‘Some of us may not want to,’ the boy with the open collar remarked.
‘A community needs a voice and, at the Mercury, we try to provide it,’ Duncan said, careful to avoid the ‘losing its voice losing its heart’ analogy after his encounter in the spring with the daughter of a sign-language user.
‘My dad used to get it,’ a girl said. ‘But he stopped when you banned an ad for a BNP rally.’ Duncan looked at the girl, whose pasty face and flaxen hair took on a sinister hue. ‘He said it was censorship.’
‘For the greater good,’ Duncan replied, remembering his battles not just with Trevor Vale, the advertising manager, for whom scruples belonged to papers with healthy balance sheets, but with Ken Newbold, a staunch libertarian, who held that extremists had the right to damn themselves from their own mouths.
‘Aren’t the BNP part of the community?’ asked a solemn-looking boy.
‘Individually, of course,’ Duncan said, ‘but I’d maintain that, collectively, they’re out to destroy everything community is about.’ He wondered whether the two Asian pupils might wish to add something, but both stood studiedly impassive. ‘In the end, it’s my job as editor to take the tough decisions. And I hope that you might be able to persuade your father to give us another chance,’ he said to the flaxen-haired girl.
‘Like he listens to me!’
He ushered the pupils upstairs to the boardroom where, because there were too few chairs, he suggested that some sit at the table and the rest on the floor. ‘Perhaps we should work on the principle of ladies first?’ he said to three boys who had scrambled for seats.
‘That’s sexist,’ one of the girls said, plumping herself down on the carpet.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realise,’ Duncan replied. Catching sight of his father’s portrait, he felt a surge of sympathy for the man whose old-school courtesies, however self-serving, had made for a gentler world. With a glance of irritation at Pete Daniels who, having ceded responsibility for his charges, had wandered over to the window to check his texts, Duncan outlined the history of Mercury House.
‘It was built in the 1920s by my grandfather to accommodate both the offices and the presses. Back then he had a staff of around forty: reporters, secretaries, printers and so on. Every inch of the premises was occupied. The foundry and presses were in the basement (nowadays the paper’s printed off-site). On the ground floor, where you came in, were the switchboard and mailroom, the advertising department’ – he swallowed the words for fear of a further challenge – ‘and storage space for the huge rolls of newsprint. On the first floor, as well as this boardroom, there was the reading room where we still house the archives. On the second floor, which we’re about to visit, were the reporters’ room and the editorial offices (that’s the only area that’s remained much the same), and the case room where the linotype operators set the page. On the third floor was the art department, along with a bookbinding and design studio, which was a separate business. On the top floor was a small executive flat where the editor could stay overnight.’ He refused to admit to these children that it had become his permanent home. ‘At the very top were the turrets. You can’t have missed them; they’re a local landmark. Any ideas what they were for?’ He held the silence for longer than was comfortable. ‘Pigeons.’
Hoping for a response, Duncan had to settle for a repetition. ‘Pigeons?’ asked a gawky boy with green-tinged teeth.
‘Yes. Don’t forget, in the Twenties phones were scarce. Pigeons were used to file stories till the end of the decade.’
‘You mean they trained them to speak?’ the boy asked, to general derision.
‘Sure,’ one of his companions replied. ‘They said: “I am a retard.”’ The second burst of laughter prompted Pete Daniels to look up briefly from his phone and utter an ineffectual ‘Hush!’.
‘No,’ Duncan said gently. ‘Reporters would take them to football matches and send them back with copy in cylinders attached to their legs.’
‘Didn’t they bite?’ The gawky boy’s attempt to redeem himself led only to further jeers.
‘The birds’ legs, dumbo, not the reporters’,’ a pug-nosed boy interjected. ‘Can we climb up to the top?’
‘I’m afraid not. The staircases aren’t safe. After the pigeons were axed – not literally,’ he added, seeing the Asian girl’s widening eyes, ‘we used one of the turrets as a dark room, but now we no longer have a photographic department it’s fallen into disrepair.’
