GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS SHORT STORY PRIZE 2022/23
CHARLOTTE TURNBULL
‘Headshot’
THE DAMAGE TAKES PLACE IN A GLAMOROUS LOCATION. When the new assistant looks up at the building, Soho’s skinny, smoky streets seem to lean towards her new office. It is like the pin at the centre of London’s compass; the pivot of a whole city. There is an unlikely Rowan tree growing from the pavement in front of it. While the city’s plane trees were deliberately planted to withstand pollution, the rowan will have seeded naturally. Where the new assistant comes from, rowans will cultivate inhospitable soil, providing shelter for other saplings – oaks, beeches – which then colonise, thriving once the hard work is done, and eventually dwarfing the rowans. Thinking happily of the moor, the new assistant thinks the rowan is a good sign.
She swipes her card to open the automatic glass doors on the ground floor and thinks she hears the whip of rush-hour heels behind her stop, for a moment, as people notice where she’s going – as they see the actors and actresses staring, moody and flawless, from the posters in the lobby.
But when the new assistant steps out of the lift onto the correct floor, the ceilings are low. The carpets are threadbare and it smells of urine. From reception, she looks towards offices that can only be reached through passages narrowed by explosive shelves of boxes and files and scripts.
The new assistant understands why she was not interviewed here, at the office.
She had met her future boss, Francesca, at an exclusive, members-only club. She waited on a scuffed Chesterfield in front of a mug-stained farmhouse coffee table where her plastic wallet of handwritten notes and pre-prepared questions looked both litigious and childish at once. The other patrons spoke in low voices and wore jeans and shirts and Converse that somehow all shone like pelts. But, during the interview, Francesca laughed at the new assistant’s jokes, with a loud, unselfconscious bellow. Francesca turned heads. She caught eyes with people who waved and smiled. The new assistant believed everyone wished they were in her meeting, having fun.
There are books of renovation plans in reception for the talent to look at. The new assistant flicks through one while she waits to be shown to her desk. On the glossy cover, a jarring photoshopped blue sky hangs above the building, precarious, like it is dangling by strings. In the photograph, the mirrored windows make the building look somehow cleaner than any building is, or can, be – there is no tree in the pavement, let alone a rowan. The assistant turns the page and the interiors gleam – polished floorboards; glinting, empty desks; white, blind computer monitors. There is a computer-generated glint from the glass of framed mock posters covering the walls. Each pretend film is complete with badges of fictional awards.
Wow, the new assistant thinks, one day this place will be perfect.
*
It is the new assistant’s first task every morning to collect and tabulate viewing figures and box-office statistics for all the company’s productions, and those of their competitors. The company keeps a close eye on how everyone else is performing.
On her first day, Francesca waits at the new assistant’s desk, while she prints out a copy of the weekend’s stats. The Managing Director joins her and slowly, other executives are drawn to her desk, like sharks to chum. The Managing Director asks the new assistant to pronounce her name, twice.
‘I’ll never remember that.’ He takes the printout from the printer, still warm, and flicks quickly through at the statistics. ‘You’re Dave.’
Francesca rolls her eyes and grins at Dave.
‘He’s a nightmare,’ she says, kindly.
Dave is flattered to be part of an in-joke, grateful to have her dream job.
The other executives point numbers out to one another, watching for the Managing Director’s reaction. When the Managing Director leaves, he shoves the papers, now cooling, into the bin. The other executives follow suit.
*
Dave arrives early, before Francesca, each day.
The runners and interns are in even earlier. The photocopiers need to warm up. They check and replace toner, paper. The dog room needs airing; fresh bowls of water, clean rugs for the dog beds. Dave thinks that the industry press should do a ‘Star Dogs of Tomorrow’ list, alongside the lists published for the agents, producers, writers, directors, but she never says it out loud. Dave and the other asthmatic assistants keep their inhalers close.
The assistants arrive next. Monitors flash on instantly across the floor – no one ever powers down completely, just in case. Foil-wrapped breakfast orders sweat on their tables. There is a queue for the small office kitchen. People empty low-fat yoghurt and blueberries into bowls, chop lemons for hot water, microwave rice porridge.
