Martin Harbottle's Appreciation of Time

by Dominic Utton

  From: Martin.Harbottle@premier-westward.com

  To: DantheMan020@gmail.com

  Re: 22.50 Premier Westward Railways train from London Paddington to Oxford, February 28.

  Dear Dan

  I do hope you’re well. Thank you for your recent letters and apologies for my late reply. I have been extraordinarily busy, I’m sure you understand.

  Your train on February 17 was late leaving Oxford due to an earlier incident with a freight train shedding some of its cargo in the Taplow area. Fourteen Renault Clios were unfortunately written off in the incident – though I should point out that they were all empty of passengers and were being transported from London to Reading at the time.

  On February 22, another incident in the same area involving a lightning strike and a fallen tree caused similar delays. As I’m sure you appreciate, neither incident was technically the fault of Premier Westward, but naturally we did our best to work with Network Rail to ensure that our passengers experienced as little delay as possible.

  Your lengthy delay on the way home the following day was admittedly due to a fault on one of our trains. I am sorry to say that my job as managing director does not allow me the luxury of time to pursue ‘word puzzles’ but I am sure that the crossword you were kind enough to create for me was every bit as good as any of your father’s.

  As far as non-train-related business is concerned, I do hope you are well. You certainly sound much happier of late. Positively buoyant in your last two letters! Have you spoken to your wife yet? And is the fearsome ‘Goebbels’ happier with your work? I did see Mr Best’s arrest on the news. It must be a great relief to all at the Globe that he’s still such a troubled young man.

  Best

  Martin

  ‌Letter 73

  From: DantheMan020@gmail.com

  To: Martin.Harbottle@premier-westward.com

  Re: 22.50 Premier Westward Railways train from London Paddington to Oxford, March 1. Amount of my day wasted: 12 minutes. Fellow sufferers: Overkeen Estate Agent.

  Oh, Martin. Have I been getting you wrong all this time? Have I been underestimating you? Are you actually a bit of a sarcastic so-and-so? That last line… that had bite, Martin! That had teeth! And what’s with all the buoyant stuff? Are you being deliberately satirical? I’m not buoyant. When I get carried away with the screamers and the superlatives, when I extend my metaphors to metaphorical breaking point, when I get hyperactive with my adjectives… it’s not because suddenly everything’s OK in my pitiful life again. It’s because it’s all I’ve got.

  Don’t you get it? You’re all I’ve got. You’re the only one left to try to impress. My wife’s gone back to her mother’s (telling tales of drunkenness and cruelty, as the song has it), my beautiful baby daughter’s been dragged with her, and my readers, the millions I used to make laugh every week with my cynical asides on the career aspirations and pratfalls of the nation’s celebs, well, now they’re not sure whether to secretly smile or to tut and frown in disapproval. Even Universal Grandpa’s daughter has stopped flirting with me. Or if she still is, he’s choosing not to pass the messages on.

  So you’re it. It’s all on you. Even if you are showing a hitherto-unsuspected sarcastic side to your character. Even if you’re not that interested anyway. Even if my word puzzles bore you sometimes.

  So, to answer your questions: no, I have not spoken to my wife yet. I haven’t even tried. She should be the one to call me, right? She’s the one who should be trying to build bridges and make amends. She’s the one who should be doing whatever it takes to save our marriage, given she’s the one who smashed a wrecking ball right through it. It’s not up to me to make the first move. I’m the victim here.

  And you know what else? I am going to follow the advice of Train Girl. I’m not going to sit around in my empty house crying over dummies in the fridge and bits of shopping lists found in my pocket (‘nappies’ – how can the word ‘nappies’ reduce a grown man to tears like that? How can that one stupid word keep me sobbing all night? Was it the word itself, the reminder that I haven’t changed a nappy in weeks, or was it the fact it was written by Beth? Can I not even see her handwriting without crying now?). I’m not going to do any of that any more. I’m taking action!

  Train Girl and I are going out. We’re going to smash up the place. We’re going to paint the town red and then paint it black and then paint it red all over again. We’re going to enjoy ourselves, like normal people do. The untouchably cool, the effortlessly good-looking, the unutterably sorted Train Girl… and me. The beautiful and the damned.

  What was your other question? Something about Goebbels? Is he happier with me? Well, actually, as it happens, since you ask and believe it or not… yes, he is. The mad old nutjob. Do you want to know why?

  We’re running the teenager-tupping Tory taxdodger story. He said he wanted to go after the people going after us and so we’re taking down the elected member who’s been most vocal in his criticism. He’s spent the last few weeks appearing on every news bulletin, talk show and liberal newspaper – and always spinning the same line, the same uncompromising condemnation of our methods, our madness (his phrase). He has, in short, set himself right up for a fall. And Goebbels wants us to be the ones to knock him over. Poetic justice, he calls it. Also: justice. There ain’t no justice – just us.

  It’s not running this week, but it’s down to splash next week. We’ve got the photos (those girls in their school uniforms, wide-eyed and pouty, perched on the edge of the bed in the swanky hotel room, the champagne and truffles, looking terribly young but also old enough, looking terribly innocent but also not innocent enough…), we’ve got their words, their breathless confessions, we’ve got the corroborating receipts, the copies of expenses claims. The lawyers have had a look. We’re getting it all double-legalled now. We’re going to plaster it all over the front page a week on Sunday and, in the words of Goebbels, ‘show them just what it means to go to war with the Globe’. It’s all going to kick off.

  And there will be my name, underneath the headline. There will be my name, under what will be our most-talked-about splash of the year. And what do I think about that? Excited: yes. Terrified: also yes. The story’s solid, I’m sure of that… but it’s our nuclear option. We’re firing our big weapons now. We’re launching a full-scale attack and I can’t help thinking that the one thing we know about nuclear war is that nobody really wins in the end.

  Christ, I do sound a bit buoyant, after all, don’t I? I’m not buoyant, Martin. And despite the bluster, I meant what I said. I might be hitting the town with Train Girl again, but I’m still in bits over my wife and daughter. I might be about to score the biggest scalp of my journalistic career, but work is still utterly hellish.

  You’re all I’ve got. These letters – they’re kind of all I’ve got. Talking to you is all I’ve got. And isn’t that rather pathetic, in the end?

  Au revoir!

  Dan

  ‌Letter 74

  From: DantheMan020@gmail.com

  To: Martin.Harbottle@premier-westward.com

  Re: 22.20 Premier Westward Railways train from London Paddington to Oxford, March 7. Amount of my day wasted: seven minutes. Fellow sufferers: Overkeen Estate Agent.

  Oh holy crap, Martin. It’s all happened. More unwelcome visitors in the newsroom. Not the police this time, but internal security. A pair of them marched in, all little grey suits and shiny shoes and name badges… they marched in, marched past everyone, entered Goebbels’ office without knocking, said something to him, and then stood back as he burst out laughing. And then stood back again as he pushed past them and addressed the whole floor.

  ‘Go on,’ he said, still grinning that chilling, humourless grin he has. ‘Say that again. Tell the whole paper what you just told me. We could all do with a laugh. Say it again and crack us all up.’

  One of them stepped forward. Cleared his throat. Actually adjusted his (clip-on) tie. ‘I have been asked to escort you from the buildi
ng,’ he said. ‘Effective immediately you are dismissed from your position at this newspaper and are no longer an employee of the company. You’re to give me your security pass, your mobile phone, your laptop, and accompany me off the premises. If necessary I’ve been instructed to make sure these things are carried out by force.’

  Goebbels roared with laughter. ‘Brilliant, eh?’ he shouted. ‘Priceless! Perfect! What do you think, team? Isn’t that the best joke you’ve heard in years?’

  Utter silence.

  He turned back to the security men, no longer smiling. ‘Now,’ he hissed, ‘why don’t you piss off back to your little office in the basement and get back to looking at your little CCTV monitors and let me do my job?’

  For a second nobody moved. And then they each took an arm, twisted them behind his back and frogmarched him across the floor and out of the door. We could hear his screams all the way down the lift.

  And then, almost as one, we turned to the television (the replaced television, replacing the one Goebbels smashed) and the live feed from outside our offices and watched as Goebbels was thrown – literally thrown, slapstick style – out of the building and landed in a heap on the pavement. And then we watched as he charged at the door and bounced back off the glass, landing on the floor again. And then we watched as he got to his feet for the second time, blood streaming from his nose, hair wild, eyes glaring, opened his mouth, screamed like an animal and launched himself straight at the cameramen.

  And then the live feed switched back to the studio. And that, I can’t help thinking, is the last we’ve seen of him.

  What did we do? We sat there in silence for a while… and then we went to the pub. Later we got an email from someone in the managing editor’s office. Goebbels has been sacked following ‘an internal investigation into activities surrounding the illegal accessing of civilians’ private information’. He’s now been arrested too – for that, and for four counts of assault on three journalists from the broadsheets and a News 24 cameraman outside our office.

  And so he’s gone. It’s a hell of a story, right?

  Au revoir!

  Dan

  ‌Letter 75

  From: DantheMan020@gmail.com

  To: Martin.Harbottle@premier-westward.com

  Re: 23.20 Premier Westward Railways train from London Paddington to Oxford, March 10. Amount of my day wasted: five minutes. Fellow sufferers: No regulars (Saturday).

  Guess what I did today? On the day before my big splash on the tax-fiddling Tory and his teenage totty? Guess what I did, in the offices of the Globe?

  I hacked into Beth’s email. I illegally accessed her private information. Harry the Dog helped me.

  ‘The thing about passwords,’ he said, as the pair of us stared at the Gmail log-in page, ‘is that they’re always simpler than you think. Nobody can be bothered doing all that stuff with mixing up letters and numbers and what-have-yous. People can’t remember that stuff. Names, jobs, street names, birthday months, football teams, football players, film stars, pop stars. I’d say 99 percent of passwords fall into one of those categories. And the best thing about webmail is it gives you unlimited chances to guess. All you need is a little persistence.’

  I folded my arms and looked at him. ‘And you know this how?’

  He grinned. ‘Everyone knows it, old boy. Everyone who knows what they’re doing knows it. Don’t tell me you’ve never got into someone’s email before.’

  I’ve never got into someone’s email before, Martin. It’s illegal. And then today I got into Beth’s email.

  It took us 17 goes to get it. And do you know what her password was? It was my name.

  I know. Don’t say it: I know.

  Anyway: Harry left then and I had a quick scoot through her email history. Were there any revelations? Well, yes. Were they damning? Did they paint her as the wicked harridan, the fallen woman, the scheming unfaithful wife leading her poor husband up the proverbial garden path? Well, no, actually.

  She’s been emailing her friend Karen. About us, I mean. About what’s happened between us. Here’s part of the most recent:

  Kazza, it’s awful. Really, properly awful. He’s not even called since we came back to Mum’s. I know I keep saying it, but I’ve just fucked everything up so badly. What if he doesn’t call? What if he never calls?

  Mum says to give him time but all I do is cry all the time. I’m stupid. I’m so stupid. I can’t believe I’ve done this to us. And you know what’s really stupid? Dan’s being a dick, of course he’s being a dick, he’s a dick a lot of the time, but that’s who he is. He was a dick when I married him. He gets himself into a state over stupid work things all the time, but he’s still Dan. He’s still my Dan. And I know it sounds crazy but I love him. I love him so much and now I’ve thrown it all away.

  Christ.

  Now I feel really bad. And you know what else I realised? I don’t even know who Karen is. Martin, what she did – it was wrong. It was terribly wrong. But I don’t even know who her best friend is. How can I not even know who my wife’s best friend is? What sort of husband does that make me?

  And also: am I a dick? I’m not a dick, am I?

  Au revoir!

  Dan

  From: Martin.Harbottle@premier-westward.com

  To: DantheMan020@gmail.com

  Re: 23.20 Premier Westward Railways train from London Paddington to Oxford, March 10.

