Chapter Two #2
‘Look here, I didn’t come out of retirement to be taken down by a posse of people in reinforced underpants.’
Thinking that no one said ‘Look here’ any more, Edward shook his head indignantly. ‘I’m sorry if that’s what you think of our audience. Why don’t you come in with me? Just tell them I’ve lost my voice. Or if you like, I can go home.’
Another shout from the other side of the door.
‘I can’t come in with you because then we get the pantomime. I’ll get booed and hissed. I’m Paula Vennells in all this. They’re the subpostmasters. Go. You’re on. You’re the … the star.’ Again, a staggering of the sentence; the infinitesimal pause before each word.
He added: ‘Remember – inclusive.’
As his hand turned on the brass knob and the door opened for Edward, the controller faded away like a ghost. The door gave way onto a stage, which was not what Edward had expected.
A stage he was now standing on. The sunlight outside was blocked by short, heavy curtains drawn across the fanlights in the upper part of the walls.
He saw rows and rows of faces, and heard the polite applause as he moved towards them and a single spotlight which found his face.
‘Firstly, I am sorry about the terrible state of my voice,’ Edward Temmis began, ‘and the younger presenters, who haven’t made it.’ The sentence came out wrong and caused laughter he was not expecting. He felt a little dizzy. ‘I’m just a cog in this. I’m a tiny cog. I have a miniature role.’
The audience was hushed, trying to hear. In the silence he whispered, ‘Is there a microphone? Could someone turn off this big light that’s on me? And put on the hall lights again, or draw back the curtains? Please?’
He heard a man’s voice mutter, ‘Who’s the diva?’
When the lamps came on, he looked at all the faces.
He should not have been surprised to see Kim’s mum Barbara here.
The two were so close. The exchange of information was constant – the latest was that Barbara had a new boyfriend, who was a specialist in military re-enactments.
Kim had joked that they spent the first month together just re-enacting Barbara’s first marriage.
The older woman was a short, enthusiastic divorcee with two new hips and two old dogs. The world might have decided Barbara was fit only for retirement and daytime TV, but she had a lively brain, a good social life, and nothing got past her.
In Harpford Hall were also a number of faces he might see at his local church come Christmas.
This was a sea of grey, and he felt sudden pride that these were his people; these were the ones who gathered around their radios for his show every night, who had paid their taxes and just wanted a little respect. They were his Republican Guard.
For some reason, Edward Temmis felt a stab of depression.
He adjusted his hearing aid. He was less than half the man they thought he was.
They wanted him to be Frank Sinatra. In reality he was Frank Spencer.
He was not even a father any more. He was just a greying guy on a short-term contract living alone in a house that was falling off a cliff, doing a show-off job to prove the bullies at school they were wrong. What had he ever done?
Solved one murder. That was it.
A heavy velvet curtain in the wall above him was being jerked back.
Through a fanlight came a broken beam of late afternoon sunlight.
It fell directly onto three of the women in the middle of the hall.
One reached immediately for sunglasses, the sort you saw in black-and-white pictures of cinema audiences watching early 3D films.
Pushing his voice to the limit, he said, ‘This was billed as meet-and-greet the presenters, and I know there were four of our exciting young names on the bill, including’ – he knew he must not mess this up – ‘Satan, Honor, Tamla, and of course the brilliant Tessa K. They send their apologies. Satan especially is very sorry. I was drafted at the last moment. It’s a great privilege to be here with you. ’
He added, thinking of Aspinall’s eager words: ‘Inclusive. We are an inclusive station, sitting here by the open sea, the big sea, and it’s great you all feel included still.’ He should not have added the last word.
Edward decided to stare at Barbara for reassurance. She was nodding and smiling.
‘I love the radio more than I can say. The pioneers – I once met Tony Blackburn. Wogan of course. And how we miss Annie Nightingale, and the chap who did the golf.’
‘Did you meet Terry Wogan?’ someone shouted.
‘No,’ Edward said, feeling his throat hurt and his voice getting fainter and fainter. A man with an untidy beard was dragging a microphone on a stand down the middle aisle. ‘However, I once met someone who worked with Terry, for many years, in a lift.’
Again, he had misspoken. He was off his game. He saw the looks of puzzlement – some thinking ‘Why was Terry Wogan working in a lift?’ while others were perhaps unable to hear him at all. His voice was close to giving up and he could not elaborate.
‘The microphone will help me here. Sorry everyone.’ The base of the stand came at him first, the three prongs launched from below the stage by the man with the beard, like Neptune hurling a trident from the ocean.
He did his best, whispering for ten minutes about why he loved the radio and why he loved RTR-92.
‘I am inspired by the sea,’ he said. He remembered to use Aspinall’s line: ‘We are playing great music with presenters young and old.’ Then, out of ammunition, he asked for questions.
A line of four people jumped to their feet in the back row.
It was an odd movement – four of them, sitting next to each other, all jumping up at once.
Without asking to be called, the tallest one, a beak-nosed man with a long neck who wore a bright red golfing jumper, said: ‘We respect you so much, Mr Temmis. But we need to know what is happening in the matter of our compensation.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Edward, ‘for what?’
But he already knew.
‘My wife and I lost fifteen arsing grand in that scam no one talks about,’ said the beaky man aggressively. ‘I personally think we should bloody go public. It’s time.’ Beside him were three women. The middle one wore an anorak of such violent orange it seemed to be acting as a light.
The three women started speaking all at once.
Numbers tumbled out, stories of pain and humiliation.
The Case. He desperately wanted to make it better, to heal the pain of those who had been scammed.
Although the perpetrator was now behind bars and the victims had got some money back, the rest of the money was gone; unrecoverable.
The victims held the station in part responsible.
And the station simply did not have that kind of cash.