Assistants join the company tall and confident from drama schools; pigeon-toed and broke from literature MAs; chaotic and assured from the families of well-known directors, producers, actors. The other assistants like to talk about plays or films they’ve just seen. They want to talk about weaknesses of scripts, and poor choices of cast. Dave loves to listen to them while she does her work. They are clever, insightful. It is a pity, she thinks, that they are only speaking to one other.
‘What did you do before this?’ Dave asks the assistant sitting opposite her who they all call Alan.
‘Nothing,’ Alan says, without looking up. ‘I did nothing.’ She waves Dave away with one hand. Dave notices she is missing half of her little finger.
Dave and the other assistants sit in the open-plan heart of the floor, surrounded by the executive offices. Their bodies are hidden from each other by low cubicle walls. The executives have windows – views across the city – and access to a balcony running around the edge of the building, 17-storeys high; they smoke there after hours, in expensive, sparkling sunsets.
All day, the assistants sit away from the natural light, in strip-lit dark. In the height of summer, Dave wonders, if she were able to look down from the balcony, would she see the rowan below her? Would its ripening fruit look like someone’s chucked a handful of red sequins at it?
*
In the board room, at the end of Dave’s first weekly company meeting, an assistant called Graham puts her hand up.
‘Someone’s blocked our emergency exit,’ she says, ‘with boxes of old DVDs.’
‘The refurbishment—,’ the Managing Director says, ‘ —we’ll deal with all that in the refurbishment.’
After a week in this office, Dave realises the Managing Director means the carpet runners that peel up causing the assistants to trip and stumble daily. He means the taps overshooting the small, individual sinks that make the assistants’ bathroom floor slippery. He means cords snaking across the floor around the photocopier.
‘But, what if there’s a fire?’ Graham says.
The Managing Director looks too serious. ‘We put fires out in this company, darling.’
The executives all laugh at the joke.
‘We could give them to charity,’ Graham says, quietly, pretending to take a note. ‘If no one wants them anymore.’
The executives watch the Managing Director watching Graham.
‘Good idea.’ The Managing Director sighs. ‘We must do what we can for charity.’
The executives nod slowly at what has turned out to be a good idea.
Graham looks like she’s trying not to smile.
*
The first time Dave gets hurt, the Managing Director is walking down the narrow passage with the film star, Jeremy Jones. Dave almost walks into them with a fresh cup of coffee for Francesca.
‘Woah,’ Jeremy Jones shouts. He has a briefcase cuffed to one wrist that he lifts up with both hands as he swings around to avoid her. Not a drop of coffee is spilt.
‘Jesus,’ says the Managing Director. ‘Slow down, Dave.’
‘I’m too valuable for burns.’ Jeremy Jones smiles, but, for some reason, Dave feels sick. ‘It’s OK, darling.’ He reaches out a hand. It slides from Dave’s elbow to her wrist, which feels snappable in his grip. ‘I’m OK, darling,’ Jeremy Jones says, although, it is Dave who would have been scalded.
‘Sorry.’ Francesca comes down the passage and takes the cup from Dave. She stands in front of Dave; she blocks Dave from view. ‘She’s new.’
Francesca and Dave turn sideways, pressing back into the files and boxes to allow the Managing Director and Jeremy Jones through into reception. The briefcase runs over Dave’s thighs briefly. Dave can’t not look at it. The metal casing is smeared, greasy. After they have passed, Dave thinks she can smell something rotting, and brushes off her legs, assuming it is one of the dogs.
‘What’s in the briefcase?’ Dave whispers to Francesca, as they walk back to their desks.
‘None of your business.’ Francesca sucks her cheeks in until her lips square together, blunt as a mallet.
Another executive crosses the office and leans against Francesca to speak in a low voice. ‘How,’ she says, ‘has he not been cancelled yet?’
‘I know,’ Francesca says. The narrow passage way is like a telescope as they watch Jeremy Jones in reception. He runs a finger back and forth over the cuff around his wrist, as he speaks to the Managing Director.
