Traces of Red, page 7
That was the way it had become for Joe and me. Though I was still in love with him, I looked behind, never forwards. There was something so strong and tight between us, so full of intimacy and feeling, yet all those small particulars of everyday ordinariness could never swell and enhance what there was. And so there it lay, a fleshless carcass we couldn’t bury.
Because we couldn’t talk about the hard things, we talked of politics, books, issues we were both interested in. Our major common interest became Connor Bligh.
As well as the personal stuff, which made Connor Bligh come alive to me, Joe gave me scraps of information about the case. Perhaps it was a kind of appeasement: he could sense my frustration and grief at what was happening between us and he knew how much I wanted this story. But when it came to telling me whether he believed Bligh was guilty or innocent he was always evasive.
‘As I’ve said, Rebecca, Bligh says he didn’t do it. He’s always held to that and, as his solicitor, I’m not going to challenge that position.’
‘But what do you think?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s one of those situations where it’s impossible to wholly know what the truth is. In many cases it’s obvious whether a client is guilty or not. Everyone’s entitled to a defence so even when I suspect or am aware of a client’s guilt I have to do my best for them. Even in cases where I’m repelled by the crime I have to do my best. In Bligh’s case I had – and have – the sense that I may well be defending an innocent man. But, even so, I can’t say absolutely he didn’t do it.’
‘But if you’re not sure, why are you trying so hard for a retrial?’
‘That’s not anything to do with what I, or my colleagues, believe. It’s the legalities of the situation.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Obviously if you’re petitioning for a retrial there have to be certain criteria which must be met. It’s not possible to simply request a retrial because you don’t happen to agree with the verdict reached on the former one.’
‘So you’re going on this new evidence you won’t tell me anything about?’
He hesitated. ‘What I will tell you, and this is in strict confidence, is that the information we have could put an entirely different slant on things.’
‘As far as I can see,’ I said, ‘the only information that could really help Bligh is if there was another suspect.’
Joe looked at me steadily. He didn’t answer.
‘Is that it? It is, isn’t it? Someone else could have done it? Who? God, Joe, you have to tell me. I’d keep it to myself. I promise.’
‘I’ve already said too much,’ he said. ‘Time, I think, for a change of subject.’
‘But I’m right, aren’t I? There is someone else?’
A slight movement of his head. An almost imperceptible nod.
I wrote up my proposal, carefully assembling the information I had into a concise and logical structure. I read it over a dozen times, cutting and rearranging, then wrote a covering letter and put it all in a folder. Paul Keenan was the head of programming but if you wanted to get anything done you had to get it past Harry first. For all intents and purposes it was him who made the decisions since he was the one Paul listened to.
I waited until Harry was at his desk then picked up a couple of coffees and the muffins he likes from the café across the road. I held them out to him and he looked up at me, not exactly smiling but not entirely unwelcoming.
‘Have you got a couple of minutes?’ I said.
He leant back in his chair and folded his arms. ‘Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.’
I sat down in the chair in front of him and held out the folder. ‘I want to put this forward and I wondered if you’d take a look at it.’
‘Rebecca, I’ve got less than fifteen minutes before my next appointment.’ He opened it up, flicked through the pages. ‘Look, why are you pestering me with this?’
‘It’s a good story.’
‘I’ve already been over it with you.’ His voice had assumed his god protect me from stupid young women tone. ‘You know we’re moving away from this stuff. Even the nursing homes thing you’ve got on the go. We’re doing it since it’s already in the pipeline but I don’t like it. If we’re going to pull people away from Sky on a weekend night we have to come up with something that’s entertaining, not depress the pants off them.’
‘Not everyone wants to watch Nurse Betty. Doing this would get us attention.’
‘No it wouldn’t. What we’re getting from surveys is people don’t want to be bombarded with shit. They’re getting enough of that on the news. There’s been a definite shift away from this kind of thing, especially on a night when people want to have their beers and chips and a bit of fun. Besides that, Bligh’s already been done to death.’
‘Only at the time of the court case and appeal, and that was mainly reporting on what was going on.’
‘So why in hell would anyone be interested now?’
‘Because there could be a talented young guy in prison for the next god knows how many years for something he didn’t do.’
‘Rebecca, he was found guilty and after that he didn’t win his appeal.’
‘Harry, just think about it, okay? Right now while they’re asking for a retrial would be the perfect time for us to get in on this. Think about what that series on Dougherty did for the Sunday Star-Times’ sales.’
‘Different story, different medium.’ He looked at his watch, swigged back the coffee and stuffed half the muffin into his mouth.
‘I really want to do this,’ I said. ‘I know it’d be good. Do me a favour and at least think about it?’
‘I’ll get back to you.’
15.
I interviewed pedigree cat owners about conflict within the cat-show industry. Harry wasn’t talking and when I brought up the idea of the story with Blake, who after all was my co-presenter and should have been interested, he seemed distant and preoccupied. Another dreary week turned into yet another dreary weekend. All of my friends had plans. Joe was in Auckland. He’d been there since Monday and Michelle was joining him on Friday afternoon. They had friends on Waiheke Island and were spending the weekend with them. Michelle loved Waiheke.
