‘Firstly I want to go into a little detail about my background, so you understand the particular colour I bring to my articles. Obviously, I’m young’ – this got a big laugh, and Bernadette ascertained that the average age of her audience was probably well above forty – ‘I’m female, and I have a particular world view. It’s well thought out and it’s my own, and I’m fond of it.’ Here she glanced at Radley, who was beginning to smile. ‘So you should know that everything I write is tainted by who I am. I often decide what I’m going to write about a person before I interview them. It’s called having an “angle”. The Man Whisperer’s angle is as sneaky and nefarious as it sounds: I’m a lipsticked Eve, a friendly face with a filthy purpose, and I am out to lambaste any guy that signs up for it.’
The audience was silent, bewildered by the hostility in her voice. She could feel their uncertainty shimmering like a breaking wave. Her crisp English accent and harsh tones were not the norm. She hadn’t lost them yet; they were just confused. She hastened to reassure them, to guide them to understanding. She spoke eloquently of her dissatisfaction with telling stories about real-life men; she confessed that her infamous piece on President Wibawa was more about her than it was about him; she focused on gender politics and dissatisfaction. ‘I am sick of the inequalities that still exist. I am ashamed to be defined by terms that men dictate – the very word “feminism” was originated by a man!’
It was here that the booing began. ‘You’re forty years too late!’ called one disgruntled woman.
Bernadette tried to ignore her and the crushing hostility, but the noise entrenched her further in her own position, her excitable nature flaming with each taunt. ‘You’re fools if you don’t recognise it!’ she said, her voice ringing loud across the auditorium, a note of panic rising sharply. ‘We have been emancipated to the lauded rank of up-for-it bimbo sex toys—’
‘Speak for yourself!’ someone yelled.
‘I usually do speak for myself,’ Bernadette shouted back. ‘But you’ve paid money to come and listen to me speak, so listen!’
Several members of the audience got up out their chairs and began to leave. Bernadette felt hot tears stinging her eyes and willed herself not to cry, not to even snuffle. Her views were extreme and she was a defensive fundamentalist. She was a woman with an opinion, and she was on her own.
She looked round desperately, trying to find Tim’s face in the crowd. David was standing offstage, all colour drained from his flabby face, his worried jowls slack and weak. Elizabeth was for some reason still gazing rapturously up at her, undeterred. Radley was staring venomously at departing audience members, looking like he would hit them if he could.
‘I can’t be the only woman fed up with being called a “good sport” if I accommodate a man’s fantasy-girl persona, and considered lesser if I don’t live up to his raunchy ideal,’ she tried again, reasonably. ‘I say it’s time we stop whispering and start shouting!’
She stopped as she noticed David ascending the stage, pushed up the steps by Tim, who had miraculously appeared. David almost snatched the microphone from her trembling hand. ‘Thank you, thank you, Bernadette,’ he said shrilly, facing the audience. ‘We’re unfortunately running slightly short on time, so now would be a good moment to open discussion up to a question-and-answer format. I’m sure we’ll have lots of good questions.’ He thrust the microphone back at Bernadette and shaded his eyes with his hand, straining on tiptoes to find a raised hand in the audience. ‘Ah, yes! Yes, young lady with the blue sweater, what is your question?’
There was a pause and a shuffle as a runner delivered a microphone to the waiting blue-sweatered woman. ‘What about journalistic integrity?’ she asked upon receipt. ‘You’ve just said you make everything up. Why should we believe anything you say about anything?’ Her tone was a pompous gotcha, and Bernadette bristled, her heart still pounding rapidly.
‘I didn’t say I make everything up! What I said was, what I write is corrupted by who I am, and that often I work in my own assumptions. I ask leading questions, I tease and flirt, and often I intentionally mould answers to fit my view. That’s not the same as making everything up. I never misquote a man – if he’s stupid enough to say it, I print it, that’s all!’
David laughed nervously. ‘I think Bernadette is joking with us a bit; it’s that dry British sense of humour. We, of course, have a great editing team at Squire; no one has assumptions there—’
‘But her assumption is that all men are raunchy pigs?’ asked blue sweater, clinging on to the microphone longer than her turn.
