ploughed 50 yards back through the crowd, then slowed down to a leisurely stroll. The picture of innocence; quite right too, since he had done nothing wrong. More than that, he had done nothing at all.
When they came to get Joe, the other person holding the other pole at the other end of the banner, name of Siouxsie or some such, had at least attempted to poke a policeman in the eye with it. Perhaps not a wholly convincing attempt, but more than a rhetorical gesture. She tried –
that’s the point, and though her brief effort was effortlessly brushed aside by a cop in full riot gear, she didn’t have to feel guilty that she’d seen her mate beaten to the ground and arrested, and done absolutely nothing to defend him.
Of course, runaway Dinky was heart-stoppingly ashamed of himself. Gripped with guilt.
Hating everything about his loathsome, gutless existence.
If only the ground would swallow him up in the same way that the police had engorged
poor Joe. But no, he knew he didn’t really mean that. He simply wasn’t capable of feeling anything strongly enough to make him risk his neck. Obviously not, or he would have run the risk just now.
Five minutes after Joe was arrested, Dinky had already reached the edge of the crowd.
There were plenty of people still coming to join the show, but he peeled himself away and went up Whitehall. Past the statues of war heroes and the Cenotaph. All these people ready and willing to die for what they believed in.
So what was wrong with him? What did everyone else have that Dinky Dutta couldn’t
share in?
(14) Dangling man
An hour later, around the time Joe stopped shouting for a lawyer and sat down to wait on the blue plastic mattress in his cell, Dinky opened the front door and stepped inside the small terraced house which he shared with Rupa (paid for, it should be said, by his parents and hers).
His shoulders drooped when it came home to him that there was no point in calling out to her: she’d be away, rehearsing for her next performance in the forthcoming round of the nation’s
‘most popular TV talent show’.
For want of something better to do, Dinky showered and shaved. While drying his hair he wandered from room to room. In the pile of papers on his workstation (he and Rupa had one each, facing each other across what, in a family home, would have been the ‘dining area’), he came across a copy of the last piece of work he had done for his course, complete with highly favorable comments from the assessors. In his naturally lush voice, Dinky began reading it out to himself. Not loud, but intimately, as if to a radio microphone. It was called,
‘No Face’, and this is what he read: It looks perfectly all right when I wear a mask.
When I’m wearing one, you wouldn’t know there is no face behind it. My life used to be so complicated, having to wait for masked balls and hanging around operating theatres. But now, thanks to the popularity of anti-pollution masks, especially in Asia, I can cover up any time and blend right into the crowd. Faceless in the crowd – that’s me. All it takes is a square of muslin and a piece of elastic.
When UK prime minister David Cameron toured Beijing today, I fitted in fine with the
party members and the British trade delegation. Just another Chinese official. I should think he suffers from asthma: he’s got that thing on to keep the Beijing smog out of his face. Wouldn’t you agree, George?
I joined the posse at Beijing Tesco’s. Yes, the same company, and the same blue and
white colour scheme you have in the UK. I stepped into line with the others. One minute I wasn’t there; next minute I was. If you had noticed me making my entrance - and nobody did - you might have thought I’d come right off the supermarket shelves.
The next bit was trickier. I had to get close enough to David Cameron to hand it to him. I thought about dressing as a soldier and lining up on parade. But that wouldn’t have helped: Chinese soldiers on ceremonial duty are not meant to move; on pain of death. Handing
something to the visiting dignitary might have got me shot.
I saw my opportunity when the delegation arrived at a former temple, where Cameron
was due to be photographed sitting round a table with a couple of ‘social entrepreneurs’. As the scene was being set, I pulled up an extra chair and joined them.
Now there were three of us along one side of the rectangular table, backs to the camera; plus two interpreters, in profile, one on each of the table’s short sides; and Cameron on the side opposite us, full face. (Such a pink and creamy white face. When I think back to that moment, I can’t help imagining it on a skewer, next to a row of animal carcasses).
So I sat still while my new middle class compatriots said their little their piece – one via an interpreter, the other showing an impressive command of English. When Cameron had duly replied to the others, all eyes turned to me. Thank you for giving me my cue, I thought.
I reached out across the table, extending my right arm to Cameron as if to shake hands with him. He saw me doing it and reciprocated – too polite to do anything else, despite what his security people tell him. At which point I palmed the small circle of black card into his well manicured hand. The pirates’
summons. The black spot. A call to account imbued with the weight of history; a small
sign notifying the recipient of the momentous day of reckoning.
There was no date on the back, and even I don’t know when it will be. But our day will come, Mr Cameron.
Our day will come.
Not bad, Dinky is thinking. He lets himself think it again.
But not good enough. Too slight, too light. Just not enough.
He picks up his old-fashioned cigarette lighter and thumbs it. Now he’s holding his piece of writing (What is it anyway? Not a short story, not a poem; a sad case of too much genre bending), holding it over a waste basket and lighting it up. He feels something go out of him as the flame gets stronger, but he’s letting it burn anyway, until there are only a few crumbs of browned paper to drop into the basket.
Moving quickly now, he goes to the kitchen for a bottle of beer, opens it, flicks on the television and sits down to light a cigarette. He doesn’t check to see what else is on, but sticks with whatever comes up on the channel it’s already tuned to. Stays with that channel all night.
Dinky is sitting there in the dark. Stuck there, struck dumb. Dangling over the drop.
Part 2. LIfe's a pitch
(1) Rupa’s got talent
Empty, now empty my mind, and let the song come through.
It’s the same old...ssshhh! This is my time – now!
A rush of light, then the camera grabs her as she moves down stage. She is there for the taking. Come to us, little girl with lustrous eyes and blue black hair and breasts more tender than you seem to know.
We’ll take you by the waist and bolt ourselves on to your delicious body. Now we’ve
found you, we know it’s true: this country’s got talent.
A whole orchestra playing that riff. Then her voice: strong, tensile, reeling in the
audience with a mixture of warmth and oh-so-casual disdain.
‘I bet you wonder how I knew...’
By the time these words are out, she’s taken over.
Before she’s got to the end of the line, even. Two almost indecipherable syllables and the cadence between them, that’s all it took. How’d it go?
‘Aaah-uuh-I bet you wonder...’ Aaah-uuh, twisted up. Not Marvin Gaye’s
straightforward anguish, hers is younger than that; but more complicated.
The way she sings, she’s not even talking to the guy who broke her heart; instead she’s looking in a mirror, putting on make-up, rehearsing how to break his. Or maybe she’s doing it to webcam, for uploading on YouTube. Hey, people, look at me: this is me acting heartbroken. And there beyond the webcam that isn’t really there, the television camera that really is.
Gonna make her a star.
Name of Ru
pa.
Ripped-up jeans. Face split between frightened eyes and a kiss-me mouth, ready to smile or snarl. We’ve all been ripped apart, haven’t we? Then put back together in that face.
And her voice is like skin. She touches us with it.
It is how she surfaces. She uses her voice to break through to you and to hold herself
together, both at the same time.
And she can do it, this double-act. In a few seconds they’ll all be cheering her, because she’s doing it absolutely right, right now. At this very moment, she’s the do-right woman.
Only because of before. Before tonight, all those evenings through the rain and wind to the after-school music school.
When she started there, aged six, Dad would hoist her up and jog through the streets of East London, carrying his little girl on his shoulders. In sunlight, twilight, and wrapped up warm for winter nights, they kept on going. Then there were vocal exercises to do at home. Brush your teeth, sing your scales; brush your hair, sing those scales again. And now, as she moves down stage for the camera to take her, just as she gets to her mark and hears the cue for her first note, she can let go. She can afford to. Tonight she can spend, spend, spend. Because she has all those years in the bank.
When next she notices, after a burst of applause not for a high note but for having held a low one longer, so much longer than a young girl should, she finds she’s still in credit.
Her voice is on the money; the audience feels enriched by it. Her singing is like an
exceptional payment for all the time we have lost. Whenever she hits a note dead-on, then plays with it in her mouth, wobbles it, pulls it over like a loose tooth, we can all have a little of our life back.
Rupa’s singing for her life, for the kind of life she wants to lead; and we can hear our own lives accumulating in the grain of her voice.
Last note. She curtsies. As if auditioning for the corps de ballet. Can you believe that?
The West, the East, the Past: this girl’s got it all.
In the auditorium, the audience goes wild for her. The judges can’t get them to shut up.
They have to roll the credits with cheering and foot stomping still going on. Somebody’s already written tomorrow’s headline:
‘Supa Rupa’.
(2) Pete at home
My son and daughter are bickering over what to watch on TV. One of them grabs the
remote and the other groans in protest. Any second now, I’m going to yell at them to stop. My voice at the back of my throat
– I can feel it, about to come out shouting; but I manage to gag it down.
Palms out, hands slightly splayed, as if pushing my own children away, I walk quickly
from the room.
This is Pete in the kitchen of his South London home (Edwardian terrace, red brick).
Standing still.
Head bowed, holding on to a chair. Holding on.
A few deep breaths. Yep, just stick to the breathing for now, Pete.
This evening he’s on his own with the kids and just as well. If wife Carol were here she’d worry (needlessly) that he was ill.
Only a hangover. Not the head-busting dehydration frenzy that frequently followed the
drinking bouts of his youth. Now he knows (always did know, really) to drink lots of water and take two paracetamol before getting into bed; lots more water and two ibroprufen when getting up to pee two hours later.
2x2x2 is Pete’s time-honoured formula for avoiding the dread head of a hangover. But it
does nothing to prevent that feeling of alcohol-induced weakness, as if your limbs are repeatedly on the point of going numb before tipping back into a semblance of normality.
That and the slowing of the brain.
Pete keeps thinking of what he’s thinking a split second after having thought it.
Intimations of mortality, he says to himself, his mind enunciating the words laboriously (there you go, it’s happening again).
All day like this. To work. On campus. Back home.
The hours dragging on, walking across his mind as slowly as Clint Eastwood.
In the attempt to get back up to speed, the trick learned from previous experience is to keep talking.
Find any excuse to carry on conversations with colleagues, students, the woman at the
coffee shop, cleaners, DLR ‘train attendants’ – anyone will do.
Once you’ve struck up a conversation, their expectations of you – Dr Fercoughsey, rock musician (ret’d), former journalist, university lecturer –
will carry you through. Keep you on the straight and narrow. From which you strayed last night with your old mate Tony bloody Skance.
Last night. Only one night in God knows how long. So that’s all right, then, right?
No, not at all, all right. Here you are, Dr Nobody, not only physically fragile but feeling low and dispirited, too. Hankering after a life you haven’t got. Wanting the attention, the limelight you yourself turned off, that day 20 years ago when you walked out of the band.
Punched your own lights out, Pete. Can’t complain now about the dark.
Pete’s daughter Lily (13) comes into the kitchen because she wants a Coke. She knows
her father will ask her to make do with juice or water. The two of them are bound to have a tinsy-winsy tussle over this. That’s what they do, these two. But Lily starts with a different question:
‘You all right, Dad?’, spoken quickly because she doesn’t want him to open up and say
he’s not. Then she leans over and just touches the nape of his neck, resting her hand there for a moment, as if she were his mother. ‘Am now’, replies Pete, turning round to give his daughter a fatherly hug.
‘Aaah, so that’s who I am’, thinks Pete.
No more thinking needed. That’s enough thought for the day.
(3) Dinky goes for interview
Shut the front door behind me. Do not stop. No, do not stop to check if it is shut. Four, five, six paces down this street of terraced houses, a neat row like ships of the line, pause to light cigarette, shoulders hunching, bunching to keep the wind away. Zippo, heavy in my hand; a lighter not a logo. My thumb flicks the lid, fires wheel.
Almost gag on the first drag. Exhale and walk on.
First cigarette of the day. This summer’s day so crisp and sunny that the air itself is blue with brightness.
In Central Park, East Ham, on my way to Canary Wharf.
The day of my interview with Tony Skance.
Managing to forget his deserting-a-demonstration debacle, Dinky has been basking in his small success (in this age of grade inflation, what else to call a first class degree from a mid-
ranking university?); and also in his father’s largesse.
Dad already paid for the whole family’s Easter holiday in Malta, shelling out extra for Dinky and girlfriend Rupa to have their own room at the resort (hewn out of red and yellow cliff in aptly named Golden Bay); and paid again for Dinky to throw a graduation party, back at the parental home in Essex.
Dad’s a banker. Rhyme it how you like.
Party night included a special highlight: Dinky and his best friend from way back when taking it strictly in turns to smack each other in the face.
Of course, not exactly Fight Club. Simply, how many punches can you stand and take
without flinching?
(No blood on Mum’s carpet, OK, so please remove rings and avoid nose and mouth.)
Here goes another one: bang! Dinky’s schoolmate Stephen even said ‘bang’ each time he left fly.
Obligingly. At the receiving end, it felt more like a heavy thud, then the first throb of a headache that was over almost before it started. Except after four or five of these, the headache didn’t go. Lingered like an old friend should. Then someone told Rupa and she made them stop it, ‘before you really hurt yourselves.’ They did, but only to please her.
That night they were on top of the world, nothing could harm them, don’t yo
u see?
Now the party’s over. Back in London, Dinky is waiting for the 101 bus to the Docklands Light Railway station in Beckton. He’s been waiting nearly 20 minutes. He should have walked.
At last, there’s a bus turning right at the old town hall (Edwardian architecture evokes the British Raj), snaking down High Street South towards Dinky’s stop. Eventually.
Old woman gets on in front of me. Fluttery, bird-like. Pecked at since the day she was born. Are you all right, hen? No, that’s Glasgow, doesn’t translate round here.
‘Maybe she even chose to be small and thin,’ Dinky thinks, ‘so that no one could accuse her of taking up too much room. She looks so frail, it makes me want to do something to reassure her, let her know we’re not all red in tooth and claw.’
I’d carry her shopping but the bags she’s holding are still folded up and empty -
Games Makers Page 5
