Chapter Thirty-Two
When he finally got to Alfie Burton’s microphone thirty minutes after the press conference in the church had ended, Edward was dishevelled.
The young reporter set eyes on the senior presenter and his face fell.
He was dutifully standing by the radio station’s van, parked at the church gates, one side almost touching the wall of Sidmouth Museum.
He covered the head of his microphone to speak only to Edward.
‘Grumpy Gordon,’ whispered Burton, moving his eyes upwards. It was a way of directing Edward to what was happening directly above him. On the roof of the van, the three-metre telescopic mast was retracting. So the vehicle’s broadcast systems had been shut down in preparation for its exit.
‘GG just said “I’m not waiting any longer”, and started turning things off,’ said Alfie. ‘Insisted on packing up because you weren’t here.’
At that moment, Gordon moved around the bonnet of the van, shirt untucked, a traveller’s money pouch hanging from his waist. He was Edward’s age and wore flannel trousers even on the hottest days.
His bulbous nose and ears were cabbaged, as if he had just withdrawn his head from a rugby scrum after twenty years.
His angry frown melted away as he saw Edward.
‘Boss! I gave up on you! What happened?’
What had happened to Edward was that, just as Wendy had collared him in the church, the crowd folded in towards the radio host as if everyone had recognized him at once.
Edward was offering yet more embarrassed excuses to the widow – sorry, he was on air, he had to get out to the broadcast van – but then got waylaid a matter of yards from her by dozens of people wanting information he did not have.
‘Got stuck in there,’ Edward told GG.
‘Mate! How do you always look so slim?’
Alfie Burton looked astonished at Gordon’s lighter tone, but Edward knew there would be no grumping when the engineer saw him. They had both lost a child in the same year. They were both, in a way, cross at everyone and everything – except each other.
‘Did you think I’d gone missing in there?’ asked Edward.
‘Boss,’ said GG, ‘I have to confess, I’m on overtime here and I promised to see the wife in an hour.’
‘You pack up if you’ve started.’
‘Wouldn’t dream of it!’ said the man, transformed from cloud to sun, and clicked a control in his hand that was wired direct to the dashboard.
The mast squeaked, juddered, and began to extend again.
There was still a queue of people coming from the church, and some stopped to watch when they heard the radio van hum.
Edward had little to say that was new. He heard the on-duty presenter as he clipped on his headphones.
It was one of the old guard, Brian Channon.
Standing on the street, staring at his shoes to concentrate, Edward felt his heart sink.
Channon, aged seventy-two, was now an occasional weekend fill-in after being dropped from his daily show.
Giving the so-called ‘Farmers’ the occasional shift was Aspinall’s way of keeping a lid on their fury – what was the phrase, ‘Better to have them inside the tent pissing out …’?
– but it felt strange, hearing a dusty Bobby Vee song fade and then Channon’s voice, full of loathing for the presenter who had survived every cull and change of management: ‘Well, Edward Temmis on the line, from the church – well, well, did you get stuck in there?’
Alfie Burton was supposed to be introducing Edward and asking the questions, but of course Channon had completely bypassed the young man.
‘Met a lot of our listeners, all with questions,’ bluffed Edward.
‘And you, a qualified scientist, could answer them.’
‘I’m not even a qualified presenter, Brian, same as you.’ Edward kept the tone light.
Alfie Burton cut in bravely. ‘Brian, I can tell you the church was packed. People are still coming out. We brought every word of the news conference to our listeners so you’ve heard what was said. Do you have a question you want me to put to Edward?’
‘Why? Are his headphones broken?’ Channon laughed cruelly. Edward was sensing this might be the old stager’s last shift.
Edward tried to bring it back to the matter in hand, but as he did so his heart sank. Wendy Wrigley had emerged from the church and was standing by the wall, letting the crowds pass. She was wearing earphones. Was she listening to the radio station? He could not read her expression.
‘Today,’ he said, ‘we are all thinking of that poor child. Nina Lopez. Even if it turns out there was no wider risk to human life with the contents of the motorbike, even if we are left with an absolute mystery, even if the so-called Russian connection makes no sense and it was not, as the newspapers call it, “The Pizza Parlour Attack”, even if there was no Ukraine and no explosive, no radiation and no poisonous vapour, even if there was nothing, nothing to trouble us here in Sidmouth, a child died on our seafront. A family took their child to our promenade and a child with a future, who might have become a great writer or great scientist or great-grandmother, will be in a casket at a funeral this Saturday. We think of her. We think of the size of that casket, so small, so many years ungrown, so much life unlived. We all think of Nina. And of course, of Gabriel, the father, and her mum Andrea.’
Edward had accidentally eulogized the little girl, and to his surprise, when Channon’s voice came back on the line, the older sounded too choked to speak. ‘I have a – a great-great-grandchild on the way.’
Was that two greats, or one? It hardly mattered. ‘That brings it home, Brian, I know.’ Edward stared at his shoes, not wanting to think of his own lost son.
‘And it’s all such a mystery,’ concluded a tearful Channon. ‘Thanks mate. Edward Temmis there, outside St Giles and Nic’s, with reporter Alfie Brunton.’
So Alfie even got a namecheck? His surname had been scrambled, but perhaps the old man had a soul after all.
Edward continued to gaze at his feet, headphones on, the thick hair on the back of his head heating up in the May sun.
He was like a dog, always needing a haircut.
The rhythm and power of his own words had caught Edward by surprise and made him realize that, however much of a let-off the scientist had given the town, they must never forget Nina.
At the other end of the line, Channon was playing Simon and Garfunkel, ‘The Boxer’.
Something tapped Edward’s arm. Still holding the microphone in his right hand, he pulled off the headphones with his left.
Alfie Burton was pointing at Wendy Wrigley.
Now his ears were not covered, he heard her clearly.
‘I need you to tell me what you know. I beg you. Whatever it is, however bad it is, I can take it.’