Having It All

by Maeve Haran

  In Yorkshire the answer to every problem was a cup of tea and Britt decided to go down to the kitchen and make herself one. It was only when she got to the bottom of the stairs and saw the small tree, its fairy lights flashing a weird pink and red like the neon Motel-sign in a hammy Hollywood movie, that she remembered that it was Christmas morning and she saw that Christmas or not her mother was already up and kneeling in her old quilted nylon dressing gown, laying a fire.

  ‘Hello, love, did you sleep well?’

  On the point of confessing that she had had the worst night of her life, something stopped her and she smiled back. ‘Yes, Mum, fine.’

  Watching her mother quietly for a moment she remembered the photographs of her in the family albums. Her mother, now faded and anxious, had once been pretty and lively and had glowed with happiness as her married life began. And yet, looking at her kneeling there in her dressing gown, Britt felt herself to be a cuckoo in this poky suburban nest. And she realized, with an unfamiliar twist of regret, that hers was a classic story.

  Her parents, always believing that education was power and that it was a gift to which girls should be as equally entitled as boys, had scrimped and saved to give her the best opportunities they could. With their encouragement she had gone to grammar school and on to Oxford. And steadily, with each new achievement, she had moved further and further away from them, until she had, now, almost nothing in common with them at all.

  And as she sat sipping her tea another memory, deep and repressed, sprang up bringing with it a sick feeling of shame which even twelve years hadn’t managed to blot out.

  It had been Degree Day at Oxford, for parents the one moment where the saving and the sacrifice seemed to have all been worth it. The day when their sons or daughters, dressed in gown and mortar board or cap, trooped into the rococo splendour of the Sheldonian Theatre and collected their degree from the Vice-Chancellor before submitting themselves to the most sacred ritual of all: the taking of the graduation photo for the place of honour on mantelpiece and in family album.

  And she had deprived them of it, their one moment of reflected glory, because she was ashamed of them. To Britt, groomed and sophisticated now and in with the university’s smart set, the idea of her father in an ill-fitting suit and her mother wearing Crimplene and a borrowed wedding hat, wandering uncomfortably among the rich businessmen and titled parents of her new friends, was too much to face. So she had put them off, telling them she would be on holiday for Degree Day and would collect hers by post.

  But she had gone all the same. And as she stood amongst a group of laughing friends she had turned to see the only other student from Rothwell Grammar standing watching her with her parents, and she had gone cold and sweaty, and her day had been ruined by the fear that her parents might, after all, discover the truth. That she had been too embarrassed to invite them.

  If they did hear, nothing was ever said. But as she looked at the empty mantelpiece this morning, where their only child’s graduation photo should have proudly stood, she felt so ashamed that she had to look away.

  Her mother smiled her faded smile at Britt perching on the arm of the uncomfortable sofa, in a raw silk kimono which had probably cost more than the entire three-piece suite.

  ‘Warm enough, love? The fire’ll be ready in a minute.’

  And Britt watched fascinated as her mother finished plaiting old copies of the Daily Mirror into neat firelighters and laid them carefully in the grate, covering them with twigs and coal, then sat back and put a match to the paper and stared at the fire, listening to the hiss and crackle of the kindling as it began to catch. And it struck her for the first time that no matter what she thought her mother and father were happy with their lives, that they felt secure in their daily rituals and their strong beliefs, pulling together in a tightly knit community. And that it was she, who believed so passionately in the individual, whose credo decreed that you could have anything you wanted if only you tried hard enough, and that the only person who could really help you was yourself, it was she who found herself pregnant and alone.

  For the second time since she’d left London, Britt felt vulnerable and lonely and she knew that it wasn’t her parents who needed her, they had long since learned to expect little of their remote and haughty daughter. It was she who needed them. Yet she also knew that in this house, where emotions were not displayed or discussed, she didn’t know how to tell them.

  Slipping off the arm of the sofa, she kneeled next to her mother and stared into the fire too. Finally she spoke.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Yes, love?’

