Wildlife (3 page)

‘Go on,' whispers Ben. ‘Try it.'

‘You lot,' Anka mutters, picturing her audience, shaking her head a little, exhaling in pretend disbelief. ‘Sometimes I don't know why you bother. I mean, you sit there on that
sofa you haven't finished paying for. You tip all that shit into yourself every single day. You're mad. Take a look out of your window, if you've got one. Look at the world, sniff it, walk on it; it's changing. You're going to need the money. You're really going to need the money. What beats beyond your ribs?'

Anka gets a round of thumbs ups from the Channel MANC crew. The two work-experience girls smile at her in genuine awe. Red lights are already beginning to ignite on the switchboard. The wankers will always rise. The economy told me so. Anka suppresses a rush of pride and excitement. She grimaces into the camera.

‘The fact of the matter is this: you're a loser. Deep down you've always known. All day every day you are two things. You are noisy and you are boring. Every night you are two things. You are alone and you're a wanker. You really need this money. The Wild World will watch you drown. Tell me what beats beyond your ribs?'

The more TV channels people acquired in the early twenty-first century, the more the large audiences of the past were broken into pieces. To watch TV, particularly late in the evening, particularly complete crap, is to feel inconsolably alone.

‘It's a scramble. It's always a scramble,' snaps Anka, exaggerating the vindictive tone in her voice. ‘And the fact is you're too fat and too thin to scramble to safety. Your bank account is a joke. You daren't check your balance. Your debts to the old world will make you unviable in the Wild. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but unless you win some money soon, you're fucked.'

‘Keep going,' mouths Ben through a smile. The girls by the switchboard are leaning backwards in amazement.
This is the economy getting angry, thinks Anka. I am the old economy getting angry. This is fun, she thinks. I'll remember this when I'm safe and working and eating in the Wild World. I'll tell this story. I'll tell it to people, in the future, when I'm happy.

‘Come on,' she shouts, leaping off the end of the bed and skipping close to the camera's lens. ‘The one thing you don't have is time. It's New Year's Day. What beats beyond those ribs of yours? How will the debts be paid? Come on. I'll give you a clue: it rhymes with tart. It beats dirt around your tracksuit. Put your cock down. Take that cushion off your fat tits. Call in. I just know you want to keep living. Call in and tell me what beats beyond your ribs? For five grand. What beats beyond your ribs?'

Ben nods to the switchboard girls. They can afford to take a call. The pre-recorded voice of a crazy bastard shouting
‘WE HAVE A CALLER!' echoes round the studio. The crew are in hysterics, they've gathered round the camera to watch Anka deal with the caller. Anka's finding it difficult to keep a straight face. She's completely forgotten Ben's remark about her limbs. Her reddening cheeks keep rising into a half-smile.

‘Hello, who's there?' she says.

Silence. Then the sound of accelerated breathing. Ben flicks to the next line.

‘Wanker!' shrieks Anka.

‘WE HAVE A CALLER!' shouts the pre-recorded, craziest of bastards.

‘Hello, who's there?' says Anka.

Same again. No answer. Just breath. A slight groan. Vague ecstasy. The line goes dead.

‘Wanker!' shouts Anka.

‘WE HAVE A CALLER!' shouts the wacky, recorded shithead.

‘Hello, who's there?'

A Northern woman: ‘You skinny southern slut, why don't you try –' Cut!

‘WE HAVE A CALLER!' Zany-brained, dead cunt.

‘Hello, who's there?'

The sound of breath being drawn through a very dry throat.

‘Do you have an answer?' asks Anka. ‘Come on, what beats beyond your ribs? Come on. Quickly. What beats beyond your –'

‘Nothing,' interrupts the voice.

‘Nothing?' says Anka, smiling.

‘Nothing beats there,' says the voice. It is male and panting. It is almost completely breathless.

JANUARY 2. JANEK
Freeman is sitting in silence in the dining room at Reel World. Reel World is a state-of-the-art recording studio, built by the former Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel on the site of an old watermill in the Wiltshire village of Box. Gabriel saw the point in Wiltshire. He was happy to settle here. ‘Seriously,' he told his friends, ‘it's actually quite nice.' He's here now, Peter Gabriel, he's staring out of the dining-room window at the lake that lies at the centre of Reel World. Behind him, Janek is pouring himself coffee. The atmosphere is tense.

