In Pieces

by Nick Hopton

  ‘Mm,’ intoned Dougy, ‘he’s doing well, Bill, isn’t he?’

  Si tried to mirror Dougy’s thoughtful look and nodded slowly. After that he’d left the eagle’s nest office as quickly as possible. Stopping only to chuck the approved page onto Bill’s desk, asking him to deliver it downstairs, he grabbed his bag and made for the lift.

  Si went straight from work to the station, where he picked up Mary in front of the main noticeboard. He was on time, but she’d been waiting quarter of an hour already; she made sure he knew this.

  Si had been dismayed by Mary’s enthusiasm to meet his parents. A weekend à quatre loomed and it was unclear how it would pan out.

  It was the first time he’d been fond enough of any girl to want to take her home; or rather, to agree to her demand that he introduce her to his parents. As they stood on the platform waiting for the six forty which would take them to the little Easfolk village where he’d grown up, he wondered again if he was doing the right thing. Perhaps Mary would get the wrong idea and assume the next step would be a proposal. He felt nowhere near ready for marriage yet. Wasn’t this just giving her false expectations? The arrival of the train distracted him.

  ‘It’s here Si; stop daydreaming. The least you can do after being so late is to talk to me.’

  Despite the unfair criticism, Si followed her obediently through the automatic doors which beeped repeatedly and then swooshed shut behind him. Like entering the command deck of the Starship Enterprise… Or a gas chamber.

  ~

  Si was at his desk. How long this could go on he didn’t know. He knew what he should do, but doing it required more courage than he could muster. And he wasn’t even managing to do the job well either any more. He felt caught in no-man’s-land between two safe and correct courses of action.

  Now, instead of rewriting a piece he’d researched earlier, he was reading a book of poetry. Mary had given it to him last weekend in Easfolk. His parents and Mary had got on extremely well and, after cautiously observing them for the first evening, Si had decided to join in and enjoy the weekend as well. It had been a great success and as a result his relationship with Mary seemed to have moved onto another, highly satisfactory plane.

  Mary said the collection was one of her favourite books. So far he had not discovered the same truths within the pages but he was persevering in the hope of understanding Mary better. Only one poem had really struck a chord with him.

  I go to Ely to sustain my soul

  And the Island wind restores me whole.

  Within steep vaults of lofty stone

  The beast within groans and is gone.

  On knees of bone I gaze ahead

  Beyond the choir, to when I’m dead.

  And in the gloom a glow surrounds

  My quietening heart and present sounds.

  The grandparents stand at the mortal watch;

  The parents, ageing, now hear the clock;

  And I, with no more than twice this more,

  Find comfort in these mortal laws.

  I go to Ely to sustain my soul

  And the Island wind restores me whole.

  Si hadn’t heard of the poet before but this song of death seemed strangely joyful and he could identify with the mortal mood. It was rare to find a modern writer with so clear a perception of death, recognising within that great unknown cause for calm and pleasant expectation rather than nihilism or terror.

  The phone rang and Si put down the slim paperback volume.

  ‘How’s the page going?’

  ‘Fine, fine,’ lied Si.

  ‘Yeah? Well. I hope so. Bring it up to me as soon as you’ve got all the bits in place, okay?’

  The requirement for Dougy to approve the Diary every day before it went to press still held him like a ball and chain; there was still no sign that Dougy would lift the injunction.

  ‘Only temporary, mind. Understand? Just until we get it back on track, up to your previous standard. Okay?’ That’s how Dougy had explained retaining control when Si had asked him if they couldn’t now return to the previous arrangement.

  Despite this half-reassurance, Si wondered how long it would be before Dougy permanently removed his remaining authority. In his heart he knew he didn’t really care any more. The glittering prizes of journalism no longer held the same fascination. It could only be a matter of time now.

  ~

  The Sleeper collected the first part of the kit the week after the meeting in Hammersmith. ‘Just a small amount of explosive,’ Ginger had said. But within a fortnight the Sleeper had a small arsenal. He suspected that his operation was not the only one Ginger was masterminding. As he had been instructed, he hid the material in a lock-up garage in Kilburn.

