I was up into the opening hours of Christmas Day after everyone else, involuntarily glancing every few minutes at the fireplace below the hanging stockings. It isn’t even a real fireplace and there is no chimney, so I’m not sure what my eyes were hoping to catch.
My belief in the existence of Father Christmas was rudely shattered one year when my mother burst into my bedroom at one am, throwing my presents onto the foot of my bed and saying ‘There’s no point in pretending anymore, is there?’ Both my siblings are older than me and I suppose my mum and dad had just become tired of the whole ordeal. Although, to be fair, I was thirteen.
Last night I was holding a microphone plugged into my laptop and attempting to record an audiobook version of my late novel with the intention of selling it on iTunes, with or without Harper Collins’ backing. I was, of course, also drinking whisky and I remember little of the process after chapter three. Listening back to it this morning, wearing a garish, hot, itchy jumper my sister Sharon gave me, I am disappointed with the results. My flat monotone becomes more erratic as the story progresses until I am babbling incoherently. It is, frankly, shit. I will send the novel to a professional next week - David Attenborough, perhaps - and try to drum up some interest.
We are at Sharon’s for Christmas. She has the biggest house in the family because her ex-husband possesses a successful company and enough guilt to pay handsomely for Sharon and their kids’ lifestyles without having to see them. Sharon is constantly elated because she never liked men very much but wanted kids and security and now she has both without the man. She certainly doesn’t need a new kitchen from me.
Brian, of course, showed up alone. He claims that he has several women he sees casually, and we all gleefully make fun of him whenever he says this. It is a rare bonding exercise for the family – albeit at the exclusion of one of us - and we seize the opportunity frequently. In fact, all our joyful moments are at the expense of one of us; Sharon’s suspected borderline lesbianism, my father’s habit of marrying any woman who shows an interest in him, my little sci-fi nonsense novel. To be honest, I believe they cross the line with me, and it is genuinely hurtful.
My father has brought a new flame along. She is disappointingly nice. Somehow it seems wrong that he is walking around happy when my mother is dead. But it makes things easier to have someone we can like. We all tell her they’ll be married in a few months if she’s not careful. This makes her uncomfortable.
I tell Cheryl that she should have one of my sister’s cigarettes. A couple of weeks ago Cheryl smoked her first cigarette for three years on a night out with friends. At first I was annoyed but after realizing that it might be nice to have a few bonus years of bachelorhood at the end of my life, I have been encouraging her to take up the habit again. Brian, Sharon and I are already involved in a three-way sibling death-race featuring food, cigarettes and alcohol, but there’s always room for late entries.
“I don’t want one,” she hisses.
“Spoil sport,” I say.
Sharon’s dinner is uncharacteristically delicious and I gorge myself on sausages and turkey and stuffing and potatoes and my annual Brussels sprout.
Afterwards I unpack my Wii and the family takes turns to play the bowling game. My father’s girlfriend lets her controller slip out of her hand as she bowls and it shatters on the TV screen. She is mortified and secretly I am pleased to have a foothold of some kind over her. My five year-old nephew, George, has a supernatural ability at the game and embarrasses us all.
Afterwards, the kids fight in the front room over their new toys and the adults sit in the living room, half-watching a film and slowly digesting the meal but constantly topping ourselves up with chocolate.
Brian sits slightly apart from us and says very little. I realize that I will never understand anything about him and I accept it.
Sharon buzzes around, topping up drinks and offering snacks around and filling all the conversational lags that threaten to become silences.
My father seems happier than I can remember him in many years, and he surprises me by quietly saying to me, “It’s a bit violent your novel, isn’t it?”
“It is a bit, yeah,” I say.
“Makes sense at the end, though."
“Good,” I say. “Thanks.”
And then I go to the toilet and splash water on my face and realize that I am genuinely emotional for the first time since I saw Edward Scissorhands.
Later, in the guest bedroom, Cheryl lies on the bed, half-drunk and exhausted. I slowly empty my pockets onto a chest of drawers.
“When are you next working?” Cheryl asks me.
“New Year’s Day. Six am early shift.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. Although if I’m still drunk I find the first half of the shift goes a lot quicker.”
“I’m so glad I have the holidays off this year,” she says. “Saturday can we just stay at home all day and lie on the couch?”
“Maybe. Sid texted though. I might be having my first rehearsal with Down Wit’ It that day.”
“Oh. Fun.”
“Yeah.” I sit on the bed and pull my jeans off and then suddenly lose all the energy required to do anything more.
“Are you okay?” Cheryl says.
“Yeah,” I say. I sit and stare at the wall for a long time.
“What’s wrong?”
“I think I’ve just hit middle age,” I say. “Right then. Thirty seconds ago. I thought it was when my back went out last year but no. This is it. This moment of realisation.”
“What realisation?” Cheryl says. I can hear her popping the cap off some kind of cream she smears on her face.
“It’s too pathetic to talk about, really. I just… I always wanted to be different. I know everyone does but I did too, and I kind of thought that I was different, that I would actually be one of the people who did something interesting. And then I went and did all the ordinary things anyway. I actually got married. I mean, how boring, how average, can you get? I’m a thirty-two year-old man, married, who doesn’t own a house, who has to work for a living.
“I thought that getting a novel published would validate everything in my life. That it would excuse my bad behavior – past, present and future – and that everyone would look at me in a different light. But it hasn’t changed a thing. Maybe if I had sold a million copies but not…three hundred or whatever it was.”
“That can’t change who you are, what you do,” Cheryl says to my back. “Only being a better person can make you feel better about yourself.”
“I know. I just…thought I’d feel fulfilled, maybe. That I would have achieved my life’s goal and could live the rest of my life satisfied somehow. But it never stops. There’s no…completeness. Life just plods on in its mundane routine.”
Cheryl puts her hand on my back. “The things that make you happy are always closer to home. The most basic human needs and urges. The cycle of life. If you want to give your life meaning then maybe now’s the time for us to start trying to have a baby. A little son or daughter to pass everything on to and pour your life into.”
“I’m not sure if I’m that empty yet,” I say.
“It would make me happy. To move back to America and start a family near my parents. If you can never be content, if you’re going to be miserable no matter what then at least give me the opportunity to be happy.”
I sigh and lie down next to her. “Okay. Throw your Pills away, then.”
“So romantic.”
I kiss her, and then, for better or worse, I give in to her again.
Friday 26 December 2008
Monday 22 December 2008
Clean Break...
Firing Sid is largely a symbolic gesture. With agents, as with girlfriends, it’s probably better to find a new one before getting rid of the old, but (as with girlfriends) this is easier said than done. But as we approach the beginning of a new year, I’m all about clean breaks and fresh possibilities. It is the only way I have managed to keep remotely upbeat in the last week.
The simple truth is that Sid is no longer effective in any business capacity, and he will probably interpret the termination of our professional relationship as the firing of him as a friend. Which is, of course, part of the problem. This is the first time I’ve had to sack anyone since I got rid of the Colombian drummer of my old rock band. He was the most popular member but he couldn’t play in time. But as Cheryl says, Sid’s in a ‘gots-to-go situation’.
He’s already in the pub when I arrive, drinking with two long-haired surly seventeen year-olds in trench coats. He introduces them as Down Wit’ It, an urban drum and bass duo. They stare menacingly at me and I don’t bother trying to shake their hands. I buy Sid a beer but ignore them. Sid gives them some pound coins and they sulk off to the pool tables.
“I’m excited about this,” Sid tells me. “They’re good kids. Very talented. Could be huge.”
“You’re definitely moving into the music business then?”
“Why not?” Sid says. “Don’t worry about your career, though. I won’t let them overshadow our relationship.”
“Sid, I don’t have a career.”
“You need to diversify,” he tells me. “Fingers in pies. You could join Down Wit’ It and be a novelist and a musician.”
“I'm not that desperate," I say. "What do you know about drum and bass anyway? Do you actually like their music?”
“I haven’t heard them yet, I must admit. But it all sounds the same, that stuff, doesn’t it? It’s all about aesthetics and they’ve got It, haven’t they? The X Factor. Look at them.”
I watch the pale spotty kids playing in silence and missing balls and find myself nodding my head. Then I try to summon a grave, troubled expression in an attempt to encourage him towards asking me what’s wrong, at which point I would sigh and look down at my hands until he coaxes it out of me. But he is totally oblivious of my efforts.
“Here,” he says. “I’ve been seeing a girl from the Singles Club for a few weeks now. Things are going really well.”
“That’s great.”
“Yeah. Trouble is… It’s been so long that I’ve kind of forgotten how to, you know, make the move.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” he whispers. “I get nervous and never seem to find the right moment to kiss her. So we just end up shaking hands at her door every night. She’s sweet and I don’t want to blow it.”
“Hmm. I never really had that problem. In fact, I was always the opposite. I’d lose patience and pounce on them far too early and at completely the wrong time. Like when they were trying to hold the biting point in traffic half way up Primrose Hill Road or relaxing with a mouthful of Marmite on toast.”
“I don’t want to scare her away.”
“Well what’s the problem? Does she like you?”
“I think so, yeah.”
“Then take a risk. If you do it nicely then she’ll either respond or reject you. If the latter, you say goodnight and see her again and try again. You’ve already signaled your intentions and it makes it harder for her to turn you down each time. But you’ve got to at least try.”
“Yeah…” he says. “I guess.”
I don’t know why people ask me for advice because they never heed it.
“So, any new developments?” I ask, giving him one final chance of saving his ‘job’.
“Yep.”
“Yeah? What?”
“Got Down Wit’ It a gig at the Black Swan a week from Tuesday. Apparently there’s a pretty good PA setup and the stage is…”
“I meant with me for Christ’s sake.”
“Oh. Not yet. Still sending stuff out, crossing my fingers. A lot of publishers aren’t interested in sci-fi at the moment.”
“It’s not sci-fi though, is it? The new stuff is contemporary fiction. Why are you telling them sci-fi?”
“I haven’t been sending out the new stuff,” he says. “I thought Clear History made more sense.”
“No, that makes complete nonsense seeing as Clear History has already been released and my new novel is what we’re trying to sell them.”
“Oh,” Sid says. “Yeah, I suppose so.”
“How can you…” I stop and take a deep breath. “You know what, it doesn’t matter. You’ve made my job a lot easier.”
He nods vacantly, sipping his beer.
“Sid, I think we need to end our professional relationship.”
“We do?”
“Look, we had a go and we got a book published which is great, of course. But I think we both need a fresh start, a new perspective. I want to go to the next level and I feel like I need a new source of inspiration. You know?”
“You’re going to find a new agent?” he says with a breaking voice.
“We haven’t met our targets,” I tell him. “You’re not exactly…the easiest agent to work with.”
“But I just sent it to Bilbo Hewlins. He wanted to read it, remember?”
“See, you’re not listening to me. I’m not writing a follow-up to Clear History anymore, am I? Remember? I’m doing something else. The thought of trying to find an agent again doesn’t fill me with joy, and I appreciate you taking me on in the first place but we’ve stalled. We’ve reached the end of our journey together.”
Sid takes a soothing gulp of beer. “I can’t believe this,” he says.
“It’s not the end of the world,” I say. “In fact, nothing will really change. You can stop going through the motions of pretending to find me a new deal.”
A nasty look has come over Sid’s face. “You blame me for the book not selling.”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“You know, you’re not as talented as you think. You’re not some great author. You’re a spoiled brat.”
“Sid, don’t do this.”
He leans forward, pointing. “You’re the one who doesn’t listen. Not to me, not to your editor or your publicists or anyone who tried to help you.”
“That’s not true…”
“You’re not going to find anyone else to represent you. I was the only one willing to take a chance. No one else wanted to deal with you. Because you’re a whiny, selfish, precious hack.”
“You really think that?”
“If you’d toed the line and kept quiet and blended in you could have had a long life at Harper Collins.”
“If you’d accepted a two book contract then we’d still be there you fuckwit,” I shout.
“Then you’d be having to write another sci-fi novel and you’d be bitching and moaning about it and they’d drop you anyway you cock.”
We’re both suddenly standing in the pub. “Let’s not fight,” I say.
“Fuck you,” he says. “I’ve got other talent now. I don’t need you. These boys are my future. They’ve got drive and commitment and there’s a bond between us that we never had.”
He joins them at the pool table across the pub, telling them something, and I distinctly see one of them mouth ‘Piss off’ at him.
The Colombian drummer took the news better.
The simple truth is that Sid is no longer effective in any business capacity, and he will probably interpret the termination of our professional relationship as the firing of him as a friend. Which is, of course, part of the problem. This is the first time I’ve had to sack anyone since I got rid of the Colombian drummer of my old rock band. He was the most popular member but he couldn’t play in time. But as Cheryl says, Sid’s in a ‘gots-to-go situation’.
He’s already in the pub when I arrive, drinking with two long-haired surly seventeen year-olds in trench coats. He introduces them as Down Wit’ It, an urban drum and bass duo. They stare menacingly at me and I don’t bother trying to shake their hands. I buy Sid a beer but ignore them. Sid gives them some pound coins and they sulk off to the pool tables.
“I’m excited about this,” Sid tells me. “They’re good kids. Very talented. Could be huge.”
“You’re definitely moving into the music business then?”
“Why not?” Sid says. “Don’t worry about your career, though. I won’t let them overshadow our relationship.”
“Sid, I don’t have a career.”
“You need to diversify,” he tells me. “Fingers in pies. You could join Down Wit’ It and be a novelist and a musician.”
“I'm not that desperate," I say. "What do you know about drum and bass anyway? Do you actually like their music?”
“I haven’t heard them yet, I must admit. But it all sounds the same, that stuff, doesn’t it? It’s all about aesthetics and they’ve got It, haven’t they? The X Factor. Look at them.”
I watch the pale spotty kids playing in silence and missing balls and find myself nodding my head. Then I try to summon a grave, troubled expression in an attempt to encourage him towards asking me what’s wrong, at which point I would sigh and look down at my hands until he coaxes it out of me. But he is totally oblivious of my efforts.
“Here,” he says. “I’ve been seeing a girl from the Singles Club for a few weeks now. Things are going really well.”
“That’s great.”
“Yeah. Trouble is… It’s been so long that I’ve kind of forgotten how to, you know, make the move.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” he whispers. “I get nervous and never seem to find the right moment to kiss her. So we just end up shaking hands at her door every night. She’s sweet and I don’t want to blow it.”
“Hmm. I never really had that problem. In fact, I was always the opposite. I’d lose patience and pounce on them far too early and at completely the wrong time. Like when they were trying to hold the biting point in traffic half way up Primrose Hill Road or relaxing with a mouthful of Marmite on toast.”
“I don’t want to scare her away.”
“Well what’s the problem? Does she like you?”
“I think so, yeah.”
“Then take a risk. If you do it nicely then she’ll either respond or reject you. If the latter, you say goodnight and see her again and try again. You’ve already signaled your intentions and it makes it harder for her to turn you down each time. But you’ve got to at least try.”
“Yeah…” he says. “I guess.”
I don’t know why people ask me for advice because they never heed it.
“So, any new developments?” I ask, giving him one final chance of saving his ‘job’.
“Yep.”
“Yeah? What?”
“Got Down Wit’ It a gig at the Black Swan a week from Tuesday. Apparently there’s a pretty good PA setup and the stage is…”
“I meant with me for Christ’s sake.”
“Oh. Not yet. Still sending stuff out, crossing my fingers. A lot of publishers aren’t interested in sci-fi at the moment.”
“It’s not sci-fi though, is it? The new stuff is contemporary fiction. Why are you telling them sci-fi?”
“I haven’t been sending out the new stuff,” he says. “I thought Clear History made more sense.”
“No, that makes complete nonsense seeing as Clear History has already been released and my new novel is what we’re trying to sell them.”
“Oh,” Sid says. “Yeah, I suppose so.”
“How can you…” I stop and take a deep breath. “You know what, it doesn’t matter. You’ve made my job a lot easier.”
He nods vacantly, sipping his beer.
“Sid, I think we need to end our professional relationship.”
“We do?”
“Look, we had a go and we got a book published which is great, of course. But I think we both need a fresh start, a new perspective. I want to go to the next level and I feel like I need a new source of inspiration. You know?”
“You’re going to find a new agent?” he says with a breaking voice.
“We haven’t met our targets,” I tell him. “You’re not exactly…the easiest agent to work with.”
“But I just sent it to Bilbo Hewlins. He wanted to read it, remember?”
“See, you’re not listening to me. I’m not writing a follow-up to Clear History anymore, am I? Remember? I’m doing something else. The thought of trying to find an agent again doesn’t fill me with joy, and I appreciate you taking me on in the first place but we’ve stalled. We’ve reached the end of our journey together.”
Sid takes a soothing gulp of beer. “I can’t believe this,” he says.
“It’s not the end of the world,” I say. “In fact, nothing will really change. You can stop going through the motions of pretending to find me a new deal.”
A nasty look has come over Sid’s face. “You blame me for the book not selling.”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“You know, you’re not as talented as you think. You’re not some great author. You’re a spoiled brat.”
“Sid, don’t do this.”
He leans forward, pointing. “You’re the one who doesn’t listen. Not to me, not to your editor or your publicists or anyone who tried to help you.”
“That’s not true…”
“You’re not going to find anyone else to represent you. I was the only one willing to take a chance. No one else wanted to deal with you. Because you’re a whiny, selfish, precious hack.”
“You really think that?”
“If you’d toed the line and kept quiet and blended in you could have had a long life at Harper Collins.”
“If you’d accepted a two book contract then we’d still be there you fuckwit,” I shout.
“Then you’d be having to write another sci-fi novel and you’d be bitching and moaning about it and they’d drop you anyway you cock.”
We’re both suddenly standing in the pub. “Let’s not fight,” I say.
“Fuck you,” he says. “I’ve got other talent now. I don’t need you. These boys are my future. They’ve got drive and commitment and there’s a bond between us that we never had.”
He joins them at the pool table across the pub, telling them something, and I distinctly see one of them mouth ‘Piss off’ at him.
The Colombian drummer took the news better.
Tuesday 16 December 2008
"You Blew It..."
After waking up from a sweaty mid-afternoon dream involving Pauline, Mavis and napalm, I leave the flat while still half-asleep and take the tube to Hammersmith where I sit across the street from Harper Collins, getting up from the concrete wall every ten minutes or so to walk off some of the cold.
Mavis leaves the building around four o’clock, throwing a large scarf around herself like a cape, but I ignore her.
At five, a man who I think is Jason - one of the executives or at least someone high up – emerges and I run across the street and accost him before he can get to the staff car park.
“Jason,” I say, and he looks up, startled. I can’t think of anything else to say so we stare at each other until he recognises me.
“Christopher?”
I nod.
“You look freezing. What’s going on? Are you okay?”
