From Call It in the Air
Talk Radio
By: Gregory Light - Nov 04, 2026
(Toronto 1982)
'Well, he's two for two this month,' Joey said to Joanna as he entered the kitchen. It was the second Monday in March. She ignored him. She knew he was referring to George. For half an hour before McDougal arrived, Joey paced the living room. When the doorbell rang, he had jumped. Now, while a "bitter-laden" McDougal was in the toilet relieving himself, Joanna had to listen to her bitter husband. It's not even seven.' he said to her, peeking into the oven. 'His boss must have booted him out of the pub early- Chicken Kiev!’
Joanna had expected the outcry. ‘Hell, Jo, why tonight? Sausages and cold chips is too good?’ Joanna drained the potatoes without answering. She had taken over cooking on Monday for exactly this reason. To reduce arguments.
When McDougal's Monday visits first became regular, Joey had tried serving ill-prepared meals to drive him off. The culinary result had almost driven Joanna off. After one meal of burnt beans, they had argued furiously in the bedroom, while McDougal casually leafed through a magazine on the sofa. Joey stormed out of the flat. He would have slept on the sofa when he returned, except McDougal had annexed it. George’s unwitting good deed. After a sincere, late-night apology, and lots of even more sincere love, Joey and Joanna were able to laugh about it the next morning, agreeing she cook on Mondays.
'Will you listen to that?' Joey was back in the living room. ‘Why doesn't he close the bloody door?' George was still in the toilet. Joey raised his voice. 'Hey pal, close the door. This isn't a barn.'
'Could have fooled me,' McDougal yelled back, laughing.
'Will the pair of you keep it down,' Joanna said from the kitchen.
The toilet flushed.
'Oh no, not tonight, pal,' Joey muttered to himself. He spied the blanket and sheets Joanna had laid out over the end of the sofa. 'Tonight, you go home.' When McDougal returned, he caught Joey crouched down behind the sofa.
'What are you hiding?'
'Your blanket. You're not staying tonight,' Joey replied.
'So, don't tell me then.' McDougal shrugged and sat down at the table. 'It's a surprise, right?'
Joey pulled out the sheets and blanket and threw them on the sofa. McDougal refused to notice. Joey scowled. Before he could force the issue, Joanna entered and served dinner, her manner relaxed and pleasant. Somehow, she managed George with a kind of grace: the drinking, the inconvenience, the inane conversation, the belches?even Sally.
When George first became their Monday boarder, Sally had been his only topic of conversation. "Sally used to say ..."; "Sally and I would ..."; Did you know that Sally ..." It was so obsessive that Joey eventually forbade talk of her in his presence. So, Joanna became George's outlet. He switched to her with intensity. Usually, he pulled out a sad, faded letter from Sally, a hastily scribbled apology written two years after she had divorced him, and reading sections to Joanna, asked her what she thought it meant.
'You're a woman. You know how they think, how they feel. She didn't have to write this letter. There must be a reason. What do you think? I'm willing to wait. I loved her. I still love her. It'd be worth the wait. No matter how small the chance. What do you think?'
What did she think? Zero chance. Give it up. What did she say? What could she say? McDougal’s eyes screamed vulnerability. Joey told her to tell the truth. 'Be blunt. Cruel, if need be. It's the only way he'll get over her.' But when she suggested he tell George, Joey backed away. She looked at the letter, read it carefully and, hesitating, told George she didn't know; maybe. And this "maybe" made George's heart soar. A big, glowing "maybe" giving him hope. Joey had hoped it would improve George’s drinking. But, if anything, it made it worse. George wanted no part of dry, wicked thoughts eating away at his one solitary, watery glimmer.
Joey was delighted Joanna was fielding George’s sorrow. It gave him a breather. He liked to lie back on the bed, the bedroom door ajar, listening, knowing he didn't have to nod, look interested, or make the appropriate comments. It was better, even than LBC's radio phone-in programs which he sometimes listened to, soothed by the strange everyday plights of his fellow Londoners. Everything from sexual deviation to dog grooming, it wasn't his problem.