  Ginger obviously had a sense of humour because the ordnance was always packed in identical Manchester United sports bags, which locked with a small key. The Sleeper wondered if Ginger knew that he’d once had a very similar bag; he used to take his sports kit to school in it. Or perhaps Ginger had been inspired by United winning the Double Double with Cantona’s cracking goal? Even Greta had appreciated that one. Anyway, the Sleeper reflected, he found it strangely comforting to associate the operation with his football heroes.

  After the last delivery, he saw Ginger once more. Again in Hammersmith, but this time a different pub.

  ‘Now sit tight and wait to hear from us. Okay? And if you must shag your landlady, do it discreetly? We don’t want you getting murdered by a jealous husband now, do we?’ Ginger grinned. ‘Not when you’re about to be a hero.’

  The Sleeper nodded. He was in so deep there was no point in trying to resist or even contemplate a change of course.

  ‘Good man.’ Ginger turned and, without shaking hands, walked straight out of the pub. The Sleeper didn’t see him again. Not in the flesh anyway.

  ~

  According to CNN, the new government in Madrid was making heavy weather of the economic inheritance bequeathed to it by Gonzalez’s outgoing administration.

  Si had been to Madrid once. He’d spent two days a few summers ago researching a feature as a cub reporter desperate to make an impact. The piece had eventually appeared under the title Madrid After Dark. Si had been disappointed because the detail of his sleepless visit had been erased by some dumb sub-editor who failed to understand that the repetitious references to drinking beer were essential to the article. As far as Si could work out, the Madrileños measured out their lives in small glasses of beer, cañas, as they called them.

  Little happened before seven in the evening, but even mid-week the city bustled until three or four in the morning. The bars overflowed with people of all ages drinking cañas. Everyone seemed to be having a great time, without a care in the world. During the working hours a heavy inertia descended across the dusty streets. The heat oppressed and little work seemed to be done.

  Si was not surprised by CNN’s report. But he thought it would take more than a Prime Minister, especially one who looked like Charlie Chaplin, to make Spain adopt the work ethic. Long may it remain as it is, he smiled to himself. Si had loved his blurred, sleepless forty-eight hours in Madrid. A great city which could teach London a lot about nightlife, certainly during the summer months.

  Si flicked off CNN as the soapy news presenters—the man imbecilic and the woman disconcertingly cross-eyed—began to repeat the stories he’d listened to just fifteen minutes before. He found satellite news useful from a professional point of view; he could catch up with the main news any time of the day or night. But since its advent, the quality of news reporting had suffered and Si suspected that even tabloid newspapers offered a better analysis than CNN or Sky’s so-called ‘informed comment’. Ten minutes a day of this stuff was about all he could stomach. But it was marginally better than working.

  Si forced himself to concentrate on the job in hand. ‘Hey Bill, how’s your story coming?’

  Bill grunted.

  It was one of those days. It always got tricky in mid-summer, but this
year the stories seemed to have dried up early. It was only June. What would they have to write up in August, if they were already printing pieces of such low quality?

  He’d sent Bill off earlier on a wild goose chase to draw a connection between recent gossip about a government reshuffle and the BSE crisis. He suspected that there was nothing in the story, told to him by a notoriously untrustworthy backbencher. No doubt the MP was trying to score points off the Agriculture Minister or the pro-European faction in the party. Si wouldn’t have minded if the story was credible. But to suggest that the Prime Minister had timed the release of new information about BSE as part of a strategy to sacrifice the Europhile Agriculture Minister, thereby allowing him to sack the poor fellow and increase support for more Euro-sceptic policies! This was so circumstantial and tenuous that Si would not normally have bothered following it up.

  But these were not normal times. There was a dearth of stories and Si knew that Dougy would come down on him like a ton of bricks at the first opportunity. If he was going to leave The Courier, he wanted to jump—not be sacked for incompetence.

