Christ, she really is alone in the zoo with us, thinks Alec. It’s a wonder she doesn’t reel out of the house in the morning coughing and gagging.
He puts down the mug on the post at the end of the banisters and opens doors, draws curtains, opens windows, imagining a cleansing gale blowing through from end to end. Out on the other side of the Rise he can see the new green on the big trees starting to cover up the frontages of the big old houses over there. The part they live in is modern infill, presumably where a bomb wiped out the Georgian symmetry. It’s the only new bit, and the only comfortable bit. The behemoths opposite are all dusty-windowed multi-occupancy nightmares, full of art students, old people with a hundred cats, and bewildered Nigerians. Though there are one or two being done up – the ones with a Saab or a 2CV parked outside. A little bit of April rain spatters on the tilted glass. The April air, on the other hand, pushes hesitantly inside a few inches, doesn’t fancy it, withdraws. Oh well. He’s wasting time anyway, he knows he is; his watch says it’s nearly nine now, and he ought to be heading for the bus stop himself soon if he’s going to make the meeting on time. Now or never, Dad. He picks up the mug, knocks on the last unopened door on the crowded landing and, getting no answer, pushes into Gary-land.
In the sweaty dark, ancient-looking suits bought from charity shops hang on walls, plus one, two, three pork-pie hats, equally vintage. There’s a record player and a row of LPs but not a single book. The shelves Alec put up have shoes on them. His firstborn child is sprawled under a duvet and, as ever, Alec’s first reaction is to be startled by the boy’s bulk. Alec is stringy, Sandra is a lovely greyhound. Gary is brawny, blubbery almost, with big slabby shoulders and a seam of flesh around his jaw that could easily grow into a double chin. Who the hell does he take after? Where did he come from, this junior Mussolini?
‘Cup of tea for you, son,’ says Alec.
Gary doesn’t answer or open his eyes but he goes still. His mouth is set, his brows are slightly clenched. Alec is almost certain he’s awake.
‘Gary?’
There’s a pause, as if Alec’s voice has a long way to go to reach the relevant authorities. Down corridors the message goes, up stairs, till at last it reaches the Department of Irritating Dad, where a functionary will consent to look at it, and sigh.
‘What,’ says Gary in the end.
‘I was wondering if you’d had a chance to look at that brochure? From the college? With the list of courses?’
‘No,’ says Gary.
‘Well, you should, when you’ve got a moment.’
‘Huh,’ says Gary.
‘There’s all sorts in there. Graphic arts. Carpentry. Electrical.’
‘Dad,’ says Gary.
‘You could take your pick. Decide where you wanna end up, and then work out what you need to get there.’
‘Dad!’ says Gary, still without opening his eyes, but with a sort of thick anger gathering in his voice.
‘What?’
‘I don’t need to go on a course. I’ve told you!’
‘Well, you need to do something, don’tcha?’ says Alec, feeling his own irritation kindle helplessly. ‘You’re lying in bed in the middle of the day. If you’re not going to stay in school, fine, but then you need to learn a trade. You need to get off your arse and—’
‘I’m asleep!’ bellows Gary. ‘I. Am. A. Bloody. Sleep!’ And in an infuriated convulsion he draws up his big feet, pulls the duvet over his head and disappears. The interview is clearly terminated. But to make this doubly plain, a second later Gary’s arm snakes out and he stabs the On button of his clock radio. Capital Radio at full volume fills the room, Kenny Everett howling like a camp banshee.