Francesca reaches out to take a document from Dave’s desk and seems to stumble slightly, pouring her entire cup of boiling coffee onto Dave’s lap. Dave only registers a moment after the steaming liquid has soaked through her thin, polyester trousers onto the skin of her thighs. She stands up, fast, and pulls the wet fabric from her legs. She can’t believe it happened.
‘And what is in that disgusting briefcase?’ Francesca brings her cup to her face, hugging it with her whole hand like it is precious – kissing its lip – looking from Dave to the other executive with playful eyebrows.
Dave smiles at Francesca. Dave knows Francesca is under a lot of pressure and assumes that Francesca had not seen her there; not remembered she had hot coffee in her hand; didn’t realise what she’d done.
Francesca looks into her mug, and sees it empty.
‘Could I have another, please?’ She places the cup back onto Dave’s desk and both executives go, arms folded, lips hard, back into their respective offices.
Dave stares at her hot, damp lap, then at the floor. She looks for a piece of curling carpet, but sees nothing to explain the sudden trip. Somehow, she thinks, the executives always know exactly where to tread.
When she looks up again, Alan is using powder to cover up a bruise on her cheek bone.
*
It is a busy fortnight. Dave encourages Francesca to go home when her head drops slowly in front of her computer screen. Dave makes a joke of walking backwards, waving paperwork like a carrot so Francesca will leave her office, to stagger into the lift, into the cab waiting for her at the entrance of the building.
Dave, herself, can’t afford a cab, or the hours lost to night buses. She sleeps on the sofa in the dog room; sometimes on the sofa in Francesca’s office when the dog room is taken by another assistant. In the mornings, the assistants give each other privacy to strip-wash in the leaky bathroom. Afterwards, they each mop up the floor with the thin ply toilet tissue and Dave learns to keep fresh underwear in her drawer, between the energy drinks and tampons. None of the assistants mention this to their bosses, not since they were all given a serious warning about using the office outside office hours – apparently the company is not covered for this by their health and safety insurance.
After another late night, Francesca comes into the office at lunchtime. She stands behind Dave’s chair, smelling of alcohol. Francesca strokes Dave’s long hair, smooths it across Dave’s shoulders, and then invites her into a meeting.
‘We’ve got to give you development opportunities,’ Francesca says. ‘You can’t keep shuffling paper forever.’
Dave glances across to the other assistants, hoping someone else has heard this.
Dave is excited. She reads every draft of every script that comes into Francesca’s inbox, in her own time though – in the evenings, at weekends, on holidays – because on work time she is supposed to be handling the diary, or running out to get Francesca’s lunch and dry cleaning. The meeting is about a thriller, but a quiet one. It’s one of those stories, she thinks, where the story isn’t really about what the story is about.
During the meeting, neither Francesca nor the casting director look at Dave. Dave takes notes and, eventually, asks the age range for the female lead.
‘Why has she gone so red?’ Francesca nods at Dave, but looks at the casting director, smiling. ‘Are you nervous or something?’ she says, spreading a pile of head shots across the floor with one toe.
‘I don’t know, Francesca.’ Dave’s voice breaks out high. She truly doesn’t know, but realises she is, now, blushing.
The casting director twists a glossy black and white photograph of a famous actor, back and forth between his hands.
‘The problem is,’ the man says, suddenly throwing it to the floor with the rest, ‘The problem is I wouldn’t fuck her.’
‘Yes,’ says Francesca, sounding tired. ‘That is the problem. Dave, can we have some lunch?’
By the time Dave returns with two bespoke salads, the meeting is over, the casting director has gone, and Francesca is compiling contracts at Dave’s desk.
‘I’m not too good to do my own stapling.’ Francesca says mildly, when Dave tries to take over. So, instead, Dave collects the papers into the correct order and holds them straight, while Francesca staples.
Francesca lines the stapler up again and, looking out into reception, she leans her full weight onto it, before Dave has a chance drawn her hand away. A pin of the staple runs through the soft, thin stretch between Dave’s thumb and first finger.
Dave shakes her hand slightly, like she might just shake the document off. She realises that her body is now part of a signatory copy of a contract, and she thinks she might faint. But when she looks up for help, Francesca is back in her office, leaving Dave to do the rest of her stapling.
