Cents and Sensibility

by Maggie Alderson

  I shook my head at him.

  ‘You boys,’ I said.

  As Ham was always telling me, the sexed-up savage was never far below the surface with men, however civilized they appeared to be on the surface. Alex was clearly no exception.

  By the time we re-emerged back in Ham’s kitchen about an hour later – after carefully checking from the garden that his one-man love-in was definitely over – it seemed he had already forgiven me and Alex for our sudden exit.

  ‘Sorry we missed it, Ham,’ I said, pecking him on the cheek. ‘We just weren’t in a Californian sort of mood.’

  ‘That’s all right, you cheeky little buggers, I loved you up anyway – both of you – in absentia.’

  And as he beamed at us and invited us into the library for a cognac, while the younger children watched a DVD in the living area, I reckoned his irritation at our rudeness was probably cancelled out by his delight in seeing us bonding.

  Whatever Ham was up to with us – and nothing to do with human relationships was accidental if he had anything to do with it – was clearly going to plan. I was happy to let him have his little fantasy.

  10

  The next week, satisfied that the paparazzi were no longer on my tail, I felt able to start accepting invitations again. It was about time. I needed to get out there working my contacts and sniffing out the big stories before the competition did.

  But while I was still shuffling through the folder of invites on my desk, I got another one I certainly wasn’t expecting when Doughnut’s secretary, Sheila, sent me an email asking me to call her.

  ‘Mr McDonagh is having lunch in the boardroom today,’ she said. ‘And he would like you to join him.’

  I was thrilled. Lunch in the boardroom was a big deal at the Journal – I’d only been twice in my five years on the paper. It was such a splendid room. They had moved the original one over from the old Fleet Street building, panel by panel, so that a corner of this soaring office block was forever the 1920s. It was an art deco gem on a par with the Savoy, with the original furniture, sculptures and paintings, and I loved going up there.

  I was just about to hang up on Sheila, when I remembered to ask her what this lunch was in aid of.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘But I think it’s something to do with features.’

  I presumed that meant the ghastly Jeanette Foster would be there, which slightly dampened my enthusiasm. Jeanette was the editor of the daily ‘Journal Plus’ features section, where my weekly pages appeared, and she clearly thought she was my ‘boss’, although that was an honour I reserved mentally for Doughnut and no other.

  After all, I worked for the news pages almost as much as I did for features – and for the Saturday ‘News Review’ section and the colour magazine. I even wrote the odd book review, if a biography of Christian Dior came out, or something like that. Once, I had even reviewed a car.

  But Jeanette – or the Lovely Jeanette, as Peter Wallington sarcastically called her – relished her little power trips and would frequently pull stunts like making me rewrite a perfectly good feature, just because she liked to make me suffer.

  Over the year or so she had been features editor, I’d got her measure, though. I’d just rewrite the first two paragraphs and she’d think I’d done the whole thing again, because she’d never actually read it to the end in the first place.

  ‘That’s so much better, Stella,’ she’d say in her smug voice, loudly, so the whole office could hear. ‘I think it’s a much better read now you’ve re-nosed it as I suggested.’

  ‘I’ll re-nose her, if she carries on picking on you,’ Peter had muttered as she’d minced off in her ultra-flat shoes.

  Peter hated her. He could be really bitchy when he didn’t like someone, and it amused me intensely.

  ‘I don’t mind the fact that she is so brazenly talentless,’ he had said to me on more than one occasion. ‘Or even that she is lazy and ordinary and has never had an original thought in her tiny little suburban life, although she is always fast to claim those of others as her own. I don’t even particularly mind that the only reason she has her job here is because her husband is a great friend of our managing editor, Mr Ryan. No, what I really can’t tolerate about the Lovely Jeanette is the way she looks. I don’t like her teeth.’

  I had roared with laughter. She did have funny teeth. They were strangely long and narrow.