‘Was that where the pervert worked?’ asked a girl with a disconcertingly deep voice.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Duncan asked.
‘The paedo,’ the girl replied, as even the most listless faces around her grew animated. ‘My mum said he was done for taking porno pictures of kids and he hanged himself before his trial.’
‘His name was Bert Ponsonby and he was an outstanding photographer,’ Duncan said, determined to give him both his identity and his due. ‘No matter where you sent him, he instinctively knew how to get the best shot – even group portraits that can look so dreary.’
‘But he was a paedo,’ she insisted.
‘He had a weakness,’ Duncan replied to the girl, whose doe eyes and full lips would undoubtedly have played to it. ‘I’m really not happy discussing it, but if gossip is still doing the rounds after twenty years you ought to know the facts.’
‘Why?’ the pug-nosed boy asked.
‘Because there’s more than one side to every story,’ Duncan replied, taken aback. ‘And Bert’s … Ponsonby’s story’ – he quickly added the surname for fear of sounding complicit – ‘is a constant reminder to me of that. It’s true that Bert took photos of girls – young women – in inappropriate poses.’
‘You mean like this?’ One of the first boys to grab a chair now leant back in it, with his legs splayed and a finger inserted in his pouting mouth.
‘Something like that,’ Duncan said, above the wolf whistles. ‘The vast majority of them were in their late teens and early twenties, but a couple were underage. Up in the dark room, he was able to develop the pictures undisturbed. One girl – or it might have been her parents, I forget – contacted the police. After a lengthy investigation they decided not to press charges.’ He turned to Bert’s principal accuser. ‘That’s where your mother was wrong, there would have been no trial. I kept Bert on. In retrospect it was a mistake, but I accepted the police line that he hadn’t coerced – let alone, interfered with – any of the girls. Indeed, given his medical condition’ – he gulped – ‘that wouldn’t have been possible. But there was another paper in Francombe at the time, the Citizen, which liked nothing more than to disparage the Mercury. They covered the story in the most scurrilous way, insinuating that we knew and even condoned Bert’s … Ponsonby’s actions. An unholy alliance of parents, feminists, church groups and the National Front held a series of protests outside the building, haranguing my staff as they came to work. Worst of all, the Citizen published Bert’s address and a gang of thugs firebombed his house. The only person in at the time was his mother.’
‘Was she killed?’ a moon-faced girl asked, in between chewing a hank of hair.
‘Not in the fire, no, but she had a heart attack and died in hospital a week later. The morning after her funeral, Bert drank bleach.’
‘Then he really was a weirdo,’ said the girl with the jelly bracelets.
‘It wasn’t for pleasure!’ Duncan replied in amazement. ‘Quite the opposite. There were plenty of his mother’s pills in the bathroom that he could have swallowed, but he seems to have wanted to suffer.’
‘That’s what I said. A weirdo!’
The conversation having taken an unforeseen turn, Duncan was eager to move on. He led the pupils to the second floor where he introduced them to the reporters, the lack of response to his suggestion that they might have seen them around town a reflection less of the children’s apathy than of the reporters’ increasing confinement to their desks. His assertion that staffing cuts had resulted
in a leaner, closer-knit team was challenged when one of the boys noticed the Readers’ Response chart pinned to the wall.
‘What’s this?’ he asked.
‘It’s a record of the number of letters, phone calls and emails each of the news team have received,’ Brian said.
‘Who’s Rowan?’
‘Rowena!’ she corrected him sharply. ‘The token woman.’
‘You’ve not got half as many ticks as Ken and Brian.’
‘That’s because I’m not given half as many big stories,’ she replied, poised to break ranks.
‘Or else because young Brian here gets all his friends to write in,’ Ken said quickly.
‘That’s libel,’ Brian said. ‘And I’ll be calling you lot as witnesses.’ Some of the children looked worried. ‘But then our venerable news editor knows all about libel, don’t you, Ken?’
‘Private joke,’ Ken said, looking unamused.
Several of the boys gravitated to the sports desk where Jake, with rare loquaciousness, expounded his pet theory that sports journalists had a unique insight into human nature at its most primal. Meanwhile, two of the girls were inspecting Humphrey. Brian lost no time in regaling them with the bear’s history, before offering to take a picture of one of them sitting on its lap. ‘Though you’re wasting your time, sweetheart. You’d have more fun sitting on me.’
Her frosty stare triggered Duncan’s fears that Brian had confirmed the paper’s reputation for depravity.
‘It stinks!’ she shrieked, jumping away.
‘Behave, Dawn!’ Pete Daniels said, finally putting down his phone.
‘It stinks of puke.’
‘It’s old,’ Stewart said, as Ken looked away. ‘We keep it on for sentimental reasons.’
‘Gross!’ Dawn said, frenziedly rubbing her face.
Duncan strove to rescue Ken from the shame that was visibly engulfing him. ‘I don’t want to sound boastful,’ he said, ‘but at the Mercury we see ourselves as the first line of defence for local democracy. Who’s going to hold the Council and the police and big business to account if we don’t? Not the national press with its metropolitan bias and celebrity culture. Not Internet bloggers who are subject to little or no scrutiny. Not the large media groups whose loyalty is to their shareholders rather than their readers. To take one example, Ken here spent two months undercover as a porter at Rosecroft psychiatric hospital in order to expose its brutal treatment.’
‘Didn’t they realise?’ asked a boy in a jacket two sizes too small for him.
‘Realise what?’ Ken replied.
‘Who you were.’
‘As far as they knew, I was on the staff.’
‘So you got two pay packets?’ the boy said. ‘Cool.’
‘The commitment of our journalists is the Mercury’s greatest resource and, if I may say so, it’s also one of Francombe’s. Ken’s been with us for over forty years. He joined the paper straight from school, just like Brian.’
‘Are you going to stay here that long?’ Dawn asked Brian.
‘They’d have to nail me down by the … by the fingertips.’
‘Brian’s going to be whisked away to Fleet Street,’ Ken said. ‘You’ll see, in two years’ time he’ll have his own column in the Sun and be hosting makeover programmes on Sky.’
‘At least I won’t be a sad old alkie drinking to forget where his life fell apart.’
‘You must have noticed a great many changes in your time here, Ken?’ Duncan interjected.
‘The journalists who were here when I arrived were giants, not like the pygmies they send us now.’ Ken glared at Brian. ‘My first news editor was a man called Frank Brocklehurst. He knew every street – every house – in Francombe. He was respected by one and all from the local villains to Lord Cradwyck at Seacombe Court. A hard drinker and chain smoker, he’d sit at his desk with his hip flask and his packet of Players. He used his typewriter as an ashtray. Clouds of smoke would rise up as he pounded the keys. I thought it was magic. I still do.’
‘What about Health and Safety?’ a soft-spoken girl asked.
‘That’s right, love. What about them? What the bloody hell about them?’
Ken pushed through the clustered pupils and left the room. Brian lifted an invisible glass to his lips, provoking a few nervous giggles.
‘As you see, the news desk is nothing if not lively,’ Duncan said. ‘Creative tension’s the name of the game. I don’t know if any of you are considering a career in journalism, or if anything you’ve seen today may have encouraged you…’ His voice trailed off in embarrassment.
‘How much do you get paid?’ the deep-voiced girl asked.
‘It’s not a profession you go into for the money.’
‘What do you go into it for then?’ the boy with the green teeth asked.
‘Job satisfaction. The chance to make a difference. I’m sure that Mr Daniels would say the same about teaching.’
Mr Daniels looked unconvinced.
‘But how much do you get paid?’ the girl insisted.
‘It all depends. Top Fleet Street columnists can earn fortunes. Salary levels at the Mercury are more modest. If you start straight from school, it’s around £12,000.’
‘Is that all?’ one of the boys asked. Two of his companions spontaneously edged away from Brian, who stared at his feet.
