A View to a Kilt

by Wendy Holden

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Harriet, still typing. ‘So you are. Well, you’d better stop that for a start.’

  ‘Really?’ Alice demanded, dangerously. ‘What should I write, then?’

  Harriet did not appear to notice the dangerousness. ‘Maybe something about the wonderful conditions of the workers in his garment factories,’ she suggested, only half-jokingly.

  Alice was now so furious it was almost possible to see smoke coming out of her multi-pierced ears. Her studded nostrils were flared wider than a seventies glam-rock band’s trousers. Her burning eyes now swung on Laura.

  ‘What about all your great editorial principles?’ she thundered. ‘“Fearless in our quest for truth and justice,” that’s what you said. “Features at the heart of the magazine.” You said that too. That’s why I came here. I could have gone anywhere, but I chose you.’

  Laura leapt to her feet, knocking over a glass of water in her haste. It soaked into the proofs of the new issue on her desk. ‘I know!’ she yelped. ‘And you were right to!’

  It was too late, however. The office door slammed in the wake of the furious editor at large, the blinds crashing violently against the glass. Laura stared after her, then sank despairingly back into her seat. Bev Sweet had claimed her first scalp.

  ‘Well!’ said Harriet, with an attempt at wryness. ‘That could have gone better.’

  Laura glared at her. ‘It would have gone fine if you hadn’t said that about the factories.’

  ‘Joke,’ said the ad director, unrepentantly. ‘Not my fault if she doesn’t have a sense of humour.’

  Laura reflected that Alice not only had a sense of humour – a dark wit some several thousand feet above Harriet’s grey-cropped head – but sterling qualities as an investigative journalist that would now be lost to Society. There was no point, she knew, rushing after her and pleading with her to reconsider. Given Bev’s ultimatum, she could hardly promise her a free hand on features any more. She tipped her head back and groaned.

  ‘I’ve got an idea.’ This was Bodge, the interiors editor. Laura jerked her head back down. She couldn’t recall Bodge ever having an idea before, but there was a first time for everything. ‘How about gold fried chicken buckets?’

  ‘What?’ Laura made an honest effort to understand, she really did.

  Bodge shook back her centre-parted blonde hair and beamed earnestly back at Laura. She was one of the few members of staff left over from the previous editor who recruited on the basis of social status. Bodge was the daughter of an earl, but unlike her predecessor, Laura did not regard that as a profession. Negotiations with HR to move Bodge on to another magazine in the stable were advanced, but not completed.

  ‘Yah, it’s the latest thing,’ Bodge explained in her honking Sloane voice. ‘You know those manky cardboard buckets KFC give you? Yah?’

  Laura didn’t. She had been raised in Paris and never ate fast food. Harry, on the other hand, was addicted to takeaway chicken katsu curries. Another little irritant between them.

  ‘Well, when Deliveroo turns up with it you just plonk it all into one of those solid gold buckets,’ Bodge went on. ‘Much smarter, and last much longer. Yah?’

  ‘Er, yah,’ said Laura, when she was capable of speech.

  ‘You could have gold McDonald’s cartons as well,’ Pidge put in supportively. ‘So much more stylish than polystyrene.’

  Laura heard her from what seemed miles away. She was feeling quite stunned with misery. Her star writer had left and the ideas her staff were coming up with were terrible. None was going to attract a single advert, let alone 75 per cent.

  ‘Bothies are really trendy?’ Smudge said now. She was a good-natured willowy features assistant who had earlier that day filed a column about heated dog leads for cold morning walks.

  ‘Bothies?’ Laura tried to concentrate. She had no idea what Smudge was talking about.

  ‘They’re kind of remote stone huts?’ Smudge always made a statement sound like a question. ‘They don’t have loos and you sleep on the floor?’

  Laura didn’t believe a word of it. ‘Why would anyone want to do that?’

  Thomasella, who had made an impressive recovery from the Old Sporran ganaches, leapt to explain. ‘Smudge is right, they’re seriously massive. Well, actually, they’re pretty small.’

  Laura rubbed her eyes. Was it her, or them? ‘But what do people do in them?’ she asked, patiently.

