by Liam Livings
'I'll do unannounced spot checks to see if you're keeping up the grooming regime. I don't want any of this moping about because of that man. There will be other men. There will be other sources of ideas for your stories. Look at today, that cashier with the shirts is due a book of his own surely?'
And he had been. I'd made a note of what he'd said on the Tube home.
Chapter 26
'Darling, they've called me, saying they want to meet me at the office, to go over some things about the columns. Don't panic, but I think we might have been rumbled.' It was Clara-Bell. She'd turned up at my door at stupid o'clock one morning.
I scratched my head and let her in. She bustled about, making us both strong coffee and talking at twenty to the dozen about her editor, Jenny Sinatra-Hamilton, and how she'd never had cause to question anything, so she didn't know where this had come from.
'Does this mean I've got to get dressed?' I sipped my coffee standing opposite her in the kitchen.
She'd stopped flapping quite so much by this point, but was still talking much faster than normal. 'I think it's best. Just throw something on. Something smart. Imagine you're teaching again. This afternoon she said. I couldn't put her off any longer.'
As we waited for the taxi she'd booked ('Darling, I'm over sixty, I said to Jenny if I was coming in to see her I couldn't possibly be expected to get public transport, at my age, so she agreed to a taxi if it would get me in to see her today'). She explained that Jenny had been calling and e-mailing her regularly for the last few weeks, at first politely asking her to come to the office, and then demanding that she must, or they would cease payments, and terminate her contract. Jenny hadn't ever given much detail about what she wanted to see Clara-Bell about, and had only ever mentioned 'some irregularities' and also 'a few routine things to go over', which had confused us both the more we discussed it.
'What's the worst that can happen? They find out and fire me.' She looked at me as we approached the square in central London where the magazine publishing house was, just off Oxford Street.
'Me, it's me they're firing. All right for you with your glitzy sagas and back list as long as my arm. What about me, how am I meant to pay the mortgage, how am I meant to eat? This has been my bread and butter, every month knowing it's coming in. If they take this away I'm royally fucked.'
She put her hand on my arm and squeezed it gently. 'Darling, it won't come to that. I coped when The Colonel died of a heart attack just as we were about to enjoy our retirement together. I've coped through a war, and I'll certainly cope through this. What you need to remember is I've known dear Jenny since she was a tea girl at this place. Who do you think got her the work experience in the first place?' She tapped the side of her nose. 'The key is being prepared. Are you prepared?'
War? She wasn't old enough, was she? 'What's our story again?'
She went over our story one more time as the taxi pulled into the square and stopped in front of the Art Deco building with a revolving door and four floors high lobby. 'On account please. Ladies Weekly Magazine. Jenny Sinatra-Hamilton.'
I noticed the meter on the taxi as we got out. During the journey I'd thought it was showing the time. Only now did I realise it was actually almost a hundred pounds. 'Did you see how much?'
'Come on darling, no time to dawdle. We've got your job to save, and some serious flannelling to pull off.' She strode into the lobby and said, 'Clara-Bell Clements for Jenny Sinatra-Hamilton please.' She stood at the reception desk, drumming her long red nails loudly, adjusting her makeup in a small mirror she'd produced from her voluminous handbag.
A short, mousy blonde woman in her mid forties appeared in a matching white skirt and jacket, edged with black. Jackie Onassis would have been proud. 'Clara-Bell, it's been so long!' Air kisses all round. 'And who do we have here?' Jenny looked me up and down.
I felt relieved I'd dug out my smart dark jeans, posh jacket from H&M and a flowery shirt from Marks and Spencer's, rounded off with some pointy brown shoes which were so sharp, according to Clara-Bell on the journey, I could have split an atom with them.
Clara-Bell smiled widely, put her arms around me, and Jenny. 'This, is Michael Mountsford. My associate. He's a writer.'
Clara-Bell swept us up the stairs and into Jenny's office, where she shouted orders for hot drinks.
