‘Malley! Paddy “Sure I’m only having you —” ’
Frank cut him off. ‘I’m not him. So I’m afraid I’ll have to say no.’
Cyril stared at a point above Frank’s head, his lips pressed together tight and then his eyes started to leak. Frank looked over at Lorraine in panic, but she shook her head and ducked behind her monitor.
Frank found a handkerchief in his pocket and handed it to Cyril. He got him to sit down and tried to calm him. ‘Come on, Cyril. Come on now. It’s not that bad.’
Cyril continued to cry and it was some time before he could control his voice enough to speak.
‘I’m so sorry, Frank. I’ll go. What a ridiculous spectacle. I’m just … sorry.’
Frank put his hand on Cyril’s arm. ‘It’s okay. You don’t have to go. Get your breath back. It’s all right.’
Cyril tried to breathe deeply. ‘I’m so embarrassed. I don’t know what’s come over me.’ His voice went high again. ‘I don’t go around crying like this, you know. Please don’t let Phil know. I couldn’t bear for him to think of me like this.’
‘Just take it easy for a few minutes. It’ll pass.’
Cyril sat with his head down taking deep breaths. Frank went and got him a plastic cup of water. When he returned, Cyril seemed to have collected himself.
‘Are you feeling all right now?’
‘Yes, thanks. Again, I’m so sorry. I was just taken unawares.’
‘I wasn’t expecting you to take it so badly. I mean it’s only a few quid a week. It can’t be that big a blow.’
Cyril shook his head. ‘It’s not the money — I can get by on my pension. Phil and I went back a long way — he was all I had left. Since he’s moved on I’ve tried some of the old clients, but they’ve all got new writers or packed it in. Paddy O’Malley’s training to be a geography teacher. Can you believe that? Phil kept me going. I could meet with the other writers once a year and hold my head up knowing my material was still out there.’ He paused for a moment to take a long drink of water. Afterwards he looked into the empty plastic cup. ‘Writing jokes is what I do. What have I got aside from that?’
Frank grimaced. ‘I’m really sorry, Cyril, but I just don’t think I could say those things.’
Cyril sniffed and looked Frank in the eye. He sensed that Frank was softening. ‘Frank, look, if you’re not comfortable doing jokes, I’ll give you really subtle lines — those that aren’t looking won’t even notice them, but those that miss Phil’s gags will appreciate the odd little play on words, just a hint. Not every day, just once a week, on a little story, tucked away somewhere, just enough so that I can still say I write.’
Frank said nothing.
‘Please, Frank. I won’t make you look a fool.’
That had been fifteen years ago. Since then co-presenters had come and gone, the studio set had been transformed by various makeovers and just six months ago Phil Smethway had died, but the jokes remained. If anything, they were even more noticeable than when Phil used to drop them in as they were now only occasional and Frank appeared so ill at ease with them.
Shortly after he started inserting the occasional joke, Frank’s producer discovered through a friend of his son’s that Frank was developing a cult status amongst students in the city — the bad jokes were actually pulling in more viewers. Eventually a website was dedicated to him — www.unfunniestmanongodsearth.com — with clips of Frank delivering his more excruciating one-liners. One forum thread focused on his ‘anti-timing’ and some contributors thought that Frank must in fact be a comic genius to be able to misplace the beat so unfailingly in every gag. Frank went from a dull but credible newsreader to a bit of a joke in a matter of months and the increased viewers meant his bosses had no intention of letting him make the step back. He started being asked to do more public appearances, and he found it hard to say no. He’d managed to develop a persona that fitted him as poorly as the cheap suits he’d worn as a reporter, but neither the suits nor the persona ever really bothered Frank. He held on to the belief that people saw beyond the surface.
5
Frank had started working on Heart of England Reports in 1989. Since then he’d learned to smile patiently at the remarks about cats stuck up trees, presenters in bad toupees and roller skating ducks. He knew there was an assumption that anyone who spent their working life in regional news was either unambitious or had suffered thwarted ambition, but he knew also that neither was true of him. Local news was where he had always wanted to be.
His mother always maintained that it was something in his father’s dedication to the large-scale and concrete that had pushed Frank in the direction of the small-scale and human. It was true that as a boy, surrounded by plans and drawings, what had fascinated him wasn’t the shape of the windows or the relationship of the interior to the exterior spaces, but the people who might live and work in those buildings, of the potential stories they might contain.
Frank thought he’d made a good local news reporter. He had met many of the great and good of the city as a child through his father’s work and because of that link many of them had trusted him alone amongst local journalists. His promotion when Phil moved on made him the youngest presenter in the programme’s history. He knew he should be proud of the achievement, but part of him always missed reporting.
After twenty years in regional TV, though, he was no longer the bright-eyed enthusiast he once was. He appreciated that the small-scale and the local often equated with the banal and the inconsequential. He started to question the choice of what was featured in the news and what was omitted. It seemed to him that it was often the stories that didn’t make the broadcasts that said the most about the region and its people. In this too he sensed the shadow of his father. As his buildings were bulldozed one by one, Frank began to suspect that often what vanished revealed more than what remained.
In May 1991, around the same time as the first of the demolitions, Frank reported on the death of Dorothy Ayling. He was used to the ways in which news stories could creep up on him. The murdered women, abandoned babies and teenagers caught in the crossfire would not affect him whilst at work. In the preparation and delivery of his report, caught up in the adrenalin pulse of the newsroom, his mind was all on the job. It was later in the evening, having a drink with colleagues, or at home with Andrea, his mind spooling of its own volition through the events of the day, that something would snag. He would feel himself suddenly anxious, a small panic that something was terribly wrong, and then he’d remember the story, hearing the words of his report for the first time and finding himself affected by the details. He was used to this, and dealt with it as his audience did, by trying to think of something else. But Dorothy Ayling was different.
She was found nineteen days after her death. As often happened, the neighbours reported a bad smell. When the police broke in, they found her lying in bed. In the years to come he would find it strange how often the isolated were discovered in positions of repose — sitting in an armchair, lying in bed or on a couch. Their deaths had not surprised them in the middle of making a cup of tea or watering a plant. They seemed instead to be ready, waiting perhaps to see if anyone would notice their absence from the world.
He presented the report live from the studio itself. Just a few words into the report he felt an unbearable lump in his throat and for a horrifying moment thought he was going to cry. He managed to disguise his emotion with a coughing fit, and was able to compose himself enough to continue. Afterwards, though, his mind would not move on. As he read the item, he was overcome with a powerful sense that he was uttering the last record of her existence, that no one would speak of Dorothy Ayling again. A death so isolated and solitary that it seemed less like death to him and more like extinction. As the autocue scrolled and her name disappeared, so, Frank felt, did she.