A View to a Kilt

by Wendy Holden

  ‘How’s it going?’ Laura asked, noticing, as her features editor looked up, that her eyebrows weren’t there. To infiltrate the fashion world Alice, who was tall and rake-thin, had been modelling for a designer called Ku Chua. He was famous for ‘challenging conventional ideas of beauty’. His latest show had featured naked models with traffic cones on their bald heads, pushing each other down the runway in supermarket trolleys.

  Alice had been lucky to escape with just the eyebrows, Laura thought. Although she had no interest in her personal appearance – what motivated Alice far more was the fact that Chua’s clothes, which socialites bought for thousands, were made by impoverished slaves in pitiless garment factories in the Far East. As Alice described the latest outrages she had unearthed, her eyes blazed beneath where her eyebrows should have been.

  While she shared her features editor’s indignation, Laura was also excited. This was going to be a brilliant story, absolutely in tune with her magazine’s editorial stance. Whilst it celebrated glamour and fun, Society deplored injustice and exploitation. The luxury it featured was strictly ‘woke’. Unlike most other glossies, it didn’t just sell shiny things to people who didn’t need them.

  ‘Great stuff,’ Laura said to Alice and went off confidently to meet Bev Sweet. With a piece like this in the bag, she surely had nothing to fear.

  Chapter Three

  The office of the CEO was on the top floor of the British Magazine Company’s white art deco building. Laura had occasionally been summoned in the past to see Christopher Stone, and knew that up here, carpets were thick, walls panelled and oil paintings glowing under picture lights.

  At least, they had been. When the lift doors sprang open, Laura initially thought she was on the wrong floor. The formerly deep-piled-blue-carpeted corridor was now black wood. What should be oak-panelled walls were painted matt white and hung with black-framed fashion advertisements. Instead of agreeably clubbable, the atmosphere was starkly commercial.

  Laura was about to turn and get back in the lift. Then, at the desk at the end of the corridor, where on the sixth floor Honor would be, she spotted… Honor?

  In her unchanging uniform of low-heeled black patent shoes, sharply pleated tartan skirt and petrol-blue ribbed polo neck, the CEO’s long-serving secretary personified posh sixties glam. She had worn it all since the actual sixties. Rumour had it that Honor had once worked for the Duke of Edinburgh.

  ‘What’s happened to you?’ Laura gasped, her hurry along the corridor now becoming a run. Gone was Honor’s pleated plaid. In its place was a red PVC boiler suit worn with oversized cat’s-eye sunglasses.

  ‘People my age are very popular in Mango campaigns,’ Honor replied mildly. ‘If I walk around Soho like this I might be spotted by an agency for the over-60s. Then I can model for one of our advertisers.’

  Laura stared. ‘Is that what you… want to do?’

  Honor shook her head. The smooth grey bob was now gelled up and dyed green. ‘Not terribly, but it’s what Mrs Sweet wants me to do. She’s absolutely obsessed with advertising. It’s all she ever seems to think about.’

  Laura knocked on Bev Sweet’s door and prepared to enter the lair of the Poison Pixie. Presumably, like Honor and the corridor, it too had changed.

  Christopher Stone had furnished his office like a stately home study: buttoned-leather sofas, thick rugs, a pair of globes, cigar humidors. In pride of place had been the legendary polished walnut desk that had provided working space for British Magazine Company bosses since the firm was founded more than a century ago. Built from wood salvaged from the ballroom of the Titanic, this famed piece of furniture had risen from the deep to hit the heights. Greta Garbo had posed on it. Fred Astaire had tap-danced on it. The cocktail shaker that Mrs Simpson had used to serve Old Fashioneds remained in one of the bottom drawers. It was considered unlucky to move it.

  Only, now, as she entered Bev Sweet’s office, Laura saw that it had been moved. In its place was a transparent plastic workstation and three large and uncomfortable-looking grey cubes. The carpet was now a black tile surface over which Bev’s cruel spike heels clacked like the knitting needles of a tricoteuse beside the guillotine.

  A pair of hard, assessing eyes met Laura’s. They were the chlorinated blue of a Riviera swimming pool and had a terrifying glow, as if lit up from behind.

  ‘Lorna Lane?’ snarled the Poison Pixie.

