By Naomi Gryn
“Once I was like you,” Norman sighed,
resting his cigar stub in the ashtray. “Hungry for work and no idea how to find
my way in the world.”
Paul moved his microphone closer,
wondering if he should interrupt the old man’s flow with a question. Sitting in the bar at the East India Club,
it was hard to imagine that Norman Clark, now in his 80s with a carved walking
stick resting against his leather armchair, had ever eaten baked beans straight
from a tin to save on his next gas bill.
This was Paul’s first feature for The
Times, and he wanted to make a big impression. Sharing a one bedroom flat in Stockwell with a medical student
was far from the dream that had led him to leave Liverpool. They had a rota for who slept in the bedroom
and who got the sofa bed. Working
twenty hours a week teaching English as a second language was about as
glamorous as cutting toenails and it only barely covered the rent.
He had sent an email to the features
editor suggesting an interview with Norman Clark, the reclusive owner of a
group of newspapers, and had yelped with joy when he got an answer. Just one line, no capitals: “1200 wds on spec by end of week.” His godmother, Sally, the resident
astrologer on one of Clark’s papers, had suggested the assignment and helped
him make contact with the tycoon. Okay,
so it wasn’t exactly a commission, but at least he hadn’t been ignored and
besides, what else would he be doing today?
Reading a book at the lido?
“Is that thing on?” Norman asked,
gesturing towards Paul’s MiniDisk recorder.
“Don’t want to have to repeat myself.”
Paul checked. Yes, it was
recording; the levels were fine. Maybe
he’d be able to sell the interview to a radio station as well. Paul nodded.
“You probably think things weren’t as
difficult in the thirties, before women got it into their daft heads that they
could interfere in a man’s world, before every half-wit with a laptop computer
fancied himself as a writer, but actually things have never been easier. Especially for outsiders.”
“Outsiders?” Paul queried.
Norman raised his eyebrow. “You know,
foreigners. Aliens. I’m what they used
to call a kike, a clip-tip, a front wheel skid. What’s the hip slang for us these days?”
Paul flushed, a little
embarrassed. He had read that Norman
had come from Vienna after the Anschluss in 1938, a teenage refugee, but Jews
were always so well-connected, especially in the media, he had half-imagined
that Norman’s path to Fleet Street had been strewn with rose petals. “I’m sorry, do go on. How did you get started?”
“My name in those days wasn’t Norman,
it was Siggy, Sigmund Kahn. My friends
in
Vienna called me Freud, but no one in
London in those days was going to give a job to a cheeky chap called
Siggy.
“It was a summer’s day, a bit like
today, and I didn’t have a bean in my pocket.
I was sharing a room with another refugee who was working nights so I
had to be out in the day while he slept.
Anyway, one day I was busting for a piss but didn’t look old enough to
go into a public house, and had better manners than to relieve myself on the
street.
Paul couldn’t see what this had to do
with Norman’s career as a newspaper proprietor, but from the faraway look on
his face, the old man had gone back in time and Paul thought it better to let
him ramble for a while. “Where was
that, sir?” asked Paul,
deferentially.
“Piccadilly Circus, I recall. Just a few hundred yards from where we sit
right now. Funny that, you can travel a
whole lifetime and hardly move from the spot.
Anyway, I saw a penny on the pavement and picked it up, pretending I was
tying up my shoelaces. I headed
straight for the nearest public convenience, the one next to the Eros
statue. Maybe it’s not there any
more. Heaven knows I wouldn’t go into
one of those places these days, what with all those junkies and perverts and
God knows what other troglodytes. Where
was I? Oh yes, by amazing luck, one of
the toilet doors was opened, so I had my pee and still had my penny as
well.”
Paul couldn’t see where Norman’s story
was leading, and was vaguely starting to regret having followed his godmother’s
advice. If he wanted to work regularly
with The Times, this interview would have to be an ace of spades, not a
joker.
“With that penny, I bought some pencils
from the market, and took them down to Ludgate Circus, where I sold them for a
nice profit to journalists rushing to work and then bought some more. The following week I added notepads and
erasers to my wares and set up a little stall.
I enrolled in an evening class in English and another in shorthand and
started jotting down some stories myself.
One day, one of my regular clients took the trouble to ask me a bit
about myself, where I was from, what I wanted to do, that sort of thing. I showed him one of my articles. A piece about the bowler hat, I think it
was. He asked if he could show it to
his editor and they gave me a job. Not writing
at first, of course, but making tea.
And I brewed the best tea any hack has ever drunk, weird though I
thought it was in those days that you Brits put milk in your tea. Where I come from, you only drink milky tea
when you’re sick.
“The thing is, son, I didn’t have
anything to lose, and since my roommate was out every night, I figured I needed
to improve my lot more than I needed the sleep, so I spent those hours writing
up little vignettes about British life and eventually one of them got
published. But I hadn’t forgotten my
lesson about the pencils and knew that to get out of that vulnerable situation,
I had to start a newspaper myself. The
Fleet Street Messenger I called it.
I wrote under several pseudonyms and sold copies myself outside St
Paul’s station. Amazingly I ran out of
every copy from that first print run. I
invited readers’ contributions and published those too in the next issue.”
Norman paused as he drew on his
cigar. Paul was now listening
attentively. He wondered if Sally knew
Norman’s story and had sent him on this mission for an existential lesson on
how to get on in life.
“I bet you’d like to thank whoever
dropped that penny.”
“No,” said Norman. “The man I’d like to thank is the one who
left open the door of the toilet.”
© Naomi Gryn 2006