The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life (7 page)

‘I thought you loved it.’

‘I do.’ Barry Eagles read English at Brasenose. ‘It’s a gorgeous shocker. But who reads Keats any more?’

‘Jesus, Barry. We’re not making the Teletubbies.’

‘I need cuts. That’s all I’m saying. Get Aidan to come up with a really contemporary intro, something that doesn’t need any special effects.’

‘Aidan’s a busy man.’

There’s a clue and a half, but Barry misses it. Or chooses not to hear. Henry likes Barry, and God knows he’s saved his bacon with this gig, eight months on the outside and people think you’ve retired. Barry’s the master at winning commissions from channel controllers. Not easy selling a historical documentary on Puritan iconoclasm. And his trump card in the successful pitch was of course Aidan Massey and his nationally famous hair.

‘Christina.’ Barry turns to the researcher. ‘Put together some material for Aidan. Possible leads for an intro.’

‘Okay,’ says Christina. ‘Best if I pass it by Henry first. It’s his script.’

God bless the girl.

‘Whatever,’ says Barry. Like this is some kind of team logistics.

‘I was thinking,’ Christina persists. ‘Henry could write this up as a piece for
History Today
. His ideas are really original.’

‘Let’s get the show out first.’

Oh, beloved Christina. How I would love to write an article, a book even. But who would publish me? Too late now, my colours nailed to the television mast, I sail on over the ocean of development. The voyages grow longer, the sightings of land rarer, and all of it discovered, inhabited, ruled.

Television, the great image factory. Images the tool of the devil. Calvin called the human mind ‘a perpetual forge of idols’.
Finitum non est capax infiniti
. Our little minds can’t imagine the mystery that is God, and so we create lesser gods to worship. ‘Houses of pictures,’ Henry Clark called churches, and that was not a term of approval. Pictures induce spiritual fornication.

Henry has his eyes closed in the heart of the meeting.

What am I doing here?

The door springs open and in bounces a small man with a big head, supposedly off an overnight plane. He’s pulsating with nervous energy.

‘Late, late!’ cries the star of the show. ‘Mea culpa! BA culpa! On the ground twenty minutes late, no jetway, seven miles of glazed corridors. Coffee! Feed me coffee! Henry, my man! Greetings! The countdown has begun. We’re going to have fun.’

‘Glad you made it, Aidan,’ says Barry, ushering him to one of the black leather and chrome steel chairs. ‘Our last gathering before you go over the top.’

Henry watches Aidan Massey gulping black coffee, jerking his upper body back and forth as he pours out the stream of unrelated observations that passes for brilliance. His shock of auburn hair flops over his outsize brow, the hair the authenticator of genius in this image-infantile culture.

Entirely independently of all that is passing in the room, Henry has an idea for the new intro. He makes a note.

Barry is telling Aidan there’ll have to be some minor cuts. Aidan takes this in his stride.

‘I’ll be winging it anyway,’ he declares. ‘What you have on paper there is no more than a sketch.’

‘A fucking good sketch, Aidan. It’s going to be knock-out.’

‘I’m in Henry’s hands.’ Oh, you sly shitbag. ‘I’m the clay on the spinning wheel. Henry will mould me. Won’t you, Henry?’

‘Do my best, Aidan.’

Barry throws a copy of the
Spectator
across the table.

‘Did you see this? Television’s sexiest intellectuals. You’re number three.’

Of course he’s seen it. The page is already framed and hanging in his downstairs lavatory. But he reads it like it’s an amusing surprise.

‘Michael Ignatieff at number one. Melvyn Bragg at number two. Who votes on this?
Spectator
readers? Of what sexual orientation? Stock up on Vaseline, Henry. For your lenses, of course.’

And shoot you in close-up so the
Spectator
readers never see that your legs are too short for your body. The trademark Aidan Massey in-your-face presenting style, widely praised for ‘immediacy’ and ‘attack’, in fact devised to frame out the star’s dwarfish build.

‘Maybe you should give me your notes, Aidan. So we can run out a final version of the script.’

‘The final version is what comes out of my mouth as the camera rolls, Henry. I know that must drive you crazy. It’s not how the book says. But it’s what I do, and it has the minor merit of not sounding rehearsed. My kind of television isn’t a lecture. It’s a conversation with the viewer. I want him, or preferably her, to follow what I’m saying. To get drawn in, to be hungry for more. So I plead guilty.’ He taps the
Spectator
on the table. ‘I’m a seducer.’

‘Images are the tool of the devil,’ says Barry, quoting from the script.

Aidan Massey’s eyes cloud over. He’s momentarily unsure which term is the source of the humour.

‘One of your lines,’ prompts Barry. ‘I love the irony. Today’s devil imagery has to be television.’

Henry meets Christina’s eyes. They both know Aidan hasn’t read the script. He has no idea where the line comes from. Fuck it, enough. Tell it like it is.

‘Are you okay with what I’ve written for you, Aidan? After all, you’ve had no real input since our first meeting.’

Aidan Massey turns his big handsome head towards Henry and gazes at him in silence: a silence made all the more potent by its contrast with his usual volubility.

‘Ever heard of the alien blow-job theory?’ he says at last.

‘Can’t say I have, Aidan.’

‘It goes like this. In every survey of sexual habits, around seventy per cent of adults say they’ve been on the receiving end of oral sex. But only forty per cent say they’ve given oral sex. That leaves thirty per cent of the adult population getting blow-jobs that no one’s giving. Hence the postulation that every night teams of aliens descend on the nation’s bedrooms.’

Barry Eagles laughs. Christina smiles. Henry does neither.

‘Not following you, Aidan.’

‘Things are never the way they seem.’

‘About the script—’

‘Don’t worry about the script, Henry. I’ll make it work.’