In fact, once it had been his problem. Trivial when he looked back on it, but at the time, scary! The radio voice had announced that "weddings" would be the topic that evening, inviting his listeners to share funny stories of their nuptials. Brides left at the altar, grooms losing rings; Joey couldn’t get enough. The best was from Bill in Fulham who revealed how his fiancé and friends had switched brides as a practical joke, the stand-in hiding behind a long gown and veil. 'I married a total stranger, he said. 'But thirty years and three kids later we are still married.'
The next call was from Amanda in Islington. She spoke so softly it was impossible to make out what she was saying, and the presenter had to prevail on her to raise her voice.
'I can't speak up,' she said. 'My husband is sleeping in the next room, and he wouldn't be happy if he heard this.'
Thousands of London's ears perked up, Joey's included.
'Is your husband also American?' the host asked, her accent noticeable.
'Uh, yes,' she paused.
'Where were you married?' On behalf of his constituents, the presenter was carefully reeling in this potentially explosive, live drama.
She paused. 'Uh, in America five years ago.' she said, specific detail lopped off. 'In the mid-west, where my father lived; my mother was not alive at the time.' (Is she now?' Joey said out loud.) 'It wasn't convenient for my husband's parents, but my father has a fear of flying so they agreed.'
Joey squirmed uneasily. There was something familiar in this story. Images of his own wedding began to wade into his head. The broad outline she sketched closely silhouetted his own memory.
'The wedding was to take place in the small chapel where I had been baptized, and everything was fine until my husband saw the crowd of friends and relations; mostly mine.'
Mostly? Ha! Joey frowned. Who wouldn't have been angry? And Joanna's father "fear of flying" was definitely suspect, although he grudgingly accepted Joanna's sister might find train travel difficult. 'But why can't she fly? Thalidomide effects are physical, not psychological.' He had not intended it to sound disapproving.
'Joey!'
Sorry, but I know Beth would detest being used as an excuse.'
Joanna cried. Joey apologized, but she said it wasn't his fault. It? What it? The wedding? The emotion? In the end, he'd agreed to travel the two thousand miles on condition the ceremony was intimate. And there was a silver lining. McDougal, who had pestered him about being the best man, would not be able to make the trip because of a conflicting business engagement.
'I'll quit my job. Honest.'
'You do that, and the wedding is off.'
'I feel terrible. I know you depended on me. Who else will you get on such short notice?'
His mother suggested Uncle Frederick, but Joey vetoed that idea. He didn't want a best man. Gary was his choice. He did allow his father to tell Frederick that the wedding was to be in Calgary because the location was closer to him. And that was partly true. Joey had developed an admiration for Frederick after he was fired for joining an indigenous protest at the school in which he was teaching. Their children. Their language. Their schools. He had written to Joey’s father. Instantly Joey’s view of Fred changed. Joey didn’t know the details, but he liked Frederick’s new voice. Fred’s presence would make the wedding more tolerable. Nevertheless, he lobbied to cancel it.
'Let's elope,' he pleaded with Joanna the week before they were to leave.
'I couldn't do that to my father. He's made so many plans.'
Plans? It was a blueprint for mass mobilization; gowns, tuxedos, a small orchestra, dinner reservations for over two hundred.
'Jo, you promised me it would be intimate.'
'Intimate doesn't mean the same to daddy. Anyway, it's only the reception. Just close family at the wedding. You've seen the chapel. It's tiny.'
Tiny, minuscule, non-existent; it didn't matter. When Joey looked inside, it was so full that the pews on his side (a mere three seats taken by his family) were as packed out as those on Joanna's side. And more than twenty people were standing in the side aisles. The sheer mass staggered him. He demanded one of the eighteen-year-old twin ushers, Joanna's cousins, fetch his bride. With considerable commotion, murmurs darting up and down the crowd, Joanna disentangled herself from her father and made her way to Joey.
