Paul Magrs - Mystery Lady

He looked just a little bit nervous to me. ‘Come on, Tim. Don’t be scared. This is everything you ever dreamed of. All those years you’ve spent building up to this! Hospital Radio. Local Radio. Pirate Radio. National Radio. The Breakfast Show. And now television! This is your moment of glory, at last!’

He looked sheepish. ‘I know. I’ve just got this queer feeling… that something is going to happen. Something is going to go wrong. Someone’s going to get electrocuted or say something rude live on air, or I’m going to forget my words or freeze or something…’

‘Nothing bad is going to happen…’ I tried to reassure him.

‘I just have a feeling that there’s something… nasty on its way,’ he shivered.

I gave him a huge hug. ‘You do look a nana in that get-up, sweetie.’

Cassandra told him: ‘Well, I think you look very dashing and handsome, Timothy.’

But, as ever, Timothy looked straight through her.

Then the director came bustling in with a script and notes. He was fierce and businesslike. It was almost time for the show.

Cassandra and I went to our place in the crowd on the church’s dance floor and we stayed there all evening .

We had a lovely time!

And everything went swimmingly.

Timothy didn’t slip up once and, from what I could tell, the camera loved him. He was funny and spontaneous and handsome as anything.

Nothing nasty happened that night.

Silly old Timothy. I scoffed at him – what the devil did he think was going to happen?

Hello, there, I’m Cassandra. Dodie’s indispensable assistant. I get her from A to B and all points in between.

So, here we are actually on ‘Smashing Tunes’! Actually on the telly! There’s not much space for dancing. Those cameras come thundering across the floor and everyone has to scatter. All the kids they’ve let in are stomping about and jabbing their elbows and waggling their heads like crazy. The music thunders out of speakers and all the old foundation stones of the church are vibrating with the beat.

We dance to Mervin and his Mop-heads. Gary and the Gonks. And then there’s a slow sung by the classy Glaswegian songstress, Brenda Soobie, who stands under a spotlight in a lovely purple gown.

Ooh, the whole thing’s gorgeous. It feels like the centre of the universe here.

And doesn’t Dodie look happy and carefree? However, I know that’s not the case. She’s very deep, is my friend and employer, Dodie. She might look serenely beautiful on the outside, but sometimes her mind is far away, working on puzzles much too strange and obscure for me to even imagine.

It’s while we’re dancing to the new number by Peter and Penelope that a thought strikes me out of nowhere.

Dodie’s letter! I’ve been carrying it around in my handbag for three days!

How could I be so silly?

She frowns at me as I start rummaging around in my handbag in the middle of the song.

‘What are you doing?’ she hisses.

Then I’ve got it. It’s a letter on very fancy, creamy paper. Very expensive. It’s direct from a classy publisher in Bloomsbury, London: Mephistopheles and Company.

Dodie takes it from me with a frown, never once losing the beat as she shimmies and shakes to the up-tempo chorus. She scans the page and her eyes light up. ‘Oh, hurray!’ she shouts out. ‘How marvelous!’

Several of our fellow dancers glance over at her, wondering what’s going on.

She grabs my elbow and we wriggle through the crowd, away from the glare of the television cameras, into an obscure nook of the church.

‘I’m so sorry, Dodie. I’ve been meaning to give you this for days. It arrived at the end of last week.’

She waves away my words, scanning the contents of the letter again. ‘They want to see me. The editorial director, Mr Henry Duke, wants me to come to his London office for a meeting… the day after tomorrow!’

Now I feel really awful. We’re only just in time. Suppose I’d not remembered about the letter till after the suggested meeting? She might have missed her chance with this prestigious publisher.

‘Mephistopheles and Company, Cassandra…!’ Dodie gasps. ‘Just think! Imagine being published by a company like that!’

I share her excitement. Her career is one of my biggest concerns. I want her to do well. She so deserves it.

‘We’re on our way, Cassie!’ she smiles. ‘This is the start of something exciting and big, I think!’

The Peter and Penelope duet finishes and we all applaud wildly. Then our lovely Timothy is back in the spotlight, giving the rundown to the chart’s top ten singles.

And before we know it, ‘Smashing Tunes’ is over.

The show finishes with a rousing, up-tempo Motown number and glitter falling from the rafters as we all dance ourselves dizzy until the cameras stop rolling and the floor manager tells us that we’re no longer live on air. Everyone gives themselves a huge round of applause.

‘Well, that was quite good, wasn’t it?’ Dodie says, as we fight through the surging crowd towards Timothy’s dressing room. ‘And didn’t he do a good job?’

But we find Timothy in his tiny dressing room just about on the verge of tears.

‘Whatever’s the matter?’ Dodie rushes to him.

‘I was just awful,’ he sobs.

‘You’re always like this!’ she laughs. ‘I remember you having this reaction after our junior school nativity play when you were the Angel Gabriel. And you were fabulous then, too.’

He shakes his head despairingly. ‘No, no, they’ll never ask me again, and I’ll be a laughing stock in show business.’

‘Rubbish!’ Dodie scoffs. ‘You, my lovely, are going to be a huge, huge star.’

And then she offers to take him out for a celebratory slap-up meal. ‘At the Taj Mahal!’

This perks him up.

It takes him quite some time to change into slightly less outrageous clothes, and then to say his farewells to all the crew and the pop stars. Everyone congratulates him on his expert hosting of the show, but he modestly shrugs off their compliments. . He’s so vulnerable, really.

We open the church doors and step out into the dark night. It’s chilly and the street is filled with fans and policemen and waiting vehicles. Timothy signs a few autographs, then Dodie drags us off in the direction of her Jaguar.

She loves a good curry, does Dodie, and she knows just where to get one here in Manchester.

All through the poppadums and sundries we were talking about Timmy’s show. We considered every single moment from every conceivable angle, and I reassured him that I had never witnessed a finer hour of pop TV – or any other kind of TV – in all my life. Then the bhajis arrived and I was wondering if it would be rude to change the subject and break into my own news now?

The Taj Mahal’s owner, genial Uncle Sayeed, brought us beer and extra little treats and he clapped Timothy on the back, offering hearty congratulations.

Timothy was glowing with pride and hot spices by now.

Cassie leaned across to whisper at me: ‘Tell him your news. Tell him about London tomorrow.’

And so I did.

His eyes gleamed. ‘Dodie, that’s brilliant! You’re actually going to be in ‘The Horrible Book of Terror’..?’

I smile and nod. ‘Volume Number 27. Edited by the infamous Fox Soames.’

‘Oh my God,’ Timothy stared at me. ‘Do you remember, Dodie? When we used to bunk off from school on summer afternoons and go and sit in the long grass on the waste ground by the Secret Lake and read out those stories to each other? We’d scare each other half daft…’

I laughed at the memory, and I was so glad he brought it up. Timothy more than anyone else understood what having a story accepted for this annual anthology meant to me.