I nod again, shivering. “Yeah, I’m okay. I just…no one’s talking to me and I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what to do.”
The first patches of red are already forming on Jason’s face. Our breath plumes out of our mouths and noses like smoke machines. “This isn’t the most convenient time or place to talk, Christopher. Let’s arrange something through the proper channels.”
“No, because nothing will happen. Chris doesn’t return my calls or emails.”
“I’m sure he’s very busy.”
“It’s been months since we spoke.”
His face twitches. “Well, that’s not acceptable.”
He pulls his phone out of his coat pocket and pushes a few buttons and holds it to his ear. “Chris, are you busy right now? I have Christopher Hardy with me outside. Can you meet us in the Starbucks? We’ll find out, won’t we? Very good.”
He hangs up.
“Let’s get a coffee,” he says.
I drink my hot chocolate quickly even though it is scolding hot and try to stop my hands shaking. Jason is clearly disturbed by my appearance but it is hard for me to care at the moment. He asks after my family and my plans for Christmas until Chris arrives.
A Cappuccino is already waiting for him on the table. “I remembered what you like,” I tell him as he sits down.
“Thanks,” he says without enthusiasm.
“Christopher was waiting for me outside,” Jason says. “He tells me that he’s having difficulty contacting you.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to get back to you,” Chris says. “You know how it is.”
“Not really,” I say. “I just wanted some feedback.” I know that I look and sound pathetic but my spirit is broken.
“I haven’t heard anything from higher up so I’ve got nothing to tell you,” Chris says. “Sorry.” He looks to Jason.
Jason clears his throat. “It’s my understanding that you’re no longer working on a follow-up to Clear History. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“I think that’s really what we were looking for from you. But at any rate, sales, unfortunately, haven’t met any of the targets we set.”
“No one was behind it,” I whine, unable to summon any dignity. “There was no support.”
“I hear your frustration,” Jason says. “But I can assure you that we were behind you.”
“No you weren’t.”
“Christopher, we signed you because we wanted to publish you and sell your book. We took a chance on you and it didn’t pay off. But you have to accept some responsibility for that. You haven’t been the easiest author we’ve ever had to work with.”
Chris says nothing. He stares at his coffee.
“I wanted it to be a success,” I say.
“Of course you did,” Jason says. “We all wanted it to succeed. But not everything can."
“At least put out a paperback.”
“There’s no demand. Look, if it’s any consolation, I thought it was good work. A really interesting novel. I wish more people could have got to read it.”
“If you like it then you could take another chance on me.”
Jason smiles sympathetically. “It’s not my money I’m playing with, Christopher. We have directors, shareholders.”
“But… I feel like what I’m working on is something really special. Yes, it’s not the follow-up you asked for but forget that, let’s start again. It’s… I really think it could be great.”
I realise I’m almost pleading but I can’t help it. I turn to Chris. “I’ve sent you about five chapters now and you haven’t got back to me. If you just read them I know you’d like it. I’m sure of it.”
“Have you read them?” Jason asks him.
“I have,” Chris says. “I’m afraid we just didn’t see anything in them.” He talks to Jason and won’t look at me.
“You read them?” I say. “You swear to me that you’ve looked at them and that you gave a fair evaluation?”
He glances at me and nods.
“Tell me what it’s about. Tell me what happens.”
“Sandy read them thoroughly,” Chris says, addressing Jason again. “I read a little and I agreed with her.”
“Sandy is your assistant?” Jason says.
Chris nods.
“And you trust her opinion?”
“Implicitly.”
Jason looks at me. “I’m sorry, Christopher. It sounds as though we’ve reached the end of our journey together.”
“No, wait,” I say. “I want someone else to look at it. I want another editor to read it. I know that what I’m doing is good.”
“I know it’s tough, Christopher,” Jason says. “But I think you should look at taking it to other houses. A fresh start, new eyes, a new perspective. Let your agent loose.”
“No, please,” I say. “I’ll do better this time. I’ll do what Chris says, I’ll put the work in. Don’t close the door on me just yet. I know I can do something great.”
I am whining at an embarrassing volume and the rest of the patrons are looking over.
“This is painful,” Chris says. “Be a man, Christopher. You blew it.” He stands up and waits for Jason to do the same.
I stare at the table as Jason rises and buttons his coat. “I wish things could have been different,” he says, and they leave.
I sit alone in the coffee shop for awhile until I notice a young couple waiting for the table and I force a smile and move out of their way and they thank me and I leave the coffee shop and stand outside in the cold for a long time, just looking around and waiting for my brain to make some kind of decision as to where I should go and what I should do.
Mavis leaves the building around four o’clock, throwing a large scarf around herself like a cape, but I ignore her.
At five, a man who I think is Jason - one of the executives or at least someone high up – emerges and I run across the street and accost him before he can get to the staff car park.
“Jason,” I say, and he looks up, startled. I can’t think of anything else to say so we stare at each other until he recognises me.
“Christopher?”
I nod.
“You look freezing. What’s going on? Are you okay?”
I nod again, shivering. “Yeah, I’m okay. I just…no one’s talking to me and I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what to do.”
The first patches of red are already forming on Jason’s face. Our breath plumes out of our mouths and noses like smoke machines. “This isn’t the most convenient time or place to talk, Christopher. Let’s arrange something through the proper channels.”
“No, because nothing will happen. Chris doesn’t return my calls or emails.”
“I’m sure he’s very busy.”
“It’s been months since we spoke.”
His face twitches. “Well, that’s not acceptable.”
He pulls his phone out of his coat pocket and pushes a few buttons and holds it to his ear. “Chris, are you busy right now? I have Christopher Hardy with me outside. Can you meet us in the Starbucks? We’ll find out, won’t we? Very good.”
He hangs up.
“Let’s get a coffee,” he says.
I drink my hot chocolate quickly even though it is scolding hot and try to stop my hands shaking. Jason is clearly disturbed by my appearance but it is hard for me to care at the moment. He asks after my family and my plans for Christmas until Chris arrives.
A Cappuccino is already waiting for him on the table. “I remembered what you like,” I tell him as he sits down.
“Thanks,” he says without enthusiasm.
“Christopher was waiting for me outside,” Jason says. “He tells me that he’s having difficulty contacting you.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to get back to you,” Chris says. “You know how it is.”
“Not really,” I say. “I just wanted some feedback.” I know that I look and sound pathetic but my spirit is broken.
“I haven’t heard anything from higher up so I’ve got nothing to tell you,” Chris says. “Sorry.” He looks to Jason.
Jason clears his throat. “It’s my understanding that you’re no longer working on a follow-up to Clear History. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“I think that’s really what we were looking for from you. But at any rate, sales, unfortunately, haven’t met any of the targets we set.”
“No one was behind it,” I whine, unable to summon any dignity. “There was no support.”
“I hear your frustration,” Jason says. “But I can assure you that we were behind you.”
“No you weren’t.”
“Christopher, we signed you because we wanted to publish you and sell your book. We took a chance on you and it didn’t pay off. But you have to accept some responsibility for that. You haven’t been the easiest author we’ve ever had to work with.”
Chris says nothing. He stares at his coffee.
“I wanted it to be a success,” I say.
“Of course you did,” Jason says. “We all wanted it to succeed. But not everything can."
“At least put out a paperback.”
“There’s no demand. Look, if it’s any consolation, I thought it was good work. A really interesting novel. I wish more people could have got to read it.”
“If you like it then you could take another chance on me.”
Jason smiles sympathetically. “It’s not my money I’m playing with, Christopher. We have directors, shareholders.”
“But… I feel like what I’m working on is something really special. Yes, it’s not the follow-up you asked for but forget that, let’s start again. It’s… I really think it could be great.”
I realise I’m almost pleading but I can’t help it. I turn to Chris. “I’ve sent you about five chapters now and you haven’t got back to me. If you just read them I know you’d like it. I’m sure of it.”
“Have you read them?” Jason asks him.
“I have,” Chris says. “I’m afraid we just didn’t see anything in them.” He talks to Jason and won’t look at me.
“You read them?” I say. “You swear to me that you’ve looked at them and that you gave a fair evaluation?”
He glances at me and nods.
“Tell me what it’s about. Tell me what happens.”
“Sandy read them thoroughly,” Chris says, addressing Jason again. “I read a little and I agreed with her.”
“Sandy is your assistant?” Jason says.
Chris nods.
“And you trust her opinion?”
“Implicitly.”
Jason looks at me. “I’m sorry, Christopher. It sounds as though we’ve reached the end of our journey together.”
“No, wait,” I say. “I want someone else to look at it. I want another editor to read it. I know that what I’m doing is good.”
“I know it’s tough, Christopher,” Jason says. “But I think you should look at taking it to other houses. A fresh start, new eyes, a new perspective. Let your agent loose.”
“No, please,” I say. “I’ll do better this time. I’ll do what Chris says, I’ll put the work in. Don’t close the door on me just yet. I know I can do something great.”
I am whining at an embarrassing volume and the rest of the patrons are looking over.
“This is painful,” Chris says. “Be a man, Christopher. You blew it.” He stands up and waits for Jason to do the same.
I stare at the table as Jason rises and buttons his coat. “I wish things could have been different,” he says, and they leave.
I sit alone in the coffee shop for awhile until I notice a young couple waiting for the table and I force a smile and move out of their way and they thank me and I leave the coffee shop and stand outside in the cold for a long time, just looking around and waiting for my brain to make some kind of decision as to where I should go and what I should do.
Friday 12 December 2008
Book Signing...
I have organised a book signing two months after my novel’s release primarily for my own amusement. On a whim I called my home town Dartford’s only local bookshop and the owner, Graham, said Yes immediately. I could almost hear him shrugging over the phone.
“I’m not expecting a great deal of people,” I warned him.
“I shouldn’t hire extra security then?” he said. I like him.
When I arrive Graham is sitting behind the till reading a huge hard backed account of the Sandinista National Liberation Front.
“What do you do for fun?” I say by way of introduction.
He lowers the tome. He is about fifty and wearing glasses and a cardigan, perhaps as a comment on the stereotypes of bookshop owners. Or perhaps because stereotypes exist for a reason. “Mr. Hardy, I presume,” he says.
“Indeed.” We shake hands. I glance around his tiny, empty shop. “How’s business?”
He just laughs.
I smile and look round again. He has set up a table at the far end of the room. Next to it is a blackboard on which he has actually written, exactly to my specification, Christopher Hardy - King of Sci-Fi’s Christmas Signing Spectacular in shaky handwriting.
“Just set yourself up over there and I’ll wait for the masses to begin filling my till,” he says.
“Right.” I put my bag under the table and take my jacket off, revealing my ‘King of Sci-Fi’ shirt. I sit down and finger the felt-tip pen on the otherwise bare surface. “Where are the books?”
He looks up from the counter. “Which books are you referring to?”
“My books. Clear History.”
“I don’t have any,” he says. “I assumed you were bringing them. We usually just buy the copies the author sells, and a few more for stock.”
“Oh,” I say.
“Oh indeed,” he says.
I lean back in my chair and laugh, suddenly giddy with the sheer absurdity of the event.
“There appears to have been a lack of communication,” he says.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, still laughing. “Really. No one will come.”
He smiles and shakes his head. He nods towards a door marked ‘Staff Only.’ “Make us a cup of tea then, will you?”
“Sure,” I say, wiping a tear from my cheek.
The door opens onto a small kitchen area and a toilet. I make the tea, dancing to a song in my head.
When I come out there are two young girls in the shop. Graham takes his tea. “Your first fans,” he says.
I laugh again. “Yeah, right.”
The girls hear me and turn round. They giggle and take the few steps required to cross the shop.
“Hi,” one of them says.
“I looove your book,” the other one says.
“Shut up,” I say, stunned.
Their smiles fade.
“I mean…that’s great,” I say. They are even prettier than the girls who asked James Hardy for his signature and this pleases me. “Wait, I should be sitting at the table.”
They follow me over and I sit down. We look at each other, smiling. No one is sure what to do.
Eventually one of them says, “Will you sign a book for us, then?”
“I’d love to, but I don’t have any.”
They look at each other. “We came from London.”
“Hold on.”
I ask Graham to call the local W H Smiths. He does so with a bewildered expression.
“Smith’s has copies,” I tell the girls. “It’s just down the road.”
They leave the shop in a state of confusion and almost immediately a huge guy in a leather jacket holding a motorcycle helmet comes in and approaches me.
“Good to meet you,” he says. “Big fan.”
“Thank you,” I say, a little scared. “Look, I’m afraid we’ve…sold out of copies already, but…”
“That’s okay,” he says. “I’ve already got one. I want you to sign something else.”
He pulls his jacket off and then his shirt. His torso and arms are covered in tattoos.
“Christ,” I say.
“I love my tattoos,” he says.
“Looks like it. That’s…great.”
“I’ve got a space here,” he says, pointing to a fleshy area over his left nipple. “Sign it and then I’m straight down the parlour to get it inked.”
“Wow,” I say. I stand up and move warily around the table. “What’s that one?” I say, squinting at a large amateurish scrawl on his shoulder.
“‘The Ebonic Plague,’” he says cheerfully. “That was the name of my Nazi punk band in my misspent youth.”
“Wow,” I say again. “That sounds…fun.”
“It was okay,” he says modestly. “We put out one single; ‘Rosa Parks Should Have Stood The Fuck Up.’ It didn’t do that well.”
“That’s a shame,” I say, gingerly stretching out his moist skin with trembling hands and marking it with my childish signature.
I step back, awaiting judgement. He looks at it for a long time and my heartbeat doubles. Eventually he looks up. “That’s brilliant,” he says with genuine emotion.
I smile with relief. “Excellent.”
“Quick photo,” he says. He holds his mobile phone out and crushes me against his flesh. I smile the best I can. He checks it, and again appears delighted.
When he has left, I sit at the table and recover my composure. “Is he a regular?” I ask Graham.
The two girls return with copies and I sign them and they take photos and I am slightly less uncomfortable with the whole process than I feared I might be.
Graham is less happy. “Those are sales I’m losing out on,” he says.
“Don’t worry, no one else will come,” I assure him, but only ten minutes later a middle-aged woman comes in and flirts for awhile and goes off to Smiths to buy the remaining three copies for Christmas presents.
“This is silly,” Graham says.
“I know.”
I call Pauline at Harper Collins. “How quickly can you get copies of my book to Dartford?”
A courier is dispatched from the warehouse. Two groups of young men come in and I ask them to return in two hours but they don’t have time, and they run off to another nearby chain for copies, and when I sign them thirty minutes later, Graham is furious.
More people arrive and I do photographs but they leave empty-handed.
“I’m sorry,” I tell Graham.
The courier finally arrives and the tension is relieved a little and he stacks forty copies of my book on the table and Graham signs for them and he leaves.
I sit behind the table for the rest of the afternoon. No one else comes in. The silence, at times, is almost unbearable.
I leave Graham in his shop at seven pm, staring forlornly at the stack of books. I can’t think of much to say.
Free Counter
“I’m not expecting a great deal of people,” I warned him.
“I shouldn’t hire extra security then?” he said. I like him.
When I arrive Graham is sitting behind the till reading a huge hard backed account of the Sandinista National Liberation Front.
“What do you do for fun?” I say by way of introduction.
He lowers the tome. He is about fifty and wearing glasses and a cardigan, perhaps as a comment on the stereotypes of bookshop owners. Or perhaps because stereotypes exist for a reason. “Mr. Hardy, I presume,” he says.
“Indeed.” We shake hands. I glance around his tiny, empty shop. “How’s business?”
He just laughs.
I smile and look round again. He has set up a table at the far end of the room. Next to it is a blackboard on which he has actually written, exactly to my specification, Christopher Hardy - King of Sci-Fi’s Christmas Signing Spectacular in shaky handwriting.
“Just set yourself up over there and I’ll wait for the masses to begin filling my till,” he says.
“Right.” I put my bag under the table and take my jacket off, revealing my ‘King of Sci-Fi’ shirt. I sit down and finger the felt-tip pen on the otherwise bare surface. “Where are the books?”
He looks up from the counter. “Which books are you referring to?”
“My books. Clear History.”
“I don’t have any,” he says. “I assumed you were bringing them. We usually just buy the copies the author sells, and a few more for stock.”
“Oh,” I say.
“Oh indeed,” he says.
I lean back in my chair and laugh, suddenly giddy with the sheer absurdity of the event.
“There appears to have been a lack of communication,” he says.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, still laughing. “Really. No one will come.”
He smiles and shakes his head. He nods towards a door marked ‘Staff Only.’ “Make us a cup of tea then, will you?”
“Sure,” I say, wiping a tear from my cheek.
The door opens onto a small kitchen area and a toilet. I make the tea, dancing to a song in my head.
When I come out there are two young girls in the shop. Graham takes his tea. “Your first fans,” he says.
I laugh again. “Yeah, right.”
The girls hear me and turn round. They giggle and take the few steps required to cross the shop.
“Hi,” one of them says.
“I looove your book,” the other one says.
“Shut up,” I say, stunned.
Their smiles fade.
“I mean…that’s great,” I say. They are even prettier than the girls who asked James Hardy for his signature and this pleases me. “Wait, I should be sitting at the table.”
They follow me over and I sit down. We look at each other, smiling. No one is sure what to do.
Eventually one of them says, “Will you sign a book for us, then?”
“I’d love to, but I don’t have any.”
They look at each other. “We came from London.”
“Hold on.”
I ask Graham to call the local W H Smiths. He does so with a bewildered expression.
“Smith’s has copies,” I tell the girls. “It’s just down the road.”
They leave the shop in a state of confusion and almost immediately a huge guy in a leather jacket holding a motorcycle helmet comes in and approaches me.
“Good to meet you,” he says. “Big fan.”
“Thank you,” I say, a little scared. “Look, I’m afraid we’ve…sold out of copies already, but…”
“That’s okay,” he says. “I’ve already got one. I want you to sign something else.”
He pulls his jacket off and then his shirt. His torso and arms are covered in tattoos.
“Christ,” I say.
“I love my tattoos,” he says.
“Looks like it. That’s…great.”
“I’ve got a space here,” he says, pointing to a fleshy area over his left nipple. “Sign it and then I’m straight down the parlour to get it inked.”
“Wow,” I say. I stand up and move warily around the table. “What’s that one?” I say, squinting at a large amateurish scrawl on his shoulder.
“‘The Ebonic Plague,’” he says cheerfully. “That was the name of my Nazi punk band in my misspent youth.”
“Wow,” I say again. “That sounds…fun.”
“It was okay,” he says modestly. “We put out one single; ‘Rosa Parks Should Have Stood The Fuck Up.’ It didn’t do that well.”
“That’s a shame,” I say, gingerly stretching out his moist skin with trembling hands and marking it with my childish signature.