*
There are perks – the odd premiere, parties, a set visit, once – but no one ever wants to speak to Dave at those things and Dave never receives a plus one. She learns to hug the walls at events, pretending to send emails. Dave’s friends always ask about it – the nurses, the teachers, the solicitors – they always want to know who she’s met; she’s better than the Daily Mail app, they tell her. But Dave’s actual favourite thing about her job is that, from her desk, she can see the reception area. She can watch actors, directors and other talent sit there, checking their phones, staring into space, behaving like normal people. For some reason, no one ever asks about the ripped sofas. They seem content to ignore the nervy smell of dog urine.
Dave emails her friends, as a group, the day an actor they all love is coming into the office. They know her from a science fiction show they had watched together at university. The actor moved back home from Los Angeles to London, Dave tells her friends, after the show ended suddenly.
Before the meeting Francesca watches an episode of the show in her office.
‘This is a good one,’ Dave says, from Francesca’s doorway. ‘This one is good.’
‘You really have to know what you’re doing with sci fi,’ Francesca says, shaking her head, leaning back in her chair and sighing.
‘They did,’ Dave says.
‘They didn’t,’ Francesca says, looking at Dave, laughing at her. ‘Because they were cancelled.’
After the meeting, Francesca shows the woman out of her office and Dave asks her to sign one of the headshots they’ve been sent by her agent.
‘Ah, sweet.’ Francesca pats Dave on the back, and smiles at the actor. The actor signs the headshot, distracted, and Francesca leads her out into reception.
Dave pins the headshot above her desk, but when Francesca returns, she pulls the shredder out from under Dave’s desk.
As Francesca pulls the headshot off the wall, she somehow gets her fist tangled in Dave’s hair. She turns the shredder on and shoves the headshot through it, hair and all.
Dave’s neck clicks as she realises what has happened. Her head is dragged down, and Francesca has gone back into her office. Not wanting to draw the office’s attention, Dave grabs blindly, silently, to switch the shredder off, quickly pulling the power cord out at the back.
As the shredder whirrs down, the actor comes back to Dave’s desk and looks down at her.
‘Would you mind calling me a cab, sweetheart?’ she says.
Dave twists around on the floor to sit up, head still inches from the metal teeth. She picks up the shredder to balance it on her lap, to sit at the desk and reach for her headset. ‘Please have a seat in reception. I’ll come and get you when the cab’s here.’
Later, at her desk, her remaining hair clipped up, Dave has replies in her inbox from her friends. How was it? they ask. Did you speak to her? Did you do the salute?
Dave feels embarrassed for them, and deletes the messages without replying.
*
At the end of the month, the Managing Director goes into Francesca’s office.
‘Wait,’ Francesca shouts, as the Managing Director closes the door behind him. He lowers the partition blinds, blocking the light from Francesca’s window and tilting Dave’s desk into the dark. Alan and the other assistants get up, leave their desks, carrying scripts for photocopying and empty mugs to return to the kitchen.
Dave is the only assistant left in the office. She is rescheduling a meeting when she hears Francesca begging in her office.
Dave cannot move until it is over.
When the Managing Director leaves Francesca’s office, he passes Dave’s desk and tips a pile of paper from Dave’s desk onto the floor.
‘Clear that up, please, Alan,’ he says to Dave.
In her office, Dave helps Francesca up and onto her swivel chair. Francesca’s blood is dark as Cabernet. Dave’s cardigan makes a cheap tourniquet for her leg; Francesca pulls her own cashmere tightly around herself. When the bleeding stops Dave runs out to buy Francesca new trousers, so that no one sees where Francesca soiled herself. The old carpet was already dirty, but Dave borrows cleaning foam from the dog-room and sprays it thick anyway. She scrubs it hard with a brush; the bristles flick bloodied bubbles of soap and who knows what else into her face.
Perhaps, Dave thinks, I should look for a new dream job.
‘Thank you,’ Francesca says, from her desk, not meeting Dave’s eye, a new draft of a script in front of her. ‘I need somewhere nice for dinner. I’m meeting Jeremy Jones.’
*
The next day Francesca calls Dave into the office and holds both her hands, grinning. Dave is a little afraid.
‘Jeremy Jones has signed on,’ Francesca says. ‘We’re going into production.’
