Not one to hang about, Stanley helpfully suggested that Harold could come back the next weekend. Also, and entirely coincidentally, a boy at school was selling guinea pigs, just in case any of us wanted to know. Harold stayed for most of the day, and as well as making excellent progress from a construction point of view, there was no doubt that he had been a gigantic hit with us all.
“What a nice man,” I said to Bunty after he’d gone.
“Isn’t he?” she said. “I think we cheered him up.”
“Well, someone certainly has,” I replied. Bunty ignored me, but she looked ever so pleased.
As I had hoped, the jolliness with Harold, followed by another double shift at the fire station, made for a nonstop weekend, and helped me put the madness of Mrs. Porter to the back of my mind. I may have been tired from lack of sleep, but on Monday morning I felt ready to brace up and attack whatever wild notions might arise. After all, my job was writing for a magazine. It was not as if it involved dismantling bombs.
As I made my way up the stairs at Launceston House and then turned left towards our offices, I noticed that the pictures on the walls to either side of the double doors had been replaced. On one side was a smart metal sign with WOMAN’S FRIEND engraved on it in rather beautiful modern lettering, and on the other was a very large, framed photographic portrait. Below it, as if I was in any doubt at all, was a bronze plate, which read, THE HONOURABLE MRS. CRESSIDA PORTER, OWNER AND PUBLISHER.
It was a posed studio shot, with Mrs. Porter in a black frock and pearls sitting at a right angle to the camera and looking over her shoulder and into the lens in a thoughtful and intelligent way. She looked very lovely, as well as very young. It gave the entrance to our modest offices a very glamorous look.
“Gracious,” said a voice behind me. It was Mrs. Shaw. “That must have cost a bob or two. Doesn’t Mrs. Porter look smashing?”
“It’s like she’s out of the films,” said Hester, joining us with Mr. Newton.
“Like a young Greta Garbo,” said Mr. Newton, which was taking things a bit far.
I hung back, thinking how odd it was that while we were now all well aware that Mrs. Porter was not exactly as lovely as she had first appeared, even her picture seemed to have the ability to turn people slightly giddy.
“I wonder if she’s moved in?” said Miss Peters.
There was only one way to find out.
Mrs. Shaw pushed open the heavy doors, and we all took the few steps to the office opposite mine. It had been Mrs. Bird’s when she was Editress a couple of years ago and had always been a rather dour room. Guy had preferred to stay in his own office when he had taken over, and I was sure Mrs. Porter would have made major changes to it. But when I gently knocked and then opened the door, the austere furniture of Mrs. Bird’s tenure was all in its place. Nothing had moved an inch.
“That’s a damp squib,” said Mrs. Shaw.
“Sorry, everyone,” I said. “I thought Mrs. Porter said this weekend, but I must have been wrong.”
With a few “Ah wells,” and as Mrs. Mahoney arrived, asking what we were all doing, I shut the door on the disappointment and followed the team to the journalists’ room for our usual post-weekend chat.
Then I stopped dead. Instead of being in their usual two neat rows, the desks were now all squashed together in half the space. They had been joined by the long table from the meeting room, which had been pushed up against the window. A stack of mismatched chairs sat precariously on top. Everyone looked at each other.
Still in my hat and jacket, I spun round and opened the door to the meeting room.
And there it was. Or rather, it wasn’t. The tired and scuffed off-white walls had been freshly painted in a pale coral, and there were a number of framed modern art prints at eye level. The floor had been newly restained and polished, and at the far end was a beautiful burr walnut desk, with a matching chair on wheels. An elegant art deco lamp sat next to an ivory telephone with matching cord, and on the other side of the desk a young woman in bronze danced with abandon on top of an alabaster base. In the centre, facing out for any visitor to see, a name plate read: The Hon. Mrs. Porter.
As everyone crowded in to look, I noted that there were no chairs by the desk. Instead, two sofas had been placed further away at the other end of the room, with a low coffee table between them. A new set of magazines—not including Woman’s Friend—were displayed.
“Bloody Nora,” said Mrs. Shaw, speaking for us all.
“I don’t think we should be in here,” said Mr. Newton.
