In Bed with Mr. Plantagenet

by Deanna Maclaren

  The season hadn’t got going yet. There wouldn’t be any candy-floss or toffee apples until after Easter. In bright Spring sunshine against a wind you could either call bracing (David) or bloody awful and it’s messing up my hair, they strolled along the front.

  David had his arm round her. ‘Never sure about Brighton,’ he said. ‘Pebble beach, bad. Regency houses, good. Tawdry hotels –‘

  Eugenie was talking about his future university, London would be the most convenient, he could live at home with her –

  ‘Marigold, I’m not going to university.’

  Especially after what his Form Master had said. ‘Plantagenet, I don’t see your name down on the University List.’

  ‘No, Sir. I won’t be applying.’

  ‘But I had you marked down for Oxford. The headmaster’s old college. He’d put in a word for you.’

  ‘Yes, Sir, thankyou, Sir, but I won’t be going.’

  ‘Stuff and nonsense! Of course you must go. Bright boy like you…’

  ‘Bright boy!’ David had exploded to Art. ‘It’s what you see in adverts. Bright Boy Wanted to clean out the bogs.’

  Eugenie had stopped walking. ‘But you always wanted to go to university. You wanted to be the first one in your family to go.’

  ‘What I always wanted – and you’ve always known this – is to go round the world. All I’ve ever known is school and Stupples Road and the ice-cream stall. I’ve never been on a proper holiday so I haven’t even got as far as Margate. So I’m doing the A-Levels as a Just in Case for the future. In case I need them when I get back from my trip and need to find a proper job.’

  Eugenie didn’t say anything for a good ten minutes.

  ‘Marigold? Are you upset with me?’

  ‘Well, I suppose a lot of women would be. I mean, the day after you marry a guy, he tells you he’s buggering off. But I suppose it’s no different from those wartime weddings.’ She didn’t continue along that track. Sounded like Marisa.

  Instead, she held him tight and said, ‘You know I want you to have the best possible life, David. I want you to live your life, not sit around saying I wish.’ She took a determined breath. ‘When – when were you thinking of going?’

  ‘January the first. There’s a sailing that day. Oh, I haven’t told you. I’ve decided to kick off in Cape Town. Mr Carter says he’d like to pay for my passage.’

  Eugenie decided she didn’t like Brighton. She felt piqued that David had first discussed his plans with Mr Carter, not her.

  ‘You’ll be leaving school early in July. What will you do then?’

  ‘Work for Mr Carter. Can’t let him down. Usual ice- cream stand in the summer, and then in the months up to new year, I can help out in the shop.’

  They strolled through the little maze of antiquey shops known as the Lanes, but there was nothing they would admit they wanted to buy. To keep out of the wind, they took refuge in a small café where there was no choice of menu. It offered a sort of soup that might have been tomato, ham and chips, jam roly poly, all-in for 4s/6d. Tea and bread-and-butter were extra.

  As they were walking up the long hill that led to the station, David said,

  ‘You don’t mind me going, do you? I mean, if you mind, you are my wife and you must come first.’

  Eugenie thought of all his National Geographic magazines, all his maps, his grubby atlas.

  ‘No. Of course I don’t mind.’

  And no, she didn’t like Brighton at all.

  *

  Glo spotted the shiny new wedding ring as soon as Eugenie came into the office. ‘So you been and gone and done it?

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘Can’t see you married, somehow.’

  ‘Well you’re not a great advert for it. How’s the Running Away fund coming along?’

  ‘Bloody awful. I’ve got to get a better job. More money. And this time, my sponging kids won’t get their mitts on it.’

  In May, when Glo was, as usual, studying the Situations Vacant pages in the mid-day edition of the Evening Standard, she called out, ‘Hey Eugenie!’

  Eugenie waved a Not Now hand at her. She was on the phone.

  ‘Well I’m very sorry you’ve been having trouble with your footwear. The problem is, I’m really only qualified to speak on British footwear, and your shoes are Bata. Most of Bata comes from a factory in Czechoslovakia…Foreign. Yes. Quite. Well, different standards, one imagines. Yes. Quite. Not at all. Thank you for contacting the Footwear Information Bureau.’

  Wearily, she put down the phone. ‘Honestly Glo, I don’t think I can stand much more of this.’

  ‘Play your cards right and you won’t have to,’ Glo said gleefully. ‘Listen to this. In the Standard. It says:

  ‘Can you write? Can you smile down the phone? Do you know London like the back of your hand? STET is a new literary/political magazine looking for a female editorial assistant to join enthusiastic team.

  ‘Interviews Thursday 10.00. 22 Garrick St, WC2.’

  ‘That’s a week away,’ Glo went on. ‘Better think what to wear. Have you got an interview suit?’

  Eugenie hadn’t, and she had no intention of buying one. ‘I shall wear what I wore to my wedding,’ she announced. ‘My shocking pink coat-dress.’

  ‘That’s right,’ beamed Glo. ‘Knock ‘em dead.’

  *

  In Garrick Street, the porter informed her that Stet was on the third floor, and the lift was out of order. Then after a moment’s hesitation, he said, ‘Can I say something, Miss? I think you’re an absolute smasher!’

  Highly bucked, Eugenie approached the stairs and found them thronged with chattering girls.

  As she joined the end of the queue, one of the girls on the stair above her said, ‘Helloah! Where did you go?’

  ‘Go when?’ said Eugenie.

  ‘Which university did you go to?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Oh well, you haven’t got a hope. They’re bound to want someone with a degree. Sukie and I were up at Oxford together. Such a hoot, Sukie, meeting up like this! No, I didn’t actually see the ad either, Daddy’s secretary did and he knows the proprietor of this Stet rag so I expect I –‘

  Eugenie turned round, walked the short distance to Henrietta Street and proceeded to Covent Garden market. She strolled in a leisurely way round the stalls, looking at the vibrant cotton knits in crazy fun patterns. The jewellery, too, was wonderfully inventive – she was particularly taken with some drop ear-rings fashioned to hang like kites, one yellow, one red.

  But she wasn’t here to buy a zany cardigan or witty ear-rings. She wanted some flowers. Nowhere better than Covent Garden market for flowers. Best time to come, Glo had told her, was six in the morning when the flowers were fresh delivered and you had the best pick. Local pubs were allowed to be open then, too, or there were stalls selling hot tea and soup.

  I must do that with David, Eugenie decided. One Friday, when he hasn’t got school the next day. We could stay up all night, walk along the Embankment, go to a Covent Garden pub, choose flowers, get a taxi home.

  It was 11.30 when she returned to Garrick Street. The porter was absent. The flock of girls had gone. Presumably, one of them had got the job. Even so, she’d go up and look. Eugenie had never been in an editorial office before.

  Bearing her flowers, which the seller had insisted on wrapping in cellophane instead of the customary newspaper, Eugenie climbed to the third floor. The varnished oak door declaring STET was ajar. Eugenie knocked, and went in.

  Eugenie’s image of a newspaper office came from the movies. American movies, with chain-smoking men in shirt sleeves typing on battered machines, throwing the typewitten sheets at a running boy (who would rise to stardom in later films) a gorgeous blonde in a fur coat sashaying through the office but appearing not to do anything else at all, let alone answer one of the clamouring phones, and, hopefully, a man in a trenchcoat dashing in and yelling, ‘Hold the front page!’

  And the Evening
Standard advert had asked for someone to join ‘an enthusiastic team.’

  The Stet office was quiet. One man sat at a large metal desk, scribbling something in green ink on a yellow pad. He was smallish and thinnish wearing red braces and a red silk knitted tie. Eugenie couldn’t tell the colour of his longish, straight hair because it was so thoroughly oiled. Eugenie had never encountered a snake, or smelled snake-oil but when she looked at the man, she thought, Snake-Oil.

  ‘Revel Rooke,’ he said. ‘Editor.’ He waved her to a bentwood chair beside his desk. On a spare desk, Eugenie placed her flowers.

  Revel Rooke regarded them and declared, ‘Consider the lilies of the field. They toil not neither do they spin.’

  Eugenie recognised the reference. Marylebone High School had been strong on religious education.

  ‘Know what the lilies of the field are thought to have been?’ Revel Rooke went on, ‘No? I’ll tell you. Anemonies. Grow in windy places. And that’s what you’ve brought with you. The lilies of the field.’

  He turned to a fresh page on his yellow pad. ‘Name?’

  ‘Eugenie Plantagenet.’

  ‘Good heavens,’ he said, writing it down. ‘How on earth did you get a name like that?’

  ‘My mother called me Eugenie, and I married a man called Plantagenet.’

  ‘Planta genista. Gorse.’

  ‘Actually, Mr Rooke, it’s golden broom.’

  He frowned. ‘Know what Stet means?’

  David, armed with his most comprehensive dictionary, had prepared her for this one.

  ‘It’s an instruction to the printer. It means Let it Stand. After the Latin, stare, to stand. You write it on a proofsheet with dots under the words to be retained.’

  ‘Very good. Except you’d find little dashes easier than dots. You can keep little dashes more consistent than dots. Do you smoke?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. Daily Mirror office, you couldn’t move for overflowing ashtrays, and the floor heaped with half eaten plates of greasy dinners.

  Don’t know anything about cricket, I suppose?’

  ‘Well, a bit. We had to play at school.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Marylebone High. We used to play against Wallington County and Roedean.’

  ‘Roedean? My girlfriend went there. But she’s not sporty, exactly. What field position did you play?’

  ‘Second slip. At first I tried to lurk on the boundary, but I wasn’t strong enough to throw the ball in. It used to land on the pitch like a poached egg.’

  Laughing, Revel Rooke picked up his pen. ‘Do you have a second name?’

  ‘Virginia. I was born Eugenie Virginia Dare.’

  ‘Know why the Virginia?’

  Eugenie did. David had researched this ages ago. ‘It’s because when the settlers first arrived in America, the first child born was Virginia Dare, so they called the State after her.’

  Revel Rooke looked delighted. ‘Wonderful. And quite wrong. The State of Virginia was named after Elizabeth the first, the Virgin Queen. Alleged virgin queen.’

  ‘Well I prefer my version,’ said Eugenie, with spirit, rushing to David’s defence.

  Revel said mildly, ‘Journalism is about facts, Eugenie. Deadlines and facts. Never miss a deadline, and always, always check your facts. That isn’t to say we can’t make a bit of mischief, from time to time. All magazines need to make a bit of mischief.’

  She saw he had written down, E.V. Dare. Underneath, he wrote, Evie Dare, and drew a box round it in his green ink.

  ‘Eugenie Plantagenet’s too long for a by-line. Evie Dare’s better. Shorter.’

  A by-line! Eugenie stuttered, ‘I thought you’d want a reference…’

  She had a glowing reference in her bag, composed and typed, appropriately, by the reliable Glo.

  ‘Don’t hold with references,’ Revel Rooke said dismissively. ‘You probably made it up, anyway.’

  A by-line! ‘Mr Rooke –‘

  ‘Revel. Everyone in Fleet Street calls me Revel.’

  ‘Well, d’you mean you’re giving me a job?’

  ‘Mrs Plantagenet, of course I’m giving you a job. Never had a girl come in here before with an armful of anemonies and knowing about cricket.’

  It was much, much later that Eugenie realised, the main reason Revel had given her the job was that, of all the girls he’d interviewed, she was the only one who was married.

  ‘Revel!’ David shouted when she rushed in. ‘Revel? Did he say what he did before Stet?’

  ‘Well, he said – he implied – that he’d been on the Daily Mirror.’

  Hugging her, David choked with laughter. ‘I’ll tell you what he did. There can’t be two Revels in London. He ran a seedy strip-joint in Soho, called Revel’s Revue Bar.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve been there?’

  ‘Oh. Art – he wanted to go. Bloody awful. Tarts, you know.’ He didn’t mention that he and Art had been fleeced to such an extent, they’d been in danger of having to walk all the way back to Wembley.

  At the dining room table, he pushed aside his French revision. ‘Oh Marigold, I’m so proud of you! Go and look in the fridge.’

  She found a bottle of chilled champagne. David took it from her. ‘See, I knew you’d do it. Come on, let’s get this open.’

  ‘But your revision –‘

  ‘Can wait. Hey, did you meet the team at Stet? What are they like?’

  ‘They’re not. I get the feeling the team is, actually, me.’

  The phone was ringing. Eugenie ran to her office and snatched it up. It was the faithful Glo, wanting to know how she’d got on.

  Eugenie gabbled her news.

  Glo said, ‘Pay all right?’

  ‘Tenner a week, with a rise if he still likes me after three months. I have to be paid monthly.’

  ‘Cunning,’ said Glo. ‘Means you get less. Fifty two weeks in a year, twelve months in a year, work it out.’

  ‘He wants me to start Monday. I’m supposed to give a week’s notice, but can you ring them and say I’m ill, dead, my mother has a brain tumour. A fatal brain tumour…’

  When she told David about the salary angle, he responded, ‘And of course, the reason he advertised for a female, is that he can pay you less than a man.’

  ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘Not really. Women can take time off to have a kid. Sit in the backyard all summer, doing nothing. The wives in Stupples Road are always at it, getting preg and skiving off.’

  Eugenie’s answer to this didn’t materialise for some years, with the welcome arrival of a feminist magazine called Spare Rib.

  David had poured two glasses of champagne and was back at the dining table. He always did his homework, or his revision there, leaving her office strictly alone. The Wembley Grammar sixth form were on revision leave, which Eugenie gathered they were all taking seriously except for Dawson, who considered he wouldn’t need any A-Levels as he was going to work in his father’s garage.

  ‘Are you going to tell Marisa about Stet?’

  ‘I will, when she sends me a letter I can actually read. The envelope of the last one was so rain-sodden I’m surprised it got here. She never says where she is, or gives a proper date. Just something like, ‘Friday. Or is it Saturday? I’ll have to ask Reginald.’

  David was eyeing his French poetry book. She saw he was completing a translation of Baudelaire’s La Beaute.

  ‘Read it to me, in French. I won’t understand, probably, but it’s nice to listen to you.’

  David sipped his champagne, and read:

  ‘Je suis belle, o mortels! Comme un reve de pierre,

  Et mon sein, ou chacun s’est meurtri tour a tour,

  Est fait pour inspirer au poete un amour

  Eternel et muet ainsi que la matiere.

  Je trone dans l’azur comme un sphinx incompris;

  J’unis un coeur de neige a la blancheur des cygnes;

  Je hais le mouvement qui deplace les lignes,

/>   Et jamais je ne pleure et jamais je ne ris.’

  ‘Oh,’ Eugenie sighed. ‘It’s obviously romantic. The only French I know isn’t a patch on that.’

  He grinned. ‘Come on. Let’s have it.’

  ‘Okay. Cette sauce de haute qualite est un mélange de fruits orientaux, d’epices et de vinaigre.’

  ‘Marigold, you never learned that at school.’

  ‘No. It was on the HP Sauce bottle.’

  *

  Just before nine on Monday morning, the Garrick Street porter informed Eugenie that the lift was now working, and he’d had a hunch she’d get the job. Eugenie smiled at him sweetly, wondering how often she’d have to call on him to prove to Revel that she really did know London like the back of her hand.

  Revel was already at his desk, workmanlike with his shirt sleeves rolled up, his red braces lending a faint pink lustre to the white cotton. Eugenie had chosen a tailored dress in marine blue for her first journalistic day.

  Revel leapt up and gave her a tour of the office. The desk by the window was hers. If she found it draughty, Mr Herbert, the handyman, would stuff some brown paper in. Stationery cupboard was in the corner. Bloody mess. Eugenie might like to spend a spare ten minutes sometime tidying it up. The steel grey metal filing cabinet was hers. Revel’s cabinet, containing his important confidential papers, was red. His phone, on his desk, was red. Eugenie was to use her black phone for all calls pertaining to Stet.

  ‘You can answer my phone, Eugenie, but there’s no need to ask who’s calling. People at a certain level get annoyed if their voices aren’t recognised instantly.’

  Eugenie’s friend the Town Planner was far from being a celebrity but she would insist on starting her phone calls, ‘It’s me!’ And yes, Revel was right. The Town Planner did get very shirty if Eugenie said, ‘Me who?’

  ‘Main people not to offend, Eugenie, are Rhoda Flong, she’s my girlfriend. And Sir Anthony Charles. He’s our proprietor, chairman, calls the shots. Okay, let’s get you to work. First thing, I want you to do the letters.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Where are they?’