  ‘Next time you make a fire, could you show me how to do it?’

  Her mother looked at her in surprise. ‘Course I will, love.’ She smiled shyly at her daughter. ‘Do you know that’s the first time you’ve ever, in your whole life, asked my advice?’

  She glanced at Britt, wondering if she’d gone too far, whether her daughter would bite her head off. But Britt was smiling.

  ‘More fool me. Oh Mum . . .’

  And to her mother’s astonishment Britt threw herself into her mother’s arms, tears streaming down her face, as if she were a little girl again.

  ‘Oh Mum, I’m sorry . . . I’m really sorry . . .’

  Her mother looked at her in amazement. ‘What for, love?’

  Britt picked up one of her mother’s hands, black with coal dust and held it against her cheek. ‘For being me. For being such a disappointment to you . . .’

  Her mother watched as a thin channel of black drew itself on her daughter’s face where the tears mixed with the coal dust, and she closed her arms around Britt tightly, feeling for the first time since Britt was a small girl like a real mother and knowing that this was a moment she would always remember.

  ‘Oh, Britt, Britt. You’re not a disappointment to us.’ She felt her own tears mix with Britt’s. ‘We love you.’

  And as she and her mother held each other wordlessly Britt learned the first lesson of families, that they love you whether you deserve it or not.

  Over her shoulder she was dimly aware of her father standing at the door in his old-fashioned stripy pyjamas watching them. She saw that he was smiling and the grey, strained look had left his face.

  ‘Hello, girls. Nothing like a good cry at Christmas. Anyone feel like a cup of tea?’

  David rolled over on to his front in the vast bed and decided he wanted to die. His head was pounding, his mouth was dry and he felt shivery. Dragging himself out of bed he went to look in the bathroom cupboard, hoping wildly that Logan suffered from hangovers.

  But just like everything else he did in life, Logan seemed to do the deed without paying the price other mortals did. There was no Fernet Branca. No Alka Seltzer. Not even that new concoction – Remorse was it? No, that was his own over-active guilt gland working. Resolve – that was it.

  Realizing that, if he wanted to live to see tomorrow, which frankly he wasn’t sure about, he would have to go and get himself some antidote to his currently toxic state, he got up. Washing his teeth with soap because he’d forgotten to buy toothpaste and gargling with Eau Sauvage, he found that he still smelt like a piss-up in a brewery and that if he didn’t shave he would be mistaken for a wino and chucked out of the Grosvenor House’s distinguished portals by the doorman.

  Slowly he dressed and, putting on his cashmere overcoat, slipped the two empty bottles of whisky into his briefcase and went to look for a rubbish bin and a chemist. Two hundred yards down Park Lane, it struck him that it was Boxing Day and no chemist would be open. With the empty bottles still in his briefcase he headed into the Hilton, impelled by his belief that a hotel chain respecting life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness must surely sell hangover cures.

  He was right. And carrying a paper bag containing Paracetamol, Alka Seltzer and Dextrosol to get his blood sugar going he headed for the bar to wash it down with a stiff Fernet Branca.

  Halfway across the lobby he caught sight of a newsstand
and instinctively headed for it to get a copy of today’s Daily News. To his irritation there didn’t seem to be any left. And then he saw the last copy poking out from behind the Daily Mail.

  So it wasn’t till he picked it up that he noticed that the whole front page was plastered with enormous close-ups, blurred but horribly recognizable, of an emaciated man lying in a hospital bed with more of the same promised inside. And he realized that with impeccable timing Jim Johnson had chosen Christmas Day to give up his months-long fight against the deadly virus of Aids.

  ‘Long time, no see,’ Logan Greene drawled dangerously as he arrived at his office the next morning, for once not shadowed by the ubiquitous Mick Norman, and found David perched aggressively on the corner of his vast desk.

  ‘Where’s Mick?’ David’s eyes, alert and sharp as a hunting bird’s and showing remarkably little sign of the excesses of the last three days, held Logan’s. ‘Gone to pick up your dry cleaning?’

