by Pippa Wright
Mollie, the blushing intern who had been with us two weeks, opened the meeting by pitching her first feature. I knew she had been working on it late last night, since I’d been there myself, unwilling to head back to Auntie Lyd’s for another dose of tough love and Second-hand smoke.
‘I – er,’ began Mollie, and I knew she was already doomed. Our meetings were like a harsher version of the Just a Minute panel game. Any hesitation or deviation was immediately leapt upon and punished. ‘I’m proposing a feature—’
‘I know you are, this is the editorial meeting. That’s what it’s for,’ snapped Amanda. ‘Get on with it.’
‘Um,’ said Mollie, the paper in her hand beginning to tremble. ‘Wallpaper – from early Chinese hand-painted examples, with reference to Chatsworth, through the archives at Sanderson.’
‘Yeees,’ said Amanda, tapping at the laptop that sat opened in front of her. She spent most of our editorial meetings catching up on her email correspondence, with only half an ear on the meeting itself.
‘We could get advertising alongside from some of the big names, and, er,’ said Mollie, bravely persisting even though Amanda had already turned her attention to Lysander and was whispering in his ear.
‘The pictures would be beautiful,’ Mollie continued.
‘Done to death – including last February’s issue, if you had bothered to check. No. Next?’ said Amanda.
Mollie blushed even more furiously and folded up her page of notes, placing it on her lap beneath the desk. Her eyes glittered with tears and Ticky tilted her head towards her with speculative interest.
‘Anything else?’ asked Amanda. ‘We’re still two features short for the April issue and I’m not even certain we will get the Pippa Middleton interview since Tatler offered her the cover.’
‘Sewww,’ said Noonoo from the end of the table, flicking her blonde mane like a pashmina-wrapped pony. ‘I saw Nickers Stanhope over the weekend? She’s opening up an eco-lingerie boutique and teashop at Stokeley? It’s, like, a fairtrade, organic Agent Provocateur, but with gluten-free cupcakes?’
Noonoo was a contributing editor, which meant, as far as I could see, that she came into work when her busy schedule of shopping and lunching brought her in the direction of the Country House offices, and dropped poorly spelled features about her braying friends into my in tray. Noonoo’s ideas always revolved around the lives of herself and her coterie of fabulously wealthy friends, who took up their pens to offer lifestyle features with such down-to-earth tips as ‘When clothes shopping, buy three of everything – that way you’ve got one for each house’, or ‘Why it’s an utter nightmare getting planning permission for a swimming pool in the basement of your Grade I listed home’. There was a time when I had had to stifle my laughter at her pitches – I’d had to resolve never to catch the eye of Jeremy, our art director, as she proposed yet another feature using the word ‘mumpreneur’ to describe a banker’s wife who’d got a sideline in scented candles. But these days, more often than not, I found myself nodding in agreement. Not because I’d had a Country House lobotomy, but because I know that this is exactly what Amanda wants. And what’s the point in arguing with that?
‘Nickers says she and her sister will pose in the undies with, like, a plate of cupcakes?’ Noonoo continued, with sublime confidence. ‘And she says we can run a special reduced-price entry to Stokeley for the readers – two for the price of one plus a free cake. We can sell the pics to a national for pre-publicity too?’
‘Perfect,’ said Amanda, her head snapping up from her laptop. ‘Three thousand words and get the pictures soonest. Why can’t the rest of you bring me stuff like this? Young, fun but still perfectly Country House?’
Noonoo bowed her head smugly. I felt Martha’s rage next to me. She didn’t have to speak for the entire staff to know that the very idea of posh totty in their underwear gracing the illustrious pages of Country House appalled her. Amanda’s mission to bring a younger readership to the magazine was a direct affront to Martha’s years of giving the existing readership what she believed they wanted: scholarly features on aristocratic homes, gardening and art history.
‘Ticky?’ said Amanda, suddenly. ‘You haven’t had a features idea for weeks.’
‘I, er,’ said Ticky, her usual confidence slightly shaken by the direct attack. ‘Just been buttering up a few rellies, Amanda, but you know how tricky these old boys can be. I’m, like, this close to getting Uncle Jasper’s Mustique memoirs – he was, like, raaahlly close to Princess Margaret back in the day. If you know what I mean.’
