by Sam Byers
Hugo made to step past Teddy towards the entrance to the Larchwood, where he’d left the press and the demonstrators and where he’d imagined himself delivering his defining address. Teddy, though, deploying the corralling gesture he so often used when telling journalists there would be no more questions, held his arm across Hugo’s path.
‘Slight change of plan, big guy,’ he said.
‘But what about—’
‘Situation’s very fluid,’ said Teddy.
‘Fluid? Teddy, we’ve knocked this out of the fucking park. We’ve killed not just two birds but basically a whole flock with, OK, maybe not one stone as such, but with very few stones, Teddy. I mean, we’re practically home and dry here.’
‘Let’s chat in the car,’ said Teddy, steering Hugo down a side alley, away from a future Hugo had been imagining for a very long time.
‘Is it bad news?’ said Hugo. ‘What is it?’
‘Good news and bad news,’ said Teddy, still leading Hugo quite firmly to the end of the alley, which opened out onto a backstreet on which a car – not the car, Hugo noted, but a car: an unremarkable people carrier – was waiting with its engine running. Teddy opened the door for Hugo, ushered him inside, then climbed in behind him and slid it shut.
‘I’ll give you the good news first,’ he said.
‘I would have chosen the bad news first,’ said Hugo. ‘That way, the good news will sort of put a positive spin back on the—’
‘The way this is going to play out, it’s more like after the bad news there is no more news.’ said Teddy.
‘I see,’ said Hugo, suddenly unable to distinguish between the sensation of the car pulling away and the weightless, floating unease in his stomach and bowels.
‘The good news is that the by-election date has just been set,’ said Teddy.
‘Oh my God,’ said Hugo.
‘Yup. Turns out all this fracas with The Griefers and the Larch-wood and Twitter and what have you was even more of a godsend than we thought. Trevor Barnaby’s released a statement announcing his retirement. He says he no longer feels qualified or equipped to deal with Edmundsbury’s changing status as a modern town.’
‘Bloody hell,’ said Hugo, momentarily forgetting that subsequent bad news was promised. ‘Teddy, this is amazing. This is more than we ever could have … I mean, did you maybe think this might happen? You know, when we were planning …’
‘I hoped things might get a bit much for Barnaby, yeah,’ said Teddy.
‘God,’ said Hugo. ‘Imagine being so bamboozled by your own constituency that you just … chucked it all in. You know, this is so perfect for us, Teddy. We’ve gone on and on about how the political establishment are out of touch, how they’re not equipped to deal with what’s happening, and now he’s basically admitted it. We need to pounce on this. I mean, what’s our next move? I need to confirm that I’ll be running, of course.’
‘Well …’ said Teddy.
And there it was, thought Hugo: the bad news, delivered in a single, hesitant word.
‘Fuck you,’ said Hugo immediately. ‘Try it. Just fucking try it, Teddy, you scheming shit.’
Teddy held up his hands. ‘This isn’t a power play, Hugo.’
‘No? Then what the fuck is going on? Is this some bullshit that Alan’s pulling? Because if he thinks he can nail this constituency without me …’
Teddy fired up the screen on his tablet and turned it so that Hugo could see it. The moment he looked, Hugo experienced a sudden and seemingly permanent exsanguination.
‘Is this your dick?’ said Teddy, pointing to the screen of his tablet, on which was displayed a photograph of Hugo’s penis peeking out from a clearly shrunken bookshelf of Penguin classics.
Hugo said nothing, merely stared dumbly at what was, undeniably, his own image.
‘Is this your dick?’ said Teddy, scrolling down to reveal a picture of Hugo’s penis reclining across a computer keyboard the length of which it somehow exactly matched.
‘Teddy—’
‘Is this your dick?’ said Teddy, continuing his apparently infinite scroll and pulling up an image of Hugo’s penis as the centrepiece of a traditional, though miniaturised, roast dinner.
