`Hello!' said Mike Trickle, briefly turning on his smile. He was accompanied by a pneumatic blonde who seemed to have been grafted or glued onto his arm. `It's great to have you on the programme. You had good cuttings this morning.' He turned the smile off as though to save the batteries.
`Nice to meet you,' said Mrs Caldicot, having difficulty in dragging her eyes away from the awful wig the man was wearing and wondering why no one told him how silly he looked. She hadn't yet got round to reading the morning's newspapers though Mike Trickle wasn't the first person to tell her that her story had appeared in them. `I've seen you on there,' she said, nodding towards the television monitor in the corner of the room. Mr Trickle did not realise that Mrs Caldicot was speaking literally but naturally assumed that she meant that she was a long time fan. In recognition of this he gave her another fifteen second burst of the smile. The blonde's smile seemed wired up to Mr Trickle's for when he smiled she smiled too. When he stopped smiling she stopped smiling. Mrs Caldicot suddenly noticed that the TV star also had what looked like a hearing aid in his right ear.
`It'll all be very straightforward,' said Mr Trickle, reassuringly. `I'll ask you about the cabbage and you just tell me what happened.' He seemed to think about smiling for a moment then changed his mind. He turned to Sally. `Have the Vandals turned up yet?' he asked her.
`I don't think so, Mike,' said Sally, apologetically. `I'll check with Peter.' She hurried off across the room towards the telephone.
`Damned pop group,' said Mike to Mrs Caldicot. `Have you heard of them?'
`Is it Vandals with a capital V?' asked Mrs Caldicot, speaking rather more loudly than usual, and as clearly as she could, so that the deaf celebrity could understand her.
`Yes. I suppose so,' replied Mike, instinctively moving his head backwards a few inches and wondering why Mrs Caldicot had suddenly started shouting.
`Then I don't think so,' said Mrs Caldicot, enunciating carefully in case Mr Trickle relied on lip reading.
`They've had two hits and of course they think they're superstars now,' said Mike. He decided that the old woman was probably batty. Accompanied by the sticky blonde he strode off towards the remains of the sandwiches, flicked through them as though leafing through the magazines in a dentist's waiting room and then slipped what looked like a piece of ham into his mouth. Sally put the telephone down, walked back across the room and said something to him. Mike didn't answer but just strode off angrily. The blonde's stiletto heels click clacked furiously on the corridor floor as she struggled to keep up with him.
`It's a shame about him being deaf,' said Mrs Caldicot when Sally returned faithfully to her side. It was clearly her job to keep Mrs Caldicot entertained.
`Deaf?' said Sally, puzzled.
`Mrs Caldicot leant towards her. `I saw the deaf aid,' she whispered.
`Oh!' laughed Sally, nervously. `That isn't a deaf aid. It's a tiny radio so that the director can talk to him.'
`Ah!' whispered Mrs Caldicot, nodding to show that she understood though she still didn't really understand why the director would want to talk to Mr Trickle while he was broadcasting. `And why doesn't his wife tell him not to wear that silly wig?'
`The wig?' said Sally, blanching and looking behind her to make sure that no one was listening.
`It's not a very good one, is it?' said Mrs Caldicot.
`Sshhh!' said Sally, holding a finger to her lips. `It's a big secret. How did you know about the wig?'
`I'd have to be blind not to know!' laughed Mrs Caldicot. `I've seen more convincing hair on a toothbrush.' `And that's not his wife,' added Sally, looking around to make sure that no one was listening. Since apart from Mrs Caldicot and herself the only other occupants of the room were the sandwiches her fears were unfounded.
***
Thirty minutes later Sally took Mrs Caldicot into the make- up department where a nice young lady with a lot of frizzy red hair filled in her wrinkles, livened up her eyebrows and painted her lips a rather ferocious shade of red.
