Wildlife (25 page)

Up in the banqueting suite, the atmosphere is hushed and expectant. Relatively little of the cheers and boos of the crowd outside can be heard in here. It's weird to be sat in silence so close to forty thousand screaming people. Weird to see so many fanatics waving flags and shouting insults at a field, while you yourself are sat quietly at a beige table in a long beige room, watching an empty stage, not knowing quite what you're waiting for.

Next to the stage, five or six of the shellsuits are huddled together and talking in excited whispers, smiles bursting across their faces whenever they speak. Turning momentarily from this huddle, one of them addresses the audience. ‘It shouldn't be too long now, ladies and gentlemen,' she says. She's just a girl, a girl with a fringe so straight it could draw
blood. Having reassured the waiting guests, she returns to the group and rejoins the whispering. A soft murmur travels round the increasingly stuffy room. Shoulders get hunched. Palms are revealed in gestures of not knowing. Some people even yawn.

Not one person from the fabulously unimpressive list of D-grade celebrities that Life invited to the launch of the Wild World has been allowed in. They turned up in terrible clothes and faces rendered foul by fleeting fame. They got told to fuck off. They got told that the young girl, Life, did not have the authority to invite them. They were told that Life, like them, like everyone else, has misunderstood the Wild World.

There are no celebrities in this room. These people who sit silently round these tables are strangers. They are mostly elderly. Judging by their expensive suits and smart, understated dresses, they are rich strangers, strangers from business, strangers from the aristocracy, even strangers from the government. Irritated by the lack of activity on the stage, most have turned to watch the beginnings of the football match through the long window that stretches all the way down the suite. They watch as a fat man is introduced to both teams.

A minute or two later and the referee blows his whistle and the match kicks off. In the banqueting suite, a few of the guests even call out. ‘Come on, Chelsea,' says an old man with a wet, white side parting and a highly reflective face. ‘Fuck off, Chelsea,' cries a gentleman wearing a monocle. The guests in the banqueting suite seem so old. The men are wearing waistcoats. Their facial hair is cloud-like and ludicrous; their skin is creased and uneven. The women, too, are old except for their make-up, which cakes
over their thinning skin and invents curious eyebrows where little hair now grows. On the table at the front, which Life had intended to share with Janek and Joe, Roger and Anka, a typically elderly couple have become captivated by the football match. The two of them stare at the pitch with fixed, glazed eyes. They watch as one of the players in blue begins to run down the wing, attempting to trick the defender with various step-overs and dummies. The elderly woman, her soft white hair tied into a bun, takes a cigarette from a silver case and places it in her mouth; she nudges her husband, requesting that he light it.

‘It seems, darling,' says the old man, removing a gold lighter from his waistcoat pocket, ‘that football has changed a great deal since our time.'

The woman leans so the tip of her cigarette enters the yellow flame. She inhales on it, exhales and then crosses her legs, reclining at a relaxed and thoughtful angle.

‘Perhaps you're right,' she says. ‘I'm told these men are all autistic orphans, that they're raised in fields with only footballs and one or two volumes of pornography to entertain them.'

‘Is that right?'

‘It's what I'm told. They make good money, of course, but . . .' The woman delays exhaling a lungful of smoke while a free kick is taken on the pitch below. The ball sails over the bar. The woman blows smoke into the air. ‘. . . but most of these men will die very, very young. They won't live to be as old as us. It's sad.'

The two of them watch as three or four players from each team suddenly get into an argument. They start pushing each other, bringing their foreheads very close together and exchanging fierce stares before their respective teammates
start pulling them apart and the referee starts issuing yellow cards.

‘Yes,' agrees the old man softly, ‘it is sad.'

The elderly guests' attention is grabbed so firmly by the minor brawl taking place below them on the pitch that none of them notice when the lights of the banqueting suite slowly begin to dim. ‘Send the tosspot off,' shouts a grumpy-eyed man with a dragged-down face and a top hat, thumping the thick glass window with a white and weakly clenched fist. No one notices when a spotlight ignites and shoots a bright beam across the half-light of the room. Only the shellsuits by the stage turn to stare at the spotlit doorway. They're more excited than ever.