‘Not good enough,’ said Amanda. ‘I, for one, have heard enough about Princess Margaret’s Caribbean exploits to last me a lifetime. Bring me Lady Helen Windsor wife-swapping on the Ile de Ré and we’re talking, Ticky. Martha?’
Martha coughed and shuffled in her seat. ‘I’ve come up with some ideas for the Marvellous Englishwoman column, as you asked.’
‘Let’s have them then,’ said Amanda, looking up from her laptop, less out of interest in Martha’s ideas than in preparation for dismissing them out of hand, as she usually did.
‘Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf, Agatha Christie, Dorothy Whipple,’ Martha read from a list in her hand.
‘Dorothy Whipple?’ said Amanda scornfully. ‘Martha, sometimes I think you wilfully misunderstand me. While I am sure these women were marvellous in their day, I specifically asked you to find living, contemporary Englishwomen for this feature. Twiggy, Joanna Lumley, Kirstie Allsopp, that sort of thing.’
Martha sniffed as if something unpleasant had been waved under her nose. ‘I hardly think Kirstie Allsopp compares to Dorothy Whipple.’
‘No,’ said Amanda, ‘the difference being that our readers might actually have heard of Kirstie Allsopp. I want four new possibilities – living, breathing possibilities – on my desk by the end of the afternoon.’
‘Fine,’ said Martha, in a voice that indicated she felt it anything but.
‘Rory?’ said Amanda, her head whipping round to me. I flinched in shock – Amanda didn’t usually ask me for features ideas, just relied on me to edit everyone else’s articles into shape. I panicked that Lance might have somehow contacted her to report on my mortifying behaviour.
‘I, er,’ I said, feeling my stock sink with every hesitation. ‘I’m working on a new Behind the Rope column—’
‘I’ve been thinking about Behind the Rope,’ interrupted Amanda, ominously. I hadn’t imagined she ever gave any thought to anything I was involved in, and the discovery that she had was not a comforting one. ‘It’s tired. Not what the new Country House is about. I’m cutting it.’
‘But I’ve got two months’ more columns filed!’ I exclaimed.
‘No,’ she said.
I felt myself redden. There was a stifled gasp from Martha beside me. Having my own column was the primary reason I stayed at Country House; without it I was nothing but a poorly paid subeditor with a misleading job title. Amanda had already turned to interrogate Flickers on his features ideas when I interrupted.
‘Amanda. I don’t think we should cut my column,’ I said, holding on to the table to stop my hands from shaking.
Amanda looked at me with disbelief and astonishment, as if one of the Betterton family portraits had stepped out of its frame to join the editorial meeting. ‘But I do, Rory. And that’s final.’
‘I – I think I can bring it up to date, make it more relevant for the new Country House,’ I said wildly, with no actual idea of how I might achieve this.
‘Oh really?’ smirked Amanda. ‘Do elaborate. After all, this meeting isn’t nearly long enough as it is. I am all ears.’
I cast my eyes desperately about the room, where they landed on Ticky, who was looking at me with an expression of horror. Clearly she didn’t think I was going to be able to salvage this. She shook her head to warn me to back down. But then I remembered our conversation earlier, and I knew I had an angle.
‘I could turn it into a dating column,�
� I said triumphantly.
‘A dating column? What does a dating column have to do with Country House?’ snapped Amanda. ‘Rory, you are wasting everyone’s time—’
‘Wait, Amanda. You want Country House to be more like a women’s magazine; a dating column could be just what new readers want. Something fun and light to run alongside the more serious pieces.’
Amanda sighed. ‘Rory, every magazine and free newspaper in London has a dating column – why should anyone read this one?’
‘Well, I could give it a country house angle, maybe visit a house on a date . . .’ I suggested.
‘Boring.’
‘No, wait,’ I said, in a burst of inspiration. ‘I do know how to make it different. I do. Instead of looking for Mr Right, I’m going to be looking for Mr Wrong.’
‘Mr Wrong?’ said Amanda, turning to look at me with a tiny flicker of interest.
‘Mr Unsuitable, then,’ I said, looking over at Ticky, whose mouth hung open. ‘I’m going to be purposely dating all the wrong types to show our readers how to identify and avoid them themselves – toyboys, lotharios, men who still live with their mums. We can call it Country House Dates Unsuitable Men – So You Don’t Have To.’
