by Sam Byers
The problem was that as well as being a perpetual font of youthful vigour, Hugo also had to remind potential supporters that he was just like everyone else. He was, according to his own personal branding, the man in the street. More importantly, he was the man in the pub. If ever he failed at being the man in the pub, was the fear, men in the pub would stop being impressed by him. This put pressure on Hugo’s photo opportunities. The second Teddy got wind of a photographer, he parked Hugo behind a full English, or jammed a fag between his fingers, or hastily pulled him a pint of ale, even if it was barely ten in the morning.
The result was that Hugo’s perky exterior was grossly at odds with his slowly corroding interior. Regardless of the glow in his cheeks, his campaign was killing him from the inside. His pulse sped up and slowed down on a schedule entirely of its own devising. Even when he slept he panicked, waking in the grey, dingy fog of near dawn to a hammering heart and what seemed like more sweat than any one body should healthily have produced.
He told himself this would all be reversible. The timeframe of the campaign was vague, but at some point, hopefully in the next year, it would be over. The by-election was yet to be announced because the incumbent occupant of the seat on which Hugo had his eye – the neither hale nor hearty Trevor Barnaby – was not yet dead and not yet retired, but soon, very soon, as everyone knew thanks to a series of well-publicised health scares, he would be at least one of those things, and Hugo would pounce. There would be a last desperate expelling of energy and then, finally, a moment of rest.
Deep down, though, Hugo knew this wasn’t quite the case. It was true that the campaign hadn’t helped, but it was equally true that the tightening grip of decay about Hugo’s body hadn’t just come from nowhere. His fears had diseased him. Hugo was a man very much in touch with his fears. He had to be, for they were legion. He could file every heart-flutter and stomach-plummet, every clutched breath and stumbling white-out, into its appropriate category: Illness (global); Illness (personal); Death (self); Longevity (others); Humiliation (self); Failure (self); Success (others); Impotence (self); Virility (others). He knew them, but didn’t want to talk about them. Instead, he transmogrified them, bundled them into an all-purpose terror that people seemed to relate to. Everyone was scared, when you got right down to it. Hugo was old enough to remember the days when politics was about reassuring people. But those days were over. Now you had to keep them fearful. Who better to do that than a fearful man?
Fag finished, Hugo took a preparatory calming breath, eased himself through the back door, and wandered through to the kitchen, where Teddy was lounging at the dining table with his feet up on one of the chairs.
‘Boss man,’ said Teddy. ‘Hugotron. The Hugh-ster. How goes it?’
‘It goes fine,’ said Hugo. ‘Get your feet off my chair.’
‘Totally,’ said Teddy, not getting his feet off the chair.
Teddy was ostentatiously toned. His physique suggested not so much physical strength as an unswerving commitment to the expansion of his glamour muscles. He had a way of flexing his pecs with every motion. Even reclining, he kept his arms about six inches away from his torso, clearly attempting to convey the impression of throbbing power brought reluctantly to rest. Like his body, his tanned skin spoke not of invigorating outdoor activity but of expensive indoor labour – a shade somewhere between bad laminate flooring and a photoshopped sunset. He dressed in a uniform of hyper-advanced activity gear: skin-tight breathable running tops and dangerously revealing shorts. On his feet he appeared to be wearing a kind of moulded saliva.
‘What on earth have you got on your feet?’ said Hugo. ‘You look like you’ve stood in a puddle.’
‘Memo-skin footwear,’ said Teddy. ‘It mimics the experience of being barefoot. I literally can’t feel my shoes.’
Hugo made his way over to the kettle, wondering, not for the first time, why Teddy’s daily intrusion into his domestic life seemed to exclude the effort of making a cuppa.
‘Cup of coffee?’ said Hugo, somehow making it sound like both an offer and a request.
‘No thanks. I’m powering down.’
‘Do you mean sitting down?’
‘No, I can power down standing up. I’m arriving at a moment of stillness.’
Teddy closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath.
‘I feel totally re-energised,’ he said.
‘I thought you were powering down?’
