AND ON WE GO - THE STORY IS DEVELOPING
CHAPTER SIX
London’s underbelly reminded me of my home, Belfast, and why my parents crawled out of the rubble to give me a better life and education. I became a journalist trying to change an indifferent world.
Damn Hart and Hrisacopolis. I refused to look the other way.
Annoyed at both men, I gunned my car down the approach road to the better side of Wapping and the Herald building. As I drove around a bend, I caught sight of kids from the nearby tower block kicking a ball up against the doors of an abandoned warehouse. The ball bounced across the road in front of my car. I punched the brakes and skidded to a halt. After several deep breaths, I wound down the window and ordered the kids not to play in the road. I drove off at a slower pace. A string of four-letter words and two fingered salutes followed.
Not the most endearing of neighborhoods but then the last thing a newspaper baron worries about is a scenic location. The City airport bustled a short distance away and easy access to several major trunk roads carrying commuters in all directions through the metropolis lay nearby. Wapping became the Herald headquarters in the eighties and whether I liked it or not, the hub of activity for Hart’s empire.
I parked close to the building, jumped out of the car, and ran for cover. Undercover parking existed for management, not the newsroom.
Inside, a blast of hot air caught me on the back of my neck. The temptation to stand and dry out faded with the sound of running feet behind me. I reached the elevator and while waiting, five other staff joined me. We dripped rain on the marble floor, all of us looking at our watches as though our lives depended on time – a stupid British thing I’ve never understood – and nodded to each other without saying a word. I smiled inwardly, visualizing a group of those little dogs you see on the rear shelf of a car giving you a nod. The elevator arrived and we all piled in.
We remained silent as we ascended to the newsroom. I couldn’t get the Greek out of my mind. There was something missing. I’d got a few enquiries of my own to attend to and decided to ask Jessica to follow up on one particular member of the Hrisacopolis family.
A soft pinging bell warned we had arrived at the newsroom. Everyone braced themselves as the doors slid back with a slight judder. Facing us was a herd of journalists on their way out. Beyond them office staff on their way to meetings clutched folders. I successfully sidestepped them, only to bump into Max’s secretary carrying a polystyrene cup of coffee. She gave me a tight smile but declined the piece of crumpled tissue I produced from my pocket to dab her dress with.
I walked to my cubicle, crossing the firing line between our deputy editor and a fellow journalist. They were shouting at each other over news of a plane crash while competing with the buzz of telephone conversations around them.
Monday mornings normally started with a couple of aspirin.
Before I reached my desk, I could see a long pair of legs stretched out from behind the partition. Dressed in a pleated light blue skirt and navy blue jacket, Jessica put me to shame in my dull gray suit. Her red beads were gone, replaced with a gold charm bracelet. The gardenias however, still hung in the air, an invisible man trap.
After our afternoon at Jack’s, I’d decided to work a few hours at the office. I lost track of the time and finished at ten-thirty. Hrisacopolis turned out to be an interesting man. The more I found out about him the more I wanted to dig. Call it instinct but despite Max’s warning I knew I’d find a great story behind the story. The results could sit in my drawer for the time being.
Jessica sat in my chair looking at the notes, holding my pen mid air as though correcting mistakes. The desk looked clean and tidy. I bit my tongue. She’d created a mess in my mental comfort zone.
“Hi,” I said, cheerfully. I shook my raincoat and draped it over the wall. “It looks different around here.” I waited until she got to the end of the page. When she turned the page I got a little more direct. “What the hell have you done with my papers?”
I hovered over her, my anger rising. The cubicle contained my little cozy piece of the world and it only housed one, not two.
She laid the pen on the desk and looked up with wide eyes.
The opportunity to work with Enda Osin came as a surprise to Jessica. She vaguely remembered seeing him a couple of times on the newsroom floor but they had never met. Her office, three floors above the newsroom, was a world away. Work sometimes took her out to art galleries, auctions and museums but never into the newsroom bedlam.
Max asked her to meet him urgently for an assignment, providing research for Enda. She wondered why she would have anything to do with politics. It was a pleasant surprise when Max briefed her on an upcoming project for the Sunday supplement.
The ‘Osin Column’ was already popular with readers when she joined the Wapping office, and she too admired his in-depth political comment. The prospect of working with him excited her. She looked on the opportunity as a chance to do something more interesting than writing art reviews.
Enda turned out to be very different to the man she expected. Instead of a well groomed and polite gentleman, she found herself shaking hands with a savy Irishman. His bright blue eyes looked into hers and gripped her attention while she shook hands. The dry humor aimed at Ms Linguard made her smile. A little shorter than herself and almost twice her age, she liked him at first meeting. Across one cheek there was a short, thin scar that gave him a not too rugged look she found attractive.
What did surprise her was the man’s wardrobe. A worn jacket, scuffed shoes, and a un- ironed shirt. The clothes were expensive, obviously from a bespoke tailor. The shoes were Italian leather. Max had warned her, Osin was a bachelor.
The last four days proved difficult. Enda was well educated but lacked any kind of well practiced social graces. Their backgrounds were different and Enda’s witticisms could be annoying. His political views though, confirmed his expertise. She listened, fascinated and interested in his vast knowledge of world financial and political matters.
Frustration at Enda’s comment the day before annoyed her. She realized that his words were not personal. It was her beforehand comment that showed she may not have understood his depth of knowledge into Hrisacopolis history. She resolved not to make the mistake again, although she felt no need to apologize.
Jessica ignored the question and told me my notes, although informative, did not exactly stay within the agreed research areas.
That said, she returned to the notes and read on.
