Sam
Forty-one days. Friday.
The car park behind Scarholme Sound had eleven spaces, a skip, and the North Sea at the end of it, about forty yards past a wall that came up to my knee. I'd reversed in, so the sea was behind me. I could still hear it. It made a noise like a very large man breathing through his mouth, and every so often it threw something at the wall.
My phone said four minutes to midnight. Ruth said, on speaker, "Darling, are you there? You've gone all tunnel."
"I'm in a car park."
"Lovely. Is it nice?"
"It's next to the sea."
"Super," Ruth said. "So here's where we are. Clock starts at midnight. Forty-two days. Nine thousand four hundred to thirty thousand, or the show goes. Do your overnights paper, do it tonight, and by my first check-in on Monday I'd love, love, love a stunt. Something people tell each other about in a queue."
"Thirty thousand is three times."
"It's a nice round number, isn't it? Monday, darling. Go and be brilliant."
She went. Ruth always goes as if somebody's opened a door for her.
I sat for a minute with the plan on my knee. Eleven pages. Overnight Efficiencies, Scarholme Sound. It was a good plan. That's what's wrong with it. Three till six, which is currently Hector Mabey sitting at a desk playing records to lorry drivers, becomes a computer playing records to lorry drivers, which the lorry drivers won't notice, because the computer has better taste. And midnight till three, the Wren Archer show, keeps an engineer two nights a week. The other five, she drives her own desk. Most presenters do now. Most presenters are in Leeds, in a nice room, with the heating on.
I'm not cutting the show. I'm cutting the budget. The show is collateral.
I'd said that to Ruth in December, in a meeting, and she'd written it down.
I went inside.
Studio B hummed. Fifty cycles, low, the mains coming up through the floor from the carpet warehouse. Nobody else could hear it. That's the job. I hear the thing in a room that nobody else can, then I take it out, and the room is quieter and slightly worse.
Wren Archer was in her chair with her feet on the bin. She took my eleven pages off me without looking at them, held them up to the glass so Hector could see the cover, and said, "Oh, he's done us a booklet."
Through the glass, Hector put his reading glasses on. It was the most threatening thing I'd seen anybody do with reading glasses.
"Read it after the show," I said. "Please. I'd rather—"
The clock went to midnight. The red light over the door went on. She swung her feet off the bin and leaned into the mic, and her voice dropped half an octave and got warm, the way a kitchen gets warm when someone puts the oven on.
"Good morning, Scarholme," she said. "It's Friday. It's midnight. And I've been handed some homework by the man from Leeds. You remember him. He asked which mic was mine." She turned a page. "Overnight Efficiencies. Ooh. Page one. 'Executive summary.' Hector, have we got an executive?"
"No," said Hector, on talkback, which apparently also went out.
"No, we haven't. Page four." She found it faster than I'd have liked. "From April, three till six will be fully automated. That's a computer, Scarholme. That's a computer that plays the records Hector plays, in the order Hector plays them, without the bit where Hector clears his throat before the shipping forecast. And midnight till three keeps its engineer," she looked up at me, "two nights a week."
She left a gap. Four seconds. On commercial radio four seconds is a long time to leave nine thousand people looking at their radios.
"The robots are coming for Hector," she said.
The phones lit. All six lines, at once, like a fruit machine paying out.
She took line one without looking to see who it was. A woman, older, a television on somewhere behind her, the sound of somebody who'd got up specially.
"Is Hector all right?" the woman said, down the line. "Wren, love, is he all right? Is he there?"
"I'm fine, Maureen," Hector said, on talkback, on air. "I'm sat right here. I've got my tea."
"Oh, Hector," Maureen said, as if he'd come back from a war.
"Don't you worry, Maureen," Wren said. "Nobody's touching Hector. Not while I've got a microphone and a mouth on me. And the man from Leeds is sat right next to me, Maureen, if you'd like a word."
