Times of Austerity Ch. 01

Elisabeth prided herself on being a rational individual when it came to the misfortunes that life placed in her path, or at least she tried to be, thinking that to imagine they were the result of either a malicious cosmos or caused by a conspiracy against her individual interests would have been the first step on the road to madness. All the same there were times when it became so very hard to keep that stance, especially when they tended to happen in an unfamiliar building which resembled a labyrinth of glass and steel and well before any sensible human being would have been awake and out of their bed if given a choice in the matter.

There were signs and she still had the directions that the harassed production assistant had texted to her agent the day before, but actually reading either of them would have required her to slow down and admit that she was lost. It was worthy of note that as well as being practical, Elisabeth was also a very stubborn character, and making such an admission was simply not a thing that she was willing to do until faced with certain disaster, even then doing so only with the worst of grudges.

As ridiculous as it sounded now she was here, she had simply assumed that it would be a matter of ease to locate the studio in which the breakfast show was made. After all it was one of the most watched programmes on the network and pretty much served as the thing that kept the government from being able to take away its large share of the licence fee. She expected the path to almost be marked out by a red carpet.

Just then she was the recipient of a lucky break, spotting despite her tiredness and frustration the familiar logo of the breakfast show on the identity card that hung around the neck of a particularly stressed-looking young man, burdened beneath a tray of coffees from a ubiquitous franchise.

Elisabeth followed in his wake, trying all the time to make it look as though she knew where she was going and make it apparent that she was very much not in the mood to make polite conversation. Not that anyone tended to want to ask her anything other than potentially embarrassing questions when she turned up for an interview of this kind, for which she had a series of tersely delivered stock answers, designed specifically to kill a conversation before it could go somewhere she was not prepared to follow.

What had the last such question been?

She almost scowled despite herself as she recalled the smarmy little bastard of a researcher who actually asked if there was a position within the world of broadcasting that she had not either occupied or else made a concerted effort to achieve in the space of her rather varied career. Apart from the poorly veiled insinuation that she was some kind of behind-the-scenes bike, ridden by everyone with whom she could hope to get a hand up on the ladder (never mind the thought of a leg over), it was the fact that people were so brazen about making her a laughing stock amongst her colleagues that really made her blood boil.

While it was true that she had perhaps one of the most varied and interesting careers in television that could have been imagined, she had also been on the receiving end of some of the worst luck to go along with it as well. Children's broadcasting was not exactly the cutting edge, but there was a certain amount of respect due to an individual who was forced to wear a smile constantly while they appeared on screen. And heaven knew that Elisabeth had been on screen long enough in that capacity to make the muscles of her face ache once the day was over. The sheer number of different programmes on which she had worked, no slaved and then heard was to be axed at the end of the current run was enough to have pushed a lesser mortal towards the contemplation of suicide. But she had not been beaten, using the ever-present world of pantomime as a place to which she could retreat and regroup and the number of times that she had come back and given her all for a shiny new programme was almost beyond her ability to count.

Her agent had actually kept an accurate tally, but the one time he shared the number with her had resulted in a rather depressing episode with a few wine boxes from the minimarket nearby her flat, the only positive upshot of which was that she recalled nothing of the incident, let alone the final figure.

Elisabeth was aware that she had made mistakes, such as the time she got involved with one of the senior producers and was accused of sleeping her way into a job or agreeing to the photo shoot that somehow had sounded almost innocent when the idea was described to her. But was it a crime to expect a chance at something in the world of adults, even when she had spent so much of her younger life entertaining the nation's offspring on a daily basis? She still got the occasional letter from a supposed fan that was past the age of puberty, though it felt like small redress for the damage her reputation had suffered as a result.

And what was she coming back here, to the scene of the crime and into the proverbial lion's den to promote?

A bloody fitness video, six hours of her arsing about in an impressive-looking gym, whilst banging on about the importance of keeping active and ensuring that the body remained young through exercise.

And wearing lycra on top of everything else.

How had she been persuaded to put her name to any of it, convinced that it was anything but a terrible idea?

Elisabeth had always thought of herself as a dancer before anything else, after all that was what she had studied for all those years, what had been her passion in life and the only thing she could once have imagined doing until she was dead and gone. Of course there was never a great deal of money to be made unless you were the sensation of your own generation, and so there was always the need to supplement her income with more lucrative – if less aesthetically pleasing – jobs along the way. And as is so often the case, the dancing jobs had become harder to find at the same time as the more mainstream ones began to seek her out on account of the reputation she had established for professionalism and an eagerness to work.

She had never harboured a secret desire to be the sainted dancer of her time, knowing that she did not possess either the waif's figure or the classical beauty that was a prerequisite for such a consideration. Instead Elisabeth was less than tall and had a little too much breast and bottom to be called waiflike, which when added to the way her nose was slightly upturned at the end, conspired to make her more resemble a mischievous pixie than a slender and elegant elfin lady.