  I loathed the way she looked too, but for different reasons. She wasn’t unattractive really, she just offended my personal sense of aesthetics. She had brutally straight, cropped hair – without the beautiful bone structure to justify it – dyed a hard mahogany red, and she favoured ‘art jewellery’ of a particularly clunky kind, which she thought very sophisticated. She always referred to it as ‘pieces’.

  ‘Oh, what a marvellous necklace,’ Peter would say, completely disingenuously, when she’d turn up sporting the latest bit of anodized scrap metal some charlatan had flogged her.

  ‘Oh, thank you, Peter,’ she’d say, through her frightening ventriloquist’s dummy teeth. ‘I do think it’s rather a special piece. I got it at the weekend from a favourite little gallery of mine in Brussels.’

  She was always dropping Brussels into the conversation – to the point where the subs called her Sprouts. Her husband was a Liberal Democrat MEP and she loved swanning over there on taxpayers’ money.

  Brussels was another reason Peter hated her so much. He was so anti the European Union, he refused even to go to France on holiday any more, which caused great distress to his wife, Renee, as they had a beautiful house in the Luberon.

  If I wanted to wind Peter up I would put a five-euro note on his desk while he was in the loo. He’d hop from foot to foot like Rumpelstiltskin when he came back and saw it – usually tearing it to shreds in his rage.

  We did have some funny times in that office.

  I was just spraying myself with my favourite Frédéric Malle fragrance, Musc Ravageur, before heading up to the thirty-fifth floor for the lunch, when Jeanette walked past towards the lift.

  She was wearing a particularly nasty pair of oversized earrings and her mouth was smeared with a brutal slash of her signature dark red lipstick. She was definitely going to Doughnut’s lunch. I recognized her warpaint mode.

  ‘There goes liver lips,’ muttered Peter, then he glanced over at me. ‘Are you ready for the lunch too, my fragrant one?’

  I’d had no idea he was going too and must have looked surprised, which clearly delighted him as he stood up, slipped on his suit jacket and put out his arm for me to take.

  ‘The thirty-fifth floor, madame?’

  He never missed a bloody trick that one. But I was even more surprised when I walked into the boardroom and saw Ned already installed there.

  He was standing chatting to the managing editor, Martin Ryan, and a man and woman I didn’t recognize, which meant they probably worked on the advertising side of things. They all turned round when we came in and I caught Ned’s eye. He raised an expressive eyebrow at me.

  I went over to him.

  ‘Bet you’re surprised to see me,’ he said, smiling cheekily.

  ‘I sure am,’ I said. ‘But I’m pretty amazed to be here myself. It’s only my third time up here. Have you any idea what it’s all about? Those two are from advertising, aren’t they? Doughnut doesn’t normally have much to do with them.’

  ‘I’ve been doing some investigative reporting while we waited for you,’ said Ned, his eyes twinkling. ‘I think they’re starting some kind of new section and from what I can gather, it might be good for you and me.’

  Before he could tell me anything else, Doughnut arrived with Jeanette, which was odd because I’d seen her on her way up before Peter and I had even left our desks. She’d probably lurked near the lift so she could accidentally-on-purpose emerge and get into it with him, I realized.

  And you had to hand it to her – it was a constant campaign of those kinds of sneaky manoeuvres that had got her where she
was on the paper. From the self-satisfied look on her face as she swept in through the double doors with him, you’d have thought Doughnut had invited her to enter on his arm.

  But things didn’t go quite so well for Jeanette for the rest of the lunch. She was clearly rattled when she saw that I had been seated on one side of Doughnut, with the woman from advertising on his other. Jeanette was between Ned and Martin.

  ‘Right,’ said our esteemed editor-in-chief, the moment we had all sat down. He never was one for small talk. ‘I bet you’re all wondering why you’re here. Well, it’s simple – money. But first of all, let me introduce you to Tony and Gillian. Tony is our advertising sales chief and Gillian is new to his team. She’s come over to us from Condé Nast, so that we can steal as much of their advertising as possible. That’s right, isn’t it, Tony?’

  Tony nodded, smiling.

