Текст книги "What a cave up!"

Автор книги: Джонатан Коу

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

I folded the paper in two, laid it aside and thought for a moment. I could feel a new energy rising in me and the temptation to laugh, odd though it would have seemed, was quite powerful. ‘Do you know what the funny thing is?’ I said. ‘Shall I tell you the really funny thing?’

‘Please do.’

‘This is the longest conversation I’ve had – the most I’ve talked to someone – for something like two years. More than two years, I think. The longest.’

Fiona laughed in disbelief. ‘But we’ve barely spoken.’

‘None the less.’

She laughed again. ‘But that’s ridiculous. Have you been on a desert island or something?’

‘No. I’ve been right here.’

A confused shake of the head. ‘Well how come?’

‘I don’t know: I just didn’t want to. It hasn’t been a conscious decision or anything, it’s just that the occasion’s never arisen. It’s easy, you’d be surprised. I suppose in the old days you’d have to have talked to someone: going into shops and things. But now you can do all your shopping in the supermarket, and you can do all your banking by machine, and that’s about it.’

A thought occurred to me, and I got up to lift the receiver on the telephone. It was still connected.

‘Does my voice sound strange to you? How does it sound?’

‘It sounds fine. Quite normal.’

‘What about this flat? Does it smell?’

‘It’s a bit … close, yes.’

I picked up the remote control for the television and was about to switch off. The young boy with the locked, expressionless eyes, his back as tense and rigid as Fiona’s when she had sat down on my sofa, was no longer on the screen: but the avuncular man with the big grin and the heavy black moustache was still stomping around, this time in full military uniform and surrounded by men of the same age and nationality and bearing. I watched him for a few seconds and felt another memory beginning to recover its shape.

‘I know who that is,’ I said, pointing and clicking my finger. ‘It’s – whatsisname – President of Iraq …’

‘Michael, everyone knows who that is. It’s Saddam Hussein.’

‘That’s right. Saddam.’ Then, before turning the television off, I asked: ‘Who was that boy with him? The one he was trying to put his arms around?’

‘Haven’t you been watching the news? That was one of the hostages. He’s been parading them on television, as if they were cattle or something.’

This made little sense to me, but I could tell it was not the moment for elaborate explanations. I switched the television off and said – listening with interest to my own voice – ‘I’m sorry, you must think I’m being very rude. Would you like a drink? I’ve got wine and orange juice and beer and lemonade, and even a bit of whisky, I think.’

Fiona hesitated.

‘We can leave the door open if you like. I don’t mind about that at all.’

And then she smiled, and sat back on the sofa, and crossed her legs, saying, ‘Well, why not. That would be very nice.’

‘Wine?’

‘I think orange juice, please. I can’t seem to shake off this dreadful sore throat.’

∗

My little kitchen had always been the cleanest room in the flat. I never dusted or used a vacuum cleaner because dust is not easily visible to the casual observer, it’s possible to turn a blind eye to it, yet I could not tolerate the sight of smudges and splashes of dried food caked to my brilliant white surfaces. When I withdrew into the kitchen, therefore, and turned on the two 100-watt spotlights which sent their beams of pure brightness fearlessly exploring every gleaming angle and corner, it restored my self-confidence. The night was slowly darkening, and from the kitchen sink the first thing I could see was my own reflected face, hovering like a spectre outside my fifth-floor window. This was the face that Fiona had been addressing for the last few minutes. I took a good look at it and tried to imagine how it would have appeared to her. The eyes were puffy from lack of sleep and bloodshot from too much glassy staring at the television screen; deeply scored lines were beginning to appear around the corners of the mouth, although these were partially obscured by two days’ worth of stubble; the jaw-line was still reasonably firm, but another three or four years would probably see the onset of a double chin; the hair, once tawny, was now streaked with grey and stood desperately in need of cutting and re-styling; there were the shreds of a parting, so tentative and wasted that the onlooker might easily have been forgiven for not noticing that it was there at all. It wasn’t a friendly face: the eyes, a deep, velvety blue, might once have suggested wells of possibility but now seemed guarded, fenced off. But at the same time it was honest. It was a face you could trust.

