The Stranger Times

by C. K. McDonnell

Banecroft matched her volume. ‘Get out. You’re fired.’

  Hannah limped through the door. ‘What?’

  Her outfit had no doubt started the day in fine fettle; however, the left sleeve of the jacket was now torn, the blouse was missing a couple of buttons, and there was some blood on it, presumably from the nosebleed she was trying to stem with a tissue.

  ‘Sorry. I had a bit of an issue getting here.’

  ‘Better luck getting home. You’re fired.’

  ‘No,’ said Grace, ‘you are not.’

  Grace and Banecroft locked eyes. ‘I can’t have people rolling in whenever they like – it sets a dangerous precedent.’

  ‘Look at the girl. She’s bleeding, panting, clothes all messed up – I’m guessing she didn’t just forget to set her alarm clock.’

  ‘It’s the principle of the thing.’

  ‘You’re a man of principle now, are you?’

  They continued to stare at each other.

  ‘Five,’ said Banecroft. ‘I want five swears.’

  ‘No way. We need more staff and you know it. Where are we going to get a new Tina from at this rate?’

  Banecroft shrugged. ‘I could ring the old Tina, see if she’ll come back.’

  ‘She …’ Grace turned to the others. ‘What’s the word for it?’

  ‘Headbutted,’ said Ox.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Grace, before turning back to Banecroft. ‘She headbutted you.’

  ‘Yes, but not that hard.’

  ‘Four.’

  ‘And I want my gun back.’

  ‘I do not have your gun.’

  ‘No,’ said Banecroft. ‘But you can ring up and get it back by asking nicely. People like you. You are likeable.’ He managed to say this as if it were a serious character flaw on Grace’s part.

  Grace looked up at the ceiling, quite possibly making a silent prayer. ‘OK. Fine. I shall try.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  ‘But no guarantees. As far as I understand it, the police are in the business of taking guns away from people, not giving them back.’

  ‘I know. It’s political correctness gone mad.’ Banecroft looked up at Hannah. ‘All right, Real Housewife of Wherever, you’re not fired. You’re on a final warning.’

  Hannah nodded nervously. ‘OK.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘I’d rather not talk about it.’

  ‘I’d rather not be here,’ said Banecroft, ‘but I am. Go.’

  They all looked at Hannah, who puffed out her cheeks.

  ‘If you must know, I’m living with a friend of mine and her husband, and—’

  ‘You got into a fight with them?’

  ‘No!’

  Banecroft twirled his finger in the air. ‘Then skip forward.’

  ‘I got on the wrong bus.’

  ‘And then you tried to hijack it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then skip forward.’

  Banecroft added rhythmic stomping of his good foot to the finger twirling.

  ‘All right. But—’

  ‘Forward, forward, forward.’

  ‘All right! I was late, running through the park, and this woman was walking her six dogs. I mean, who has six dogs?’

  ‘Forward, for—’

  Hannah stamped her foot. ‘This is the last bit!’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I … tried to run around her, got tangled up in one of the leads and sort of ended up in a fight with this bloody woman and her six dogs. She was … They were …’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Banecroft, ‘we’ve hired Inspector Clouseau.’

  Grace cleared her throat. ‘Need I remind you, you shot yourself in the foot.’

  ‘Yes, but that was yesterday. Let’s all just move on, shall we? We have a piss-poor paper to produce.’

  ‘That’s one.’

  ‘Damn it.’

  Grace patted the chair beside her. Hannah limped over and sat down.

  ‘Right,’ said Banecroft, ‘let’s kick off this parade of inadequacy, then, shall we?’

  Grace opened her notepad to take what could loosely be referred to as the minutes.

  Banecroft pointed his crutch in Ox’s direction. ‘Let’s start with the Chinese one and then we’ll do the fat one.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Hannah, ‘but that is totally inappropriate.’

  Banecroft flicked some cigarette ash on to the floor. ‘Oh, the late one has something to say.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hannah. ‘Yes, I do. I know you’ve got your whole being-horrible-to-everyone thing going on here, but you cannot refer to somebody as “the Chinese one”. It is racist.’