  ‘Now, Tony and Gillian, I would like to introduce you to the people who are going to help you do that. Martin, my managing editor, you already know. Peter Wallington, I hardly need to tell you, is the senior journalist on the paper and the best newspaperman in the business. He was my mentor when I joined the Journal as a young reporter, many years ago.’

  Well, I hadn’t known that. That explained a lot.

  ‘Stella Fain there,’ he gestured at me, ‘is one of my best writers – a star on the paper and certainly the leading authority in British journalism on the luxury world. Ned Morrissey is new to the paper, a very bright talent, with a fresh voice and a particularly sharp eye for the youth market.’

  For a moment it seemed he wasn’t going to introduce Jeanette. She’d already looked pained by his glowing description of me, and now she looked as though she were being strangled.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, as an afterthought. ‘And that’s Jeanette Foster, features editor.’

  There was a pause while the boardroom butler served the starter and then Doughnut resumed.

  ‘Right. Tony and I have been talking and we have come to the conclusion that there is a large segment of the advertising market which the Journal is missing out on. Now you in editorial will know that I am not particularly interested in advertising, except in so far as it funds my journalists, in which case I am very interested in it.

  ‘And as the board are once more trying to make me cut costs – and have even made such preposterous suggestions as closing our Jerusalem bureau – it is in my interests to help boost the advertising revenue. With this in mind Tony, Gillian and I have been discussing how we can work together to do that. Now over to you two.’

  Tony and Gillian then went into long explanations of how the paper was failing to maximize the potential advertiser appeal of its well-heeled readers because it didn’t have an editorial ‘platform’ suitable for ads from companies such as Chanel, Hermès and Louis Vuitton.

  ‘The only part of the newspaper family that is getting that spend at the moment is the Saturday magazine,’ said Gillian. ‘Which obviously has a separate budget structure from the main paper…’

  ‘Meaning it won’t fund my Jerusalem office,’ interjected Doughnut, before indicating that she might continue.

  ‘But we don’t see why we wouldn’t be able to persuade the prestige brands to increase their overall spend with us and the more niche brands to start advertising here,’ she said, ‘channelling the new revenue directly to the paper, by providing a new editorial platform in the broadsheet week – which will also enhance the reader experience.’

  The jargon was doing my head in – and Ned crossed his eyes at me when I looked over at him – but I thought I had grasped the main gist of it. They were going to start some kind of new features section in the paper, expressly to attract advertising from the kind of companies I wrote about. Sounded OK.

  Jeanette had clearly got this message too and I could see her eyes flicking backwards and forwards between Gillian – who was still talking – and Doughnut, as she tried to suss out what was in it for her. But I had an urgent question of my own.

  ‘That sounds great,’ I said, when Gillian had finished her spiel. ‘Obviously I am delighted to hear there will be more space for coverage of the luxury market in the paper. But what concerns me is that if this new section is being set up expressly to attract advertising from the brands I write about, where does that leave me with regard to my editorial independence? In short – if they do something rubbish, can I still say so?’

  I asked, because I was sincerely concerned about the answer. I knew the girls on Pratler couldn’t say anything even vaguely negative, or even cheeky, about any of the magazine’s advertising clients and I seriously did not wish to be in that position myself. Then I really wouldn’t be able to stomach being the fluff correspondent.

  I was a bit worried it wouldn’t be a popular topic to bring up, with advertising executives in the room, but seeing the beam that lit up Doughnut’s face and the fond smile on Peter’s, I knew I was OK.

  ‘That’s absolutely right, Stella,’ said Doughnut. ‘You have hit the nail on the head. We will carry on telling the truth, however uncomfortable, in the great Journal tradition – even as we take their advertising money. And that is exactly what will give the section its credibility and make it the one that they simply must all have an advertising presence in.’

  ‘That’s fantastic,’ I said.

  ‘And that’s why we want you to edit it,’ said Doughnut, smiling broadly at me.

  Jeanette dropped her fork. That was not what she’d been expecting.

