The Quorum (15 page)

Stepping into the street and loosening his scarf, he was recognised by a brace of girls window-shopping.

‘It’s Michael Dixon, off the telly,’ one said.

He looked quizzically at them.

* * *

‘I’ll be in conference,’ he told Ayesha, seriously. ‘With Kendra and Gwen,’ he added, prompting a further discharge of giggles.

Minions queued outside his office, arguing among themselves, bearing offerings. Ayesha, supernaturally perfect, mentally reordered his schedule, compressing appointments, rearranging deadlines. She told him Derek Leech’s office called, selecting the single item of paramount importance from among twenty trivial inquiries. He was reminded about tonight. A car would be sent. Ginny would be picked up on the way.

‘By the way, find out who owns the
Basildon Elbow.’

As he manoeuvred the thrilled girls through the office, Michael made snap decisions. Of two comedians available for Friday’s show, he chose the up-and-coming American and back-burnered the newly rehabilitated Brit. He ruled out Sade for the music spot as ‘too eighties’ and authorised tentative Bosnia gags for the topical monologue, weighing bad taste against the need to prickle.

‘We’ve weeded it down,’ April announced, delivering a selection of Big Heart tapes. He loaded Kendra up as if she were a supermarket trolley and promised a decision by four. April, never still, whizzed off to pace and fret until she knew which release forms to pursue.

He gathered Kendra and Gwen into his office, and closed the doors. Sound-proofing cut out chatter and bustle from beyond. The ceiling lightstrips automatically faded on.

‘My kingdom,’ he announced.

Gwen spun like a top, skirt whirling over black leggings, demonstrating how much space there was. Michael conjured the wet bar and the girls gaped at the gadgetry. They fell upon the coloured bottles, demanding to know what each was. He ignored exotic requests for heavy liquids and took out the half-empty Stoli. He disassembled a Russian doll into a set of tumblers and sloshed generously.

‘Everything’s something else,’ Kendra noticed.

Manipulating the remote control, Michael had a slim screen descend from the ceiling and a multiple-deck video rise from the floor.

Gwen sighed at such wonders.

‘Shove those in, would zhou,’ he asked Kendra, nodding at the pile of videotapes she hugged to her chest. Fumbling, she managed to get the oblongs in their slots. Tapes were sucked in and the machines whirred.

Gwen took an overly enthusiastic first mouthful and made a balloon-cheeked, red-hot-pepper face.

‘If zhou loved me, zhou’d swallow that,’ he said.

Gwen gasped a laugh that sprayed vodka through her nostrils. Kendra had minor convulsions.

The screen came to static life. Michael sat on the edge of his desk fast-forwarding four tapes simultaneously on different channels, zapping between them.

‘What d’zhou reckon?’ he asked Gwen, who had peeled off her blue plastic coat to show a ribbed v-neck jumper.

The Big Heart slot focused on someone ordinary who was heroic, made a true-life sacrifice or pined for a lost loved one. The gimmick was the subject’s (victims, they were called in the office) family and friends made the video themselves and submitted it to
Dixon’s On.
The production team selected which would air: embarrassingly cheap, inordinately popular.

‘I dunno,’ said Gwen, whom he noticed was not a brain surgeon of the future. ‘Which is which?’

He used the remote to quarter the screen. Each video ran at normal speed in one quadrant. Even with the sound off, Michael gathered the choices: a game granny riding about somewhere rural on a motorbike, a cat staying faithfully by a toddler in a coma, a class of schoolkids rescuing gannets from an oil spill, and a lady lawyer giving it all up to go to Somalia and work in famine relief.

‘Look at the poor birdies,’ Gwen said, the Voice of the Audience. No matter how the team might mutter about his ‘conferences’, they were more useful than circular discussions with the overeducated neurotics on his payroll. It was a lesson he’d learned from the master, Derek Leech.

‘I like the lawyer,’ said Kendra, who would in two years be embarrassed that she’d been best friends with Gwen. ‘She’s more genuine.’

‘Zhou’re right,’ Michael told her. ‘But not for us. There’s a difference between zhenuine and real.’

‘It’s terrible the wildlife that suffers because of tankers,’ Gwen said.

Fast-forwarding all four tapes at once, Michael privately decided on the cat. You could take audience research too far. Animals and sick children were surefire: it would be tragically wonderful if the pet-owner recovered, or at least stirred from deep-sleep to blink at her adoring moggy, in time for a follow-up.