‘Oh, I’ve powered down. Now I’m re-energising. It’s all about flow.’
‘Are you going to have to power down and recharge or whatever repeatedly today? Because—’
‘I’m striving for the non-habitual. Ask me how big my comfort zone is.’
‘How big is your comfort zone?’
‘This big,’ said Teddy, pinching his index finger and thumb tightly together.
‘Meaning you’re never comfortable?’
‘Meaning I’m embracing the unknown.’
‘So you’re uncomfortable and you don’t know anything.’
‘What do any of us really know?’
Hugo didn’t have an answer for that. The things he knew he didn’t want to know. The things he didn’t know he didn’t want to know either.
Having consumed as much as he was able to tolerate both of coffee (he couldn’t, yet, stomach anything solid) and Teddy’s surreal musings (an area in which a degree of solidity would have been appreciated), Hugo trudged back upstairs to his study, got himself comfy in the luxuriously padded swivel chair that faced his desk, and settled down to what he rather generously referred to as work, by which he meant the arduous task of wasting yet another hour examining the internet’s opinion of him. Years ago, there had been a sense of excitement in being the subject of discussion, but this was quickly replaced by paranoia, and then, as the paranoia burned itself out, by grim resignation and even, although he couldn’t quite admit it, morbid fascination, and so, for the past few years, Hugo’s working day had begun with a deep-dive into the state of his autocomplete. Typing Hugo B into the search box was relatively pleasing in that Hugo Bennington tended to be a respectable fourth or fifth in line, but Hugo tended not to pause here, instead pushing on to Hugo Benn, at which point his full name jumped satisfyingly to the top of the list. Day after day, Hugo took exactly one second’s pleasure in what he always thought of as a bloody and dramatic coup fought out in some unseen cyberspatial realm, only for his fantasy to rudely dissolve as, bubbling upwards from the bottom of the list, Google’s suggestions for what might follow began to appear. Hugo Bennington evil tended to make a pretty rapid appearance, as did Hugo Bennington ugly, Hugo Bennington sexist, Hugo Bennington racist (naturally), and Hugo Bennington must die, which was, much to Hugo’s utter disgust, the name of a radical left-wing punk band plying the Devon pub circuit. From here, a man with more self-control and, indeed, more self-respect than Hugo would have given up, hit the delete key, and watched all the suggestions vanish. But sadly, if that man existed, Hugo was not in touch with him, and so his fingers forged manfully ahead, bashing out the final letters of his name and watching as, against all his hopes, Google began to vomit up insult after insult, particularly if, or, more accurately, when, Hugo’s fingers, acting largely on their own reconnaissance, added is after his name, at which point it always felt as if Google had opened a direct conduit between the filth of the world and every half-buried insecurity in Hugo’s soul. Hugo Bennington is a moron. Hugo Bennington is the antichrist. These were the ones he clung to now: the vague, the uncreative, the mindless. But beneath them came an ever-evolving hierarchy of distressingly inventive ire. Hugo Bennington is to humanity what dog shit is to shoes. Hugo Bennington is an aching scrotum. Hugo Bennington is a condom full of clap.
Precisely why he wasted the start of each day masochistically updating himself on the extent to which he was loathed, Hugo couldn’t quite say. Like everything else in his life, he had a suspicion that it stemmed from his fears. To the ever-growing list, he had, since the mar
ked increase in attention he now enjoyed, added invisibility, irrelevance, superfluity. So long as people were angry, he thought, he could still be reasonably certain that he existed.
‘Ten-minute warning, big guy.’
Teddy’s voice from the bottom of the stairs gave Hugo an unpleasant jolt. The irony of Teddy, a child so fundamentally sub-par that it was a miracle he managed to dress himself, getting paternal with Hugo was almost too much to take. But such irritations were, in Hugo’s experience, best borne in silence.
He shut down his computer, which now that it had fulfilled its primary purpose of reminding him exactly how much he was hated was effectively redundant, gathered his documents and briefcase, and made his way downstairs.
‘Car’s here,’ said Teddy brightly.
‘The car? Oh Christ, is it that time already?’