  ‘Yes,’ continued Doughnut, oblivious to her discomfort. ‘We are going to drop the features section on Fridays and turn it over to you and Ned. Obviously, the crossword, telly et cetera will still be in the back of it, but the rest of it will be called “The Good Life”.

  ‘We want to get it up and running in a month, so I’m taking you two off features from now on and, as editor, you’ll have your own office, Stella, and Ned will work alongside you, concentrating on the male side of the subject matter. Peter will work with you to develop the section, and I would like to see a dummy for it by the end of next week, OK?’

  And with that, the lunch was over – and it would be hard to say which of us left it more surprised, me, or Jeanette.

  I was thrilled with my promotion, but the only thing that made me a bit sad about it, was the thought of packing up my desk to move into my own office. I wouldn’t be sitting next to Peter any more.

  ‘I’ll miss you,’ I said, as we got back to our little corner after the lunch. ‘I’ll even miss your thundering typewriter. I’ve got used to being deafened while I try to write.’

  ‘We’re going to be working together very closely on this section,’ he said. ‘You’ll probably get sick of me. Anyway, are you pleased with your new role?’

  ‘I’m totally thrilled,’ I said.

  ‘Did you see the look on Jeanette’s face?’ he added, wearing his most wicked expression. He looked like a mischievous old pixie.

  I just giggled. Peter started to chuckle too.

  ‘Mind you,’ he said, leaning close to me and speaking quietly. ‘That’s nothing compared to when she finds out you’re moving into her office.’

  He threw his head back and roared with laughter.

  ‘No!’ I said. ‘I don’t want to, it’ll have bad feng shui. And she might leave some earrings behind.’

  ‘No, don’t worry, I’m just kidding. It would probably smell of feet as well. But I do think we’ll have to make sure you get a bigger one than hers, with a better view. Actually, Stella, I think we should go out tonight and celebrate this new era, don’t you? Let’s see if Ned can come too.’

  So I flicked through my invitation file and found a clutch of cocktail parties for us to hit and the three of us, that unlikely triumvirate, went out on the town in a major way.

  It was a truly great night. I decided that if Ned and I were going to work together he might as well have total immersion in the luxury world and we started out at a very intimate cocktail party for elite press a
nd best customers, in the Anya Hindmarch boutique in Pont Street, looking at the new range of summer bags, which had just gone in store.

  Peter fitted in absolutely anywhere, but Ned looked rather uncomfortable surrounded by glossy young women in skimpy tops and very high heels, all sporting handbags which had cost three times as much as his work suit. After we’d been there ten minutes, he was still standing in a corner, holding his glass of champagne like it was a pint of lager.

  ‘Look, Ned,’ I said, walking over to him and holding my glass up in front of his face. ‘You hold it by the stem.’

  He looked puzzled.

  ‘Champagne flutes,’ I continued. ‘You hold them by the stem, so the champagne doesn’t get warm, which makes it go flat.’

  I saw him glance around the room and take in the fact that everyone – including Peter – was holding their glass by its stem. He adjusted his and then, looking me right in the eye, he downed it in one go.

  ‘Is that right, Stella?’ he said, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘Any more of this piss on the go, do you think?’

  I grinned at him. I knew we were going to have a really good time working together.

  The next event was in the Cartier boutique on Bond Street, hosted by my friend Becca, the in-house PR, who always threw a great party. I knew she wouldn’t mind me turning up with a couple of extra guests and she whooped with delight when she saw us.

  ‘Stella, my darling,’ she said in her throaty theatrical voice. ‘Two spare men, how clever you are. We never have enough men at these things.’

  She stopped a passing waiter, so we could get some drinks and Ned picked up a flute of champagne by its stem and raised it to me. He was a quick study, I thought.

  Leaving the boys to get to know Becca better – she was someone Ned would need in his new role as cool fluff correspondent, as we had already dubbed him – I did a quick once-around-the-room, collecting compliments on my recent articles, and one or two catty comments about Jay Fisher.