‘Where did you get these, Teddy? Because if you’re blackmailing me, let me tell you—’
‘Hugo, I’m getting these from the web. These are out there, big guy. They’re out there all over the place. Your dick is trending on Twitter. I’ve just done a resonance graph of recent events in Edmundsbury and your dick is so big you can’t even see anything else that has happened. You want to see a heat map?’ He tapped away on his tablet again and turned it back around to show a map of the British Isles rendered entirely in red. ‘Areas where people are not talking about your dick are shown in green.’
‘But there’s no … Oh.’
‘Yeah. Oh.’
‘I don’t understand how—’
‘Is your password still password?’
‘I was literally about to change it. I just didn’t have—’
‘And did we or did we not, Hugo, I think more than once, but certainly at least once, have a very clear conversation about The Griefers, and what they were threatening to—’
‘Wait, is that who’s behind this? That bunch of masked fucking—’
‘Apparently. Them and a columnist called Byron Stroud, who seems to have a hotline to their intel, by which I mean your dick.’
‘Right,’ said Hugo, steeling himself. ‘OK, this is embarrassing. Right? But like you always say, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. At least people are talking about me. We can spin this, Teddy, like we always do. I’ve been a victim, a victim of this … I don’t know what it is but let’s say campaign. Let’s say witch hunt. And yes, it may be embarrassing, but this is my chance to stand up for—’
Teddy held up his hands. ‘I thought exactly that,’ he said. ‘And if this was just, you know, a bunch of hackers pulling some dick pics off your hard drive, we might have been able to go down that road. But this is no longer about that.’
‘What’s it about?’
‘Well, since this Byron Stroud guy went live online with the exclusive, other people, other women, have come forward.’
‘What other women?’
‘Women saying you’ve been doing this for years, sending them stuff, and they’ve never said anything because they were worried about—’
‘What fucking women?’
‘Hugo, after your BBC profile, did you send a picture of your dick to Vivian Ross?’
‘Oh fuck me.’
‘Because tell me you didn’t and I’ll go out there and bat for you, Hugo.’
‘I … She was such a bitch in that interview. I mean, you watched that interview, Teddy. She was a cunt in that interview. I honestly think, if we put it to the public, you know, like a poll, most people would agree that she was a fucking cunt in that interview, and that she deserved—’
‘Was the picture an effigy of her detached head impaled on your penis?’
‘It’s a joke. It’s a fucking joke, for fuck’s … Look, if I had actually impaled her head on my cock, which, I might add, I very much wanted to do, then I would see your point, but, Jesus Christ, we’re talking about a picture here.’
‘She’s charging you with indecency.’
‘She’s … What? How’s that even a crime?’
‘And threatening behaviour.’
‘How did I threaten her? This is insane, Teddy. This is totally insane.’
‘Sure is, big guy.’
Hugo held out his hand for the tablet.
‘Give me that.’
‘You really want to look?’
‘Give it to me.’
Teddy handed it over. Hugo scrolled through the images. It was, he found, a comprehensive overview of his work. He tapped on the address bar and googled himself. In a final act of ironic efficiency, no doubt as a result of conflating Hugo Bennington miniature models and Hugo Bennington dick, Google’s top suggestion was
now Hugo Bennington miniature dick.
How maddening, he thought, to know that this, of all the possibilities, would be his undoing. It was, in many ways, his ultimate fantasy: his dick writ large, mapped over England’s topography. He’d always feared the slow fade from public attention. Instead, he’d been undone by irrelevance’s opposite. He’d gone too public. He’d become an attention supernova.
He sank back into the car seat and tugged at his tie. He desperately needed a smoke but couldn’t face the inevitable battle that smoking in the car would entail. This age of fucking sensitivity, he thought. What was he supposed to do – castrate himself? When he met a woman he fancied, he fantasised about shoving his dick in her face. When he met a woman he loathed, he also fantasised about shoving his dick in her face. Was that no longer normal? Was that something for which he was supposed to apologise?