‘No, no!’ laughed David.
‘Not all of them,’ Bernadette answered glumly into her own mic.
‘Next question!’ called David desperately, pointing to a hand in the sea of faces.
A middle-aged woman with soft curling hair stood up and said, ‘I kind of hear what you’re saying. But in all honesty, I didn’t know this was a political thing. I just came here to see if you could get me laid. Do you have any tips on that … please?’
‘Probably not ones you’d care to hear,’ said Bernadette, softening at the woman’s tone. She pointed to David, and shrugged. ‘I’m sleeping with him.’
There was a gasp from the audience, a noise of general squeamish disgust, and a call of ‘You’re sleeping with your editor? Whore!’
‘Next question!’ yelled David, practically crying.
The runner dutifully delivered the microphone to a painfully thin girl with a pinched face. ‘Yeah, I just want to know if you think you’re all that,’ she said, gawking aggressively at Bernadette.
‘If I think I’m all what?’
‘Hotter than the rest of us. Do you think you’re fucking Beyoncé or something?’
Bernadette stared in quiet loathing at the woman, while the room waited with bated breath for her answer. She couldn’t believe that this was what she had been reduced to. ‘Sometimes I feel attractive and sometimes I don’t,’ she answered evenly, her voice lifeless now. ‘Do I think I’m hotter than everyone in the audience? No, statistically that’s unlikely. Do I think I’m hotter than you, as an individual? Yes.’ The audience gasped and she heard David squeak with despair beside her.
‘Oh no you did not!’ cried the thin woman, enraged.
‘My question to you is: does it matter?’ asked Bernadette, as the poor runner tried to wrestle the microphone away from the angry guest.
‘Next question! Next question, please!’ David implored. Bernadette heard his voice lighten considerably as he said, ‘Yes! Yes! Man in the front row. If I’m not mistaken, it’s Radley Blake!’ He was obviously relieved to land on a friendly face, although his cheer was short-lived as he noticed the dark intensity of Radley’s eyes. ‘Er … er, Radley Blake, ladies and gentlemen!’ he choked out, as the runner puffed over to Radley.
The audience was aflutter, enlivened by the appearance of such eligibility in their midst. Those who recognised his name seemed to telepathically communicate his net worth and physical attractiveness to the unenlightened. Scores of women jostled to get a good look, and any camera phones not yet in operation were whipped out and readied. Bernadette was humiliated on their behalf, cursing the dopes of her gender.
She forced her eyes to meet Radley’s. He was waiting patiently for her attention, quite still and serious, and scowling slightly. ‘Bernadette,’ he said into the microphone, his voice low and deliberate, ‘will you marry me?’
5
Bernadette sat alone on the bed of the green room suite, head in her hands. Her long dark hair fell forward around her face, loose and tumbling. She focused on the sound of her breath and the sensation of moving this life energy through her body.
She was not one to be easily overcome. Even in the depths of despair she was happy to be alive; she could appreciate the beauty of her skin and the comfort of her environment. The hotel was luxurious and handsome, and she was lucky to be sitting in that room at that moment. She was lucky to have a brain and a body. The past
meant nothing and the future didn’t exist. Right now, she was clean, sane and calm; she was unhurt, educated and young. She warmed her body with her breath, inhaling slowly and exhaling through her mouth, making a small puffing sound with each count.
There was a knock at the door, and she heard the whirring sound of a key card allowing access. She looked up as Tim entered, her eyes still raw from crying.
‘You did this to me,’ she said unfairly, falling backwards. He said nothing, but came to lie next to her on the bed. He wrapped his body protectively around her, and she felt their legs instinctively entwine. He buried his face in her hair, and they lay still, and quiet, and so close. His heart was beating under a layer of thin pinstripe, and she basked in his soft-cotton, soapy scent. They lay like gorged lions on warm stone.
‘Aren’t you going to speak?’ she asked, after a long silence. The moment was bliss, and yet nothing could lift the dull indifference, the dead weight, the grey cloud.
