Gifted and Talented

by Holden, Wendy

  Olly pushed open a stiff, cold metal door, crossed a deserted foyer and ascended three flights of stained, grey-carpeted stairs to a brown door on which someone had written ‘The Post’ on a piece of A4. The newspaper, Olly concluded from this, was not a very professional set-up. They would be glad to have someone even of his limited experience on board.

  This impression, it turned out, could not have been more wrong. Olly had been only five minutes in Alastair Cragg’s company when he realised he was hopelessly out of his depth.

  Alastair had an impressively – terrifyingly – strong grip of current newspaper trends and technology and spoke at great length and in great detail about websites and reader interaction and online advertising. Olly followed as best he could; Alastair’s intention, he gathered, was to produce both an online and physical daily newspaper.

  ‘That’s a lot of work,’ Olly ventured timidly, then wanted to kick himself. He didn’t want to give the impression of being workshy. ‘Which is great!’ he added, brightly.

  Alastair flicked him a doubtful glance. He had close-cropped hair and, when he chose to display it, an engaging grin. He was not displaying it now, however. ‘Lot of work, yes. And a hell of a lot of competition. And of course we don’t have much money. Our only advantage is staff. I want the best staff.’ Alastair stared hard at Olly, who tried his best to look as if he fitted this demanding bill.

  Alastair looked unconvinced. He cleared his throat and picked up something from his desk, which Olly recognised as the letter he had sent with his features ideas. Including the living-statue one. He sat up a little straighter. Now he could get his advantage back. He reminded himself that he had been sent for immediately, which had to count for something. Although, increasingly, he could not see what.

  ‘These ideas,’ Alastair said.

  ‘Yes,’ Olly beamed, widening his mouth in an expectant smile. Alastair was surely about to say he liked them, then hopefully the offer of a job would follow. He felt a glow inside. He pictured himself rushing back to Dotty and David’s with the news, perhaps picking up a bottle of champagne on the way, Dotty’s shriek of joy, corks popping . . .

  ‘Well, they’re not very good, are they?’ Alastair’s words cut sharply into this pleasant dream.

  Olly gasped.

  ‘A lifetime in the day of a living statue in the shopping centre,’ Alastair quoted from the letter. His eyes bored into Olly’s. ‘It’s been done before.’

  ‘Has it?’ Olly faltered. And he had thought it so original.

  ‘Daily Telegraph, to name but one,’ Alastair sniffed. ‘And most of the other stuff you’ve suggested here’s been done too.’

  Olly’s spirits swung sharply downwards. He felt horribly disappointed.

  ‘If the Post’s going to make its mark – survive, even –’ Alastair’s voice came through the embarrassed thumping in his ears – ‘we need to build a reputation for news stories. Headlines. I advertised for an investigative journalist, not a features editor.’

  A red spike of anger now joined the other feelings churning round Olly’s heart. If Alastair had thought the ideas in the letter so bad, why had he sent for him? Did he find humiliating people amusing? He raised his head and met the editor’s eyes with a new feeling of hostility.

  The evident change in his expression seemed to interest the editor. ‘Tell me,’ Alastair said, sounding unexpectedly friendly, ‘what really drives you. What story you’d really like to do, if you could.’

  Olly gazed glumly back. Apart from the reiteration of the discredited suggestions on the letter, his mind was blank.

  The editor’s fingers were drumming impatiently on an unassuming wooden desk that had struck Olly on arrival as being unexpectedly tidy. He had imagined newspaper editors to be surrounded by a chaotic sea of paper. But Alastair seemed to radiate calm and control. It was one of the reasons, Olly realised, that, despite everything, he wanted to please him. A sense of hopelessness, of resentment even, now joined his annoyance. Why did everything always go wrong?

  ‘Let me put it another way,’ Alastair said softly. He was watching Olly carefully. ‘What makes you angry? Really angry, I mean.’

  ‘Jasper De Borchy.’ It came out with the speed of a bullet, before Olly even had time to think about it. He hung his head, aware of expressing something ridiculously petty and personal. Alastair had probably never even heard of Jasper. This would surely be the end of his hopes for a job.

