Martin Harbottle's Appreciation of Time (28 page)

(Oh, and in case you’re worried about that ‘anonymous’ thing – it’s not a problem. We’re not going to say where we got the story from, obviously, and if the good people of Narcotics Anonymous – or even the man himself – work it out, what are they going to do? It’s a true story. We’re reporting a true story. You can’t argue with the facts, Martin!)

Anyway: suffice to say I’m more than pleased with the scoop. I might even take Wee Tim’rous Trainee out for a drink – show my gratitude the old-fashioned way, the Fleet Street way, by getting her good and sloshed one lunchtime. She’s got initiative, after all. She’s got nerve. And you know what else? She’s young and she’s keen and both Bombshell and Harry the Dog have told me she’s one to watch, too. Although in Harry’s case that may be as much because he fancies her as anything else.

Oh, and Martin, don’t worry. I’ve got no designs on her. My wife might be prepared to sleep with just anyone, but not me. I’ve still got principles.

And, just so you know, I didn’t sleep with Train Girl last Saturday night, either. I mean, I did sleep with her. But I didn’t, you know, sleep with her. We slept in the same bed, but we slept.

She told me all about it (I couldn’t remember, remember). We came home from the club, we fell into her flat, I started crying (I really must stop doing that when I’m drunk)… and then I fell on the bed and fell fast asleep. It was all she could do to get my shoes off, get my shirt off, roll me over a bit and fall asleep next to me. And when we woke in the morning, we shared nothing more intimate than a bacon sarnie and a mug of coffee before I went home.

So: nothing happened, right? And don’t start talking to me about intent, either. About what might have been, had I not been so offensively drunk. The point is: nothing happened. That’s the story. Those are the facts.

Also, the crying thing. Don’t tell anyone about that either. It’s a bit, well, embarrassing, isn’t it?

Au revoir
!

Dan

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re:
22.20 Premier Westward Railways train from London Paddington to Oxford, January 26. Amount of my day wasted: five minutes. Fellow sufferers: Overkeen Estate Agent.

Dear God, Martin, can we not go a bare week without someone important leaving the paper, one way or another? You know, just for the sake of a little stability? Just for the sake of allowing us to get on with doing our job properly? Or, in fact, at all?

Today the chief executive resigned. And nobody saw that coming. Or at least, nobody except maybe Goebbels. And once again, the hardest, most cynical, most seen-it-all hacks in Fleet Street… struck dumb.

Don’t get me wrong: I didn’t care much for her myself. I barely saw her in the flesh, and whenever that was was usually when she’d come onto the floor to give someone the beasting of their lives. But still. She’s the chief executive! Her name is synonymous with this paper. She came here as a graduate trainee three decades ago and worked her way up – all the way to the very top. Trainee, reporter, feature writer, deputy features ed, deputy showbiz ed, showbiz ed, news ed, editor, chief exec. It’s not a bad career ladder, is it? And the stories you hear about her…

The time she actually went undercover as a reporter on a rival paper – I mean, actually took a job there, just in order to phone in all their stories to us. She got away with it for six months, Martin! Six months in which they couldn’t understand why they couldn’t get a single exclusive without us getting it first. And when they did find out, she needed a police escort from the building. For her own safety. The editor himself told her if he ever saw her again he’d kill her. She believed him.

The trick she had of leaving a jacket permanently hung on the back of her chair – and of slipping the cleaning staff and the work-experience kids a few quid to ensure that her computer was turned on and a lit cigarette was in her ashtray 24 hours a day… just in case somebody important should pass by. She wanted to make it look like she lived in that office, like that job was her life.

The weird thing is: that job was her life. And so when she appeared on the newsroom floor this afternoon, all power-suited and clicky-heeled, deathly pale and clutching a notepad (some reporters’ habits never die) and Goebbels announced with a weird, strangled kind of smile that she wanted to address the troops, what we naturally assumed was that she was about to shut the paper.

