chairs in a makeshift work-room from six in the morning and wait miserably all day for proofs to correct. Lillian had never visited the typesetters, and imagined it, rather perversely, as some sort of holiday camp. The word ‘buns’ had once been mentioned in her hearing, and this had unaccountably conjured to her mind a scene of great frivolity, like something Christmassy in Dickens. Perhaps she thought the sub-editors tossed these buns across the room at each other, or had races to pick out the most currants or lemon peel. Who knows? Envy can play funny tricks on a person’s mind. Anyway, the fact that Tim and Michelle would return late on Friday afternoons actually stumbling with fatigue failed utterly to shake Lillian’s notion of Typesetter Heaven. ‘No, I’m afraid Michelle is not in the office today,’ she would report to the editor (who sometimes popped in on Fridays to check his post for job offers). ‘She has got the day off, at the typesetters. I expect she will be back at work next week.’
Suddenly, on a whim, Lillian answered the phone.
‘Come Into the Garden,’ she snapped, making sure it didn’t sound too much like an invitation.
‘For heaven’s sake, Lillian, where were you?’
It was Michelle. Lillian pursed her lips and made a series of smoke rings by jabbing her cigarette in the air.
‘Did you say where was I?’ she repeated carefully. ‘Well, I’ll tell you. I was stuck in the bloody lift, that’s where I was.’
Michelle ignored this. Life was too short to argue about it.
‘Listen, could I be a desperate bore and ask you to do something for me? I brought my “Dear Donald” file with me, and a couple of letters are missing. Would you be unbelievably selfless and helpful, and look on my desk for them?’
Lillian prepared to stand up, but then thought better of it.
‘The letters to Osborne from Honiton?’
‘What?’ Michelle sounded rather indistinct, suddenly.
‘The letters to Osborne. From Honiton.’
‘No,’ she said, after a noticeable pause. ‘Ha ha, I don’t think I’ve seen any letters to Osborne. No. Not from Honiton, I don’t think. Hmm. I mean, surely they would be sent straight to him, wouldn’t they? Nothing to do with “Dear Donald”. Or to do with me, for that matter.’
‘I suppose not.’
Lillian waited. She had known Michelle for fifteen years. This pally ‘ha ha’ business told her something was up. The seconds ticked by. ‘So,’ said Michelle at last, ‘have you got the letters to Osborne? I wouldn’t mind a peek.’
‘No can do, I’m afraid. I sent them on yesterday.’
Michelle gasped.
‘To Osborne?’
‘That’s right.’ ‘Oh.’
‘Nothing wrong, I hope?’
‘No, it’s fine.’
Lillian took a deep, satisfying drag on the cigarette. ‘By the way, you haven’t seen my big packet of cup-soups by any chance?’
Osborne turned the letters over in his hands, and felt peculiar. Peculiar was the only word for it. Makepeace meanwhile took a large bite out of a fried-egg sandwich and tried to imagine what it would be like to realize one morning that you had a fan in the West Country who entertained schizophrenic delusions about you while dressed in gold flip-flops and reinforced gloves. It was hard.
‘I don’t like this bit about slapdash twaddle,’ said Osborne at last.
‘Hmm,’ agreed Makepeace.
‘I mean, what does she take me for? You don’t expect Tolstoy in a piece about sheds, surely?’
Makepeace grunted, wiped some egg-yolk from his chin and prepared to contest the point. ‘Except that all happy sheds are happy in the same way, I suppose,’ he volunteered, reaching for a serviette. ‘While unhappy sheds …’ But he tailed off, sensing he had lost his audience. Osborne looked nonplussed.
‘I suppose we are sure it’s a woman,’ added Makepeace. ‘I mean, the négligé might be more interesting than it at first appears.’
Osborne looked mournfully at the infant Hercules wrestling with snakes (next to the tea-urn) and shook his head.
‘So who’s the next shed, then?’
‘Ah,’ said Osborne darkly, as though it meant something. ‘Angela Farmer.’
‘Where’s the problem? Right up your street. Funny, charming, famous. Didn’t she have a rose named after her recently?’
‘It was a tulip.’
‘That’s right. She had a tulip named after her, the Angela Farmer.’
‘Yes, but you said rose.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘OK.’
Makepeace changed the subject.
‘A doddle though, presumably?’
‘Oh yes. The piece is half-written already, if I’m honest.’
He started fiddling with his string bags. ‘I ought to check where she lives, I suppose, since I’ve got to arrange to get there on Monday,’ he said, and distractedly pulled out a few scarves and Paris street-maps. ‘I’ve got a diary in here somewhere.’
‘More coffee?’ asked Makepeace, and went to order it while Osborne delved among tangerines and library books, muttering, ‘He said rose, though’ several times under his breath.
‘Ah, here we are.’ The diary was found. ‘Honiton,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Angela Farmer’s address. Honiton in Devon.’ They looked at one another.
‘You mean, like, Honiton where the nuts come from?’
‘Oh, bugger. Bugger it, yes, I think I do.’
A hard day at the typesetters had left Tim pale and drawn. His big specs felt heavy on his face, and a deep weariness sapped his soul as he trudged back from the tube station with only a few minutes to spare before his Friday night curfew of half-past seven. Being the sort of chap who responds to pressure by withdrawing deeper and tighter into his own already shrink-wrapped body, Tim was often on Friday nights so tautly pulled together that he was actually on the verge of turning inside out. Not surprisingly, then, he carried himself pretty carefully for those last few yards to the front door. After all, the merest nudge in the right place, and flip! it might all be over.
