The Spoiler

by Annalena McAfee

  Wedderburn had realised that The Monitor needed to reach out to younger readers and the appointment of a few under-thirty-year-olds to senior editorial positions would be the first step in a circulation-building campaign. It was unorthodox, certainly, to announce a promotion in such a public way, but Tamara was not going to quibble.

  “And, once we’ve despatched the main business of the conference, I hope she might tell us something about her vision for The Monitor,” went on Wedderburn.

  Tamara’s excitement turned to terror and her temperature plummeted. Vision? The nearest she had got to a vision was when Ross had slipped her a slice of magic mushroom omelette at Glastonbury. She could recite the list of Psst!’s stories for the week, she had boned up on the main news of the day, and she had worked up a couple of jokes on the subject of wedding bells, rather than parliamentary division bells, for Gordon Brown. But vision? Who did he think she was? Saint Bernadette? She sat in horrified silence, wondering how she was going to get out of this, hoping for the sudden arrival of a secretary bearing a fax carrying news of, say, the death of a leading member of the royal family, something—anything—that might be of sufficient import to demand the immediate dissolution of conference, when another voice—young, female, toweringly confident, the sound of a public school head girl on Founder’s Day—rang out in the void.

  “Thank you, Austin.”

  It was Tania.

  “I promise I won’t take too much of your time,” Tania continued, turning to address the entire conference. “But, following several meetings I had with Austin on recent breakthroughs in information technology, he kindly invited me to address you this morning about the World Wide Web and its implications for the paper.”

  Tamara leaned forward and looked along the table, incredulous, from Wedderburn to Tania and back again, her feelings alternating between relief and disappointment as the truth revealed itself and her bright halo shrivelled to a limp jester’s cap. This was humiliation on a grand scale. Tamara looked across at her colleagues. No one was meeting her eye, no one was smiling or openly relishing her embarrassment. All heads were turned to Tania.

  Wedderburn rapped his pen on the table again and the conference swept on. As the morning’s papers—The Monitor and its rivals—were ritually disinterred, Tamara recovered her composure and waited for her moment to speak. She had not been singled out, the emperor had not smiled on her, he had not even seen her, but she would still get her chance to impress.

  Vida was implying, in the nicest possible way, that the news desk’s handling of the education policy story left something to be desired, while the news editor suggested, in the most cordial manner, that Features had missed a trick on the lost yachtsman story, which had been addressed so humorously by this morning’s Courier. Vida struggled to suppress her fury as she pointed out that Me2’s deadpan coverage of the story had actually been commissioned by Johnny; the news editor countered with a joke from The Courier’s “Captain Calamity” piece, which elicited a brief facial tremor, possibly a smile, from Wedderburn. A chorus of light laughter rippled round the table.

  Toby Gadge hesitantly suggested that the news desk might have made more of the Tory government’s response to allegations that one of its MPs had engaged in an illegal homosexual affair, while the news editor retorted that Politics might have made more of the government’s latest crisis, when it slipped into a minority following the sudden death of one of its MPs after an alcoholic binge.

  The Money editor, shifty as an accountant on the take, was concerned that his reports of a building society’s plans to float on the stock exchange were not getting proper play on the front page. Wedderburn yawned openly and, round the table, several of his senior editors felt emboldened to shift in their seats, rub their eyes and stretch their arms. The arts editor, a shock-haired troll, made his weekly plea for more space for classical music reviews. He received the weekly response, a pained silence, as Tamara mentally refined her lines on the shadow chancellor’s romance rumours. Before she knew it the conference had moved on from yesterday’s news to today’s.

  This involved the sombre reading of lists—in which senior editors on the daily paper, or their deputies, outlined the stories being assembled by their respective teams for inclusion in tomorrow’s paper. As far as Tamara could tell, the chief task of senior editors was to read the same lists to many of the same people at different meetings several times during the course of a working day. The trick was in the delivery; variety was all, ensuring that on each hearing, the same list sounded blisteringly new, brought piping hot to the meeting—the scrap metal of rumour forged in the furnace of journalistic enquiry into the glowing ingot of fact. A staccato urgency might be appropriate when addressing a predominantly news-based meeting, languid irony was more effective when addressing Johnny’s features meeting, a “gather round, children” narrative jauntiness helped to galvanise Circulation and Marketing, while swift robotic detachment, even contempt, worked best at budgetary meetings. List-reading at Morning Conference, however, defined the pace and tone of the working day.