Then Sally took Mrs Caldicot along to the studio where she wished her all the very best of luck and handed her over to a girl in blue jeans and a T-shirt who wore a pair of headphones with a microphone attached and who introduced herself as Jenny. Jenny took Mrs Caldicot behind a large piece of painted scenery where the floor was covered with huge thick cables and told her to wait there and to be quiet. A voice suddenly crackled faintly in the headphones she was wearing and Jenny apologised and hurried off. Mrs Caldicot peered around the edge of the scenery and could see a small audience sitting quietly in their seats waiting for the show to start. She wondered how long they'd had to wait and then she realised that she wanted to spend a penny.
She retraced her steps, said `Hello!' to three men in jeans and plaid shirts, slipped out through a door marked `Exit' and found herself in a corridor which she didn't recognise and which seemed to stretch forever and ever. She walked down it for a minute or so, passing several doorways on her way, and eventually found a door marked Ladies.
When she came out a minute or two later she couldn't remember which way she'd come so she followed her instincts and turned left. After she had walked for another hundred yards she realised that she had gone the wrong way and so she turned right when she saw an illuminated sign which said Studio.
When she got to the studio she opened the door cautiously. The room was deserted and was clearly not the one she had left a few moments earlier. She intended to retrace her steps but once again she took the wrong turning and quickly realised that she was well and truly lost.
Mrs Caldicot decided that if she kept walking she would be bound to find someone who could help her find her way back to the right studios and so she continued her journey around the labyrinth of corridors.
`Excuse me!' she said, politely to a man who was wearing a dark blue uniform and had the word Security printed on his chest and his hat. He seemed to be guarding a door.
`What are you doing there?' demanded the man, rather aggressively.
`I'm lost,' said Mrs Caldicot. `Can you tell me how I find the studio where the Mike Trickle show is being broadcast from?'
The security guard frowned and looked at his watch. `It's due to go live on air in three minutes,' he said. `I think you're probably too late now.'
`Oh dear,' said Mrs Caldicot. `What a pity.'
`Go out through this door,' said the guard, relenting and feeling sorry for her. `Walk along the street for two hundred yards and you'll come to the main entrance. They may just let you slip in at the back of the audience.'
Mrs Caldicot followed his instructions and walked along the street to the main entrance. `Hello!' she said to the man guarding the main entrance. `Can you tell me how to get to the studio where they are broadcasting the Mike Trickle show?'
The security guard shook his head and sucked air in through his teeth. `I think you've missed it, love,' he said, sadly. He looked at his watch. He examined a list of names in front of him. `What's your name?'
`Mrs Caldicot,' replied Mrs Caldicot.
The guard looked up. `Thelma Caldicot?'
`Yes!' smiled Mrs Caldicot.
`Oh my God!' said the guard. `They're going mad up there looking for you! Where have you been?' He picked up a telephone and dialled a three digit number. `She's here!' he said. `Yes! Mrs Caldicot.' He listened for a moment and then put the telephone down. `Wait here!' he said. He came out of his cubicle, lifted a large key from a ring on his belt and locked the entrance door so that no one could sneak in while he was gone and then headed off into the depths of the building. `Follow me!' he cried over his shoulder. Hurrying was not a form of motion which came easy to him and he swayed a little from side to side as his stability came under threat from his speed.
Half a minute later they met Sally running towards them. She had been crying and had mascara all over her cheeks. Behind Sally ran a man in a sports coat and a woman in a blue suit. They were both shouting hysterically. `Where have you been?' and `We're on air
in thirty seconds!' were the only two things Mrs Caldicot could decipher from their gibbering.
They quickly escorted her back to the studio and deposited her once more behind the painted scenery. Mike Trickle was just being given an enthusiastic welcome by the audience.
`Where have you been?' hissed a harassed looking Jenny. `You're on!' she said, and without more ado she pushed Mrs Caldicot from behind the scenery and out into the bright lights of the studio.
Mrs Caldicot was live on national television.
***
`Welcome to the Mike Trickle Show!' said Mike Trickle, giving Mrs Caldicot one of his most incandescent smiles. Mrs Caldicot could see that he was sweating heavily. Something seemed to have been worrying him for he had developed a small twitch in the muscles around his left eye.