I step back, awaiting judgement. He looks at it for a long time and my heartbeat doubles. Eventually he looks up. “That’s brilliant,” he says with genuine emotion.
I smile with relief. “Excellent.”
“Quick photo,” he says. He holds his mobile phone out and crushes me against his flesh. I smile the best I can. He checks it, and again appears delighted.
When he has left, I sit at the table and recover my composure. “Is he a regular?” I ask Graham.
The two girls return with copies and I sign them and they take photos and I am slightly less uncomfortable with the whole process than I feared I might be.
Graham is less happy. “Those are sales I’m losing out on,” he says.
“Don’t worry, no one else will come,” I assure him, but only ten minutes later a middle-aged woman comes in and flirts for awhile and goes off to Smiths to buy the remaining three copies for Christmas presents.
“This is silly,” Graham says.
“I know.”
I call Pauline at Harper Collins. “How quickly can you get copies of my book to Dartford?”
A courier is dispatched from the warehouse. Two groups of young men come in and I ask them to return in two hours but they don’t have time, and they run off to another nearby chain for copies, and when I sign them thirty minutes later, Graham is furious.
More people arrive and I do photographs but they leave empty-handed.
“I’m sorry,” I tell Graham.
The courier finally arrives and the tension is relieved a little and he stacks forty copies of my book on the table and Graham signs for them and he leaves.
I sit behind the table for the rest of the afternoon. No one else comes in. The silence, at times, is almost unbearable.
I leave Graham in his shop at seven pm, staring forlornly at the stack of books. I can’t think of much to say.
Free Counter
Tuesday 9 December 2008
Press Clippings...
Harper Collins has sent me a package with all the press clippings surrounding the release of my novel, Clear History. I was expecting a motorcycle courier, but the folder arrived instead with the rest of the Royal Mail correspondence in a single A4-sized envelope.
I pick it up between thumb and forefinger and flap it, as though it might trigger some expansion mechanism. It doesn’t. It remains depressingly thin and light.
I spread out the contents on the bedroom floor and pick through the skeletal remains of my writing career. “How could people have bought the thing if no one knew it existed?” I ask Cheryl.
“They don’t know what they’re missing out on,” she says with a sympathetic look.
“Wankers,” I say.
The few national newspaper articles are brief mentions of the book’s existence, either in release round-ups or within reviews of other books, the two relevant words diligently highlighted in luminous yellow marker pen. Most of the actual reviews are short, lukewarm, and from local papers around the UK. Several are nothing to do with me at all, just coincidental uses of the phrase ‘clear history.’
On one clipping, presumably included on a particularly desperate day, someone has attempted to get away with marking the words Clear and History in a paragraph, despite the fact that the words are used in separate sentences in an article about fish tank maintenance.
The print-outs from sci-fi websites are generally longer and more positive, and I linger over them, nodding my head at the praise and ignoring the criticism.
One blogger seemed obsessed with the novel, making almost daily posts in between other entries about Star Trek and The Matrix. Over time he went deeper into his analysis of the themes and morality of my book, penning whole articles on subtexts I had never intended (probably created in my editor’s revisions), creating graphs detailing the complex relationships within the story and supplying his wishes for plot developments in subsequent novels in the projected series. Even he, though, perhaps through a lack of response from anybody at all, appeared to have lost interest after a few weeks, and after an accurate and thorough investigation of my main influences (including, cheekily, Scotch) he never mentioned it again.
I quietly stack the papers together and slide them back into the envelope. “That’s that, then.”
“Not necessarily,” Cheryl says.
“No, not necessarily. But, barring a miracle, almost certainly.”
“I’ve got a little surprise for you,” she says, pulling a copy of Time Out from her bag.
I watch her in silence, not allowing myself to become excited, knowing how disappointing her surprises usually turn out to be. She opens the magazine and hands it to me. The article is entitled ‘The Fifty Best Books You Didn’t Buy This Year (but should have).’
It takes me awhile to find any pertinent information because she hasn’t highlighted anything in yellow. But, near the bottom of the page at number forty-six is Clear History by Christopher Hardy. ‘Stylish, brutal, nightmare vision of the near-future,’ it says.
“I know it’s not huge,” Cheryl says, “but it could be the beginning of a re-examination or something. It might be one of those cult things that get noticed over time.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I say, smiling.
“And look, it’s written by loads of people so it’s not just one person’s opinion.”
“It might get on a few lists,” I say. “And then people will take notice.”
“Exactly.”
“Thank you.”
She throws her arms around me and we lie on the floor and cuddle. This, combined with the fact that it is almost dinner when I can start drinking openly, gives me a rare moment of genuine happiness. I kiss Cheryl on her forehead and my stomach is taut with love. She looks beautiful.
I almost tell her that I am happy and that I will never forget this moment, but I hold back. I don’t like to say nice things to her because if I ever leave her then it will just have created more memories for her to feel bitter about. Better for her to think I didn’t care that much than for her to be sitting alone in a dark room for months on end, saying ‘He must have still loved me when he said that…’
Mavis finally replies to an email from days ago:
Christopher, I’m sorry that Chris is not responding to your emails, but I’m afraid I do not have time to track him down personally. I’m sure he is as busy as I am and will get back to you in due course.
Thank you for sending me the chapters of your new novel. Unfortunately, I am not trained to give feedback on an author’s work, and have not read them.
Pauline says to say the same.
I pick it up between thumb and forefinger and flap it, as though it might trigger some expansion mechanism. It doesn’t. It remains depressingly thin and light.
I spread out the contents on the bedroom floor and pick through the skeletal remains of my writing career. “How could people have bought the thing if no one knew it existed?” I ask Cheryl.
“They don’t know what they’re missing out on,” she says with a sympathetic look.
“Wankers,” I say.
The few national newspaper articles are brief mentions of the book’s existence, either in release round-ups or within reviews of other books, the two relevant words diligently highlighted in luminous yellow marker pen. Most of the actual reviews are short, lukewarm, and from local papers around the UK. Several are nothing to do with me at all, just coincidental uses of the phrase ‘clear history.’
On one clipping, presumably included on a particularly desperate day, someone has attempted to get away with marking the words Clear and History in a paragraph, despite the fact that the words are used in separate sentences in an article about fish tank maintenance.
The print-outs from sci-fi websites are generally longer and more positive, and I linger over them, nodding my head at the praise and ignoring the criticism.
One blogger seemed obsessed with the novel, making almost daily posts in between other entries about Star Trek and The Matrix. Over time he went deeper into his analysis of the themes and morality of my book, penning whole articles on subtexts I had never intended (probably created in my editor’s revisions), creating graphs detailing the complex relationships within the story and supplying his wishes for plot developments in subsequent novels in the projected series. Even he, though, perhaps through a lack of response from anybody at all, appeared to have lost interest after a few weeks, and after an accurate and thorough investigation of my main influences (including, cheekily, Scotch) he never mentioned it again.
I quietly stack the papers together and slide them back into the envelope. “That’s that, then.”
“Not necessarily,” Cheryl says.
“No, not necessarily. But, barring a miracle, almost certainly.”
“I’ve got a little surprise for you,” she says, pulling a copy of Time Out from her bag.
I watch her in silence, not allowing myself to become excited, knowing how disappointing her surprises usually turn out to be. She opens the magazine and hands it to me. The article is entitled ‘The Fifty Best Books You Didn’t Buy This Year (but should have).’
It takes me awhile to find any pertinent information because she hasn’t highlighted anything in yellow. But, near the bottom of the page at number forty-six is Clear History by Christopher Hardy. ‘Stylish, brutal, nightmare vision of the near-future,’ it says.
“I know it’s not huge,” Cheryl says, “but it could be the beginning of a re-examination or something. It might be one of those cult things that get noticed over time.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I say, smiling.
“And look, it’s written by loads of people so it’s not just one person’s opinion.”
“It might get on a few lists,” I say. “And then people will take notice.”
“Exactly.”
“Thank you.”
She throws her arms around me and we lie on the floor and cuddle. This, combined with the fact that it is almost dinner when I can start drinking openly, gives me a rare moment of genuine happiness. I kiss Cheryl on her forehead and my stomach is taut with love. She looks beautiful.
I almost tell her that I am happy and that I will never forget this moment, but I hold back. I don’t like to say nice things to her because if I ever leave her then it will just have created more memories for her to feel bitter about. Better for her to think I didn’t care that much than for her to be sitting alone in a dark room for months on end, saying ‘He must have still loved me when he said that…’
Mavis finally replies to an email from days ago:
Christopher, I’m sorry that Chris is not responding to your emails, but I’m afraid I do not have time to track him down personally. I’m sure he is as busy as I am and will get back to you in due course.
Thank you for sending me the chapters of your new novel. Unfortunately, I am not trained to give feedback on an author’s work, and have not read them.
Pauline says to say the same.
Thursday 4 December 2008
Holden Caulfield Needs a Slap...
I’m walking along Berwick Street again, ostensibly in search of good bargain records and pretending to myself that I’m not looking for James Hardy. Since tricking one of the Harper publicity crones into giving me his number, I have left a humiliatingly large number of messages on his mobile’s answer phone, but he hasn’t returned my calls.
I have kept alive the slim possibility that my messages have cut out each time at the exact moment that I am reciting my own phone number, leaving him unable to contact me, frustrated and desperate to go out again and perhaps let me ride on his coattails of success for a time.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. It is Linda, the ex-girlfriend who I met for lunch a few weeks ago, calling me for the twentieth time. I reject it, as I have done each time. Despite this, she refuses to take the hint and keeps calling. It is embarrassing for us both.
As I get to Oxford Street I see a poster for my novel on an alley wall. It has somehow survived being torn down, graffitied or plastered-over with another advert and it looks great. I try to imagine how the poster would make me feel if I had never heard of Clear History. I imagine noticing it, moving closer to take it in, then running to the nearest bookshop to make a purchase. It seems like the natural reaction.
None of the passers-by even glance at it. Eventually I pick out a man my age. “Excuse me.”
He stops and frowns.
“Have you seen this poster?” I say, pointing at it.
“No.”
“What do you think of it?”
He shrugs and frowns again. “I don’t know.” He walks away.
“Don’t you want to buy it?” I shout after him.
He doesn’t look back. Unperturbed, I slip back into the role of the newly-smitten consumer and make my way to Borders.
It is a quiet weekday afternoon. I take the escalator to the third floor and bravely stride into the sci-fi/fantasy section as though it is a normal thing to do.
My book isn’t there. I check several times but it is nowhere to be seen. The possibility that it has sold out suddenly excites me and this gives me the courage to approach the man at the nearest till.
“Excuse me. Have you got Clear History by Christopher Hardy?”
“Let me check.” He taps a few times on his computer keyboard. “Clear...?”
“History.”
He taps again and makes a strange clucking sound with his tongue. “Should have a few in stock.”
“Couldn’t see any.”
“Oh, hang on. We had a couple on the shelf but they sold out on the first day, actually. Looks like the rest of them are still in storage.”
“Where’s…storage?”
“Downstairs. In the basement.”
“So…since the day it was released there haven’t been any copies on the shelf? For the past six weeks?”
“Looks that way.”
He can see my anger coming to a boil and seizes an opportunity to palm me off onto someone else. “Greg,” he shouts across the shop.
A surly-looking teenager who was passing with a trolley full of books stops in his tracks and lumbers towards us, rolling his eyes.
“Greg might be able to dig one out for you,” the till man says, turning away.
Greg stops in front of me. “What?”
“Apparently you’ve got a load of copies of Clear History just sitting downstairs.”
He doesn’t reply.
“Have you?”
“I’ve no idea, mate.”
“Well, do you think you might be able to have a look for me?”
He rolls his eyes again and sighs. “I’m really busy, mate.”
“Apparently they’ve been down there for six weeks, so maybe you could make time?”
“What was it again?”
I give him the title and author and he walks towards, I presume, the lift. But he stops in the sci-fi section. I join him. “It’s not here,” I say. He ignores me and keeps looking. “I’ve looked.”
A minute later, he sighs again. “No, it’s not here.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s downstairs.”
“Look, how badly do you want this book? I’m so fucking sick and tired of going up and down to that fucking basement.”
“I don’t want it myself, I just want copies on the shelf.”
“You what?”
“Listen,” I say, looking round and leaning into him. “I’m Christopher Hardy.”
He looks at me blankly.
“I’m the author.”
“Right.”
“Come on, mate. How are people supposed to buy the book if it’s not on the shelf?”
“There’s no room on the shelf,” he shouts, angrier than I am. “I can’t fit them on.” He stands there, pointing and panting.
“Build some more shelves,” I say.
He opens his mouth again, winding up for an enraged meltdown.
“I’m joking,” I say, my own anger dissipated. “I feel your frustration. I’ll give you ten pounds if you bring up all the copies.”
“Thirty,” he says immediately.
“Thirty? But I won’t make a profit even if they all sell.”
“Thirty,” he says again, folding his arms and smiling smugly.
“Fine,” I say, shaking my head and handing him the cash. “But I’ll be back to check.”
I run out of the shop, a new hope rising that sales are low only because the copies are all hidden in storage rooms around the country. All I have to do is tour the UK, personally visit every bookshop and give them thirty pounds.
But this concept is shattered in the next shop along, where two copies of my book are on display, squeezed onto a shelf with their spines showing.
I approach the manager. “Hi. I’m Christopher Hardy. Would you like me to sign copies of my book?”
“Which book is that?” she says.
I lead her to the shelf and slide out the copies.
“Erm… I don’t think it will make much difference,” she says. “Thanks anyway.”
Another man asks her a question and she moves away. I leave my books with the covers facing outwards, blocking others.
Outside, I look through the shop window and see the manager putting them back.
Back at home I lie on my sofa in the living room, staring up at the framed Clear History poster on the wall, imagining how good it would have looked as a giant billboard on Earl’s Court Road.
I have kept alive the slim possibility that my messages have cut out each time at the exact moment that I am reciting my own phone number, leaving him unable to contact me, frustrated and desperate to go out again and perhaps let me ride on his coattails of success for a time.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. It is Linda, the ex-girlfriend who I met for lunch a few weeks ago, calling me for the twentieth time. I reject it, as I have done each time. Despite this, she refuses to take the hint and keeps calling. It is embarrassing for us both.
As I get to Oxford Street I see a poster for my novel on an alley wall. It has somehow survived being torn down, graffitied or plastered-over with another advert and it looks great. I try to imagine how the poster would make me feel if I had never heard of Clear History. I imagine noticing it, moving closer to take it in, then running to the nearest bookshop to make a purchase. It seems like the natural reaction.
None of the passers-by even glance at it. Eventually I pick out a man my age. “Excuse me.”
He stops and frowns.
“Have you seen this poster?” I say, pointing at it.
“No.”
“What do you think of it?”
He shrugs and frowns again. “I don’t know.” He walks away.
“Don’t you want to buy it?” I shout after him.
He doesn’t look back. Unperturbed, I slip back into the role of the newly-smitten consumer and make my way to Borders.
It is a quiet weekday afternoon. I take the escalator to the third floor and bravely stride into the sci-fi/fantasy section as though it is a normal thing to do.
My book isn’t there. I check several times but it is nowhere to be seen. The possibility that it has sold out suddenly excites me and this gives me the courage to approach the man at the nearest till.
“Excuse me. Have you got Clear History by Christopher Hardy?”
“Let me check.” He taps a few times on his computer keyboard. “Clear...?”
“History.”
He taps again and makes a strange clucking sound with his tongue. “Should have a few in stock.”
“Couldn’t see any.”
“Oh, hang on. We had a couple on the shelf but they sold out on the first day, actually. Looks like the rest of them are still in storage.”
“Where’s…storage?”
“Downstairs. In the basement.”
“So…since the day it was released there haven’t been any copies on the shelf? For the past six weeks?”
“Looks that way.”
He can see my anger coming to a boil and seizes an opportunity to palm me off onto someone else. “Greg,” he shouts across the shop.
A surly-looking teenager who was passing with a trolley full of books stops in his tracks and lumbers towards us, rolling his eyes.
“Greg might be able to dig one out for you,” the till man says, turning away.
Greg stops in front of me. “What?”
“Apparently you’ve got a load of copies of Clear History just sitting downstairs.”
He doesn’t reply.
“Have you?”
“I’ve no idea, mate.”
“Well, do you think you might be able to have a look for me?”
He rolls his eyes again and sighs. “I’m really busy, mate.”
“Apparently they’ve been down there for six weeks, so maybe you could make time?”
“What was it again?”
I give him the title and author and he walks towards, I presume, the lift. But he stops in the sci-fi section. I join him. “It’s not here,” I say. He ignores me and keeps looking. “I’ve looked.”
A minute later, he sighs again. “No, it’s not here.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s downstairs.”
“Look, how badly do you want this book? I’m so fucking sick and tired of going up and down to that fucking basement.”
“I don’t want it myself, I just want copies on the shelf.”
“You what?”
“Listen,” I say, looking round and leaning into him. “I’m Christopher Hardy.”
He looks at me blankly.
“I’m the author.”
“Right.”
“Come on, mate. How are people supposed to buy the book if it’s not on the shelf?”
“There’s no room on the shelf,” he shouts, angrier than I am. “I can’t fit them on.” He stands there, pointing and panting.
“Build some more shelves,” I say.
He opens his mouth again, winding up for an enraged meltdown.
“I’m joking,” I say, my own anger dissipated. “I feel your frustration. I’ll give you ten pounds if you bring up all the copies.”
“Thirty,” he says immediately.
“Thirty? But I won’t make a profit even if they all sell.”
“Thirty,” he says again, folding his arms and smiling smugly.
“Fine,” I say, shaking my head and handing him the cash. “But I’ll be back to check.”
I run out of the shop, a new hope rising that sales are low only because the copies are all hidden in storage rooms around the country. All I have to do is tour the UK, personally visit every bookshop and give them thirty pounds.
But this concept is shattered in the next shop along, where two copies of my book are on display, squeezed onto a shelf with their spines showing.
I approach the manager. “Hi. I’m Christopher Hardy. Would you like me to sign copies of my book?”
“Which book is that?” she says.
I lead her to the shelf and slide out the copies.
“Erm… I don’t think it will make much difference,” she says. “Thanks anyway.”
Another man asks her a question and she moves away. I leave my books with the covers facing outwards, blocking others.
Outside, I look through the shop window and see the manager putting them back.
Back at home I lie on my sofa in the living room, staring up at the framed Clear History poster on the wall, imagining how good it would have looked as a giant billboard on Earl’s Court Road.
Saturday 29 November 2008
You See Me In Whatever Light That You Choose...
Sid, my agent, calls me from his office at seven am. “Christopher!” he announces cheerfully.
“This better be good,” I mumble, my brain sending out surveillance probes to assess the extent of my hangover.