‘Look, everyone,' shouts the girl with the dangerous fringe, appealing to the guests, trying to drag their attention from the game with frantic flaps of her arms. ‘Everyone, look. Please. Ladies and gentlemen. If we could have your attention.'

Music begins to play. The sound of an orchestra swelling to crescendo is played through large speakers. The elderly guests begin to struggle round in their seats, opening their mouths slightly and craning to look over their shoulders at the door beside the stage. The timpanis join the orchestra, hit firmly, tribally; the music is getting louder and louder. The fluorescent young at the front are clutching each other's shoulders, stooping slightly and peering into the bright light of the doorway. ‘Get ready,' shouts the girl with the murderous hair, satisfied now that the elderly guests are no longer watching the match but have turned to view the event. ‘This is it,' she shouts. A shadow appears in the doorway, silhouetted by the spotlight's beam. The elderly guests begin to nudge each other, forgetting about the
match. ‘Look,' they say, shouting to be heard above the now deafening music. ‘Look at that. What on earth could that be?' Answers are not heard. The music can get louder. Trumpets, bassoons, trombones and always the rageful dum-dum-dum of the drums. The figure is on the move. It's a man. A man dressed in a spotless white suit. He steps out of the doorway and up onto the stage, tracked always by the spotlight.

When they see him properly, the gasp given off by the elderly guests could suck the features from your face. Their eyes open too wide in horror. Each of them suddenly resembles the gingerbread dead: shocked and simple. The lady with the drawn-on eyebrows and the caked face lets out a scream, tossing her cigarette into the air. There is chaos. On the table near the front a man removes his top hat and he and his wife take turns vomiting into it. Some of the men even struggle to their feet and begin waving ivory-tipped walking sticks at the stage in protest. They're made to sit back down by the shellsuits who can't help but smile and applaud even while forcing guests to return to their seats. The man, meanwhile, has made it to the podium at the centre of the stage. The orchestral crescendo seems intent on going on forever. How long can a group of people go on getting louder and louder? It's unclear. The man straightens the cuffs of his white suit and sends a smile spinning round the room like a boomerang before catching it in his teeth and winking at his horrified audience. Next he feigns a grimace that seems to acknowledge the absurdity of the music and the fact that a football match is taking place in a packed stadium outside the window. To the shellsuits, the man nods, acknowledging their generous applause and their crowd-controlling skills. But not even his evident
good grasp of facial expressions can strip the shock from the faces that stare back at him. A woman has removed a red silk glove from her hand and is attempting to blindfold herself. Men bite into their own fists. Women weep. When the recording of the orchestra finally comes to an end, it is replaced by a discordant arrangement of sobbing, loud breathing and human groans.

‘Please,' says the man, gesturing for quiet with both hands. ‘Please, ladies and gentlemen, please settle down.'

For a second it works, the crowd quietens and the elderly people stare at the floor, eyes wet with concentration. But the moment they raise their heads cautiously to look at the man, they begin to shriek with disgust even louder than before. The man shrugs. He's annoyed. ‘Yes,' he starts saying. ‘Yes, it's true. Yes.' The crowd gets no quieter. The sickly couple at the front are in need of a second top hat. ‘Yes,' says the man, stepping down from the stage and deciding to shout. ‘Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you're all correct!' He brings a fist slamming down onto the table nearest to him and finally the elderly people regain a degree of composure. The man smiles sympathetically, nodding a little. ‘There,' he says. ‘Thank you.' He returns to the podium while the last sobs subside.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, let me reassure you. What you see here is just a trick. There really is no need for you to react like this. Please, take a moment to become accustomed to it. I shan't be offended.' The man smiles and leans forward with both hands on the podium. ‘What you see here is the result of plastic surgery, I assure you,' he says. ‘See this as simply an arrow pointing in the direction of your future. Surely you must have anticipated this. Surely you have heard.' The man deepens the pitch of his voice to lend
it gravitas and says, ‘A Wild World will come. And with it the end of our days. Then finally, armed with our future, a dickhead will rise from among us.'

