by Jo Hamya
* * *
Although I took pains to come in early and work late, the Editor of the magazine was absent for another two weeks. When the former copy editor left, she put a microfiber cloth and room spray on my desk. That’s more for him than it is for you, the picture editor said in response to my confusion. He likes a tidy office. You’ll know when he’s due because you’ll get a bollocking about the state of your workspace.
It was true. When an email emerged in mid-July asking us pointedly to keep all personal possessions off our desks, orchids appeared on each window’s ledge, pale and hovering. The intern was tasked with keeping them alive. They checked each fragile petal with an anxious face, whispering, How do you know if they need something? This was the general state of things. A couple of days prior, the art director had spilt a flat white on the carpet beside her desk; now production was usurped with the process of negotiating with a cleaner over the phone. I’ve been calling for two days now, she said into it, more agitated by the hour, I’ve got a stain that’s really quite urgent.
On 19 July, three days after the orchids appeared, I watched him blow into the office—sunglasses on his head, swathed in the customary ill-fitting clothes of the expensively dressed. The hem of his jeans and sleeves were too short and everything else, somehow, conspicuously loose. He went into the soundproofed glass box of his office for half an hour, then blew back out. His assistant, a small woman who sent the smell of plain miso wafting downwind towards my desk punctually at one o’clock every day, hovered behind him. At his presence, the room became supine. He kissed the associate editor in the European style and with the voice of a true Sloane purred, You looked so good at the Cartier last night. So good. I was only there for fifteen minutes, if you stay any longer at a party, then it’s probably dead, but I saw you there looking so good.
She, far older than him, gave him a luxuriant chuckle and the affection of a great-aunt. Where have you been? she asked. It’s been just hell for me.
He made sure to widen his eyes. Oh?
Look. She gestured extravagantly towards the large, open window beside her desk. Look. Thames Water dug up the road in front of my house and now these bastards, I don’t know who they’re with, have dug up the road here, and all I hear from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep is the sound of a fucking drill. Look, I recorded it on my phone, what they’re doing by my front garden—
She was a foot shorter than him. When she leaned in to show him the video on her phone, her shoulder brushed the crook of his elbow: the phone could not have reached his line of sight. She, squinting at the screen, tapped the play and pause button in quick succession with her index finger so that the recording kept stopping when she meant it to start. That’s arduous, the Editor quipped drily.
It is, it’s real hell, she returned. So do you know what I’ve done? I’ve checked into the Berkeley and sent Thames Water my bill.
That’s good, he said, his attention already lost. There’s a piece in there, we’ve got so much interiors stuff in this issue anyway. It would be good to do a one-eighty on that, you know? Write me something about your life without a home. We’ll call it something like “Nowhere Land.” Actually no, we won’t call it that, but think about it, would you? And there is something else. I want to do a bright young things feature—you know, like new debs. Do you know if any of your nineties boytoys had kids? If you can think of a list, we’ll set up a time to talk. He was already on to the travel editor: and where had she got that fabulous tan from? His assistant turned to the associate editor and began running a manicured nail down a Smythson diary. I went blissfully ignored.
You mustn’t take it personally. You’re young, you know, the art director said once he had retreated back behind the transparent walls at the end of the room. You’re the nobody now. Christ, I remember when I was the nobody. She leaned back in her swivel chair. I was at the Slade, and to be honest with you, that degree did fuck all for me, but I remember it gave me free time to go and rage against Thatcher and the like. And then I tried to start selling some prints, but as I say, I was a nobody, so they didn’t sell. I came here after that. It’s actually kind of a laugh. I mean, it wasn’t then—you felt it all to be very serious, and I was there, screaming about feminism and a woman’s right to her own body. But I mean—I went out there in the street and now I get trolled by young women online who post pictures of my work and write about how it’s of no benefit to them. That’s a very narrow-minded view, she said, suddenly brisk. Just because I work on a society magazine. I don’t even believe in the thing. Not that I’m speaking directly about you, but where your generation is concerned, all I see is a lot of shouting on Twitter and not much else. Anyway, what I was getting at was, you can just use this time to rage, figure out what you want your world to look like—
The phone on her desk rang. She picked it up and after a few seconds sighed into it; said, Oh don’t come now. He’s in the office now, the whole point was to get it cleared up so he wouldn’t notice. I’ll phone you when he leaves again. Then she sagged in her chair and looked over at me. Are you going to the pub?
The pub? I checked the time in the corner of my screen. There were, ostensibly, two hours left in the working day. On my desk, the mess of proof articles to fact-check, copy-edit, then send for approval, had been arranged into two neatly stacked piles. What they had gained in height, they had gained in menace: they were like little towers, could not be conquered, would not let me leave my seat.
Didn’t you get what’s-their-face’s email?
At the desk in front of me, I watched the intern’s body turn incrementally, suddenly stiff.
No. I took the next proof to be edited from the pile and tried to keep my tone light. I don’t think I was cc’d in.