  ‘Laura Lake,’ Laura corrected with a smile.

  ‘I won’t ask you to sit down. The Queen always sees her Prime Ministers standing up and I don’t have half the sodding time she does.’

  Laura nodded pleasantly, but apprehension had now gripped her insides.

  ‘I’ll come straight to the point,’ the Poison Pixie added. ‘Have you seen this magazine?’

  Something was thrust into her hand and Laura found herself looking at a glossy front cover with a familiar face on it. It belonged, at least partly – although there was no saying where the many fillers and plumpers had come from – to Savannah Bouche, currently riding high as one of the world’s biggest film stars. Printed across the wave of glossy dark hair rising from her lineless brow was the word Simpleton.

  Laura suppressed a gasp. Simpleton was the mindfulness title published by the British Magazine Company’s main rival. It was all about simplifying, decluttering and reconnecting with yourself. Paring down, throwing things out.

  Laura’s company had tried to launch a competitor, Down & Out, but that had folded after two issues. Simpleton, with its clean-eating recipes, ovary masterclasses and famous ‘air supermarket’, where you could buy fresh air online from whatever part of the world you wanted, was the market leader. The last issue Laura had seen had been a Composting Special with Alan Titchmarsh on the cover.

  What on earth was Savannah Bouche, man-eating megastar and patron saint of conspicuous consumption, doing on it? She famously had homes on every continent and private-jetted to the hairdresser’s. Yet here she was, raving about Ayurvedic farmers’ markets and ‘opening up her mindfulness toolkit’.

  ‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ snapped the Poison Pixie, who had been observing Laura closely.

  ‘Incredible,’ Laura agreed. ‘Her carbon footprint is the size of a yeti’s.’

  Bev Sweet’s small, pale face darkened with annoyance. ‘What are you talking about?’

  Laura gestured down at the cover. ‘She’s not relevant to them. In fact, she’s a complete betrayal of everything they stand for.’

  The ends of her fingers now stung as something was forcibly ripped from them. ‘What’s relevant,’ said Bev Sweet, shaking the magazine in Laura’s face and narrowly missing hitting her on the nose, ‘is advertising. Have you seen how many ads there are in here? It’s like a bloody phone book.’

  The ever-observant Laura noted the simile. Bev Sweet’s official age was thirty, making her theoretically too young to have ever seen an old-fashioned telephone directory.

  This was obviously not the point here, however. She, Laura, was under attack, and not for the first time on this front. Magazine management were always haranguing magazine staff about the need to get more ads in their publications. Laura mentally girded her loins and started making the point that a balance had to be struck between editorial principle and commercial imperatives.

  ‘Bollocks!’ yelled Bev, before Laura could reach the imperatives.

  Laura was shocked. Even Christopher at his angriest had stopped short of expletives. ‘Sorry?’

  Bev was far from sorry. ‘I don’t care about sodding editorial excellence. I want ads! And lots of ’em. The ratio needs to be 25 per cent to 75 per cent.’

  Laura swallowed. In really big issues, such as the September fashion one, Society might hope to be a quarter advertising. In any other month, such a ratio would be a struggle. But as admitting this would clearly be inadvisable, she would accentuate the positive. ‘Well, 25 per cent advertising might be possible,’ she said brightly, crossing her fingers behind her back.

&nbs
p; For a few seconds Bev Sweet just stared at her. Then she started shouting. ‘I mean 25 per cent editorial! I want 75 per cent advertising, have you got that?’

  Laura’s mouth dropped open. ‘No magazine gets 75 per cent advertising,’ she began, before Bev Sweet cut her short. And given how short Bev Sweet was, that was very short indeed.

  ‘This one does!’ she yelled, waving Simpleton around like someone cheerleading a baseball match before hurling it at Laura.

  Laura picked it up with as much dignity as she could summon. There were, as expected, adverts for yoga mats as well as peculiar mindfulness-related items such as vaginal onions. Laura examined this ad with interest. The onions, specially grown for the purpose to be the right size and shape, strengthened the pelvic floor whilst imparting from the onion skin invaluable vitamins ‘used in women’s health for centuries’.