“Oh, is it early again?” he says. “Sorry mate, don’t mean to keep waking you up.”
“Why are you always at work so early anyway?”
“Well, I share hot water with the other flats in my building and a couple of times it’s run out in the middle of my shower so I’ve started getting up before anyone else to beat them to it. Unfortunately a few of them are road sweepers. So I’m up at four every day now.”
“Jesus. No more nights out then? You must be going to bed at nine.”
“Nah. The good news is I’m out of the office at one every day and I just sleep in the afternoon. The other good news is that I get to see all the filthy foreign cleaners. I tell you, there’re some beautiful, sad-looking Latino women knocking about before the sun comes up. There’s one on my industrial estate with a waist the size of a can of Pringles and tits like Zeppelins but she looks painfully damaged. Seems like easy pickings except every time I drive past her there’s always some older man shouting and threatening to hit her. Surely I can offer her a better life than that?”
“So you’d let her give up the job?”
“Oh, I see. No. No, I wouldn’t. Maybe I could stop the threats at least.”
“What the fuck does he want?” Cheryl hisses from next to me.
“Yes, what the fuck do you want?”
“Let’s do a meeting. I’ll be round at noon.”
He sits on the couch while I make him a toasted cheese and ham sandwich. Cheryl hides in the bedroom. Sid changes the channel to QVC and I try not to take it as some kind of mockery.
I hand him his sandwich and he points at Julia Roberts selling Diamonique. “Is this stuff actually any good?”
“I’m not a jewellery expert, Sid. I don’t know.”
“Huh.” He leans forward, scrutinising the merchandise.
“So what’s this meeting about? Any good news for me?”
“Maybe. You mentioned you’d written your first song in ages?”
“Yeah?”
“I’ve found someone who wants to record it.”
“Who?”
“Some kid with a studio in his flat.”
“So this is a change of career? You’ve given up on me as a writer?”
“Just keeping our options open, Christopher.”
“I’m too old, Sid. I’ve done the band thing. No one wants to hear what a thirty-two year old man has to say.”
“Yeah. I suppose you’re right.”
“Jesus. You’re not supposed to agree.”
“I’m not, I’m just telling you what I thought you wanted to hear. I’m all about an easy life.”
“What about my second novel? Have you been shopping me around? Any feedback, and leads?”
“I’m trying, Christopher,” Sid says, blowing on the steaming sandwich. “But that part of things isn’t really my strong suit, to be honest.”
“But… That’s what an agent does, for Christ’s sake. What have you been doing? What is your strong suit?”
“Just being supportive. Having a laugh. Going out for drinks. Just being a mate.”
“No, that is a mate. That’s what my friends do. My agent is supposed to fulfil certain other functions.”
Sid shakes his head, his mouth full of hot cheese. “No one really needs an agent. It’s just perceived that you do. So you do need one, I suppose, but only because that’s the perception.”
“What?”
“There’s nothing an agent can do that you can’t. It’s just an unofficial rule that you have to have one.”
“Sid, I’m pretty sure that’s just you. I think other agents are actually out there working for their clients, selling their work.”
He looks at me blankly, slowly munching his lunch. “Trust me,” he says finally. He finishes and puts the plate down. “Right, I’ll take a nap and then we’ll go round this bloke’s house. Can I use the bedroom?”
“Not really. Cheryl’s in there…working.”
“Oh, I don’t mind. As long as I’m on a bed I can sleep through anything.”
“Why don’t I see if she can take a break?”
So Cheryl and I sit in the living room while Sid snores in our bedroom.
“He’s on my side of the bed,” Cheryl says through clenched teeth.
“I’m sorry,” I say for the seventh time. It is almost ten minutes before it occurs to either of us that we are still watching QVC.
Two hours later, Sid wakes up and we go to a stranger’s house where I record all the instruments in one take and a friend makes a video that causes mild brain damage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxSRChS793U
“This better be good,” I mumble, my brain sending out surveillance probes to assess the extent of my hangover.
“Oh, is it early again?” he says. “Sorry mate, don’t mean to keep waking you up.”
“Why are you always at work so early anyway?”
“Well, I share hot water with the other flats in my building and a couple of times it’s run out in the middle of my shower so I’ve started getting up before anyone else to beat them to it. Unfortunately a few of them are road sweepers. So I’m up at four every day now.”
“Jesus. No more nights out then? You must be going to bed at nine.”
“Nah. The good news is I’m out of the office at one every day and I just sleep in the afternoon. The other good news is that I get to see all the filthy foreign cleaners. I tell you, there’re some beautiful, sad-looking Latino women knocking about before the sun comes up. There’s one on my industrial estate with a waist the size of a can of Pringles and tits like Zeppelins but she looks painfully damaged. Seems like easy pickings except every time I drive past her there’s always some older man shouting and threatening to hit her. Surely I can offer her a better life than that?”
“So you’d let her give up the job?”
“Oh, I see. No. No, I wouldn’t. Maybe I could stop the threats at least.”
“What the fuck does he want?” Cheryl hisses from next to me.
“Yes, what the fuck do you want?”
“Let’s do a meeting. I’ll be round at noon.”
He sits on the couch while I make him a toasted cheese and ham sandwich. Cheryl hides in the bedroom. Sid changes the channel to QVC and I try not to take it as some kind of mockery.
I hand him his sandwich and he points at Julia Roberts selling Diamonique. “Is this stuff actually any good?”
“I’m not a jewellery expert, Sid. I don’t know.”
“Huh.” He leans forward, scrutinising the merchandise.
“So what’s this meeting about? Any good news for me?”
“Maybe. You mentioned you’d written your first song in ages?”
“Yeah?”
“I’ve found someone who wants to record it.”
“Who?”
“Some kid with a studio in his flat.”
“So this is a change of career? You’ve given up on me as a writer?”
“Just keeping our options open, Christopher.”
“I’m too old, Sid. I’ve done the band thing. No one wants to hear what a thirty-two year old man has to say.”
“Yeah. I suppose you’re right.”
“Jesus. You’re not supposed to agree.”
“I’m not, I’m just telling you what I thought you wanted to hear. I’m all about an easy life.”
“What about my second novel? Have you been shopping me around? Any feedback, and leads?”
“I’m trying, Christopher,” Sid says, blowing on the steaming sandwich. “But that part of things isn’t really my strong suit, to be honest.”
“But… That’s what an agent does, for Christ’s sake. What have you been doing? What is your strong suit?”
“Just being supportive. Having a laugh. Going out for drinks. Just being a mate.”
“No, that is a mate. That’s what my friends do. My agent is supposed to fulfil certain other functions.”
Sid shakes his head, his mouth full of hot cheese. “No one really needs an agent. It’s just perceived that you do. So you do need one, I suppose, but only because that’s the perception.”
“What?”
“There’s nothing an agent can do that you can’t. It’s just an unofficial rule that you have to have one.”
“Sid, I’m pretty sure that’s just you. I think other agents are actually out there working for their clients, selling their work.”
He looks at me blankly, slowly munching his lunch. “Trust me,” he says finally. He finishes and puts the plate down. “Right, I’ll take a nap and then we’ll go round this bloke’s house. Can I use the bedroom?”
“Not really. Cheryl’s in there…working.”
“Oh, I don’t mind. As long as I’m on a bed I can sleep through anything.”
“Why don’t I see if she can take a break?”
So Cheryl and I sit in the living room while Sid snores in our bedroom.
“He’s on my side of the bed,” Cheryl says through clenched teeth.
“I’m sorry,” I say for the seventh time. It is almost ten minutes before it occurs to either of us that we are still watching QVC.
Two hours later, Sid wakes up and we go to a stranger’s house where I record all the instruments in one take and a friend makes a video that causes mild brain damage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxSRChS793U
Monday 24 November 2008
"Atypical Selection..."
I’m hung-over because last night I was up into the mid-morning hours struggling with the follow up to Clear History. I pace the living room ranting at Cheryl because she is locked into her laptop and is therefore here but not here.
“They’ve got me over a barrel. They’re playing me like a puppet. I really want to just say ‘Fuck them’ and write what I want but they’re dangling this second book contract over my head and I’m jumping for it like a fat kid for cake and it’s embarrassing. It’s just such a horrible torturous process fighting to put a few hundred words a day down because my heart’s not in it and I haven’t got any ideas and everything’s horrible. But it’s the only chance I have of getting a new contract so I have to show them something definitive soon and it has to be good and…”
“Christopher,” Cheryl says, surprising me by looking up from the computer. She summons a sheepish, compassionate look. “I don’t think they’re going to offer you a second contract.”
I stop pacing because as soon as the words have left her lips the absolute truth of them hits me like a wrecking ball and I slump bonelessly into my armchair. All the breath has gone from my lungs and it takes an immense effort to gasp, “Oh God.”
“Look, what do I know?” Cheryl says but I don’t listen and suddenly I realise I need to breathe because my vision is greying.
And then the shock is replaced by a euphoric sense of relief and freedom as now only one logical path is open to me and the nightmare that is piled up on my desk has become obsolete and irrelevant.
I stop short of burning all my work in a satisfying ritualistic cleansing as even I have enough foresight to realise the possibility of one day regretting it. Instead I pile up all my notes and chapters into a red folder that is tearing at the edges and put that in a box in my bedroom wardrobe. Then I pull out a green one and spread the papers within across my bedroom floor.
Three hours later I compose an email to my editor, Chris:
You haven’t been responding to my emails but I know you’re still alive because I saw you purchasing unusual fruit juices in a health food shop in Sloane Square on Saturday. I wasn’t in the shop so I cannot be specific about which fruits you chose, but a brief glance at their website shows all the juices to be of an atypical selection.
I have chosen to cease jumping through hoops in a desperate attempt to gain a contract for a second novel. It is not that I am ungrateful for the opportunity of the first or ignorant of the reasoning behind a sequel and perhaps a series. It is simply that my heart is not in it and therefore the quality of writing is insufficient.
Thus it is my intention to win a new contract on the merits of an entirely new work. (I will not use the word Thus in it). I am attaching the first draft of a sample chapter that I have just dashed off in a joyfully creative burst. It is set in a hostel in Sydney. This is what I want to write. If you see nothing in it, then I will be disappointed but at least I will have tried. Enjoy. I hope.
Recognised On a Beach
We went to the beach in the early afternoon. It was still too cold to do so but there was nowhere else to go and nothing else to do, so we all pretended it was hot. I sat at the edge of the group.
Bradley obviously had felt his cunt gene kick in again, and was carrying Katie down towards the water. She was kicking and screaming, uselessly hitting at his massive body. Some of us chuckled at the sight, watching him step into the cold water above his knees. Then he threw Katie forwards into the ocean, soaking her shorts and shirt and hair. The group stopped laughing. Immediately, Bradley turned and walked back towards us. Katie splashed at him, wetting his T-shirt, then stood up and followed him, looking down at her clothes.
Bradley reached us and stopped, grinning. Some of the people in the group laughed again. “Nice one,” Rob said.
“You’re mean,” Emma said in a jocular tone. No one said anything seriously. No one wanted to voice their disapproval against anyone who fitted in. No one wanted to draw Bradley’s attention.
Behind him, Katie shuffled up, uncomfortable in her clinging wet clothes, dripping water and sand. She looked down at herself and it was easy to see the anger and embarrassment behind her strained smile.
“Aah, she’s all wet,” Rob patronised her.
“Most of the time, I’ve heard,” I said as an innuendo, fucking hating myself. Katie pulled ineffectively at her shirt which was clinging to the fabric of her white bra.
An uneasy silence fell over the group. Bradley either didn’t pick up on it or chose to ignore it. All the while he had been picking his next victim and I watched in amazement as he told Rhiannon to take her valuables out of her pockets.
She looked up at him with wide, frightened eyes. “No, come on Bradley. Enough’s enough.”
All the humour had left the situation. Still he persevered. “Look, you’re going in the water,” he told her. “I’m just giving you fair warning. If you take your phone out now, it won’t break. Now that’s fair enough, isn’t it?” He didn’t look round for laughs. Instead he stared at her, smirking, and I wondered what he was getting out of it, what drove him to it. He bent over, reaching out for her.
She looked round for help, almost pleading with him now. Both her boyfriends were there, lying back and forcing smiles. Now would be the time for them to step in, but they didn’t. Maybe they were scared of taking her place in the water. Or maybe because she was fucking both of them, neither felt it was their duty to stand up for her. Randy was pretty big, and if both he and Simon worked together they stood a chance, albeit a slim one, of taking him down. But Rhiannon was learning now that life doesn’t work that way, and if neither Simon nor Randy were willing to acknowledge the other’s relationship with her, then they couldn’t fight together for her. It would be a public admission of their triangle.
“This is your last chance,” Bradley said, lightly slapping her legs below the knee.
“I’m not wearing a bikini,” she wailed. “I don’t have a towel.”
“Not my problem,” he said and scooped her up.
“Fuck’s sake,” she said, and threw her phone and keys onto the sand near her bag.
Rob and a few others laughed. Her denim skirt rode up revealing her white thighs, and I thought perhaps Bradley got a sexual thrill from it. He had given up on the idea of being able to pull any of the girls, so using his power to humiliate them was the next best thing. If he could grab a quick feel in the process, his day was made.
We all watched him carry her down the beach, Rhiannon resigned to her fate and lying still in his arms. I wondered if she was saying anything to him as he padded onto wet sand and the waves began washing over his feet, then up to his knees as he moved out further.
This time, instead of throwing her, he maliciously lowered her in slowly, not letting her feet touch the ground.
I risked a muttered “Jesus Christ” just loud enough for Martin next to me to hear. Perhaps as a response, he laughed at what was happening in the water, and now more than ever I felt isolated.
Rhiannon stayed in the water, lying on her back, acting as if she wasn’t bothered. Meanwhile, Bradley was making his way back towards us, and the remaining girls were stirring uneasily. Even though it seemed unlikely he would pick on me, it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility, and I wondered how much of a struggle I would be willing and able to put up. His sneer widened as he approached, and it seemed possible that we could lie here in silence as he picked us up one by one and threw us into the ocean.
Then my attention was taken by two young girls standing fifty metres down the beach, chatting and looking over at us. I had seen that look a few times before in my life and I knew they were looking at me. I lowered my sunglasses and looked away but it was too late, and in my peripheral vision I could see them coming over. I thought about throwing my shoes on and running away, but that might not stop them asking the others about me. At least if I stayed I could exert some influence over the situation.
I was barely aware that Bradley was in front of the group again, grinning inanely. “He’s back for more!” Rob said excitedly, possibly the only other person getting off on it. As Bradley’s mate he was fairly safe; Rugby lads sticking together.
There were only three girls left, and I hoped that Martin would stick up for Claire, although Emma was the more likely choice because she was prettier. Then the two girls were by me, shielding their eyes from the sun even though it was behind sheets of clouds.
“Excuse me,” the blond one began. I ignored her but everyone else turned and looked at the girls, then at me. “Aren’t you Henry Clarke?”
I was still looking away, but with everyone else staring at me, I realised my attempt at ignorance was coming across as imbecilic. I looked at them and said, “Sorry?” pointing at my chest.
“You’re Henry Clarke.” They were grinning now.
I was aware of a heavy silence around me, then the thundering of a wave crashing into shore. I was hung-over.
“No. Sorry.”
The girls look slightly unsure of themselves.
“Yes you are,” Martin said. “I’ve seen your passport.”
I looked at him and nodded slightly, stuck. “Oh” was all I could think of to say.
“Could we get a photograph with you?” the brunette asked, and I laughed a little. They were English, these girls, but not the usual type who recognised me. Mostly I was placed by society’s elite, nine times out of ten by middle-aged women who saw me as an eligible bachelor for their pig-faced daughters. This was the world I had come to escape entirely, ten-and-a-half thousand miles away on the other side of the planet. These two girls, eighteen perhaps, must have read OK or More very closely, where my photo would appear occasionally from some fashionable party I had attended, usually standing next to someone far more famous…
“They’ve got me over a barrel. They’re playing me like a puppet. I really want to just say ‘Fuck them’ and write what I want but they’re dangling this second book contract over my head and I’m jumping for it like a fat kid for cake and it’s embarrassing. It’s just such a horrible torturous process fighting to put a few hundred words a day down because my heart’s not in it and I haven’t got any ideas and everything’s horrible. But it’s the only chance I have of getting a new contract so I have to show them something definitive soon and it has to be good and…”
“Christopher,” Cheryl says, surprising me by looking up from the computer. She summons a sheepish, compassionate look. “I don’t think they’re going to offer you a second contract.”
I stop pacing because as soon as the words have left her lips the absolute truth of them hits me like a wrecking ball and I slump bonelessly into my armchair. All the breath has gone from my lungs and it takes an immense effort to gasp, “Oh God.”
“Look, what do I know?” Cheryl says but I don’t listen and suddenly I realise I need to breathe because my vision is greying.
And then the shock is replaced by a euphoric sense of relief and freedom as now only one logical path is open to me and the nightmare that is piled up on my desk has become obsolete and irrelevant.
I stop short of burning all my work in a satisfying ritualistic cleansing as even I have enough foresight to realise the possibility of one day regretting it. Instead I pile up all my notes and chapters into a red folder that is tearing at the edges and put that in a box in my bedroom wardrobe. Then I pull out a green one and spread the papers within across my bedroom floor.
Three hours later I compose an email to my editor, Chris:
You haven’t been responding to my emails but I know you’re still alive because I saw you purchasing unusual fruit juices in a health food shop in Sloane Square on Saturday. I wasn’t in the shop so I cannot be specific about which fruits you chose, but a brief glance at their website shows all the juices to be of an atypical selection.
I have chosen to cease jumping through hoops in a desperate attempt to gain a contract for a second novel. It is not that I am ungrateful for the opportunity of the first or ignorant of the reasoning behind a sequel and perhaps a series. It is simply that my heart is not in it and therefore the quality of writing is insufficient.
Thus it is my intention to win a new contract on the merits of an entirely new work. (I will not use the word Thus in it). I am attaching the first draft of a sample chapter that I have just dashed off in a joyfully creative burst. It is set in a hostel in Sydney. This is what I want to write. If you see nothing in it, then I will be disappointed but at least I will have tried. Enjoy. I hope.
Recognised On a Beach
We went to the beach in the early afternoon. It was still too cold to do so but there was nowhere else to go and nothing else to do, so we all pretended it was hot. I sat at the edge of the group.
Bradley obviously had felt his cunt gene kick in again, and was carrying Katie down towards the water. She was kicking and screaming, uselessly hitting at his massive body. Some of us chuckled at the sight, watching him step into the cold water above his knees. Then he threw Katie forwards into the ocean, soaking her shorts and shirt and hair. The group stopped laughing. Immediately, Bradley turned and walked back towards us. Katie splashed at him, wetting his T-shirt, then stood up and followed him, looking down at her clothes.
