Hot Bebe

"I won't say anything to Bebe about your final test, Mrs Humphries, but she will become the young contracted contributor you are seeking. I know this because, unlike me, I believe Bebe presents herself fully open in character and is fearless and set you back on your heels."

"Well, back to work and thanks Indiana. I hope your prediction comes true. Anyway, she's likely to be offered the post because I have photos of her, copies of her high school and university files and Ted's assessment of Bebe in my dossier. She's already the front-runner on paper. Saturday night will provide the opportunity to make my own ultimate assessment."

Back in her office, Indiana, who was born in Indianapolis, the capital of the State of Indiana in the USA and immigrated to Australia with her parents when she was aged 12, sent off the email concerning the dinner appointment and included the details 'Melba is 17 and Anna (Julianna) is 23', and crossed her fingers.

Part of her duties was to manage contracted contributors and perform the initial assessment of their contributions and she had the feeling she'd really enjoy working with Bebe. Indiana had almost completed an online degree in journalism.

* * *

The housekeeper at the single residential property in Richmond, East Melbourne, overlooking Yarra Park and only 3 km from Melbourne's CBD, led Bebe into the living room and introduced her.

"Miss Newton has arrived."

The family of three faced their guest.

"Omigod, you're beautiful," gushed Melba.

"Melba!" cautioned her sister.

"I suggest you leave her, Anna. Melba, you look adorable and never be afraid of expressing your instant opinion, within reason. It's obviously part of your exuberant character."

Anna said, in surprise, "How did you know I'm Anna and that Melba says things without much thought? You have never met us or know about this family."

"Well, I declare that from my research, I'm aware you recently graduated with a degree in music Anna and intend to pursue a career in teaching the violin. You play the violin but prefer the electric guitar, and of course you are the eldest child of very well-known and talented parents."

"Omigod, you're cracked into my personal web pages."

"I had a fellow female student to, um, open the page. She is studying computer science and said your page security is a joke. Megan says she'll beef up your website security if you wish, at no charge."

Anna stood with her mouth dropped while her younger sibling said, "There you go sis, I told you the security on that site is as weak as shit, oops, sorry mum."

Before her mother had time to react, Bebe darted forward and kissed her on the cheek lightly and said, Hi, Sonja. Thanks for the dinner invite and what rewarding children you have."

"Rewarding?" Sonja said, as if she was on the back foot.

"Nice save," Melba chortled. Thanks."

Anna frowning, said, "Mum, our guest who is younger than me, called you by your first name?"

"And there's the explanation of 'rewarding'," Bebe said, smiling.

"Melba is displaying the early signs of a star about to emerge, and probably soon will become a power-house amateur on social media, leading to perhaps a career in radio, tv or the print media. On the other hand, Anna has already developed the mindset of a professional musician, being focused, precise and toeing the line."

"H-how on earth could you at your age even make-up a prediction like that when this is our first meeting with you?"

"It's not difficult to explain, Sonja. "It just comes out of my mouth like, I suspect, that will similarly come out of the mouth of Melba with greater accuracy and credibility as she ages."

Sonja held a hand across her forehead and said, "Omigod, there's no need for me to use this meeting to listen to you and to furtively interview you. The job is yours, if you want it."

"But I still have a year's fulltime studies to complete and anyway, what is the job?"

"The offer is to become a contract contributor to the magazine, writing a monthly column from a young person's viewpoint, this proposal being suggested by my daughters as a new feature in the magazine. You appear to be the perfect fit as the inaugural contributor as the column will become permanent. As Anna suggested, it could attract younger readers to convert them into loyal readers of Thinking Woman's Magazine."

"You have two weeks to..."

"I accept, with thanks."

"Omigod, you are such a visionary," Anna said, coming up and hugging and kissing Bebe.

"Anna, a visionary doesn't need to be told she's a visionary," said her younger sister. "Just thank her for taking up the challenge."

"Right everyone, to the dining table for wine starters," Sonja said. "Melba, as this is a special occasional, you may have one glass of wine."

"Thanks, mum."

"There you go Sonja, you just heard how rewarding your children can be just listening to their thoughtful comments."

The daughters raced ahead of their mother and Bebe.