Later Henry finds himself in the men’s room occupying a niche next to Barry Eagles.

‘Aidan happy?’ says Barry, who left the meeting when the detailed work began.

‘Yes, he’s happy.’

‘That’s good.’

‘You do realize Aidan hasn’t written a word of the script?’

‘But he’s okay with it, isn’t he?’

‘Yes, he’s okay with it. But it’s my script.’

Barry expels a sigh.

‘Look, Henry.’ He struggles with the buttons of his fly. ‘Aidan’s a professor of history, not an actor. He brings the project authority.’

‘Fake authority.’

‘You want to tell the viewers that?’

‘No,’ says Henry.

‘Life’s not perfect.’

‘What pisses me off is I’m actually proud of what I’ve done. It’s my research, my thesis. It just might be brilliant.’

‘But if we don’t have Aidan, we don’t have a series. Channel Four isn’t going to buy you as the presenter.’

‘I know.’

‘You could try asking Aidan to go with a co-writing credit.’

‘Oh, sure. He’d love that.’

He returns to the planning meeting, where they’re revising the script to make the necessary cuts. Aidan looks up from the pages with a triumphant smile.

‘I can’t believe what I’m reading here, Henry. You’ve caught my phrases, my thought processes, my fucking soul. Fuck you, man! It’s like you’re inside my head!’

‘So you don’t have many changes?’

‘Why would I want changes? You’ve channelled me. Listen.’

He reads out a paragraph of script as if performing to camera, striding up and down the room. When he’s done the others clap and he leans over Henry, seated at the table, and embraces him.

‘Soul brother!’ he says.

What’s the use? The dead weight of his own anger exhausts him.

I’m walking on walls and below only clouds.

9

The noise they make, thinks Alan Strachan. How is it possible that eighty children can make so much noise and still eat their lunch? The throat is not designed for shouting and eating at the same time. They must be shouting between mouthfuls.

‘Sir, can I leave the rest, sir?’

‘No. You’ve hardly touched it.’

‘But sir, it’s horrible. It makes me want to be sick.’

‘You don’t know till you try.’

‘Do you want me to be sick, sir?’

‘Well, it would vary the monotony.’

‘All right then. Here goes.’

Not a bad kid, Victoria. She’ll do anything to get attention. Never sees her parents, of course. They’re too busy in their high-powered jobs earning the money to give their children all they could possibly desire except the one thing they want.

‘No cheating now. No fingers down the throat.’

A crowd forming. Reassert control.

‘Back to your tables, everyone.’

‘Is Victoria really going to be sick, sir?’

‘Sir sir. Hold up your hand like this sir. Then when I shoot let it flop down like it’s dead.’

‘What is this, Jamie?’

‘Just a joke sir.’

‘All right. There you are.’

‘Poof!’

Down goes the hand. Howls of laughter.

‘You’re a poof sir. Just a joke sir.’

Erch-erch-chukka-erch. Oh God she’s going to do it.

‘If you’re sick, Victoria, you clear it up yourself.’

‘Sir!’ Face red with straining, eyes wide with the injustice of it. ‘That’s changing the rules!’

‘Not at all. Retch and chuck it, fetch the bucket.’

‘You just made that up.’

‘True.’ Look at the time. ‘I have to go. Aimee, can I leave them to you? I’m behind on my marking.’

‘Yes, yes. Off you go.’

‘Bless you.’

Nor is it a lie. Staff room or classroom? Jimmy’ll be in the staff room and he’ll go on clearing his throat until I talk to him and all he has to talk about these days is the
Sussex County Chronicle
, for God’s sake you’d think he was filing copy for the
New York Times
. Ten minutes in the classroom then zip home.

Funny old room. The French windows rattle in the slightest breeze and the desks are never straight. Not that I care. At least there’s a view over the playing fields to the Downs. So, Alice Dickinson. My Journey.

My mother takes me in the car to the station were I catch the train to London were my father lives. he is always bisy so when I go to visit him its only for an hour really and all the rest of the time is my journey. my journey is not very interesting not like when mum comes on the train with me so I dont know what else to write. coming back on the train is just like going out on the train except all the stations happen backwards and sometimes its dark. if my mother is still at work my granma meets me and so my journey is over.

Dear God why don’t I shoot myself now? How can I go on living in this vale of unshed tears? No parent would ever send their child to school if they knew what they reveal daily, hourly, about their monotonous egotistical cruelties. Pretend not to notice. Correct the spelling, urge the use of capital letters, instil some sense of punctuation. And all the time before our eyes the hearts harden and the wonder dies.

And what of them, my own composition markers, my anonymous readers, my judges? How can I tell them that for me writing is more than fancy, even more than vocation? My mission is to rekindle the dying fire, to fan it to blazing heat. Just give me half a chance. Give me a leg up. Let me get one foot on the lowest rung of the ladder and you’ll see me climb. Twenty-nine years old and I swore I would be on my way by thirty, three months to go, why else the solitude, why else the low pay and even lower esteem? For how can I not see it in their eyes, the surprise and the pity, he seems such a capable young man, what’s he doing teaching in a Sussex prep school, you’d think he’d have more ambition than that. Oh yes I have ambition. More even than your little dreams of swimming pools and personalized number plates. Long after I’ve forgotten you and your children, you’ll be telling fibs in pubs about how you knew me once.

Alan Strachan looks up at the clock on the classroom wall. Forty minutes before the next period, every minute of that time needed for marking. Why didn’t I do it yesterday evening as I planned? Because I was tired. Always tired in the evening. Not so much tired as out of hope. The reservoir of hope starts full each morning and trickles away in the course of the day. Evenings are dark times. Thank God for television, the light that cheers but does not inebriate.