Jenny looked at me, then Clara-Bell. 'I am awfully sorry. It was just Clara-Bell I wanted to see. You will have to wait outside, I'm afraid. Just ask one of the girls, they'll get you a magazine to read. I'm sure one of our titles will be interesting for a man.' She looked me up and down, then turned to Clara-Bell.
'Sorry, Jenny, old sport, but that won't do. He's staying with me, or I'm not taking the meeting. As I said, he's my associate. And he's in the trade too, as I've said. He writes all sort of articles for various magazines, and is heavily involved in the education sector too. He's a teacher by background, you see.' She smiled at Jenny. 'Now, what seems to be the problem? I like a trip up the West End as much as the next person, but I do have writing to get on with. I'm at that tricky stage of my current novel, where the end is in sight, but I'm not quite sure exactly how to get there, and I'm hoping my characters will steer me through. You understand don't you, Michael?'
'Oh yes, I know exactly the stage you mean, Clara-Bell. I'm very familiar with it.' I smiled at Jenny, who smiled back weakly.
Jenny looked at her notepad, then pulled her hair behind her ears. 'As I said in my e-mails, it's just a few usual things to go through. Finance got a bit worried when I said I'd given you a contract without even meeting you. Said you might be some monster with three eyes or something.' She paused and looked at us both, before turning back to her notepad.
Clara-Bell sipped her black coffee from the tiny cup. 'Any problems with the letters? Deadlines missed, advice given incorrectly, not in line with the magazine's ethos maybe?'
'Oh no, none of that. I'm very happy with the letters. In fact we've had more letters and e-mails to the problem page since you've been responding to them than we've had in years. Of course, I wouldn't tell Mary Martyn, the old agony aunt, that.' She laughed nervously. 'In fact I was thinking about asking if you'd be prepared to respond to four or five more each week - make it into a DPS of your letters piece.'
'DPS?' I mouthed at Clara-Bell.
'More money?' Clara-Bell peered over her reading glasses at Jenny then signed two pages with up turned palms, mouthing double page spread at me.
Jenny looked up at Clara-Bell, laughed quietly. 'Of course, we'd revise your contract to reflect the extra work. Same deadlines though, every week. I have tried, but we can't move the print deadlines, although goodness knows I wish I could sometimes.' Another nervous laugh.
'I'm sure that could be arranged, couldn't it, Michael?'
'Oh yes, that sounds like a sensible development of the problems page. With the contract revisions of course.' I shot a look back to Clara-Bell who allowed herself a small smile back to me.
'Come along, Jenny, do get to the point, darling.'
She looked back at her notepad. 'Personnel - well I still call it that, but I think now it's HR. Finally they've dragged themselves into the twenty-first century.' She giggled to herself.
We didn't giggle back.
Jenny continued, 'Yes, HR have said I need to review our business relationship and suggested meeting to discuss terms. At the start you were getting me out of a fix, but now, really, I'm afraid we need to put you on the normal freelancer rate. And of course, there's always plenty of freelance work other than the column we could throw your way. It's less per day, but more days, so overall you'd probably be the same, if you want the extra work that is. Swings and roundabouts. But I'm afraid it would have to be at the normal rate. They said if I wasn't happy I could, well, if we weren't happy, it could all be ended amicably still. It's all to do with governance or finance or agency regulations or something. She did explain it to me, but I forget. So ... ' She looked at Clara-Bell hopefully.
Clara-Bell looked at me. 'Michael, what do you think to that? On the freelancers' rota of the Shining Brighter Media Empire. At a lower rate though.'
I looked at Jenny. 'Swings and roundabouts. How many other magazines does Shining Brighter publish?'
'Now, let me see, there's ... ' she counted on her fingers, muttering under her breath. 'Nine. There's nine titles. We do some men's magazines too, did you know? There's one which is a mixture of men's fashion and men's things - you know, cars, computers, that sort of thing. It's marvellous I'm told. Hubby loves it. Can't wait until I bring him a copy home. Well, he used to - now he has it on his pad thingy. Why do you ask?'