  Realising Bev was glaring at her, Laura continued to flick through. She was astonished to see that, beside all the wellness mumbo jumbo, Simpleton had exactly the same high-fashion ads as any other glossy; the same ones as Society, in fact. Plus a few that Society didn’t have that month, and which the advertising director had been concerned about. How had Simpleton done it? She raised her eyes, or, rather lowered them, to the Poison Pixie.

  ‘Their rates are half yours,’ Bev Sweet growled.

  Laura was relieved. She wasn’t good at figures and had always struggled to be interested in Society’s commercial side. Editorial was her passion. But this was easy. Her magazine’s ads must cost 50 per cent less, was all.

  ‘But your rates are staying right where they are,’ the Poison Pixie added. ‘You just need more ads, and you’re gonna get ’em. Otherwise,’ she went on, shaking Simpleton in a threatening fashion, ‘you’re out of a job.’

  Chapter Four

  Outside Bev’s office door, Honor gave her a sympathetic smile. There was something rather weary about it, as if she’d had to smile many such smiles over the last few weeks.

  Back in her own office, Laura closed the door and turned the sign to Do Not Disturb. Her secretary, Demelza, glanced over with interest as she played with the neon-pink feather at the base of her long black plait. Demelza’s style was high-end Minnehaha: fringed beaded ankle boots, denim minidresses and round coloured sunglasses. Most of Demelza’s summer was spent at the type of exclusive festivals that did not admit ordinary members of the public.

  Demelza stopped playing with her hair and made a ‘T’ sign with her forefingers, one of which was tattooed with a tiger. Laura nodded. A cup of tea would be welcome, even one made badly by Demelza, who had yet to grasp the most basic secretarial duty. She was hopeless at her job but brought a certain joie de vivre to things, as well as an eclectic contacts book which had come in very useful. Demelza knew everyone from Cabinet ministers to cabaret dancers, and most of them were her devoted slaves.

  Laura sat down at her desk and stared at the copy of Simpleton that Bev had given her, almost literally as a parting shot. The smoothly beautiful face of Savannah Bouche smiled kittenishly up at her and Laura felt the Poison Pixie’s knife twist painfully between her ribs.

  She had been given an impossible task, and yet somehow she had to make it happen. The volley of threats Bev had issued as she left the CEO’s office were still ringing in her ears. If she didn’t succeed in making the advertising ratio 75 per cent, the Poison Pixie would sack her. But much worse than that, she would make Society an online-only magazine.

  Laura did not want to be sacked, but she absolutely could not bear to think of her precious publication disappearing, quite literally, into the ether. She got a daily kick out of seeing Society on the news stands, holding its own among international heavy hitters such as Vogue and Vanity Fair. The idea of its beautiful glossy cover with its distinctive masthead never being seen again made her want to weep.

  It would be such a waste, too. She was doing something with Society that no one else was doing with any publication anywhere. Her magazine was utterly original and the formula was a success; her many journalistic awards attested to that. It had all been achieved by sticking to certain principles, such as refusing to give interview subjects ‘copy approval’, or the right to change the article as they wished and make it bland and boring. Nor had she ever run ‘puff’ pieces which extolled advertisers. And had she not just recruited Alice, who was shining a hard, bright light into some of luxury’s darker corners? She had to protect all this, Laura reminded herself fiercely.

  Even so, her heart sank. How could she, whilst attracting advertisers in the numbers demanded, particularly at the enormous rates charged for pages in the magazine?

  Laura sank her head on her arms in despair. Perhaps she should just walk out now, throw in the towel and save herself the agony of inevitable failure – failure in the eyes of all her journalistic peers, too. If she left straightaway her chances of getting another job would be better. But could she leave in such circumstances? Without even trying?

  Slowly, she raised her head again. Her dark eyes, reflected in the glass panes of her office, were steady and resolute. Laura had a stubborn streak. She believed in herself. She had overcome great odds in the past and this was just the latest challenge. Her father, she knew, would have thought the same. Peter Lake never walked away from a difficult situation. In the end, it had cost him his life.

  Laura smiled at her reflection. She would overcome this somehow – together with her trusty staff members. They would all pull together and come up with the answer. They would start with an emergency editorial meeting.

  Demelza now entered with a mug of milky water in which a soggy teabag floated.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she asked, beaming brightly. ‘The Poison Pixie hasn’t sacked you, has she?’ Demelza had a way of getting to the point of things.