  ‘No, it is not.’ Banecroft turned to Ox. ‘Are you Chinese?’

  Ox looked at Hannah and then nodded. ‘I am. I’m proper Chinese, me.’

  ‘See? So thank you for your input, Ms Moral Outrage, but we have a very good system here.’

  ‘You could just use people’s names?’

  ‘I could do, yes. But then I’d worry that the unwarranted rush of self-esteem it would result in might give the staff the incorrect impression that they’re good at their jobs. As soon as someone actually does something competently, I’ll let them know. It hasn’t happened yet, but rest assured, I am on constant alert for even the slightest indication that it might. Now, if Malcolm X of suburbia is done trying to empower the oppressed workers, we’ve got a paper due out Friday, and so far it contains nothing but some of the most depressing lonely hearts ads you’ll ever see, three letters of complaint, and a picture of a Japanese goat that looks like Kylie Minogue. In other words, editorial meeting is in session!’

  CHAPTER 8

  Two hours into the editorial meeting and Hannah had an aching wrist, a sore head and a desperate need to use the bathroom. There didn’t seem to be a good moment to excuse herself, mainly because of the meeting’s relentless pace. Most of the time, Banecroft sat slouched in his chair, his face covered with an open copy of The Catcher in the Rye and his bandaged foot up on the desk. His hands gesticulated as he issued occasional instructions amidst a torrent of reprimands, admonishments and swear-free insults.

  Hannah was too busy trying to keep up to ask any questions, attempting to interpret Banecroft’s barked commands with nothing but whatever clues Grace could slip in to assist her. While she tried furiously to scribble notes – which she assumed she was supposed to do, as Grace had handed her a notepad – Stella sat in the corner, tapping away on a computer.

  There seemed to be a rough structure to the whole process, with the emphasis on ‘rough’. Proceedings opened with Grace running through articles that had been submitted by what Hannah supposed could be called freelancers, although Banecroft preferred ‘the idiots I don’t have to see every day’.

  Ox and Reggie, the ones she very definitely wasn’t referring to as ‘the Chinese one’ and ‘the fat one’, apparently made up the paper’s features department. This seemed a rather grandiose title, but Hannah was trying to keep an open mind. Of the two, Ox seemed to have a better feel for managing Banecroft, at least in the sense that he got shouted at marginally less frequently. His collection of UFO sightings, wild conspiracy theories and weird robots invented by Japanese people seemed to fit mostly what Banecroft was looking for.

  In contrast, Reggie kept pitching stories that he assured everyone were ‘of interest to the serious paranormalist’. Banecroft, one eye on Grace and her swear count, eventually resorted to making rude noises to express his displeasure. It would be unfair to say he was acting like a spoiled child – Hannah had never seen a child who could be so consistently and creatively rude. By the end of Reggie’s pitching session, Banecroft was red in the face and surely running out of saliva, such was the raspberry count. While Hannah didn’t know much about any of this stuff, it appeared Reggie was trying to move the paper in a more ‘serious’ direction. Best of luck with that.

  Yesterday, Hannah had taken home a copy of the most recent edition of The Stranger Times. Its stated task w
as to report the weird and wonderful from around the world ‘and beyond’. Hannah could hear the voice of her father roaring ‘Nonsense!’ as she read articles about sightings of mythical creatures, discussions of outlandish conspiracy theories, and stories of people doing all manner of disturbed and disturbing things, an alarming number of whom had been naked while doing them.

  Hannah didn’t consider herself a prude, but the euphemistically titled ‘Coming Togethers’ column, seemingly a regular piece, had been rather shocking. It contained a list of things women had ‘married’ and men had tried to have sex with. Her soon-to-be-ex-husband had been some kind of sex addict, but at least he’d never been caught attempting to have his end away with the statues of a terracotta army. Mind you, if Hannah had followed the path of a woman from Wyoming and married a combine harvester, think how differently her life could have turned out …

  Hannah had closed the paper and given herself a long, hard talking-to. For the first time in her life, she had a job. And if that job consisted of publishing nonsense, then she was going to be the best damn publisher of nonsense she could be. There were undoubtedly worse jobs in the world, although Banecroft was quite possibly a top-five worst boss.