‘Maybe those of you who are putting together the features page for next month will feel differently. I’m really looking forward to seeing what you come up with. But there are other ways to get involved. I’d encourage you all to send us letters.’
‘On what?’ the girl with the jelly bracelets asked.
‘Anything you feel passionate about.’
‘Then you can write about Bilbo,’ said a boy with a prominent Adam’s apple, before playfully punching his undersized neighbour.
‘Matters you think are of public interest. We get far too few letters from anyone under twenty.’
‘We get far too few from anyone under fifty,’ Brian said, in a vain attempt to restore his standing.
‘How much do you pay for them?’ the deep-voiced girl asked doggedly.
‘We don’t. You get the pleasure of seeing your name in print and knowing that you’re contributing to the community.’
‘Why? We’re not on probation,’ one of the boys said. Duncan forced a laugh, breaking off abruptly when the boy’s affronted expression showed that he was serious.
The visit over, Duncan escorted the pupils to the main entrance where several put on headphones as if needing the security of their self-regulated worlds. As he returned to his office, his fears for the future extended far beyond that of the Mercury. Age might have warped his perspective and memory his perceptions, but the children seemed so inert, devoid of the hope and enthusiasm that had marked his own adolescence. Depressed by the encounter, he was determined to do everything he could to motivate Jamie, the occasion presenting itself barely an hour later, when he drove to Francis Preston for the parents’ evening.
On his arrival at the school two years before, Jamie had been horrified to learn about the Mercury visits, making him swear never to invite groups from his year, a vow from which he trusted that he would be released before it was put to the test. Meanwhile, Jamie had even tried to deter him from attending tonight, maintaining that ‘Mum should come on her own, since she’s the one who sees me do my homework’. To Duncan’s relief, Linda had demurred and was waiting for him now at the school gates. Apologising for the traffic, he kissed her cheek, a greeting that seven years after he had lost the right to greater intimacies still felt forced.
A sense of regret enveloped him, as it did for the first few minutes of every meeting with his former wife. He was grateful that Linda, who had once been so attuned to his slightest mood, now seemed oblivious to his distress.
‘You’re looking well,’ he said, with a pang of guilt. It was undeniable that, despite the strain of looking after Rose, she had blossomed since the divorce.
; ‘You might have made more of an effort,’ she said quietly. ‘That jacket should have gone to Oxfam years ago.’
‘I offered, if you remember.’
‘I’m sorry. Forget I mentioned it.’
It was not just his wardrobe he had offered to change in a last-ditch attempt to keep her from leaving. He had promised to spend less time at the paper and at Ridgemount and even, with a resolve that she had discounted, to enrol on a basic DIY course.
‘We’ve both tried, Duncan,’ she had said. ‘But it’s not working.’
‘I’ve not tried hard enough.’
‘It’s not you that’s the problem. It’s us.’
He knew, of course, that she was right. He had been told as much when they announced their engagement, not only by his mother and sister but by impartial observers like his Cambridge writing partner, Angus Carmichael, who described them as ‘the original odd couple: he’s very mot juste and she’s very just a mo’, a jibe that had sounded even more cruel when he was forced to spell it out to Linda. She, however, shrugged it off with her usual good grace, suggesting that they nickname each other ‘Justin’ and ‘Mo’, a riposte that had even impressed Angus. She was so beautiful and passionate and full of life that he was astounded when she accepted his proposal. Although she refused to admit it, he was convinced that she had been influenced by her mother, for whom marriage to the editor of the Mercury promised the prestige and security denied to the owner of a seafront souvenir shop. So the reality of his sixteen-hour days and permanent financial worries, not to mention his Klinefelter Syndrome, must have struck her a severe blow.
A stronger and more self-confident man or simply a more aggressive one – the KS at work again – would have fought harder to save his marriage, but his overriding desire, as he explained, was that she should be happy.
‘You’re the kindest man in the world,’ she said. ‘You’d better watch out; you’ll be fighting off the women once they know you’re back on the market,’ a prospect that would have alarmed him had he not found it risible.
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