Alec retreats. His own anger fills him: his chest is tight with it, his fingers clench. He thumps down the stairs and ditches the tea mug in the sink. It slops as it goes, and he makes himself wipe it up neatly, and squeeze out the cloth, and rinse the mug. But peace does not return, his breath still comes quick and angry, the song, whatever it is, comes through the ceiling. Everyone knows that parenthood changes you: but he’d thought that meant the rearrangement that comes at the beginning of it, when you learn that your life is going to be curled protectively around the kids. He doesn’t know what to do with this recent, new rage, where you feel the pattern of hopes and expectations you’ve had for them all this time start to shrivel and unpick, at their initiative; where they let you know that they don’t want, or apparently even understand, what you want for them; where the story of their lives you’ve been telling yourself, with chances you’d’ve liked, and a step up you’d’ve been glad to take, turns out to be nothing like their own story of themselves. The homework carefully done with Gary – the projects, with the little light bulbs and the batteries and the wires – all gone. Gary doesn’t want that. Gary wants— Oh, who knows what Gary wants. Little bastard. Idle, ignorant, ungrateful little bastard. He’s not going to calm down in here, is he; and he should be on his way. Sweater, windbreaker, book in the pocket. But he shuts the front door with a demonstratively controlled click: no slam.
The meeting is in the NUFTO Hall on the corner of Jockey’s Fields, just in the lee of Gray’s Inn itself. When Alec gets off his bus, he finds himself in a swirl of barristers, wigged and gowned, being loaded into a fleet of black taxis along with box after box of documents. This is the funny thing about this part of London, this particular compartment of the city. At the south end of Gray’s Inn Road, you’ve got this enclosed playground for the lawyers, with its paths and trees and stately facades, like an Oxford or Cambridge college parked in reach of the Old Bailey. But then, as you go up the street, just a couple of hundred yards if that, it turns industrial. There’s four thousand people working in the Times building – well, when they are working – manufacturing the newspapers, and sending out the finished product in lorries. For that matter, you’ve got thousands of posties working just to the east in the Mount Pleasant sorting office, so there’s a definite blue-collar critical mass. And then, when you go on up the Gray’s Inn Road, again only a few hundred yards, it sinks into the scuzziness of King’s Cross. Winos, tarts and petty crims, all being steadily ignored by the commuters streaming on and off the trains. And that’s one street, half a mile long. It’s like some sort of chart of society, from poshness to the lower depths by way of the factory. But the parts do mix. None of it is all just the one thing. It’s the balance that shifts as you travel along it.
And here Alec is at the posh end, where the wigs predominate, and even a strike committee meets in a slightly college-quadrangle kind of atmosphere. The Furniture Trades Hall is one of those Edwardian edifices, like some old town halls or public libraries, that wanted to do grandeur for the people. Its actual hall is like a cut-down labour-movement version of the grand halls next door. Dark wood panels and scruffy plywood chairs.
He is a little bit late. The others on the joint liaison committee are already there, and Terry Fitzneil is tapping his biro on his agenda. He loves an agenda, does Terry. The Times dispute is five months old, and though it has quickened lately there is no sign of it coming to an end. But Terry’s enthusiasm is undimmed. He seems to be immune to boredom. It’s impressive, in a way, like being one of those people you hear of sometimes who can’t feel pain. The other fathers-of-chapel from the five unions representing the Times and Sunday Times staff have got that crumpled look, preset for endurance; they sit slightly slumped, ready for the long haul, even though the meeting’s just started. As old Clive Burnham said to Alec, before he emigrated to Australia, ‘You know what you need most, for a successful negotiation? An iron arse, that’s what.’ Terry, on the other hand, seems as happy as a hamster on a wheel, eyes bright, moustache quivering. His secret weapon for defending his NATSOPA clericals – the typists, the secretaries, the ladies who take down the classified ads – is a limitless willingness to talk. In any sentence of any draft agreement he can find an ambiguity that requires exploration. Slow exploration. Long exploration. Patient exploratio
n. It’s a principle he brings to the job of handling the fraternal relations between unions, too.
‘Lot to get through this morning, gents,’ Terry says. ‘Update on the picketing arrangements; some nice messages of support I’m gonna share with you; news on the situation with the scab edition in Germany; provisional report on the co-op ownership plan, I’m hoping? Where are we with that, Josh?’