Bradley reached us and stopped, grinning. Some of the people in the group laughed again. “Nice one,” Rob said.
“You’re mean,” Emma said in a jocular tone. No one said anything seriously. No one wanted to voice their disapproval against anyone who fitted in. No one wanted to draw Bradley’s attention.
Behind him, Katie shuffled up, uncomfortable in her clinging wet clothes, dripping water and sand. She looked down at herself and it was easy to see the anger and embarrassment behind her strained smile.
“Aah, she’s all wet,” Rob patronised her.
“Most of the time, I’ve heard,” I said as an innuendo, fucking hating myself. Katie pulled ineffectively at her shirt which was clinging to the fabric of her white bra.
An uneasy silence fell over the group. Bradley either didn’t pick up on it or chose to ignore it. All the while he had been picking his next victim and I watched in amazement as he told Rhiannon to take her valuables out of her pockets.
She looked up at him with wide, frightened eyes. “No, come on Bradley. Enough’s enough.”
All the humour had left the situation. Still he persevered. “Look, you’re going in the water,” he told her. “I’m just giving you fair warning. If you take your phone out now, it won’t break. Now that’s fair enough, isn’t it?” He didn’t look round for laughs. Instead he stared at her, smirking, and I wondered what he was getting out of it, what drove him to it. He bent over, reaching out for her.
She looked round for help, almost pleading with him now. Both her boyfriends were there, lying back and forcing smiles. Now would be the time for them to step in, but they didn’t. Maybe they were scared of taking her place in the water. Or maybe because she was fucking both of them, neither felt it was their duty to stand up for her. Randy was pretty big, and if both he and Simon worked together they stood a chance, albeit a slim one, of taking him down. But Rhiannon was learning now that life doesn’t work that way, and if neither Simon nor Randy were willing to acknowledge the other’s relationship with her, then they couldn’t fight together for her. It would be a public admission of their triangle.
“This is your last chance,” Bradley said, lightly slapping her legs below the knee.
“I’m not wearing a bikini,” she wailed. “I don’t have a towel.”
“Not my problem,” he said and scooped her up.
“Fuck’s sake,” she said, and threw her phone and keys onto the sand near her bag.
Rob and a few others laughed. Her denim skirt rode up revealing her white thighs, and I thought perhaps Bradley got a sexual thrill from it. He had given up on the idea of being able to pull any of the girls, so using his power to humiliate them was the next best thing. If he could grab a quick feel in the process, his day was made.
We all watched him carry her down the beach, Rhiannon resigned to her fate and lying still in his arms. I wondered if she was saying anything to him as he padded onto wet sand and the waves began washing over his feet, then up to his knees as he moved out further.
This time, instead of throwing her, he maliciously lowered her in slowly, not letting her feet touch the ground.
I risked a muttered “Jesus Christ” just loud enough for Martin next to me to hear. Perhaps as a response, he laughed at what was happening in the water, and now more than ever I felt isolated.
Rhiannon stayed in the water, lying on her back, acting as if she wasn’t bothered. Meanwhile, Bradley was making his way back towards us, and the remaining girls were stirring uneasily. Even though it seemed unlikely he would pick on me, it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility, and I wondered how much of a struggle I would be willing and able to put up. His sneer widened as he approached, and it seemed possible that we could lie here in silence as he picked us up one by one and threw us into the ocean.
Then my attention was taken by two young girls standing fifty metres down the beach, chatting and looking over at us. I had seen that look a few times before in my life and I knew they were looking at me. I lowered my sunglasses and looked away but it was too late, and in my peripheral vision I could see them coming over. I thought about throwing my shoes on and running away, but that might not stop them asking the others about me. At least if I stayed I could exert some influence over the situation.
I was barely aware that Bradley was in front of the group again, grinning inanely. “He’s back for more!” Rob said excitedly, possibly the only other person getting off on it. As Bradley’s mate he was fairly safe; Rugby lads sticking together.
There were only three girls left, and I hoped that Martin would stick up for Claire, although Emma was the more likely choice because she was prettier. Then the two girls were by me, shielding their eyes from the sun even though it was behind sheets of clouds.
“Excuse me,” the blond one began. I ignored her but everyone else turned and looked at the girls, then at me. “Aren’t you Henry Clarke?”
I was still looking away, but with everyone else staring at me, I realised my attempt at ignorance was coming across as imbecilic. I looked at them and said, “Sorry?” pointing at my chest.
“You’re Henry Clarke.” They were grinning now.
I was aware of a heavy silence around me, then the thundering of a wave crashing into shore. I was hung-over.
“No. Sorry.”
The girls look slightly unsure of themselves.
“Yes you are,” Martin said. “I’ve seen your passport.”
I looked at him and nodded slightly, stuck. “Oh” was all I could think of to say.
“Could we get a photograph with you?” the brunette asked, and I laughed a little. They were English, these girls, but not the usual type who recognised me. Mostly I was placed by society’s elite, nine times out of ten by middle-aged women who saw me as an eligible bachelor for their pig-faced daughters. This was the world I had come to escape entirely, ten-and-a-half thousand miles away on the other side of the planet. These two girls, eighteen perhaps, must have read OK or More very closely, where my photo would appear occasionally from some fashionable party I had attended, usually standing next to someone far more famous…
Thursday 20 November 2008
Leatherman
James Hardy is strolling along Berwick Street browsing the record shops. A bitter, jealous loathing erupts with an intensity that both shames and scares me. But the loathing is stronger than the shame.
He looks so casual that for a moment I wonder if I have the right man. Then he stops for two pretty girls half my age who are holding towards him pens and copies of his lavishly bound novel with a submissive eagerness that momentarily pleases my misogynistic tendencies. With a winning smile he scrawls his signature and, no doubt, a charming personal message on the title page of each.
He excuses himself and the girls watch him leave with the books clutched to their chests and their hearts swelling. He doesn’t look back and the girls turn away, giggling and opening their phones to tell their friends.
Sales of my novel have stalled at an embarrassingly lowly figure and in recent weeks, as James’ cherubic image beams out from every magazine and website alongside captions including words such as ‘genius,’ ‘sensational debut,’ and ‘selling by the bucket loads,’ he has become something of an obsession for me. The publicists assigned to my novel have spent their time and energy ensuring his success, leaving my effort to fend for itself. As a result, he has come to symbolise all my failings in the literary world and life in general.
And here he is, swanning about Soho in blissful freedom when he should be paying the price for his actions that have ruined my life. And not just mine. Another neglected Harper Collins author had a non-fiction book published and ignored on the same day as mine with Pauline and Mavis offering the pathetic excuse that the ‘self-help market is saturated.’
I follow him for awhile, anger building with every flick of his stupid blond hair, his sly smile that he flashes easily to shop assistants and passing ladies, his snobbish, elitist insistence on purchasing vinyl.
Finally we are alone together in the basement of one of the few record shops left here; the obscure, dusty vinyl-only cells where men with passion still get their kicks. My hand goes to my hip and fingers the lump there. I came straight from an early shift at Bid TV and my Leatherman is still on my belt. Without thinking, I pull it free of its case and flip out the sharp blade.
I move slowly towards him with the knife at waist level, ready to…I don’t know what. Stab him in the leg perhaps. At least cut a hole in his jumper. At the very least, show him the blade. From a distance in case he’s tough and disarms me.
I fail to reach a decision on which course of action to take and so end up stopping right behind him, breathing audibly. He turns, brushing against me, and takes a small step back, slightly unnerved.
“Can I help you?” he says.
“I suppose you think I’m an obsessive fan,” I say, going for a menacing tone.
“We’re all obsessive fans in a place like this,” he says with the quick wit that has sent interviewers, male and female alike, scurrying to their laptops to proclaim him the new Messiah.
I can’t think of anything to say to this, so I just stand and stare at him and his eyes narrow and he frowns and I think he is scared but then he says, “Hey, are you Christopher Hardy?”
“Errr…yes.”
“Oh, man.” He holds his hand out. “I’m a huge fan of your novel.”
Stunned, I slip the Leatherman, knife still out, into my jeans pocket and shake his hand. “Really? You’ve read it?”
“Yeah, a friend recommended it and I’d heard about you at Harper, so…Oh, I just had a novel published as well at Harper so I knew your name.”
“What’s the name of…err…”
“The Art of Life and Death.”
“Oh you’re James Hardy,” I say, then clear my throat.
“That’s right,” he says. “I’m honoured.”
“So…you’re a sci-fi fan?”
“Not ordinarily, no. but to be honest I didn’t really see your book as sci-fi. Don’t know if it’s just me, but…”
“People have said that,” I say, reeling from the sudden heart-thumping adoration I feel for this man with his gorgeous, stylish blonde hair, his playfully endearing smile, his flawless taste in music.
He sees me looking at the copy of Yanqui U.X.O. in his hands. “I have it on CD,” he says, “but the vinyl version is supposed to have extra stuff.”
“A nine minute extended ambient section,” I say as though in a trance.
“A man of taste,” he says. “Here, if you’re not doing anything do you fancy a pint?”
“John Snow?”
“Excellent. Love that place.”
“I’d have thought you’d be hanging out in private members clubs with your new found success.”
“Fuck that,” he says. “Pints are still two quid in the John Snow.”
While he pays for the LP I carefully fold the knife back into its housing and then just watch him.
After a few pints I’m moaning endlessly about Harper Collins and he is agreeing with me and empathising.
“They don’t know it but I’m going to leave them,” he confides. “Even if they make the biggest offer for the next book, I’m gone.”
“But the book’s doing so well. Why would you leave?”
“Because they don’t listen,” he says.
“I know,” I say, wondering how anyone could fail to listen to James Hardy.
“I wrote my manuscript with double speech marks, I specified double speech marks for the printing, and what do they use? Single speech marks. Shitty little singles.”
“Wow. Even mine has doubles.”
“I’m jealous. But also, they started the page numbers from the cover. So after all the copyright and blank pages and whatever, the first page number is seventeen. What kind of idiot does that? Page one is the title page. Count from there!”
“Takes the piss,” I say, sipping the Alpine. “I want to write about international terrorists next but they’re forcing me to do a sequel to Clear History.”
“Wankers. Although, I would read that.”
“You’ll be lucky. They haven’t offered me a contract yet.”
“Wankers,” he says again.
“You should have a word for me,” I say, smiling as though I am joking.
“Yeah,” he says, smiling and actually joking. “I just have so many ideas and I want to get them all down but there isn’t enough time. I wish I could somehow suck them all out of my brain and fire them onto paper. Do you feel like that? That it’s a race against time now and we’ve only got however many years left to live and so many stories to write?”
“Not…really. I don’t get many ideas.”
“Oh, I can’t stop. Sometimes it feels as though my head’s going to explode.”
“I suppose I have a few real-life stories but none of them are really full-length novels. Maybe short stories. I have some I try to put in other things but it always feels as though I’m just shoe-horning them in.”
“Like what?”
“Well, like when I was seven and I wrote ‘FUCK SHIT SHIT FUCK’ on a ruler.”
“Huh?”
“We had a communal tin in the classroom that everyone took a ruler from and I saw it on one of them and copied it onto another. I showed a girl on my table and she put her hand up and told the teacher.”
“Bitch.”
“I can still remember that awful, squirming feeling of dread while I was pleading with her and she wouldn’t put her hand down. I admitted it to the headmistress and she called my mum and I denied it to her. It went on for weeks with me admitting it to the headmistress and then lying about it to my mother. She had to come in to school and when they were together I’d deny it. I told my mother the ruler had said ‘bloody.’ I remember the look on the head’s face the next day in her office when she said ‘It was not bloody.’”
“That’s funny.”
“Or how I hated swimming for years because of an incident with my teacher.”
“Go on.”
“We went swimming in the summer and everyone had to get out of the pool while the teacher talked to us. I didn’t get out and he kept shouting at me and I ignored him and he kept shouting. All the kids were just looking at me and I beckoned the teacher over. He bent down and I whispered that I couldn’t get out because I had been thinking naughty thoughts and well, I had…become aroused. He winked and said, ‘Oh, I see. Don’t worry, lad.’ Then he stood up and faced the whole class and said, ‘Hardy will not be getting out of the pool because he has a boner.’
“No way.”
“Needless to say, there was much laughter and much embarrassment.”
“They’re both good but, yeah, difficult to find a place for.”
“Maybe one day.”
We finish our pints. He looks at his watch and rolls his eyes. “Better go. I’ve got Wogan in the morning.”
“Ugh. Typical.”
“Well, it’s been fun.”
“Yeah, we should do it again.”
“Well, you’ll often find me perusing the old vinyl racks for bargains.”
I pull out my phone. “Cool. But just give me your number and I’ll give you a ring next week or something.”
“Err… Tell you what, give me yours and I’ll call you.”
“You don’t like people calling you?”
“No, I’m just a bit funny about giving my number out. Been getting some crank calls recently.”
“I’m not a crank.”
“I know, I know. But I’d rather take yours. To be honest I’m not sure what my schedule’s like at the moment.”
“Okay.” I give him a fake number which makes me feel slightly better.
We shake hands and he leaves the pub in a hurry and I sit alone for a moment telling myself that I have enough friends anyway.
Thirty seconds later I am running down Poland Street yelling that I’ve given him my old number by mistake…
He looks so casual that for a moment I wonder if I have the right man. Then he stops for two pretty girls half my age who are holding towards him pens and copies of his lavishly bound novel with a submissive eagerness that momentarily pleases my misogynistic tendencies. With a winning smile he scrawls his signature and, no doubt, a charming personal message on the title page of each.
He excuses himself and the girls watch him leave with the books clutched to their chests and their hearts swelling. He doesn’t look back and the girls turn away, giggling and opening their phones to tell their friends.
Sales of my novel have stalled at an embarrassingly lowly figure and in recent weeks, as James’ cherubic image beams out from every magazine and website alongside captions including words such as ‘genius,’ ‘sensational debut,’ and ‘selling by the bucket loads,’ he has become something of an obsession for me. The publicists assigned to my novel have spent their time and energy ensuring his success, leaving my effort to fend for itself. As a result, he has come to symbolise all my failings in the literary world and life in general.
And here he is, swanning about Soho in blissful freedom when he should be paying the price for his actions that have ruined my life. And not just mine. Another neglected Harper Collins author had a non-fiction book published and ignored on the same day as mine with Pauline and Mavis offering the pathetic excuse that the ‘self-help market is saturated.’
I follow him for awhile, anger building with every flick of his stupid blond hair, his sly smile that he flashes easily to shop assistants and passing ladies, his snobbish, elitist insistence on purchasing vinyl.
Finally we are alone together in the basement of one of the few record shops left here; the obscure, dusty vinyl-only cells where men with passion still get their kicks. My hand goes to my hip and fingers the lump there. I came straight from an early shift at Bid TV and my Leatherman is still on my belt. Without thinking, I pull it free of its case and flip out the sharp blade.
I move slowly towards him with the knife at waist level, ready to…I don’t know what. Stab him in the leg perhaps. At least cut a hole in his jumper. At the very least, show him the blade. From a distance in case he’s tough and disarms me.
I fail to reach a decision on which course of action to take and so end up stopping right behind him, breathing audibly. He turns, brushing against me, and takes a small step back, slightly unnerved.
“Can I help you?” he says.
“I suppose you think I’m an obsessive fan,” I say, going for a menacing tone.
“We’re all obsessive fans in a place like this,” he says with the quick wit that has sent interviewers, male and female alike, scurrying to their laptops to proclaim him the new Messiah.
I can’t think of anything to say to this, so I just stand and stare at him and his eyes narrow and he frowns and I think he is scared but then he says, “Hey, are you Christopher Hardy?”
“Errr…yes.”
“Oh, man.” He holds his hand out. “I’m a huge fan of your novel.”
Stunned, I slip the Leatherman, knife still out, into my jeans pocket and shake his hand. “Really? You’ve read it?”
“Yeah, a friend recommended it and I’d heard about you at Harper, so…Oh, I just had a novel published as well at Harper so I knew your name.”
“What’s the name of…err…”
“The Art of Life and Death.”
“Oh you’re James Hardy,” I say, then clear my throat.
“That’s right,” he says. “I’m honoured.”
“So…you’re a sci-fi fan?”
“Not ordinarily, no. but to be honest I didn’t really see your book as sci-fi. Don’t know if it’s just me, but…”
“People have said that,” I say, reeling from the sudden heart-thumping adoration I feel for this man with his gorgeous, stylish blonde hair, his playfully endearing smile, his flawless taste in music.
He sees me looking at the copy of Yanqui U.X.O. in his hands. “I have it on CD,” he says, “but the vinyl version is supposed to have extra stuff.”
“A nine minute extended ambient section,” I say as though in a trance.
“A man of taste,” he says. “Here, if you’re not doing anything do you fancy a pint?”
“John Snow?”
“Excellent. Love that place.”
“I’d have thought you’d be hanging out in private members clubs with your new found success.”
“Fuck that,” he says. “Pints are still two quid in the John Snow.”
While he pays for the LP I carefully fold the knife back into its housing and then just watch him.
After a few pints I’m moaning endlessly about Harper Collins and he is agreeing with me and empathising.
“They don’t know it but I’m going to leave them,” he confides. “Even if they make the biggest offer for the next book, I’m gone.”
“But the book’s doing so well. Why would you leave?”
“Because they don’t listen,” he says.
“I know,” I say, wondering how anyone could fail to listen to James Hardy.
“I wrote my manuscript with double speech marks, I specified double speech marks for the printing, and what do they use? Single speech marks. Shitty little singles.”
“Wow. Even mine has doubles.”
“I’m jealous. But also, they started the page numbers from the cover. So after all the copyright and blank pages and whatever, the first page number is seventeen. What kind of idiot does that? Page one is the title page. Count from there!”
“Takes the piss,” I say, sipping the Alpine. “I want to write about international terrorists next but they’re forcing me to do a sequel to Clear History.”
“Wankers. Although, I would read that.”
“You’ll be lucky. They haven’t offered me a contract yet.”
“Wankers,” he says again.
“You should have a word for me,” I say, smiling as though I am joking.
“Yeah,” he says, smiling and actually joking. “I just have so many ideas and I want to get them all down but there isn’t enough time. I wish I could somehow suck them all out of my brain and fire them onto paper. Do you feel like that? That it’s a race against time now and we’ve only got however many years left to live and so many stories to write?”
“Not…really. I don’t get many ideas.”
“Oh, I can’t stop. Sometimes it feels as though my head’s going to explode.”
“I suppose I have a few real-life stories but none of them are really full-length novels. Maybe short stories. I have some I try to put in other things but it always feels as though I’m just shoe-horning them in.”
