TP Fielden - The Riviera Express

‘Bit of a waste going to meet the 4.30,’ she persisted. ‘There’s only Gerald Hennessy on board . . .’ (and an encounter with a garrulous, prosy, self-obsessed matinée idol might make me late for my choir practice, she might have added).

‘Hennessy?’ The editor put down his pipe with a clunk. ‘Now that’s news!’

‘Oh?’ snipped Miss Dimont. ‘You said you hated The Conqueror and the Conquered . “Not very manly for a VC”, I think were your words. You objected to the length of his hair.’

‘Rrrr.’

‘Even though he had been lost in the Burmese jungle for three years.’

Mr Rhys performed his usual backflip. ‘Hennessy,’ he ordered.

It was enough. Miss Dimont noted that, once again, the editor had deserted his journalistic principles in favour of celebrity worship. Rhys enjoyed the perquisite accorded him by the Picturedrome of two back stalls seats each week. He had actually enjoyed The Conqueror and the Conquered so much he sat through it twice.

Miss Dimont did not know this, but anyone who had played as many square-jawed warriors as Gerald Hennessy was always likely to find space in the pages of the Riviera Express . Something about heroism by association, she had noted in the past, was at the root of her editor’s lofty decisions. That all went back to the War, of course.

‘Four-thirty it is, then,’ she said a trifle bitterly. ‘But Church v. Law – now there’s a story that might have been followed up by the nationals,’ and with that she swept out, notebook flapping from her raffia bag.

This parting shot was a reference to the long-standing feud between the editor and his senior reporter. After all, Rudyard Rhys had made the wrong call on not only the Hamilton Biscuit Case, but the Vicar’s Longboat Party, the Temple Regis Tennis Scandal and the Football Pools Farrago. Each of these exclusives from the pen of Judy Dimont had been picked up by the repulsive Arthur Shrimsley, an out-to-grass former Fleet Street type who made a killing by selling them on to the national papers, at the same time showing up the Riviera Express for the newspaper it was – hesitant, and slow to spot its own scoops when it had them.

On each occasion the editor’s decision had been final – and wrong. But Judy was no saint either, and the cat’s cradle of complaint triggered by her coverage of the Regis Conservative Ball last winter still made for a chuckle or two in the sub-editors’ room on wet Thursday afternoons.

With her raffia bag swinging furiously, she stalked out to the car park, for Judy Dimont was resolute in almost everything she did, and her walk was merely the outer manifestation of that doughty inner being – a purposeful march which sent out radar-like warnings to flag-day sellers, tin-can rattlers, and other such supplicants and cleared her path as if by miracle. It was not manly, for Miss Dimont was nothing if not feminine, but it was no-nonsense.

She took no nonsense, either, from Herbert, her trusty moped, who sat expectantly, awaiting her arrival. With one cough, Herbert was kicked into life and the magnificent Miss Dimont flew away towards Temple Regis railway station, corkscrew hair flapping in the wind, a happy smile upon her lips. For there was nothing she liked more than to go in search of new adventures – whether they were to be found in the Magistrates’ Court, the Horticultural Society, or the railway station.

Her favourite route took in Tuppenny Row, the elegant terrace of Regency cottages whose brickwork had turned a pale pink with the passage of time, bleached by Temple Regis sun and washed by its soft rains. She turned into Cable Street, then came down the long run to the station, whose yellow-and-chocolate bargeboard frontage you could glimpse from the top of the hill, and Miss Dimont, with practice born of long experience, started her descent just as the sooty, steamy clouds of vapour from the Riviera Express slowed in preparation for its arrival at Regis Junction.

She had done her homework on Gerald Hennessy and, despite her misgivings about missing the choir practice, she was looking forward to their encounter, for Miss Dimont was far from immune to the charms of the opposite sex. Since the War, Hennessy had become the perfect English hero in the nation’s collective imagination – square-jawed, crinkle-eyed, wavy-haired and fair. He spoke so nicely when asked to deliver his lines, and there was always about him an air of amused self-deprecation which made the nation’s mothers wish him for their daughters, if not secretly for themselves.

Miss Dimont brought Herbert to a halt, his final splutter of complaint lost in the clanking, wheezing riot of sooty chaos which signals the arrival of every self-regarding Pullman Express. Across the station courtyard she spotted Terry Eagleton, the Express ’s photographer, and made towards him as she pulled the purple gloves from her hands.

‘Anyone apart from Hennessy?’

‘Just ’im, Miss Dim.’

‘I’ve told you before, call me Judy,’ she said stuffily. The dreaded nickname had been born out of an angry tussle with Rudyard Rhys, long ago, over a front-page story which had gone wrong. Somehow it stuck, and the editor took a fiendish delight in roaring it out in times of stress. Bad enough having to put up with it from him – though invariably she rose above – but no need to be cheeked by this impertinent snapper. She had mixed feelings about Terry Eagleton.

‘Call me Judy,’ she repeated sternly, and got out her notebook.

‘Ain’t your handle, anyways,’ parried Terry swiftly, and he was right – for Miss Dimont had a far more euphonious name, one she kept very quiet and for a number of good reasons.

Terry busily shifted his camera bag from one shoulder to the other. Employed by his newspaper as a trained observer, he could see before him a bespectacled woman of a certain age – heading towards fifty, surely – raffia bag slung over one shoulder, notebook flapping out of its top, with a distinctly harassed air and a permanently peppery riposte. Though she was much loved by all who knew her, Terry sometimes found it difficult to see why. It made him sigh for Doreen, the sweet young blonde newly employed on the front desk, who had difficulty remembering people’s names but was indeed an adornment to life.

Miss Dimont led the way on to Platform 1.

‘Pics first,’ said Terry.

‘No, Terry,’ countered Miss Dim. ‘You take so long there’s never time left for the interview.’

‘Picture’s worth a thousand words, they always say. How many words are you goin’ to write – two hundred ?’

The same old story. In Fleet Street, always the old battle between monkeys and blunts, and even here in sweetest Devon the same old manoeuvring based on jealousy, rivalry and the belief that pictures counted more than words or, conversely, words enhanced pictures and gave them the meaning and substance they otherwise lacked.

And so this warring pair went to work, arriving on the platform just as the doors started to swing open and the holidaymakers began to alight. It was always a joyous moment, thought Miss Dimont, this happy release from confinement into sunshine, the promise of uncountable pleasures ahead. A small girl raced past, her face a picture of joy, pigtails given an extra bounce by the skip in her step.

The routine on these occasions was always the same – if a single celebrity was to be interviewed, he or she would be ushered into the first-class waiting room in order to be relieved of their innermost secrets. If more than one, the likeliest candidate would be pushed in by Terry, while Judy quickly handed the others her card, enquiring discreetly where they were staying and arranging a suitable time for their interrogation.