This, he thought, was the society he lived in: a society where a decent, upstanding man could at any moment be lined up in front of what was effectively an internet firing squad and summarily executed for the simple crime of doing what he’d always done: sowing fear; terrifying the cosseted, preening, effete, and ultimately unrecognisable excuse for a nation England had ultimately become. Because dear God if there was one thing Hugo had learned through all the years he’d spent banging on about how much he loved England, it was how much he hated England: its hordes of immigrants; its filthy street markets of foreign tat that babbled with every language except the one Hugo himself spoke; its prancing, marrying queers; its blaring, feral, feminist bitches; its querulous, faggy politicians with their gelled hair and flashy soundbites – that, he thought, that was the platform on which he should have stood: not England Always but England Eroded, England Besmeared.
‘Alright,’ he said, ‘I can see a way out of this.’
Teddy shaped his face into the first expression of sympathy Hugo had ever seen him attempt.
‘That’s … That’s awesome, Hugo. I mean, don’t let the bastards grind you down, right? But … we’ve been having a bit of a chat—’
‘Who’s we?’
‘Me and a few people.’
‘What people?’
‘Well, people in the party. A few of Alan’s people. Alan.’
‘Alan? What’s he chatting to you for? He should be chatting to me.’
‘Oh, he’s chatting to you in spirit, Hugo. Like, big time. He wants that to be really clear.’
‘What do you mean in spirit? Is he using a fucking Ouija board?’
‘I mean, you know, spiritually he is with you, even if—’
‘Physically he’s not with me at all.’
‘Physically or, more relevantly, publicly.’
‘Fine,’ said Hugo. ‘Fine. I get it. He wants to distance himself. I understand. If he wants me to go out there and—’
‘He doesn’t, big guy.’
‘He doesn’t what?’
‘He doesn’t want you to go out there.’
‘OK, I mean, that’s probably wise in the circumstances. Maybe just release a statement and—’
‘He doesn’t want you to release a statement. In fact, he’s actually pretty directly instructing you not to release a statement of any kind.’
‘What, and just let this whole bloody scandal—’
‘Just let him handle it.’
‘Let him—’
‘Let him handle you, basically.’
‘Handle me.’
‘Fire you.’
‘Fire me.’
‘Basically, yeah.’
‘Fire me.’
‘Sorry, big guy.’
‘So because I sent a few pictures of my dick to a few fucking—’
‘Well, that’s a big part of it.’
‘What’s the other part?’
‘The other part is really about moving forward.’
‘Moving forward to where, Teddy? We can’t just keep saying things like moving fucking forward if we never—’
‘It’s a very fluid picture.’
‘How can a picture be fluid? The whole point of a picture is that—’
‘It’s dynamic, big guy.’
‘What’s dynamic?’
‘You’ve got us this far, and that will be very clearly noted.’
‘Noted? And what far? How far? Where are we?’
‘We’re entering the next phase.’
‘What is the fucking next phase, Teddy?’
‘It’s really not something you need to—’
‘Look, if you and Alan think you can edge me out without so much as a—’
‘To be honest, it doesn’t have an awful lot to do with us.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘It’s not really a decision that’s being taken at that level.’
‘There is no other level, Teddy. That’s all the levels. You think England Always is some kind of global syndicate with—’
‘Not England Always, no.’
‘Not … Oh fuck me. You’re kidding.’
‘They want to make it very clear that this will in no way affect your stock options, Hugo.’
‘They. They being … Downton? Downton now get to decide—’
‘Well, between Downton and Green—’
‘Where do Green come into this? Since when do we … Please tell me this isn’t all about the estate, Teddy. Because I have handled the estate. That situation has been completely dealt with. The mad genocide woman is gone. That old codger is about to be gone. Downton should be kissing my arse. I solved that estate for them, and now—’
‘Now you’re kind of too closely linked to it.’
‘Too—’
‘Like, people kind of associate you with the whole thing. It’s making Green a bit edgy.’