The audience, encouraged by a small, fat man who was holding up a large placard, clapped enthusiastically. Mrs Caldicot wondered what the placard said. She couldn't read it because it was facing the wrong way. The small, fat man, who had sweat stains on the back of his T-shirt and underneath his armpits, lowered his sign and the clapping stopped instantly. Mrs Caldicot could now see that the placard bore the single word `CLAP' in large red letters.
`Mrs Caldicot,' said Mike Trickle, `you're in the news at the moment because you led a walk out among residents at The Twilight Years Rest Home. It is believed to be the first walk out of its kind ever to take place in this country. Do you think your action will herald the beginning of a revolution among older citizens?'
Mrs Caldicot stared at him and found that she had difficulty in concentrating. She could not take her eyes off his wig which, she suddenly realised, looked rather like a sleeping kitten curled up on top of a turnip.
`I don't know,' she said, honestly and simply. There was a silence which Trickle waited, in vain, for Mrs Caldicot to fill. The silence was broken only by a buzz from an audience which had never before heard anyone confess their ignorance on prime time television.
`You don't know!' said Trickle to his guest. He spoke in a mocking sort of voice, rather like a stern parent quizzing a stubborn child.
`Sometimes life isn't so much about knowing the answers as about knowing the right questions to ask,' said Mrs Caldicot simply. When she had spoken she hoped that Mr Trickle didn't take offence. She had meant none. The audience, which would have taken against her if they had suspected that she was trying to be clever, recognised her simple honesty and a few of them instinctively took her to their collective bosom.
Mike Trickle should have been warned. But he was too stupid to realise the danger. He glanced down at the next question on the piece of paper on his lap. `You claim that you led the walk out simply because you don't like cabbage. Don't you think that was selfish and irresponsible of you? Wasn't it a rather dramatic response to a childish dislike of cabbage?'
`That's not what happened at all,' said Mrs Caldicot, rather hurt and indignant. `It's true that I walked out of the dining room because I didn't want to eat any more cabbage but that wasn't why I left the rest home, and it certainly wasn't why any of the others left the home. I left the dining room because I thought the cabbage smelt horrid but that is only one small part of the story.'
`That's a rather small reason for such a big deed isn't it?' said Mike Trickle. `If everyone walked out because of one pungent vegetable the world would be a pretty turbulent place, wouldn't it? Isn't it true, as some people are saying, that you led the walk out simply to draw attention to yourself?'
Mrs Caldicot stared at him for a moment as though she couldn't quite believe what she had heard. `That's rather rude of you,' she said. `Why are you being so aggressive? I didn't want to attract attention to myself at all.'
`Oh, come on now!' said Mr Trickle. `You're here on national television aren't you?'
`But only because you asked me to come,' said Mrs Caldicot. `And to be honest with you I'm beginning to wish I hadn't come. There's a rather good old black and white film on the other side that I'd have quite liked to watch.'
The audience laughed spontaneously. Out of the corner of her eye Mrs Caldicot could see that the fat man was waving his hands horizontally in an attempt to quell the spirited response.
`But some people might argue that by leading a walk out you've endangered the lives of many old people,' persisted Mike Trickle, who was desperate to enhance his reputation as a tough current affairs presenter and to get rid of his light and frothy showbiz image. `Isn't it true that some of the old people who left with you are in their seventies and eighties?'
`Yes,' agreed Mrs Caldicot. `But just because people are old that doesn't mean that they can't make their own minds up. Just because people are eighty they don't have to put up with things that younger people wouldn't put up with. Why do you young people feel you have a right to sneer and snigger at us old folk?'
`I haven't heard of many thirty-year-olds leaving home because they didn't like the smell of the cabbage,' said Trickle. After making sure that the camera wasn't on him he turned towards the audience and pulled a face, mocking Mrs Caldicot.
`It wasn't like that,' insisted Mrs Caldicot. `It was more about my cat than the cabbage.' She explained what Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor had said about Kitty.
`So all these people, in their nightwear, walked out into the cold because of your cat?'
`I didn't ask them to come with me,' said Mrs Caldicot. `They all just followed me.'