‘It’s not a bad idea,’ said Amanda ruminatively. I thought I might have her. ‘But still not quite what I’m after for the magazine.’
‘I’ve already been on the first one,’ I blurted. ‘A date with a man who seemed like he was gay but wasn’t.’ I looked at Ticky for confirmation. ‘A fauxmosexual. I can write it up straight away, ready for the April issue.’
Amanda considered me. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said.
I chewed my bottom lip in frustration; I knew when I’d been beaten. If I’d been the Honourable Rory Carmichael of the Norfolk Carmichaels, Amanda would have gone for it like a shot. Someone titled and connected could have dated a packet of pork sausages and Amanda would deem it worth a column; but a nobody like me didn’t have a chance.
‘You can write it for the website.’
I stopped chewing my lip and stared at Amanda in surprise.
‘The website?’ I echoed. Despite all the talk of launching the Country House website last year, everyone knew that no one actually read it. It existed purely so that Amanda could pretend we were current media players, with an online presence should anyone choose to search for us. In reality Country House readers were the Eleanors and Percys and Auntie Lydias of the world, no more interested in the internet than they were in the contemporary urban music scene.
‘We need extra material for the website. Forget about the country house thing, just drop that bit. I want a straight dating column, just as you pitched it, dating unsuitable men so our readers don’t have to. We’ll test it out on the website and, if I like it, we’ll move it into the magazine. Five hundred words a fortnight.’
Before I could express thanks or relief or amazement, or any of the other emotions that were roiling in my stomach, the meeting had moved on. Amanda annihilated Martha’s latest pitch in record time; Martha stalked out of the meeting without waiting for it to finish; Lysander name-dropped several prize-winning fiction writers before admitting that his review pages this month would mostly focus on the memoirs of Mim, Dowager Duchess of Rutland and (no coincidence this) his own grandmother; Flickers got the go-ahead for yet another piece on country sports; and Amanda’s Jack Russell terminated the meeting by asphyxiating us all with stealthy under-the-table flatulence.
In short, the meeting proceeded exactly as it usually did.
9
It took me rather a long time to notice that Ticky was ignoring me that afternoon. In fact, I didn’t actually notice until she came over to my desk and cleared her throat loudly for the third time. I looked up from the layouts I’d been proofreading and she glared at me.
‘Er, yeah? Not talking to you until you, like, apologize?’ she said, wagging her finger at me like the sassy black neighbour in a sitcom; an incongruous look for an old Cheltonian.
‘Sorry?’ I said, my brain still with one of Noonoo’s ‘I went to a fun party in a big house’ name-dropping featurettes.
‘Yah, like, still waiting,’ said Ticky, miming looking at her watch.
‘Waiting for what?’ I asked.
‘Rory, I know you are like, having a raaahlly terrible time at the moment. And I know, like, that breaking up with someone can make you mental. Well, more mental than usual. But it is saahriously uncool for you to have taken that unsuitable-men idea and palmed it off as your own.’
‘What? Ticky, are you sahhrious – I mean serious? You weren’t going to date any unsuitable men yourself – you’ve got a boyfriend. You told me I should do it.’
‘Yah, but I didn’t, like, say why don’t you go sucking up to Maaahn with my brilliant idea and make her think you’re all clever and inventive, when, like, I couldn’t come up with any features ideas myself?’ Ticky pouted and flicked her hair away from her face.
‘Right, okay, well I’m sorry I didn’t credit you with a feature idea that Amanda only thinks worthy of putting on the website, which, in case you haven’t noticed, is read by pretty much nobody,’ I snapped. ‘I hardly think anyone is going to be getting promoted over this one, least of all me.’
‘But, like, Roars,’ Ticky said, and I was surprised to see that she looked properly upset, her mouth pinching up, ‘it’s all right for you. People already think you’re smart, you don’t have to prove it all the time. But just for once I’d like Maaahn to think something I did was clever or good, instead of just being, like, “Oh come on, Ticky, weren’t you at school with someone interesting, or, like, isn’t your uncle a baron?”’
I blinked at her. It had never occurred to me that Ticky, with all of her swishy-haired, expensively educated privileges, might consider herself to be hard done by, either in life or at Country House. Surely she knew that class was what counted – here and everywhere? That Martha and I, armed only with what Amanda called ‘native cunning’, could only get so far. Also, her uncle was a baron? I didn’t even know barons existed outside of fairy tales.