‘Coming along, Mr Fitzneil.’ Delicate point of class etiquette, just there. Josh Eden is there from the Times journalists’ chapel, a middle-class socialist playing nicely with the rough boys. He gets called Josh, just like the others round the table are Terry, Alec, Pat, George, Ian to each other. But he doesn’t get to call them by their first names in return. That would be a liberty. The dignity of being given the mister by those who work on the fifth floor is too important, even if this particular member of the boss-class happens to be an ally. Half-included, Josh goes on: ‘But I think maybe we should talk about the NUJ exec’s meeting last night first? There’s been a development.’
‘Well, I was going to get to that under Item 3. Is it urgent?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘All right, then. I’ll just make a note. Hold on.’
They wait while Terry’s biro moves carefully. Someone lights a fag from the stub of an old one.
‘Yes,’ says Terry. ‘The floor is yours, Josh.’
‘Right. Thank you, Chair—’
‘Chair?’ says Pat derisively. ‘He’s not a piece of fookin’ furniture, you know.’
‘Steady on,’ says Alec. ‘Can’t speak disrespectfully of furniture, you know: not in here.’
‘I’m just trying to avoid, er, sexism,’ says Josh.
‘I wouldn’t say no to a bit of sex, cold morning like this,’ says an elderly lithographer from SLADE who has somehow become the group’s licensed blue joker, probably because his voice is satisfyingly prim.
‘Still up for it, then, your missus, is she?’ says Pat.
‘I’m glad to say that Mrs Edwards remains the tigress she has always been.’
Whistles and hoots for politeness’s sake, fairly nominal.
‘Sex-ism,’ says Terry reprovingly. He nods to Josh and they subside.
‘Right,’ says Josh. ‘Well, okay. Well, as I was saying, our NEC met last night, and the German edition was discussed; and I’m glad to say the ruling is that Times writers should not co-operate with the whole scheme.’
‘No co-operation meaning no copy?’ asks Alec. The journalists’ position in the dispute is tricky, because their chapels did reach a new working agreement with Times Newspapers Limited, last autumn, and so they didn’t get laid off when the lockout came. They’re still working, technically, though there isn’t anything for them to write, or hasn’t been till this idea of getting a kind of export-only Times printed up in Frankfurt came along. Apart from management, the journos are the only ones still occasionally going in and out of the building.
‘Yes,’ says Josh, and a chorus of approval goes round the table. ‘But, sorry, there’s a catch,’ he continues, raising his voice to be heard. ‘The national executive say no, but I couldn’t quite swing it at our own chapel vote. I’m afraid it was a close thing, but the Times NUJ has voted to co-operate. Some of us will write for the German version of the paper. You know, people are frustrated? With the general election coming up and everything? They want to get their pennyworth in. I’m sorry, I know it’s awkward.’
‘That’s one word for it,’ says Pat.
‘So, wait a minute, what’s that going to mean on the picket?’ says Alec, leaning forward. The picket concerns him more than it does any of the others, because it’s the compositors who took the initiative when the German thing leaked, and it’s the compositors and only the compositors who are keeping up the picket on all seven of the building’s entrances. ‘If they cross the line, are they scabbing or not?’
‘Not technically,’ says Josh. ‘Our constitution says the chapel has the final word, where there’s this kind of disagreement.’
‘Maybe that’s something that should be looked into, at a suitable moment,’ Terry says thoughtfully. ‘Convene a working group, maybe?’
‘We’re not the only ones who think local autonomy matters,’ says Josh, with a flash of defiance. The NATSOPA chapels are notoriously unruly, and have been ignoring their national leadership at will throughout the dispute.
‘Leaving that on one side,’ Alec insists, ‘what are we supposed to be saying to people today? What do my members say to your members, if they try to go in?’
‘It was very close, Mr Torrance,’ says Josh to Alec. ‘Very close; and I think a lot of the people who voted in favour are uncomfortable with it, deep down. So I think if you do get people coming in, this afternoon, you could probably get a long way with just, um, a gentle appeal?’
Pat snorts, but Alec nods. A mighty social gulf separates the journalists from the troglodyte world of the printing plant in the basement; but they work with the compositors directly, often, or at least through the wafer-thin mediation of the subs. He knows most of the Times’s London writers, to look at if not necessarily to talk to. He’s been typesetting their words for the last fifteen years. It’s a kind of intimacy; it’s something you can appeal to.