  He had an unusual system of editorial decision-making, which revolved around marine life. Someone would mention a story and then he would either ask further questions or shout out the name of an aquatic lifeform along with a number, then they’d move on. After being confused initially, Hannah eventually caught on that it was a way of determining how big a story should be, along with a page number.

  ‘Plankton’ were tiny – a couple of lines; ‘prawns’ were a single paragraph; ‘trout’ a couple; ‘salmon’ three; ‘dolphins’ a page; and ‘sharks’ were a two-page spread. When he asked ‘Fried?’ it apparently meant ‘Does the story have any pictures with it?’, and ‘bubbles’ were quotes – both of which were good things. If he didn’t like a story, it was ‘thrown back’ or else there was the ‘icebox’, which Hannah guessed meant that it was to be kept for a later date. A ‘whale’ – well, a whale was something they hadn’t found yet, which was why the atmosphere in the room was becoming increasingly tense. That and the fact that Banecroft had taken off the shoe on his good foot, although the stench that ensued meant that ‘good’ was a relative word.

  ‘Right,’ said Banecroft, whom Hannah had suspected of being asleep, so long had been the pause since he’d said anything from under his book. ‘Let’s go round again.’

  This declaration was met with a widespread groan. Banecroft sat up and looked around.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry – are we not feeling it? You should have said. I do apologize. Let’s all take a break, maybe get some fresh air and just, y’know, chillax.’

  Even as Hannah stood up, a voice in her brain was screaming at her to sit back down. The others looked at her as if she were the herd member who had just started limping on a really dodgy area of the African plain.

  ‘Yes,’ continued Banecroft, ‘let’s all follow the new Tina’s example and toddle off to have a nice long lunch – maybe some light shopping – as we have, after all, not a care in the world. I mean, who really cares that we’ll be publishing a newspaper on Friday with a wide, gaping monumental nothing on the front page, because we have found absolutely nothing worthy of it?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Hannah. She sat back down, having just grasped what a ‘whale’ was in the Banecroft nomenclature.

  ‘All right, Vincent,’ said Grace. ‘You have made your point.’

  ‘Have I? Have I? It doesn’t feel like I have, as we are currently sitting here with our collective thumbs up our …’

  Grace shot him a warning look.

  ‘Our you-know-wheres … and nobody – but nobody – has come up with what we need.’

  ‘Could we not just …’

  Hannah was shocked to realize the voice that was talking was hers.

  Banecroft’s eyes narrowed as he turned in her direction. ‘What?’

  ‘Make something up?’

  When at home for Christmas a few years ago, Hannah had made the mistake of allowing Karl to drive in the snow. He’d said something about how most drivers were wimps and that modern tyres were designed to cope with all-weather conditions. He’d then taken a corner too fast and the car – along with its modern tyres, designed to cope with all-weather conditions – had gone into a long skid. A very long skid. It had been the weirdest of experiences. As the car had spun and spun, Hannah had had enough time to tut at Karl’s idiocy and he’d had enough time to explain how this wasn’t his fault, and only then had they hit the side of the tractor. The farmer had been very good about it, even when Karl had – against all available evidence and notions of decency – tried to claim it was somehow the farmer’s fault.

  The memory of that incident came back to Hannah now. She could see the inevitable collision careering towards her and there was nothing she could do to save herself. She hadn’t said the wrong thing. She had said the wrong thing. Banecroft’s eyes were small pinpricks of red, like a forest fire in the distance that was coming to burn down all the little piggies’ houses.

  ‘Make something up?’

  His voice chilled her to the bone. Hannah had never heard him speak softly before.

  Grace opened her mouth to say something, but a look from Banecroft silenced her.

  ‘Make something up?’ he repeated.

  ‘I mean,’ offered Hannah, ‘it’s just that … seeing as …’

  ‘As what? As everything we report is nonsense, we could just save ourselves the effort and make it up?’