  Lucy-Annabelle, the beauty editor, shrugged her tanned shoulders. Her job involved the near-permanent inspection of spas in exotic locations. ‘Binge-watch The Crown?’

  ‘They don’t,’ said Pidge, ‘have electricity.’

  ‘But where are they?’ Laura pursued.

  ‘In the mountains in Scotland,’ said Smudge, which did it for Laura. Scotland always looked freezing cold and utterly miserable. All mist, soggy heather and biting insects. Whisky was all right, of course, and tartan a fashion perennial. But that was the most you could say about it.

  ‘Land of the Purple Haze,’ remarked Demelza.

  ‘Heather,’ corrected Harriet. ‘Land of the purple heather, land of the shining river.’ She began singing ‘Scotland the Brave’.

  ‘No, purple haze,’ Demelza insisted when she had finished. ‘It’s a music festival. A really big new one in Scotland. Apparently it’s going to be as big as Glastonbury. McGlastonbury, I guess.’

  ‘Yay!’ exclaimed Harriet.

  The staff looked at each other again. Whilst definitely brisk and energetic, Harriet was a tad square. She wasn’t really the festival type.

  ‘I’ve got it! Let’s have a special Scottish issue,’ the ad director went on, excitedly.

  Why, Laura thought angrily, didn’t Harriet just butt out? She’d done enough damage this morning already. Society was Laura’s magazine. It was up to her to decide on themes.

  Too late, though; there were rumbles of agreement from among other members of staff. ‘Scotland’s definitely having a comeback,’ Thomasella confirmed. ‘Deep-fried Mars Bar sorbet and haggis tempura is everywhere right now.’

  Violet, the travel editor, excitedly agreed and added that a just-launched, all-suite hotel on the West Coast of Scotland was pulling in star punters. ‘It’s built on a former Highland Clearances site.’

  Pidge beamed. ‘I love a designer discount outlet!’

  ‘Not that sort of clearance.’ Violet explained that the Highland Clearances involved throwing agricultural labourers off the land and replacing them with sheep.

  Pidge looked puzzled. ‘But can sheep do agricultural labour?’

  Demelza piped up again, saying that tartan tattoos were a thing. Lucy-Annabelle lent her voice to the swelling strain saying that porridge facials were becoming huge and wet rooms with single-island malt-whisky showers (studies having shown this helps hair regrowth) were the latest oligarch accessory. The final touch was added when Serena, the social editor, arriving late from the launch of a fashionable bingo hall, said she knew of a Notting Hill celebrity bagpipes club.

  ‘It looks,’ said Harriet triumphantly to Laura, ‘as if Scotland could be the answer to all our problems.’

  It was now that Laura remembered the ad director’s surname was McDonald. She decided not to argue. Insulting the land of Harriet’s fathers was obviously not a good idea. She’d just lost one key member of her team and couldn’t afford to lose another. Particularly if that one was responsible for bringing in the adverts.

  After the meeting was dismissed and the rest of the staff were filing out, Harriet came and sat on the edge of Laura’s desk in the way she did when excited about something.

  ‘Property’s the thing, I reckon. We could clean up. There are literally hundreds of castles for sale. Baronial estates the length and breadth of the Highlands.’

  Laura wasn’t surprised. Had she a Scottish estate, she would sell it too. Then get the next plane out.

  ‘Great,’ she said. ‘Over to you. You can sell 75 per cent of the magazine to Scottish estate age
nts.’ Lorne shot through her mind. He was a Scottish estate agent, of a sort. Perhaps Harriet could start with him.

  Her ad director looked at Laura sternly over her blue-rimmed half-moon reading glasses. ‘Yes. After you’ve been up there and paved the way. Checked out a few of the chateaux. Offered to write about them for the magazine.’

  Advertorial – flattering articles about advertisers – was strictly against Laura’s editorial code. She looked Harriet right in the reading glasses. ‘Definitely not.’

  Harriet shook her grey-cropped head. ‘Sometimes Laura Lake, I really don’t understand you. For the sake of Society, you’ve been imprisoned in castle cellars by jewel thieves and shot at by spy rings. But you won’t see a few estate agents and stay in a few castles in the most stunningly beautiful country in the world?’

  Laura wouldn’t. Supplying PR for baronial estates was not what she went into journalism for. She did not say so, however. There were ways round this. She’d just think of another idea for a special issue. A better one.