‘You are smart, Ticky,’ I lied. Perhaps I wasn’t lying, perhaps she was smart; how was I to know, since she pretty much never did any work? Perhaps, I realized, I too had treated her like a posh idiot, and just let her get away with doing little more than filing her nails in between social appointments.
‘You, like, raaahlly think so?’ she said, her chin wobbling. ‘Mummy always used to say, “Suffolk-born, Suffolk-bred, Ticky’s thick in the arm and thick in the head.”’
‘That’s just a silly saying,’ I said. ‘I’ve heard that a million times before – she doesn’t really mean you’re thick.’
‘And I only got a third on my degree,’ she sniffed. ‘Mummy said they only passed me at all because Daddy made such a big donation to St Andrews.’
I was actually beginning to feel sorry for Ticky; Mummy sounded like a right witch. At least my mother’s approach to childcare, while scatty, amounted to nothing more shocking than a benign sort of neglect as she ignored me to focus on hunting her latest husband.
‘Ticky, plenty of people who are very smart don’t do well academically,’ I said consolingly. ‘You just need to work with your strengths.’
‘But what are my strengths, Roars?’ she sighed, slumping on to my desk.
‘Well, networking is one,’ I said, thinking that this was a polite way of mentioning the endless social appointments that kept her from her desk.
‘But Roars, I am, like, fucking running out of relatives to milk for Maaahn, and half my old schoolfriends won’t invite me to their houses any more in case I try to use them in a magazine feature.’
‘Don’t they want to be in Country House?’ I asked; it had never occurred to me that people weren’t lining up to show off on our pages. There certainly never seemed to be a shortage of them.
‘Roars, duh! They’re all way too young. They want to be in Tatler or Vogue, or get a wodge of cash from Hello!. The on
ly time people actually, like, want to be in Country House is if they’re trying to flog the family pile. Or if they’re like, ancient,’ Ticky said.
‘What about all of Noonoo’s friends? They’re not ancient.’
‘Noonoo’s friends are just, like, total nouveau publicity whores. They’d appear in Readers’ Wives if they thought it would get them a bit more attention. No, Roars, the non-nouves, the old-school country house types that Maaahn would kill for, don’t want to be in a magazine at all. I totally dread asking them every time.’
I wondered why Ticky and I had so rarely talked properly before. Was it because I was always rushing home to Martin? Because I always had half of my brain tuned in to what he might be doing, what he might need or want? This was the first time since she started at Country House that I had even considered that Ticky’s diary dates were actually work for her; she no more thrilled at the thought of begging her great-aunt for a favour than I did at copy-editing more of Noonoo’s friends’ reminiscences.
‘Well, aside from networking, you’re also very good at getting people to talk,’ I said. ‘You got me to talk about Martin when I really wasn’t sure I wanted to.’
‘Thanks, Roars,’ said Ticky with a sniffle. ‘I guess I’m not entirely useless.’
‘You’re not at all useless,’ I said. ‘And I’m sorry for not crediting your idea about the unsuitable men. If it’s any consolation, I wouldn’t have done it unless I was desperate.’
‘Yah, like totally desperate,’ agreed Ticky, launching herself off my desk and returning to her own with renewed vigour. ‘Like, your middle name is desperation. Rory Desperation Carmichael. Desperation, thy name is Rory.’
I rolled my eyes and turned back to the layouts. I pretended to work, but actually I was mostly panicking about the Unsuitable Men column. Ticky was right: to have suggested it at all reeked of desperation. What had I been thinking? Of course, I reassured myself, it was unlikely that anyone but Amanda would read it. But that itself was terrifying. What if I completely cocked it up now that her attention was focused on me for once? You didn’t have to attend the management lunches in Old Mr Betterton’s fusty old club round the corner to know that redundancies were looming. Advertising was down, other magazines were folding every month. We were protected, for now, by being privately owned – no massive magazine conglomerate was going to axe us in favour of a more profitable stablemate, but the Betterton funds couldn’t support us for ever. I had always hoped that I would avoid redundancy by being so far beneath Amanda’s notice as to be entirely forgotten about. No longer, it seemed.
