chorus of The Star Spangled Banner.
Next thing, Seth Coleman sits back, arms folded, and throws in his two cents’ worth.
‘Yes, we’re all aware there’s an election coming up in the US, thanks for that Robbie,’ he spits dryly, with his lizardy unblinking eyes focused on me. ‘As ever, your fundamental grasp of the obvious is overwhelmingly helpful. Can we please move on to some actual hard news?’
And although I’m nodding, giving the outward appearance of being focused and interested in the game, the truth is … to my shame I’m actually miles away, utterly and totally absorbed in my own worries. I may look like I’m listening but all I can really hear is the sound of the blood singing in my ears as my pulse rate feels like it’s soaring well up into triple figures.
Then, dimly in the background, like a kind of accompanying soundtrack to all my stressing and fretting, our Northern correspondent, Ruth O’Connell manages to successfully shout Robbie down, take up the intellectual cudgels and is now aggressively pitching a two thousand word story on a car bomb that went off in Newry last night, injuring a high ranking senior sergeant in the PSNI.
Ruth’s from Belfast, thin and wiry with severe jet-black bobbed hair and the whitest skin you ever saw, which kind of gives her the look of Louise Brooks, except with muscles. Even her teeth, which are irregular and uneven, seem to strike an attitude. She wears skinny little trouser suits like they’re a uniform, always in varying shades of black or grey, and has exactly the same washed-out, bleary-eyed look on her pale, gaunt face as the rest of us.
Ruth’s also a terrific sub-editor, feisty and like a dog with a bone when she’s on the verge of a breaking story, always with an uncanny sixth sense for what will be next week’s big lead. On the down side though, she’s a bit too fond of the sound of her own strident voice and tends to try and dominate these meetings, pushing her own agenda with the aggressive tactic of simply yelling down the rest of the room. At the best of times I’m always glad to have her here because, hard as it is to believe, she and I are the only two women in the room. But I’m even more so today; her banging on about Catholic versus Protestant attitudes to joining the PSNI and the resultant socio-economic effect on whole communities gives me space to think a bit more clearly about the disastrous interviews I had to suffer through earlier.
Ohgodohgodohgod. Where do I start? Maybe by asking Rachel if she’s accidentally rung up a theatrical agency and told them I was holding open auditions for ‘third thug from the left’ in some TV cop show? Maybe then I’d be able to understand the parade of headcases I had to deal with. And to think that these people were actually vetted and approved by a nanny agency? It’s just beyond comprehension.
Candidate number one sauntered in earlier this morning, ten minutes late and wearing a tracksuit with a tight leather jacket over it, with – and I wish I were joking here – the words Mega Revenge written in flames across the back of it. Oh and if that wasn’t enough, she had a pierced nose and eyebrow with a black tattoo all down the side of her hand. I caught a glimpse of her in the reception area outside my office and that was frankly enough. The very sight of this one was enough to make my bowels wither and I knew Lily would take one look at her then either start crying, or else innocently ask me who was the scary lady and why did she have an earring coming out of her nose? Not a runner. So I called Rachel in and told her in no uncertain terms to get rid of her. And that if she wouldn’t leave, then to threaten her with security.
Hot on her heels was candidate number two, who tiptoed pale and shaking into my office, stinking of cigarette smoke. No CV, no experience, nothing. Her boyfriend had just left her, she immediately told me, and now she not only had nowhere to live, but absolutely no reason to live either. ‘So, what have you been doing for the past few years?’ I asked, anxious to get off the subject of her private life. I’ve been a patient in the John of God’s, she told me, suffering from bipolar manic depression. But according to her, the good news was she was officially off suicide watch and fully prepared to mind my child for forty euro an hour. I was half afraid she’d throw herself out of the window if I told her there and then that she wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, so I gave her the more cowardly ‘don’t call me, I’ll call you’ line, and gently shooed her out of there ASAP.
This is what should be on the front page, the complete and utter lack of childcare for busy working parents, I find myself silently ranting while Ruth thunders on. Now she’s rolling up her sleeves – always a bad sign with her, means a row is never too far off – and spouting on about a recent survey indicating the tiny minority of Catholics who now are fully paid-up members of the PSNI and the general unfairness of it all and how it’s setting the whole peace process back a full decade.
That’s another thing about Ruth; she’s superb at what she does, but never in your life have you come across anyone carrying as many chips on their shoulders.
Anyway, Kian O’Sullivan, sports editor, former Irish rugby international and something of a lust object among just about every female P.A. up and down the building (who I happened to know have collectively nicknamed him Don Draper), playfully fires a rolled-up ball of paper over at her. Then in no uncertain terms he tells her to shut up and demands to know why sports always gets considered last on anyone’s list of priorities when we’re blocking out tomorrow’s paper.
‘Because people only really care about sports results on a Sunday after all the Saturday games, you gobshite,’ growls Robbie in his twenty-fags-a-day voice, but coming from him that could be deemed a term of affection.
‘Seriously Eloise, you have GOT to listen to me on this!’ Ruth is almost screeching to be heard over the racket, waving a fistful of notes in front of her, like that’s going to catch my attention. ‘It’s front page stuff and if we don’t run with it, make no mistake, The Chronicle will and then it’ll be my head on the block, won’t it?’ On and on she spews, thumping her fist off the table in angry frustration now.
Meanwhile out of the corner of my eye, I’m dimly aware of everyone looking to me, waiting on me to call the lot of them to order, like some overly strict school headmistress whose class has sensed that she’s a bit distracted and is now all acting up accordingly.
‘Eloise?’ says Seth Coleman from directly across the table, de-latticing his fingers, slicking back the lank, greasy hair and giving me one of his unblinking, lizard-like stares. Very disconcerting, if you’re not used to him. ‘We really do need to wrap this up. Tempus fugit.’
I hide my irritation and point out that we haven’t heard from our finance editor yet, throwing the floor open to Jack Dundon, a bespectacled, grey-haired, grey-skinned, softly spoken guy with a background as an award-winning economist; someone who rarely shines at these meetings, but who’ll consistently come up trumps and turn out impeccably researched stories written in language readers can grasp, unlike those on some of our rivals’ finance pages, that you’d nearly need a Harvard master’s in finance to get your head around.
He draws the air of experience deep into his lungs and addresses the now silent room. The European Central Bank have announced an interest rate hike of half a per cent, is his calm opener, which mightn’t exactly be the sexiest lead story at the table, but it’ll affect hundreds of thousands of mortgage holders and so therefore it has massive bite. On and on he goes, giving me the freedom to let my thoughts take me back to my more pressing concerns and back to about noon today, when in sauntered a slightly more promising candidate for the job of nanny/lifesaver.
But when I say ‘slightly more promising’, all I mean is she was young, reasonably well groomed and at least had the courtesy to turn up for the interview appropriately dressed, even if her eye make-up did happen to be the exact colour of bright yellow hazardous waste. Trouble was, she had precious little experience in childcare and when I asked her