Oh. Well. The art director shrugged. Go anyway. Round the corner on the left, as you head to Savile Row. Big pub. You won’t miss it. I won’t be there, mind. But you younger lot, you always need a few drinks to cope.
Even to myself, I seemed thin-lipped. There was a jibe on my tongue about being too overworked and underpaid to afford the many liters of alcohol I needed to deal with being too overworked and underpaid, but I tapped one of the piles with my pencil and said, We’ll see. My inbox lit up a few minutes later with a single line, it said, Apologies! Forgot to cc you in. The pub is on Maddox Street. Come as you are after work. But it was not like the chain of emails visible above, back-and-forth banter in lowercase and textspeak among the office at large. My brain could not forgive the formality of the message sent only to me, and the relaxed warmth apparent between everyone else. I didn’t reply; worked late, and went home. I was not asked to the pub again.
* * *
On 23 July, the entirety of the pavement in front of the thoroughfare and outside of the office was ripped out, save for a thin footpath leading up to the revolving doors. The rest was cordoned off. The surface area left was not wide enough to handle the two-way traffic funneling in and out of the building, let alone the hordes of young women who still gathered insistently in front of it, simply cropping their photos to new angles. The collective temper of the office came sharply down.
Enough with the fucking drill, the associate editor snapped at the brief burr of machinery that operated within her range of sound, and the intern, red-faced: Sorry, it’s the coffee machine. I was making an espresso. Does anyone else want one? From my desk, I could see the editors in the office at large ready to reply, but when they opened their mouths, a succession of grainy recordings issued into the air.
I was brought up, in my father’s house, to believe in democracy. Trust the people. The sound was broadcasting from the iMac in the rightmost corner of the room. It continued—We are masters of our fate. The task which has been set us is not above our strength; its pangs and toils are not beyond our endurance. As long as we have faith in our cause and an unconquerable willpower, salvation will not be denied us. In front of the screen was the senior editor, a wry, jovial man with wisps of gray hair, who lean
ed back and watched it with the air of taking in a good football match. The office began to gather around him and the voices of Conservative ministers past which heralded the introduction of a party conference to announce its new leader, and by extension, the country’s new prime minister. They began to play a game, could they identify each voice? First Churchill, and now —? The managing editor reached towards the keyboard and increased the volume. It’s a proud thing, to be given the office of Prime Minister of Britain. As for courage, character—I know the British people have these in full measure. Britain has been great, is great, and will stay great, providing we close our ranks and get on with the job.
It was impossible to get a good view. Those who had already descended on the screen obscured it completely. I stood on tiptoe, felt absurd, and listened as best I could. I have only one thing to say, the speakers issued next, you turn if you want to. And laughter. The lady’s not for turning. I will not change just to court popularity. I am happy that my successor will carry on the excellent policies that in fact have finished with the decline of socialism and have brought great prosperity to this country, which have raised Britain’s standing in the world and in fact have brought about a truly capital-owning democracy.
What is “Maggie Thatcher”? said the intern. The senior winked at them; stretched his arms; placed his hands behind his head. As he did so, a space cleared where the editors had parted to make way for his gesture. I caught a small rectangle of a view. There was a seated audience in front of a banner of blue, and intermittently the screen cut to two empty chairs. The senior editor yawned, and the audio clips, overlaid with a gently swelling piano track, went on.
I believe that when our children and grandchildren look back on this turbulent century, they’ll look on those years from 1979 onwards and say, these years changed the face of our nation; they changed the fate of our nation, and they changed them both for the better. The yawn was contagious. It spread while the piano morphed into a chorus of violins: the sort of thing played at the denouement of war movies. The intern, having finished their espresso, fiddled with their vape, and the features editor, who had only just come into the room with her lunch, ate standing—a Niçoise salad, and the crunch of lettuce leaves, the tang of tuna behind me.
Is this it? she asked, picking tomato out of her teeth. Have they announced it yet?
No, the senior editor said, swiveling round to face her and grinning broadly. They’re just having a bit of foreplay over a gramophone.
I peered again at the screen, waiting for the appearance of the politician whose presence had sparked protests outside the Oxford Union building. It’s not just foreplay, I said. They’re writing him into the books. I wanted to speak more; express my anxieties about an election I had no say in, and which I had been told repeatedly by various news outlets had only one outcome. In spite of the gradual familiarization the news stream on my phone had accorded me with his face, I felt a renewal of the shock that had accompanied the Brexit referendum in 2016. The surprise then had been that through misinformation and well-timed jokes, he had altered the social and economic fabric of the country for generations to come. The surprise now was that within the hour, the failure of what he had set in motion meant he would be the person by whom the country would be run. I opened my mouth again, but the features editor jabbed her fork at the screen and asked, Who’s this now? Everyone looked at her instead; began discussing, genially, the cast of characters onstage. It was impossible to take in. On the senior editor’s screen: pseudo-democracy and spectacle for a man who had called the people he was set to govern piccaninnies and letter boxes. Around the senior editor’s screen, lunchtime banter, low laughter, gossip, calm. The world turning as it ever did, as though nothing very much was happening.