And if you looked beyond the face, what did you see? I peered out into the twilight. Nothing much. A few scattered lights had been turned on across the courtyard, and the gentle babble of televisions and stereo systems drifted over from open windows. It was a muggy August evening, entirely typical of a summer which seemed to be taking a malicious pleasure in testing Londoners to the limit, drenching them day and night in dense city heat. Looking down, I noticed the movement of a shadow in the gardens. Two shadows, one very small. An old woman walking her dog, probably struggling to keep up as it zig-zagged from bush to bush, its nerves stretched and tingling with the excitement of secret, nocturnal pleasures. I listened to its intermittent rustles and scuffles, the only distinct sounds to be made out, apart from the occasional siren, above London’s buried monotonous hum.

Turning away from the window, I fetched a carton of orange juice from the fridge and cracked three or four ice cubes into a tumbler. I poured the juice over the blocks of ice, enjoying their dull music as they clinked together and rose to the top of the glass. Then I poured myself a glass of beer and took the drinks into the sitting room.

As I paused on the threshold, I tried to look at the room with the same objectivity I had brought to the reflection of my own face: wanting to imagine the impression it would have made on Fiona. She was watching me, now, so I didn’t have as much time, but some quick observations presented themselves: the fact that the curtains, which had come with the flat, and the pictures, which had been bought many years ago, reflected nothing of my present taste; the fact that so many of the surfaces – the table, the window-sills, the top of the television, the mantelpiece – were stacked with papers and magazines and videotapes rather than the few well-chosen ornaments which might have given the room form and personality; the fact that the bookshelves, which I had put up myself, also many years ago, had been largely cleared of books (now jumbled into a tower of cardboard boxes in the spare bedroom) and were scattered, instead, with still more videotapes, piled both horizontally and vertically, some pre-recorded and some filled with scraps of films and programmes taped off the television. It was a room, I thought, which presented an aspect not dissimilar to the face reflected in the kitchen window: it had the potential to be welcoming but for the moment seemed to have transformed itself, through a mixture of carelessness and disuse, into something ungainly and almost eerily neutral.

The first thing Fiona said about the flat, after we had been talking a little while, was that she felt it needed some pot plants. She sang the praises of cyclamen and hibiscus. She waxed lyrical about the merits of cineraria and asparagus fern. She had gone crazy on cineraria recently, she said. It would never have occurred to me to buy myself a pot plant and I tried to imagine what it would be like to share this room with a living, growing organism as well as my stale litter of films and magazines. I poured myself another beer and fetched her some more orange juice and this time she asked me to put some vodka in it. I could tell she was a warm and friendly woman because when I came to sit next to her on the sofa in order to fill out her sponsorship form, she was quite happy to let our legs come into occasional contact: there was no shrinking away, and as I wrote down the amount and signed my name I could feel our thighs touching, and I wondered how this had happened, if in fact it was Fiona who had edged closer to me. And soon it became clear that she was in no great hurry to leave, that she was for some reason enjoying talking to me – I who had so little to give in return – and I could only conclude from this that she must in some brave, quiet, reckless way have been a little desperate for companionship, because although I was a poor companion that evening, and although my behaviour must certainly have frightened her to start with, still she persisted, and grew more and more relaxed, and more and more talkative. I can’t remember how long she stayed, or what it was we talked about, but I can remember enjoying it, at first, this unaccustomed business of talking, and it must have been quite a while, several drinks later, before I began to feel tired again and uneasy. I don’t know why this should have happened, because I was still enjoying myself, but I had this sudden and intense craving to be on my own. Fiona carried on talking, I may even have been answering back, but my attention had started to wander and she only regained it by saying something which surprised me very much.

‘You can’t switch me off,’ she said.

‘Pardon?’

‘You can’t switch me off.’

She nodded at my hands. I had gone back to the armchair opposite her and without realizing it I had picked up the remote control for the video. It was pointed in her direction and my finger had strayed to the pause button.

‘I think I’d better go,’ she said, and stood up.

As she made for the door, sponsorship form in hand, I made a sudden bid to save the situation by blurting out: ‘I think I’ll get myself one of those plants. It’ll make quite a difference.’

She turned. ‘There’s a little nursery on my way home from work,’ she said softly. ‘I’ll get one for you if you like. I’ll bring it round tomorrow.’

