Dunster (2 page)

‘Good God. Is he going to make the joke?' Cris would mutter, his eyes fixed on the huge, operating theatre lights which hung over the black marble slab that formed our boardroom table.

‘... In all their 57 varieties!' Sydney Pollitter delivered his punchline into a silence only broken by the eager laughter of the managing director, who had heard it all before but who was at pains to treat Sydney and Cris, who never agreed about anything, with equal respect. ‘It's not I who am distressed, Chairman. But it's the average housewife in Bexleyheath I'm concerned about. Does she really want to be treated to a view of the naked buttocks of some long-haired actor as he dives into bed with yet
another
promiscuous social worker?'

That day, however, it was not sex that was uppermost in the Pollitter mind. It was war. After another endless apology for wasting the time of the Board on a trifling matter, which we might well, with our superior knowledge of the technicalities of programming and audience research, dismiss as of quite exaggerated importance, he suddenly said, ‘Isn't it the duty of all of us not to do anything to undermine the morale of our young men as they go into battle in a distant land? I merely ask the question, Chairman, so that you may shoot me down.'

‘I don't want to shoot you down, Sydney. I don't want to shoot anybody down. I've seen quite enough shooting down to last a lifetime.'

‘I'm sure you have, Chairman. We all know your war record is impeccable. That goes without saying. And I'm sure everyone here will rebuke me for wasting the Board's precious time by repeating it.'

‘I don't really think a war record' – Cris was smiling with more than his usual charm – ‘is a thing for anyone to be proud of, exactly.'

‘You say that, Chairman, of course. We all hear you say it and we all have the greatest respect for your modesty. But if I may just waste a further moment of your time, and I speak as one who served his country as a national serviceman, albeit in a clerical capacity.'

‘Pay Corps' Cris wrote on his doodled-on copy of the minutes and nudged it in my direction.

‘I am just anxious, and you will no doubt tell me at once that I am unnecessarily anxious, that an intended programme suggesting that our own record in time of war may not have been, let us say, beyond criticism is not the sort of thing we should allow to creep into the schedules at this particular moment in our island story.'

‘No longer an island. Since the Channel tunnel,' Charles Glasscock, partner in a firm of solicitors and the latest addition to the Board, piped up and was immediately ignored.

‘I mean, of course,
War Crimes.
Now let others speak. You must all be heartily sick of the sound of my voice. No. I mean that in all sincerity.' At which Sydney Pollitter closed his eyes and appeared to compose himself for sleep.

Gary Penrose, for the management, did his best to explain the situation. ‘
War Crimes.
We're commissioning it from Streetwise. We see it as a late night show. Around eleven o'clock. Certainly when the kids have been put down for the night. It's going to take the place of something like
Great Hotels of the World.
'

“It's quite far in the future, as I understand it,' Cris said. ‘This war, if there is a war, will no doubt be over. Now, if we could move on to the financial report. Philip ...' He looked hopefully at me, but his smile faded as Sydney Pollitter stirred, opened his eyes and started up his engines with another firm pull at his ear lobe. ‘May I. at the risk of being howled down by the rest of you, who no doubt have far more important things to talk about, just say that I think
Great Hotels of the World
an absolutely
super
programme. I mean, all sorts of perfectly ordinary, decent people, who could never hope to go to the Peninsular in Hong Kong, for instance, get a chance to see what a really luxurious hotel looks like.'

‘I've been to the Peninsular in Hong Kong –' The newest arrival on the Board was clearly going to be a chatterer. Cris returned to a close study of the ceiling as Sydney Pollitter carried on.

‘That seems to me to be exactly the sort of thing we should be doing. Bringing glamour and excitement to the ordinary housewife in, let's say for the sake of argument, Bexleyheath. But when I hear talk of a series apparently designed to show that all sides in a war can behave equally badly, then I wonder, in my probably quite uninformed and extremely naive way, if that's exactly the sort of thing we should be concentrating on. Particularly in times of National Emergency.'

‘I think Philip's going to take us through the financial report, Sydney.'

