GOSSIP CALUMNY - 1/5 - The Daily Routine Disrupted

Henry carefully placed the pen down. That was enough words. He'd reached around the usual limit for his column. Words in his hands, composed in his mind, became these instruments of correction. Applied sparingly but with the desired effect they became a scathing whip. Their only purpose to publicly shame their victim, and to do so hard. Instilled with his version of neo puritanism that was so prevalent these days. No longer religious, it now underlay most modern discourse with its secular strain of self righteousness and mortification.

His colleagues at the Express thought him the last crusty reprobate remaining on the paper. A view reinforced by the fact he wrote all his columns out in pen and ink. Defiantly old tech, a fuddy duddy affectation it maybe, but one that chimed with his insensitivity towards all contemporary moral niceties. The type seemingly always prefaced with hash tags. He'd never justify any of his behaviour or provide reasonings. Didn't feel he had to explain himself, ever. Just so long as his writing was good, delivered on time, who the fuck cared?  

Of course someone else had to type them up. That was his PA Rebecca's  job to sort that out. He never enquired how this actually happened, just so long as it did. On a rare occasion this well oiled process would foul up. The copyist perhaps misinterpreting his illegible inky scrawl, producedf a sentence of uncharacteristic opacity. In such circumstances, it was as though the writer suddenly leapt straight off the page, and punched you in the face. It found its voice, and it was that of a foul mouthed rottweiler, ready to tear limb from limb. Henry, when angered, well, no one wanted that.

Anyway, he'd finished his column for the week. Handed it to his Rebecca. Went out for lunch. He never arranged to meet anyone. Categorically refusing to both eat and talk. Preferring to eat out alone. Everyone else preferred he did too. So much unpleasant slavering, shirt spillages, explosive grunts and derisory laughs as he read through the opposition's papers. His favourite restaurant had a corner reserved specially for him. They screened him off. Where he ate the same lunch every day, steak chips and peas, in a lake of gravy. And without fail there it would be, piping hot, ready for when he'd arrive at midday, on the dot.

He ran his life on this tightly controlled treadmill, and largely on account. Trusting the conscientiousness of his PA to deal with a complex web of monthly payments. Otherwise, lunch might be off, as would his PA. The current one, Rebecca, had worked for him for about a year. A sign of immense skill and tact on her part. Working for Henry Beddington, meant any future job would be a breeze by comparison. Other people respected you instantly, they knew exactly what you'd had to cope with. 

Ditto Patricia Beddington his long suffering and now very ex wife, who'd poured her bruised soul out, delightfully cramming it with colourful anecdotes, to a rival paper. She'd now become an extremely popular TV agony aunt. Dispensing clearly one sided advice, basically of the - all women are terribly good - all men are terribly bad - variety. Henry frequently would regularly feature as an egregious example. About which Henry was privately livid, but publicly affected to be beyond caring. He thought about his revenge all the time. But so far he couldn't quite face the exertion, not to mention expense, of going down the route to litigation. Ever since Oscar Wilde this sort of thing, of defending your bruised ego in court, could so easily backfire. Particularly as his own carefully cultivated abrasive public persona was deliberately meant to rub the liberati up the wrong way, into apoplexy.

His life outside of his writing, had frankly turned into one gigantic tangle of failed or failing relationships. All his disappointments, frustration and anger got siphoned through his columns via the verbal vitriol he dispensed. It was how he processed and resolved issues. By the time he got home after lunch, Rebecca had filtered and sorted his mail out, into Do it Now or They Can Wank For It - piles, anything else passed quickly through vetting and straight into the jaws of a jabbering shredder.  

At the top of the Do It Now was a long handwritten letter from his young wayward, and only son, Chalfont Beddington. In it he was at pains to explain in precise detail to his Father, how he had always felt himself to be really a she, and that she would now quite like Henry to call him Clarrisa from now on. Henry's heart, then jaw dropped, then his temper rose. An expletive ridden response was loudly aired, approximating to - not on your bloody nelly. Until it dawned on him quite how badly all of this might play out once it inevitably hit the tabloids. It was incontrovertibly a bad thing whenever a gossip columnist themselves became the subject of the gossip. 'God, this could be one fuckin feeding frenzy, a five star disaster in a matter of days.'