andrea’s visits were taken up with cleaning and shopping for food. Maureen started to lose weight and never seemed to know when or what she’d last eaten. One day Frank received a call from the newsagent near his mot
her’s house, telling him that Maureen had tried to pay for her paper with a bus ticket.

  The doctor didn’t rule out Alzheimer’s but diagnosed Maureen primarily as depressed. Frank asked her to come and live with his family, but Maureen refused point blank. She said she would rather he smothered her with a pillow than become a burden on him. And so after much investigation and thought, aged just sixty-seven, Maureen moved into Evergreen Senior Living.

  Evergreen had started off in the States before importing their variety of deluxe privately run care homes into the UK. Maureen’s home, by virtue of being in the Midlands, had been branded Evergreen Forest of Arden. It was a vast purpose-built facility, with over one hundred permanent residents and more making brief stays for respite care. The home was divided into two zones. Maureen, Walter and Henry were in ‘Helping Hands’, whilst those with more advanced dementia or greater dependency were housed in a separate, secure area called ‘Golden Days’, inevitably referred to by residents as ‘Gaga Days’.

  For some historical reason never explained to Frank the home had always attracted a significant proportion of residents retired from the entertainment business. Frank had first heard of Evergreen through Phil Smethway, who had himself heard of it through someone else, word of mouth being the way that most people came across the home. Retired magicians, dancing girls, musicians and technicians now found themselves all at the same endless after-show party, drinking tea and trying to identify the latest presenter of Countdown.

  Once a month a cabaret night was staged by the residents. Maureen had attended one once and told Frank it had all the charm and entertainment value of being buried alive. Frank noticed the poster for the next one on the wall:

  The Great Misterioso

  (aka Ernie Webster)

  will be presenting a dazzling array of his greatest tricks in

  THE MAGIC NEVER DIES

  Saturday 24th 4 p.m., Shakespeare Lounge

  ‘ “The magic never dies”. Are you going to that, Walter?’