Pollitter threw up both hands in an exaggerated gesture of surrender. ‘I am rebuked, Chairman. I am courteously but fairly rebuked. Of course the financial report is far more important. But can I just leave the thought in your mind. For you to dismiss as utter nonsense, of course. If you decide so to do.'

‘Bloody marvellous place, that Peninsular Hotel,' Glasscock told us. ‘Soon as you go into your room a little old Chinese chap turns up with a trolley and offers you the choice of about thirty varieties of soap: Guerlain, Roger & Gallet, Chanel. My lady simply couldn't believe it.'

‘Please, Philip' – the moment had come for Cris to take over command and he did with authority – ‘the financial report.
If you please
.'

I started to go through the figures which I knew by heart and the board members of Megapolis did their best to look as if they understood them.

Up till then the meeting had followed its usual pattern; a boring formality in the work of the company. The hint of troubles to come, the cloud no larger than a man's hand, appeared when Cris asked me to stay behind for a moment.

‘Sid Vicious,' he said, ‘was especially unbearable this morning.' I was surprised that Cris, well over seventy and only staying on by special dispensation of the Board, whose pop musical experience might have been expected to stop short at Cliff Richard, should have heard of anything like the Sex Pistols. But his knowledge of many matters was unexpected.

‘If only he'd stop apologizing,' I agreed, ‘the board meetings'd take half the time.'

‘Talking about my war record!' Cris was tall and lanky. His braces supported the trousers of a tweed suit of indeterminate age. He had clear features, blue eyes and wings of white hair brushed back over his ears. But he looked suddenly shy, at a loss, like a young man. it was bloody embarrassing!'

Stories of Cris in the war circulated in the company. He had been parachuted behind the German lines in Italy with the odes of Horace in his pocket, He had fought in the desert wearing a silk scarf and a pair of old cricket trousers. He had been dropped into Yugoslavia with the ‘Balkan Air Force'. None of these were incidents I ever heard him mention.

‘My war record! Three quarters of the time I was bored to death and the rest I was scared shitless. We need to do these programmes so people like Sid Vicious can understand what war's all about.'

‘I suppose so.' At that time my feelings about
War Crimes
were neutral. I would have been more excited by
Great Acting Moments to Remember.

‘Streetwise've come up with rather a bright treatment. Gary's asked me to have a look at it. It seems to ask all the right questions.' He was looking out of the boardroom windows, down the glittering river towards the suburbs and patches of green that might still be countryside. I was standing by the marble slab of the boardroom table that was as cold and as uninviting as a tomb.

‘The writer's called Richard Dunster.'

It was the last name I expected to have thrown at me, in that place, on that morning. When I was silent he asked, ‘Who is this fellow Dunster? Do you know anything about him?'

‘A little.' Of course I knew a great deal about him. He just wasn't anyone I wanted to think about, let alone discuss with Cris.

Is he any good as a screenwriter?'

‘I don't really know.' I tried to sound as unapprehensive as possible. ‘I haven't seen Dunster for years.'

‘And the ungodly shall be cast out into outer darkness when that day comes, my friends. And only those who have given their hearts and their souls to Jesus shall walk into the light.'

‘What about the Chinese?'

‘Only those who have stepped forward for Our Lord will be received into His company.'

‘And the Indians: Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists? Millions of them. Aren't they going to walk into the light?'

‘Come on, Dunster,' I said. ‘Please. We'll miss the matinée.'

‘And how shall we know when the day is at hand? you ask.'

‘No,' Dunster said. ‘I didn't ask that. I asked about Buddhists.'

‘The signs will be a mighty rushing wind. Then shall there be an outbreak of small fires.' The speaker, standing on a little stepladder at Marble Arch, was squat and grey-haired with glasses. He looked like a bank manager or an insurance salesman and uttered his dire warnings in a matter-of-fact voice, as though he were discussing the times of trains from Waterloo. It was Dunster, supposedly my best friend at school, who looked a fanatic: bright-eyed with a lock of dark hair fallen across his forehead, his unbuttoned mac flapping in the wind and a voice which trembled on the verge of indignation or sarcastic laughter – you could never be quite sure which would emerge. My idea of pleasure was to see
Othello
at the Old Vic, his was to heckle the orators at Speakers' Corner. The man on the stepladder should have been grateful as, apart from a few released secretaries and their lovers who paused for a moment on their way to a vacant patch of grass and then walked on, quite uninterested in the end of the world, Dunster and I were his only audience.