  Logan smiled. ‘As a matter of fact I have sent him out on a little errand.’ Logan sat down without inviting David to do the same. ‘A little market research. You see, I happened to notice that my newsagent sold out of copies of yesterday’s News by ten a.m. and I wondered how widespread that was.’ He looked at David, knowing instinctively why he was here. ‘Not a reliable way of measuring sales, of course, but revealing, don’t you think? Doesn’t quite back up your touching belief in the high moral standards of the great British public. Interesting all the same.’

  ‘That’s hardly the point. It was still a disgusting thing to do.’

  ‘Come, come, David. We’ve been through all that. Johnson’s death changed everything. And since you weren’t around to convince us of the justice of your case I gave my personal permission to print. And Bingo. A sell-out.’

  David winced. Did Jim Johnson’s death justify printing those humiliating and degrading pictures of his last dying weeks? Not to David it didn’t. The man’s family were still trying to say it was cancer, but with those photographs on every news-stand it would be hard to keep that up.

  ‘As a matter of fact, we tried to contact you, but no one seemed to know where you were.’

  ‘Nobody did.’

  Logan looked at him curiously. ‘David, if you’re having a mid-life crisis that’s your affair. But I’d rather you didn’t have it on the paper’s time.’ His voice was friendly, the kindly uncle giving good advice.

  But David wasn’t listening. He was thinking how less than six months ago he had accused Liz of the same thing, simply because her values had changed and she was trying to act on them. And now, too late, he finally understood what she’d been fighting for. Now he could see as clearly as she had that working for shits like Conrad Marks or Logan Greene tainted you too, and that the moment you started compromising your values with theirs, you were finished.

  For a moment he thought about trying to convince Logan that newspapers should show compassion. But it would be like talking a cheetah into turning vegetarian.

  Looking up, David saw that Logan was watching him and his instincts, as well as years of reading Logan’s mind, warned him to be alert. Logan did not throw sympathy about. He was working up to something. And suddenly David realized why Mick Norman wasn’t there. Logan had wanted to be alone because he was going to fire him. He probably wanted him out so that he could bring in some other sharp-suited yob with the moral sense of a property developer. The only real surprise was that he hadn’t seen it coming.

  ‘Fine.’ David was surprised how calm he felt. ‘I’m sure I can find someone who has a use for a burnt-out thirty-five-year-old.’

  ‘That would be a pity.’

  David scanned Logan’s face. He was such a devious bastard. What was he up to now?

  ‘Why would that be, Logan?’

  ‘Because I was about to offer you a job.’

  ‘What as? Splash Sub on Farmers Weekly?’

  Logan smiled unnervingly. ‘As editor of my new tabloid.’

  David narrowed his eyes. ‘Is this some kind of joke? You hired Norman for that job.’

  ‘I know, but I’ve got to know that young man very well over the last few months.’ Logan stood up and came round to David’s side of the desk. ‘He isn’t up to it. He’s talented, certainly. But he’s like a fucking cocker spaniel always tearing off into the distance after some wild idea or other. Mick’ll be fine at picking up the game but I need someone with judgement and experience to fire the bloody gun. Look, David, I’m investing ten million in this paper and that’s just for starters. I need someone who knows what they’re doing.’

  David felt a flicker of excitement. The News had already been going five years when he joined it and he’d always wanted to start a paper of his own. It was the highest of high-risk ventures, but if you got it right, also the most satisfying. And it would be a lasting pleasure to sit on that cocky squirt Norman, the boy genius who thought he knew everything about newspapers at the age of twenty-nine. For months now, David had seen how Logan’s minions had started to treat Norman as the heir apparent instead of him. He’d noticed them almost imperceptibly turn towards Norman in conversation, subtly giving David the cold shoulder.

  And now Logan was offering him the throne again.