“I agree,” I said. I felt as if I had broken into someone’s hotel suite. “Let’s wait in the journos’ room. Mr. Collins will be in soon for the editorial meeting.”
Quietly, everyone retreated to what now looked like a neglected, uncared-for storeroom. That the furniture had been pushed around was bad enough, but far worse was that piles of readers’ letters that had been carefully sorted on Friday had been shoved to one side so that they were now in muddled, half-collapsed heaps. A full postbag that was due to be opened was stuck in the far corner under the meeting room table, and someone would have to crawl across the floor to get it out.
This room had never been fancy, but in recent years it had been brought to life by the women who worked in it. I wasn’t one for lots of rules, but everyone knew that the readers’ letters had to be looked after properly. Stacked, logged, the stamps cut off and put to one side, and then, once dealt with, the letters carefully destroyed. People shared their lives with us. They would be treated with respect.
Everyone knew that. Everyone agreed with it. Everyone followed the rule.
The oohs and aahs about the new office had completely died down. As we tried to assemble some sort of a meeting in the higgledy-piggledy mess, the comparison was more than obvious.
Mrs. Porter’s room was like an oasis, an apparition of pre-war loveliness. In contrast, the rest of the Woman’s Friend offices were drab and battered, a hotchpotch of mismatched office furniture where the only “art” was magazine covers, which had been cut out and stuck to the walls with drawing pins. Each cover just had one pin at the top, as anything metal was in such short supply, so when the windows were open, the covers would flap untidily in the breeze.
Mrs. Pye arrived, looking swish in a new hat that was strikingly similar to the one Mrs. Porter had worn the last time she was in the office. “Our publisher will be in soon,” she announced. “Mrs. Porter is keen to see her new office. It is a triumph, of course—I assume you’ve all looked. I did suggest to Mrs. Porter that she might wish to invest in a lock.”
“You’ve already seen it, then?” said Mrs. Shaw.
If someone had told Mrs. Pye to hide the Crown Jewels on personal request from the King, she could not have looked more full of herself. “I myself personally directed the refurbishments over the weekend,” she replied. “Mrs. Porter did not trust it to be done exactly as she wanted unless I was here.”
“It’s a shame she didn’t ask you to make sure this office was left exactly as it should be,” said Mrs. Mahoney quietly.
Mrs. Pye gave a silly, tinkly laugh. “Oh, Mrs. Porter isn’t interested in where the awful old furniture goes.”
I bent down and picked up a photo frame that had been knocked onto the floor. It held a picture of Hester’s little brother, and it usually sat proudly on her desk.
“It’s not broken,” I said to her as I carefully put it back where it belonged. “And I’ll call the Facilities Department to come up as soon as they can. We can sort things. It doesn’t matter.”
The thing was, though, it did.
Bags of fudge and flattery could get you so far, but I could see by the look on everyone’s faces that they were shocked.
“Good God, what’s happened here?”
It was Guy.
“Mrs. Porter has moved into the meeting room,” I said calmly.
From the way Guy didn’t answer, but just pursed his lips, it was clear that this was as much news to him as it had been to us.
“She’s had it redecorated,” said Mrs. Shaw. “Mrs. Pye was in charge.”
Guy glanced at Mrs. Pye, but unlike the rest of us, he showed no interest in seeing the work that had been done. “That’s up to Mrs. Porter,” he said, looking at the letters lying in disarray. “It’s this room I’m concerned about.”
“We’ll sort it,” I said. “I’m going to call—”
“No, no,” interrupted Guy, in a very controlled tone that didn’t sound like him at all. “Leave it for now, thank you. I’d like to get on with our meeting. Let’s gather some chairs together. When we’ve finished, I’m sure Mrs. Pye can find time to sort out the removal of anything that doesn’t belong in here. If you would, Mrs. Pye.”
For the first time, her face lost some of its smugness. Despite his calm, no one could be in any doubt that Guy was far from impressed.
There was no cheery conversation or happy hubbub as the team gathered. Everyone did as they were told, making a wonky attempt at a circle of chairs to form a meeting. I watched Guy take a deep breath. I realised that I had been too wrapped up in my own concerns about Mrs. Porter to give anything like enough thought as to how he must feel. It was one thing to have promised Lady Overton to help look after her niece, but to have his authority and position increasingly ignored by the day was another. I wondered how much he would put up with out of loyalty to the magazine and to the people about whom he very much cared.