‘What's troubling you, young man?' The speaker, unwisely, decided to confront Dunster.

‘All those Buddhists. Are they going to be cast out into darkness?'

‘Unless they have stood up for Jesus.'

‘They've probably never even heard of Jesus.'

‘That is why, young man, I have taken it upon myself to spread the word.'

‘Well, you're not spreading it much here, are you? You're not exactly surrounded by Buddhists waiting to be converted. In fact you would hardly have had anyone here at all if Progmire and I hadn't turned up.'

‘Please, Dunster. Let's go. We're going to be late.' I wanted to put an end to this scene. Not only did I find it embarrassing but I was sorry for the man on the stepladder. He seemed to me to have enough on his plate, what with the rushing wind and the small fires and the Day of Judgement, without having an argument with Dunster to contend with.

‘Oh, all right. You never want to do anything interesting.' Dunster agreed to leave with a good deal of reluctance. I looked back at the preacher, who stood in silence on his stepladder for a moment, the wind disturbing his neat grey hair, before he drew breath and shouted after us, ‘Outer darkness, my young friends. I ask you to beware of the outer darkness. Just you mull it over!'

We went to St George's, a long-surviving London day school in the dark alleyways around the Guildhall and the Mansion House. When it was felt that we needed fresh air, we were bussed out to a set of rented playing-fields in Barnes where we stood and shivered and longed for the warm, dark ride back, the shared crisps and bottles of Coke and the aimless fights and sudden friendships. When we arrived, the headmaster lectured all new boys on the school's history, which stretched back, more or less uneventfully, to the reign of Henry VIII. ‘What you will all get here,' he said, as he looked out on an assortment which included a good many Indians, Jews and a smattering of Japanese, ‘is a sound Church of England education. St George's has always been a school at the heart of English life, as the name of our patron saint will probably have made clear to you.' ‘Absolute balls!' – the boy beside me had a penetrating whisper – ‘St George was a Palestinian pirate and a brothel-owner. I thought everyone knew that.' It was my first meeting with Dunster.

I didn't choose to become friends with him. When I look back on it, the number of actual choices I've made in my life seem minimal. As I have said, I didn't choose to be an accountant. It was a disability I was born with. I didn't choose Natasha's mother. She chose me for reasons which I still find hard to explain. Looking back on my schooldays, it doesn't seem to me that I chose my friend, any more than I chose my school, or the uniform of straw hats and red blazers we wore, or even the part of Rosalind into which I was forced with considerable terror at the age of thirteen – and which I now look upon as one of my greatest achievements, more successful, in its way, than my Hamlet at university, which is another story entirely. So the fact of the matter is that I didn't pick out Dunster but he did, deliberately and inexplicably, choose me. He became, as the years went by, inescapable.

He always seemed to be closer to me than I really cared for. I thought, at times, that I was quite alone and then I would turn my head and there he would be, pale-faced and bright-eyed, his hair flopping down from under the ridiculous boater and his blazer buttons hanging by a thread (Mrs Dunster had left home and Dunster's father and his son cared for, or neglected, each other). He was eager to tell me some disgraceful secret he had discovered: that our headmaster, Mr Sheldrake, had got a Fourth in History and was only chosen for his present post because he was a member of the Freemasons, or that the yapping little cocker spaniel of a man who tried to teach us football had been dismissed from a job at Borstal for suspected buggery and even – and this was a story which lasted with considerable embellishments throughout the whole of one long, wet summer term – that the angry stringbean of a man who taught us French had been a close friend of Burgess and Maclean and lived in daily terror of being arrested as an old Cambridge leftie and still-active Soviet spy.