‘Afraid so, dude.’
They stepped out of the front door and walked to an idling Mercedes. They both sat in the back, separated from the driver by a glass screen. From his obscenely futuristic backpack, Teddy brought out a fluorescent-yellow plastic thermos, unscrewed the lid, and began to drink.
‘Oh God,’ said Hugo. ‘Can’t you wait until we get to the office? The smell of that stuff makes me gag.’
‘I time my nutrition to the minute, Hugo. Putting back breakfast throws my whole metabolism off.’
For approximately a year, Teddy had consumed no solid food whatsoever. Instead, his diet was composed entirely of a semi-liquid, neon-yellow goo called Fibuh, which he consumed four times a day at carefully scheduled intervals and which he claimed was scientifically calibrated to provide an even more rounded meal than the average rounded meal. Fibuh had been invented by a seventeen-year-old chemistry genius so socially awkward that he was unable to eat in the school canteen and so in need of remedial life-skills training that he was unable to prepare a sandwich. He’d therefore devoted his life to the design, production, and marketing of a product that eliminated both of those horrors and which also, conveniently, made him a millionaire. He claimed he was going to live to be two hundred years old because he was achieving optimum nutrition. A series of nutritionists claimed that as a result of never allowing his body to process solid food he’d be colostomised by forty.
Teddy took a long haul on his flask and came away with his upper lip painted bright yellow.
‘Mmm,’ he said, with a slightly uneasy satisfaction. ‘Yeah.’
‘You know that stuff smells exactly like melted plastic, don’t you, Teddy?’
‘Fibuh is actually flavourless and odourless,’ said Teddy. ‘Taste and scent are synthetically added as part of the production process.’
‘Then why have they chosen to make it smell like a radioactive lunchbox?’
‘It’s actually supposed to smell like a canteen. Research has shown that the smell of dining rooms elicits a more stable hunger response than the smell of food itself.’
‘It’s eliciting a distinctly unstable nausea response in me.’
‘That’s because you haven’t tasted it,’ said Teddy, taking another haul and swallowing heavily, then blinking away tears and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘So you don’t have the right association. Once you taste it …’
‘What does it taste like?’
‘Chicken,’ said Teddy. ‘It’s a joke.’
‘How’s that a joke?’
‘You know, people always say everything tastes like chicken. Well, in the future, everything will taste like chicken.’
‘That’s it? In your brave new world of never having to consume solid food again, that’s the only choice of flavour anyone will have?’
‘Choice is unproductive,’ said Teddy. ‘It produces cognitive friction. People haven’t got time for choice any more, Hugo. They want to get up, put on their clothes without choosing them, knock back some Fibuh, and get on with what’s important.’
‘But what about variety? What about surprise?’
Teddy shrugged. ‘Outmoded concepts.’
Hugo was on the verge of pressing Teddy on what was, in terms of Hugo’s political ambitions, a rather concerning view, but Teddy had clearly drilled down enough, and had shifted his attention to the street outside.
‘Right, he should be around here somewhere,’ he said. He twisted in his seat and squinted out the back window. ‘No sign of a tail.’
‘For God’s sake, Teddy. Do we really have to go through all this—’
‘Do you want to be seen with him?’ said Teddy. ‘Do you want to explain why you’re having a meeting with him?’
‘No.’
‘Right then. OK, there he is.’ Teddy pointed to a thick-set, shaven-headed man standing on a corner desperately trying to look inconspicuous by reading a newspaper in the middle of the pavement.
‘Christ,’ said Hugo. ‘He’s in disguise as himself.’
‘Why’s he wearing his outfit?’ said Teddy. ‘How many times have I told him: don’t wear your outfit?’
‘He doesn’t have any other clothes, I don’t think. He’s like you. He gets up in the morning and chooses between four identical black bomber jackets.’
‘OK, let’s pick him up,’ said Teddy. ‘And Hugo? Strict fifteen-minute clock on this meeting. That Fibuh will be heading downtown and you don’t want me trapped in a car when it pulls into the station. You know what I’m saying, big guy?’