The elderly crowd erupts once more, taking immediate offence at the idea that this . . . this dickhead at the podium is some sort of prophet, some sort of Jesus, a messiah or a seer with a penis on his head. How dare he? They fire questions at him and in response the dickhead, that is to say the rather genuine dickhead from whose forehead a dick definitely droops, begins to try and restore calm once more, saying, ‘It's Marlon Brando's, if you must know. Jesus! If you must know, it belonged to Marlon, yes, a real star, my God, would you all calm down?'

Under his penis, the dickhead is a man of about thirty-five. He has eyes and a short back and sides. He's handsome. The football match seems like a distant memory to the elderly audience who look up at him. It is only the dickhead's persistent shouts of ‘Would you like to know your future?' that finally causes silence to fill the room, preceded by some angry, elderly cries of ‘Who are you? Who are you?'

‘My name,' says the dickhead, ‘is Ian. And that's about as much as I'm prepared to say about myself. My past, like the past, is not relevant. Sure, I was a schoolboy, somewhere, once, I was a student even, but not in this country. My calling was a higher one, you see. I have no past. My name is Ian.' The dickhead is almost chanting. ‘I have no past. My name is Ian. I am he that will rise, as it was foretold, he that will rise, armed with our future, forehead thus adorned. I'm here to talk to you about the Wild World. I have no past. My name is Ian. I like sport, music and film.'

There is a modest round of applause that seems to signal
that the audience has come to terms with the contents of Ian's forehead.

‘And so the Wild World,' Ian says, his voice calm and authoritative, vaguely light-hearted. ‘Yes, the Wild World. I must start by saying that a lot of rubbish has been spoken in recent months about the precise nature of it. In actual fact, the Wild World is . . .' He trails off and begins lightly tickling the tip of the dick with his index finger. ‘You people,' he begins again, his hands returning to the podium, ‘some of you people must remember the interwar years, yes, you're about that age, aren't you? Most of you, I'm sure, recall the aftermath of the Second World War. Do you? Yes, I'm sure you do, judging by your white hair and your old skin, I'm sure you do. Of course, I'm quite young and I might be wrong, but I dare say the best way to describe the Wild World to you is to go back to the twentieth century and . . .' Ian feigns a slanted and puzzled expression. ‘Maybe not,' he continues, tickling his penis once more, perplexed. ‘Yes, maybe not. Because I dare say, judging by some of the very grey complexions in this room, some of you remember the nineteenth century, am I right?'

A murmur of agreement grumbles in certain sections of the room. A man at the back says, ‘I do.'

‘Yes,' says Ian, his excitement growing, ‘you remember the nineteenth century! Super. You do, no doubt, recall the cotton mills of Oldham and Manchester, hundreds of chimneys on the skyline, the birth of the modern world, the behemoth of industry, the long working days? Tell me,' shouts Ian towards the man who remembers the nineteenth century, ‘what was it like?'

‘Crap!' cries the man, immediately. ‘It stank. I was a weaver.'

‘Good, good,' cries Ian from the stage. ‘It was crap, his whole life stank, says our friend from the nineteenth century. But tell me, did you not enjoy a seaside holiday from time to time?'

‘We went to Morecambe once,' shouts the man immediately. ‘It was crap! It was boring.'

‘Was it?' says Ian. ‘I see. It was boring. And then, what next? The nineteenth century became the twentieth, didn't it? I'm sure that some of you must have fought in and survived the First World War. Tell me, how did you feel when you came back to England after fighting so hard?'

The elderly crowd shuffle in their seats, guests on adjacent tables exchange questioning glances, as if to say, well, how did we feel?

‘Bloody awful,' shouts a bloke near the front, before folding his arms tightly and sinking into his seat.

‘Extremely angry,' shouts another.

‘No, no,' says an incredibly old man on the middle table, rising to his feet. He has eyes like accidents, skin like the pages of a Bible, no hair, just a stained scalp. ‘No, it wasn't quite like that. We felt . . . angry, yes . . . but mostly, we felt worthy of a great reward. Yes. And we felt no morality at all, that's right, no morality, not compared to those who stayed behind. We felt like we deserved to do what on earth we felt like doing. We were owed.'