  Increasingly, he spent far more time feeling frustrated than enjoying his job. He knew he should do something about it. But what else could he do? He was just another over-educated generalist, trained by a decadent society to appreciate literature and abstract art, but incapable of explaining how a kettle worked, let alone how to build a house or mend a car. Those were really useful things to be able to do. It wasn’t as if he was really contributing anything to the greater knowledge of mankind. Bottom line, he was a crappy journalist doing a shitty job, being paid to poke his nose into other people’s affairs, interfering where he wasn’t wanted.

  ‘Do you fancy a drink?’

  Bill looked up with a blank look on his pug features. The sun had brought out his Scottishness, spraying a rash of ginger freckles across his face.

  ‘A pint? I don’t know about you but I really feel I’m not getting anywhere here.’ Not that he’d even started to tackle the story Dougy had pushed his way that morning. Si hated Dougy’s so-called “leads”. He just couldn’t seem to get them right, to get into his boss’s mindset.

  ‘What about the story? It’s already three thirty.’

  True, if they went out for a drink they’d be hard-pressed to get the page together on time. Well, one drink would probably be just about all right.

  ‘We’ll only go for a quick one. How about it… That place just over the park? I’ll buy.’

  They sat on the wooden benches contemplating the river. The Thames flowed past thickly, clearly as exhausted by the heat as everyone else. Washed out, dripping office workers in suits, bred for English weather not continental heat, wandered despondently by.

  In the park—as the thin strip of yellow grass and three trees sandwiched between the road and the river was optimistically called—some pink individuals lay prostrate before the sun god. Why was it that whenever the sun came out, the normally reserved and prudish English abandoned their inhibitions and stripped almost naked? If only they had the bodies to get away with it. But these red blobs were typical: grey bras, flabby chests and summer skirts tucked into oversized knickers, which had been designed for undercover protection on cold winter nights.

  Si watched an obese girl with compassion. The poor thing was so obviously suffering, but seemed determined not to miss even one photon of potential tan. Elephantine thighs, puckered with cellulite, rolled over the dry grass like lard on toast. The girl mopped her perspiring brow furiously but seemed to have abandoned the rolls of sweating torso which flopped over the waistband of her skirt.

  Si looked away. This was terrible, no way to live. He was tempted to wander over, offer the girl a drink, tell her to cover up. But guessing the reaction this would provoke, he just sighed and abandoned the girl to her humiliation.

  Bill sat on the bench beside him sipping his pint. ‘Did you watch the Cup Final?’ Si asked. He’d asked the same question a few weeks before but couldn’t remember Bill’s answer.

  ‘What Cup Final?’

  Si wondered how to take this. He looked at Bill, taking in the shiny nose ring and the surrounding, inflamed skin which seemed to be going septic; at least his colleague’s hair had grown a bit, although Si was unconvinced by the red tint Bill had recently applied. But perhaps most disconcerting about Bill’s appearance today was the studded metal collar around his neck. This accessory was making its debut appearance. Si had managed during the morning to resist the temptation to nickname Bill ‘Fido’ or to make doggy jokes. He knew this would only be met by a serious sense of humour failure.

  It wasn’t easy making conversation with Bill. On paper his subordinate was quite bright. And there was no doubt about his growing ambition. Bill clearly intended to take over the Diary at some stage. But despite this, Bill had few social skills and often appeared to be thick as two short planks. Si suspected that much of this was deliberate and that Bill got a perverse pleasure from testing those who conversed with him. He probably regarded conversation as a sort of duel in which the winner was the one who managed to psyche his opponent into social niceties. No doubt Bill scorned Si’s interest in his views, considering it a sign of weakness.

  Si groaned inwardly. It was definitely one of those days. Bill was probably right to adopt the stonewall approach. He would make a good journalist one day, if he had the breaks. Compassion and understanding rarely sold newspapers.

  ‘Yeah, I saw it… Weeks ago, though,’ admitted Bill eventually. Perhaps he had been psyched out himself by Si’s protracted silence? ‘Crap, wasn’t it?’

  ‘True, it wasn’t great. But I suppose that the best team won in the end, didn’t they?’

  ‘I hate Man United. They were crap. Even the goal was a fluke deflection.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. It looked pretty inspired to me, the way Cantona cracked it through the defence. Fairy tale stuff, eh?’

  Bill looked at Si as if he’d just confessed that he was an active paedophile. ‘It was crap,’ he repeated sullenly.

  Si studied the bottom of his pint glass. Against his better judgement, he pursued the subject. ‘What did you think of the new United lad?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘You know… Jimmy Sweeny’s his name, I think?’ Si hoped that this disingenuous approach might allow Bill to break with form and compliment his friend. He’d not mentioned his friendship with Jimmy to anyone at work before. But somehow it seemed important that a sceptic like Bill should appreciate Jimmy’s success.

  ‘No idea. Can’t say I noticed him. Even if I had, I doubt he was very good. United were crap. I really hate them. More than anything, I think.’ Bill pondered this for a moment, an unusually alert expression illuminating his blunt features. He nodded sagely. ‘Yeah, definitely. More than anything.’

  Si felt unutterably depressed. He suppressed a desire to grab Bill’s dog collar and twist it until his colleague lay choking on the ground. Instead, he thought grimly that Bill clearly revelled in mediocrity, knocking talent and cynically undermining true excitement, blinded by petty jealousy. He clearly had the right skills to work on the Diary. Si realised it was going to be a long summer.

  ‘Let’s get back, shall we? We’ve got a page to finish.’

  Bill grunted. They raised themselves from the bench and shuffled in silence along the dusty street towards the hulking Courier building.

  ~

  Mary pressed the button and turned off the telly. They were in Si’s flat ensconced for an evening of take-away curry, an episode of This Life and if they had the stamina, for a video recording of last Friday night’s Friends and Frasier. In Si’s book this was the perfect way to unwind. But Mary was now introducing a dissonant note.

  ‘So where does it end, Si? Do we just go on like this until we die?’

  Si recognised the thought. The easiest thing in modern life was to keep going in a straight line: work, friends, films, sport, dinners out and so on. No need to do anything radical. Why rock the
boat? He suspected that was why so few of his friends had married yet or had kids or done any of the great life-affirming acts which have traditionally measured out the span of human existence, the events between birth and death which endow direction and meaning and give the lie to Beckett’s supreme, nihilistic image of women giving birth astride a yawning grave. Si wasn’t sure how his contemporaries measured out their lives. They didn’t really. They just assumed their present existence would continue forever. Perhaps that’s why they were so serious, so purposeless, so un-attuned to the spiritual? Because endless life was such a depressing prospect.

  ‘So? What have you got to say, then?’ Mary demanded.

  Although Si recognised the question, he had not expected his girlfriend to put it to him, and he certainly didn’t have a clear answer.

  ‘The thing is, Si… I love being with you. We go well together. But we’re not getting any younger and I need to know how serious you are.’

  ‘About what?’ It began to dawn on Si that Mary was coming at the question from a slightly different angle.

  Exasperated, she shook her head violently. ‘About me, you idiot. Oh, I don’t know why I bother.’

  ‘Right, I see. Sorry, I just didn’t quite understand.’ Si played for time. ‘Well, yeah, I agree. We’re great together. But I guess I thought we could carry on like this for the moment. After all, we haven’t known each other that long, have we?’

  ‘How long do you need? It’s over six months. In another year I’ll be thirty. Do you realise that?’

  Si hadn’t really thought about it. But now he did he saw what Mary was driving at. It wasn’t that he didn’t think he could marry Mary; he just hadn’t thought they were anywhere near that stage yet. Obviously Mary had other ideas. ‘Listen, my love, I see what you’re saying. But give me a bit of time, okay? I’m still trying to get my life under control, you know, at The Courier, and I’m not quite there yet. But trust me, okay? I’m not messing you around. Right?’