'I'm not going in,' he told her, his lips trembling, 'I'll meet you out here when it's over.'
'Joey! That's crazy. If you can't think of me, at least think of your own family.'
Through the arched doorway of the church, Joey could see the pressed figures of his parents and Fred in the front row. Like everyone else, they had turned in their seats and were looking back to see what the delay was about. Everyone saw Joey peer into the church; saw his eyes skip across the hundreds of heads looking for his parents; saw him pause, then saw his eyes well up with tears.
He quickly ducked back into the sunlight. 'I can't go in, Jo. He darted down the church path. 'I'm sorry. I'm sorry,' he said, partly to Joanna, but partly to Gary. He had made one request of Frederick that morning: 'Whatever else, please ....' He knew it sounded crazy, but he begged his uncle, '… please leave a space on the pew between you and mom, no matter what.' Frederick looked sceptical. ‘It’s symbolic, but important. Don’t ask me why.’ He made Frederick agree to this at least five times. That space was for Gary. Which Frederick had sort of figured out. And he tried. He really tried. But the humanity crowded in and took every inch of space.
'Joey!' Joanna ran after him, her soft, cream-coloured hairpiece flying off and her long gown stirring up loose pebbles on the pavement. The twin ushers watched bemused, eventually making themselves useful by chasing the hairpiece that the wind had sent down a grassy incline. 'Joey,' she said, catching his arm by the iron gate. 'Don't do this. I promise I didn't expect this many people. It was Dad. He's been so worried for me. Please. Please.' She held both his hands and kissed him. 'It won't be hard. I promise.'
Joey hesitated. He was thinking of Gary. And Gary was thinking of him?
'I'll just go in with you, then,' Gary said.
'What?' The voice startled Joanna. It was the first time she'd heard Gary speak.
'Okay, I'm coming,' Joey said covering up. 'Give me a minute.' He pushed at his hair with his fingers, comb-like. 'You go back now. Tell your cousins I'll be there in a moment.'
'You're sure?' she asked, still holding his hand. Joey nodded. 'Okay,' she said, dropping his fingers and kissing him fully on the lips to glue him to his word. 'See you in a second.' She turned away cautiously, then dashed up the path to the church, collecting her hairpiece on the way.
'Are you out of your mind?' Joey said when Joanna disappeared into the church, 'How could you speak out loud?'
'Somebody had to say something,' Gary replied.
Joey paused, smiling. 'Okay, but keep your mouth shut.' Then he started to laugh. Gary was tickling him. He was still laughing when he caught up to the twins. 'Okay, let's get it started,' he said, clapping them on the back.
'... eventually, I persuaded him, but he laughed all the way down the aisle.' Amanda in Islington was still telling her story, the presenter and so many million listeners hoping her husband would wake up.
Wait! Joey bolted up. Amanda? Amy? From Islington? American accent? Joanna wouldn't! He listened suspiciously.
'By this time, the whole congregation was laughing?'
It's her! Joey sprang off the bed, flew across to the door and flung it open. 'How dare you?' he shouted.
Joanna jumped. 'What's wrong?' she said. Joey took in the room slowly. The telephone sat on the coffee table. A tangle of papers and books lay in front of Joanna on the dinner table. 'What's wrong?' she asked again.
'Nothing.'
'Bad dream?'
'Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. Sorry.' He stepped back inside the bedroom, closing the door behind him.
'Did the vicar stop laughing?' the presenter was asking.
'Eventually, but during the service, there were sporadic giggles which sent everyone but my husband into fits of laughter all over again.'
Joey opened the bedroom door and peered out. Joanna was looking at him. 'Yes?' she asked from the table, the telephone still out of reach.