He moved slowly, pulling his body back so they could see each other clearly. She knew she could have him then if she moved at that moment; he would be hers if she kissed or touched or sighed the right way. But her body refused to be roused from its current lethargy. She was alive, yes, but not as alive as before. Something hurt.
‘What made you do that?’ he asked.
‘I’m still not entirely sure what it is I’ve done. I said some words, that’s all. I stood in front of some people and said some words. And I could feel their judgement like a bullet. Their hatred pierced me, and now I know it’s the end, even though I don’t know why.’
Tim shook his head as if he were trying to rewrite history. ‘I really think you must be a bit crazy,’ he said, not unkindly.
‘I’m not crazy,’ she responded hastily. ‘I’m just lyrical.’
He laughed, the kind of laugh that precedes tears, and pulled her close again, hiding his face once more in the crook of her neck, under the cover of her soft hair. She felt his lips brush against her skin, near her sensitive nape, as he spoke.
‘What was that?’ he asked.
‘I’ve told you I don’t know! I don’t know what capital crime I’m supposed to have committed—’
‘Not that. What was that with Radley? What was that?’
‘Oh,’ she gasped softly.
When Radley had asked her to marry him, for one crazy moment she had wanted to say yes. She’d wanted to scream the word into the microphone and deafen the hateful crowd with her affirmative. His eyes were locked desperately on hers, but instead of his usual mesmeric mastery, he seemed … vulnerable. Radley Blake looking uncertain was nothing she cared to see, and so to block out the image, she moved. What followed was a blur, as she moved quite rapidly.
She shoved the microphone at David and strode off the stage. She pushed past people and fell through a doorway. She ran down a passageway and leapt up some stairs. She careered down corridors and stumbled on her heels. Finally she found the deserted green room, where the monitor still displayed the empty stage. She had rested on the bed, and remembered to breathe.
‘I don’t know what that was,’ she replied.
‘Well, that’s a bad sign.’ He pulled back again so he could look at her. His face was agitated behind his spectacles.
‘Why?’
‘That means it’s real. If it was nothing, you’d do your dismissive thing – you’d say he’s madly in love with you and can’t help himself, or you’d say he’s a crazy attention-seeking lunatic and make fun of him. But to not know!’
The numb feeling began to ease, to be replaced with a gruesome air of wrongdoing. ‘That means it’s real,’ she heard him say again. ‘That means it’s real.’
‘Why is everyone so keen for me to have a definite opinion?’ she asked.
‘Because you are opinion! You are opinion itself!’
‘Well, I sound great,’ she sighed, sarcastically.
‘You are great,’ he said, too low. She knew that now was the time to lean in and claim him. He was ripe and unprotected and spiralling in free fall. It made her think that what she had done on the stage must have been very bad indeed. Tim was unflappable. He’d climbed mountains and trekked through rainforests. But now, clearly, he was unnerved.
‘Is this the end of my career?’
He looked surprised that she had asked; not quite offended, but certainly caught off guard.
‘No, no, don’t think like that. There’ll be damage limitation, of course, but that’s what I’m here for. Nothing is ever final. Asking you to speak was a mistake, I see that, and you were right to say it’s my fault. It was a bad suggestion on my part and I’m sorry.’
As he spoke, they had instinctively uncoiled their bodies, separating and standing apart. He was blushing.
Suddenly the whirring sound of an access key card rumbled through the door, and David entered without knocking. He was beside himself, frazzled and sweat-drenched, and wringing his hands in misery.
‘Bernadette!’ he cried. ‘What was that? Why did you say those awful things about yourself and the magazine? I just don’t understand the sabotage, the self-sabotage! Why? When you had them eating out of the palm of your hand, when you can make people do anything you want! Why would you throw it all away?’
‘Let’s calm down,’ said Tim, coldly. ‘These kind of things are never as bad as they seem. It’s entirely containable.’
‘It is?’ said David, a drowning man grasping at a life raft. ‘Containable? You think so? I don’t know how the magazine is going to feel about this. It’s most unfortunate, but it was really was quite libellous—’
‘David,’ said Tim, ‘you are the magazine. Come on, now.’