He shut off the screen and slipped an arm around Gwen. She looked at her friend, giggled nervously, then cuddled up. She touched the lapel of his Gaultier jacket, drew her fingers away as if she’d had a static shock, then stroked the material.

‘It feels funny,’ she said.

Kendra had second thoughts. She stood to one side, still in overcoat and woolly hat. She wasn’t shocked exactly, more confused. Here on his desk, he could do anything he wanted with Gwen. That made him interested in Kendra. Gwen snuggled against him and licked his neck like a cat. He looked, smiling, at Kendra, and raised his glass in a toast.

‘Drink up, it’ll warm zhour insides,’ he said.

Kendra took a swallow and, slowly, dawdled across the room. He eased Gwen away and put a hand on Kendra’s shoulder drawing her close, fixing her eyes. He filled his mouth with vodka and, when it was time to kiss, squirted down her throat. Her open eyes grew wide but she did not choke.

* * *

The girls scrawled threatening letters. He said it was a joke on a friend, but they didn’t need an explanation.
Lee Harvey, just for a laff, shoot this gun at the President...
The ‘we were chust obeyink orders’ line of Nuremberg defence was a miscalculation; gas chamber functionaries should have argued that a nonentity’s compulsion to do what a celeb tells him was a universal human trait.
What Lee Harvey didn’t know is we gave Mr Ruby another gun and this time - tee hee - he’s the one who’s going to be shot at. So let’s see what happened next...
Careers were based on public willingness to suffer intolerable privations so long as they got on telly, on a pretend-equal basis with Jeremy Beadle or Alan Funt.

Grey blotches dotted his vision and his head was pleasantly painful. He diagnosed his condition and prescribed a further course of treatment, washing down red pills with more Stoli.

Kendra squatted, his jacket surprisingly terrific on her, rump peeking out under the backflap, head close to carpet as she laboriously filled in dripping red stains on her death threat. Gwen concentrated on foul language and limited abuse, her most inventive offering being the ancient ‘welcome to the AIDS club’, but Kendra was interested in design. She decorated her prim little notes (‘tonight, you will be killed’) with skulls and crossbones, poison daggers and large, staring, mad eyes.

He ran off address labels and stuck them on envelopes (plain,
not
Top Hat stationery) then added leftover Christmas stamps. He made the girls promise to send the letters from their home town (Richmond) at irregular intervals between now and Valentine’s Day.

When they were done, Michael had Ayesha give them T-shirts and badges. Twenty minutes after he’d sent the girls on their mission, it hit him, with a headachy surge like a blow from a ballpeen hammer, that their handiwork would be uselessly diverted to a box in Belfast. He’d probably scuppered the ELF membership at the same time.

* * *

As he gave yay or nay to the week’s line-up, his mind hunted through his bloodstream like Pac-Man, seeking out and blasting vodka particles. The team liked to talk at once to wildly different purposes and protract production meetings into the evening. To cut extraneous noise, he introduced a 6th of January ruling that no one could make a contribution without prefacing his or her statement with ‘Mr Whippy-Wobble-Willie of Crab-Apple, Abergavenny says...’ on pain of donating a day’s salary to Somalia relief.

‘What a good idea,’ said Roily, office toady and hatchet man. ‘Nobody can say we aren’t creative.’

‘Mr Whippy-Wobble-Willie of Crab-Apple, Abergavenny says... that should be
Mr Whippy-Wobble-Willie of Crab-Apple, Abergavenny says
“what a good idea, etc”, Roily.’

Roily made a goldfish mouth while everyone tried not to laugh.

‘Mr Whippy-Wobble-Willie of Crab-Apple, Abergavenny says make the cheque out to Oxfam,’ Michael said.

Everyone was keen on Faithful Kitty. April said she’d do what she could on a recovery follow-up.

‘It wouldn’t even...’ she began, amid braying laughter. ‘Sorry, Mr Willie-Wobbly-Wonka of Crawfish, Abacadabra says... it wouldn’t even have to be permanent. Maybe if they gave her electroshock or an injection we could get a waking moment on tape.’

‘Mr Whippy-Wobble-Willie of Crab-Apple, Abergavenny says that’s entirely too fondant of you, Ape,’ he said, giving her the nod.

The American comedian, Barry Gatlin, was firmed for the stand-up item.

‘Mr Whippy-Wobble-Willie of Crab-Apple, Abergavenny says make sure it’s the real Bastard Barry not the cleaned-up
Wogan
version,’ Michael ordered. ‘We’re not soggy terrestrial TV. We’re supposed to be muckrageous.’