Now, however, he gave us something approaching a normal smile and called the meeting to a start.
A few minutes later, as I started reporting on Yours Cheerfully, doing my best to sound upbeat rather than enraged at Mrs. Porter’s editorial approach, I ground to a halt as I heard her high-pitched chatter in the corridor. It was accompanied by a man’s voice and what seemed to be the yapping of a dog.
Mrs. Pye immediately leapt to her feet.
“Please continue, Emmy,” said Guy steadily, “and do sit down, Mrs. Pye.” He gave her a look and she reluctantly did as he had requested.
“We’ve been getting a lot of letters from…” I began.
“Now, that is better. Look, my darling, look.” Even with the door shut, it was clear that Mrs. Porter was inspecting her new office. Mrs. Pye smiled.
“You’ve been getting lots of letters from?” prompted Guy.
“Oh no. No, no, no, that won’t do. It’s entirely in the wrong place.”
Mrs. Pye’s smile wavered.
“Where is everyone?”
At this point I gave up, which was just as well, as the door was flung open and Mrs. Porter walked in.
“Oh,” she said.
“Good morning, Mrs. Porter,” said Guy. “Are you joining us for the Editorial Meeting?”
“Good morning,” said Mrs. Porter, resplendent in a cream suit and a hat so small it needn’t have bothered. “How lovely. No, thank you. Where is Mrs. Pye? Oh, there you are.”
Mrs. Pye had given a small wave. “Good morning, Mrs. Porter,” she said. “I trust you find everything as you wished?”
First prize in the Fishing for Compliments Contest to the lady on my left.
“Oh yes, very good,” said Mrs. Porter vaguely, and not appearing quite as grateful as Madame Pye had perhaps hoped. “But Small Winston’s cushion is in the wrong place entirely, and he’s upset enough as it is. My goodness,” she said, finally drawing breath. “This room is a fright.”
“It’s the furniture from your office,” said Guy.
“It’s awful,” replied Mrs. Porter. She paused and turned her smile onto full beam. “Look at you all. Working so hard, and it’s still virtually the middle of the night. And Mr. Collins running everything so beautifully. I can’t thank you enough. And now I’m here. It’s terribly exciting.”
I wasn’t sure if Mrs. Porter was expecting some sort of ovation, but everyone just stared. Also, it was twenty to ten and most of us had been up for hours.
“Oh dear,” she said. “Have I interrupted something important? Don’t mind me, I shall go and sit in my office. Mr. Collins, might I borrow Madame just for the tiniest moment, please? Oh, and then I must introduce you to Mr. Elliot, who starts today, although I am afraid he is currently indisposed as poor Winston did not feel himself in the lift.”
And with that, she swooped out of the room, followed obediently, if perhaps nervously, by Mrs. Pye.
Now everyone looked to Guy. I wondered if we had seen the straw on the camel’s back. Would he finally snap?
But he merely shook his head. “This is ridiculous,” he said under his breath. He was silent for a moment, and then he began to speak. “You know, I’ve always tried to be not entirely dreadful as your Editor, and I hope you’ve felt in safe hands. But I have to say I wouldn’t blame you for currently having your fair share of doubts.” He gave a brief smile. “Quite frankly, this is a poor show, and you deserve better.” He looked at the mess of letters and papers and pushed his spectacles up to the bridge of his nose. “These are disconcerting times for us all, and this is the last thing any of you need. I promise I will do everything in my power to make working here as decent as I can. Things are very odd at the moment, but I will always be honest with you, which I hope might help. You’ve all been absolutely top drawer.” He hesitated. “No one could ask for more from their team.”
“Don’t you worry, Mr. Collins,” said Mrs. Mahoney. “We’re made of stern stuff.”
Everyone nodded and several people said, “I’ll say,” and “Hear! Hear!”
“Thank you. I couldn’t agree more,” said Guy. He cleared his throat. “Now, before we get to meet Mr. Elliot and someone I can only hope is a dog rather than a man who has let himself down in a lift, let’s get on with running a magazine.”