  The home news editor, one laugh up and already ahead of the game, read his with brisk effectiveness, then gave a more expansive description of tomorrow’s spoiler, calculated to torpedo The Courier’s latest “exclusive” book serialisation scheduled for Saturday. The book, for which The Courier had paid the equivalent of four times Tamara’s annual income for four extracts, comprised a rogue MI5 agent’s sensational claims of an elaborate assassination plot aimed at destabilizing oil-rich countries. The Monitor’s news desk had managed to get an advance proof of the book (a cash-strapped security guard at the publisher’s warehouse had accepted a three-figure sum) and had rehashed the story, adding outraged quotes from Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, sceptical quotes from ex-colleagues, and a diagnosis, by an obliging media psychiatrist, that the agent was suffering from histrionic personality disorder. The Monitor’s story would also be tagged “exclusive,” a cheeky, low-cost trumping of The Courier, which had also paid for a stingingly expensive TV advertising campaign to publicise the serialisation. Wedderburn gave a throat-clearing chuckle of satisfaction at the heist, setting off a wave of similar respiratory episodes round the table, then nodded to the foreign editor.

  After the virtuoso performance of Home, Foreign wisely played it straight and read her list—Hebron, Hutus and Tutsis, Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma and President Milosevic in the former Yugoslavia—in a tone that could have gone down equally well at a budgetary meeting. On to Features, and Vida, taking advantage of Johnny’s absence, was shelving the more frivolous elements he had planned for Me2 tomorrow and replacing them with a substantial meditation on domestic violence by the feminist writer Isadora Talbot, a report on dwindling sperm counts, and an upbeat story about an ingenious new antirape device. News and Foreign exchanged discreet smirks.

  Then Ricky Clegg rocked back in his chair like a restless teenager and recited his litany in nasal plainchant. His wisecracking reference to the romantic misfortunes of a Premier League footballer raised a mild laugh from Wedderburn, and a heartier one from everyone else. Sport’s small victory was followed by the brisk telegraphic announcements of stock market falls, retail price rises and exchange-rate fluctuations from Money, and Arts’s passionate advocacy, before an indifferent audience, of a season of Brechtian theatre. Through it all, Tamara, now sure of her lines and waiting her turn, ground her teeth as she watched Tania taking careful notes.

  The main business of tomorrow’s paper was dispatched and it was now the turn of the weekend senior editors. The S*nday menu was, as usual, not so much a list of stories as a literary who’s who—Saul Bellow, Iris Murdoch, Ted Hughes on, respectively, Robert F. Kennedy, writers’ block and the mythic resonance of the stickleback—and Lyra read it with the cold poise of a TV anchorwoman. Wedderburn nodded solemnly, his equivalent of the imperial thumbs-up. Then the books editor, Caspar Dyson, a nervy boffin in wire-rimmed glasses who seemed permanently affronted by the company he was
obliged to keep in order to make a living, stammered through his list of reviews—something about colonialism, something else about poetry, something about history, something about politics, and a novel that he described with breathless urgency as “postmodern meta-narratory poioumenon,” none of which ignited Wedderburn’s interest.

  There was more enthusiasm for the travel editor’s contribution, an enviable catalogue of freebies—all-expenses-paid jaunts to the Maldives, Caribbean romps, Thai beach idylls and dirty weekends in European boutique hotels—bestowed on favoured members of staff, including Simon (a week in a luxury spa resort in the Seychelles) and Wedderburn (a fortnight’s golfing in Mauritius), in exchange for six-hundred-word, land-of-contrasts, ancient-meets-modern, verdant-valleys, mist-shrouded-mountains, East-meets-West, picture-perfect-paradise-island puffs.