‘Thanks. That’s very kind.’

And then she was gone. For a few seconds after the door had closed behind her I experienced a peculiar sensation: a feeling of loneliness. But this loneliness was mingled with relief and before long the relief had taken over, swamping me and calming me and guiding me gently back to the armchair and to my two friends, my trusted companions, the remote control units for the television and the video, resting one on each arm. I switched the machines on and pressed play, and Kenneth said:

‘Well, a – a handsome face isn’t everything, you know.’

∗

I woke up the next morning with a sense that something subtly momentous had happened. The event, whatever it was, would clearly not bear analysis at this stage, but in the meantime I was anxious to take advantage of its most immediate symptom, which was a surge of mental and physical energy unprecedented in my recent experience. A handful of disagreeable tasks had been gathered, cloudy and lowering, on my mental horizon for some months now, but today it felt as though their weight had been lifted and they lay before me, unthreatening, inviting even, like a set of stepping stones which would lead me to a brighter future. I wasted no time lying around in bed. I got up and showered, made myself some breakfast, washed up and then began to hoover the whole of the flat. After that I went round with a duster, creaming off layers of dust so thick that I had to shake the cloth out of the window with every wipe. Then, tiring a little, I did a bit of desultory tidying and re-organizing. I was anxious, among other to make sure that certain papers were still to be found where I had left them many months ago, because I intended to re-acquaint myself with these and to start work on them again in the afternoon. They turned up after a search of perhaps thirty minutes, and I dropped them in a single pile on my freshly cleared desk.

This was without doubt an extraordinary day and to prove it I now did yet another extraordinary thing. I went for a walk.

My flat was at the rear of a large mansion block which fronted on to Battersea Park. Although this had been one of my main reasons for buying it, some seven or eight years ago, I rarely took advantage of the location. Circumstances sometimes obliged me to walk through the park, it’s true, but this was not the same as choosing to do so for the purposes of pleasure or meditation, and I would take absolutely no notice of my surroundings on these occasions. As it happens, I hadn’t intended to take much notice of them today, either, because when I set out on my walk I did so primarily in the hope that it would enable me to reach a certain decision, the taking of which, like so much else in my life, I had now been deferring for far too long. But it seemed that in my newly wakened state I was also less than usually capable of ignoring the world around me, and I found that I was beginning to warm to this park, which had never before struck me as being one of London’s most attractive. The grass was parched, the flowerbeds cracked and grey in the sun, but none the less their colours astounded me. It felt as though I were seeing them for the first time. Beneath a sky of impossibly pale blue, hordes of lunchtime sunbathers were surrendering themselves to the glare; occasional bits of clothing in garish primary colours shielded their pinkening bodies, while their heads throbbed to the beat of the sun and the deadening pulse of their ghetto-blasters and personal stereos. (There was a confusion of different musics.) The bins were overflowing with bottles, cans and the discarded wrappings of pre-packed sandwiches. The mood seemed to be one of festivity, with just a distant hint of tension and resentment – perhaps because the heat verged, as usual, on the unbearable, or simply because we all knew in our hearts that this was not the best place to be trying to enjoy it. I wondered how many other people were wishing that they could have been in the countryside; the real countryside, of which this park was in fact little more than a scurrilous parody. In the north-western corner, not far from the river, there was an attempt at a walled garden, and as I sat there for a few minutes it reminded me of the garden at the back of Mr Nuttall’s farm, where I used to play with Joan. But here, instead of that enchanted silence which we had taken so much for granted, I heard the rattling of lorries and the thunder of passing aeroplanes, and there were no sparrows or starlings to watch us from the trees, just strutting city pigeons and fat black rooks the size of small chickens.

As for that decision, it was arrived at soon enough. Earlier in the week I had received a bank statement, and this morning I had opened it to discover, not very much to my surprise, that I was heavily overdrawn. In which case, something would have to be done about the pile of manuscript now lying on my desk. With luck – perhaps with the aid of a miracle – there might just be money to be raised on it: but I would have to read it through as quickly as possible, so that I could decide how to approach the relevant publishers.

I started on this task as soon as I got back to the flat, and had managed to read about seventy pages when Fiona called by in the early evening. She brought two large paper carrier bags, one of which had foliage spilling over the top.