  Harriet now prepared to leave, overdue at the launch of a high-end tripe bar called Offally Posh. ‘I’m hoping for a half-page, even if I don’t give the place till the end of the week.’

  Laura agreed. It was a terrible idea. ‘Who wants posh tripe? It’s a contradiction in terms, like hot champagne.’

  Once Harriet had gone, Laura, still thinking of champagne, remembered the bottle in her bottom drawer. Given the morning she’d just endured, she was inclined to drink it all on the spot. But she took it out and put it in her bag. She would see Harry tonight, and while the first part of the evening was to be spent looking at the Eggtimer, there would be time later to relax with a flute or two.

  There was, despite her problems, plenty to look forward to.

  Chapter Five

  The Eggtimer was even worse than the Corkscrew. It was, if anything, more soulless – and had built in to its base an arcade of fashionable retail outlets described by Lorne as ‘London’s most Instagrammable shops’. Laura thought Harry would puke on the spot.

  On the bus on the way back to Shoreditch, she seized the moment to tell him about Bev. Hopefully, given his experience of cruel despots the world over, Harry would have some advice about how to deal with her.

  But before she could say a word, Harry, who was sitting on the window side, turned away and stared out into the night. ‘I’ve made the most massive mistake,’ he said bleakly.

  Horror gripped Laura. She stared at his handsome profile, her dark eyes full of fear. ‘What sort of mistake?’ Debt? Sexually transmitted disease? Or did he have another family somewhere he’d failed to mention until now?

  They were on the upstairs front seat as the bus edged along the High Street. It was getting late and tweed-capped hipster dads with beards and iPhones were following over-styled kids with vintage Chopper bikes along the pavements. Harry put his head in his hands.

  ‘The job,’ he groaned, as Laura sat beside him, rigid with alarm. ‘I just hate it. I don’t care about being paid more. I just hate having to deal with all these managerial and internal politics while I send other guys off to all the interesting places.’

  Laura felt as relieved as she felt sympathetic. ‘It must be awful.’

  ‘You have no idea!’ Harry’s flushed face reared up from his palms, his chiselled features twisted with pain. ‘I miss it so much, being out in the field, seeing things as they happen, being there first. There’s this story I’m setting up at the moment – and I want to do it myself.’ He buried his face dramatically in his hands again. Laura, as they bowled along, saw one of the hipster dads looking up at them curiously.

  ‘Well, you can’t do anything about it tonight,’ she pointed out sensibly. ‘Just try to relax and tackle it in the morning.’

  But, excellent as this advice was, it was difficult to follow, as Laura knew from her own experience. She felt the same about Bev. Relaxing when you were worried was impossible. To get through the evening they would both need a distraction.

  They were passing the local retro-chic cinema, the Screen On The Scene. ‘Let’s see a film,’ Laura exclaimed. Alongside a Norma Talmadge retrospective, Caspar’s new Bond film, Kiev Chicken, was on. That should cheer Harry up, watching the superspy’s risible, ridiculous adventures in his former stamping ground of Russia.

  Laura had seen it once already, but another viewing wouldn’t hurt. The shots of Moscow, St Petersburg and Kiev were stunning, and watching her former lover on the big screen always cheered her up. His success had come so quickly. It seemed no time at all since Caspar was so desperate he was working as a (not particularly convincing) Prince Harry impersonator. And being part of a ludicrous contemporary art installation in Paris, which was where he and Laura had met.

  The film’s Bond Girl, Happy Ending, was played by Savannah Bouche, who had been with Caspar at the time. Just as Laura had feared, she had used him ruthlessly to get the part. So besotted had Caspar been that he’d gone the extra mile and got parts for Savannah’s four dogs as North Korean baddie Dr Kimchi’s pack of killer hounds.

  Kiev Chicken had been a huge hit and yanked Savannah’s profile even higher into the stratosphere. The relationship with Caspar had ended soon after. Devastated though he had been at the time, Caspar was now happily involved with an actress called Margo Boston. Her bed was a classified Hollywood historic monument, having hosted everyone from Jack Nicholson to Warren Beatty in its time.