Well, what else were we to think? And instead, we got a resignation. A tearful resignation. A taking of the bullet for the team. With her out of the picture, the heat might come off a little. The scandal might follow her, and leave us all behind. That’s the plan. And to be fair to her, it’s a pretty bloody honourable one too.

But still. Gobsmacked. Struck dumb. All except Goebbels, who just kept smiling that creepy smile, even as she tottered out again, shoulders shaking, to face the camera crews outside.

And naturally it was Goebbels who broke the silence. ‘You.’ He pointed at me. ‘Get me something other than the resignation of our chief executive to lead with on Sunday. Get me it now.’

And that, as they say, was that.

Au revoir
!

Dan

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re:
22.20 Premier Westward Railways train from London Paddington to Oxford, January 26.

Dear Dan

Once again, thank you for taking the time to write and tell me of your recent problems. Your train on January 18 was the victim of a mix-up in our depot, when the earlier service was mistakenly assigned four buffet cars instead of standard-class carriages. Unfortunately, the resulting delay to that service had consequences for several other services throughout the morning, of which yours was one.

On January 21, your evening service back to Oxford was delayed thanks to rowdy passengers threatening a guard who refused to let them use a toilet reserved for first-class customers. Those troublemakers, I might add, were subsequently breathalysed, found to be intoxicated and arrested by the British Transport Police.

I am very sorry you feel that drunkenness – and indeed rioting – are socially acceptable ways of behaving. Perhaps I am old-fashioned but I certainly do not. And even making allowances for the pressures you are under at work and at home, I can’t help thinking that perhaps sometimes you should examine your own opinions before being so hasty to pass comment on everyone else. I feel that on occasion you do tend to become rather ‘tabloid’ in your thinking, and that is a shame.

Martin

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re:
07.31 Premier Westward Railways train from Oxford to London Paddington, February 1. Amount of my day wasted: 13 minutes. Fellow sufferers: Guilty New Mum, Lego Head, Universal Grandpa.

Woah there, soldier! Easy, tiger! Careful, cougar! What’s with all this sudden judgemental stuff?

I’m sorry if you feel I’m a bit tabloid. I am a bit tabloid. I said it to you ages ago, didn’t I? In fact, I’ve just looked back through my email history and found it. Here’s what I said:

‘I basically think I’m better than everyone else and at the same time worry that nobody else really realises it. It makes me think I’m always right (even when I sort of know, inside, I may be wrong). Because the
Sunday Globe
– it is always right, isn’t it? It tells the world what’s right – and more often, what’s wrong.’

That really is me, isn’t it? Oh dear. The thing is, Martin, I’ve been living like that for years now (at least as long as I’ve been at the paper, anyway) and, like the paper, I’ve been doing it with a swagger, a self-confidence that’s born out of being part of something that’s basically untouchable.

But now. Now the paper has been touched. Now I’ve been touched (as it were). And I’m not so sure either the paper or me is so right about everything any more. And it’s true what you say: rioting isn’t big or clever. It’s not funny. It’s no cause for celebration. I’m just being an idiot pretending it is. I’m just showing off.

I’ll be honest with you, Martin. (I’m always honest with you, for good or ill.) I’m having a bit of a crisis right now. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, like, but things are kind of falling apart – and I’m not sure (OK, I have no idea) what I should be doing about it. Even whether I can do anything about it. All this stuff at work, and all this stuff at home: I’m part of it, it’s part of me, but I feel like it’s all happening despite me, like it’s all happening to me, but like I’ve got absolutely no influence on what matters. I’m not driving the train, Martin, I’m sitting on the train watching it all happen out of the window, powerless to do anything about where it’s taking me or how long it’s going to take to get there.

I should get off the train, shouldn’t I? I should get off the train and start walking. I should take charge of stuff, determine my own direction, be in control of how long it takes to get there. It’s just that… I don’t know how to do it.

And what of the train? Who can I see today? Guilty New Mum… I’m beginning to wonder about Guilty New Mum. Choppy waters may run deep, as far as she’s concerned.