‘You’re saying you’ve had your baby food and now you have half an hour before you shit yourself.’
‘That’s … I mean, I wouldn’t put it quite—’
Teddy didn’t get a chance to finish because Ronnie Childs was clambering awkwardly into the back of the car and trying to slot himself between Teddy and Hugo.
‘Gents,’ he said.
‘Ronnie,’ said Hugo, moving over.
Short, muscular to the point of being spherical, bald to the point of being reflective, Ronnie Childs was now wedged so tightly between Hugo and Teddy that his shoulders were up around his ears and what little neck he had was completely compressed into his bomber jacket. Unable to properly turn left or right, he attempted to greet first Teddy then Hugo using only the muscles in his face.
For several years, Childs had positioned himself as head of the East of England wing of a self-styled ‘militia’ called Brute Force. Brute Force’s agenda was, in no uncertain terms, street-level race war. They wore a uniform of black bomber jackets, oversized black boots, and camouflaged combat trousers. They were all, to a man, feral. The problem was that they were also increasingly popular, so popular in fact that they’d started muttering about becoming a legitimate political party, meaning they presented, for Hugo and the rest of England Always, a double nightmare. On one level, they were political poison, roaming the streets making what Hugo thought of as the ‘proper’ Right look bad. On another level, they had the potential, if they insisted on their deranged plan to shed their bomber jackets and slip into some cheap suits, to leech votes. They therefore had to be convinced to work with England Always so as to secure as much of the vote as possible. However, because they were the last thing England Always needed to be publicly associated with, any connection between Hugo and Childs had to be conscientiously concealed and, in the event it was ever uncovered, strenuously denied, which was why, once a month or so, Hugo and Teddy had to go through the rather debasing rigmarole of hiring a car and a driver in order to pretend to Ronnie Childs that they were important enough to have a car and a driver, just so Childs would meet them in the car and not at the office.
‘My boys aren’t happy,’ said Childs bluntly. ‘And if my boys aren’t happy, I’m not happy.’
‘And we want you to be happy, Ronnie,’ said Teddy, doing his empathetic face. ‘What is it that’s making you unhappy?’
Ronnie Childs was a man who spent his entire life tense to the threat of disrespect, and so he often, as now, tended to stare at people for quite a long time before responding, clearly trying to ascertain whether or not he was being mocked.
&n
bsp; ‘It’s these cunts in masks,’ he said finally.
‘Right,’ said Teddy.
‘They’re fucking terrorists,’ said Childs, trying to raise a hand to emphasise his point but finding himself straitjacketed by the seating arrangements.
‘Are they?’ said Hugo, genuinely surprised.
‘They might be, for all we know,’ said Childs. ‘That’s the point. We don’t know what they are.’
Hugo looked over towards Teddy, seeking some kind of confirmation.
‘It looks like they’re political,’ said Teddy. ‘Whether or not that makes them—’
‘Some bunch of cunts in masks are waltzing around fucking things up and freaking people out. And what are we doing? Nothing. Fucking nothing. Because you said before I get the boys to do anything about … anything, I have to ask you. Meaning we’re just sitting on our arses.’
‘Are you listening to this, Teddy? Ronnie here is sitting on his arse. We can’t have that.’
‘No,’ said Teddy.
‘I’m not the sort of bloke who just sits on his arse,’ said Childs.
‘Quite,’ said Hugo. ‘Look, it seems to me that what we need to work out first is who they are and what they want.’
‘Well, good luck with that,’ said Childs, ‘when you can’t even see their faces.’
‘Right,’ said Hugo. ‘We can’t see their faces and so we can’t—’
‘You can’t see if they’re Muslims,’ said Childs.
‘Shit,’ said Hugo. ‘That’s true.’
‘Whoa,’ said Teddy, holding up a hand. ‘Let’s—’
‘What?’ said Hugo. ‘It’s what everyone’s thinking.’
‘But no-one’s saying.’
‘But that’s my thing,’ said Hugo. ‘I say what everyone’s thinking but no-one’s saying.’
‘Well, within reason. Some people are thinking things no-one wants anyone to say.’