  Laura had been surprised at the combination as Margo wasn’t the typical Caspar type. A good thirty years older than he was, she had the left-wing activism of her generation and was a UN Special Envoy. Caspar, meanwhile, lacked a single political bone in his body and was uniquely uninterested in anything that didn’t directly affect him. But Laura was glad he was happy. His post-Savannah anguish had kept her awake at nights, largely because he rang at all hours from LA, drunk and weeping.

  The Screen On The Scene was the sort that had ripped out conventional rows of cinema seating and replaced them with upcycled individual chaises longues. You could lie on them whilst drinking cocktails and eating Indian small plates. Great, they could have dinner here; there was nothing in the fridge in Cod’s Head Row and Laura was keen to avoid Harry ordering yet another takeaway.

  On the top deck of the bus, she pulled her lover to his feet. He seemed reluctant, but complied.

  *

  The cocktail bar at the Screen On The Scene was hung with Indian sequinned material in magenta and peacock blue. A couple of tuk-tuks served as seating areas; Laura hurried to get one. Milling around were the usual fashionable locals; Soviet-chic T-shirts and advanced male-pattern baldness squiring women with burgundy fringes and round glasses with thick black frames.

  Harry threw them a contemptuous glance over his beekeeper’s cocktail which was apparently made with honey from the bartender’s own Hoxton hives. ‘I feel sick,’ he said.

  Laura, for her part, was quite enjoying the cocktail. It was a bit sweet, but reasonably strong and after the horrors of the working day, plus Lorne and his slow-closing drawers, strong was what was needed. ‘You just need to eat something,’ she told Harry, passing him a menu of Indian street food in which quinoa bhajis and edamame pakora featured heavily. He tossed it out of the tuk-tuk.

  ‘Not hungry sick. Fed-up sick.’

  Laura felt a stir of impatience. She’d had the day from hell too, not that Harry had enquired about it. She also had plenty to whinge about, should she choose to.

  ‘And I feel bloody silly sitting in here,’ Harry complained, shifting his long legs with difficulty in the cramped space of the tuk-tuk. ‘Last time I was in one of these I was hurtling through Delhi after one of the Indian mafia. But look at me now,’ he moaned, brandishing his beekeeper’s cocktail in disgust.

  Laura was offended. He was with her, wasn’t he? He should be thanking his lucky stars. She swung her legs out of the tuk-tuk. ‘Film’s about to start. Come on.’

  It was a mistake, Laura realised, within
five minutes of sitting down. Or rather lying down, although the upcycled chaise longue was strangely hard to get comfortable on. Probably she would have preferred a normal seat. The quinoa bhaji tasted quite odd as well and sat uncomfortably in her stomach with the produce of the Hoxton hives.

  The mistake was not the surroundings, though, it concerned her choice of film. All the hipsters nearby were roaring with knowing laughter as James Bond speed-boated down the Neva or clung to the Kremlin’s gilded onion domes after a parachute drop went wrong. Only Harry had his arms folded and his face set.

  It remained set throughout the film, even when evil Dr Kimchi was devoured by his own killer dogs. Watching the scene, Laura remembered Caspar telling her that Savannah’s animals had their own suite complete with swimming pool in the chateau-style Bouche pile in Beverly Hills. Playing a set of relatively deprived Communist dogs was therefore probably quite a stretch for such pampered pets and may have been the only real acting in the film.

  Certainly Savannah, practically smouldering a hole in the screen as deceitful temptress Happy Ending, was only playing herself, and Caspar never played anybody else. His performance in Kiev Chicken was confined mainly to his eyebrow.

  ‘Enjoy it?’ Laura ventured afterwards, tucking her arm into Harry’s as they turned out of the Screen On The Scene.

  As he obviously hadn’t, she was prepared for a sarcastic laugh. But not for Harry to wrench his arm out of hers and storm off down the street. Laura hurried after him, dodging the exiting cognoscenti discussing ‘reassuring tropes’ and ‘vintage style’.

  ‘Harry!’

  He stopped and turned. Laura rushed up to him and flung her arms about him. It was a generous gesture and one he didn’t really deserve. But the alternative was a row, which she was keen to avoid. ‘What’s the matter? I thought you’d like the film, that it would make you laugh.’