‘How do Green figure in this?’
‘Green are central to Downton’s plans, Hugo. Without Green, there’s no vision. It’s just … an estate, basically. And on top of that, you know how central Green are to Edmundsbury. They basically re-infrastructured the whole town. Look, you’ve nailed it. You’ve locked this town down. Between the estate stuff and the Twitter thing, you’ve swung it big time. That’s what I mean about getting us so far. But are you going to get us all the way, Hugo? Are you going to be able to work with Green and Downton on building the future? No offence, big guy, OK? But your brand isn’t really future. It’s past. We needed to lock down the past. But now we’ve done that and we need to lock down the future. You don’t go out there and offer to govern the world as it is. You define the world you want to control.’
‘But I’m the one with all the traction, Teddy. That’s what you’re forgetting. You think people in Edmundsbury are excited about England Always? They’re excited about me. I’m the local boy. I’m the face they know. I’m the guy that has been here for them, personally, through—’
‘That’s not entirely true, big man.’
‘What? Of course it’s fucking—’
‘The Griefers have queered the pitch. People’s fears are changing. They’re looking to different people to assuage those fears.’
‘Christ,’ said Hugo. ‘You utter, utter scheming shit. You don’t seriously think that you’re the person they … I mean, what, you and your little techno-cult? Your little fucking geek club? You can’t make a political movement out of life-hacks, Teddy, OK? It’s all very well going on about thinking in or outside the box to a roomful of techno-freaks but that is not going to translate to a national vision of—’
‘The efficiency movement is the fastest growing movement in the country.’
‘The efficiency movement? Since when did it become a movement? What are you, like Occupy or something? What are you going to occupy? Desk chairs?’
‘People want an efficient England, Hugo. That’s what they really want. They don’t want a load of ideology. They don’t want to get wrapped up in party politics. They want a country that runs smoothly. We can help with that. Green can help with that. Downton can help with that. You know what’s always held the ef
ficiency movement back? Its image. People think it doesn’t respect the past. They think we’re slash and burn. It frightens them. But now, thanks to you, they look at me and go, hey, this is a guy who can fix the future but who we totally trust not to completely trash the past. Meanwhile, what’s the biggest criticism people always level at England Always, at you, at Alan? That you’re stuck in the past. That you can’t even see the future, let alone deal with it. So …’ Teddy brought his hands together, fingers gradually interlacing.
‘How in the name of Christ does that in any way coincide with any of the issues England Always have been campaigning about? How is that going to strengthen cultural identity? How is that going to bring down immigration? How is that going to manage the spread of militant Islam? How is that, basically, Teddy, going to do any of the fucking things people want us to do?’
‘Oh, it’s going to do those things, big guy. It’s going to do those things like no other political party has ever done those things before.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘What’s the best argument for curbing immigration? Efficiency. The less immigration we have to manage, the more time and money we’ll have to manage the things that really matter. What’s the best argument for making sure everyone in England speaks the same language? Efficiency. Because if everyone speaks the same language, we won’t have to waste time dealing with people who don’t understand what’s going on. What’s the best argument for controlling the spread of radical ideologies that run counter to basic English values? Efficiency. Because if we allow militant ideologies to spread, then the country will collapse into anarchy. No-one wants anarchy, Hugo. No-one wants chaos. They want consistency. They want a safe, predictable, efficient country that runs like a well-oiled machine. That’s what they want, Hugo, and that’s what we can give them, and now we can give it to them without taking away all the stuff they love about the past.’
Hugo leaned forward, placed his elbows on his knees, and clamped his palms to his temples. He was assuming the brace position, he thought, in preparation for his inevitable crash landing into a world he neither recognised nor wanted.
‘How long have you been working with Downton?’ he said.
‘I’m sorry?’ said Teddy.
‘You’d already briefed Jones. All you needed was for me to deal with the old guy and then you could step in. How long did you have that cooked up with Downton?’