Dave thinks of that filthy, smelly metal briefcase and tries not to gag.
‘I can’t promote you, but you might get a credit,’ Francesca says, handing Dave a box. ‘I bought you this.’
Dave undoes a delicate noose of ribbon, and folds back gentle layers of tissue paper to find a long, stylish black coat worth at least a month of her rent.
*
The next few weeks are relaxing. Francesca is away on set. Dave stays quiet in the office. Dave tries not to notice people covering up bruises and cuts; the assistants stay out of each other’s business. They fight their own battles with concealer, and beta-blockers, and camomile tea.
Dave is copied into emails with the Special Effects team discussing the difficulty of editing the suitcase out of scenes in post-production. The other leads complain that the suitcase affects their blocking, and distracts during performance. Wardrobe have to spend time unpicking and resewing Jeremy Jones’ left sleeves because he refuses to uncuff it. Dave is constantly scanning clauses of contracts to email through to Francesca.
Going in and out of Francesca’s office, Dave becomes aware of how heavy the filing cabinet is when one day a drawer unexpectedly falls from its runners into her hands. The contracts she flicks through are all printed on paper thin as blades. They slit Dave’s skin so finely she can barely see it, but she can feel the cuts run deep. When she turns on Francesca’s desk lamp, her eyes water.
But then it is awards season.
The company is nominated for everything, and Dave finds it hard not to be grateful for a position at such a winning company. You can’t make world-renowned entertainment without getting some paper-cuts, she thinks.
She invites her friends over to watch the ceremony live, but they spend most of the evening catching up among themselves as she strains to hear the results over them.
*
When the film goes into post-production, Francesca works long hours as the film tips over budget. Jeremy Jones falls out with the director, and the director is now in a different time zone.
Francesca often comes into the office not having been to bed. She spends all night on the phone to one talent, then to another talent. She sits at her desk patting expensive creams under her eyes and drinks so much coffee that Dave can see her hands shake as she types.
Dave wears thicker clothing, more layers. She wraps bandages around her ribs before dressing in the morning, trying to mould an exoskeleton. She tries to spread the impact of Francesca’s bad days across her body. She tries to see where it is coming from – the scald of tea, the prick of a drawing pin, the electric shock. She tries not to draw attention to her vulnerability; tries not to let Francesca know it hurts.
Francesca gifts her handbags, jewellery, perfume.
*
Dave organises an exclusive screening of the finished film. She is given a budget that could be a deposit for a flat in Dave’s building. They hold the screening at a 5* hotel over the road, for the rest of the company and other important executives.
Dave lingers at the entrance to the cinema room. The walls are soundproofed with burgundy leather padding. Dave has a clipboard, although she would never dream of checking a name. The thick-rimmed glasses and sports jackets with jeans all speak for themselves. In the small, stuffy space, the crowd of people make a low grating noise that reminds Dave of a wasp’s nest.
Alan passes Dave, holding a glass of white wine. She charges it to Dave, her phantom little finger waving like an invisible flag.
The Managing Director takes the podium and introduces the film. The whole room laughs together at his jokes. If there’s one thing you can say about this industry, Dave thinks, it’s got a sense of humour.
Dave is listening, learning, so only sees the women rushing past, waving their briefcases, when it is too late.
They rush the stage and push the Managing Director to the floor.
They point down at Jeremy Jones, sitting in the front row, listening to accolades about himself, and scream.
‘Give us back our parts.’
‘You’ve deformed us.’
‘You’re an animal.’
‘You’re a fucking monster’.
*
Dave’s friends send her messages, worrying about her proximity to Jeremy Jones.
He always seemed perfectly nice, Dave tells them.
*
The following day Francesca and the Managing Director are shut away in Francesca’s office with a crisis management team engaged to protect the film.
By lunchtime Jeremy Jones is arrested at his home. The metal briefcase is unlocked. It contains a multitude of tiny, almost negligible pieces of the human body. Tips of toes, nails, snippets of ear lobe, belly buttons. A little finger. Nothing too obvious. Things that are easily hidden. They have been stored, slopping around together, unpreserved and rotting.