Michelle had been a little under the weather. Michelle was looking forward to a break.
To give him credit, Joe was not evasive about arrangements that he and his wife made and told me of any plans which could affect his ability to see me. But in fact, the calmness with which he proffered this information had begun to make me seethe. It was so matter-of-fact, this is my life and what we have must fit in wherever possible. The expectation was that my response to these announcements would be equally unemotional. I had to speak calmly in response, I could neither complain nor comment when what he did with Michelle took him away from me. It was an unspoken rule that I would behave with dignity about such matters and he would be with me whenever possible. She was his wife. I fitted in.
At first it hadn’t bothered me when he and Michelle were off on one of their jaunts because I was too enraptured with this glorious and clever man. No sacrifice is too much for our love.
But, fuck it, I loved Waiheke Island. I needed a break. I’d worked so hard putting the Bligh proposal together and now it had ended up in the garbage heap. That weekend I basked in a swamp of self-pity. My career was shot, my relationship was going nowhere. My biological clock was racing and I had nobody who understood or sympathised, nobody to take me away for a break, nobody to look after me.
And while the TV weather news pictured Auckland basking under blue skies for both Saturday and Sunday, Wellington was enveloped in a grey, dismal fog and relentless drizzle. I had dinner with David and Anna on Friday after work. I bathed Lily and Ted, towelled down their perfect little bodies, helped them into fluffy pyjamas, wriggled their feet into woolly slipper-boots – and it yanked at my heart. I left their place early, drank too much wine on my own at home and woke heavy-headed and miserable. I watched Saturday Night and despised it and me as I saw myself wading through a pack of Beagle puppies. My fixed, false smile as I animatedly chattered to the woman who was training them to become sniffer dogs in airports.
‘You must become so attached to them. Oh they’re so cute, how can you let them go?’
And I loathed that new hair cut they’d given me and oh fuck I looked truly desperate as those bloody dogs milled around my feet nipping at my ankles.
‘They’re very … very active, aren’t they?’
Joe always called when he was away so, out of pure umbrage, I’d turned on my home answer phone and switched off my mobile.
Let him wonder where I am for a change.
But by Sunday morning there were no messages from him. Having too good a time to even pick up a phone?
But I imagined him, as I always did in my worst moments, injured or dead in a car accident, struck down by a heart attack. I knew I’d not be told, I wouldn’t know until the news filtered out via the media or was somehow dropped into conversation.
Oh, incidentally, did you know? Joe Fahey’s dead.
I needed company, to just get out. I phoned around, got voicemails. Margo was in Nelson visiting her parents, David was working, Anna was taking the kids to someone’s birthday party. But I had to do something. Anything. Lunch, I’d take myself out for lunch, go along to Maranui, eat something nice, maybe I’d be lucky enough to get one of the tables near a window, maybe there’d be someone there that I knew. I showered, tidied myself up, strolled along the beach.
There were two queues at the door, one line going up the stairs, the other coming down. When I finally made it to the top and into the café, the noise from people crowded around the tables and standing about waiting for a table was unendurable. I joined the downstairs queue and walked back home.
I poached eggs, made toast and coffee and set it on the table. One placemat. One knife, one fork, one plate, one mug.
A sad person’s lunch. A single woman’s lunch. I felt a wave of loneliness. Loneliness and fear.
Some years ago I’d interviewed a paediatrician who had been treating children born with hearing and sight problems. Their mothers had, during their pregnancies, all been living in areas where surrounding farmland was regularly treated with insecticides and she was determined to have it brought out into the open.
She was in her late forties, elegant and articulate and I’d liked her immediately. We met initially to talk about the programme and then began to quite regularly have coffee together and occasional meals. She phoned one day and told me she had accepted a job offer in Sydney and invited me to have dinner with her before she left.
She was distant and rather tense. She played with the fish she’d ordered and in the end put down her fork. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I wanted to see you before I left but I guess I’m just not good company right now.’
‘It must be tough leaving friends behind,’ I said. I didn’t mention family. I knew her mother had recently died and that she’d been an only child and had remained single.
She stared through the window out into the street. When she glanced back towards me I saw her eyes were filled with tears.
‘Leaving’s so much more difficult than I ever thought it would be,’ she said.
I chattered blithely on about how wonderful Sydney was, how amazing her new position sounded and the excitement of new opportunities and adventures before she stopped me.
‘I know all that,’ she said, ‘but … really … I’ve wasted my life.’
I stared at her. She was dressed in a fitting black dress, very tailored, with an enormous crocodile-skin belt and neat, green suede boots. I admired her so much, wanted to be like her. Elegant, assured. Successful.
‘How can you say that, Elaine?’ I said.
She told me. For the past twenty years she’d been having an affair. In the beginning he couldn’t leave his wife because they had three small children and later, there were other reasons, always a little different but always with the same results. She’d had two abortions.
‘One day in February this year I looked at the date and realised it was the anniversary of the day I met him. I was twenty-six and had just finished my internship. There were about nine of us through and drinks were put on in honour of us one evening and he was there. And there I was twenty years later. I’d wanted a career, certainly, but, like any other young woman, I’d wanted a family. I was stupid. I can only blame myself.’
