The Spoiler

by Annalena McAfee

  She returned to her notes: “She is the diva of dissent, a bien pensant superstar, and they are listening in admiring silence to her account of horrors in Hyderabad, calamities in Cambodia, atrocities in Azerbaijan.”

  Was she ever going to stop talking? Was there much more of this? There was. Much more. A continent-hopping grand tour of global misfortune.

  Tamara glanced round the audience—even these professional pessimists and catastrophiles must have their limits. But no, another question from the audience. The voice, the light yet assertive peal of a summoning handbell, was irritatingly familiar. Tania Singh.

  “I wanted to say, first of all, what a privilege it is to hear Honor Tait tonight, and I wanted to thank her for her inspiring work.”

  There was an outbreak of affirming applause. Wasn’t this supposed to be a question, not a master class in grovelling? Tamara, seething, looked back towards the door and was gratified to see that, like her, the good-looking loner was not clapping.

  Tania continued.

  “I wondered what advice you would give a young woman journalist starting out today?”

  Honor Tait hesitated for a moment, plainly displeased.

  “Any advice I have would apply just as much to young male journalists as to their female counterparts.”

  At the back of the hall Tamara gloated. It was good to see the old woman turn her blowtorch on Tania Singh. But Tania was implacable. She bounced back with another question.

  “What would you say are the most important qualities a journalist requires?”

  Tait shrugged, and for a piquant moment Tamara thought she was going to put Tania in her place. But the old woman seemed to relent.

  “An ability to really see,” she said finally. “Through patient observation, the accumulation of detail and a hunger for truth, the bigger picture will emerge. The reporter’s duty is to champion the weak and to shine a searchlight in the darkest corners of human experience.”

  Visibly tiring, Tait was reduced to quoting herself. Tamara had had enough. But more hands were raised as the audience jostled to take the microphone and put questions to which they already seemed to know the answers. Honor Tait’s voice wavered as she spoke of child brothels in Asia and sex traffickers in the former Soviet Union, but her words were, despite the promising subject, free of enlivening anecdotes and full of generalisations and statistics. She even seemed to be boring herself. Her voice gradually trailed away and she went to sit down, with a final mumbled admission that “It isn’t really my area. Perhaps Clemency would like to add something.”

  Clemency most certainly would, and did. Her contribution was heartfelt, vague and self-loving as she vibrated with transcendent righteousness before the microphone. Tamara’s spirits only lifted when the ticket collector with the harlequin waistcoat appeared at the back of the hall swinging a plastic collection bucket. The meeting was drawing to a close. Tamara pushed past him as she made her way to the door, in time to see that she was not the first fugitive. The attractive latecomer was sprinting just ahead of her, wrenching open the door of a white van and nimbly slipping inside. It was raining hard and, as Tamara looked vainly for a cab amid the thunderous convoy of traffic on the Archway Road, he drove off into what remained of the evening, spattering a jet of muddy water over her trouser suit.

  How had Clemency talked her into it? A new charity? As if there were not sufficient old charities crying out for funds. And that banal, ahistorical name? Kids’ Crusaders. Self-righteous nonsense. Honor knew that the real object of her ire was not Clemency but herself. She should never have agreed to it. She had become too dependent on Clemency’s support, the financial lifeline, the late-night phone calls, all the practical help a wealthy heiress, without family commitments or demanding job, could command at the wave of a chequebook.

  In exchange for the generous benefactions, their unwritten contract decreed, Honor must every so often lend her name, and her intellectual and social weight, her years’ experience, to some feeble-minded cause that served no purpose but to bolster the ego of its paymistress. The indignity of the experience, of travelling out on a miserable evening to that godforsaken part of London, of enduring Clemency’s tiresome speech, of endorsing it by sitting there in silence, of sharing the stage with a grinning booby from the Labour Party, or the New Labour Party as it styled itself these days, who was there simply to harvest votes for the coming election, was too much to bear.

