There was stirring on the other side of the door, and someone seemed to be blowing a whistle. ‘We know you’re out there!’ came a croaking shout, followed by laughter.
Douglas withdrew his hand and shoved it deep into his jacket pocket, a signal that he trusted Edward not to go into the room just yet. He snapped his teeth together, forcing a grin. ‘I’ve had a peek through the curtain. In English history, what did they call the century after the middle ages?’
‘No idea. The Tudors?’
‘Right, that’s who we’ve got out there. That lot were middle-aged about a hundred years ago. And they are … tricky, Edward, okay? You understand? Tricky and cross with us, with me. The sodding Tudors.’ He filled his lungs with air as if preparing for a regretful sigh. ‘Not cross with you. I thought we’d get at least a few young couples. You know, the newer listeners we’ve brought in …’
The sigh came. It smelt of king prawns. Edward wondered if the fabled ‘audience rise’ might be Vic Turnbull’s dead cat or evena rounding error. Hoarsely, voice a fading whisper, Edward said: ‘What do you want me to do? I just came because I was told to.’
‘Right. Listen up. As regards The Case,’ said Douglas Aspinall, voice sunk to a similar whisper, ‘obviously not a word on that because we can’t concede liability and there’s just the slimmest chance someone out there knows how to use a smartphone and you get recorded.Capisce?And also, regarding station direction …’ Douglas reached again for the door handle, but this time he began to turn it. ‘Keep saying that we are playing great music with presenters young and old. Use the word “inclusive” a lot. Talk about the sea.’
‘Okay.’
‘Look here, I didn’t come out of retirement to be taken down by a posse of people in reinforced underpants.’
Thinking that no one said ‘Look here’ any more, Edward shook his head indignantly. ‘I’m sorry if that’s what you think of our audience. Why don’t you come in with me? Just tell them I’ve lost my voice. Or if you like, I can go home.’
Another shout from the other side of the door.
‘I can’t come in with you because then we get the pantomime. I’ll get booed and hissed. I’m Paula Vennells in all this. They’re the subpostmasters. Go. You’re on. You’re the … the star.’ Again, a staggering of the sentence; the infinitesimal pause before each word.
He added: ‘Remember – inclusive.’
As his hand turned on the brass knob and the door opened for Edward, the controller faded away like a ghost. The door gave way onto a stage, which was not what Edward had expected. A stage he was now standing on. The sunlight outside was blocked by short, heavy curtains drawn across the fanlights in the upper part of the walls. He saw rows and rows of faces, and heard the polite applause as he moved towards them and a single spotlight which found his face.
‘Firstly, I am sorry about the terrible state of my voice,’ Edward Temmis began, ‘and the younger presenters, who haven’t made it.’ The sentence came out wrong and caused laughter he was not expecting. He felt a little dizzy. ‘I’m just a cog in this. I’m a tiny cog. I have a miniature role.’
The audience was hushed, trying to hear. In the silence he whispered, ‘Is there a microphone? Could someone turn off this big light that’s on me? And put on the hall lights again, or draw back the curtains? Please?’
He heard a man’s voice mutter, ‘Who’s the diva?’
When the lamps came on, he looked at all the faces. He should not have been surprised to see Kim’s mum Barbara here. The two were so close. The exchange of information was constant – the latest was that Barbara had a new boyfriend, who was a specialist in military re-enactments. Kim had joked that they spent the first month together just re-enacting Barbara’s first marriage.
The older woman was a short, enthusiastic divorcee with two new hips and two old dogs. The world might have decided Barbara was fit only for retirement and daytime TV, but she had a lively brain, a good social life, and nothing got past her.
In Harpford Hall were also a number of faces he might see at his local church come Christmas. This was a sea of grey, and he felt sudden pride that these were his people; these were the ones who gathered around their radios for his show every night, who had paid their taxes and just wanted a little respect. They were his Republican Guard.
For some reason, Edward Temmis felt a stab of depression. He adjusted his hearing aid. He was less than half the man they thought he was. They wanted him to be Frank Sinatra. In reality he was Frank Spencer. He was not even a father any more. He was just a greying guy on a short-term contract living alone in a house that was falling off a cliff, doing a show-off job to prove the bullies at school they were wrong. What had he ever done?
Solved one murder. That was it.
A heavy velvet curtain in the wall above him was being jerked back. Through a fanlight came a broken beam of late afternoon sunlight. It fell directly onto three of the women in the middle of the hall. One reached immediately for sunglasses, the sort you saw in black-and-white pictures of cinema audiences watching early 3D films.
Pushing his voice to the limit, he said, ‘This was billed as meet-and-greet the presenters, and I know there were four of our exciting young names on the bill, including’ – he knew he must not mess this up – ‘Satan, Honor, Tamla, and of course the brilliant Tessa K. They send their apologies. Satan especially is very sorry. I was drafted at the last moment. It’s a great privilege to be here with you.’
He added, thinking of Aspinall’s eager words: ‘Inclusive. We are an inclusive station, sitting here by the open sea, the big sea, and it’s great you all feel included still.’ He should not have added the last word.
Edward decided to stare at Barbara for reassurance. She was nodding and smiling.
‘I love the radio more than I can say. The pioneers – I once met Tony Blackburn. Wogan of course. And how we miss Annie Nightingale, and the chap who did the golf.’
‘Did you meet Terry Wogan?’ someone shouted.
‘No,’ Edward said, feeling his throat hurt and his voice getting fainter and fainter. A man with an untidy beard was dragging a microphone on a stand down the middle aisle. ‘However, I once met someone who worked with Terry, for many years, in a lift.’
Again, he had misspoken. He was off his game. He saw the looks of puzzlement – some thinking ‘Why was Terry Wogan working in a lift?’ while others were perhaps unable to hear him at all. His voice was close to giving up and he could not elaborate.
‘The microphone will help me here. Sorry everyone.’ The base of the stand came at him first, the three prongs launched from below the stage by the man with the beard, like Neptune hurling a trident from the ocean.