“Like what?”
“Well, like when I was seven and I wrote ‘FUCK SHIT SHIT FUCK’ on a ruler.”
“Huh?”
“We had a communal tin in the classroom that everyone took a ruler from and I saw it on one of them and copied it onto another. I showed a girl on my table and she put her hand up and told the teacher.”
“Bitch.”
“I can still remember that awful, squirming feeling of dread while I was pleading with her and she wouldn’t put her hand down. I admitted it to the headmistress and she called my mum and I denied it to her. It went on for weeks with me admitting it to the headmistress and then lying about it to my mother. She had to come in to school and when they were together I’d deny it. I told my mother the ruler had said ‘bloody.’ I remember the look on the head’s face the next day in her office when she said ‘It was not bloody.’”
“That’s funny.”
“Or how I hated swimming for years because of an incident with my teacher.”
“Go on.”
“We went swimming in the summer and everyone had to get out of the pool while the teacher talked to us. I didn’t get out and he kept shouting at me and I ignored him and he kept shouting. All the kids were just looking at me and I beckoned the teacher over. He bent down and I whispered that I couldn’t get out because I had been thinking naughty thoughts and well, I had…become aroused. He winked and said, ‘Oh, I see. Don’t worry, lad.’ Then he stood up and faced the whole class and said, ‘Hardy will not be getting out of the pool because he has a boner.’
“No way.”
“Needless to say, there was much laughter and much embarrassment.”
“They’re both good but, yeah, difficult to find a place for.”
“Maybe one day.”
We finish our pints. He looks at his watch and rolls his eyes. “Better go. I’ve got Wogan in the morning.”
“Ugh. Typical.”
“Well, it’s been fun.”
“Yeah, we should do it again.”
“Well, you’ll often find me perusing the old vinyl racks for bargains.”
I pull out my phone. “Cool. But just give me your number and I’ll give you a ring next week or something.”
“Err… Tell you what, give me yours and I’ll call you.”
“You don’t like people calling you?”
“No, I’m just a bit funny about giving my number out. Been getting some crank calls recently.”
“I’m not a crank.”
“I know, I know. But I’d rather take yours. To be honest I’m not sure what my schedule’s like at the moment.”
“Okay.” I give him a fake number which makes me feel slightly better.
We shake hands and he leaves the pub in a hurry and I sit alone for a moment telling myself that I have enough friends anyway.
Thirty seconds later I am running down Poland Street yelling that I’ve given him my old number by mistake…
Tuesday 11 November 2008
Book Tour Pt 2
Mavis at Harper Collins has marked out on my itinerary for which appearances I should be drunk. Generally, as part of her continuing ‘Drunken Public Appearances’ plan, anything to be broadcast after nine pm has a D next to it. Some events with a liberal attitude have a DD meaning that I should be totally beyond my own control and will still probably avoid arrest. Mavis doesn’t seem to understand that once I start, the consumption of alcohol is already beyond my control, rendering the concept of regulating my level of intoxication laughable.
Last night's radio interview was a DD and yet, as I remember it, the DJ was delighted with my condition and, after baiting me into spouting ludicrous slurs against people of various races and religions, joined me with his own bottle of…Absinthe perhaps.
The session concluded at two am with the presenter actually snorting lines from the mixing desk and babbling like a madman about being the new king of Shock Jocks.
This morning I look online for any local or national stories about the incident but there is no trace of it anywhere, not even in the dregs of the blogs, and I feel, not for the first time, invisible.
Since the BBC has, in the last few years, reacted to minor scandals with a maniacal martyrdom, gleefully ripping its shirt off and flogging itself in the town square while sobbing and begging for more, cutting itself and firing anyone that happened to be in the office that day, comparing rash decisions made by stressed PAs to the atrocities carried out under Stalin and Hitler, offering to accept responsibility for every sin committed throughout history and generally declaring itself unfit for existence, it has been decided that all BBC interviews should be conducted whilst sober.
Mavis, though, as someone who probably thinks being drunk is giggling once or twice over an evening, hasn’t factored in the time required to sober up from such extreme intoxication, and I have to drive to Doncaster Radio at seven am covering one eye.
An ugly PA greets me at the door and I try to smile but just manage a pained grimace. She takes me to the green room. “Can I get you some breakfast?”
I start to shake my head, then stop, closing my eyes. “No solids.”
“Oh. Some tea then?”
“No liquids either.”
“Nothing then?”
“Can you make it tomorrow already?”
“Don’t wish your life away,” the nineteen year-old urges me.
The DJ is yet another bland early middle-aged man wearing an uncomfortable-looking jumper. I sit opposite him, trying to keep my head upright.
He introduces me. “Welcome to Doncaster.”
“Thank you,” I say, picking up on some irony in his greeting that isn’t actually there. “The AIDS capital of Great Britain.”
His smile drops. “I don’t think…” He falters.
“Luckily, I’ve already got it.”
He just stares at me.
“I haven’t really,” I say. “I’m not…involved in any of that sort of thing.”
“This is the BBC,” the presenter says.
“It’s alright,” I say. “It’s not… I mean, somewhere has to be, doesn’t it? I’m just saying.”
“I actually think that’s a myth started by spreaders of hate,” he rages, red-faced and spitting.
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s not get bogged down in it.”
He looks at his notes, then back at me with a sneer. “How’s the tour going?”
“Fine.”
“Really? Pleased with sales so far?”
“I…think so.”
He gives a surprised snort. “Interesting.”
“I haven’t actually seen them.”
“Perhaps you’d like me to inform you on air?”
I panic. “AIDS capital.”
He reddens again. “How can it be the AIDS capital when there’re all those gays in Brighton?”
There is a suitable amount of dead air before a record is played.
I call Mavis on my way to Lincoln. “How many copies have I sold?”
Mavis sighs. “I don’t have that information right now.”
“Then find it. I know you’re in the office.”
“Christopher…”
“I want to know.”
“It’s not important right now.”
“Tell me now,” I say, and she sighs again and clicks her computer mouse.
“Erm… Two hundred and twelve.”
“Two hundred and twelve…thousand?”
“No. Two hundred and twelve copies.”
“Right. That’s not great, is it?”
“Early days,” she says. Then, “Sorry, got to go, James Hardy’s on the other line.”
At the next Travelodge later that morning, a bottle of J&B Scotch sits with a plastic cup wrapped in cellophane on my bedside table. With it, a printed note from Mavis:
‘An early DD this afternoon. Get stuck in!’
I groan and sit on the bed and then crack open the bottle. The fumes make me wretch. Nethertheless, I force the whisky down and after a few shots it starts to smooth out my hangover. Then, a third of the bottle through, I’m kneeling in front of the toilet watching streams of brown liquid force their way out of my stomach.
When I regain control, I sit on the bathroom floor, wiping tears away and moaning. Then I look at the bottle that for some reason I brought in with me, take a few deep breaths, and begin again.
The taxi takes me under a sign that has the word School on it but it barely registers because I’m slumped in the back, forcing the last of the whisky down my throat. I shove the empty bottle into my bag.
The headmistress and teachers are clearly disturbed by my condition but with the last of my lucidity I manage to avoid any challenges. “We want to encourage the children in their creative writing by hearing from someone who has made it into a career,” the headmistress says.
“You have progressive children,” I say, and she nods, confused.
The possibility that Mavis has mixed up the schedule leaves my mind along with the last fragments of my sanity as I stumble onto the stage and spend the first two minutes trying to open my book at the page with the large bookmark. “This is the live autopsy scene,” I say.
“‘Harris picked up a scalpel and leant forward over the patient. Holding the blade at face height, he looked for a moment at Reece. The agent’s eyes were rolling like marbles in a glass, and a low growl began to form in his throat, coupled with a gurgling, strangled gasping.
“‘Scully put a hand on the man’s brow, a gentle look in her eyes, as Harris moved the blade from the chest to the pubic bone, sending a fine arc of blood onto his gloves and arm. The Y-shape complete, Harris then pushed his fingers into the incision and peeled back the skin in three huge flaps, exposing the steel ribs and wasting muscles. Reece’s groan turned into a whistling, whining moan that made Scott want to cover his ears. He turned and saw that Wilson’s mouth was curved downwards in distaste. Only Owen remained impassive. In fact, Scott noticed, he was watching intently.
“’Harris strummed his fingers over the blood-flecked ribs, seemingly oblivious to Reece’s cries.’”
I pause for a moment, taking a few deep breaths to ward of the whisky nausea. There is a general murmuring among the adults, and a few of the children are crying. “Shut up,” I say, which makes them cry louder. I continue anyway.
“’A scalpel was used to make a fresh incision from behind one ear around the back of the skull to the other. As the cutting began, Reece’s face froze into a shocked stare and his eyes blinked stupidly. Harris remained in front of him, watching.
“’Reece’s scalp was then pulled up and inverted over the head, exposing the skull and mercifully, Scott thought, covering his face from view. His low moans were muffled now by his own flesh and hair.
“’One of the techs used the drill to unscrew the back of Reece’s skull, and then using a lever, he popped the top and lifted the bone clear, revealing the brain. Harris leaned over and prodded it, pushing his fingers into the cortex. Under his hand, Reece shook against the paralysis drug, and emitted a shrill shriek. Scully and her assistants first looked on in distaste, then turned away as Harris slid his fingers into the oozing pink organ up to the first knuckle.’”
I can’t find the section about pornography that I have been ending my adult readings with but I lunge into my post-reading routine without a bridge.
“Talking of pornography, I’ve never enjoyed watching it because circumcised cocks look so painful.”
The audience is restless now, and I jerk my head from side-to-side, vaguely noticing how young these children are.
“Do you think porn stars have porn collections?” I say, continuing the routine I’ve been considering taking into the comedy clubs. “And, hey, at what point do you think porn stars tell their kids what they do? ‘Err…I’m an actress.’ ‘Wow, mummy, can I watch one of your movies?’ ‘Well, I’d rather you didn’t. Mummy has no clothes on and several men who aren’t your daddy are jizzing all over her…’”
A teacher jumps on stage and runs at me, swinging his fists. I stumble backwards and am bundled out of the hall and into my cab.
By the time I regain consciousness in my Travelodge room Mavis has drafted an apology letter to the school and the tour is finally over.
Last night's radio interview was a DD and yet, as I remember it, the DJ was delighted with my condition and, after baiting me into spouting ludicrous slurs against people of various races and religions, joined me with his own bottle of…Absinthe perhaps.
The session concluded at two am with the presenter actually snorting lines from the mixing desk and babbling like a madman about being the new king of Shock Jocks.
This morning I look online for any local or national stories about the incident but there is no trace of it anywhere, not even in the dregs of the blogs, and I feel, not for the first time, invisible.
Since the BBC has, in the last few years, reacted to minor scandals with a maniacal martyrdom, gleefully ripping its shirt off and flogging itself in the town square while sobbing and begging for more, cutting itself and firing anyone that happened to be in the office that day, comparing rash decisions made by stressed PAs to the atrocities carried out under Stalin and Hitler, offering to accept responsibility for every sin committed throughout history and generally declaring itself unfit for existence, it has been decided that all BBC interviews should be conducted whilst sober.
Mavis, though, as someone who probably thinks being drunk is giggling once or twice over an evening, hasn’t factored in the time required to sober up from such extreme intoxication, and I have to drive to Doncaster Radio at seven am covering one eye.
An ugly PA greets me at the door and I try to smile but just manage a pained grimace. She takes me to the green room. “Can I get you some breakfast?”
I start to shake my head, then stop, closing my eyes. “No solids.”
“Oh. Some tea then?”
“No liquids either.”
“Nothing then?”
“Can you make it tomorrow already?”
“Don’t wish your life away,” the nineteen year-old urges me.
The DJ is yet another bland early middle-aged man wearing an uncomfortable-looking jumper. I sit opposite him, trying to keep my head upright.
He introduces me. “Welcome to Doncaster.”
“Thank you,” I say, picking up on some irony in his greeting that isn’t actually there. “The AIDS capital of Great Britain.”
His smile drops. “I don’t think…” He falters.
“Luckily, I’ve already got it.”
He just stares at me.
“I haven’t really,” I say. “I’m not…involved in any of that sort of thing.”
“This is the BBC,” the presenter says.
“It’s alright,” I say. “It’s not… I mean, somewhere has to be, doesn’t it? I’m just saying.”
“I actually think that’s a myth started by spreaders of hate,” he rages, red-faced and spitting.
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s not get bogged down in it.”
He looks at his notes, then back at me with a sneer. “How’s the tour going?”
“Fine.”
“Really? Pleased with sales so far?”
“I…think so.”
He gives a surprised snort. “Interesting.”
“I haven’t actually seen them.”
“Perhaps you’d like me to inform you on air?”
I panic. “AIDS capital.”
He reddens again. “How can it be the AIDS capital when there’re all those gays in Brighton?”
There is a suitable amount of dead air before a record is played.
I call Mavis on my way to Lincoln. “How many copies have I sold?”
Mavis sighs. “I don’t have that information right now.”
“Then find it. I know you’re in the office.”
“Christopher…”
“I want to know.”
“It’s not important right now.”
“Tell me now,” I say, and she sighs again and clicks her computer mouse.
“Erm… Two hundred and twelve.”
“Two hundred and twelve…thousand?”
“No. Two hundred and twelve copies.”
“Right. That’s not great, is it?”
“Early days,” she says. Then, “Sorry, got to go, James Hardy’s on the other line.”
At the next Travelodge later that morning, a bottle of J&B Scotch sits with a plastic cup wrapped in cellophane on my bedside table. With it, a printed note from Mavis:
‘An early DD this afternoon. Get stuck in!’
I groan and sit on the bed and then crack open the bottle. The fumes make me wretch. Nethertheless, I force the whisky down and after a few shots it starts to smooth out my hangover. Then, a third of the bottle through, I’m kneeling in front of the toilet watching streams of brown liquid force their way out of my stomach.
When I regain control, I sit on the bathroom floor, wiping tears away and moaning. Then I look at the bottle that for some reason I brought in with me, take a few deep breaths, and begin again.
The taxi takes me under a sign that has the word School on it but it barely registers because I’m slumped in the back, forcing the last of the whisky down my throat. I shove the empty bottle into my bag.
The headmistress and teachers are clearly disturbed by my condition but with the last of my lucidity I manage to avoid any challenges. “We want to encourage the children in their creative writing by hearing from someone who has made it into a career,” the headmistress says.
“You have progressive children,” I say, and she nods, confused.
The possibility that Mavis has mixed up the schedule leaves my mind along with the last fragments of my sanity as I stumble onto the stage and spend the first two minutes trying to open my book at the page with the large bookmark. “This is the live autopsy scene,” I say.
“‘Harris picked up a scalpel and leant forward over the patient. Holding the blade at face height, he looked for a moment at Reece. The agent’s eyes were rolling like marbles in a glass, and a low growl began to form in his throat, coupled with a gurgling, strangled gasping.
“‘Scully put a hand on the man’s brow, a gentle look in her eyes, as Harris moved the blade from the chest to the pubic bone, sending a fine arc of blood onto his gloves and arm. The Y-shape complete, Harris then pushed his fingers into the incision and peeled back the skin in three huge flaps, exposing the steel ribs and wasting muscles. Reece’s groan turned into a whistling, whining moan that made Scott want to cover his ears. He turned and saw that Wilson’s mouth was curved downwards in distaste. Only Owen remained impassive. In fact, Scott noticed, he was watching intently.
“’Harris strummed his fingers over the blood-flecked ribs, seemingly oblivious to Reece’s cries.’”
I pause for a moment, taking a few deep breaths to ward of the whisky nausea. There is a general murmuring among the adults, and a few of the children are crying. “Shut up,” I say, which makes them cry louder. I continue anyway.
“’A scalpel was used to make a fresh incision from behind one ear around the back of the skull to the other. As the cutting began, Reece’s face froze into a shocked stare and his eyes blinked stupidly. Harris remained in front of him, watching.
“’Reece’s scalp was then pulled up and inverted over the head, exposing the skull and mercifully, Scott thought, covering his face from view. His low moans were muffled now by his own flesh and hair.
“’One of the techs used the drill to unscrew the back of Reece’s skull, and then using a lever, he popped the top and lifted the bone clear, revealing the brain. Harris leaned over and prodded it, pushing his fingers into the cortex. Under his hand, Reece shook against the paralysis drug, and emitted a shrill shriek. Scully and her assistants first looked on in distaste, then turned away as Harris slid his fingers into the oozing pink organ up to the first knuckle.’”
I can’t find the section about pornography that I have been ending my adult readings with but I lunge into my post-reading routine without a bridge.
“Talking of pornography, I’ve never enjoyed watching it because circumcised cocks look so painful.”
The audience is restless now, and I jerk my head from side-to-side, vaguely noticing how young these children are.
“Do you think porn stars have porn collections?” I say, continuing the routine I’ve been considering taking into the comedy clubs. “And, hey, at what point do you think porn stars tell their kids what they do? ‘Err…I’m an actress.’ ‘Wow, mummy, can I watch one of your movies?’ ‘Well, I’d rather you didn’t. Mummy has no clothes on and several men who aren’t your daddy are jizzing all over her…’”
A teacher jumps on stage and runs at me, swinging his fists. I stumble backwards and am bundled out of the hall and into my cab.
By the time I regain consciousness in my Travelodge room Mavis has drafted an apology letter to the school and the tour is finally over.
Tuesday 4 November 2008
Book Tour part 1
(You can now subscribe to this thing by email over on the right)
…My only television interview is for a local access digital cable channel in a shed in Shropshire. A young balding man greets me at the door and shows me to the green room which is just a cupboard with a portable TV showing dreadful documentaries about the local community. I make a cup of tea and then the same man leads me to the studio which is another tiny room with one fixed camcorder on an Argos tripod pointing at two plastic chairs in front of a green screen.
The screen makes me nervous because they are able to project anything that takes their fancy after the fact. On my Media Production course at Bournemouth University I once floated TWAT above the head of a fellow student who I actually quite liked, so I know what people are capable of.
The man clips a microphone to my shirt and then sits in the chair opposite mine. He clips on his own mic and slots an IFB into his ear. There appears to be no one else in the building, although it seems that he receives some information on his earpiece because he nods at the camera and then at me.
“Okay?”
“Yep. Great.”
He turns on a TV smile. “So, Christopher Hardy, welcome to our studio.”
“Thank you. Great to be here.”
“Your debut novel is called Clear History. Talk a little about how the idea came about.”
“Well, it’s an idea I’ve had knocking about for many years. Probably since I was about fourteen or fifteen. It’s an amalgamation of several different influences such as 1984, Robocop, Judge Dredd and computer games such as Beneath a Steel Sky and Syndicate. But it took me twelve years or so to make sense of all the ideas and come up with a cohesive storyline. Plus I wasn’t really mature enough to write a decent novel until a couple of years ago.”