‘Gosh,’ she said. ‘You look different.’

(I remember these rather absurd exclamations of hers, now. ‘Gosh’ was one; ‘Crikey’, another.)

‘Do I?’ I said.

‘I caught you on a bad night, didn’t I? Last evening, I mean.’

‘Maybe. I’m feeling more … with it, tonight.’

She put the carrier bags down on the floor, saying: ‘I brought these round right away. They need re-potting. If I can leave them here, I’ll just go and freshen up and things, and then I’ll come and give you a hand.’

When she had gone I took a peek inside the bags. There were plants in one and a couple of fair-sized earthenware pots and saucers in the other, along with some bits of shopping, and a newspaper. It was a long time since I had looked at this particular tabloid, but remembering that today was a Friday I took it out of the bag and thumbed rapidly to a page near the middle. When I found what I was looking for I smiled a private smile, and started to read through it: without much interest at first, but then, after a few lines, I frowned and something chimed within my memory. I went into my spare bedroom, the one I used as a study (the one I never went into), and came back with a large box file full of newspaper clippings. I was looking through these when Fiona returned.

She took her bags through into the kitchen and set about repotting the plants. I could hear the noise of things being moved about and taps being turned on and off. At one point she said: ‘I must say your kitchen’s awfully clean.’

‘I’ll come and help in a minute,’ I said. ‘I really appreciate this, you know. I must reimburse you.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘Ha!’

I had found the cutting, which I pulled out of the box with this small cry of triumph. It was a vindication of my powers of recall, apart from anything else. I laid out today’s paper on the dining table, opened at the appropriate page, placed the cutting next to it and read both items again carefully. My frown deepened. When Fiona came in carrying one of the plants, she said: ‘I wouldn’t mind a drink.’

‘Sorry. Of course. Only I was just looking at this column. What do you make of it?’

When she saw that I was looking at her newspaper, Fiona became defensive: ‘I didn’t buy that, you know. I found it on the tube.’ She glanced at the identical pictures of Hilary Winshaw which headed each page, and grimaced. ‘That dreadful woman. I hope you’re not going to tell me you’re a fan.’

‘Not at all. But I do have a professional interest. Read them while I get you something, and let me know what you think.’

The column had been running for more than six years now and still bore the title PLAIN COMMON SENSE. The photograph at the top hadn’t changed, either. It was here, every Friday, that the great television mogul and media personality could be found airing her views on any topic which happened to seize her wandering fancy, holding forth with equal conviction on issues ranging from the welfare state and the international situation to the length of hemline sported by members of the royal family on recent social outings. Countless thousands of readers seemed to have been charmed, over the years, by her endearing habit of professing almost total ignorance of any subject which she chose to discuss – her speciality in this regard being a willingness to put forward the most strident opinions relating to controversial books and films while cheerfully admitting that she had been unable to find the time to read or see them. Another winning feature was her way of making the reader feel generously included within her circle of intimates, by being prepared to write at extraordinary length about the minutiae of her domestic arrangements, in tones which would rise to a pitch of righteous indignation whenever she described the vagaries of the successive builders, plumbers and decorators who seemed to be in permanent attendance at her enormous Chelsea home. It’s an interesting but little known fact that for pouring out this torrent of nonsense, Ms Winshaw was paid a yearly fee equivalent to six times the salary of a qualified school-teacher and eight times that of a staff nurse in the National Health Service. I’ve got proof of that, as well.

The two items which I’d chosen for comparison found Hilary in a political frame of mind. Although they were separated by roughly four years, I present them here as Fiona and I read them that day: side by side.

A NEWSLETTER reaches my desk today from a group who call themselves the Supporters of Democracy in Iraq – or SODI for short.

They claim that President Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator who maintains his power through torture and intimidation.

Well, I’ve got some words of advice for this silly bunch of SODIs:check your facts!

It’s not often that a television programme can make me feel physically sick, but last night was an exception.

Can there be anyone in the country whose stomach did not turn over, as we watched Saddam Hussein on the Nine O’clock News,parading the so-called ‘hostages’ he is wickedly proposing to use as a human shield?

Who is responsible for the social welfare programmes which have brought such massive improvements in housing, education and medical services throughout Iraq?