Mike Trickle, deciding that he was on safe ground with an old lady with no previous television experience, leant back, abandoned his scripted questions and bravely ad-libbed.
`Are you seriously claiming that you are so charismatic that all these people just followed you?' he asked, sarcastically. He turned to the audience and pulled a disbelieving face. There was a faint and rather hollow splutter of laughter. Most of it came from technicians and researchers.
`No,' said Mrs Caldicot firmly but quietly. `I'm just telling you what happened. Why are you determined to be so rude to me? Why do you keep making faces to the audience? How would you like it if I asked you why you wore such a silly wig or whether your wife knows about that blonde girl who was glued to your arm earlier on?'
Mike Trickle, who was so touchy and self-conscious about his hair piece that he had threatened to sue every newspaper which had ever dared even to suggest that his hair wasn't entirely his own, paled and opened his mouth to reply. All that came out was a rather faint `What did you say?' He was still trying to work out whether or not Mrs Caldicot really had mentioned his wife.
`How would you like it if I asked you why you wore such a silly wig?' asked Mrs Caldicot, repeating her question. `And have your wife and that blonde girl you were with been introduced to each another?' She spoke clearly and deliberately as though addressing someone hard of hearing. She still didn't entirely believe the explanation that Sally had given her for the hearing aid Mike Trickle wore.
Mike Trickle tried to respond but even if he had managed to get any words out no one would have heard them. The audience erupted and the sound of laughter and cheering would have drowned a brass band. The director went into an advertising break nine minutes early and Jenny, red-faced and looking desperate, rushed out and dragged Mrs Caldicot out of her chair.
Mrs Caldicot's moment of glory on `The Mike Trickle Show' was over.
But Mrs Caldicot's moment of glory was, in reality, only just beginning.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Overnight Mrs Caldicot became a national celebrity.
Previously, much of the emphasis had been on what she had done, but now the emphasis was on who she was. Feature writers telephoned to say that their editors wanted them to write profiles of her. Radio producers wanted her to choose her favourite records and give her views on both national and international politics. Mrs Caldicot had become a woman of some importance.
The morning after her appearance on `The Mike Trickle Chat Show' Mrs Caldicot was the star guest on the nation's biggest and most successful television breakfast programme; pushing
the previously booked guest, a mediocre politician who had acquired some temporary notoriety by introducing a bill to increase taxes, out of the programme schedule completely.
`I don't know,' said Mrs Caldicot, reluctantly, to the television researcher who telephoned her to ask her to appear on their programme. `I was hoping to spend some time trying to find somewhere cheaper to stay.'
`Oh don't worry about your hotel bill,' said the girl researcher. `We'll pay that.' The researcher was already hugging herself because she reckoned that she could get Mrs Caldicot to agree to appear for a fee of £25 which was a tenth of the amount she knew that the producer would have paid.
`All of it? Everything that's on my bill?' said Mrs Caldicot, genuinely surprised.
`Everything!' agreed the researcher, as a faint twinge of anxiety disturbed her equilibrium and as she quietly wondered just how much room service one old lady could possibly use.
`Wonderful!' said Mrs Caldicot, not bothering the researcher with the information that the accounts for all sixteen rooms, including Miss Nightingale's, were all being put on her bill.
The breakfast programme didn't want its guests there quite so long before the start of the programme. A chauffeur driven limousine picked Mrs Caldicot up from her hotel at 5.30 am. She arrived at the studio entrance at 6.00 am and was on air, made up and clutching a plastic beaker of coffee at 6.15 am.
`Welcome to the Breakfast Show,' said the presenter, a portly, cheery man who looked uncomfortable in a pair of grey slacks and a pink sweater. He had cut his teeth as a foreign correspondent and was now given all of the programmes `big name' interviews. The presenter, whose real name was Cyril worked under the professional name of Peter. His colleague, whose real name was Flora-May but who called herself Susie, sat back in her chair, well out of camera shot, and studied the notes for her interview with a man who had trained a hedgehog to walk a miniature tightrope.
Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War Page 10