“What genre would you place it in?”
I do a TV laugh. “Well, that’s a good question. I suppose it’s a sci-fi novel, and that’s where you’ll find it in the shops, but I think it has a broad appeal. It’s set in a semi-fictionalised version of our present, and the themes it tackles are, I think, very much of the present, or perhaps our immediate future.”
“Writing a novel is really a process of implanting a dream in someone’s head, isn’t it?”
“Err…Yeah, I suppose it is.”
“Is this a nightmare or a nice dream?”
“I suppose it’s more of a nightmare if I’m being honest. But, you know, an exciting one. The kind that when you’ve stopped shaking and sweating and you feel safe enough to turn the light off again, you want to write down. But don’t; I own the copyright.”
“Would you mind reading a passage?”
“Not at all.” I pick up the copy of my book by my feet and turn to the pages I’ve read five times already this week. I address the camera lens directly in an effort to engage the audience. My mouth is dry by the time I finish. I close the book and turn back to the presenter.
“Excellent,” he says. “That’s great. I think we’re ready.”
“Okay. Ready for what?”
“We can go for a take. Let’s roll to record. If you’re ready?”
“That wasn’t…recorded?”
“No,” he says. “I just needed to know a bit about you and the book before we start. This is the real thing. Ready?!”
I nod tiredly and his real TV smile appears, dangerously dazzling under the row of lights hanging from the pipe in the ceiling.
“So, Christopher Hardy. Welcome to the studio…”
…A surprisingly intelligent DJ on Radio Norwich actually seems to have read my book, which throws me at first. He has it at arm’s length, occasionally flicking it around his desk with the point of a finger as though it is somehow harmful.
“Your book is poison,” he says on air, screwing his face up in distaste.
“Sorry?”
“It appears to have embedded in it a thorough hatred of the human race.”
“Oh,” I say, relieved and delighted that someone finally appears to have understood my novel. “Yes, absolutely. Almost everything and everyone fills me with despair. Each day brings with it something else to send me further into a spiral of despair.”
“So how can you reconcile those feelings with an effort to sell your book to those very same people?”
“It is tough,” I admit. “Ideally only the small percentage of people who aren’t objectionable would buy it. I wanted to vet potential buyers, have them pass a series of tests before they were allowed to make a purchase, but the publishers wouldn’t allow it. So I’m encouraging people who have bought it to ask themselves a series of questions. If the answer is Yes to things like ‘Do you own and enjoy records by the Lighthouse Family?’ ‘Do you own more than one mobile phone?’ or ‘Did you actually complain to the BBC about Brand and Ross’ misguided comments?’ then they should return the book to me via my publisher and I will personally send them a cheque for the cover price because I don’t want them representing my audience. I’m not paying their postage though.”
“But surely a dual mobile-owning Lighthouse Family fan who doesn’t enjoy seeing old men humiliated in the name of light entertainment and also happens to appreciate your book demonstrates either the variety of tastes that make up our population or you’ve inadvertently written something that belongs in the same niche of popular culture?”
“That thought is certainly…chilling.” I say little else for the rest of the ten minute interview…
…I call Pauline back at Harper’s while I drive between Liverpool and Birmingham.
“I had to turn down four late shifts at QVC for this trip,” I moan. “I think that I should be compensated for that.”
“You should be thanking us. I thought you hated it.”
“I’m secretly in love with Anne Dawson,” I say. “We would have been together for two of those shifts.”
“If you do a good job then you’ll make as much money from book sales over the next two weeks as you would doing proper work. As for the woman, whoever she is, you’re married.”
“These Travelodges don’t even have mini-bars for Christ’s sake. I’m homesick. I want a contract for a second book. I want a tour manager. I want women sent to my room. I want a better room. I want my book sold to the US market. I want to stop seeing James Hardy on the television. I’m sick of driving. I’m racking up a fortune in petrol costs.”
“I told you, just keep track of your mileage and we’ll reimburse you.”
“Damn it.”
“What?”
“I forgot to reset my milometer. I’ve no idea how far I’ve driven since London.”
“I’m losing you Christopher,” she lies and she hangs up…
…I wake up in an unfamiliar town and some eager radio station actually sends a taxi for me. Unfortunately as I sit contentedly in a leather swivel chair in the interview booth, the DJ starts speaking to me in a foreign language and I simply cannot understand a word the woman says and after a few uncomfortable minutes she plays a record and just looks at me as if the mistake is mine.
“What country am I in?” I ask the intern leading me out of the building.
She looks at me as the DJ had. “Scotland.”
“Then why was that woman talking a foreign language?”
“It’s called an accent you cheeky wee English cunt,” she says.
I drive back across the border, thankful to be back where people speak proper English. Then I check my tour itinerary and see that I am going to Newcastle…
Free Counter
…My only television interview is for a local access digital cable channel in a shed in Shropshire. A young balding man greets me at the door and shows me to the green room which is just a cupboard with a portable TV showing dreadful documentaries about the local community. I make a cup of tea and then the same man leads me to the studio which is another tiny room with one fixed camcorder on an Argos tripod pointing at two plastic chairs in front of a green screen.
The screen makes me nervous because they are able to project anything that takes their fancy after the fact. On my Media Production course at Bournemouth University I once floated TWAT above the head of a fellow student who I actually quite liked, so I know what people are capable of.
The man clips a microphone to my shirt and then sits in the chair opposite mine. He clips on his own mic and slots an IFB into his ear. There appears to be no one else in the building, although it seems that he receives some information on his earpiece because he nods at the camera and then at me.
“Okay?”
“Yep. Great.”
He turns on a TV smile. “So, Christopher Hardy, welcome to our studio.”
“Thank you. Great to be here.”
“Your debut novel is called Clear History. Talk a little about how the idea came about.”
“Well, it’s an idea I’ve had knocking about for many years. Probably since I was about fourteen or fifteen. It’s an amalgamation of several different influences such as 1984, Robocop, Judge Dredd and computer games such as Beneath a Steel Sky and Syndicate. But it took me twelve years or so to make sense of all the ideas and come up with a cohesive storyline. Plus I wasn’t really mature enough to write a decent novel until a couple of years ago.”
“What genre would you place it in?”
I do a TV laugh. “Well, that’s a good question. I suppose it’s a sci-fi novel, and that’s where you’ll find it in the shops, but I think it has a broad appeal. It’s set in a semi-fictionalised version of our present, and the themes it tackles are, I think, very much of the present, or perhaps our immediate future.”
“Writing a novel is really a process of implanting a dream in someone’s head, isn’t it?”
“Err…Yeah, I suppose it is.”
“Is this a nightmare or a nice dream?”
“I suppose it’s more of a nightmare if I’m being honest. But, you know, an exciting one. The kind that when you’ve stopped shaking and sweating and you feel safe enough to turn the light off again, you want to write down. But don’t; I own the copyright.”
“Would you mind reading a passage?”
“Not at all.” I pick up the copy of my book by my feet and turn to the pages I’ve read five times already this week. I address the camera lens directly in an effort to engage the audience. My mouth is dry by the time I finish. I close the book and turn back to the presenter.
“Excellent,” he says. “That’s great. I think we’re ready.”
“Okay. Ready for what?”
“We can go for a take. Let’s roll to record. If you’re ready?”
“That wasn’t…recorded?”
“No,” he says. “I just needed to know a bit about you and the book before we start. This is the real thing. Ready?!”
I nod tiredly and his real TV smile appears, dangerously dazzling under the row of lights hanging from the pipe in the ceiling.
“So, Christopher Hardy. Welcome to the studio…”
…A surprisingly intelligent DJ on Radio Norwich actually seems to have read my book, which throws me at first. He has it at arm’s length, occasionally flicking it around his desk with the point of a finger as though it is somehow harmful.
“Your book is poison,” he says on air, screwing his face up in distaste.
“Sorry?”
“It appears to have embedded in it a thorough hatred of the human race.”
“Oh,” I say, relieved and delighted that someone finally appears to have understood my novel. “Yes, absolutely. Almost everything and everyone fills me with despair. Each day brings with it something else to send me further into a spiral of despair.”
“So how can you reconcile those feelings with an effort to sell your book to those very same people?”
“It is tough,” I admit. “Ideally only the small percentage of people who aren’t objectionable would buy it. I wanted to vet potential buyers, have them pass a series of tests before they were allowed to make a purchase, but the publishers wouldn’t allow it. So I’m encouraging people who have bought it to ask themselves a series of questions. If the answer is Yes to things like ‘Do you own and enjoy records by the Lighthouse Family?’ ‘Do you own more than one mobile phone?’ or ‘Did you actually complain to the BBC about Brand and Ross’ misguided comments?’ then they should return the book to me via my publisher and I will personally send them a cheque for the cover price because I don’t want them representing my audience. I’m not paying their postage though.”
“But surely a dual mobile-owning Lighthouse Family fan who doesn’t enjoy seeing old men humiliated in the name of light entertainment and also happens to appreciate your book demonstrates either the variety of tastes that make up our population or you’ve inadvertently written something that belongs in the same niche of popular culture?”
“That thought is certainly…chilling.” I say little else for the rest of the ten minute interview…
…I call Pauline back at Harper’s while I drive between Liverpool and Birmingham.
“I had to turn down four late shifts at QVC for this trip,” I moan. “I think that I should be compensated for that.”
“You should be thanking us. I thought you hated it.”
“I’m secretly in love with Anne Dawson,” I say. “We would have been together for two of those shifts.”
“If you do a good job then you’ll make as much money from book sales over the next two weeks as you would doing proper work. As for the woman, whoever she is, you’re married.”
“These Travelodges don’t even have mini-bars for Christ’s sake. I’m homesick. I want a contract for a second book. I want a tour manager. I want women sent to my room. I want a better room. I want my book sold to the US market. I want to stop seeing James Hardy on the television. I’m sick of driving. I’m racking up a fortune in petrol costs.”
“I told you, just keep track of your mileage and we’ll reimburse you.”
“Damn it.”
“What?”
“I forgot to reset my milometer. I’ve no idea how far I’ve driven since London.”
“I’m losing you Christopher,” she lies and she hangs up…
…I wake up in an unfamiliar town and some eager radio station actually sends a taxi for me. Unfortunately as I sit contentedly in a leather swivel chair in the interview booth, the DJ starts speaking to me in a foreign language and I simply cannot understand a word the woman says and after a few uncomfortable minutes she plays a record and just looks at me as if the mistake is mine.
“What country am I in?” I ask the intern leading me out of the building.
She looks at me as the DJ had. “Scotland.”
“Then why was that woman talking a foreign language?”
“It’s called an accent you cheeky wee English cunt,” she says.
I drive back across the border, thankful to be back where people speak proper English. Then I check my tour itinerary and see that I am going to Newcastle…
Free Counter
Sunday 26 October 2008
"Why Did You Give Me Brown Hair?"
This is the entire email sent by an old girlfriend-of-sorts from university eleven years ago. We haven’t communicated for seven years. On that occasion, in a trough of heartbroken despair, I sent her a sprawling, drunken email, not in an effort to get back together, just for confirmation that she was unhappier than me. She wasn’t.
I met my wife shortly afterwards.
After reading this sparse information several times I realise that this girl, Linda (blonde), appears to be under the illusion that one of the characters in my novel is a thinly disguised version of her. This is slightly unnerving because the only character she can possibly be thinking of was modelled on Myra Hindley.
Nevertheless I reply out of courtesy and somehow end up with a lunch date at some Italian restaurant in Piccadilly. Mostly I am flattered because she is the only person not paid to do so who has intimated that she has read the book.
I tell Cheryl and the news registers with enough force to drag her eyes away from Facebook for a brief moment. Her fingers, however, remain poised over the keys, twitching. She makes a vague noise that expresses some disapproval.
I sit down. “Seriously,” I say. “This is purely just a sympathetic meeting. No need to worry.”
“Why go then?”
“Why does anybody do anything?” I say vaguely. Then, “We just had sex a few times over a few months. The truth is I was never really attracted to her even then.”
“Then why did you sleep with her?”
“Cheryl, I used to have sex twice a year if I was lucky. I had to jump at every opportunity because if I only did it with women I fancied then I never would.”
Cheryl laughs and snaps back into Facebook mode. The connection has been severed.
At twenty, Linda was a little plump. In the years intervening, her appetite has increased. My immediate thought as I enter the restaurant and spot her wedged into a booth is, ‘I hope we’re not splitting the bill in half.’
As I get closer she stands up and her full girth is revealed. (Later, when we leave, she goes into a newsagent for a packet of cigarettes. The shop has one of those sensors that beeps when someone enters and Linda sets it off three times in one passing).
She looks me up and down. “Wow! You look exactly the same,” she lies.
She stands awkwardly and I suspect that she is self-conscious about her weight, so I decide not to mention it. “You too,” I say instead after I have kissed her on the cheek.
“Oh, don’t fib,” she says, smiling and waving one hand as a shy dismissal. I say nothing and there is a silence that I fail to fill.
Her smile slowly fades and then she physically tires and squeezes back into the booth. I sit opposite her. The waiter comes and I order a beer. Linda already has a glass of wine.
I am relieved because I couldn’t shake the bizarre suspicion that Linda would awake some kind of attraction that I had either missed the first time around or beaten into denial in the years since I last saw her at the Graduation Ball, puking into a plant pot in the auditorium foyer. But there is nothing, and my memory, for once, is accurate. I was youngish and inexperienced and the opportunity of bedroom antics was still enough for me to overlook the fact that there was no sexual attraction on my part at all. Even when I started to feel a bit sick afterwards and guilty for taking advantage of a woman who clearly liked me very much, a friend (who I think was a virgin) convinced me that I should just use her for practise. And when that got old it was only when masturbation failed to hit the spot that I used her as a kind of luxury wank.
Again, I decide to keep this information to myself in case she finds it offensive.
“So, you remember Saul Peters on our course?”
“No.”
“Sure you do. Well, he’s big into sci-fi and he sent me a little interview you did for some website, and I was so excited! I’m so proud of you.”
“Thank you.”
“I ran out and bought the book the day it came out.”
“So you’re the one?” I say, smiling.
“Ha ha, still that sense of humour.”
“Well…”
“And it’s fantastic.”
The waiter interrupts us and I order a pepperoni pizza and another beer. Linda loudly orders a salad and keeps glancing at me for my reaction which makes me feel sad.
“And of course the more I read the more I identified with Sandra, and then it suddenly occurred to me. ‘Oh my God, it is me!’”
I shrug, embarrassed. “Well. You were…a major part of my life.”
She touches my hand, avoiding the gold ring on my finger. I brace myself for some kind of regrettable I-still-love-you confession. “That’s so nice to hear. To be honest I was worried that you wouldn’t want to meet me today.”
“Why would you…think that?”
“I know I hurt you.”
I blink a few times. “Sorry?”
“No, I’m sorry. I was young and I was confused and I really didn’t treat you very well. Sometimes I feel guilty for the way I behaved.”
“Right.”
“But you’ve managed to get over it,” she says with a merciful degree of self-deprecation. “Somehow!”
“It was…a struggle.”
“I bet your wife’s lovely.”
“She’s alright.”
“It was just such a relief when I heard about your novel.”
“A relief?”
“You were just so fucked up at university. All that booze and drugs and emotional avoidance. Pretending to be so aloof. So insular and immature. And then it turns out that you’re an artist and it all makes sense.”
“Right.”
“I was like, ‘Why did I not realise? God!”
“Yeah. So I should have been given special allowances. Like having an unruly child that you punish for not doing well at school and slapping girls in the playground or whatever and then he’s diagnosed with mild autism and you want to go back and replace all the beatings and cupboard lock-ins with hugs.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“And then after a few months the guilt and sympathy wears off and you just get annoyed and want to lock him away again.”
“Yeah.” She smiles uncertainly. “You’re so creative.”
“Cheryl think I’m fucked up because of Death Wish.”
“How come?”
“We all sat down to watch it as a family when I was about nine. Don’t ask me why. Anyway, my parents turned it off during the rape scene and sent me to bed and finished it. The next day they said I could watch it from after that scene. So I missed the motivation and just watched someone walking around shooting people for no reason for ninety minutes. Maybe you could talk to Cheryl and win me some understanding.”
“I’d love that!” she shouts, beaming, and I look away and eventually the food arrives. Linda surveys her salad with something approaching depression. I blow gently at my steaming pizza to send the delicious aroma of melting cheese over to her and her nose twitches involuntarily.
“So, you haven’t got married yet?”
She shakes her head vigorously. “No. Not this girl. Footloose and fancy free!”
“Party girl, hey?”
“Yeah, you got it!”
We eat for awhile.
“There was someone serious once,” she says finally.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” She looks out of the window. “It didn’t work out.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Yeah.”
“Still,” I say. “Single and free, right?”
She looks back at me. “Right.”
Afterwards, outside the newsagent, she hugs me and doesn’t let go. “Would you like to do this again?” she asks me, her voice muffled against my jacket.
“Yes…definitely. I have a small book tour to do, but then…”
“I’d love that.”
She still doesn’t let go. People are watching us as they pass on the street and I gently, then forcefully, pry us apart.
She looks tearful. “So good to see you,” she says.
I stick both my thumbs up in an absurd gesture of…I don’t know what, and then she heads into the shop and I walk and then jog towards the tube stop, clawing for my iPod, cursing the always-tangled earphones, desperate to kill thought with loud music.
I met my wife shortly afterwards.
After reading this sparse information several times I realise that this girl, Linda (blonde), appears to be under the illusion that one of the characters in my novel is a thinly disguised version of her. This is slightly unnerving because the only character she can possibly be thinking of was modelled on Myra Hindley.
Nevertheless I reply out of courtesy and somehow end up with a lunch date at some Italian restaurant in Piccadilly. Mostly I am flattered because she is the only person not paid to do so who has intimated that she has read the book.
I tell Cheryl and the news registers with enough force to drag her eyes away from Facebook for a brief moment. Her fingers, however, remain poised over the keys, twitching. She makes a vague noise that expresses some disapproval.
I sit down. “Seriously,” I say. “This is purely just a sympathetic meeting. No need to worry.”
“Why go then?”
“Why does anybody do anything?” I say vaguely. Then, “We just had sex a few times over a few months. The truth is I was never really attracted to her even then.”
“Then why did you sleep with her?”
“Cheryl, I used to have sex twice a year if I was lucky. I had to jump at every opportunity because if I only did it with women I fancied then I never would.”
Cheryl laughs and snaps back into Facebook mode. The connection has been severed.
At twenty, Linda was a little plump. In the years intervening, her appetite has increased. My immediate thought as I enter the restaurant and spot her wedged into a booth is, ‘I hope we’re not splitting the bill in half.’