'Nothing. Just wondering. Good night.' He closed the door, turned off the radio, turned off the light and got into bed. He felt foolish. What made him think that Joanna would telephone LBC? She hated the program. Besides, when the congregation and the minister started to laugh, I laughed right along with them.
'It must mean something.' McDougal had Joanna by the wrist, while Joey scraped the remains of the dinner into the dustbin. 'You see, I dreamt about never having divorced exactly six months from the day we officially divorced; the exact opposite side of the year. They negate each other. Maybe the dream is saying that Sally and I will get back together.'
'For God’s sake, George, let it go?' Joey entered with three cups of coffee. 'A dream is hardly a telephone call asking you to come back.'
George sank deeper in his chair, devastated.
'Have a cup of coffee,' Joanna said sympathetically. 'It'll make you feel better.'
'There wouldn't be any wine left, would there?'
'You finished the last of it,' Joey said, adding, 'But we can go out for a quick pint.'
'Do you think you should?" Joanna glanced at Joey.
'Sure. Just one.' It gave Joey a way to stop McDougal staying the night. 'It'll give George and me a chance to talk over old times.' He picked up George's coat and handed it to him. He kissed Joanna. 'And it'll give you a couple of hours to work.' Pushing McDougal out the door ahead of him, he swiftly exited.
The street air had a refreshing effect on Joey. Saying that The Good Intent, his local, would be crowded, he coaxed poor-depressed George into trundling four blocks further, to a small, dingy, ash and smoke-laden pub on the Holloway Road. Home of the retired and the unemployed.
'A real, historical example of working-class Britain,' Joey said cheerfully as McDougal swept a swirl of ash off his chair. 'Not many of these pubs left.' George frowned and squeezed into his seat, trying not to brush against an old man at the next table. The man sat almost motionless, unaware of either of them, his rumpled cap askew on his head, a near-empty pint of Brown Ale before him. He had probably been in the pub since six (or the Thirties) and had finally reached the state he had been chasing for the last three hours. Oblivion!
At the other end of the room, near a Space Invaders game, there were two tables with younger lodgers; two guys and a girl, eighteen or nineteen years old. They had regarded Joey's and McDougal's entrance with some interest. Joey assumed it was the stark contrast that George presented. It was the reason he chosen the pub in the first place. He knew George hated it. But George, he reckoned, should get a look-see into this kind of pub, broaden his horizons. Whatever, competing for non-existent futures in a borough with one of the nation's highest unemployment levels, these three scruffy adolescents must have looked at George, in his expensive American suit, as out of place. It was not as if George had tripped into Harlem, but he did bristle the odd pink and green streaked hair. Huddled in the corner, the two unkempt lads and their rather attractive friend had slipped into urgent whispers. Joey sighed and took a long, quenching swallow of his pint. Normally able to stroll his neighbourhood unnoticed, with George he was suddenly a conversation piece.
'So, George,' Joey said, 'how do you like the place? A trashy sort of class, wouldn't you say?'
'No, I wouldn't say. It's dreadful.'
'Oh, come now. It’s an underground hot spot.
'Look Edwards,' McDougal was not happy, 'if you had to take me to a place where you weren't going to let me talk about Sally, at least you could have chosen a place with some single women in it.'
'Since when did your women have to be single, George?' Joey had meant the remark innocently, simple sarcasm, no more. The sudden start in George's eyes, however, betrayed a hard slap in the face.
Joey wasn't supposed to know. McDougal wasn't supposed to know that Joey knew. But of course, Joey knew. He found out the evening it occurred. George was foolish to think that Joanna wouldn't tell him.
'Don't let it go too long?' Joanna had said to Joey.