  He did not dare look at Alastair Cragg. Instead, Olly stared at the floor. It was covered in hairy grey carpet tiles; one of the stains was shaped a bit like Australia and Olly was just thinking that he should probably try his chances there next when he heard Alastair inhale deeply through his nostrils. He was evidently about to speak.

  ‘That’s interesting,’ Alastair said, sounding really quite friendly now. ‘Very interesting. And why does he make you angry?’

  Olly lifted his head, scanning the editor’s face to make doubly sure he was not being mocked in some way. ‘Well, the Bullinger Club, really. He’s one of its leading lights.’

  The change in Alastair was striking. Gone was the weary irony. His eyes sparkled behind his spectacles and his countenance glowed with vivid speculation. ‘So I’d heard,’ he agreed. ‘Which brings me neatly to the real reason I asked you for interview.’

  Olly felt a mild outrage. On the other hand, Alastair was obviously not interested in his features ideas. Being invited on false pretences was better than not being here at all. He listened as the editor now explained that Olly’s educational CV had been what caught his eye. In particular, the college Olly had been to.

  It was with a growing sense of inevitability that Olly listened as Alastair explained that his first splash for the Post was to be an exposé of the inner workings of the Bullinger Club. ‘And you’re perfect for the job,’ he concluded.

  Encouraged, Olly nodded. ‘I have done some investigation,’ he said eagerly. ‘One of the university papers I worked on once did an exposé on the price of crisps at college bars . . .’

  Alastair was grinning. ‘Spare me the details. The reason you’re perfect is that you’re cheap, you’re young, you’re desperate and, most important of all, you have a motive. When I saw you’d been to St Alwine’s, it was fifty-fifty.’

  ‘Fifty-fifty?’ Olly was mystified, and not in a good way. He was still absorbing the fact that his lack of a job and burning sense of defeat and resentment was what Alastair was most interested in. His status as a loser, in other words.

  Alastair was nodding. His glasses flashed in the flickering strip light. ‘I knew you’d be one of two things: either a roaring hooray, or someone who hates them and everything they stand for.’ He paused. ‘And I could tell by the suit that you weren’t the former.’

  Olly’s mouth dropped open. Then he shut it and tried to look gratified. It was, in a way, a compliment.

  ‘And also because time is running out,’ Alastair added, talking rapidly now. ‘The Bullinger’s having its big bash this weekend. “Bash” being the operative word, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ Olly said feelingly.

  ‘The Bullinger Ball: I want you to infiltrate it. Get all the grisly details. Get me the front-page story that’ll launch us into the stratosphere.’ He leant forward, his smile now a hard and serious line. ‘In fact, you have to. We’re launching next week and at the moment we’ve got nothing.’

  Olly sat frozen to his chair. A minute ago he had felt an utter failure but now he was being charged with the success of Alastair’s entire enterprise. ‘Nothing?’ he repeated, temporarily dazed at the crushing responsibility that had landed so unexpectedly on his shoulders.

  Alastair’s shoulders rose and fell. He sighed. ‘I was hoping for drugs.’

  Olly looked back at him doubtfully. He had heard that newspaper people often operated under the infl
uence of illegal stimulants. But it was unexpected to hear it confirmed, and at their first meeting too.

  Alastair gave a sudden roar of unexpectedly infectious laughter. ‘I don’t mean me, you muppet. I meant that I was hoping for a drugs story. There’s something going on, something big. Dealing in the colleges seems to have stepped up a gear. But all the avenues I’ve followed up haven’t delivered. Not yet, anyway. So it’s up to you, OK? Your mission, should you choose to accept it. Goes without saying, of course, that, if you pull it off, you get the job.’

  Olly hesitated. But not out of doubt. He was savouring the unprecedented sensation of being at a turning point in his life and being absolutely, unmistakeably, aware of the fact. He smiled at Alastair. ‘I accept it.’

  Isabel meant to arrive at Professor Green’s session early. She had missed so many supervisions now and was determined to make an effort for this one. But Jasper had dragged her back into bed and, in the end, there had been no time even to get her coat. Even though it was freezing outside. The weather had turned suddenly. From mild, sunny autumn it had become bitter winter.