Edward tried to say, ‘I can’t comment, I’m not allowed to.
’ He was helped by a man at the front – younger than the others, possibly in his late forties, maybe escorting his mother – snapping over his shoulder at the red jumper, ‘This is neither the time nor the place.’ Someone else shouted: ‘No publicity!’ But still the four stood there at the back, with the long-necked man in red saying, again and again: ‘Fifteen arsing grand.’
He was so focused on the four that he failed to see Barbara Sinker had climbed onto the stage. He towered over his lover’s mother. ‘How did you get up here?’ he tried to ask, but his voice had gone completely now.
Barbara raised her voice, almost theatrically. ‘Can I say, Edward, how much we appreciate you being here?’
Applause, at last.
‘And how much we understand the care you give us, the oldies?’
Warmer applause.
‘Now …’ she raised her voice a little and pointed. ‘You four, don’t just go on and on. I was a victim too. I don’t blame this man.’
There was now even warmer applause, interrupting Barbara’s next sentence.
‘Perhaps, given … perhaps given the vocal difficulties Mr Temmis is having, I could help relay a message of some kind?’
Edward smiled apologetically. Ideally he did not want Barbara on the stage with him, but her support was probably what he needed. He wore a genial frown. He bowed his head and mouthed, ‘Okay.’
‘Great,’ said Barbara. ‘What can you tell the four at the back to help deal with it all, at least for this afternoon?’ She laughed. ‘So they can pipe down.’
‘I promise we care,’ Edward said in a whisper, pushing his voice. He adjusted his hearing aid, more from habit than anything. ‘I really do promise.’
‘May I have the microphone?’ Barbara asked. ‘You’re not infectious, are you?’
He detached it from the stand and handed it to her. ‘He says, “I promise we care,”’ Barbara repeated. ‘“I really do promise”, he said.’
‘It’s just that … in the radio station’s vault, there isn’t any money to refund you with,’ Edward went on, looking from the audience to Barbara. ‘They just have tomorrow sorted and that’s it. But … we will have your back.’
What was he saying? It was a terrible word salad, bits of phrases, sticky-taped together, which basically meant the radio station would not compensate its listeners.
He was only telling the audience what Douglas Aspinall wanted him to say.
Yet it sounded hollow, and Edward suddenly knew what politicians felt like.
His hearing aid whistled as Barbara repeated the words. Strangely, they were greeted by a whoop from the four at the rear of the room, and soon the whole hall was cheering loudly.
Barbara looked delighted at the response and joined in, clapping and waving as if she had won a prize. The long-necked man and his three companions gave each other hugs and thumbs-ups and sat down. Edward blinked in amazement at how receptive the audience were. Perhaps The Case could rest at last.
But then the door at the back of the stage sprang open.
Douglas Aspinall strode in, like a man trying to catch a bus without breaking into a run.
His arm was outstretched – was he going to shake Barbara’s hand?
No, he wanted the microphone. The older man caught Barbara’s elbow and ushered her off the stage.
He turned to Edward, putting his back to the audience, face like thunder.
As the applause died down, Aspinall hissed at the presenter. ‘Well, that was a total fucking disaster. Satan would have been better. Please get off the stage now, Edward, and I’ll pick up the pieces, you absolute walloper.’
Edward felt his knees turn to jelly. A silence descended on the room.
The audience had detected something was very wrong.
Edward backed away towards the door at the rear of the stage, but Barbara must have heard Aspinall’s words, or at least his tone.
She had now climbed back up the steps at the side of the stage.
As the station controller turned to the audience, she was in his face.
The two were almost the same height and squaring up.
‘If the words came out wrong, then that’s on me.’
‘Wrong? You two characters have probably just bankrupted my station!’ hissed Aspinall.
Completely confused, Edward checked his movement, not wanting to leave the stage as directed. ‘I’m sure it’s not as bad as that,’ he said. His voice was so weak he barely heard it himself.
Douglas made a diagonal move and came closer to Edward, like a chess piece in the hands of a player trying to avoid checkmate.
‘She promised to pay them back! With what? And the stuff about us having to borrow – who, what, how? You are on borrowed time, matey, you and that soft-scoop show of yours.’
The words were hissed like darts from a blowpipe, each syllable arriving in an aerosol of spittle.
Thrown, Edward did nothing but stand, arms at his sides, feeling like a schoolboy on detention.
Leaning forward keenly, the audience could still not hear the conversation.
Douglas turned to face them all and raised his voice.
‘I don’t want to cause any confusion. What my presenter has just promised didn’t … it wasn’t sanctioned.’
The man in the red jumper was on his feet again, yelling now. ‘I LOST FIFTEEN ARSING GRAND!’
Barbara moved to the front of the stage, snatching the microphone from Aspinall. When she spoke into it, her voice had strength and clarity.
‘Let’s not spoil the afternoon. We are here because we love the station and we love Edward!’
The audience were too discombobulated to clap. But there was a murmur of approval.
‘I don’t think we need this now,’ said Aspinall, but as he reached to take the microphone back from Barbara, she started a hymn. ‘“Then sings my soul, my Saviour God to Thee—”’
‘“How great Thou art, how great Thou art,”’ the rest of the audience joined in.
As Edward quietly made for the door at the back of the stage, the singing continued.
Douglas Aspinall was shouting. Barbara was physically holding him off, shielding the microphone.
The beaked-nose man was belting out the song louder than anyone.
Beside him, the three women had linked hands. It was chaos.
Touching his throat, feeling the soreness behind the skin, Edward caught a final glimpse of the controller as he left.
He had the strangest thought – there was no such thing as a radio station controller, especially not here in Sidmouth.
His place of work was constantly, completely, delightfully out of control. And that was why he loved it.