Authors: Bea Davenport
This Little Piggy (37 page)
We’d lived there for about two years when Kim arrived. She was the new district reporter for the regional evening paper. Nick knew all about her before she came. He’d joined the Dowerby Fair committee, where there’d been mutterings that there was no local reporter to get them a bit of publicity. The post had been vacant for a few months after the last reporter retired. Nick took it upon himself to write to the editor of the
Evening News
and complain they weren’t covering the area properly. It worked. The editor phoned Nick personally to say they were sending one of their brightest young reporters to cover the patch. And Nick promised to make her welcome.
Around ten-ish on a March Monday morning, Kim Carter came to Dowerby. I happened to see her arrive. I was sitting with Rosie in the café in the market square, right opposite the newspaper office. I had a window seat with a very good view. First, the newspaper’s little car pulled up, with its logo emblazoned across the bonnet in yellow and black. The driver parked it, inconsiderately, at the end of a row of cars, making it difficult for delivery vans to get past to the shops. The car door opened and Kim swung her silky legs out of the driver’s side door.
I watched as she fumbled with the keys to the dingy newspaper office, and disappeared up the stairs. Minutes later, she emerged and headed towards the café. She was quite stunning to look at, with dark long hair, a girlish face. All the café’s customers and its dour owner, Jim, watched her quite openly. I was a bit embarrassed to be honest, about the way they were staring. I swear one old woman even had her mouth open. It’s a northern habit, staring straight at people like that. Some people think it’s open and direct. Personally, I’ve always found it rude. They don’t do it in London, in fact they famously go to the extreme opposite and it’s as if you’re not there at all. I much prefer that.
Anyway, Kim didn’t seem at all fazed by this. I guess when you look like that, you get used to people’s eyes popping. She just marched up to the counter and asked for some milk to take out. Jim served her without a word. Kim remarked that it was chilly outside. Jim said, “Yes. It’s March, you know,” and clattered her change down on the counter top. Kim raised her eyebrows and left. I glanced around the café at the Biblical quotations Jim had painted on the walls, to see if there was one about being bad-mannered to your customers, but there wasn’t.
Kim must have felt the cold. She was dressed in quite a short skirt and jacket, sheer black tights and heels. Way too smart for Dowerby. The clothes looked like some I’d seen in last month’s
Elle
(I had a weakness for glossy magazines). I’d also noticed she had small, clean hands and pointed, very white nails. I’ve often wondered if other women notice as much about each other as I do. I can’t help it, taking in details. I enjoy it. But I didn’t like to ask anyone if this was normal, just in case it wasn’t.
I was watching Kim cross the market square when Sally, who works in Dowerby’s little Co-op in the afternoons, joined me. Sally had also given Kim an undisguised stare, even turning her head as she passed by. She sat opposite me and leaned over to chuck Rosie under the chin. “So that’s the new ace reporter,” she said.
“Nick didn’t tell me she was a supermodel.” She grinned. “Bet he didn’t tell you, either.”
I shrugged. “Well. I don’t think Nick will be having that much to do with her.”
“Hah!” Sally gave me a bit of a leer. “She’ll be beating the men off with a stick.”
Sally made me wince, but Nick seemed to think she was a laugh. She managed to get a coffee brought to her at the table just by nodding at Jim from the other side of the café. “So,” she said, leaning back and smiling at me. “Busy day?” It was only later I realised she was probably being sarcastic.
Kim didn’t have a good first morning. A van driver and the flower shop owner had sworn at her for the way she’d parked her car. She was thrown out of the café for doing what she said was a ‘vox pop’, which involved asking customers’ opinions on some local story. I knew Kim had asked permission from a young assistant, who’d just shrugged, but when Jim came in from the kitchen he sent her out as if she was a naughty schoolgirl.
I told all this to Nick when he called home at lunchtime. He shook his head and laughed. “Do me a favour, Maura,” he said. “There’s a big envelope by the phone with a load of details about Dowerby Fair in it. Will you drop it off at the newspaper office for me? Give you a chance to apologise to Ace Reporter for the local yokels and their bad manners.”
