Transcription by Kate Atkinson

Author:Kate Atkinson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: Penguin Random House UK
Published: 2018-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

‘Back to the hum-drum, eh, miss?’ Cyril said.

‘’Fraid so, Cyril.’

How wrong they were. ‘Hum-drum’ was the very last word that could be used to describe the horror of what happened next.

1950

Technical Hitch

JULIET RETURNED FROM Moretti’s, arming herself mentally for the afternoon’s recording of Past Lives. The bolshy girl on reception was missing – consumed for lunch by the Minotaur in the basement, presumably. In her place Daisy Gibbs was hovering. A beast would think twice about eating her – edible but indigestible, Juliet thought. ‘Oh, there you are, Miss Armstrong,’ she said. ‘I wondered where you were.’

‘I was at lunch,’ Juliet said. ‘I’m not late. Hardly, anyway. Is there a problem? With Past Lives?’

‘Perhaps.’ Daisy smiled. She was both enigmatic and unflappable. It made her hard to read. She would be a gift to the Service. You could never be entirely sure if she was being ironic or merely diffident. Again, a good trait for the Service.

‘We’ve got a late scratch, I’m afraid,’ Daisy said. ‘We’re a woman down,’ she added, leading the way to Juliet’s office as if she might be unsure of her own way there.

‘Jessica Hastie?’ Juliet guessed.

‘Yes. The Miller’s Wife’s a non-runner, I fear. She was also playing the Small Girl, who now seems to have leprosy. You changed the script quite a lot, I noticed.’

‘I did,’ Juliet admitted. ‘There was no disease in it. There was nothing but disease in the Middle Ages, I expect.’

‘Yes, and we seem to be ignoring the Black Death completely,’ Daisy said. ‘I had been rather looking forward to that. I’ve made new copies anyway.’

‘Where is Miss Hastie?’

‘I think she imbibed a bit too much at lunch. I corralled her in an empty studio. She was being somewhat disruptive in the Green Room.’ Their Green Room was tiny and Juliet could only imagine the panic that a sodden Jessica Hastie could cause in there.

‘She’s known as a bit of a lush, I’m afraid,’ Juliet said. ‘I’ll go and see her. We’ll start on time, don’t worry.’

‘I won’t,’ Daisy said. ‘It’ll be all right.’

Past Lives, as the title might indicate, was a series about the way people lived in the past, although for a moment Juliet had hoped that it would involve reincarnation. The Juniors’ collective imagination might be fired by that. They would all want to come back as dogs, of course – the boys anyway. (Juliet visited quite a few classrooms as part of the job.) ‘Workaday lives,’ Joan Timpson had told her. ‘Bringing Everyman to life through the ages. The ordinary man – and woman, of course – and the society they lived in.’ There was a subtle – and perhaps not so subtle – emphasis in Schools on citizenship. Juliet wondered if it was to counter the instinct towards Communism.

Most history for schools was of the dramatized kind. Straight facts were inclined to give them ‘hard times’, Joan Timpson had said, pleased with the allusion. (‘I hope I’m no Gradgrind!’) The war had made the world weary of facts, Juliet supposed.

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