The girl poked her head through the door again and looked at me like I was some kind of specimen before asking if I wanted a cup of tea.
‘Please,’ I replied, using my best Sunday school manners. ‘No sugar thanks.’ She disappeared again, giving me two minutes to lose my coat and sneakily turn a few pages of Bling over before she returned.
‘I’m Jackie,’ she said, handing me my tea. ‘I forgot how many sugars you said you wanted so I put in one and a half.’
‘Thanks,’ I replied and set my cup down. ‘Godfrey,’ I told her.
‘Yes I know, the new sub. I’m editorial assistant for Bling and Froth.’
We shook hands formally and I got a psychological blast of icy air up my pyjamas in the process. I’ve never met anyone so starched and joyless in all my life. This was a girl who worked for a porn mag yet she looked like a strong passage of Jane Austen would have her marching on Parliament with a megaphone to her gob. She handed me the latest copy of Bling and asked me if I’d seen it yet. I had, but even if I had Jackie would’ve been the last person on Earth I would’ve told.
‘It’s looking quite good since the redesign, quite nice. Have a look,’ she insisted, scrutinising me carefully.
I had a flip through and tried to make out that this was water off a duck’s back to me and as she hung over my shoulder. I’d never looked at a dirty mag in the company of a girl before, particularly a girl from the Addams Family after I’d only just met her and was horribly sober. It’s not something I’d recommend.
‘Now this girl,’ Jackie said, stopping me on a big double-page spread of a brunette lying across the page with her legs behind her ears, ‘this is Tanya, she’s our regular girl. We get loads of letters about her but I can’t see it myself, I think she’s ugly, well not ugly, but just you know, boring-looking,’ she said in all seriousness.
Tanya didn’t look boring from where I was standing, I can tell you that. ‘GO AHEAD, PICK A HOLE’ she was saying, or rather my predecessor had typed in quote marks next to her.
‘Don’t you think so? Boring? I can’t see it myself, and she’s got a horrible noony,’ she said, shaking her head, and for one moment I thought she was going to get hers out and use it as some sort of control noony. I suddenly realised that people who worked here had altogether different levels of squeamishness compared with the rest of the civilised world.
‘God, yeah, awful,’ I said, burning up with embarrassment. ‘When does everyone else get in?’
‘When they bloody-well please,’ she told me. ‘I’m always here at ten on the dot but no one else bothers to be on time. It’s like they don’t care or something. I hope you won’t turn out to be like the rest of them.’
‘No no,’ I assured her, not even convincing myself.
A third person arrived, to my relief, and dropped her coat and bag down on the desk next to Jackie’s and wandered over.
‘Alright?’ she said
‘This is Mary, Mary’s the editorial assistant on Ace and Bangers!. This is Godfrey,’ Jackie said, taking over proceedings.
‘Alright,’ Mary repeated and stared at me vacantly.
Mary looked like she was at the other end of the joy spectrum from Jackie completely. I know they were only my first impressions and everything but if Mary had ever turned down a fag, drink, pork pie or cock in her life I would’ve been seriously amazed.
‘How was your weekend?’ Jackie asked her.
‘Alright,’ Mary replied and continued to stare at me.
‘Did you see Duncan?’ Jackie asked.
‘No,’ Mary replied, stretching her vocabulary to its very limits. ‘I went shopping with me mum.’
‘Oh yeah, what did you buy?’ I asked, trying to show an interest.
‘Some pants and a pencil,’ she replied expressionlessly.
‘What d’you want a pencil for? We’ve got tons of them here you could’ve had,’ Jackie asked.
‘No, for my eyes,’ she replied, pointing at her eyes. Mary then pointed them at the magazine I was holding and made a similar observation to Jackie’s earlier noony comment. ‘That Tanya? She’s got a horrible cunt,’ she said, ‘It’s all mangled and horrible.’
‘Don’t say that Mary, that’s awful,’ Jackie objected.
‘She has though, you’re always saying it too an’ all,’ Mary insisted.
‘I don’t use the “c” word though. It’s a horrible word.’
‘What, “cunt”?’
‘Mary, don’t, it’s vulgar.’
‘Why? Everyone else always says it all the time.’
‘That doesn’t mean you should say it. You should rise above that sort of thing.’
‘But I’ve got more right to say “cunt” than everybody else ’cos I’ve actually got one and they haven’t,’ she said indicated between her tubby, fat legs.
This conversation went on for considerably longer that I care to remember, although thankfully it drifted away from my desk and finally I was left to my own devices. I spent the next half hour stacking the boxes in a neat pile on the floor and resetting the desktop picture on my computer to a neutral pattern.
I flicked through the issue of Bling again, feeling a little more comfortable about doing so this time and tried to appreciate the redesign, but tits and arses kept getting in the way. I put the mag away and spent an age shifting awkwardly in my chair, while I awaited more porn-hardened strangers.
A few materialised after 10.30am, glared at me and got on with their own thing and it wasn’t until 10.50am that someone finally came in and sat himself down at the designer’s desk next to mine. He looked considerably older than everyone else I’d met so far, late forties I would’ve said, and he looked tired and confused as if he’d just come to in a ditch.
‘Who are you?’ he said, furrowing his brow.
‘Godfrey Bishop,’ I told him and offered him my hand, but he was turning on his computer so he missed it.
‘Are you new?’
‘No, I’ve been here for years, you’ve just never seen me because I’ve been hiding under the desk.’
This must’ve been a company of starers because he was at it now.
‘Oh,’ he said all matter-of-fact. ‘My name’s Roger. I’m a designer. You’re going to be working on Bling aren’t you?’ I told him I was.
‘Is that the one you work on?’ I asked.
‘One? One my fucking arse. I do Bling and Froth,’ he murmured aggressively. ‘It’s a fucking joke, I’m the only bloke in here who has to do two mags every month, every other fucking designer in here just does the one but I get fucking two. Is that fair? You tell me. What other company would have their designers working on two mags, fucking wankers! I’m getting really fucked off with it, I can tell you that, fucking two mags? It’s just a joke, that’s all it is to them, a joke. They couldn’t give a shit, not a shit. Every time they’ve got a poster to do or a supplement to design, who do they come to? They don’t go to Don, yet he’s only got one mag, and it’s twenty-odd pages less than both of mine, no they come to me, fucking muggings. Well I tell you what, much more of this and I’m fucking off, I don’t give a shit, I’ve had enough. It’s a fucking joke.’ Roger turned his back on me, unpacked his sandwiches and went on for the next ten minutes muttering to himself before silence once again descended over our little corner of the office.