As I get closer she stands up and her full girth is revealed. (Later, when we leave, she goes into a newsagent for a packet of cigarettes. The shop has one of those sensors that beeps when someone enters and Linda sets it off three times in one passing).
She looks me up and down. “Wow! You look exactly the same,” she lies.
She stands awkwardly and I suspect that she is self-conscious about her weight, so I decide not to mention it. “You too,” I say instead after I have kissed her on the cheek.
“Oh, don’t fib,” she says, smiling and waving one hand as a shy dismissal. I say nothing and there is a silence that I fail to fill.
Her smile slowly fades and then she physically tires and squeezes back into the booth. I sit opposite her. The waiter comes and I order a beer. Linda already has a glass of wine.
I am relieved because I couldn’t shake the bizarre suspicion that Linda would awake some kind of attraction that I had either missed the first time around or beaten into denial in the years since I last saw her at the Graduation Ball, puking into a plant pot in the auditorium foyer. But there is nothing, and my memory, for once, is accurate. I was youngish and inexperienced and the opportunity of bedroom antics was still enough for me to overlook the fact that there was no sexual attraction on my part at all. Even when I started to feel a bit sick afterwards and guilty for taking advantage of a woman who clearly liked me very much, a friend (who I think was a virgin) convinced me that I should just use her for practise. And when that got old it was only when masturbation failed to hit the spot that I used her as a kind of luxury wank.
Again, I decide to keep this information to myself in case she finds it offensive.
“So, you remember Saul Peters on our course?”
“No.”
“Sure you do. Well, he’s big into sci-fi and he sent me a little interview you did for some website, and I was so excited! I’m so proud of you.”
“Thank you.”
“I ran out and bought the book the day it came out.”
“So you’re the one?” I say, smiling.
“Ha ha, still that sense of humour.”
“Well…”
“And it’s fantastic.”
The waiter interrupts us and I order a pepperoni pizza and another beer. Linda loudly orders a salad and keeps glancing at me for my reaction which makes me feel sad.
“And of course the more I read the more I identified with Sandra, and then it suddenly occurred to me. ‘Oh my God, it is me!’”
I shrug, embarrassed. “Well. You were…a major part of my life.”
She touches my hand, avoiding the gold ring on my finger. I brace myself for some kind of regrettable I-still-love-you confession. “That’s so nice to hear. To be honest I was worried that you wouldn’t want to meet me today.”
“Why would you…think that?”
“I know I hurt you.”
I blink a few times. “Sorry?”
“No, I’m sorry. I was young and I was confused and I really didn’t treat you very well. Sometimes I feel guilty for the way I behaved.”
“Right.”
“But you’ve managed to get over it,” she says with a merciful degree of self-deprecation. “Somehow!”
“It was…a struggle.”
“I bet your wife’s lovely.”
“She’s alright.”
“It was just such a relief when I heard about your novel.”
“A relief?”
“You were just so fucked up at university. All that booze and drugs and emotional avoidance. Pretending to be so aloof. So insular and immature. And then it turns out that you’re an artist and it all makes sense.”
“Right.”
“I was like, ‘Why did I not realise? God!”
“Yeah. So I should have been given special allowances. Like having an unruly child that you punish for not doing well at school and slapping girls in the playground or whatever and then he’s diagnosed with mild autism and you want to go back and replace all the beatings and cupboard lock-ins with hugs.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“And then after a few months the guilt and sympathy wears off and you just get annoyed and want to lock him away again.”
“Yeah.” She smiles uncertainly. “You’re so creative.”
“Cheryl think I’m fucked up because of Death Wish.”
“How come?”
“We all sat down to watch it as a family when I was about nine. Don’t ask me why. Anyway, my parents turned it off during the rape scene and sent me to bed and finished it. The next day they said I could watch it from after that scene. So I missed the motivation and just watched someone walking around shooting people for no reason for ninety minutes. Maybe you could talk to Cheryl and win me some understanding.”
“I’d love that!” she shouts, beaming, and I look away and eventually the food arrives. Linda surveys her salad with something approaching depression. I blow gently at my steaming pizza to send the delicious aroma of melting cheese over to her and her nose twitches involuntarily.
“So, you haven’t got married yet?”
She shakes her head vigorously. “No. Not this girl. Footloose and fancy free!”
“Party girl, hey?”
“Yeah, you got it!”
We eat for awhile.
“There was someone serious once,” she says finally.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” She looks out of the window. “It didn’t work out.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Yeah.”
“Still,” I say. “Single and free, right?”
She looks back at me. “Right.”
Afterwards, outside the newsagent, she hugs me and doesn’t let go. “Would you like to do this again?” she asks me, her voice muffled against my jacket.
“Yes…definitely. I have a small book tour to do, but then…”
“I’d love that.”
She still doesn’t let go. People are watching us as they pass on the street and I gently, then forcefully, pry us apart.
She looks tearful. “So good to see you,” she says.
I stick both my thumbs up in an absurd gesture of…I don’t know what, and then she heads into the shop and I walk and then jog towards the tube stop, clawing for my iPod, cursing the always-tangled earphones, desperate to kill thought with loud music.
Sunday 19 October 2008
I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness...
I dislike being the centre of attention but the launch party is a concession I make in order for those close to me to express their adulation and pride at my success. Or their envy and bitterness. I don’t really mind which as both will make me feel special. To stifle this emotional outlet would be unfair on my friends.
My publicists have given me a budget of four hundred pounds. Like everyone in my position I had, as I scrawled my childish signature on the publisher’s contract fourteen months ago, imagined a lavish event with a red carpet, limousines, paparazzi, formalwear and invitations printed on gold-edged cards and mailed by private couriers. My expectations had dwindled since then, of course, but even so this paltry budget was something of a surprise.
I sent a whiney email to Pauline, largely because I’d managed a thousand words of the follow up to Clear History that day and was at a loose end. In a decidedly terse reply, she informed me that the offer was non-negotiable, and that I needn’t produce receipts. I immediately hired a small room above a tatty old pub in Acton that still hadn’t managed to air out all the fumes since the smoking ban was implemented, ordered a limited amount of booze, sent a load of Evites and gave the remaining two hundred pounds to Cheryl towards a ticket home for a week around Thanksgiving. She became teary when I handed the cash to her and hugged me while I fantasised about what I might do with the week to myself.
Neither Pauline nor Mavis is able to attend the party as they are busy organising James Hardy’s launch at the Kensington Roof Gardens next week. Apparently, catering to the needs of the various royals and dignitaries due to attend the event is “a major headache.” I swallow the stabbing jealousy this information causes and realise that my party could well run more smoothly in their absence. Their ghoulish auras could confuse other guests who might wrongly assume they missed the Halloween theme on the Evite.
Cheryl has been called into a late shift at Sky which simply opens the door for the potential Californication-style misadventures that have so far eluded me. (I understand that the producers only have Duchovny’s character yeaning for the love of the mother of his child to allow the average viewer to accept the naked joy of his endless sexual encounters with gorgeous filthy young LA bimbos).
I arrive half an hour after the start time and buy a pint downstairs. I am being a pleasure delayer: delaying the pleasure of the guests upstairs. I sit in the corner and receive a text message from my friend Brandon informing me that he has been under the weather and won’t be able to attend. I watch the door and no one I know comes through it.
Slightly alarmed now, I make my way upstairs and stand blinking in the dark emptiness of the hired room. The young man the pub has supplied as part of the package is seated behind the makeshift bar, head leaning back against the wall. He suddenly notices me and leaps to his feet, rubbing his eyes. He is playing some kind of techno at a low level over a portable CD player.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. Another text, this time from Mark. His young child has a fever. An epidemic in London, perhaps.
I approach the barman. “Welcome,” he says in a heavy European accent.
“Polish?” I say.
“Oh, no sir. From Slovenia.” He opens a bottle of beer and hands it to me. “You are here for writer’s party then.”
“Yeah,” I say, looking around. “Am I early?”
“No,” he says, smiling. “Perhaps this writer man is not so popular, no?”
I force a smile. ”No, I guess not. Strange, I thought he was alright.”
“Oh, he is a friend of yours? You are close?”
“No,” I say. “Not so much.”
“Even he doesn’t come to own party. That says something, no?”
He laughs and I ask him for whisky. “He’s okay,” I say quietly.
“You are a good friend, I think. No one else come, but you come. That is…nice for you.”
“It’s still early.”
“Yes, of course. Still time.”
I drain the Scotch. “I have to make a phone call.”
He holds his hands up in an exaggerated gesture of non-obstruction. “Please. Don’t let me stop you.”
He makes a show of rearranging the bottles on the table and I walk to the far end of the room, calling my agent.
“Christopher! What’s up?”
“I’m dying here. How far away are you?”
“Away from what?”
“What do you mean, from what? Where are you?”
“Mama Mia baby. It’s cinema night.”
“Again? What about my launch party?”
“Oh, shit,” he shouts. “I forgot that was tonight. I’m sorry. My mum was supposed to remind me.”
“Your mum’s senile.”
“Yeah. I’ve got to get a new system.” Then, slightly muffled, “Why don’t you shut up?” followed by a distant ‘Fuck off.’
“Wait, are you in the cinema now?”
“Hold on mate. Yeah, yeah, shove it up your arse, I’m talking.”
“Sid, come now. There’s no one here.”
“No way. Meryl’s about to launch into ‘Dancing Queen.’” Immediately the opening bars flair into life so loud that it distorts and I slide the phone shut to stop its squawking.
I walk back over to the barman. “You may as well go home. No one’s coming.”
“You never know,” he says.
“If someone does come I can handle their drinks.”
“I prefer to stay. I don’t like to leave my job until it is finished. Then, no problem for me.”
“At least have a drink.”
“Oh sure, I will drink.”
We drink most of the bottle of Scotch. No one comes.
“I’m having problems with the world,” I tell the barman. “I find it harder to relate to people. Is it an age thing, I wonder?”
“Oh yes,” he says. “Certainly an age thing. I feel the same way.”
“I’m bored by people’s opinion. I’m scared by people spending hours on Facebook.”
“Facebook is stupid.” He waves his hand as though sweeping Facebook away.
“People who know only one thing about someone that undermines their entire career of merit. Like, Woody Allen; paedophile. Kobe Bryant; rapist. Zidane; the head butt.”
“Zidane is one of the greatest footballers ever.”
“Exactly. If there’s one thing that makes me feel like an alien amongst humans it’s watching Saturday night TV through my fingers knowing millions of people are wedged in their sofas munching Pringles, braying with laughter and actually rooting for a celebrity to…dance on ice, or something.”
“Sure. Saturday nights should be out with the music and the girls.”
I gulp down a beer. “And look at the movies they love. Norbit and Chuck and Larry and Saw V.”
“Norbit wasn’t so bad.”
“Really?”
The barman shrugs.
“Well,” I say. “What about the music? The Kaiser Chiefs and McFly and fucking Westlife?”
“I don’t mind the Westlife so much.”
“What?”
“They are fun. They enjoy it.”
“I don’t want my music fun. I want the musicians to sweat and bleed and become junkies to suffer for their art.”
“That Pete Doherty man is a nasty man. A nasty filthy junkie man.”
“I like him,” I say quietly.
“Oh. Me, not so much.”
We sit in silence and finish the whisky. It is past midnight.
I get off my stool. “I should go, I suppose. Give me that bag. I’m going to take this booze home.” I begin to put bottles of beer in a plastic bag.
The barman stops me. “I can’t let you take this.”
“Why?”
“I get in trouble. This writer man must take it. He paid for it.”
“No,” I say, smiling. “It’s me. I’m the writer man.”
“No.” He stops me and takes the bag back. “Nice try but you are nice man. Writer man is a bad man. But the bad man gets the drink. It is not fair perhaps, but is the only way.”
I’m drunk but I resist showing him my driving licence to prove my identity. Instead I release the bag and stand up as straight as I can. “You are an honourable man,” I tell him.
“Yes, it is the only way,” he says again.
I salute him and make my way past the mayhem of the Red Back and along Uxbridge Road, fingering the speech still folded in my trouser pocket.
My publicists have given me a budget of four hundred pounds. Like everyone in my position I had, as I scrawled my childish signature on the publisher’s contract fourteen months ago, imagined a lavish event with a red carpet, limousines, paparazzi, formalwear and invitations printed on gold-edged cards and mailed by private couriers. My expectations had dwindled since then, of course, but even so this paltry budget was something of a surprise.
I sent a whiney email to Pauline, largely because I’d managed a thousand words of the follow up to Clear History that day and was at a loose end. In a decidedly terse reply, she informed me that the offer was non-negotiable, and that I needn’t produce receipts. I immediately hired a small room above a tatty old pub in Acton that still hadn’t managed to air out all the fumes since the smoking ban was implemented, ordered a limited amount of booze, sent a load of Evites and gave the remaining two hundred pounds to Cheryl towards a ticket home for a week around Thanksgiving. She became teary when I handed the cash to her and hugged me while I fantasised about what I might do with the week to myself.
Neither Pauline nor Mavis is able to attend the party as they are busy organising James Hardy’s launch at the Kensington Roof Gardens next week. Apparently, catering to the needs of the various royals and dignitaries due to attend the event is “a major headache.” I swallow the stabbing jealousy this information causes and realise that my party could well run more smoothly in their absence. Their ghoulish auras could confuse other guests who might wrongly assume they missed the Halloween theme on the Evite.
Cheryl has been called into a late shift at Sky which simply opens the door for the potential Californication-style misadventures that have so far eluded me. (I understand that the producers only have Duchovny’s character yeaning for the love of the mother of his child to allow the average viewer to accept the naked joy of his endless sexual encounters with gorgeous filthy young LA bimbos).
I arrive half an hour after the start time and buy a pint downstairs. I am being a pleasure delayer: delaying the pleasure of the guests upstairs. I sit in the corner and receive a text message from my friend Brandon informing me that he has been under the weather and won’t be able to attend. I watch the door and no one I know comes through it.
Slightly alarmed now, I make my way upstairs and stand blinking in the dark emptiness of the hired room. The young man the pub has supplied as part of the package is seated behind the makeshift bar, head leaning back against the wall. He suddenly notices me and leaps to his feet, rubbing his eyes. He is playing some kind of techno at a low level over a portable CD player.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. Another text, this time from Mark. His young child has a fever. An epidemic in London, perhaps.
I approach the barman. “Welcome,” he says in a heavy European accent.
“Polish?” I say.
“Oh, no sir. From Slovenia.” He opens a bottle of beer and hands it to me. “You are here for writer’s party then.”
“Yeah,” I say, looking around. “Am I early?”
“No,” he says, smiling. “Perhaps this writer man is not so popular, no?”
I force a smile. ”No, I guess not. Strange, I thought he was alright.”
“Oh, he is a friend of yours? You are close?”
“No,” I say. “Not so much.”
“Even he doesn’t come to own party. That says something, no?”
He laughs and I ask him for whisky. “He’s okay,” I say quietly.
“You are a good friend, I think. No one else come, but you come. That is…nice for you.”
“It’s still early.”
“Yes, of course. Still time.”
I drain the Scotch. “I have to make a phone call.”
He holds his hands up in an exaggerated gesture of non-obstruction. “Please. Don’t let me stop you.”
He makes a show of rearranging the bottles on the table and I walk to the far end of the room, calling my agent.
“Christopher! What’s up?”
“I’m dying here. How far away are you?”
“Away from what?”
“What do you mean, from what? Where are you?”
“Mama Mia baby. It’s cinema night.”
“Again? What about my launch party?”
“Oh, shit,” he shouts. “I forgot that was tonight. I’m sorry. My mum was supposed to remind me.”
“Your mum’s senile.”
“Yeah. I’ve got to get a new system.” Then, slightly muffled, “Why don’t you shut up?” followed by a distant ‘Fuck off.’
“Wait, are you in the cinema now?”
“Hold on mate. Yeah, yeah, shove it up your arse, I’m talking.”
“Sid, come now. There’s no one here.”
“No way. Meryl’s about to launch into ‘Dancing Queen.’” Immediately the opening bars flair into life so loud that it distorts and I slide the phone shut to stop its squawking.
I walk back over to the barman. “You may as well go home. No one’s coming.”
“You never know,” he says.
“If someone does come I can handle their drinks.”
“I prefer to stay. I don’t like to leave my job until it is finished. Then, no problem for me.”
“At least have a drink.”
“Oh sure, I will drink.”
We drink most of the bottle of Scotch. No one comes.
“I’m having problems with the world,” I tell the barman. “I find it harder to relate to people. Is it an age thing, I wonder?”
“Oh yes,” he says. “Certainly an age thing. I feel the same way.”
“I’m bored by people’s opinion. I’m scared by people spending hours on Facebook.”
“Facebook is stupid.” He waves his hand as though sweeping Facebook away.
“People who know only one thing about someone that undermines their entire career of merit. Like, Woody Allen; paedophile. Kobe Bryant; rapist. Zidane; the head butt.”
“Zidane is one of the greatest footballers ever.”
“Exactly. If there’s one thing that makes me feel like an alien amongst humans it’s watching Saturday night TV through my fingers knowing millions of people are wedged in their sofas munching Pringles, braying with laughter and actually rooting for a celebrity to…dance on ice, or something.”
“Sure. Saturday nights should be out with the music and the girls.”
I gulp down a beer. “And look at the movies they love. Norbit and Chuck and Larry and Saw V.”
“Norbit wasn’t so bad.”
“Really?”
The barman shrugs.
“Well,” I say. “What about the music? The Kaiser Chiefs and McFly and fucking Westlife?”
“I don’t mind the Westlife so much.”
“What?”
“They are fun. They enjoy it.”
“I don’t want my music fun. I want the musicians to sweat and bleed and become junkies to suffer for their art.”
“That Pete Doherty man is a nasty man. A nasty filthy junkie man.”
“I like him,” I say quietly.
“Oh. Me, not so much.”
We sit in silence and finish the whisky. It is past midnight.
I get off my stool. “I should go, I suppose. Give me that bag. I’m going to take this booze home.” I begin to put bottles of beer in a plastic bag.
The barman stops me. “I can’t let you take this.”
“Why?”
“I get in trouble. This writer man must take it. He paid for it.”
“No,” I say, smiling. “It’s me. I’m the writer man.”
“No.” He stops me and takes the bag back. “Nice try but you are nice man. Writer man is a bad man. But the bad man gets the drink. It is not fair perhaps, but is the only way.”
I’m drunk but I resist showing him my driving licence to prove my identity. Instead I release the bag and stand up as straight as I can. “You are an honourable man,” I tell him.
“Yes, it is the only way,” he says again.
I salute him and make my way past the mayhem of the Red Back and along Uxbridge Road, fingering the speech still folded in my trouser pocket.
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