Vintage Babes (3 page)

‘I am, and I’ll be on the alert. Ron Vetch might profess to be twenty-four carat dependable, but it’s my suspicion he could’ve been on the take for years.’

What I didn’t reveal was that the councillor was also pals with Eric, who had deleted comments in my earlier reports which had hinted at doubts about his friend’s integrity. When I had objected, Eric had blathered on about the dangers of provoking a libel case and how he dared not risk the paper being dragged into court. I could have said he was talking piffle and that the intrepid hackette knew the score and wasn’t so irresponsible, but we had had several battles on-going and I had felt disinclined to start another. Battling with Eric could be as frustrating as juggling soot.

‘This afternoon Iced Kidneys are making a video at Pondsby Place,’ Steve Lingard continued, naming a nearby National Trust property. ‘Carol, would you attend and –’

‘Who or what are Iced Kidneys?’ I demanded.

I resented being allocated work. I had always run my own regime and did not appreciate being sent off to monitor some itsy-bitsy video shoot. He’d have me doing a survey of bus shelters next!

‘They’re an indie band influenced by ‘crunk and B’, and they’ve had two number ones in the charts this year already,’ Melanie explained excitedly.

‘Oh.’

I don’t know what indie music is, let alone ‘crunk and B’. Once upon a time when my daughter was a teenager and we watched
Top of the Pops
together, I could name all the groups in the charts, plus their lead singers. Nowadays – zilch. Don’t recognise the personnel nor the terminology. Though I am word perfect with almost every line of almost every song recorded by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

‘You must remember ‘Clock My Bling Bling?’ Melanie said. The rest of us looked blank. She sang a snatch of something which sounded like a dirge. An Albanian dirge. We still looked blank. ‘But could I do that story? To see them in real life, to speak to the guys would be bulls-eye.’ Reaching into the canvas tote bag which she lugs around, she produced a newspaper cutting and showed us a picture of shaggy-haired youths in jeans with the crotch at knee level and back-to-front baseball caps. ‘They’re awesome,’ she sighed.

I’ve never trusted ‘awesome’ and, for me, anyone who wears the peak of their cap over the nape of their neck has to be pea-brained and looks pea-brained. Even if it is the uniform of the day. There’s only one thing worse, people with clip-on plastic sunshades for their glasses, who walk around with them raised. Oh, and men with ponytails, especially if they’re over forty. Though that’s a common grouse. And I do make exceptions if the men are dramatically good-looking.

‘Please could I go?’ the girl begged, thrusting out her pink-clad twin peaks and giving Steve a cutesy smile. ‘Please, please, please.’

‘Okay,’ he said curtly, ‘but make sure you get the facts correct and give people their right names spelled properly.’

She pulled at one of the long corkscrews of fair hair which dangle down over her eyes. ‘I usually do.’

‘Usually isn’t good enough. You’ve had it far too easy here for far too long, but things are going to change.’

He may have been speaking to Melanie, but the warning went out, loud, clear and all encompassing. Smarten up, you lot, or else…

‘At three p.m. today the Garth House Hotel is hosting a presentation to publicise the state-of-the-art health club and spa which they’re opening to guests and exclusive membership,’ Steve Lingard said, returning to his papers.

I arched a brow. ‘Whoopy-do.’

‘It may not be earth-shattering, but Garth House has advertised with
The Siren
for years so –’

‘You know about that?’ I said.

‘I’ve done my homework – so a write-up would be politic. If you handle the health club –’ he passed me a glossy brochure advertising it ‘– then Tony can spend time at the new traffic lights on the by-pass roundabout which are causing so many delays and which everyone’s bellyaching about.’

Tony had been sucking on a Biro, but now he looked baffled. ‘Doing what?’ he asked.

‘Photographing the queues and conducting a survey on how long drivers are having to wait, together with irate comments,’ Steve replied. ‘Don’t bother to claim a lunch. As well as cutting down on errors, we’re cutting back on costs and expenses.’ Sitting upright in the high-back chair, he eyed the three of us. ‘Do you have any thoughts on stories or features? Some suggestions to brighten up the paper?’

‘Suggestions?’ Tony repeated, as if he had not heard the word before.

‘Eric never wanted suggestions,’ Melanie objected.

Our new boss gave a dry smile. ‘Think of me as a learning curve.’

Was he attempting to establish that we were as lacklustre as he believed? Or could he be trying to pick our brains? He may have done his homework – I’d been surprised he also considered Councillor Vetch to be an iffy character – but he hadn’t worked on
The Siren
for years nor did he live in Dursleigh. So should I help… or let him stew?

‘Think!’ he urged.

‘The local hospice is holding a fun run next month,’ I said. ‘And in June there’s a festival of football for kids. We could do features on them.’

As Mr P-J’s darling Steve Lingard possessed the power to make life difficult for me, so it made sense to at least appear to be co-operative. Plus intelligent.

‘
The Siren
hasn’t done that before?’

‘No.’ I’d suggested both ideas to Eric the previous year, and the year before that, but, although agreeing, he had let them slide. ‘We could publish photographs of the various teams. People get a buzz from seeing pictures of themselves, or their kids, in the paper. Or even from reading their names.’

He scribbled a note. ‘Smart thinking.’