Like any other young woman I’d wanted a family.
I was stupid. I can only blame myself.
What was I doing? What was I doing? It had been three years. I’d retreated from any kind of social life other than the things I had to do for work – the drinks and nibbles, the awards functions, the dinners. I’d wrapped myself up in work, limited my outings to Friday nights at David and Anna’s and spent the rest of my time cloistered in my house waiting for Joe to wedge me in between appointments.
‘A window of opportunity,’ he’d said one morning, grinning as I opened the door. I’d laughed of course. That was one of the things we liked to do, to pick up the latest catchphrases and slip them into any conversation we were having as many times as possible. At the end of the day. It’s got legs. Blue-sky thinking. This’ll fly.
So, so hilarious. I wondered what he laughed about with Michelle.
Monday morning. Ratings further down. An email from Harry to inform me. And there was to be a meeting. Harry, me, Paul Keenan. Paul’s office, 10:30.
Harry was already there and they both looked grimly up at me as I came through the door. Paul’s office is at the top of the building; large, shining windows looking into other shining office windows and over roof tops to shimmering glimpses of the harbour on a sunny day. Usually we’d sit on the leather chairs around the table, drink coffee and chat for a moment or two about the weather, the views, whatever.
No chat today. No coffee. I slid into the chair facing them. I felt like a kid about to be told off.
I wondered where Blake was. If there’s shit flying it could at least be shared around.
There were no preliminaries, no how are you Rebecca, nice day eh? or a bit of goss to make us all relax before things started off. Paul lurched right in, his face tight. ‘Blake handed in his resignation this morning,’ he said. ‘He’s going over to Zenith.’
I stared at him, not able to quite take it in. Blake Wharton had been at the network for almost as long as I’d been watching television. I’d seen him reading the news when I was a teenager and he’d fronted his own shows for years now. It was almost as if he was the network.
‘What happened?’
Paul smiled bitterly. ‘Got a better offer, I presume.’
But Blake couldn’t be going over to Zenith. He’d scoffed when it’d started up, said it wouldn’t last five minutes.
‘But—’ I couldn’t take it in. Oh fuck, what about Saturday Night?
‘When’s he going?’
‘His contract’s coming up for renewal in the middle of next month. Four weeks away. But he’s owed a month of annual leave which he’s taking as of next Monday. He’ll record what’s planned for this week’s programme. After that he’s gone.’
Everything was falling apart. Blake and me working together was the main strength of Saturday Night. We’d always made this great team and the viewers loved Blake.
‘Why didn’t he tell me? Oh god, is it me? Have I done something that’s upset him?’
Paul looked suddenly very sorry for me. ‘It’s nothing to do with you, Rebecca. Blake said he feels it’s time to move on. He gave no particular reason.’
‘But who are we going to find to replace him?’
He sighed and looked slightly embarrassed. ‘As you know, Rebecca, the ratings are down and now, with Blake leaving, well, we’re going to have to look very closely at the future of Saturday Night.’
‘You mean it might stop running?’
‘I’ve looked at the schedule. Blake will do next week’s and Greg Whitlock can fill in for the four programmes planned after that. What do you think? Can you work okay with Greg?’
He was being placatory, pretending to ask for my opinion about what he’d already decided. A bad sign. In this industry if they’re nice to you you’re on your way out.
‘I’m happy to work with Greg,’ I said.
But I wasn’t happy. Greg had stood in for Blake before and he wasn’t as good. Not even close to it. He was one of those network retainers; the nice-guy type, nice-looking in an ordinary kind of way; nice, nice, fucking-nice. He was great at fronting the sort of programmes where worthy people have their lounges redone while they’re whipped away to luxury lodges. If Greg became the permanent substitute for Blake it’d be the end of Saturday Night. And that they weren’t already considering someone new and fresh for the programme was another bad sign. Oh fuck. I’d wallowed about all weekend in that great sludge of misery I’d conjured up, but this was real. I could lose my job.
I took a deep breath and tried to smile. ‘Okay, that’s the next five weeks dealt with. What’s going to happen after that?’
‘After that,’ Paul said, ‘I think it’s very likely we’ll take a break and rethink. See what the ratings are like. Harry and I have been thinking about possible changes ahead. Courageous Leaps. You’ve heard about that?’
‘Only vaguely.’
‘We’ve decided to go with it and it’s going to air early next year. We think you could do well on it.’
‘It’s about people who’ve made changes in their lives,’ Harry said. ‘We’re hoping to start off with Sharon Wheatley. You know Sharon?’
I did, indeed. Barely successful as a model, she now owned a dating agency, Classy Partners, which aimed at introducing wealthy clients to other wealthy clients, the fastidious and the finest. She’d done astoundingly well if her fire-engine-red BMW with her logo displayed discreetly on the side was anything to go on.
Darling Sharon, with her collagen lips and gravelly voice, would adore telling the world her rags-to-riches story.
‘You want me to front this?’
‘We believe you and Janet could work well together.’