  Tamara’s moment was approaching. She reconsidered her strategy and decided to give special emphasis to her A-List, “Top Ten TV Bad-Hair Days: Shock Locks and Criminal Cuts of the Telly Stars.” Would Paul Tucker qualify as a last-minute addition? His parched thatch looked like an implement for removing limescale from toilets. But did a campaigning news reporter qualify as a TV personality?

  Vida was speaking again. She had been granted a second moment in the spotlight to announce plans for a special weekend supplement she and Johnny had been working on, in conditions of Masonic secrecy, for the past three months. The Monitor Elite List, a glossy eighty-page directory naming the “Top 100 Figures of Influence in Politics, Arts, Media, Sport and Business,” would appear with the Saturday paper in three weeks’ time as part of the spring circulation push, backed by a budget-busting prime-time TV advertising campaign. Tamara felt a stab of fury. Lists. Her speciality. No one had consulted her. Well, she would have her moment. Once she had delivered her Honor Tait piece she would not have to spend her time grubbing around the second floor, hoping someone on Features would throw a list her way.

  Meanwhile the head of Circulation and Marketing, Erik Havergal, smooth and tanned as a shop-front mannequin, was delivering a report on the satisfactory sales boost received by the Christmas seed-packet giveaway, and the less satisfactory spike in sales generated by the New Year free aspirin offer, which had been undermined by The Courier’s spoiler Alka-Seltzer promotion.

  “On a more positive note,” Havergal said, “I can reveal our exclusive giveaways planned for the Elite List issue: a his-and-hers package of faux-gold cufflinks and a faux-gold bracelet, both stamped with the letter E. For ‘elite,’ of course.”

  Wedderburn’s jowls trembled, the overture to a smile of deep satisfaction, and one by one, throughout the room, in a domino effect of delight, faces lit up with similar expressions of pure pleasure.

  The fashion editor was next to speak. Today Xanthippe Sparks’s hair was plaited and coiled round her ears, giving the impression that she was wearing stereo headphones, and she was dressed in a dirndl skirt, puff-sleeved blouse and laced bodice, in apparent homage to Heidi. She tripped lightly through her inventory: “The New Informality … Rhapsody in Shoes … Daywear for Night Owls …,” as the home news editor reexamined his schedule, Austin Wedderburn looked at his watch and Tamara, calculating that it was her turn next, scanned her own list, silently rehearsing its delivery, mentally enunciating any tongue-twisters that might trip her up. Articulacy was essential. And she must not miss her cue.

  “… and in Menswear, we’re looking at the Retro Pimp: white loafers, gold chains, black hearts …”

  The home editor gathered his heap of A4 printouts into a neat pile and gave it a card-sharp’s tap on the table while Austin Wedderburn seemed to have found something interesting lodged in the nib of his pen. Xanthippe finished on a rising note, a little bubble of self-delight unpricked by the silent derision of her colleagues, and Tamara steadied herself for her moment. She would be succinct and witty and resolutely down-to-earth. The fashion editor would be an easy act to follow.

  “Thank you, everyone,” said Wedderburn, drumming the table decisively with his fingers. “We’ll have to cut it short today. We’ve got a paper to bring out, after all.”

  He grinned, provoking an outbreak of sympathetic smirking round the table.

  “But first,” he went on, “Tania Singh will talk to us on the subject of Web readiness.”

  Tania stood to deliver her speech, a shining evangelist from the Information Superhighway bringing the good news about URLs and domain names, portals and page impressions, dot-coms and digital divides, and the senior editors watched her with varying degrees of quiet scepticism and idle lust. Tamara, consumed by loathing, could not take her eyes off her and was startled by a tap on her shoulder. It was Hazel, who had slipped back into the room with a kettle. She handed Tamara a bowl of sugar and a jug of milk and indicated with a nod that she had been chosen to help distribute the tea. This was probably on account of her proximity to the trolley, but Tamara could not help wondering, after this morning’s humiliation, whether she was giving off some kind of low-status mammalian scent.

  She did, though, eventually have her moment at conference: a direct encounter with Austin Wedderburn. Miles Denbigh was describing progress on discussions for the new multifaith prayer room—his own office was to be fitted with an altar and prayer mat in a compromise deal to head off the irate smokers—when the editor glanced up at Tamara and held a thumb and two fingers aloft. Tamara efficiently stirred three spoonfuls of sugar into his tea and passed him a plate of digestive biscuits. He did not say thank you, but she was sure he looked up again and registered her. He would know who she was next time.