‘This is sick,’ says Alan, as the news breaks across her screen. Her fork stops, inches from her mouth, above a Tupperware box of grated carrot and vinegar brought in from home. ‘I can’t read it.’ She puts in her mouthguard with her four-fingered hand, before taking her boss his lunch. Poor Alan, Dave thinks, poor, stupid Alan.
When the crisis management meeting is over, Francesca calls Dave into her office, where she sits, scrolling and scrolling through the news.
‘Why did they keep working with him?’ Dave says, watching over Francesca’s shoulder.
‘Why did you let them in?’ Francesca asks.
How could I have kept them out? Dave thinks as Francesca stands up, takes her by the neck, and slams her face down onto the desk so hard she hears the pen pot jump off the side. For a moment everything goes black and hurts so much that she can’t remember whether she is Dave, or someone else entirely.
*
Dave lies in A and E, thinking of how the rowan tree outside the office – inflamed now with leaves of red, yellow and orange – had shot away from her through the window of the ambulance. When, she thinks, did I last phone home?
She watches the doctors and nurses come and go at the end of her bed. They wear a uniform; they all look the same. Hygienic and pristine. At one point, a group of them all gather around and point at the same clipboard, sharing information, working together. Then they scatter suddenly, spinning away from each other across the smooth, blue, disinfected linoleum. Later, they draw back together again, like magnets.
Dave is checked repeatedly for concussion and receives stitches to her nose. She sees the same doctor over the course of the day. The doctor has to remind herself of Dave’s name every time she comes in. She’s busy – she apologises each time.
‘Just call me Dave.’ Dave hears the thickness of her voice through the blocked nose, and is embarrassed for taking up a bed.
The doctor doesn’t understand the joke, and doesn’t call her Dave, but has to rush away suddenly to an emergency. Dave is not, after all, bleeding to death.
Later, while Dave waits outside to catch the bus home, she touches the stitches on her nose. She presses her bruises gently with her index finger when her phone rings.
‘Derek’s off sick,’ the Managing Director tells her. ‘But I want to give you a bonus. Have you got a nice coat?’
‘Who’s Derek?’ Dave asks, but the Managing Director has passed Dave onto his assistant who wants to take Dave’s coat size.
*
Francesca does not come back to work, and does not return Dave’s messages. Who, Dave worries, will correct her spelling of ‘definately’ in emails? Who will assemble her a rainbow power bowl at Vital Salads? Does she even know the phone number for her local non-toxic dry cleaners?
The night of the premiere, Leicester Square’s red carpets loll like tongues. Dave’s heels pinch and cut into her ankles; it is important to have height in front of cameras.
Dave is relieved that the film screened well despite the adverse publicity. ‘It’s not just the lead actor, there are so many other people involved in making films,’ Dave had told her friends defensively. ‘Their hard work deserves a platform too.’
Dave stays in the cinema until the very end to watch the credits roll. Her plush, fold-down seat itches through her low-denier tights.
Sadly, Francesca does not get a credit.
There is a singular, enigmatic name in a column entitled ASSISTANTS.
‘Dave’.
*
It is early. The streets still ghost with fog as Dave walks to the office. Her pockets are filled with absorbent gauze and medical tape. The stitches on her nose have disappeared, like Alan’s finger. But Dave wonders if Alan can still feel her phantom digit, the way that Dave can still feel the phantom crack in her face; she wonders whether Alan feels whole and fully herself regardless.
The air is clearer by the time Dave reaches the glass doors. They refract the white sun in awkward constellations. Dave looks at the rowan tree, leafless and bare, to avoid her own reflection as the doors slide slowly apart. She prefers not to see her scar and, instead, her attention is grabbed by the black cabs swinging past, catapulting away to other corners of the city with centrifugal force, ramming themselves up the slim streets, dismissed, as Soho gets to work.
CHARLOTTE TURNBULL’S work has been published in Litro, Denver Quarterly, New England Review and The McNeese Review among others. It has been anthologised and translated into Italian, and is forthcoming as a chapbook from Nightjar Press. She is inspired by contemporary genre-bending writers but also the taut social atmospheres of restraint and oppression found in classic weird women’s fiction.