Clara-Bell replied, 'Just wondering what other freelance opportunities there might be for a good problems page letter writer.'
'Oh, yes, Person … I mean, HR, said they need some form of identification, a passport, driving licence perhaps. If you're to be on our rota of approved freelancers. Would you happen to have that on you, perhaps?'
'Jenny, darling. The columns. What about those? The topics we've, I mean, I've been doing, how are they going down with the readership? Do you ever do those things, what are they called?' She waved her hands vaguely in the air. 'Readership surveys, you know, ask the readers what they want, test what they read in previous editions, I understand it's all done online now.' She caught my eye.
'Marvellous. They all tested very well. I was so pleased. I had gone out on a bit of a limb asking you to step in for me, you know.' Jenny looked at her lap.
'And there was me thinking I was getting you out of a terrible fix. I'll remember that next time, Jenny darling. I will remember that one. It's noted.' She patted her head theatrically, her rings glistened in the light.
'Oh, no, sorry. Of course, you were helping me. But it was a risk. I mean, our readership is a bit less … I mean, a bit more … you know. Well it's in a different demographic box from the one you're perhaps in.'
'Charmed I'm sure, Jenny. You just wait until you're in this box. It comes to us all, darling. I remember when you were in the seventeen and fresh faced just out of college box. And now look at you. Haven't you done marvellously?'
'Well. It could have been much worse, I'll admit.' She smiled at Clara-Bell.
'So is that more of the columns, less - or should I say fewer.' Clara-Bell looked at me and I nodded. 'Fewer columns, or just more of the same please? Sorry Jenny I don't mean to rush you, but I do have a story to dive back into, you do understand, darling.'
Jenny looked at her notebook. 'It's more of the same. Yes, that would be perfect. Oh, so are you able to give me your passport or driving licence, if it's not too much bother, and I'll get HR to post the freelance contract to you if that's all right.'
'Wonderful. Are we done?' Clara-Bell stood, looking at me, so I stood.
'Not quite. There's just one tiny little thing I wanted to speak to you about, if that's all right?'
Clara-Bell sat theatrically slowly. I followed her lead, crossing my legs to show my atom-splitting shoes better.
'I was looking through the documents you sent and, I mean, I don't even know how to do this, but one of the work experience girls told me, like I said, I don't even really know what it means, but I did say I'd ask you, when HR found out. They always do find out don't they - HR, no matter what it is, they're there, lurking about in the background. Anyway, the Word documents say their author is someone called Simon. So I said I'd ask what that was about. Sorry, Michael, this must be terribly tedious for you. Which reminds me, why is it you're here again?'
Clara-Bell looked at me, then to Jenny and explained the entire thing. No lies, full disclosure, before embellishing slightly on my writing credits to date, adding a few extra schools I was working with, and the odd fictitious published novel here and there.
'But, this is fraud.' Jenny began pacing up and down the room, her side of the desk. 'Or stealing. It's something. It is certainly something. I've been paying you.' She looked at Clara-Bell. 'But you've been doing all the work?' She turned to me.
'It's not stealing, because I've given him all the money. Is it fraud? I suppose technically it is, but as you said, you've no complaints about the work, and you've actually just offered Michael more.'
'HR and Finance are going to have a field day. I bet they'll get the Compliance lot in too, sniffing all over this, like bloodhounds, baying for the kill.' She started to sniff, then properly descended into tears, collapsing into the chair with a pink handkerchief in her hand. 'That's it, it'll finish me. It was all my idea. I didn't even know about the document properties, author thingummy in Word. And then the work experience girl told HR, and so I had to call you in. Oh, what a bloody mess. And it's all back to me. After all, it was me who asked you to help, and simply took you on your word as we'd known one another so long, didn't ask you to come here once a week to file your copy, nothing. I'm such an idiot.'
Clara-Bell leant forward and rubbed Jenny's back. 'I'm sure we can sort this all out, between us. No harm done. Nobody died did they? It's funny, that's what The Colonel used to say, all the time. Until he did actually die.' She got a faraway look in her eyes.