So she had done what she had done, become a presenter on children's television and made a good living in the process. Elisabeth was not ashamed in any way of what had become of her life, but all the same she was bloody annoyed at the idea that others seemed to think that she should have been.

Emboldened by the memories of the way she had been treated in the past, she stormed into the studio and made herself known to those in charge of running things behind the scenes. If she had been forced to make the damn video, to endure that torture in a lycra outfit, then the least the nation could do in return was look up from their bloody cornflakes and pay attention for five minutes.

Some people asked her what it was like to sit down in front of a mirror six mornings out of seven and have a professional make-up artist transform the face that you saw in the rather less glamorous mirror in the bathroom into the very different visage that millions supposedly saw on the television screen as they woke to face a new day. Nina Mason hated answering questions almost as much as she had come to hate asking them, but as both that and the routine of being made acceptable to grace the cameras was an integral part of her job, she never gave an honest answer. Instead she gabbled something to the effect of it being like living the life of a film star whilst still having her feet firmly planted on the ground, as that was the kind of bollocks people wanted to hear.

In truth she hated the experience, feeling as though she was a recently expired corpse that had been dragged in from the morgue and jolted back into life for one last turn on the sofa. They were not enhancing her natural beauty or covering the minor imperfections in her face, rather their aim was more to disguise the fact that her skin was pallid, cold and stiffening where rigor mortis had begun to set in.

It was not just that the early mornings were finally starting to make themselves felt now that she was into her forties, there was also the fact that she was simply so tired of the whole affair and what it required of her that she was closer to announcing that she wanted to quit than ever before. If there had been the promise of a proper home and family awaiting her when she no longer needed to be in work before the sun was up, then she would have walked out months ago. But the truth was that the boys were old enough not to need her clucking over them all the time any more, and there had been nothing but ever colder distance between herself and the man she had married for years now. Depressing as it might have been, the reality was that all she had left was her career, regardless of how much she hated and resented every moment of it.

What was on the docket today?

Nothing leapt out at Nina as she scanned the piece of paper on which was recorded the schedule of the programme ahead. She had to crane her neck forwards, making it harder for the woman applying her make-up to do her job, but she really did not care.

Bob was off ill, which was the first thing worthy of note, apparently with a bout of the flu.

I bet, Nina thought, the kind of flu you catch from a bottle most likely.

But at least he managed to wrangle himself a day off, and she really could not be mad at him for it either, he was a sad-faced old specimen who did little more than read from the autocue and make the occasional joke when it came to the sports report.

And speaking of the sports, she saw that he was being replaced by Kari Rimmer, who would more normally have been serving in the latter role. The fact that she had been promoted to co-hosting the entire show meant that either they were desperately short-staffed that morning, or another potentially disastrous attempt was being made to groom the woman for a more permanent place on what she called 'the front line'.

Whatever, Nina brushed the matter aside; it was no skin of her nose if they wanted to try again.

She could still remember the last time that the towering woman had been sat on the sofa next to her, making it impossible to feel like anything other than a little girl in her presence. The usual jokes went around behind her back about the deep voice and the phantom moustache, as well as her breaking into the industry as a sports correspondent. But Nina was more intimidated by the fact that she could not get the image out of her head inspired by her nickname around the office. By calling her 'The Valkyrie', the wits in on the staff had burdened her with a mental picture of Kari dressed like something out of a Wagnerian opera, and she was sure that there would have been more than a few takers from both genders had she offered to carry them off to Valhalla on the back of a winged horse.

Most of the stuff was both routine and boring, studies that contradicted the studies they had covered only a few months ago, some god-awful boy-band that were going to represent the nation at Eurovision and were completely in love with themselves as a result, a couple of teachers against the latest round of government cuts to their budget and eager to explain the reason it was immoral and why the Tory Chancellor was the devil himself. Nothing that was going to keep her from wishing that she had been able to stay at home in bed, or even in bed with Bob, so long as he kept his hands to himself (unlike the last time they had ended up in that situation).

Apart maybe from that particular item, right there between the regional news and the daily explanation from the weatherman as to why it was still raining in the middle of what was technically British Summertime.

Elisabeth Jane McIntosh, a name that had some serious scuttlebutt attached to it.

Those pictures had really set tongues wagging and the rumour was that she had been blacklisted afterwards, rendered toxic by association with a place that the broadcaster was not comfortable to be seen to linger in the vicinity of, especially after the number of older names dragged through the courts for crimes they thought had been forgotten decades ago. But there she was, if not on the payroll, at least being let into the building and smiled at politely whilst she was talked about the moment she left the room. In the world of television, that was as good as a declaration that she was on the road to recovery, the first step of being rehabilitated and allowed back into the fold. There might have been nothing more than a video to flog on that occasion, though who could say where it would ultimately lead?

It should provide some interesting gossip afterwards, if nothing else.