  He stood and stared at her for an uncomfortably long time. When it became apparent that things weren’t going to proceed until she had given some kind of answer, she nodded.

  He pointed towards the window. ‘What does the sign above the door outside say?’

  His tone of voice was almost casual, in the way that a log could look casual, drifting down a river, if you ignored the large reptilian eyes blinking at you as it approached.

  ‘It says The Stranger Times,’ said Hannah.

  ‘It does,’ confirmed Banecroft. ‘And what does it say under that?’

  ‘Ehm … It says this is no longer a church, please go bother God somewhere else.’

  ‘That’s right, it— Wait, what? It doesn’t say that. It says “newspaper”.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Grace, ‘it doesn’t say “newspaper”. You changed it after that nice God-fearing man came round and knocked on the door and …’ She noticed the look on Banecroft’s face. ‘Well, I was just saying.’

  Banecroft turned back to Hannah. ‘What it should say is “newspaper”. We are a newspaper. We do not make up the news, because if we did then it would no longer be news. It would be lies.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘But nothing.’ Banecroft almost stumbled as he leaned over to one of the desks and picked up a newspaper. It was the same edition that Hannah had taken home yesterday. He read out the headline: ‘“Wolverhampton Invaded by UFOs”. This is made-up nonsense, is it?’

  Hannah said nothing, having realized belatedly that it was not her role to participate in this conversation.

  ‘It’s complete hokum, isn’t it? Balderdash. Claptrap. Drivel. Twaddle. Tripe. Hogwash. Who could possibly believe it? Well, I’ll tell you …’

  Banecroft jabbed his finger at the first paragraph. ‘Mrs Stade, forty-two, from Blakenhall. That’s who. You see, we’re not saying it’s true. What we’re saying is look, this mad woman believes this and here’s why she does. Here’s some other people who think something similar on pages five, six and seven, and we have an artist’s rendering of the series of crafts she claims to have seen. We have an interview with her husband, who claims to have been taken up by said crafts, had his genitalia examined thoroughly and then been dumped outside a bookies with, I kid you not, a hot tip for that day’s racing at Kempton.’

  Banecroft tossed the newspaper back on the desk.

  ‘We are a ne
wspaper that reports the weird and wonderful from around the world. What would you call it when a couple from Wolverhampton believes that alien beings – as in highly sophisticated creatures capable of intergalactic space travel – are inexplicably interested in not just Wolverhampton, but the meat and two veg of a bloke called Clive from Wolverhampton? Do you know what I’d call it? I’d call it weird. The belief is weird and it is news. We aren’t reporting the story as fact; we’re reporting the existence of the story as fact. That might not mean much to you, but that is a little thing I call journalism.’

  Hannah didn’t know where to look. She nodded. She blinked, hoping the tears she could feel rising would not come.

  ‘If you don’t have any respect for that, then maybe this is not the job for you.’

  ‘All right,’ said Grace, in a vain effort to halt the landslide.

  ‘Maybe you should run off back to hubby and make up your own happy ending. Where his wandering wang is actually not doing so.’

  ‘Vincent!’

  ‘Where you’ve not wasted your life on—’

  ‘Falkirk!’

  Everyone turned to look at Reggie, who was now standing up, having loudly proclaimed the name of a large town in central Scotland.

  Banecroft continued to glare at Hannah, but he spoke to Reggie. ‘What about it?’

  ‘It has a toilet.’

  ‘I’d imagine it has several.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Reggie with a sigh, ‘but only one that the locals claim is possessed by the devil.’

  Banecroft’s eyebrows rose slightly. ‘Go on?’

  ‘It’s in a pub. People claim that it speaks – issuing death threats, ominous predictions and …’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Shortbread recipes.’

  Banecroft stopped and looked at the ceiling. He remained motionless for long enough that Hannah looked at Grace, who gave her an attempt at a reassuring smile.

  ‘I … smell a whale.’

  The rest of the room looked relieved, but Reggie’s shoulders sagged. ‘Yes, I rather feared you might.’

  Banecroft turned. ‘You’re going up there – right now.’

  ‘What? But, no … I have plans for the evening.’