I would not like a word. I shook my head. She saw me shake it, and smiled, and said, "He's shaking his head, Maureen. He's shy." Then she played a record about a lorry driver, which I think was aimed.
There is a kitchen behind Studio B the size of a phone box. It has a kettle, a fridge that has given up hope, and a mug cupboard with a laminated sign on the door that says PLEASE.
Wren came in during the second record to make tea. I was already in there. I'd been in there since Maureen.
"Not that one," she said.
I had a mug in my hand. It was white and said nothing. It was the most neutral object I'd seen since I arrived.
"It's a mug."
"It's Hector's mug. That one's mine. That one's for guests. That one's for guests we like." She reached past me, into the back, and came out with something dark green with SCARHOLME SOUND, YOUR SOUND on it in a font from before I was born. It had a chip in the rim the size of a fingernail. "That's yours."
"What's the chip for?"
"Drink round it." She filled the kettle. "Or don't. You could automate it."
"You read out an internal document on air."
"You left an internal document in my booth."
"I handed it to you."
"In my booth," she said. "Anything in my booth is broadcast material. Ask the man from the council. Ask his elbow."
I went into the corridor and rang the studio line from my mobile. I wanted thirty seconds on air. I had a sentence ready about the figures. It was a good sentence. It had a number in it.
Hector picked up. I heard him through the phone and through the wall at the same time, which made him sound like a man in two places, both of them against me.
"Scarholme Sound, what's your name?"
"Hector, it's Sam."
"Sam. And where are you calling from, Sam?"
"The corridor. I can see you."
"Lovely. And what would you like to talk to Wren about?"
"The plan. I'd like to put the plan in context."
"Lovely," Hector said, in the voice of a man reading the shipping forecast to a goldfish. "We've a lot of callers tonight about the plan. I'll put you in the queue."
The line clicked. A recording of a man started telling me that Harbour Road Carpets had over four thousand rolls in stock. I stood in the corridor for twenty minutes and learned about underlay. Through the glass I watched Hector put a pensioner from Seaton through, then a bus driver, then a woman who said she'd chain herself to Hector if she had to, and Hector said off mic, quite clearly, "Please don't."
At half past one she got me in on the guest mic. I don't know how. I was standing behind it, and then she'd said, "Producer Sam, everyone, he's very shy," and I was in the chair with the stuffing coming out, and there was a biscuit tin on the desk in front of me.
"Sam audits things," she told the city. "It's his calling. So I've asked him to audit the biscuit tin. Live. Take as long as you need, Sam. It's only radio."
I looked at the tin. I looked at Hector. Hector folded his arms.
I'm not good on air. I go stiff. I go formal. I hear myself saying "in terms of" and want to lie down in the road. So I did the only thing I know. I took the lid off and I audited the tin.
"Eleven custard creams," I said. "Four bourbons. Two of the bourbons have been opened and closed again, which I'll come back to. Some sort of ginger thing, broken into three. And one pink wafer which, from the texture, was bought in about two thousand and nine and has been kept on for sentimental reasons."
Wren made a noise into her hand.
"Recommendations," I said. "The custard creams are performing well. The bourbons need a conversation. The pink wafer," I held it up, though nobody could see it, "should be thanked for its service and let go."
The phones went again. Hector read the first text off his screen in a flat voice through the talkback: "'Leave the pink wafer alone, you monster.'" Then: "'Hector, if you're reading this, I'll bake.'" Then, in the same voice: "'Who is this man, and is he single, asking for my daughter.'"
"He's from Leeds," Wren said. "He's not single. He's married to a spreadsheet."
At two fifteen a taxi driver called Gaz rang in with his indicator going and said he'd stand with the pink wafer, he'd stand with it till the bitter end, he wasn't having it made abundant. "Gaz, rank two, over and out." I wrote "abundant" on my pad and underlined it. Hector, through the glass, did the same. I think it was the first thing we'd agreed on.