When she got on the train today, she was in the usual flap, tottering and tripping down the aisle, handbag perilously close to spilling its contents everywhere, one hand clutching her travelcard, the other holding an overflowing cup, coffee sloshing over the sides and dripping along her hand and onto the floor. Her phone was crammed between her shoulder and ear and she was giving it both barrels to him indoors.

‘Well of course she’s crying,’ she said. ‘You’d be crying too if you were up all night. Except you weren’t; I was the one up all night with her. I feel like crying too. I’d love to have a good old cry. There’s nothing I want more, to be honest, than a big cry. What’s that? No, I’m not being sarcastic. Far from it. I’m telling the truth. What? When? Have you checked her nappy? What colour was it? No, that’s fine, it’s always that colour. What’s her temperature? Well, why not? Check it now. Has she been too close to the radiator? How many blankets have you put on? Well, I don’t know, but that’s what it said in the book, didn’t it? What do you mean which book? All the books! Gina thingy. That book. Well, yes, I know it also says that but you can ignore that bit. Definitely ignore that bit. Don’t leave her crying. Seriously. Don’t leave her crying. What? Where? Oh you’re joking. Both sets of keys? Well, why were they by the fridge anyway? I never leave them by the fridge? Oh Christ, don’t tell me I’ve left my security card at home again as well…’

And that’s when it happened. She was, by this time, ensconced in the seat across the aisle from me, and as she frantically rooted around in her bag, something small and rectangular and plastic dropped out and came skidding across the carriage floor towards me. I picked it up and was about to hand it back without looking when I realised she hadn’t noticed its absence. ‘Oh for crying out loud,’ she was saying, pulling out little fluffy animals and notebooks and dummies and organisers and teething granules and USB sticks. ‘I do not need this, not again, not today, not with the meetings I’ve got, not with the bloody PM on my bloody case…’

And I thought: PM? Hello?

So I took a look at her security card. On the front: her photo (taken pre-motherhood, looking smart, relaxed, confident), her name (double-barrelled!), a barcode. No clues there. But, on the back, this: ‘If found, please return to SIS, 85 Vauxhall Cross, Albert Embankment, London’, along with the whole Lion and Unicorn
Dieu et mon droit
thing.

85 Vauxhall Cross: I know that building, Martin! Everyone knows that building. It’s been in the James Bond films. The Real IRA fired a missile at it not so long ago. It’s where the spies are. And SIS: that’s another name for MI6. She’s a spy, Martin! And judging from some of the conversations she has on that phone, thinking about it again with a bit of hindsight, I’m beginning to think she might be someone pretty senior in the spy world. A Spymaster!

Remember the incident in the Putin meeting? Putin? Putin, Martin! And now the PM? And what was that thing with the G8? Am I sharing my train every day with M? (Or was it Q? No, M. Definitely M. Judi Dench, either way.) Am I sharing my train with the real-life Judi Dench? And is she actually a massive flake?

Anyway, I handed the pass back, and she gave me such a look of gratitude, I only thought: I guess she doesn’t know who I am, who I work for. If she did, she would certainly not want me going anywhere near it. A reporter at the
Globe
in possession of M’s security pass? No. Good God, no!

And then I thought again: perhaps it’s not so great, after all, being swaggering and arrogant and untouchable and unthinkingly right about everything. Not if it means you’re not a very nice person. Or not a very nice newspaper.

Or am I just going soft, Martin? Are you making me soft?

Au revoir
!

Dan

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re:
23.20 Premier Westward Railways train from London Paddington to Oxford, February 3. Amount of my day wasted: 11 minutes. Fellow sufferers: No regulars (too late even for Overkeen Estate Agent).

Hey Martin, you want to know why I’m writing to you again? Can you guess? I’ll tell you. It’s because your train is running late again, I’m stuck on it again, it’s late, I’m drunk again, I’m on the way home to my wife, to whom I haven’t spoken in a month now, and my daughter, at whom I can hardly look because she breaks my heart for looking so much like her mum, and I promised you I’d write and waste your time every time you waste my time and I’ve got to write about something after all so I might as well write about what’s going on in my life.