Joey nodded and kissed her. On the other hand, he was not about to set time limits on a meeting with The Guardian; not after three articles and countless ideas sent to them in the past had come to nought. This might be a break. They were talking about a long piece, "perhaps a feature", about Canada. The real Canada. To be published during the week the Queen delivered her Royal Proclamation transferring the Canadian Constitution from London to Ottawa. Over a century in the making! 'We want something different. Not the usual congratulatory pieces.' Different? Terrific! Joey leapt at the opportunity, ideas bubbling up on how to approach the subject. None of the usual stuff; quarrels between the Federal and Provincial governments, disputes on language, debates on minority and native rights. Wait! There was interest in native rights. Native groups were making pleas before the British Court of Appeals. At this point, most of the meeting adjourned to a local tavern. Joey called Joanna to say he'd be late.
'Remember, tonight is Monday night,' she reminded him.
Monday night. McDougal. ‘I’ll do what I can,’ he said. Then he called her back an hour later to say he'd been invited out to a dinner and he really should attend. 'I won't be late,' he told an unhappy Joanna.
Quarter to midnight. Joanna was waiting up for him. George wasn't there. She had pushed him out of the flat before eleven. She was angry, but as soon as she saw Joey, she began to cry. Which is when the story came out. 'I should have known better. I should have stopped him,' she said, describing how George had launched into a long, despondent effusion about Sally. 'He went on and on, working himself into an awful state until finally he was crying; about how ugly he was; about how women hated him because he didn't have any fingers.'
'He has six fingers and two thumbs!' Joey blurted angrily. 'He just uses that for sympathy!'
'Maybe. But I tried to comfort him.' Joey looked at her oddly. 'Well, you had to be there. He was hysterical. It was all I could do to prevent him from waking Amy. Anyway, then, then he made a pass at me. He suddenly pulled me against him on the sofa and was kissing me. When I tried to protest, he was more insistent, saying how much he needed me. Pawing me. Grabbing at my blouse.'
Joey stood by the bedroom door, stunned. His eyes raging.
'Please don't look like that,' Joanna said. 'He didn't rape me. He touched me. A hand under my shirt? oh, I don't know, I don't know.' She was in tears.
Joey noticed the missing button on her blouse. 'Well,' he said sitting down beside her, 'let's not get upset over this. Let's keep calm. Carry on. Tomorrow, I'll kill him.'
'No!' Joanna burbled. 'I told him I wouldn't tell you. It was the only way I could get him to go. He'll think I lied.'
'Not if he's dead.'
'Don't be silly. He came onto me. He didn't hurt me. He didn't threaten me. He apologized.'
Joey picked at some left-over pie. 'So why the tears?'
'Because' Joanna pushed her hair back from her forehead with both hands, 'Because, I should have done more to stop him.'
'Oh,’ Joey’s voice was wobbly. 'You liked it?'
'No! Not at all!'
So why blame yourself? It’s all on him?'
'I know. I don't want to talk about it.' And she fled into the bedroom.
The next day Joey apologized to Joanna. He knew perfectly well it wasn't her fault. He blamed himself. He shouldn't have left her alone to deal with McDougal. He knew what George was like. Joanna also apologized; she should have seen the trouble coming. Joey reluctantly agreed not to say anything to George. And, until his remark in the pub, he had been silent.
'What I mean George,' Joey backed off, 'Sally is definitely not single and you still want her.' He paused. ‘Even though it will never happen. Not in a million years.’
That did hurt McDougal. Joey saw the pain in his eyes and flick at the corners of his mouth. Long, sharp cuts of grief. Joey hesitated. He wanted the pain to stab for as long as possible. Suffer you bastard! he thought. Finally, the last call bell rang. Time to bring the pain to an end. Well almost. Joey helped a very muted George into a cab, purposefully banging his head on the door frame.
‘Ouch! I’m bleeding.’
‘You’ll survive.’ He slapped the cab roof as if it were the flank of a horse. ‘Get out of here.’
Joey crossed back across Holloway Road, aware of being watched by the three youths he'd seen in the pub earlier. ‘Okay, I’m an asshole,’ he muttered to himself. Smiling. On his way home, though, his glee faded. Why didn't he utterly despise McDougal?