  Paul, too, had been reeled in like Honor to lend substance to the new organisation, but he was more pragmatic than Honor—his Mount Rushmore features were untroubled by self-doubt, or any kind of doubt at all—and the idea that the transaction was distasteful would not have detained him for a second. He helicoptered in and helicoptered out. Even the inane questions from the audience—every one of them directed at Honor—did not perturb him. Clemency finally had the grace, or conscience, to suggest in a whisper that it might be time to wind up the meeting.

  And here, back at her flat, readying herself for a night of insomnia, Honor was battling a sense of guilt for a crime she could not remember committing. Was this paranoia? She felt like John Berryman’s Henry, stirring from a nightmare of murderous mayhem, going over everyone, reckoning them up, reassuring herself at last: “Nobody is ever missing.” It was all so long ago. Only the guilt was new. She was surely too old for spiritual stocktaking.

  She picked up the proofs of The Unflinching Eye.

  5 July 1950. Ten days and four retreats into war. Despite the reversals, the loss of life and the gruelling conditions, the mood is confident at Taejon headquarters as Major General William Dean takes command of the 24th Division. With the arrival of more troops and guns, American forces could secure victory within six to eight weeks.

  She felt revulsion at the intractable confidence of her younger self. Today’s reader knew what she could not know then, what no one could have known, that three years later America limped home—forty thousand men down, twice that number maimed, fifteen thousand missing in action or captured—to regroup for its next bruising conflict. She had prided herself on the acquisition of facts: precise troop numbers, makes and capabilities of armaments, hours of skirmishes, days of battle. That was the style, strengthening the impression of impartiality.

  What did she know, this determined young woman, convinced of her immortality, exulting in the exclusive company of men in extremis? And there was rather too much personal detail masquerading as colour writing in here for her liking. The mud, the lice and fleas, the grimness of rations, the squalor. Under fire at Taejon, surrounded by enemy troops, she had been co-opted by medics to help set up drips and administer plasma to the wounded. Initially, in all the confusion, the noise, the smoke and flares, mutilated boys writhing and groaning at her feet, she had found time to feel affronted—was it because she was a woman, the object of suspicion, even derision, to some officers, that she had been singled out for such duties? Then she saw that some of her male colleagues had been drafted in too. She went on to describe that day in a piece reeking of fraudulent humility, which won plaudits from colleagues back home: “Today your correspondent abandoned her notebook, rolled up her sleeves and became a nurse.”

  The sound of a disturbance from the garden drew her to the window. It was not the gate-crashing youths from the council estate but a group of young friends from the flats opposite. They were drinking champagne, wrapped up against the cold in hats and scarves, talking and laughing at full pitch.

  These young people were emphatically making their mark on the neighbourhood. Skips lined the nearby roads, gradually filling with old fridges, barque-size TV sets, perfectly solid pieces of dark furniture and yards of brocade curtains, double lined, mouldering in the January rain. Out with the old. No doubt some of those young people had their eyes on her flat, and the flats of every occupant over sixty left in the building and would, if they could, fill those skips with the stiffened corpses of all the bent-backed greyheads, the fixed-rent bed blockers taking up space in perfectl
y good three-bedroom mansion flats with secure twenty-four-hour porterage. They probably scoured the obituary columns daily, these thrusting young people, for the good news that would signal vacant possession and a ninety-five-year-lease.

  Well, she still had something to say before they had their way and bundled her out of here. There had been no new stories in recent years, but she must return to an old one, focus her mind, ransack her diminishing word hoard and summon the truth. She opened her notebook and read over the opening lines of her coda. No. It would not do. Taking her pencil, she scored through the words and started again.

  Buchenwald, 14 April 1945. Four days after liberation, the strongest of the frail survivors gathered by the charred stump of Goethe’s Oak for a parade to celebrate their freedom. From paper and rags, they had fashioned their national flags and they waved them now in a spirit of defiance in the spot where they had been forced to parade daily before their barbaric captors. Evidence of that barbarity was witnessed two days ago by soldiers of the American Third Army, who, with members of the press, came across piles of the rigid, naked corpses of those murdered in haste by retreating German troops.