* * *

Ayesha had arranged his costume. With the galley slaves still rowing, he retreated to his office and changed.

The padding was from Cloud 9’s drama department. It strapped on and inflated like a lifebelt, bulking him to Pavarotti proportions. Ayesha helped him into his boots, tights and puffy britches. The Tudorbethan get-up came complete with cloak, plumed hat, sword and false moustache. There was even a bottle of spirit gum.

As she glue-daubed his upper lip, Ayesha commented that she didn’t know Falstaff was in
Twelfth Night.

‘He’s not,’ Michael said, affixing his moustache, ‘Sir Toby Belch is. Shakey wasn’t above ripping himself off.’

Michael swirled his cloak and swished his sword, observing himself in the grey mirror of a blank screen.

‘Hah,
en garde
,’ he said, thrusting.

The palpitating heart of Gary Gaunt was on the point of his blade.

‘Lie there and bleed,’ he told the vanquished critic.

H
ere they were in the pit of winter, back in the dressing-room of the Rat Centre. Neil’s queasy excitement was tempered with embarrassment, as if Rachael, the blasé girl in the next room at Tadcaster House, were to see through him and picture the gawky fifteen-year-old he used to be, with a rainbow tank-top and shoulder-length curls. He toked on the joint but blow only ratcheted up the tension.

‘When we come together,’ Michael said, holding smoke in his lungs, ‘it’s a collision of matter and anti-matter.’

He burped, almost coughed. Making fists, controlling himself, he continued, ‘Universe might end but th’explosion be beautiful,
mes braves’.

In the mirror, Neil saw Mark cringe. His university girlfriend was in the auditorium; he was anxious Pippa would not consider his oldest mates immature clods. An annoying thing about Mark was his over-concern with what outsiders thought.

‘I can’t believe we’re still doing this,’ Neil said. ‘I thought we’d never live past college.’

‘Live
through
college, you mean,’ said Mickey, taking the joint.

At Art School Mickey had spiked his hair and pierced his ears. His Buzzcocks T-shirt had ripped-away sleeves; tears in his black drainpipe jeans were sutured with safety pins. For the show, he wore a Dracula cloak fastened with a black and gold Dalek badge.

They faced the long mirror, interacting more with reflections than their real selves. It was cold, despite the slur of the fan heater. Thin snow was settling outside.

‘I wish it were Midsummer,’ Neil said, not realising how he meant it.

‘Midsummer
is always a shambles,’ Michael pointed out, carefully applying a ’tache. ‘All our hits are offseason.’

‘Are we quorate?’ Mark asked.

‘More than,’ Neil said. ‘How long has it been?’

‘Forever,’ Michael breathed.

For three weeks, until Pippa turned up to claim Mark’s attention, they had worked together, ominously not arguing much. The Forum was of an equal mix of altercation and achievement. Now they had separate lives and were less open with each other. The violent arguments came when they felt strongly about what they were doing. This was just a joke. It had only been last summer. How could they be nostalgic about six months ago?

‘You sure about Alex?’ Mark asked. Alex, a college first-year had been drafted to do the lighting. Neil gathered Michael was going out with her while Penny was at Polytechnic.

‘Zh-yeah zh-yeah,’ Michael assured. ‘She did both town pantomimes. She knows the board.’

‘This could be our last stand,’ Mickey said. ‘Let’s go down with all guns blazing.’

‘I’ve heard that before,’ Michael said. ‘The Forum will never die.’

‘You’ll just wish it had,’ Mark said.

The first thing Mark did with his grant was buy a suit from one of Brighton’s many old-clothes shops, a gangsterish pinstripe. Over the term, Neil hadn’t seen much of Mark. First they were in different halls of residence, then Mark moved with Pippa into a town flat. They each had new friends. Over the holiday, they’d been together more than in two and a half months away from home.

‘We’re nineteen, we’ve
lived
,’ said Michael, not without irony. ‘We’re better now than we used to be.’

They’d all slept with girls (at least once); Neil had hopes (probably unrealistic) for Rachael. They could drink large quantities of bitter and only puke monstrously twice out of three times. For Neil, the crisis came when Michael relayed a message from Mrs Dixon: he was welcome to stay over whenever he wanted, but did he have to be sick every time?

Desmond, an ex-footsoldier whisked out of the audience and drafted backstage, came in with a tray of pints.