  Dear Dan

  Thank you for your recent letters. As I believe I have mentioned before, delays of under ten minutes are not officially classed as delays at all, but I can tell you that your 12-minute delay on March 1 was due to a signalling issue and as a result we had to reroute some services. Unfortunately the 22.50 from Paddington was one of those affected.

  I would also like to congratulate you on your ‘scoop’ in this Sunday’s paper. I must confess that following your tip-off I did buy a copy (I hid it inside my usual Sunday Telegraph – wouldn’t want the neighbours to know, after all!) and I do think you did a splendid job. To carry on like that with his own daughters’ friends (two of them!), to claim their assignations on parliamentary expenses! As a father and a tax payer and a right-minded citizen I am shocked at his behaviour. All I can say is that the man is a disgrace and you’ve done exactly the right thing in exposing him. If only your newspaper always held such high standards you wouldn’t be in the mess you are at the moment!

  Anyway, well done. I felt oddly proud of you, Daniel.

  Best

  Martin

  ‌Letter 76

  From: DantheMan020@gmail.com

  To: Martin.Harbottle@premier-westward.com

  Re: 07.31 Premier Westward Railways train from Oxford to London Paddington, March 13. Amount of my day wasted: ten minutes. Fellow sufferers: Train Girl, Universal Grandpa, Guilty New (Spymaster) Mum.

  Oh Martin, I’m blushing. I’m pleased as punch you’re proud of me. Truly, I’m not even being sarcastic. Believe it or not, it really does matter to me. Isn’t that pathetic? I mean, no offence, but isn’t that pathetic?

  Anyway. Thank you. Genuinely. And I’m sorry you felt the need to hide my paper in the folds of your downmarket broadsheet rag.

  As it turns out you’re not the only person to offer congratulations. An email came round from circulation yesterday – our figures were up on Sunday. Up! For the first time in months, we actually sold more copies of the paper than we had the previous week. That’s what leading the news agenda does, Martin. That’s how you keep advertisers on board: get scoops, sell papers, increase circulation. Old Goebbels, as it turns out, wasn’t quite so crazy as he made out. He understood that, at least.

  So, all in all, a good day for us. For the paper, and for me. I’m not even worried about the teen-tupping Tory’s threats of retribution. The randy old hypocrite’s been crucified, pilloried, neutered by the press, thrown out of his own party, threatened with a police enquiry and now kicked out of his own home by his (justifiably furious) family. I reckon that although h
e’s almost certainly seriously angry, he’s no longer got the clout to do anything about it. And it serves him right, too.

  And, weirdest of all, there were congratulations on the train.

  Universal Grandpa – he came up to me on the platform (serious breach of commuter etiquette there!). He shook my hand. He said that I’d done a good job. He said that if I kept up that kind of thing I could leave the ‘smutty stuff’ behind and ‘get a job on one of the qualities’. And you know what? Six months ago I might have had a go at him for saying that. I might have started on about the so-called qualities and the respective levels of journalism and all that other stuff… but I didn’t. I smiled back. I shook his hand back. I said thank you. I said: ‘It’s nice to have written something you’ve enjoyed as much as your daughter.’

  And you know what he said? He said: ‘You should know my daughter has learning difficulties.’ He smiled as he said it, that twinkly, kind, Grandpa smile. ‘She doesn’t really understand what you write. She just knows you’re being cheeky about her favourite celebrities. And when I read it to her I miss out all the ruder bits.’

  And still chuckling, he patted me on the shoulder, got on the train and set off down the carriage.

  Um. Crikey! What to make of that! I feel awkward about the flirting thing, now, for a start.

  Anyway. That wasn’t the end of it. I saw Train Girl this morning. She’d saved my splash again, that same way she did when I did for Jamie Best. Isn’t that sweet? Isn’t that thoughtful? She produced it with a flourish as she jumped late on the train as usual and barrelled down the aisle. She waved it, she shouted – ‘Hey scoop!’ – brandishing it above her head, laughing. Christ, Martin, she’s a looker though.