they always did. But he and Sandy mostly used it as an unofficial headquarters for emergency lunches or drinks when one of them had something interesting to report, gossip to discuss, grumbles to share. Today was definitely an emergency meeting. Kemp bought a copy of the Herald and pushed open the swing doors of the Dark Side, standing on the threshold for a moment to allow his eyes to accustom themselves to the gloom.
The Cape Herald was a local daily paper packed with the news the locals really wanted: court reports, road works, sewage spills, the latest inane decision of the Barnstaple county municipal authorities. After twenty years on the paper Sandy Rowan was senior enough to leave the small stuff to the trainees who (amazingly) still came in every year from college media courses wanting to learn how to be journalists. Sandy never understood it. Every kid you saw these days was glued to a laptop, mobile or iPod, yet here they were, queuing up, year in year out to work in an industry that created its main product by squirting ink on to pulp made from dead trees.
Sandy specialised in the big stories: the Kennedys in their Hyannis compound (the paper made sure it was very respectful to them); tracking the tourist dollars to check that at least some of local tax-take went back into the sewage-treatment plants, the roads and the schools; and of course Cape Cod’s most famous institution: the Coldharbor Institute for Marine Studies.
What had made Sandy something of a Cape celebrity was his weekly column, a collection of controversial news, views and reviews about life on the Cape. The column appeared on Tuesdays, with a photograph that made him look a lot younger than his forty-six years, under the rubric ‘Rowan’s Ride’.
Sandy did not set out to be controversial, and intensely disliked over-opinionated columnists who peddled fake moral outrage from the dubious vantage point of their own shallow lives. But he took pride in exposing cosy consensual opinions held to be self-evident because they had been repeated for so long. This did not always make him popular.
When a touring theatrical company put on one of the more celebrated plays of the twentieth-century American canon, Sandy had caused outrage with his review, which began:
Eugene O’Neill tried to drink himself to death on the Cape, at his house in Provincetown to be precise. Pity he didn’t succeed. Have you ever sat through five hours of Long Day’s Journey into Night? Try it. It will make the rest of your life feel like you made it to heaven early.
The editor stood by his star columnist, up to a point. But Sandy was never asked to review a play again.
He was already at their table when Kemp arrived.
‘The usual, please, Cleo,’ said Kemp, smiling at the tall, pale waitress, who had already mixed his favourite drink.
He sat down, checked his BlackBerry, and then pocketed it as Cleo emerged from the gloom with a long glass of chilled green tea, cut with lime juice and ginger ale and served with crushed ice, a slice of lemon and a sprig of mint. Leo called it ‘green dawn’, a name he had dreamt up along with the recipe. One day he would get round to taking out a patent and would market it as one of the world’s best-tasting health drinks – one day. In the evening he added a double shot of vodka, to put a little kick into the health habit.
‘Trouble?’ said Leo.
‘That Hoover piece we did.’
‘You mean the interview you begged me to do after that lecture I gave?’
‘I didn’t beg you.’
‘Of course not: you just rang me every day for a week pleading.’
‘It was a good story. It was picked up a lot.’
‘I know. I did all the interviews, remember?’
‘Yeah. Well, I hear that some people are not best pleased.’
‘Some people never are.’
‘Your people, Leo.’
‘Like who?’
Sandy took a gulp of his white wine. ‘This is just what I hear. There are people in Boston and here on the Cape who think you brought the Institute into disrepute.’
‘Oh, come on,’ said Leo. ‘That seal died years ago. He picked up a few English phrases and I used that as a metaphor for how useless we are at understanding these animals. I mean, if one seal can learn English, how do we know there isn’t a whole ensemble of them out there playing Hamlet three hundred feet below the waves every night?’
‘Very funny,’ said Sandy. ‘But they didn’t get the joke. If you’d left it like that, then OK. But it’s all the other stuff you threw in: calling the science establishment arrogant, all-knowing, all-powerful – that sort of thing. And then there was all that conspiracy stuff about seal culls and fish stocks.’
‘So what?’
‘So what? They don’t like it, that’s so what. The way they see it, a seal that can talk a few words of English is just a joke. What isn’t a joke is you telling the world that hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in marine research isn’t being spent properly, that it isn’t being used to find out the big things we don’t know. I mean, that doesn’t sit well with the management. It’s not good for business.’
‘You sound like the chief executive.’
Sandy drank deeply, and then put his almost empty glass on the table.
‘Maybe she’s got a point. I’m just trying to tell you what they’re saying out there. Don’t shoot the messenger. You want another drink?’
‘No thanks. How do you know about this?’
Sandy turned in his chair to signal for another drink. He’s playing for time, thought Kemp.
‘We got a call asking for the notes of the interview.’
‘From?
‘Bonner’s office.’
‘When?’
‘Last week.’
‘And you didn’t tell me?’
‘I was told not to. Sorry.’
‘I thought journos were supposed to protect their sources.’
‘Everyone knew it was you – your name was on the piece.’
‘That’s not what I meant. You could have warned me. Thanks a lot.’
Leo stood up, drained his glass and looked down at the unhappy face of his friend. He put a hand on Sandy’s shoulder and squeezed it slightly.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll deal with it. I’ve got a field trip tomorrow. Let’s have a real drink tomorrow night.’
Sandy nodded. ‘How’s the book going by the way?’
Leo shook his head. The Full and Final Circle of Evolution: Man’s Return to the Sea was long overdue at the publishers, but they weren’t exactly biting his hand off for it.
‘Don’t ask,’ he said and walked out, blinking in the bright sunlight.