Janek Freeman has been waiting his entire life for something to matter. Twenty-five years in total. He's numb. Numb from all the waiting. Janek's yet to slip and fall and get soaked from head to toe in reality. Nothing matters, he thinks. So weird that nothing matters! Janek is preoccupied with this idea. He has lived his life with his breath held, waiting to burst and breathe with enthusiasm when something, anything, finally seems important. But this hasn't happened. It's incredible. A quarter of a century on earth
and you'd expect something to seem important. But nothing has.

During these twenty-five unimportant years, Janek has been circumcised, schooled and raised in Bristol by his Polish father, a keen Jew, and his mother, a West Country native with very shallow lungs. He was taunted while at secondary school in Bridgewater. The other pupils called his mum ‘the breathless willy-wanger'.

What else hasn't mattered? Loads. Janek won a scholarship to study music at Berkeley in California at the age of sixteen. It didn't matter. By the time he returned at the age of twenty he'd become one of the most sought-after session bass players on earth. This didn't matter either. While in America, he'd recorded bass lines for Stevie Wonder, Gwen Stefani, Bruce Springsteen, Snoop Dogg and many others. This seemed very unimportant. He'd even released his own record: ‘Twelve Decisions in the Key of Bass'. It had enjoyed critical success, made him a legend in the world of bass guitars and, incredibly, hadn't really mattered at all. Shame, Janek constantly thinks, shame that nothing matters.

Janek's image, which certainly doesn't matter, comprises a jet-black beanie hat that he never takes off. It fits snugly over his curly brown hair, framing his chestnut-coloured eyes and accentuating his strong, handsome, Polish jaw. Apart from his incredible musical talent, this hat accounts for Janek's appeal among America's leading hip-hop artists. It lends him a frisson of unimportant cool and they love him for it; the likes of Snoop and Jay-Z, they pay him for it. He's wearing the beanie now, of course, in the dining room at Reel World. He's looking up at Peter Gabriel and smiling. Janek knows full well that, for Peter, loads of things matter:
world music, entertainment, performance, African instruments, sex, family, Janek's career, music technology and probably much else besides. Janek finds this touching but strange.

Peter is still staring out at the lake. He's watching as a gigantic swan parades around on the small island, hissing at the reeds that grow there. This swan is as much a feature of Reel World as the antique sound desks and the acoustics and reverberations of the live rooms. Peter smiles, remembering how the swan had once hissed at Brian Eno and petrified him, how the swan had chased Kylie Minogue across the patio, into the games room and then pecked at her through the glass door. Peter sighs. He massages the back of his neck with his hand. He's bald nowadays, what hair remains has turned grey. But his skin is still smooth, his eyes attentive. He is trim. Still virile somehow. There is life in him. Outside, beside the lake, the vegetable patch is covered in January frost. Inside the air is cold, scented with coffee.

‘Would you like a cup, Peter?' asks Janek.

‘No. I don't drink that stuff any more.'

Janek watches as Peter continues to stare at the swan. Peter's lips are quivering a little, as if he's letting out dozens of small inaudible words. Janek places a cigarette into his incidental smile.

‘I don't know,' says Gabriel, turning from the window and walking across to the stone carved fireplace. ‘Things are changing. I do think that things are changing.'

‘There're no bands here at the moment?'

‘We've had to let Mary go. The kitchen's closed. Such a shame.'

Peter takes a seat beside Janek. ‘It's a shame because they eat terrible food, these young musicians, nothing natural.
They need to be fed. I'm eating the vegetable patch single-handedly.'

Janek lights his fag and drags an ashtray across the table. The cigarette packet tells that ‘Smoking Kills'. To Janek these words mean nothing.

‘You see,' says Peter, wafting smoke, ‘they make the music in their bedrooms nowadays, on their laptops. There's even software that claims to replicate the acoustics of Reel World. And it's a good thing, of course. Technology for all. The creative democracy, it's a marvellous thing. But . . .' Peter sighs; his eyes are once again drawn from the room to where the swan is clambering out of the lake. It beats its enormous wings and shakes the water from its white feathers before marching proudly across the patio. ‘Good music,' says Peter, ‘and good life for that matter, requires great performances. People need inspiration. They do.
You
need inspiration, Janek. And so . . .' Peter trails off.