"Yes, Bebe but did you notice Melba missed the chance of attempting to negotiate permission to have a second glass of wine?"

"Alternatively, perhaps you could think she'd already one jump ahead of you Sonja and will simply sneak a second glass when you are temporarily distracted."

"Omigod, how can you be so sure of that?"

"Just watch, Sonja. Sneakiness is quite a skill and is not always performed with an evil motive. Often it should be admired."

For a moment, Sonja appeared flat-lining. Then she said slowly, "Omigod, you and Melba appear so much alike that I cannot believe it. I'm now ready to half-believe your prediction of her future."

"Perhaps you'd be more comfortable of viewing it as my wild guess."

"Indeed, and perhaps not. I can almost visualise her walking into that future."

During her end-of-year university break of almost four months, Bebe, under her name as a columnist, 'Young Bebe Newton writes...', filed six submissions, all of which were accepted without queries. The title of the first article to be published was, 'Encourage Emerging Talent in the Young.'

The theme was supported with an account of a mother's dilemma of her 17-year-old daughter sneaking a second glass of wine at dinner when only having approval to drink one glass of wine.

The mother scolded her daughter for betraying a trust but after that scolding admired her daughter's skill of managing to carry off such skulduggery and suggested that her daughter should focus more on betraying parental trust before excising her skill at sneakiness."

Ten letters to the editor commenting on that initial article were received and published. All praised the writing and thoughtfulness of the new and young columnist.

After receipt of the 6th contribution by email, Indiana phoned Bebe and invited her to lunch any day, midweek.

Bebe dazzled Indiana, aged in her mid-thirties, with her beauty, liveliness and audacity.

"Omigod, you are a potential high-powered personality and yet you're are not twenty-one years of age."

"Perhaps I'm succeeding because I don't have to try. It comes just naturally to me, and perhaps that explains why I was judged class brightest personality of the year in my last three years at high school."

"Bebe, the strictures of being a columnist mean you can't display all of your skills as a journalist. I suggested to Mrs Humphries we should commission you to produce a comprehensive interview for the magazine to display your skills and she approved of my proposal and suggested I take you to lunch and present the proposal to you. Why she suggested a face to face meeting, I have no idea."

"Sweet Indiana, it's because it's so easy for anyone to reject a proposal over the phone or receiving it by email or slow post whereas...".

"Omigod, you're saying it's because it's more difficult to reject something in a face-to-face meeting. Well, darling, you wouldn't say no in this instance to sweet Indiana, would you?"

"Okay Indiana, I'll do it."

"Oh, great. I'll send some suggestions of approved people within the next twenty-four hours and..."

"No thanks, Indiana. Leave my unencumbered."

"Pre-approved interview personalities have the greatest chance of being published."

"The interview of the person I have in mind will ring your and Sonja's bells, Indiana, should I managed to pull it off. That I promise."

"Omigod, you intend to go for the Prime Minister's wife whom a Sunday newspaper had claimed is becoming depressed, claiming she is being neglected by her husband."

"Some other time for her and no, I don't have my mother in mind. Now let's have another wine on your expense account, sweet Indiana."

Back at the office, Indiana reported her success with Bebe to Sonja.

"Good work, and who is this woman likely to ring our bells, a term Indiana that's mostly reserved for a woman who has just experienced unbelievable sex."

"Oh, I didn't know that."

"That's okay, Indiana, that's what I would suspect from anyone born in Indiana. And it doesn't surprise me that Bebe refused to name the woman she proposes to interview. It suggests to me she intends talking to a woman who's faded from the lime-tight for some reason. Perhaps she now resides in a jail."

"I apologize, Mrs Humphries."

"It's okay. Bebe is stubbornly independent because she knows she peaks better in her work that way and I must keep remembering that to get the best out of her."

* * *

Bebe eyed the impressive old home in awe and picked up the phone alongside the heavy oak doors.

"May I please obtain an appointment to see your boss, Mrs Moses."

"And who are you?"

"Bebe Newton."

"Omigod, that wonderful new columnist appearing in Thinking Woman's Magazine."

"Indeed, but I'm not sure about you calling my contributions wonderful. Eva will remember me as the university student she met at Ted Evans' soiree some months ago. My mother has her portrait of my late grandmother."