‘I’m not! I’m not! I’m just the West Coast editor, I have to answer to—’
‘Are you saying you don’t want the world exclusive? Radley Blake has never given an in-depth before. And there’s no such thing as bad publicity, you know. The magazine isn’t going to want to abandon their Man Whisperer at this point. That’s just bad business, David.’
David struggled, floundering like a line-caught tuna, his pasty face a tragicomic mask of agony. ‘But will Blake even want to do the interview?’ he gasped. ‘He was there! He heard everything – he heard her say how she likes to make a fool out of the men she interviews, for God’s sake!’
‘He asked her to marry him,’ said Tim pointedly, as though he were talking to a simpleton.
‘That doesn’t mean he’ll do the interview!’
‘He’ll do it,’ said Bernadette quietly, an authority on the subject. ‘David, I’m guessing Squire will still want the Radley Blake interview. I’m hoping Tim will be able to work some magic and salvage my career. But I totally understand if you want to stop dating me. I wasn’t very kind to you up there. It was unintentional, a reflex, but that’s no excuse. Sorry.’
David looked like a weasel in a trap, his eyes searching anxiously for escape, his brain working through possibilities. After an anxious few seconds, he gulped peevishly. ‘Well, it was quite hurtful. I just don’t understand it. It isn’t like you …’
‘David, I—’ she began, but he held up a silencing hand.
‘But,’ he said, smiling a martyred smile, ‘I’m willing to stand by you. I don’t think I’ll ever understand what made you go crazy up there, but you’re my girl, and the rest of the world can go to hell!’ He looked like he expected applause and a parade for his chivalry, and Bernadette could sense Tim stiffening with distaste.
‘Okay,’ said Bernadette, who would have resigned herself to far greater punishment. Clearly, as shocked as David was at her behaviour, it would take something pretty significant to make him give up the frequent sex and omelettes.
‘Do you want to have dinner with me and Elizabeth tonight?’ Tim asked, turning to her. The idea of leaving her to David’s overbearing forgiveness was clearly too much for him. She nodded and smiled her thanks. ‘We’ll just leave you to … freshen up a bit,’ he added, gesturing vaguely to her face, wh
ich reminded her that she had been wearing stage make-up and crying hard. ‘Come on, David.’
She was grateful when they left. Strangely, the only person she wanted to see was Elizabeth. Elizabeth reminded her of childhood Easters in England. Elizabeth was newborn lambs frolicking by hedgerows, daffodils, and hessian, and marbled ink-blown eggs. Elizabeth was a woman who had decent thoughts, and spoke sense.
One Easter, when Bernadette was about seven or eight years old, she had spent a long time decorating an Easter bonnet; it was a school project, and there was to be a parade. She painstakingly sewed a pretty yellow flower trim around her hat, and added a wide blue silk ribbon as fastener.
Young Bernadette presented her effort somewhat timidly to her father, who placed the bonnet on her head and tied the blue ribbon beneath her chin, peering at her under the brim as he did so. ‘You know, I can tell how proud you are of this bonnet,’ he said, smiling. ‘Women place great stock in silly things like this. Who can sew the best piddly flowers. Who can bake the most ridiculous fondant fancies. You’re starting young, aren’t you? You’re making of yourself the perfect little doll – an accomplished plaything with artful prevarications, your plumes and feathers designed to attract the men around you. But wait till you see what it is men really want from you! Wait until you see the arena you’ll actually have to compete in. You’re in for a shock. It’s nothing to do with daisies and cupcakes, believe me!’ He laughed. ‘Now, go and find your mother. She’ll no doubt marvel at your tarted-up cuteness, and tell you everything you want to hear. She’ll feed the delusion for you. But remember, you’ll get nothing but the truth from me. Run on, little doll.’
The morning of the school Easter parade, Bernadette looked around her at the other girls, girls in their best party dresses, with decorated bonnets demonstrating various levels of skill, girls who were smiling and actively trying to look pretty, waving and smiling at the mothers and fathers who watched them adoringly. She felt as if she was in a carnival of fools. She tore her bonnet from her head in the middle of the parade and actually stomped on it in rage, causing several of her classmates to cry, and her teacher to condemn her forever as an actual heathen.
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