Nina was up and out of her seat as the door opened to admit the next person needing the attention of the make-up artists. She was so wrapped up in her own thoughts that she almost missed the fact that it was the very woman she had been considering only a moment before.

There was no way she would have actually stopped and chatted to the other woman, being too dis-interested and altogether too jaded for the show of false amiability required. Instead she took as long a glance as she was able before the door to the make-up room swung shut and left her unable to look back at anything but solid wood. Nina was adept enough at the art of feigned indifference to appear to have done nothing more than stride forcefully out into the corridor in one smooth motion, never giving away a clue as to what she was really trying to do.

Bitch, was the first word that sprang into her head.

Why, she thought to herself, was there a breed of younger women that made the everyday act of picking an outfit into an effort to put down those who happened to have been born a few years before them and unluckier in terms of the passage of time?

A skirt that short was not the kind of thing that one wore on television so early in the morning unless there was a clear message behind it, and coupled with those tights and the top that announced to the world why that infamous photo-shoot had been so enduringly popular, that message could only have been – to Nina's mind at least – to women that she was the most physically desirable female in the room, and to me something in the manner of 'come and get it whilst it's still hot'.

Little, blonde bitch.

No matter what the so-called experts said on the subject, Nina refused to believe that it was all about diet and exercise. She was always in the gym and she could not so much as look at a plate of food that was not on her prescribed list of approved dishes without feeling like she had put on a whole stone in weight.

To have a body like hers, she thought, you needed to have been born with it and possess some kind of freakish collection of genes that kept the weight off. She supposed that being a dancer trained with only slightly less intensity than a KGB assassin and not having had three kids into the bargain might have been a factor. But all in all some people were just lucky in everything that they did, and it was a testament to their enduring status as arseholes that they paraded the fact around in public, rather than having the good grace to die in windowless locked room, far, far away.

Nina herself was pushing the bounds of good taste with the suit that she had chosen to wear, but at least knew the difference between showing off all that there was to see in one go and creating the impression that there was far more being hidden than the eye could necessarily see. It had long been her opinion that black tights and the tendency to sit with the legs apart was nothing in comparison to her own way of crossing and uncrossing legs whilst wearing the sheer, slightly shiny tan tights that she had opted for that very morning.

She might not have been asked to strip off and bare all, but at least she knew how to make the very best use what she had.

Trying to keep that in mind, she swept into the studio in the manner of a queen entering her very own throne room.

"Your hair looks nice," Kari tried in vain to make conversation before the cameras started recording. "I keep reminding you to let me have the number of the salon that you go to, but you always seem to have forgotten it." There was an awkward silence in which it became apparent that Nina was not about to answer her. "I suppose it's hard to remember a little thing like that when you have a career and a family to juggle, eh?"

Go crush a man's head with your muscular thighs, was what Nina was thinking at that moment.

"I suppose," was all she actually said, not looking up from her notes.

That's the temperature dropped below zero, Elisabeth thought to herself as she watched the two women occupying the other side of the semi-circular couch to the one she had been steered towards.

It was not that she had expected to discover the atmosphere in the studio like that of a genial knitting circle or a close group of friends who chatted about the trails of modern life whilst preparing themselves to deal with the serious and more often than not depressing news of the day. Elisabeth had spent too long a time in the world of television to be so naïve as to think that what appeared on the screen was likely to be a reflection of reality behind the scene, but all the same she had honestly imagined the relationships between the presenters on the breakfast programme to be more like that of jaded comrades-in-arms rather than a collection of bitchy schoolgirls.

"I actually considered going blonde once," it took Elisabeth a moment to realise that Kari was making an effort to salvage something of the abortive conversation she had tried to begin with her co-presenter by raising a vaguely connected point with the only other person within earshot. It was a desperate move and made all the more uncomfortable by the combination of her attempt to keep her smile pinned on and the look of resigned exasperation and disgust could be seen spreading across Nina's own face whilst she still glanced down at her notes. "But I just never had the nerve to actually go through with it in the end."

"I always wondered why people were jealous of my being blonde," Elisabeth only realised that the way she had phrased the response could have been taken as egotistical after she had spoken. "What I meant to say," she tried to recover her footing, "is that I think everyone is a bit envious of the colours they weren't born with. You'd kill for dark hair sometimes when you're blonde, like people who have straight hair and want it to be curly, then you have women with gorgeous curls who run out and buy hair straighteners."

Kari gave her a weak smile in response, as though to say that while she appreciated the effort, it was still painfully apparent that the other woman was trying her best to be nice for the sake of it rather than out of any more genuine motivation.

"Three minute warning," Nina surprised Elisabeth by breaking the uncomfortable silence.

"Three minute what?"

"Just something I've gotten into the habit of saying," Nina's expression could have been described as patronising at best. "You can often hear the sound of them turning some of the equipment on in the background just before we're ready to go on air. It's one of those subtle things that's like a really low hum, if you can hear it at all that is. Kind of like the things you'd expect a dog to be able to hear and not a person."