"Oh, indeed. I seem to remember her telling me she met a teenager who unexpectedly lit her up like a decorated Christmas tree during that brief encounter."

"Well, I would like to meet her ASP."

"May I ask why do you wish to meet Lady Simpson-Cambridge?"

"No."

"Then she's unlikely to wish to meet you."

"And I think that's unlikely. Please phone-text me with my appointment time and venue, Mrs Moses."

"Very well, Miss Optimistic. Oh, I apologise, Miss Newton."

Two hours later, Bebe read Mrs Moses' text.

'Lady Simpson-Cambridge will meet you at the Tea House in the city's central rose gardens at 4.15 on Thursday, fifteen minutes after the tea rooms close. She suspects you wish to interview her and the team room's manageress will wait till 6.15 maximum before locking up. Photos should be taken (and few provided by her) two days after the interview. PS. Bebe, I can't believe this. Her ladyship hasn't given an interview for at least fifteen years and she did say she invited you to call her Eva. I thought you referring to her as Eva was you being impertinent. I apologize for thinking that. Sara Moses.'

Chapter 2

Six weeks after that interview in the Tea House of the Rose Gardens, the latest issue of Thinking Women's Magazine was published and distribution began, with a beautiful front cover photograph of Lady Simpson-Cambridge bending over and smelling roses facing the camera, with an ethereal expression on her lined face.

Hot Bebe wrote the eight-page feature article without glamorising the woman she'd scooped for her first interview in fifteen years and without labelling Lady Simpson-Cambridge as a recluse.

The heading, at Bebe's insistence, comprised just one word, in capitals, EVA.

Editorial staff at the magazine had laughed, read sections in wonder and some even wept reading the description of the day Eva finally put down her brushes when finishing a portrait of her friend since schooldays, Melbourne businessman Ted Evans, a millionaire astute investor in promising start-up companies and publisher of Business Today magazine.

Eva put down her brush, thinking it would be the last time, and weeping, because as a widow in her mid-fifties, she was about to marry for the second time. Arthritis was spreading in her right-hand she painted with. Two arthritis specialists had urged her to give up painting and to wear a special glove on that arm to make her affliction more bearable.

The man she was about to marry, a prominent surgeon, now deceased, offered only four words when she asked for his opinion: 'It's your call, dearest.'

This brings me to the point, how did I, a new-start journalist, managed to get to interview Eva when many other of Australia's top journalists and representatives of two internationally-acclaimed publications had all been rebuffed (kindly) in the last 15 years?

It wasn't luck and being in the right place at the right time. It had something to do with our brief conversation when we met at a cocktail party grandly called a soiree. Eva asked in surprised how did I know who she was, me being one so young.

I replied simply, making no attempt to impress her, saying that it was because her painting of my late maternal grandmother hung in the living room of my parent's home. I'd viewed it several times each day for much of my life. As a result, I eventually looked up the artist's profile to learn who she was and later visited galleries in Australia and the UK to view examples of Eva's earlier portraits.

Eva said 'Omigod, you must be the granddaughter of Sylvia Fellows."

I nodded and she hugged me and wept, and I wept too. Then she said she should circulate to meet other soiree guests but not before advising me to tell my mother that the painting of gran should be donated to a Melbourne gallery where it would be under proper security and care.

Eva said because it has her last painting, the only painting done after her retirement seven years earlier, a painting done with much love, it would be valued at many thousands of dollars. My mother donated it to a prominent gallery in Melbourne where it's being reframed and an announcement about the donation is expected shortly.

I began my first job post-graduation five months ago on this magazine, having turned 21, as a columnist and love it. About seven weeks ago, it was suggested I submit a personality interview for publication. I received approval to submit it about a person that I stubbornly refused to disclose as I had Eva in mind and wished to approach her without any pressure.

Confident that Eva would remember that I was Sylvia Fellow's granddaughter and appeared to have impressed her at that soiree, I set forth confidently expecting success and you are now reading the result.