Jenny looked up from her snivelling heap in her swivelling chair.
We sat in that room until we'd all agreed the story we were going to tell to the all-seeing-all-hearing HR department of Shining Brighter Media. We had agreed a stage by stage explanation to the word so no one could deviate if asked:
a. Clara-Bell had been using a friend's computer as hers was 'terminally ill and in need of corrective surgery darling'.
b. Without the computer, Clara-Bell had been writing the letters by hand and typing them up round Simon's house, until this had all got too much with her impending book deadline.
c. Her friend Simon had been happy to lend his computer until he needed it to look for jobs after he left his teaching job. ('It's important to keep an element of truth in every lie, makes it believable, darling', Clara-Bell had said.)
d. And that was where Michael Mountsford came in - a writer Clara-Bell had met at a local writers group (again with the element of truth you see) who was looking for freelance work, so she'd brought him to the meeting, as a solution for Clara-Bell throwing it all in at short notice.
Jenny looked at her notes from our discussion to check she'd got the order of events right. 'But won't the thingummy in Word still show 'Simon' because that's your real name?' She looked at me.
'It would, unless I changed my user profile on my laptop. When I'm writing as Michael Mountsford, I always use that as my user name. If I'm writing as Simon Payne, I use that one. That changes what's viewable on the Word document in the metadata.'
Clara-Bell and Jenny blinked slowly at one another. Jenny looked at me. 'I'm afraid you lost me at user profile - but it sounds like you know what you're doing, so I'm happy with that if you are.'
'Marvellous. Jenny, darling, could you call us a taxi please? I must get back, the story's calling me.' She cupped her hand around her ear and paused to listen theatrically. 'Yes, it is definitely calling me back. Lovely to see you, darling. Send my best to your dear mother. Tell her she must come round for supper soon.' Air kisses all round and we waited in the lobby both repressing huge grins as I held a contract for employment in my hand. 'Don't sign it. Not yet, it looks too keen. Take it home and read it tomorrow.' Clara-Bell advised, taking it from me and putting it into her handbag.
Chapter 27
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Dear Michael,
It feels as if I've known you for years, many discussions on e-mail and the odd conversation on the telephone, and yet, sadly we have yet to meet in the old-fashioned sense of the word. I would very much like to shake your hand to congratulate you on all the work you've done, and I would like to do this in person. I'm afraid I am old-fashioned in that sense.
I understand that my secretary has been trying to contact you about your coming in to the school to see me. I have been informed
that unfortunately you have yet to reply to her messages. Hence I am contacting you myself, directly.
I would also like to discuss with you some possible topics for future blogging, and ask about how the Face Book and how Twittering is getting along. Apologies if I have used the incorrect terminology; I am, by all accounts much of a Luddite when it comes to things Social Media, but I do my best as I hope you'll agree. (I wanted to put a smiling face there, but can't find it on the keyboard, onwards … )
I would be most grateful if you could bring with you the 'statistics' for the website, so I can make the appropriate comparisons and provide continued assurance to the Board.
There is also a matter related to the Staff Newsletter on which I would like to ask your advice. It is quite complicated and I feel much better explained in person, if you wouldn't mind.
Please could you liaise with my secretary about my availability? I am normally here most days, but it's best to check with her first.
Yours sincerely,
Mr A Farnham
Head Teacher Fiddlers Hamlet Secondary School
Buggeration.
What was I meant to do about that one? It had all been going so well, posting to their website each week, receiving payment every month. And now he had to throw a bloody 'I want to meet you face to face' spanner in the works. These people who insisted on seeing you, face to face, talking to you, where they could see your eyes. Hadn't they heard of teleconferences? Didn't they know about Skype or Facetime? Those, I could have handled, I'd have backlit myself, deepened my voice a bit, and worn a hat and glasses at all times. I'd already thought about that one. But the face to face, not so much. I didn't have much to combat that one with.