  Over lunch with Simon in the Bubbles, however, Tamara was overcome by gloom. He was in a generous mood—things had gone well with Serena, and his hangover was finally clearing.

  “Come on, Tamara. It’s not so bad. You did well last night on the Honor Tait story. You showed some real resourcefulness, going all the way to Archway.”

  “Great! You should have been there. There wasn’t a sentence worth quoting from the entire evening.”

  “Oh, come on! There must have been something you can play with. A bit of colour. A few facts.”

  “Facts? They gave us plenty of facts. Facts were all they gave us. And what good are they? Four thousand brain-numbing words on an old lady’s charity work? Even Lyra won’t buy it.”

  “You can do better than that,” he said, pouring her another glass.

  “I know what I need,” Tamara replied. “The famous lovers, the celebrity friends, the heartbreak. I just can’t get a word out of her on any of it.”

  “It’s not meant to be easy, is it?” he chided. “If it was easy, any mug could do it. You have to work at it.”

  “What do you think I’m doing?”

  Now his pager was bleeping.

  “What about the Monday Club?” he asked, absently checking his messages. “Her gigolos and fancy boys? There’s the story. Go along and check them out.”

  “She’s not likely to invite me to one of her swanky salon evenings, is she?”

  Simon raised his eyes from his pager and gave her a withering look.

  “Who said anything about an invitation?”

  Eight

  The Monday soirees had evolved, at the Boys’ insistence, from ad hoc drinks parties to monthly suppers that had become the only fixed points in Honor’s calendar. Her only regular meals, in fact. She had always been a defiantly inept cook and, while the maid kept the kitchen cupboard and fridge supplied with essentials—bread, milk, tea, vodka, oatcakes, a little cheese, a few tins—Honor’s culinary ambitions since Tad died had never extended beyond toast and its variants. The Monday suppers were, said Bobby, her meals-on-wheels service. They provided the food and wine, she supplied the venue and the vodka.

  To them, she was a monstre sacrée, quixotic, witty, sometimes vicious. It was the glamour of her past, the association with greatness, that earned their fealty; they were flattered to spend time in her company, liked to drop her name, could tolerate any amount of
abuse from her, and the sense that an ill-judged remark could cast them into permanent outer darkness added a thrilling edge of danger to her company.

  Bobby was her stalwart. The editor of Zeitgeist, The Courier’s broadsheet weekly culture section, he brought her gossip from Grub Street, wine from the Languedoc, and a stream of handsome neophytes, usually actors newly hatched from drama school, tender Beauties to his swarthy Beast. He was, even by his own estimation, a failed academic. The author of two poorly reviewed biographies of forgotten modernist writers, he had been an acerbic critic for a number of minor Arts Council periodicals, which paid nothing for his pieces. His appointment as editor of Zeitgeist—Neville Titmuss, The Courier’s editor, had been impressed by Bobby’s excoriating review of a journalistic memoir by one of Titmuss’s old rivals—had surprised no one more than himself.

  Bobby seemed to fail upwards, whereas poor Aidan Delaney, a rather good poet, well reviewed and award winning but with the sales figures that went with his calling, continued to succeed downwards. Honor admired Aidan’s steadfastness and found his misanthropy curiously comforting. Inigo Wint, a public school pretty boy gone to seed, made her laugh in a way that no one else could. He was an artist with a slight, imitative skill, and his fashionable work was unstintingly championed in Zeitgeist. Though he was industriously heterosexual, Honor sometimes wondered whether he and Bobby had ever been lovers. A louche but loyal friend, Inigo was also, apparently, accomplished in bed. There was something of the changeling about him, and his girlfriends found him maddeningly elusive. A succession of young women, not all of them conventionally pretty—his tastes, he liked to say, were as catholic as Cardinal Hume—trailed after him with pitiful solicitousness. He indulged them for a couple of months before abruptly abandoning them for another languid geisha. “A free upgrade,” he called it.