We now roll back the years and describe Eva's birthplace in England in Kent (with a photograph), the second daughter of a hospital kitchen manager and her father was a graphic artist for an advertising agency who became thrilled when he discovered his youngest child Eva was showing interest in his drawing when he worked from home. Bill Simpson taught his daughter, aged five, to sketch her mother's face and kept her at it until she produced a reasonable representation, unaided.

* * *

Thinking Women's Magazine was distributed to 35 resellers each month within Melbourne's central business district and within two hours the first distributor was calling the publisher for urgent supplies of more magazines carrying Eva's front page photograph. A further press-run began and later followed by a larger press run and editor Sonja Humphries began receiving calls from print media people to be interviewed and demands to ask Bebe Newton where Lady Simpson-Cambridge was as her stately home appeared deserted.

Sonja also accepted an invitation for her and Bebe to appear in the Melbourne studio of a national TV network for an exclusive interview that evening, thus shutting out other TV stations and radio news networks seeking interviews for that day.

Taking Bebe for lunch, forcing a break in print media interviews, Sonja sighed after clinking of wine glasses in a toast, and said, "Well you will soon be gone from us?"

"What, am I being fired?"

Sonja laughed and said, "No you idiot, you will be received a number of job others -- you have already rejected two. But some will offer big salaries."

"I'm just ordering a lamb burger, thanks Sonja. You don't have to worry about losing me providing you add me to the payroll so that I get a thorough grounding in magazine journalism while still submitting my monthly column. I commit to you and your magazine for one year, starting from today."

"Oh darling," Sonja dry sobbed and Bebe urged her not to cry as her eye-shadow might run.

"What's the big deal, Sonja. It's only a job but I do love writing."

"Darling, don't be so thick. You are on your way and you are unstoppable. I'm so happy that you have committed to us, allowing me to treat you as my protégé and within a year you'll be receiving offers including, I predict, from international magazines if magazine journalism remains your chosen pathway."

"Thanks, Sonja, but say nothing about possible high-flying magazine prospects to the media."

"Agreed, it would only load pressure on to you. Just say you wish to gain further experience in across the board journalism before deciding on your future. According to what that newspaper journalist said, women are weeping in cafes reading about some of the things Eva said to you and commenting you write beautifully and that you played her like a seasoned journalist."

"Bullshit, it was all Eva. I just tossed her some questions and tidied up some of the things she rambled on about."

"Oh yeah," Sonja smiled. "Pull my other tit, which brings me to something else. Are you a lesbian, I haven't seen you with a guy?"

"No, and why are you asking, Sonja. Do you fancy my body?"

"No, certainly not, at least not in that sense. Here's why I asked. Ted Evans called to say he'd like one of his grandsons to date you and could I arrange it. I said no but gave him your phone number, so expect a call from a guy about your age who possibly sinks his dick as indiscriminately as his grandfather is renowned for doing."

"No thanks. If I want a fuck I'll consider going to a male brothel."

"Bebe, no you can't do that," Sonja cried desperately.

Bebe chuckled.

"Just pulling your other tit, boss. Gee, I'm hungry."

Sonja waved vigorously to a waitress, and appeared much relived.

The live TV interview that evening went well and Sonja strongest contribution came when asked how did she regard her young protégé, now only twenty-one, who'd suddenly shot into prominence, catching even media people by surprise.

"Bebe is a special edition, she's got something special whereas so many other journalist wannabe's continue on without possessing that extra booster, much like the turbo in a car engine. That's all I need to say."

Bebe thought her best comment came when asked what did she really think of Lady Simpson-Cambridge.

"Quite simply, her ladyship is the most impressive older woman I believe I've ever met. In my view, she was the perfect subject to feature in Thinking Women's Magazine."

The interviewer Gloria Mason asked sharply, "Is that saying the magazine you write for is for the intellectual elite?"

"Certainly not. The magazine is presented as a good read for women, and perhaps for some men too, who think intelligently and seek from the media something to stimulate their brain. What we present is brain fodder, and there's nothing implying elitism in that."

As Bebe walked from the studio with Sonja, she was thinking she had been relieved when being dated by the occasional guy who mainly was after one thing, and usually got that. But she would really welcome having a guy on hand who also was interested in her as a companion and could converse well. Perhaps Ted's grandson could count to ten without having to ask a female for assistance.