I felt an irresistible urge to place both hands around her neck. I sat on the edge of the desk and leaned forward, speaking as calmly as I could.
“There are several things we have to establish here.”
She turned her head and held me with a steady gaze.
“First, this is my chair and this is my desk and this is my pen and this is my space.” I pointed at each item and ended by waving my hands in the air. “Next, these are my notes.” I snatched them from her and leaned closer. “I’d be obliged if you’d refrain from sticking your nose into my work. Last – since when did you decide what we will and won’t do?”
I’d apologized for the stupid remark I made at the rally but this was different. There were fifty messy desks in the newsroom and no-one touched a thing, not even the cleaners. She should have known that.
Jessica answered my question with silence, and a glare.
“Now - get out of my chair and go get your own,” I growled.
She rose and left the cubicle without saying a word.
The chair didn’t look much, just a small secretarial chair with a worn cloth seat and three squeaky castors. After sitting in it for half an hour my buttocks ached and I spent a lot of time shifting from side to side, but somehow it survived the years. The point is, it was part and parcel of my workplace and I didn’t like trespassers.
I settled into the chair and opened the file, feeling justified at taking Jessica down a peg or two. After a few minutes she reappeared pushing a large black leather executive chair before her with one hand. The chair glided in next to mine, filling the space in the cubicle and making it impossible for me to leave. She sat upright with hands clasped in her lap, an expression of superiority set on her face. In all the years I’d been at the office no one ever owned a chair like that in the newsroom.
I guess the way I looked at the chair begged an answer.
“Max let me have it,” she said, her voice clipped and guarded.
“Really, just like that. You must have been very persuasive.”
“Not at all,” she snapped, “I asked politely.” She brushed an imaginary speck from her skirt.
The bait dangled in front of me but I wasn’t interested. What did interest me lay inside the folder she’d been reading. The previous nights work turned up a lot of material, some relating back to the fifties and some to current activity going on in the Brussels corridors of power. Hrisacopolis proved to be a very shrewd and clever man, a bastard too.
The articles about the Elgin marbles would be as glossy and as nice as Max wanted them but that wouldn’t deter me from digging deeper than the Greek’s smile. I wanted Jessica on my side for a variety of reasons, particularly her connections within the jet set hierarchy. Her father, a colleague informed me, retired a diplomat with years of experience on the ‘garden party merry-go-round’.
“I’m sorry I got angry but you should have known,” I said. “I’ve written a column in this little hole for the last two years… on my own. My notes are the only thing that belong to me around here.” I sighed and threw my notes across the desk.
“I suppose I deserved what I got.” She cast an eye over the desk. “If you want to live like this…. And I shouldn’t be looking at your notes. I’m sorry Enda.”
“You can look at anything you like but don’t move anything.” I wiggled a finger at her.
The smile returned, the hands unwound and the legs slid across one another. “I guess the urge to purge political stupidity and corruption is too strong for you to ignore, right?” She reached across the desk and picked the file up. “What’s the plan then?”
I told her I didn’t have a plan but did have a strong feeling that unless someone stopped Hrisacopolis in time, his corrupt tentacles would poison the European Union. By coercing fellow delegates on the ways and means committee he’d certainly cause chaos whether Turkey joined the EU or not.
“Surely Turkey will eventually join now that Cyprus is in the EU?” she asked, placing the folder on her lap.
I shook my head. It depended on a lot of things including human rights issues. There was a lot the Turks would have to sort out first.
I put two fingers over my mouth as Max scurried by with an armful of folders. A trail of cigar smoke and two managerial lackeys followed him. “Working hard, you two, I hope.” He said it over his shoulder without looking back at us.
Jessica opened the file and looked through a pile of newspaper cuttings I’d collected. Like me, she knew no resolution on sovereignty meant it would be easier to promote public unrest.
I agreed. From that moment on the Greek Cypriots would have support from the UN Security Council.
I could see Hrisacopolis standing on the sidelines watching the disintegration of the Turkish Republic. A strong leadership and therefore a strong trading partner would be a better solution. No doubt whatsoever, the EU would back a declaration of Enosis from the Greek parliament, and the Turkish government would have no choice but to agree to yet another condition if they wished to join the Union.
Jessica looked up from some photos. “Despite your tough exterior you do have a heart then, not just a journalist’s sense of justice?”
There was no sarcasm in her voice although there was a silent question.
“You’d better believe it,” I answered.
Yes, I cared about my fellow ordinary Joe and his family. That’s why I loved my job. When Whitehall did something right I sang their praises. When they got it wrong, I liked kicking ass on behalf of Joe.
Her eyes never left mine while I spoke. A hint of a smile showed around her lips – a sarcastic smile. “Well, I guess that explains a couple of things.”
“What’s that?”
“Why you live out of a suitcase and eat at McDonald's. You don’t get time to settle down while you’re saving the world. Have you got a red cape?”
We laughed together.
“So what’s next?”
I told her I was going to lunch with a buddy of mine from the Foreign Office whose father worked in Brussels. While I enjoyed lunch, she could dig up as much as possible about Hrisacopolis’ son, George.
I opened a drawer in my desk and took out a press clipping carrying a story on George’s death and a picture of the man. “That’s what he looked like.”
Jessica took the cutting from me and studied it, then tapped the picture. “He’s quite a handsome young man. I wonder who this woman is.” She held the picture up to the light.
Shaded by a tree, George sat on a large rock with an arm around a woman. Only one of her arms and a shoulder showed.
“No idea,” I answered, “probably a girlfriend.”
No comments:
Post a Comment