  As she hurried along, her phone buzzed in her bag. She dragged it out, breathless. Jasper? Ringing her so soon? Did he miss her already? Her nerves surged with an answering, golden rush of love.

  ‘Hello, stranger!’ Mum exclaimed affectionately.

  ‘Oh . . . hi.’ Isabel struggled not to sound disappointed.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Mum asked immediately.

  ‘Oh . . . nothing . . . It’s all fine . . .’

  ‘You sound a bit distracted. Working hard?’

  ‘Ye-es . . . Um, what’s happening up there, Mum? Lochalan behaving itself?’ Isabel began to walk along rapidly.

  Mum took a deep breath and began. Isabel hardly listened. Lochalan and Mum seemed strangely distant now. It seemed a long time since they had even crossed her mind.

  ‘You still there, love?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Thought you’d been cut off. You’re very quiet.’

  Isabel was wondering about telling Mum about Jasper. But did she trust herself to drop him, now, casually into the conversation? Mum would detect from her voice that this was no run-of-the-mill acquaintance.

  ‘How’s your friend?’ Mum asked suddenly.

  Shock rippled through Isabel. Had she mentioned Jasper without realising? Had Mum guessed? ‘My friend?’

  ‘That boy,’ Mum said easily. ‘He sounded lovely. What was his name again?’

  ‘Er . . .’

  ‘Olly, that was it.’

  Isabel let out a slow sigh of relief. ‘Olly; oh, yes,’ she said casually. It felt like a name from a long time ago.

  ‘You haven’t talked about him lately. How’s he doing with his newspaper interviews?’

  Isabel blinked. Olly? She struggled to recall a single thing about him. ‘I’m not sure,’ she demurred eventually.

  ‘I hope you haven’t fallen out with him,’ Mum said sternly. ‘I thought he sounded lovely. Really kind.’

  Isabel rarely, if ever, got cross with Mum, but irritation rose within her now. She, Isabel, would choose her own friends, not have her mother – her adoptive mother, to boot – controlling her choices from afar.

  On the other hand, there was something she needed to ask her. Something she had been intending to call about for some days, in fact. Isabel reined in her chagrin. ‘Mum,’ she said now, breaking into the stream of compliments about Olly, ‘is there . . .’ she took a deep breath, ‘any chance you could send me a bit more money?’

  Her mother stopped with a gasp. ‘Money?’

  ‘Money, yes.’ Isabel fought the shamed mutter in which this threatened to come out. ‘Please. If you could,’ she added in as matter-of-fact a tone as she could manage.

  ‘You need more money already?’ Her mother’s voice mingled amazement with alarm. ‘But you worked it all out so carefully, how much you’d need every week . . .’ Mum stopped.

  ‘I didn’t work it out very well. You know how bad my maths always was,’ Isabel forced herself to joke. Something was twisting inside her; she could hear her mother’s distress but she had to maintain the façade. Admitting to paying for every date she and Jasper had ever had would horrify Mum. She would never accept him after that.

  There was a silence during which Mum was clearly wondering what questions to ask and whether to ask them at all in the face of the uninformative and expectant silence Isabel forced herself to maintain. She was horribly aware of how coldly demanding she must sound and how little Mum deserved it. And how little Mum had to spare, too. But what option was there?

  Eventually Mum said, sounding more bewildered and hurt than angry, that she would see what she could do.

  ‘Thank you,’ Isabel said, her eyes pricking with gratitude and relief. And guilt. She ended the call quickly after that.

  The English group were already assembled outside the dark wooden door of Professor Green’s room when Isabel panted up. Just in time, she saw with relief.

  She realised her colleagues were all staring at her: Lorien and Paul with concern at her coatless state, Kate with more general annoyance. ‘Good of you to turn up,’ she said acidly.

  Her hostility remained as complete as on the day it was formed, Isabel thought. As Ellie’s had. But so what? What did any of it matter now she had Jasper? Isabel raised her cold-reddened chin defensively, reminding herself that she had been living literature recently, rather than studying it. As Jasper was fond of saying, it all boiled down to sex in the end.

