Several faces looked my way from a cluster of lads laughing and smoking around one of the desks close by before a tall fella approached.
‘The new sub, yeah?’ he said, in amiable contrast to Roger.
‘Godfrey Bishop,’ I said, stood and held out a hand.
The fella took it and said with a flick of the head, ‘come and meet the rest of the chaps’, so I followed him over.
‘I’m Paddy,’ the tall fella said. ‘I’m the editor on Ace, this is Hasseem and fat Paul, my designer and sub...’
‘Hey!’ fat Paul objected, though I don’t know on what grounds.
‘This is Don, designer on Bangers! and Matt, sub on Froth. All the other people in here are of no consequence,’ he said with a dismissive wave of the hand, which I notice took in the editorial assistants and Roger. There were still one or two other people dotted around the office but they were paying us no attention. ‘This is Godfrey Bishop,’ Paddy told the other, ‘new sub on Bling.’
‘That’s your name? Godfrey Bishop?’ Don said, shaking his head. ‘Jesus.’
‘So, you fancied a job on a porn mag, did you? Well, it can be alright here at times, once you get all the sex bollocks out of the way,’ Paddy said, making very little sense to me.
‘What did you think of that bird in your interview?’ Hasseem asked.
‘Oh yeah, what was with that? I didn’t get it.’
‘It was just a laugh more than anything, see how you all reacted,’ Paddy explained. ‘Stuart got her in for the day for a couple of hundred quid to sit in on the interviews, to see who could manage to finish the subbing test with her rubbing her tits next to them. You, apparently, were one of the few who managed it.’
‘Get this,’ Matt grinned. ‘One guy even got his cock out and started undressing in front of them both and got kicked out.’ Everyone broke up at that. Everyone that is, except me, who felt icy hands squeeze my heart.
‘So, she doesn’t really work here?’ I asked naively.
‘Course not you fucking donut, what would be the point of that?’ Don said.
‘Everyone thinks we’ve got naked birds stashed around the place,’ Paddy sighed.
‘The thing is with that model right, what was her name, Rebecca, the thing is, Stuart was meant to take pictures of the different applicants doing their subbing tests next to Rebecca so he could make a feature out of it and cost off her fee but he forgot, so he’s got to try and bury £250 somewhere in the books.’
‘Where is Stuart?’ I asked.
‘It’s Monday,’ Paddy replied. ‘He’s probably still unconscious somewhere.’
‘Hold on I’ll check,’ Matt said and picked up the phone. ‘Stuart called in today?’ he asked and ‘uhuh-ed’ a bit, then hung up and told me that Stuart had phoned in sick and wouldn’t be in today.
I scratched my head and wondered what I should do.
‘Read my paper if you want,’ fat Paul replied, reaching for the paper in his back pocket.
‘Should kill a couple of hours till lunchtime,’ Paddy said, ‘then we can go over the pub and get a drink. You need one Mondays, don’t you.’
The next two hours dragged by, and were made all the more worse by having nothing other than The Sun crossword to occupy my time. No one else seemed to be doing anything either. Roger was playing poker over the internet with his credit card behind me and losing quite badly by the sounds of it while Paddy, Don and the rest had dispersed around the office and were now chatting to other people, chatting on the phone or, in the case of fat Paul and Hasseem, playing baseball with two rubber tits that had been sellotaped together and an enormous plastic dildo. Every now and then the ball would careen into Jackie’s desk and knock papers or cups of tea flying and she’d have a mad fit and they’d stop playing for ten minutes before the whole process would repeat itself. One time, the ball flew across the office and smacked Mary on the side of the face. Mary blinked a couple of times and then started laughing.
By Christ, Paddy was right, I needed a drink.
One o’clock finally came and I was lassoed and taken to The Abbot, three doors along from Moonlight Publishing.
‘Guinness Paddy; Don, Guinness; Export for Matt and a Fosters and a plate of chips for Paul,’ the landlord said, reaching for glasses and tapping the till without waiting for confirmation. ‘Where’s Hasseem?’
‘He’s just talking to Peter but he’ll be in, in a minute,’ Paddy replied and the landlord went about pouring another pint of Guinness. ‘What d’you want?’ Paddy asked me so I said a pint of Stella. ‘Cliff, this is Godfrey, he starts work today on Bling,’ Paddy said, introducing me to the landlord (I’d never been introduced to a landlord before).
‘Yeah, when did you lot start fucking working?’ Cliff retorted. Ominous bells were tolling.
‘You come in here a lot then, do you?’ I asked Paddy.
‘Every now and then, when the mood takes us,’ he shrugged and we all went and sat down around a table by the fire. It was a traditional-looking pub and by traditional, I mean it didn’t look like it had had so much as a lick of paint since the sixties, although there was a television up in one of the corners showing the racing and a fag machine that now took decimal currency.
‘How are you enjoying your first day in porn?’ Paddy asked me.
‘I haven’t exactly done a lot.’
‘No? Oh well, I wouldn’t worry about it. You’ll probably do something tomorrow,’ he replied, savouring a few gulps. ‘Ah, just what the doctor ordered… me to stay away from.’
Believe it or not – I didn’t at first – but Paddy was an Oxford graduate with an MA in something brainy (I forget what) and an IQ you’d be chuffed to hit with three darts. He’d graduated some five years ago with a bright shining future in front of him and had come to London to make a go of his life, but had somehow got sidetracked along the way. In his first couple of weeks in The Smoke, he’d fired out dozens of letters to dozens of companies and received back dozens of job offers for his trouble. He had his pick of the cream of promising jobs but then one particular letter stood out from all the rest. He’d only applied for the position the same way he’d applied to everything in The Guardian that week, but now they’d invited him in for an interview and Paddy was suitably intrigued.
Five years on and Paddy could barely remember what that optimistic young grad had originally wanted to be. His wholesome, healthy and respectable upbringing had left a sleaze vacuum in his soul that only a drug and booze-fuelled lifetime of porn could slake, and now he was on the hook there was no getting off. He’d drunk away more brains than I was ever likely to have and regretted none of it. He was still a clever bloke, but these days his cogs concerned themselves with more worldly matters than anything that could be solved by going into a library.
To call him my porn mentor wouldn’t really be true; Paddy went places and did things I wouldn’t have touched with yours, but he was a good guy to know and the person I would come to turn to whenever I needed advice. Or more importantly my conscience absolving.
4. Are the letters real?
‘Charles... pulled... his... cock... out... of... my... dripping... hole...’ I muttered to myself as I typed, ‘and... splashed... his... sticky...’ no, ‘hot... and... sticky... fat... in... my... ’
My what?
I stared at the screen and chewed one of my fingernails as I considered the possibilities.