At five past three she put the plan on the desk between us and her hand flat on top of it.
"Go on, then," she said. "Cut something. Show me how."
Hector had put on a long record, which he never does, and was in the doorway, not going back to his desk.
"Thursdays," I said. "I listened to your Thursdays on the drive up. Six of them. There's a call at one forty-one, every week."
"The Lighthouse Man."
"Two minutes and forty seconds. He doesn't say anything. He says the same four things in a different order. On a commercial station that's—"
"Don't."
"—two minutes forty of a man breathing next to the sea. I'm not saying he's not sweet. I'm saying it's dead air with weather."
I scrubbed back through it in my head while she looked at me. Dead air with weather. It wasn't even a good line. It had sounded better in the car.
Hector said, from the doorway, "He goes straight through. Always has. I don't make him wait."
"I didn't say make him wait."
"You said dead air," Hector said, and that was the end of his part in it.
Wren had taken her hand off the plan. She was holding her own wrist with it instead.
"He said my name once," she said. "Christmas."
That was all she gave me. Her breath went in and didn't come back out for three seconds. I counted, because I count, and because it gave me something to do with my face.
Hector filled in the rest, from the doorway, in the voice of a man reading out a fault report. Christmas night. A month after her nana's funeral. Wren on air, alone, because who else works Christmas. No call at one forty-one, and Wren going on talking anyway and then not being able to. The city heard. Then, later, a call, and the old voice down the line saying, "Merry Christmas, Wren. Still no sign." The only time in three years he'd said a name.
"So don't tell me he's weather," Wren said. "He's the one thing on this show that's never let anybody down."
I don't hear it often. Most of the time I hear what needs cutting. Every now and then I hear the opposite, a thing so whole you'd have to be an idiot to put a blade near it. I heard it then, at ten past three, under the hum, in the gap after she'd stopped talking.
"Then find her," I said.
"What?"
"The woman. Find her, live, on air. Six weeks. You ask the city. Somebody's been out in a red coat at half one in the morning, somewhere he can see her, for three years? Somebody's seen her. Somebody knows her. That's the stunt. That's a queue story. That's thirty thousand."
"Thirty thousand what?"
"Listeners." I should have said it last night. Cut that. I should have said it before I got in the car. "That's the number. Thirty thousand by the fifth of March, or the show goes."
She didn't look surprised. That was worse. She looked like someone who'd been told the date of a thing she'd already put in her diary.
"And if we get thirty thousand," she said slowly, "there's nothing to cut."
"There's nothing to cut."
"Hector keeps his nights."
"If the figures are there, I can't make the argument. Nobody could."
Hector, in the doorway, made a sound that was not a laugh. "Board says payphone," he said. "Payphone, and the last four numbers. Same four, every week. I've never looked them up, and before you get clever, you can't ring a phone box back. Half of them won't take an incoming call. He rings us. We don't ring him."
"Then we ask the city," I said. "On air. Every night."
Wren picked up the green mug, looked at the chip, and put it down again.
"Terms," she said.
"Go on."
"One. You don't make a fool of him. Not once. Not for a laugh, not for a number. He's an old man on a phone."
"Agreed."
"Two. I've the final say on what goes out. My show. My air."
"Ruth won't—"
"Ruth's in Leeds. Two."
"Agreed."
"Three." And she smiled for the first time since I'd walked into her booth, which was alarming, because she had a lovely smile and she was using it like a pair of pliers. "Before the end, you take a call. On air. You. On your own. A real one."
"I'm a producer."
"You're a producer who audited a pink wafer to nine thousand people. You'll be fine."
I looked at Hector. Hector looked at the ceiling, as if the ceiling were on his side.
"One call," I said.
"One call."
She held out her hand across the desk, across the plan, across the eleven pages and the thing on page four with his name in it. Her hand was warm from the mug. Mine wasn't. Under us, the hum went on.
"Forty-two days," she said.