  ‘I haven’t missed that many supervisions,’ she retaliated. Not as many as Amber, say. The rumour that her neighbour would not be returning next term had reached even Isabel’s distracted ear. She was to be sent down – expelled, in other words.

  ‘Oh, no?’ Kate jeered. ‘There was the Brontë one, for a start.’

  A faint echo of what might have been regret rippled through Isabel. Yes, she had missed that, Kate was right. And it had been a shame, because she loved the Brontës.

  ‘And Mrs Gaskell, last week.’

  Isabel swallowed. She had prepared Mrs Gaskell for this session. Somehow she had got confused, or not read the timetable properly. So what were they doing this week? She had no idea. The subject of the next hour’s close study with one of the world’s leading literary brains was completely unknown to her.

  Her heart began to gallop. She did not dare ask the others what it was. Even glancing at the books they held would give the game away. Kate’s scorn if she did was all too easy to picture and, anyway, it was far too late.

  There was a sliding of handle mechanisms and creaking of wood as Professor Green opened her door. As usual, she wore her grey hair in a bun, an all-concealing purple paisley dress and a lofty, stately manner. She looked at Isabel from beneath beautifully shaped raised eyebrows.

  ‘Ah, Isabel,’ she said in her fruity vibrato. ‘Good of you to join us. If you’d missed another supervision, I’d have had to send out a Missing-Persons report on you.’

  Isabel looked at the orange carpet and reddened. ‘I’m sorry, Professor Green.’

  The group shuffled in. Isabel realised she had almost forgotten how pleasant Professor Green’s room was. The exposed brick walls were covered in framed RSC posters, a scented candle exuded warm lavender and the comfortable chairs and sofas were upholstered in bright, soft fabrics. Isabel felt suddenly glad to be here, eager to be part of this world once again.

  ‘Right,’ said Professor Green, smiling warmly round. ‘Edith Wharton. Who’s going to start us off?’ Isabel looked quickly at the carpet. Edith Wharton! Nineteenth-century American women writers! Her mind had gone completely blank.

  ‘Kate!’

  As Kate began expounding, Isabel realised with rising panic how absolutely out of her depth she was. Never in t
he course of her whole life had she arrived at a lesson without preparing. To turn up, now, without having read The Age Of Innocence was a stupid mistake, albeit one Isabel endeavoured desperately to conceal as the others talked knowledgably on.

  Being forced, through ignorance, to remain silent was a new and horrible experience for one, like her, accustomed to dominating through sheer knowledge and enthusiasm almost every session she had ever been in. That role now went to Kate. The looks of apprehension she had initially darted at Isabel – expecting her to interrupt, it seemed – now deepened to triumph as the tutorial progressed. She was clearly enjoying herself.

  Isabel was even unable to answer a simple question about the heroine’s background. Professor Green’s glance, expectation turning to surprise, lingered on her. An agonising, apparently endless silence elapsed before Lorien provided the answer. Isabel hunched as she sat, turned down her mouth, tried to look ill, hoping that Professor Green would take that as the reason. But she was not surprised when, as the others filed out at the end of the session, the tutor signalled to her to remain behind.

  As the door shut behind Paul, Isabel felt a leaden dread in her stomach. She knew that, unlike at the beginning of the term, she was not being detained for positive reasons.

  ‘I’ll get straight to the point,’ the don said, folding her large hands in her lap and leaning her paisley bust towards Isabel. ‘The English Faculty is concerned about you.’

  Isabel sat bolt upright, eagerly. ‘I’ll work harder. I suppose I’ve been a bit . . . distracted.’

  Professor Green nodded and gave a faint smile. ‘Isabel, you need to tell me if there are any special circumstances. Any trouble at home?’

  Isabel shook her head, perhaps too vehemently because her supervisor’s eyes now kindled sympathetically. ‘I can imagine,’ she added gently, ‘that as an only child of a single parent you are under a certain amount of pressure. Not least from yourself. It is possible that may get too much sometimes.’