And so I did. I planned to drop it through the office letterbox, but the envelope was too big so I rang the doorbell. Nothing happened so I pushed open the door, hoisted Rosie onto my hip and climbed the staircase, with its shabby, brown carpet and its musty smell. I tapped on the door at the top of the stairs and Kim put her head round it. “Hi?” she said, with caution in her voice.
“Hi. I’m sorry to bother you. Your bell isn’t working. I’ve got this to give you.”
Kim gave me a small smile. “Is it explosive?”
I smiled back. “No, it’s very dull. It’s stuff about Dowerby Fair. Have you had a tough day?”
“Tough? I feel like I’ve stumbled onto the set of
The Wicker Man
.” She held out her hand. “I’m Kim.”
“Maura. Hi, again.”
“Nice to see a friendly face. I’ve just made some tea, will you join me?” I hung back. Kim held her arms out. “Please?” So I sat down on a huge, black chair with a torn, fake leather cover. Rosie sat on the floor and Kim made a bit of a fuss of her, giving her a biscuit. “What did you say this was?”
“It’s about Dowerby Fair.”
“Right.” Kim looked blank.
“Well, my husband, Nick, he’s on the fair committee and he wants to get some publicity for it. Umm, if you would, that is. I don’t know how these things work. Getting stuff in the papers, I mean. This fair happens every summer and it’s quite a big thing for Dowerby. People dress up in medieval costume and there are stalls in the market place. The big thing is a sort of re-enactment of history. It’s like a court where they put women on the ducking stool or in the stocks, that sort of thing, like they would’ve done, a few centuries ago.”
“You mean they don’t do that all the time here anyway?” said Kim, wrinkling her nose.
I grinned. “Don’t think they’d get away with it. But it’s a bit of a crowd-pleaser, so Nick says it’s a good thing to do. It always brings the TV cameras in. And he says the women queue up for it, they love it. Apparently.”
She looked at me quizzically and it suddenly seemed hilarious. We both burst out laughing.
Later, I told Nick all about her. “She had a really grim day. No-one helping her, everyone treating her like she’d just landed. Awful. I felt ashamed.”
He was bouncing Rosie on his knee. “She’ll soon settle in.”
“Well, Nick, I’ve asked her round for supper on Thursday. Is that okay?”
He stared at me. “Sure. Of course. Bloody hell, Maura, that’s not like you.”
“What isn’t?”
“Being social. Letting someone in the house without me forcing you to.”
I frowned, “God, Nick. I’m not that bad.”
People came from all parts of the country to live in Dowerby, even though the joke is that everyone there is interbred. There is actually an RAF base, the factory where Nick worked, and of course the district council, all attracting lots of professional men with wives in tow - although rarely, for some reason, professional women with husbands in tow. I was never sure if this was because the employers in Dowerby didn’t tend to take on women or whether career women just don’t move around and expect their families to follow them, the way that men do. Or maybe most women just had more sense than to come here.
The first thing these newcomers remark on is the weather. It’s so cold! It was March when Kim arrived to take up her new job, but in spite of the shocks of garish daffodils splashed along every patch of grass, there was little sign of spring in the temperature. The very sight of a daffodil still makes me shiver, because spring in the north of England is always so bitter. It’s as if there is a different sun, one that blinds you with its light and makes your eyes smart, but offers no heat whatsoever. A sunny spring day in London warms you up.
Kim, I remember, didn’t bow to the climate much. She wore jackets rather than jumpers and very short skirts. She said that people kept staring at her legs, women just as often as men. “I don’t know what you expect,” I said. “I think you like it, really.”
“I tell you,” she complained one day, “this woman looked at me this morning, like I was some sort of alien. She was wearing maroon tights – big thick ones – and green shoes. I mean, how can you go round looking like that? And if you do, how can you judge other people?”
But it wasn’t all hostility. Kim was actually a good reporter. It was very hard to dislike her, even if you wanted to. She was very pleasant to talk to. She smiled a lot, and had a sweet, trustworthy sort of face. Her editor was pleased with her. People in Dowerby grudgingly said the town was getting some good coverage in the
Evening News
...
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