Who has recently given the Iraqis pension rights and a minimum wage?

This was one image that will stay with me for the rest of my life: the spectacle of a defenceless and clearly terrified child being mauled and pawed by one of the most vicious and ruthless dictators to hold power anywhere in the world today.

Who has installed new and more efficient irrigation and drainage systems, made generous loans to local farmers, and promised ‘health for all’ by the year 2000?

If any good at all can come from such a revolting display, it will be to make the so-called ‘peace’ lobby come to their senses and realize that we can’t just sit back and allow this Mad Dog of the Middle East to get away scot-free with his terrible crimes.

Who has no less a figure than President Reagan ordered to be removed from the list of political leaders accused of supporting terrorism?

And who else, out of all the Middle Eastern leaders, has put his moolah where his mouth is and called on so manyBritish builders and industrialists to help with the rebuilding of his country?

It’s not just the invasion of Kuwait I’m talking about. The whole eleven-year presidency of Saddam Hussein is one long, sickening history of torture, brutality, intimidation and murder. Anyone who doesn’t believe me should take a look at some of the information leaflets published by SODI (Supporters of Democracy in Iraq).

That’s right – it’s ‘brutal’, ‘torturing’ Saddam Hussein.

Come off it, SODI! It’s those barking Ayatollahs you should be complaining about. Life in Iraq may not be perfect, but it’s better now than it has been for a long, long time.

So lay off Saddam. I say he’s a man we can do business with.

There can be no doubt about it: the time for moral fudging is over; the time for action is here.

Let us pray that President Bush and Mrs Thatcher understand that. And let us pray, too, that the brave, plucky little boy we saw on our television screens last night will live to forget his meeting with the evil Butcher of Baghdad.

Fiona finished reading and looked at me for a few seconds. ‘I’m not sure that I understand,’ she said.

Hilary

In the summer of 1969, shortly before they went up to Oxford together, Hugo Beamish invited his best friend Roddy Winshaw to stay with his family for a few weeks. They lived in a huge, cluttered, slightly dirty house in North West London. Roddy’s sister Hilary was invited too. She was fifteen.

Hilary found the whole thing excruciatingly tedious. It was perhaps marginally better than spending the summer in Tuscany with her parents (again!), but Hugo’s mother and father turned out to be almost as dull – she was a writer, he worked at the BBC – while his sister, Alicia, was nothing but a crashing bore with buck teeth and terrible spots.

Alan Beamish was a kindly man who noticed quickly enough that Hilary wasn’t enjoying herself. One night as they all sat around the dinner table, with Roddy and Hugo loudly discussing their respective career options, he watched her pushing a mound of tepid pasta around her plate and asked a sudden question:

‘And what do you see yourself doing in ten years’ time, I wonder?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Hilary hadn’t given this matter much thought, taking it for granted (rightly, of course) that something glamorous and well-paid would sooner or later fall into her lap. Besides, she hated the idea of sharing her aspirations with these people. ‘I thought I might go into television,’ she improvised, lazily.

‘Well you know of course that Alan is a producer,’ said Mrs Beamish.

Hilary didn’t know this. She had got him down as a company accountant or at best some sort of engineer. Even so, she was not in the least impressed: but from that moment on, Alan, for his part, chose to take Hilary under his wing.

‘Do you know the secret of success in the television business?’ he asked her, late one afternoon. ‘It’s very simple. You have to watch it, that’s all. You have to watch it all the time.’

Hilary nodded. She never watched television. She knew she was too good for it.

‘Now I’ll tell you what we’re going to do,’ said Alan.

What they were going to do, it transpired – much to Hilary’s horror – was to sit down in front of the television and take in an entire evening’s viewing, with Alan talking her through every programme, explaining how it was made, how much it cost, why it had been scheduled at a certain time, and where its target audience lay.

‘Scheduling is everything,’ he said. ‘A programme stands or falls by its scheduling. Understand that, and you’ll already have a march on all the other bright young graduates you’ll be competing with.’

They started off with the news on BBCI at ten to six, followed by a magazine programme called Town and Around. Then they switched channels to ITV and watched The Saint, with Roger Moore.