  ‘Of course not!’ Laura exclaimed, taking a sip of the tepid brew. ‘Delicious!’ She gave her secretary her brightest smile. ‘Everything’s fine. Tell everyone there’s a meeting. We’re doing some brainstorming.’

  Laura’s staff now started to appear. She looked at them fondly as they flicked their hair and jostled for space on the yellow sofa opposite her desk. First in was best seated, a stark contrast to Laura’s own early days on Society when, a mere fashion intern, she had to sit on the floor. At that time only senior staff were allowed on the yellow sofa, but Laura had introduced a new meritocracy. Anyone could get to the top if they worked hard and seized opportunities, as Laura herself had done…

  Remembering Bev’s dire warning, Laura snapped out of the self-congratulation. It was time to get on with the brainstorming. They were struggling for survival here. Fighting desperately against the forces of Bev Sweet. As Laura looked around the massed ranks of her staff she felt like a general about to brief an army going into battle.

  ‘I’ll cut to the chase,’ she said with her best military briskness. ‘We’ve got to find a way of making Society 75 per cent advertising.’

  ‘What?’ exclaimed Harriet, Society’s ad director. ‘That’s impossible.’

  Laura gave her a determined look. ‘Well, we have to make it possible. Otherwise Bev might make us online-only.’

  She had expected widespread cries of horror at this, but the assembled faces looked back at her blankly. ‘Would that be so bad?’ asked Pidge, the beauty assistant, eventually. ‘It’s better than being sacked.’

  Laura felt as deflated as a burst balloon. As she struggled for a reply, someone else stepped in.

  ‘It’s the same as being sacked, you moron. Online means literally one person is needed to put the editorial together.’

  It was Alice who had spoken, with her characteristic directness. Laura felt grateful even if ‘moron’ was a bit strong. Pidge wasn’t the brightest, but she had skills few others possessed – the ability, for instance, to distinguish between a dermabrasion and a fruit-peel facial.

  ‘Alice is right,’ Laura said. ‘About the online bit, I mean,’ she added hurriedly to Pidge. ‘So we need to think of somet
hing to get the ads flowing in. Any ideas?’

  Muffie, the magazine’s Gadgets editor, raised her wrist. On it was a flat gold bracelet. ‘It’s my champagne detector,’ she explained. ‘It’s incredibly useful, tells you when you’re being fobbed off with prosecco. But it can also sense Veuve Cliquot from 500 yards away. There’s a bottle in this room somewhere.’

  Laura remembered there was one in her bottom drawer, a present from Christopher Stone after Society scooped Best Magazine at the British Press Awards. It seemed like a million years ago now. Such awards would mean nothing to Bev. Unless there was an award for Most Advertising.

  She smiled at Muffie. ‘It’s an ingenious idea, but possibly not quite enough to solve our problems singlehandedly.’

  ‘No one in the prosecco business would advertise, for a start,’ sniffed Harriet.

  Laura continued to look hopefully around. Her gaze fell on Raisy who, with her sister and fellow fashion editor Daisy, filled up the entire yellow sofa. The illuminated tutus meant there was no room for anyone else. ‘You don’t even want to know where the battery pack goes,’ Laura had heard Raisy telling Pidge as they came in.

  Fashion, of course, was every glossy magazine’s biggest money-spinner. It accounted for most of the advertising pages. If there was hope, Laura knew, it was in fashion. ‘Can you think of anyone who might take a lot of ads?’ she asked Raisy. There were probably subtler ways of asking, but with Raisy it paid to be direct.

  Raisy placed a thoughtful finger on the blue circle of blusher on her cheek. ‘Ku Chua’s opening a massive new shop in Bond Street,’ she said after a few seconds. ‘I’m sure he’d be good for an inside front cover, maybe the back too.’

  ‘Great,’ said Harriet, typing a note into her tablet. ‘I’ll get on to his people straight away.’

  There was a rush and a clatter as someone got to their feet. ‘It’s not great, actually,’ said Alice in an acid voice. Beneath her shaven brows, her eyes burned. ‘In case you’d forgotten,’ she added savagely, looking directly at Laura, ‘I’m writing an exposé about Ku Chua, about the appalling conditions of the workers in his garment factories.’