‘And so here I am?' offers Janek.

‘Yes. You've returned.'

‘I have.'

‘But for adverts,' says Peter, lurching forward in frustration, offering Janek his crooked, gesturing hands. ‘I didn't build this place to record advert jingles and I didn't help you so that you could –'

‘I'm doing this for the money,' interrupts Janek. ‘You know how much these people pay.'

‘I do,' says Gabriel, instantly subdued, leaning back in his seat. ‘I couldn't believe it when I got the call. The Wild World? I said. No thank you. But when they told me the price I had to reconsider. I had to say yes. Since the kids stay in their bedrooms, money is thin on the ground.'

The two men drift into silence. Janek grinds out his
cigarette and finishes his coffee, confirming as he does so that neither activity matters. Peter Gabriel tries to get lost in thought. He occasionally turns suddenly, prompted by some noise, and stares at the window or the door. He's seen some grand days, Peter has. The video for his 1986 hit, ‘Sledgehammer', is commonly regarded as the greatest music video of all time. He did some magnificent stuff onstage with Genesis. He dressed up as a large and very entertaining flower. A sunflower. People laughed at him. Enjoyed him. He performed with his head peeping out of a gigantic yellow cone, too. He actually did that. To entertain people.

‘These videos on the Internet,' Peter says suddenly.

‘What about them?'

‘It's good, isn't it, yes, it's a good thing, everybody getting a chance to make them and see them. And, of course, TV is terrible.'

Peter gets up and peers out of the window, away from the lake towards the car park. ‘It's just . . .' he says, straining to see. ‘It's just I saw one the other day that was just . . .' He turns to Janek. ‘It was just a cat falling off a bookcase over and over again to an electronic beat.'

‘OK.'

‘That's all it was and I thought, well, I thought, you know . . . it took three days of hard work to shoot the “Sledgehammer” video and, well, you understand. That video. It's very entertaining, isn't it?'

Janek smiles. ‘Yes.'

‘And this clumsy cat has been watched millions of times by millions of people and I thought . . . well, I thought . . . so much time. Such a waste of time.'

‘I imagine “Sledgehammer” gets its fair share of views.'

‘Does it?'

‘Of course.'

‘But time, Janek, you don't realise. Look at me. We're short-lived. What's that?'

The grandfather clock begins to chime. Outside, a car horn sounds. Peter leaps away from the window. Janek can hear a heavy vehicle pulling onto the gravel car park.

‘They're here,' says Peter. ‘It's been lovely to see you again.'

‘You're not staying?'

‘No. No, I'm not. I'm going to pick my boy up from school.'

Peter Gabriel is at the door, but he's still looking cautiously towards the window. There are footsteps on the gravel.

‘The Wild World has come to Reel World, Janek,' says Gabriel through a regretful smile. And before Janek can reply the one-time superstar has vanished. He can be heard dashing down the main corridor and making quickly for the manor's back door.

‘Goodbye,' mutters Janek to himself, lighting another fag.

Moments later the door to the dining room is opening and a brunette in scruffy jeans and an Aerosmith T-shirt is walking towards Janek with a straight face.

‘Janek Freeman?'

‘Yes.'

‘I'm bossing today.' They're shaking hands. ‘I'm going to be making sure we get what we want. I'm sure we will. I'm told you can play anything we put in front of you, right?'

‘Right,' says Janek, quickly deciding that no amount of cash is worth this. Nothing matters. This is going to be
another pointless and day-shaped occasion. One of many in my life. My life that repeats and repeats. My life, where nothing matters, where nothing really means it. He immediately decides that the bossing woman is a delightful bitch with bored eyes, a bored nose and a bored mouth. Barely alive. A tired heart. A flirty but dry cunt. Janek stops listening.

‘Oh, you smoke,' the woman is saying. ‘Wow, cool, OK.'

Over her shoulder the door opens again and Janek watches as a rather grand-looking girl enters slowly, her back slightly bent, peering into the room with enquiring eyes.