This is terrifying, I murmured. I don’t see how, the senior editor said mildly, and then the screen dispensed, Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome—
I pulled my attention back to it. There, considerably tidier than old photos used by news outlets of him riding around the city on his bike, hanging on a zip wire, was the politician with his platinum hair and oafish smile. The camera cut to the two vacant chairs again, and held there as he and his competitor took their seats. I watched the senior editor tap the rightmost side of his keyboard to drive the volume still further up.
This is it, the associate editor said, rubbing her hands together and straining, next to me, to see. The room fell quiet to give way to the sound of declare that the total number of eligible electors was 159,320. The turnout in the election was 87.4 percent. The total number of ballot papers rejected was 509. And the total number of votes given to each candidate was as—
From the square outside, the sound of drills cast itself once more abruptly into the room. The senior editor tapped insistently at the corner of his keyboard again, but the volume, already as high as it would go, remained drowned out by groan of steel against stone, changing only in pitch as the machines burrowed in at new angles to the ground below. It screeched: the screen cut to the two men, somber, turned in the same direction, dumb and blinking as they sat. The drill deepened—the one with the platinum hair said something, rose, shook his opponent’s hand. The drill roared, and everyone on-screen began to stand, beating their hands together, and in front of the new prime minister, several men emerged with Dictaphones, with iPhones, with cameras; he said something else, gave the thumbs-up, began to move towards the stage. The senior editor, by now quite irate, motioned me to close the windows across the room. One by one, as they shut, a bouncing, conversational voice filtered in, strengthening as each latch went. I began at the back of the office. Briefly, before the burst of another drill, I heard, question the wisdom of your decision. And there may even be some people here who still quite wonder what they have done. I closed the first window and found I had to circumvent the islands of each desk and then stretch above them to bring the panes down. I paused to listen again, and heard, the instincts to own your own house, your own home, to earn and spend your own money, to look after your own family. I knocked my knee on the corner of one of the desks and cut my hand with a jagged latch. I wanted, less and less, to carry on, but the senior editor nodded at me and said, It’s working. I closed another, and then wrapped my palm in a tissue. I went on. Do you feel daunted? the voice asked. Another window closed. I felt the tissue start to unravel from my palm and stopped to rebandage my hand once more. I caught, we are going to defeat Jeremy Corbyn, and then, nauseated, refocused my attention to get to the next window. By the middle of the room, I could more or less hear the sound issuing from the speakers of the senior editor’s desk in its entirety. Some wag has already pointed out that deliver, unite, and defeat was not the perfect acronym for an election campaign, since unfortunately it spells dud—but they forgot the final “e,” my friends, for “energize.” And I say to all my doubters, dude, we are going to energize the country. I made it back to the front of the room. The senior editor was no longer looking at the screen.
Bit weird, him saying “dude,” isn’t it? the intern mused. A bit shambolic compared to all the other speeches they played in the run-up. They began to shrug their jacket on, declaring, Well, if that’s done, I’m heading out. The Wolseley, if anyone wants to come. Think about it. You’ll all get wrinkles if you stay here frowning like that and we know how our fearless leader feels about those. Ciao ciao.
Momentarily, I was distracted. More than anyone else in the office, I had assumed the intern was like me: skint, and trying very hard to be kept on board. How can they afford the Wolseley? I asked. I can’t afford that. What pay are they on?
No one answered. The office, having barely altered in aspect or pace, processed the country’s new reality in its own leisurely way. Text from you know who, the features editor said. Anyone with connections to the new PM from school, or friends, or family, please email him, he wants to get a clear picture of the social web we’re working with now. The digital editor turned to her deputy. Being PM won’t make him more photog
enic, she mused, I don’t think we’ll get any engagement with images of him. See if you can pull together a style file on his girlfriend, she’s not bad looking, and maybe see if you can find the write-up we did of his old school; update the metadata on it for any potential clicks we can get. The deputy was already buried in her phone. Yep. There’ll be photos of him bowing at Her Maj’s hand over the next few days as well—I’ll stay on the lookout for those. See if we can do a short one on any shade she throws with her clothing, you know: EU brooch or anti-Tory earrings or something. The senior editor chuckled. I wonder, he said, whether that hasn’t been done too many times before. We should try something else. Something audacious.
I made a conscious effort to slacken my jaw and left. At my desk, where I had left them, were the same pages I had been working on since the morning; the mess of biro pens, mechanical pencils, Post-it notes, keyboard, gum, printouts, notebooks, flat plans. None of it had changed. The art director sat stone-faced in front of her iMac, scrolling through Twitter. I rolled my chair over to her.
You didn’t want to watch?
No. Why would you? None of us are the kind of people to be hit hardest by it.
It matters, I said, shocked. She grimaced, though her voice stayed even.