‘This is the kind of show the independent companies do best,’ said Alan. ‘Very sellable abroad: even to America. High production values, lots of location work. Snappy direction, too. It’s all a bit shallow, for my liking, but I wouldn’t knock it.’

Hilary yawned. At seven twenty-five they watched something about a Scottish doctor and his housemaid, which all seemed very slow and provincial to her. Alan explained that this was one of the most popular programmes on television. Hilary had never heard of it.

‘They’ll be discussing this storyline in every pub, office and factory in Britain tomorrow,’ he said. ‘That’s the great thing about television: it’s one of the fibres that holds the country together. It collapses class distinctions and helps create a sense of national identity.’

He was equally lyrical about the next two programmes: a documentary called The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and another news bulletin at nine o’clock, this one lasting a quarter of an hour.

‘The BBC is respected the world over for the quality and fair-mindedness of its news coverage. Thanks to the World Service, you can tune in a radio almost anywhere on the globe and be sure to hear impartial, authoritative bulletins, mixed in with lighter programmes which maintain the highest standards in music and entertainment. It’s one of our greatest post-war achievements.’

Until now Hilary had merely been bored, but at this point things started to go rapidly downhill. She was made to sit through a dreadful comedy show called Nearest and Dearest, full of coarse jokes which had the studio audience screeching with vulgar laughter, and then they saw a thing called It’s a Knockout, which featured a series of witless outdoor games. She began to squirm with rage and embarrassment. Unconsciously, she channelled her agitation through her fingertips by reaching across to a fruit bowl next to the sofa and plucking off grape after grape: she would peel each one with her tapered fingernail before popping it into her mouth. A little pile of the skins started to form on her lap.

‘This isn’t my sort of show at all,’ said Alan. ‘But I don’t look down on it. You have to make things which appeal to everyone. Everyone’s entitled to their bit of fun.’

They finished off by turning over to BBC₂ and watching a series called Ooh La La!, adapted from the farces of Georges Feydeau. This one starred Donald Sinden and Barbara Windsor. Hilary fell asleep halfway through, and woke up just in time to catch the end of an astronomy programme presented by a peculiar man in an ill-fitting suit.

‘So there you have it,’ said Alan proudly. ‘News, entertainment, comedy, documentary and classical drama in equal measure. There’s no other country in the world which could offer you an experience like that.’ With his gentle, melodious voice and greying bushes of hair he was beginning to look and sound, to Hilary, like the worst sort of parish priest. ‘And it’s all in the hands of people like you. Talented youngsters whose task in the years to come will be to carry the tradition forward.’

At the end of the holiday, Roddy and Hilary took the train back to their parents’ current home in Sussex.

‘I thought old Mr Beamish was a bit of a sweetie, actually,’ said Roddy, taking out a cigarette. ‘And yet Henry told me that he’s frightfully left wing.’ He lit up. ‘Hasn’t rubbed off on Hugo, thank God. Anyway, you’d never guess it, would you?’

Hilary stared out of the window.

∗

From THE 10 MOST LIKELY: colour feature in Tatler, October 1976

Lovely Hilary Winshaw is a recent Cambridge graduate who intends to make quite a splash in her new job at–Television, where she will be training as a producer. Hilary already has strong views about the work which lies ahead of her. ‘I think of television as one of the fibres which holds the country together,’ she says. ‘It’s brilliant at collapsing distinctions and building a sense of identity. And that’s definitely a tradition I hope to encourage and foster.’

In this picture Hilary is all ready to keep the winter cold at bay with a Royal Samink cape from Furs Renée, 39 Dover St, Wl (£3,460), sweater with roll-neck in camel cashmere by Pringle, 28 Old Bond St, Wl (£52.50), gloves in camel wool, medium-length from Herbert Johnson Ladies Shop, 80 Grosvenor St, Wl (£14.95), and boots in beige leather, mid calf, with stacked heels, from Midas at 36 Hans Crescent, SW1 (£129).

∗

–Television plc. Extract from minutes of Executive BoardMeeting, 14 November 1983. Confidential.

… It was reiterated at this point that nobody undervalued Ms Winshaw’s contribution to the company’s programming successes over the last seven years. However, Mr Fisher insisted that her decision to purchase TMT, the American production company, for £120 million in 1981, had never been offered to the board for proper scrutiny. He asked for clarification on four points: