Games Makers

by Andrew Calcutt

  imaginative fiction,’

  Tony insists. ‘And when the story is released, it will be the shared experience that

  London really needs. As soon as it is aired, this city will get its mojo working again.

  ‘This is how it’ll work: the people of London come together to search for the bombers.

  After the manhunt has been going on for a day or so, we have confirmation that the plot is foiled, the bombers have escaped to Pakistan or the Yemen or somewhere. But London is safe. Saved by the collective efforts of its population. Proof at last: there is such a thing as society. It’s Orson Welles, it’s Metropolis, it’s 7/7 all rolled into one. Tell me, honestly, can you come up with a sexier storyline than that?’

  Dinky’s not buying. For a moment he was almost sold on Tony’s iconic appearance. And

  the chance to be in the middle of such a dense compound of truth and lies and, y’know, there’s not really much difference nowadays, is there? He runs the scene through his mind for a couple of seconds and it sounds almost all right; and then the whole thing loses height, comes crashing down to an ageing pop singer turned unsuccessful cultural policy wonk and perhaps a bit pervy as well.

  Don’t think you can play me so easily, Tony So-and-So. You’re rank, Mr Skank.

  Dinky is still sitting in the same chair, the strait-backed office chair that he was invited to

  sit in when he came here for interview – must have been a million years ago. He shakes, shakes, shakes his head. But Tony’s not quite finished.

  ‘Society is spectacle, Dinky. You know that as much as I do. Today we live on the

  spectacular, and if we can’t produce it, we’re dead. Beijing was spectacular because of the stadium. Because there was that stadium in 2008, after less then 30 years’

  spectacular economic growth. But London sold itself as the spectacular example of

  people coming together in a multicultural city. The city is the stadium, Dinky, and right now there is nothing spectacular about it. Nothing going on out there that the rest of the world needs to see. We have to turn that around. Détournement, kiddo – they did teach you some political theory, didn’t they? Your Johnny Rotten to my Malcolm McLaren, by any means necessary. Or there’s no future for any of us in this burg.’

  ‘Burg’? You crazy, Tony? Nobody reads Dashiell Hammett no more. Anyhow, to carry

  that one off, you would need a bottle of bourbon in one hand and a blood-flecked, TB-infected handkerchief in the other. Naaah, you’re just too pink and fat to get away with it.

  Tony’s voice falls way, the last phrase already a climb down. As he falters, so Dinky

  firms up, finally finding the courage to get up and walk out of Tony’s office.

  Not looking back, not mouthing any of those end-of-meeting niceties, Dinky leaves

  Tony’s PA open-mouthed. For a moment, clocking his derrière, she almost fancies him.

  Going down in the lift, handing back his visitor’s badge, Dinky has time to think about how his exit must have looked. He catches himself wondering whether he really ought to have wiggled his bum a bit more. To get the full sashay.

  (5) Dinky and Rupa: home sweet home

  Thud of the car door as I smooth my silk dress under my bottom, the way Mum taught

  me to. Thud, thud, thud – heavy rain drops on to the roof of the car as the driver walks round the back, gets in and starts the engine.

  So this is how it would be all the time, if I hadn’t messed up my last performance and got myself voted off the show. There would have been cars to studios, cars to clubs, ‘car’s ready when you are, Miss.’ If I hadn’t lost tonight, if I hadn’t lost it.

  Now this is a death ride and a ride home, all in one.

  The one and only. Back to reality and no going back.

  Where did our love go? That first night, I knew the camera wanted me so much. I wasn’t wrong about you, was I? It really did feel that way. But today is tomorrow and, no, you don’t love me still.

  Bastard.

  Dear Reader, you shouldn’t feel too sorry for Rupa. Being a popstar wouldn’t really have suited her, despite her despair as she goes wearily home in a taxi, through the summer rain to the East End terraced house she shares with Dinky.

  Her slender, snake-hipped boy will be there to console her.

  ‘Shahid,’ Rupa calls out, as she puts the key in the door. By the time it’s open he is there, arms akimbo and ready to encircle her in a comforting embrace.

  That’s not what Rupa wants. She strides over and kisses him, pushing her tongue through his lips, pulling his body onto her breasts and against her belly.

  He knows not to speak. Instead he turns her around and unzips her silk dress at the back,

  planting a line of kisses all the way down her spine and up again to her neck. With just one more touch from Dinky, the sleeveless dress slides down Rupa’s body to the floor, and she steps gracefully out of it.

  Sweet Jesus. She is naked. Must have squirmed her way out of her knickers in the back of the car. Maybe the driver got a flash in the mirror. O Lucky Man. Lucky Dink.

  Lucked in, tonight’s the night – he can’t keep the schoolboy phrases out of his head. But what’s making him extra hard is not her body or how much he wants it. The sexiest thing is her needing him.

  Standing naked in front of him, saying nothing, Rupa is light brown and blue black and her nipples are hard. He is kissing, nibbling one of them now, as he parts the pinky purple flesh of her fanny with his forefinger, feeling for the luscious wetness inside.

  With his other hand he is fiddling with his fly (come on, come on), and now he’s got it out, he’s lifting her onto the end of his cock and holding her there.

  She’s feeling she wants more of him in her, but then she’s thinking of herself thinking this and the

  ‘him’ becomes an ‘it’; and then she’s even thinking about thinking of ‘it’ not ‘him’. All of which is too many steps removed from a feeling which was all too fleeting in the first place.

  Dinky ain’t daft. He can feel it going, ebbing out of her. Looks at her eyes, checks her expression, and instead of carrying on, trying to recapture the momentum of her desire, he stops, thank God, and pulls out. Holds her very tight. Doesn’t let her say ‘Sorry, I thought I wanted to’.

  Well he can’t stop her, but it’s only a sort of mumble into his neck. Then, face to face, hand in hand, they go upstairs to the bedroom. As they lie down, they smile at each other: a warm smile, a tender smile.

  A few minutes later, despite Dinky’s stiffy that hasn’t gone down yet, they are both

  asleep in each other’s arms.

  And if perchance they wake in the middle of the night and do it anyway - well, that’s for you to imagine.

  (6) Domestic Tension

  Middle of the night. Awake now and wishing they weren’t.

  Odd to have felt so close together earlier, when they’d hung back from having sex;

  whereas now they’ve done it anyway (they did, you see), now they really should be in a tender embrace, there is only Dinky and Rupa. Rupa.

  And Dinky. Distant and closed as a pair of full stops.

  No major falling out. They’re not splitting up, or anything. Just two people again; two different people.

  Dinky is smoking in bed, which Rupa doesn’t like; and he is stroking her shoulder, which she would like, normally, except she wants to talk. No, she wants him to talk and he’s not.

  Not talking.

  So far she’s prized out of him that he went to see Tony Skance and he doesn’t think

  anything will come of it, but he’s not saying why or what went wrong.

  Of the day’s other, major setback – Rupa’s forced exit from the nation’s best-loved TV

  talent show –

  he can only say her performance was good, really it was good; no way it should be her

  that has to leave the competition.

  He keeps saying just this, so much and no
more, that she wonders whether he really

  watched it all.

  And which would be worse – that he didn’t bother to watch her on TV, or that he hasn’t got anything to say about her performance?

  Rupa sighs. Dinky stubs out another one. In a few minutes they will both be asleep again: not quite touching; not far enough away to be decidedly apart.

  But just before going to sleep, she will have said:

  ‘Got things to do round here tomorrow. Day after, I’ll go see Mum and Dad. Haven’t

  seen much of them for ages. Stay a few days and let them make a fuss of me. Is that OK with you?’

  And he will say, ‘Right, sure’. Trying to sound warm but feeling cold towards her and

  even more so because he’s been made to feel he shouldn’t show it.

  Really, though, there’s no great harm done. Considering they both suffered big

  disappointments today, they’ve done pretty well to keep it together this much.

  So let’s have a round of applause for our Mr and Mrs, Dinky and Rupa.

  (7) Only dreaming

  Tony Blair at the airfield when Diana’s body was brought back. Except it’s not that Tony but this Tony. Our Tony. Except he never had a Mam and Dad to call him ‘our Tony’. They weren’t that kind of people, they would never have said that, our Tony’s people.

  Not that it matters. None of it matters. That’s what.

  And the street parties for VE Day (have we been here before?). And the street parties for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, 1977. The children are fatter in these pictures. Their teeth are not crooked and their ears don’t stick out anymore. Not so much.

  Meanwhile the Sex Pistols were playing on a boat hired by Malcolm McLaren. Having

  our own kind of party, Officer.

  Is that Tony Skance in the photograph? No, sorry, my mistake. It,s Glen Matlock.

  Surely not Dinky’s dream, ’cos how would he know about the Sex Pistols? Cultural

  Studies, mate. Core textbook, England’s Dreaming, the definitive history of Punk by Jon Savage.

  It’s an established part of the curriculum.

  Debris in the vicinity of Russell Square. Acres of mobile phone footage from

  underground bombings.

  It’s all so vague, General Haig. All smoke looks alike on camera; all cows are grey; all poppies are blood red.

  Running through the blue and white tape that runs round the bloody blown-up bus. Dinky Dutta, victor ludorum.

  Before university, you see, he did go to a school where Latin was the lingua franca.

  ‘I did it for London’, says Tony. Tony Who? ‘I did it for Carol,’ says Pete. ‘London does it for me’, Dinky says, definitively. It definitely is him, this time.

  Dream goes off like a light. But whose head was it running in? Answer me that.

  (8) Presenting Purgatory

  Shutthefuckupyouwankeryouabsolute pieceofshitshutup.

  Tony is in another meeting. He is having to listen to yet another presentation about the significance of people making the Games their own, and the importance of inter-agency

  collaboration to facilitate this. Going forward.

  Accordingly, the professional representatives of various Olympics-oriented agencies are sitting in a circle at this moment in time. They’ve done the rounds:

  Hi, I’m David Allen, I lead on the Olympics for the Capital Development Agency; Hello, I’m Teresa Kelly, I’m Olympics champion in the Communities Office.

  They have seen the video, yet another video, of people all round the country doing things.

  Any old thing. Mostly things they would have been doing anyway. But – this is all-important –

  doing them next to a banner that says ‘London 2012’.

  And now they are listening (is anyone listening?) to more talk about the value of agencies getting together so that we can get the people together.

  Everyone out there, each individual at a level s/he feels comfortable with, communing

  with each other. The Spirit of London, Allen Ginsberg’s wholly communion, brought about by inter-agency collaboration, coming out of our silos, working together sustainably, singing from the same hymn sheet.

  Still in use, that one; but not ‘joined up government’, which is as old as New Labour.

  Tony is trying to place the woman in the midst of this liturgy. The one giving the sermon.

  Sorry, making the presentation. Not as in name, rank, organisation. No need for that; her personal information appeared on the first slide. Rhianna Tulepo, Head of Sustainability, Olympics Legacy Commission. Also appearing on the first slide, though Rhianna was standing there for everyone to see, her photograph; and for networking afterwards, when you’re speaking to the personification of the photo, she’ll be wearing ID.

  Is it me or are we all OD’ing on ID?

  But Tony’s wondering who Rhianna was before doing this, and what does she think it is

  she is doing now? Parentage: Hispanic and Irish, Tony reckons.

  Or Scottish. Anyway, a McSpic.

  Like it, must use it somewhere, appropriately ironised, of course.

  Age: fit-looking early forties, which would make her a veteran of illegal raves, late

  eighties, early nineties, ecstasy in a field, Chill the Bill in Adidas tops.

  Now it’s linen dress, coffee-coloured legs (bare), maroon lipstick, asymmetrical hair, mouth like an old trout but the eyes are still young. In her younger days, she might have been attached to a dog-on-a-string. Now she is normally accompanied by a four-year-old with difficulties: her son, Hal.

  Hal comes with me everywhere. Almost everywhere. He sits and draws so beautifully.

  He sits so beautifully and draws. Hal is on the autism spectrum. The specialist says he doesn’t know where.

  But, really, I know my own son better than anyone.

  Perhaps that’s it. Maybe Tony is somewhere on the autism spectrum. That would explain

  why he’s not connecting with all these people, gathered here today to make connections. Come to think of it, maybe we’re all autistic now. Because nobody is.

  Connected, that is. All round the circle, there are people not quite making contact. Close

  enough to make it seem as if they are; but all the time they are looking fractionally to the side of each other –

  a glancing g(r)aze. The lucky ones are those facing the window, thankfully not blacked out for the presentation. They, at least, have something to look through to.

  Through the window, so close that it seems to be almost touching the glass, there is a large, blue-grey rectangle: it’s the Royal Victoria Dock (water’s a bit choppy for a summer’s day). Beyond the dock, and the water in it, a strip of built-up land. Then another strip of water, followed by more and more buildings as far as the eye can see. The eye can only see as far as the steep rise to Crystal Palace and its telecoms tower, which stands at the top lip of London’s hollow.

  ‘Another strip of water’, described above, is really the River Thames; except from here you can’t see that it is water; still less that it’s the Thames. Unless you already knew the river was there, in normal circumstances you’d only notice a set of buildings, then the second set, and the gap between them which might make you wonder where the third set of buildings must have gone (the ones that ought to be there in the middle).

  Not today, though. Right now, among the buildings, apparently, the masts and sails of a tall ship are moving upstream, making a mockery of the landscape, and tracing the course of the river (’cos now you’ve seen the masts so high, you can also work out what’s down below).

  At this point, nearly everyone’s watching the ship as it appears to travel along North Woolwich Road.

  Even attendees with their backs to the window, are first craning their necks, then

  swivelling right round to see it, barely pretending to pay attention to Rhianna’s presentation. At last they really are looking in the same direction, sharing an experienc
e, because for once there is something beautiful for them all to look at.

  The Head of Sustainability at the Olympics Legacy Commission is trying not to be put

  off.

  Why doesn’t she stop to see? But, of course, the no-show must go on.

  Distracted by everyone else being distracted, Rhianna is stumbling, starting to lose her lines when Tony experiences a sudden throb in the groin.

  It’s his phone, set to silent, nestled deep in his trouser pocket (pants, if you’re American).

  He could have turned it off, or simply waited for it to stop while enjoying (slightly) the vibration.

  Instead he makes it his cue to dive out of the room and take the call.

  The call is from his PA, name of Lesley Dawson, the woman Dinky had visions

  of...y’know. The silly boy didn’t pay enough attention to her voice, though. Though it is prim and proper with tints of Cheltenham Ladies’ College, these are offset by the honey-gold texture of whisky and cigarettes. Quite a girl, our girl; and, of course, she is known in the office as ‘Les’.