  And now, in this parade of defiant national pride, many of the freed prisoners silently wept for those fallen comrades.

  Seven

  Morning Conference was a demanding affair: a daily tournament of jousting egos performed before an impassive Austin Wedderburn or, in his absence, the quietly anguished Miles Denbigh. At 10 a.m. in the dowdy fourth-floor boardroom, senior editors or their deputies vied to break the most interesting news of the day; to offer the most original perspective on that interesting news; to express that perspective with concision and, when taste permitted, sufficient wit to make the corner of Wedderburn’s mouth twitch in a scant smile, or to temporarily banish the frown from Denbigh’s corrugated forehead; to dismiss most effectively the work of any rival newspaper, except when the performance of that rival newspaper might contrast favourably with the efforts of a department run by a rival senior editor on their own paper; and, most demanding of all, to laugh loudest and longest at any wan simulacrum of a joke that Wedderburn, in a rare outburst of gaiety, might throw out, like a monarch with his Maundy pennies to a grateful peasantry.

  No one anticipated the experience with pleasure, but each morning those journalists who had attained the status necessary to earn a seat at conference, stampeded into the boardroom like bargain hunters on the first day of the January sales. Only those intent on professional suicide would miss it, since any absent senior editors were regarded as fair game by those present, automatically becoming the butt of unflattering comparisons with their counterparts on other papers. Simon was not a self-harmer when it came to his career, though his love life was another matter. He might skip the weekly features meeting, affecting a lordly disdain for office politics, but even he would never miss Morning Conference. He never asked anyone to deputise for him at the meeting and, like all senior editors, he took holidays only when he knew Wedderburn would be away. Whatever he’d been up to the night before, he would always manage to make an appearance in the boardroom. Once conference was over, he would slip away from the office to catch up on some sleep before returning in time for lunch.

  This morning, however, was different. His hangover, incurred after a euphoric reunion with Serena at a champagne bar, was monumentally incapacitating.

  “When I finally woke up,” he groaned over the phone to Tamara, “it wasn’t so much a question of ‘Where am I?’ as ‘Who am I?’ I couldn’t possibly sit through conference. I’d never make it on time anyway. Do you think you could cover for me?”

  The chance to attend Morning Conference, to sit as an equal among the paper’s grandees, in heady, career-making, genuflecting proximity to its absolutist ruler, did not come along often. and Tamara, downcast by last night’s church-hall meeting, which would add little or nothing to her S*nday piece, saw the invitation as a fillip: here was a compelling opportunity to present herself, with all her skills and insights, to full advantage before The Monitor’s supreme politburo.

  At her basement desk in the office, she glanced at the morning papers, mugging up on the main issues of the day, hoping to offer some insightful new angles and rustle up some jokes. The Opposition’s education proposals did not offer much scope on either front. Nor did missing yachtsmen, a princess campaigning against land mines, and an ongoing siege in a Peruvian embassy. January was a notoriously dry news month. Pictures of John Major grinning in a turban, like an extra in Carry On Up the Khyber, on an official trip to meet his Pakistani counterpart, would be bound to raise a laugh—these days, anything he did provoked derisive titters, even from Tories—but it was more of a visual gag. Would there be any mileage in the government’s plans for a new £60 million royal yacht, a bid to gladden the nation’s loyal hearts and win votes in the coming elections? Could this be the boat that finally scuppered the Tories? Or could it successfully steer an unpopular government out of choppy waters? Might there be something witty to be said about the shadow chancellor’s rumoured plans to wed an attractive public relations executive? Something on planned mergers? Or the married person’s tax allowance? Some sparky comparison might be drawn with the planned nuptials of surly pop star Liam Gallagher and Patsy Kensit, the pouting blonde love interest from Lethal Weapon 2.