Was he being facetious, ironic or patronising? Or all three? Whichever, it wasn’t smart thinking and he knew it. All I had done was read several editions of
The Ringley Bugle
and seen what he was up to. Like
The Siren, The Bugle
has a sizeable advertising section, plus a pull-out entertainment guide to what’s going on locally which is syndicated, but the difference was in the news pages.
The Bugle’s
twelve pages, as against our six, were sparkier and far more varied in content. While both papers have strong family values – no swear words, no nipple shots, nothing too graphically grisly – he had demonstrated those values by printing plenty of accounts and photographs of local events – the planting of a cherry tree in memory of a soldier who’d been killed in Iraq, children setting off on school trips, W.I. ladies with their flower arrangements.

‘The chef at the local Italian won a best meal award recently,’ Tony said. ‘My wife and I go there sometimes in the evening,’ he added, as if to emphasise that he did not dine courtesy of
The Siren.

‘So interview the guy, take his photo,’ Steve told him. ‘And while you’re there, suggest that the restaurant advertises with us. The advertising needs to be boosted. But get out and about, make contacts, ask questions.’

‘Charm old ladies,’ I said.

Steve frowned. ‘Sorry?’

‘You wrote a tongue-in-the-cheek editor’s column for
The Bugle
which had old ladies stopping you in the street to say how you’d made them laugh.’ I, too, had done a little homework, in the form of a phone conversation with a Ringley reporter. A male reporter who had described Steve Lingard as ‘a heavy-hitter, but a nice guy and a damn good editor.’ I would’ve preferred to chat with a woman, who would have been more on my wavelength and more likely to pass on any gossip, but both of the women reporters had been out of the office. I had rung a couple more times, but frustratingly missed them again. ‘Seems they fancied you rotten,’ I said, wondering why such a grim-faced character should appeal.

‘Yeah, I’m catnip to any female over seventy.’

‘Which is why they tell you their family secrets.’

This reference was to his Scoop of the Year Award, when the geriatric mother of a government minister had chattily revealed to him that, after an unwise evening in the company of lap dancers, her son had decided to resign.

‘Are you going to write an editor’s column in
The Siren?’
Melanie enquired.

He nodded. ‘That’s the intention. Once I’ve got the hang of things. Any other suggestions?’

Silence.

In a couple of weeks the am-dram society was putting on performances of
The Master Builder
and I could have suggested we printed a piece on that, but I kept quiet. Didn’t want to make his life too easy. I had also amassed a folder of ideas for possible stories, but I wasn’t about to share that with him, either.

‘Nothing?’ he asked.

Tony and Melanie looked thoughtful. ‘No,’ they said, in unison.

I shook my head.

Steve Lingard frowned and checked his watch. ‘Then that’s it for now. I’ve arranged to meet a few folk to introduce myself –’

‘Who?’ I demanded.

He was on my territory
interfering
and I wanted to know. I deserved to know. Indeed, it would’ve been courteous if he had raised the idea with me first.

‘Today I’m seeing the fire chief and later one of
The Siren’s
freelancers, the guy who writes about antiques. If that’s agreeable to you?’ he asked, with a sardonic bow of his head.

I made myself look coolly back. ‘It is,’ I replied. Let’s face it, I didn’t have any choice.

‘Praise the Lord. But I’ll be back in the office mid afternoon. And I can always be contacted on my mobile, I’ve given you the number. If anything comes in which you think merits
The Siren’s
presence, clear it with me first.’

‘Yes, sir,’ I said, and resisted the urge to salute.

Eric had not demanded that he be consulted, he had allowed me, left me,
trusted
me to do my own thing.

As Steve Lingard departed, the rest of us returned to our desks in the general office. After agonising over how many drivers he would need to speak to in order to satisfy the new editor’s idea of a survey – two, twelve, twenty? – Tony left for an early bar lunch to be bought at his own expense. He rarely missed lunch, washed down by a pint or two, which accounted for his jowls, beer barrel belly and tendency to nod off in the afternoons. Though it seemed unlikely he’d be doing much nodding off from now on.

Steve Lingard may not have said he considered us to be a dead loss trio, but it had been evident in his attitude. I was not a dead loss, I thought indignantly. I had been responsible for the major proportion of the news which filled the news pages. But did he know that? He had been surprised to realise I had written about the phone masts
et al,
so could Eric have claimed the reports as his? It was possible, correction highly probable; given Eric’s erratic commitment to the gospel truth and the fact that he had rarely put my by-line on my work. Reckoned it would’ve looked like I wrote too much. Which, of course, I did. The ultimate underachiever and devious with it, Eric had shown little enterprise. He had preferred to let others – i.e. me – provide the drive, while he subbed their work in the comfort of his office. And studied the racing journals, placed telephone bets and chain-smoked.

‘OHOC. OHOT. WLTM a WOCA with GSOH. That’d suit you.’

I looked across at Melanie. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Own house, own car. Own hair, own teeth,’ she translated. ‘Would like to meet a woman of a certain age with good sense of humour for a long term relationship. Interested?’

‘No thanks. And you shouldn’t be logging onto encounter sites and printing out details in company time and at company expense. Eric may have let you get away with murder, but Mr Lingard would not approve.’

‘He isn’t here.’

‘Makes no difference.’