  As Logan waited confidently for his answer David glanced down at the copy of yesterday’s News, still on the desk next to him, and the anger Logan had so neatly diverted started to flare up again, stronger this time. In the end it had been Logan’s decision, and Logan’s alone, to print those photographs. And if David thought Logan would leave him alone to follow his principles, he was as naive as a girl who got into bed with a womanizer and was surprised when he put his hand on her leg.

  David had always followed his instincts and he knew what they were telling him now, even if it wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

  ‘I’m sorry, Logan, but I’m not interested in editing the new paper. I happen to think the world would be a better place without it. Not the ideal philosophy for a founding editor. So I’ll have to say no.’

  Logan put his feet on the desk. He prided himself on getting his way. Being turned down wasn’t on his list of options. ‘Maybe you don’t have much choice.’

  ‘Oh, but I do.’ Logan watched him steadily. David grinned. ‘You see, Logan, I don’t want to edit the News either. So I have all the choices in the world.’ He stood up and offered his hand for Logan to shake. ‘Goodbye, Logan. They have a proverb in China: May you die in your own bed, or in your case, somebody else’s. Good luck.’

  Logan, Buddha-like and inscrutable, watched him as he walked out of the room. He had seen it all before, the ploys editors pulled to get more money, more status, more independence, a new BMW. He knew that David would be back within an hour and he could wait.

  But for once he was wrong.

  David looked round at the office he’d edited the paper from for the last four years. He was surprised there weren’t more objects of sentimental attachment he wanted to take with him. He smiled, remembering all Liz’s offices, all monuments to her individuality: packed with snapshots of friends and family, cartoons stuck up that had made her laugh, photos of the programme team, armfuls of fresh flowers, strange objects that had been used for filming. When you walked into Liz’s office, you walked into her life and felt immediately at home there. And she’d been the same with hotel rooms, no matter how box-like and anonymous, she’d buy a bunch of flowers, drape a few necklaces around the place, a silk kimono here, a straw hat there, and the place would look more home-like and welcoming than every one of the other 599 identical boxes in the Holiday Inn, or the Ramada or the Trust House Forte.

  For David, collecting his possessions together would be easier. There wasn’t much he even wanted to take. His prized Reporter of the Year Award from his regional days, and two or three other awards, which David took for granted but most newspaper editors would have killed for, a cartoon that Johnno, the paper’s cartoonist had done of him, the youngest ever editor in Fleet Street, arriving
for his first day in short trousers with a satchel and cap. Then there was his most prized possession: his framed photograph of Jamie and Daisy.

  He sat for a moment wondering what he was going to do when he left the building. He knew he could get another job tomorrow, but who for? The tabloids were all racing each other into the gutter and he’d never wanted to work for one of the posh papers. To David, newspapers meant popular journalism, the kind that sold millions of copies and had the power to move people. Writing considered articles, full of analysis, for the Guardian or The Times, or even editing them, held no appeal for him.

  As he sat considering his future the phone buzzed one last time. Assuming it would be Logan he answered it brusquely. But it wasn’t. It was Suzan, the young reporter who showed so much promise.

  ‘Hello, David. I’ve just heard the news and I wanted to say we’re all sick as parrots.’ David knew it was impossible to keep secrets on a newspaper but he was startled all the same at the speed at which the news had travelled. ‘I know I speak for everyone in the newsroom when I say we admire you and what you’ve done with the paper. Not to put too fine a point on it, we’re scared shitless down here. Is it really definite?’

  ‘I’m afraid it is.’

  Clearly worried that she might be intruding on a private moment, Suzan seemed at a loss what to say next. Finally she added in a rush, shy and breathy, ‘I’d just like to say how much I’ve enjoyed working for you and to ask that, when you settle into whatever you do next, you could let me know if you need any reporters’ – she paused, embarrassed at sounding pushy – ‘because I’ve never worked for an editor I’ve had more respect for.’

  The undiluted admiration in her voice was almost his undoing. For the first time David found himself almost overcome with emotion. Journalism had been his life and he hated feeling that he might be throwing it away.