  The lift was not working, and by the time Tamara had climbed the stairs to the fourth floor at 9:55 a.m. she was panting like a first-time marathon runner. The senior editors or their deputies were already there, clustered round the closed door of the boardroom, waiting for the signal to charge. Vida was representing Features, standing in for Johnny, who was on a conflict-resolution course in Buckinghamshire. The home editor, bearded and cardiganed like a seventies folksinger, was whispering to the foreign editor, a Valkyrie in crush-proof pinstripes, while the new sports editor, Ricky Clegg, wearing a festive red-and-white tracksuit, scanned the pages of Sporting Life with deceptive nonchalance. It was galling to see Tania Singh—since when was she a senior editor? Or even a deputy senior editor?—standing there, pretending to read the New York Review of Books. Lyra Moore, dressed in clinging black-and-white and precipitous heels as if for a smart cocktail party, was fiddling with the buttons of a mobile phone.

  Spotting her chance, Tamara advanced towards her, mentally framing her opening gambit: “Hi! Just wanted to check in with you about …” “Hi! Lyra! I was wondering if we could have a word …” “Honor Tait, eh? What a character! …” Lyra looked up, startled, as she approached, but before Tamara could utter a word, they were interrupted by a sudden clamour. The boardroom door was flung open, revealing the burly form of Hazel, a shot-putter in pearls and chintz polyester, who stepped back with surprising agility to avoid being flattened in the scrum. As the senior editors and the deputy senior editors scrambled for seats, and Hazel fled for the safety of the fifth floor, Tamara saw that Austin Wedderburn was presiding today, further raising the stakes for any contribution she would be making to conference. This was, in Monitor terms, the ultimate networking forum, and here was her chance to shine.

  After a few unsuccessful feints at the chairs closest to the editor, Tamara finally found herself seated next to the tea trolley by the door, out of Wedderburn’s direct eyeline. If this were a theatre, her seat would have been classified as “restricted view” and sold at half price. She was going to have to work to get his attention. Lyra, an incarnation of sleekness and efficiency, marred only by the top button of her blouse, which seemed to have come undone in the melee, was seated on the editor’s left. The home editor, whose face reflected the gravity of so many of the stories he had to impart, was sitting on Wedderburn’s right, by the foreign editor. Next to the foreign editor, a couple of seats up from Tamara, was Tania, smiling with feline contentment, her elbows on the table, hands cupping her infuriatingly sweet face, like a spoiled child anticipating a treat only the truly heartless could refuse.

  Though an expectant silence had already fallen in the roo
m, Wedderburn rapped his pen like a gavel on the table.

  “Before we begin the regular business, I’d like to introduce a guest at this morning’s conference,” he said, nodding benignly towards Tamara.

  She felt a narcotic pulse of excitement; her heart revved and moved thrillingly up a gear. Wedderburn had seen her after all. And not just this morning. She jerked upright in her seat and clasped her hands on the table in a pose of alert engagement.

  “Many of you will have spotted her around the building,” continued Wedderburn, “some of you will already be familiar with her work, aware of the mark she has made at The Monitor, and I’m pleased to tell you she is going to play an increasing role in the life of the paper.”

  Could you go into shock over good news? A wave of heat stung Tamara’s face like a gust from a suddenly opened oven. She was blushing, she knew it. She hoped she was not sweating. She forced her lips, which seemed oddly mutinous, into a tight, modest smile. Lyra must have spoken to the editor about her and told him of the Honor Tait commission. It had happened. Tamara had always known, even in her deepest midwinter moods, that it would. Her talents had marked her out, set her apart, lifted her above the commonality, gilded her. She had a sudden memory of a Sunday school picture: a saint (Lucy? Agnes?) her eyes modestly downcast (Who? Me?) as a halo twinkled above her head like a golden Frisbee. At last. Tamara was one of the Elect.