‘Gentle appeals it is,’ he says.
Five hours later, and Alec is standing in one of the smallest doorways of the Times building, wearing an NGA armband. He’s done his stint at the front door, where the picket is at its most visible and organised, and where there’s the greatest chance of an argumentative encounter. In fact, bar the odd bit of chanting to do when Marmaduke Hussey came back from his lunch, and leafletting passers-by, it’s been without drama. If Times journalists are at work today, they’re doing it at home. Now Alec has taken over the unpopular job of watching a side exit, and to be honest he rather welcomed the chance to be bored in solitary peace, instead of in company. He propped himself against the crinkled brown mosaic-tile wall of the passageway, sunk his chin onto his chest, and disappeared into Mario Puzo.
Tried, anyway. But there’s something insistently, distractingly woeful about the state of the building. He keeps glancing through the locked metal door at the stub of narrow corridor behind it, and the dim stairwell at the end, as if someone might come down. But of course they never do. The building is virtually empty, and rendered odd by its emptiness. It was never attractive, never somewhere with much of an atmosphere. The old Times site by St Paul’s was the place for that, the place where you could feel the history, and know that the brickwork had centuries’ worth of ink ground into it, all the way back to the dawn of the print, to hand presses and hand-setting. New Printing House Square, the present building is called, to try and claim some continuity, but it’s a dull and plain object, with fake arches of the mosaic cladding at the top of all the windows, and the only thing showing it’s not just an office block being the huge shuttered doors closing off the ramp from the basement. And it ain’t square either. It’s the shape of a sans-serif capital D, with a patch of corporate garden between the two prongs on the left.
The only thing it had going for it was energy. When the building was full, it buzzed like a hive. A quarrelsome hive, prone to blockage and disruption, admittedly: but even when in a state of frustration or bad temper, somewhere that pulsed with anxious urgency, all day long, accelerating and accelerating as the evening drew towards press time: when, after Pat’s NATSOPA boys had extracted their pound of flesh or Terry had forced a clarification of the word ‘secretary’ from some luckless editor, the presses would roll, and the roar and vibration of the great rotating drums would travel upstairs through the whole building, as a shake in the floors, a chattering of pencils left on desks, a standing wave in a cold, half-drunk mug of tea. And then, when Alec came out onto the pavement on his way to the bus stop, in winter dark or lingering blue high-summer light, his part of the process done, the first lorries would just be grinding up the ramp, stacked with bales of newsprint bound
for the railway stations, so that tomorrow over breakfast in Greenock and Merioneth people could read Bernard Levin’s thoughts on Aida, or editorials by William Rees-Mogg containing words like ‘orotund’ and ‘oriflamme’. O-r-i-f-l-a-m-m-e.
Now, instead, the building is a derelict, a hulk. You could see it most clearly back before the days lengthened, when at teatime only a pathetic few strip lights would flicker on, up in the management’s rooms on the sixth floor, and the rest of the building dimmed to black. Blackness behind the hundreds of metal-framed windows, concentrating in there while outside it was still grey urban dusk. In the April light, the dereliction is less blatant, but it’s still palpable, and miserable. This is a hive without bees he’s guarding; a modern ruin; a structure unknitting itself. Entropy has crept through offices and composing rooms. Dust is gathering. There’s a polystyrene cup lying on its side at the bottom of the steps that must have been there for weeks. Energy is dying into dullness.
Alec is genuinely uncertain whether it’s ever going to come back to life. Management seem utterly cack-handed in their willingness to pick a fight they don’t know how to win. On the union side, the unity they can just about maintain in a talking shop like Terry’s committee falters into bickering as soon as there’s something definite on the table. The whole reason that there’s union leverage on Fleet Street is that the product is perishable – that if the Times doesn’t make it to the newsagents within a window of a few hours, it becomes unsaleable. But where does that power to take the print run hostage go when the paper is closed down by management? What can the compositors and the lithographers and the ad girls and the machine room operators threaten now?
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