The Three of U.S.: A New Life in New York. Peter Godwin
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office window, trying to compose a memo breaking the news to the editor.
The truth is I am not a real foreign correspondent at all. I have no desire to zoom across the country clutching an overnight bag and a laptop, forever on call. I took this posting simply because I’ve always loved New York. As it turns out the job is largely office based, relying heavily on rewriting the New York papers and watching cable news. My colleague in Washington, Ed Vulliamy, calls it ‘lift ’n’ view’.
When I do try to engage in original journalism and hit the phone, no one has heard of the paper. This morning I am trying to get a comment on ‘zero tolerance’ from the NYPD press office.
‘Hello. It’s Joanna Coles from the Guardian,’ I say.
‘Where?’
‘The Guardian.’
‘La Guardia? The airport?’
‘No. The Guardian. It’s a British newspaper.’
‘Really? Never heard of it.’
The bureau itself depresses me. Though I should not complain about the location, in midtown on 44th Street sandwiched between Fifth and Sixth Avenue, the office itself reminds me of the shabby sets invariably used in amateur productions of Death of a Salesman. The windows are so fudged with dirt that I can barely tell if it’s raining. The glass top on the desk is shattered, its loosely arranged shards an industrial accident in waiting. The chair, a concave scoop of leatherette which has long since stopped revolving, has a two-inch nail sticking out of the left arm.
When I raise the issue with the foreign editor he is unsympathetic, assuming that I am exaggerating in the hope that he will allow me to refurbish with Philippe Starck accessories. Besides, he keeps reminding me, I am lucky to have an office at all. Most foreign correspondents are now required to work from a computer propped up in the back bedroom at home, something which would probably drive me mad.
Wednesday, 20 May Peter
Joanna tells me that The Expectant Father will make me more understanding of what she is going through. I flip through the book and it falls open at an early page which advises me that the correct way to announce to my friends that Joanna is expecting a child is to say, ‘We are pregnant.’ I try saying it aloud. ‘We are pregnant’ ‘We are pregnant.’ It sounds absurd. I cannot bring myself to do this in public.
It is true however that I have been putting on some weight since the conception. John, also pregnant, has alerted me to Couvade’s Syndrome, a condition suffered by fathers-to-be. Couvade comes from the French word, to hatch, and victims of the syndrome experience phantom pregnancies. I try out the idea on Joanna and she suggests that I might go to the gym more often.
I fall back on the thought that, rather like a beautiful Italian peasant girl who, having snared a husband, rapidly inflates into a moustachioed pasta pudding, I am perhaps relaxing into middle age, propelled by fatherhood.
Later I am consoled somewhat by a news item on the Rolling Stone, Keith Richards, the bad boy of rock ‘n’ roll. It is reported that he has broken several ribs. This injury has not been inflicted in some night club brawl, however, or while trashing a hotel room. He has, in fact, sustained it in a nasty fall from the ladder in his library while trying to retrieve a volume from the top shelf. I wonder what the book was: Proust? Dickens? Or perhaps a leather-bound edition of the New Musical Express?
Eventually, it seems, a Rolling Stone does gather moss.
Thursday, 21 May Joanna
My office is on the sixteenth floor and offers a Hopperesque view across the street and into the offices opposite, where I watch the other hunch-spined workers twisted over their terminals. I like being up high, but I worry about the bank of elevators, which, I have learned, sometimes stop unaccountably between floors.
The first time this happened was between the eighth and ninth floors and I was alone and felt reluctant to press the red alarm in case it triggered a general evacuation and froze the lift altogether.
After waiting about two minutes, I tentatively pressed the button. It gave an unimpressive little buzz.
‘Hello,’ said a bored voice through the intercom.
‘I seem to be stuck,’ I said, trying not to sound panicky.
‘Yeah,’ said the voice, pausing. ‘You are.’
‘Well, can you get it going again?’
‘Yeah, the functions need resetting.’
‘Well, can you sort it out?’
‘Yeah, yeah. Don’t panic’
‘I’m not panicking, I just want to get out.’
‘OK, OK.’
Nothing happened so, assuming it might take some minutes, I started on a muffin and opened the New York Post. I was reading the Page Six gossip column, which is usually in fact on page eight, when my eye slipped to a headline on the opposite page: ‘WOMAN NARROWLY MISSES DROWNING IN ELEVATOR’.
I read on to discover that a woman and her Jack Russell terrier had been trapped in a lift after traipsing down to the basement to do her laundry. Unbeknown to her, workmen in the street outside had accidentally cracked a water main, which started flooding the basement and cutting the power. Eventually the water started creeping into the lift, where she was frantically pressing the alarm button. As the water kept rising she kept screaming, until her husband, worried at her delay, went down to investigate and finally heard her. By now the water was up to her neck. In order to save her dog’s life, as the water rose, she had lifted him onto her head, where he had sat barking madly throughout their ordeal.
I pressed the button again.
‘Yeah?’
‘What’s going on?’
‘I told ya, I’m resetting the functions.’
‘But how long is it going to take?’
‘Another couple of minutes. I told ya, stop panicking, OK?’
Two minutes later the car duly jerked back into life and I ascended to my floor, where there was an exasperated voicemail from the foreign editor wanting to know where I was.
Thursday, 21 May Peter
I have no inclination to read The Expectant Father, but am somehow drawn to it, almost titillated by the horror of what lies ahead. It warns me that Joanna may now exhibit violent mood swings as her hormones fizz with new life. My real worry is not the mood swings themselves, but her use of pregnancy as an all-purpose excuse for bad behaviour. She is already a skilful practitioner of premenstrual tension. By spicing it with the odd display of coquettishness and an occasional glancing apology, she can shroud bad behaviour for up to three weeks out of every four.
Now Joanna has nine months’ access to the one excuse that tops PMT. I am filled with apprehension that she will seize upon her condition to behave as disruptively as she pleases. And though I’m determined to be stoical and tolerant, I suspect that this restraint on my part will only provoke her further.
Swallowing my panic at the turn of events, I grab my kit and head for the gym. I will exercise my way out of this anxiety. The lift doors part to reveal a neighbour who is an actor and his dog, a grinning Labrador with a red polka-dotted bandanna round its neck. The dog thumps its tail on the floor and, unsolicited, puts its paw up to be shaken. His owner and I exchange small talk. ‘I’m up to my neck in Rosie’s taxes,’ he complains, patting the dog. ‘I calculate that she’s earned more appearing in commercials this tax year than I have. And there’s only so many vet’s bills and dog food that I can write off.’
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