The Wrong Story

by James Ellis

  Germaine: Were you good at art at school?

  Tom: I was okay but I don’t think I had any defined style at that point. I enjoyed it, though. Our art teacher was a boozy, rugby-playing type but he had an eye for good work. He didn’t teach us anything. He sat around, smoking and reading, and just let us do what we wanted. I’m sure nowadays he’d be sacked, but I responded well to that kind of freedom. I liked being left alone to get on with things. I still do.

  Germaine: You went to a good sixth form college. Was the atmosphere different there?

  Tom: Sixth form was difficult for me. I liked maths and music as well as art but the way the curriculum was designed, I couldn’t combine those subjects. It was either the sciences or the humanities. Art was treated as vocational along with metalwork, woodwork and so on. Also, I discovered pubs.

  Germaine (laughing): That sounds like classic training for an artist.

  Tom: I was lucky. I built up enough of a portfolio to get into the local art college.

  Germaine: Let’s get on to Scraps. How did that come about?

  Tom: I was 20 years old and part-way through a BA in illustration and photography. I shared a house with three other students, all sculptors, and the place was a tip, filled with papier-mâché manikins, balls of clay, lumps of stone, half-finished plasticine busts. There was one of me. They’d made me look like a gargoyle.

  Germaine: The cruelty of youth.

  Tom: To be honest, it was a pretty fair likeness. None of these people ever washed or did their laundry or showed any sign of personal hygiene and so I used to spend a lot of time in the garden.

  Germaine: Because of the smell?

  Tom: Partly. It was definitely a pungent house. But also because they had all told me at various times that the only reason they wanted to be artists was to get women to pose naked for them. So there were always women coming round, responding to adverts to be an artist’s model, and these delinquent no-hopers would spend all day trying to encourage them to pose naked for them. It was very sordid. Anyway, being just a doodler of lines and dots and a long way down the artists’ pecking order, I got pushed into the garden most of the time.

  Germaine: What did you think of that?

  Tom: I didn’t mind too much. I liked being outside.

  Germaine: I mean, what did you think of their motives? You said it was sordid. Would you say it was a sexist environment? Misogynistic?

  Tom: Sordid is the wrong word. Sad might be better. These were students who were scared of women and had to hide behind their paintbrushes. Nothing horrible ever happened. I thought they were all crazy. Why did those rancid hooligans think any woman would want to come to our cesspit?

  Germaine: But some did.

  Tom: Some did. Yes.

  Germaine: Okay. So there you are, in the garden.

  Tom: That’s right. One evening I was out there, staring at a broken fence, when I realised I was looking directly into the eyes of a fox – a big red fox – and it was staring right back at me.

  Germaine: Were you nervous?

  Tom: I’ve thought about that. It seems dramatic now but at the time I thought, here I am, face to face with a wild animal, a carnivore, a dangerous predator, and it’s just the two of us. It wasn’t a pet or something that had been trained, it was a creature that lived by rules I didn’t know anything about. But what I saw was curiosity and intelligence and I saw calmness, too, and I liked that. I didn’t feel worried. I said, ‘Make yourself at home.’ Of course, he didn’t say anything.

  Germaine: Of course.

  Tom: He waited and took his time, sizing me up, and then he stepped into full view.

  Germaine: He was a he?

  Tom: That’s a good point. I don’t know. He might have been a she. I’ve always thought of it as male but perhaps that’s wrong. Thinking about it, it could just as well have been a vixen on the hunt for some food for her cubs.

  Germaine: I’d like to come back to the gender aspect of your work, but for now, let’s say it was a he.

  Tom: He had a circular way of moving so wherever he stood he always seemed to be facing me, as if his head were a mask and there were puppeteers behind him.

  Germaine: Did he come up to you?

  Tom: No, he checked out the various tins and bottles and cartons that were planted in our garden and then he wandered back to the fence and slipped through the gap. When he went his brush flicked upwards and it was like a farewell salute. I ran down to the fence and looked through the gap but there was just another garden on the other side. There was no sign of the fox, no sign of any other animal, but that encounter changed everything for me. I felt that I had seen something worth seeing, that I had made contact with another world.

  Germaine: You seem to recall it vividly. It was a big moment?

  Tom: A very big moment. I remember I went indoors and there was a girl in the living room telling one of the sculptors to hand over his camera before she punched his greasy fucking head in…

  Germaine: We’ll have to edit that, Tom.

  Tom: I’m sorry.

  Germaine: That’s okay.

  Tom: So, normally I would have watched her do that but I was so taken with my encounter I completely ignored her. I went upstairs, got my pad and pen and straight away I started drawing. I wanted to capture the fox’s skinny, hunched-over body. It reminded me of those chain-smokers who always seem to have a rattling, wheezing cough, so I put a cigarette in his mouth. That’s what I liked about him: there was none of the muscular sleekness of a well-fed domestic dog, none of the power of a hunting wolf; just a mangy, scruffy, perfectly wonderful animal urchin on the prowl for scraps.

  Germaine: And did you know that was his name even then?

  Tom: I think I did. There was still a lot to do, of course, decisions to be made: where he lived and whether or not he could talk, and did he wear clothes or walk upright or drive a car, and did he have hands and elbows and knees, and how about a hat? But I knew all that would work itself out. For the moment it was enough that I could see him on the page of my pad, a skinny cartoon fox with a cigarette sticking out of the side of his mouth.

  Germaine: Before we go on to the other characters and the huge success that followed, I’d like to talk about your drawing style. Your work is noted for its symmetry and simplicity. Each frame is very economical. You said your father was an architect who presumably had a healthy regard for straight lines; and your mother was a lawyer who dealt in facts. I think you are a product of exactitude.

  Tom (laughing): Well I can’t argue with that. I do like precision. I always work a three-part gag sequence; three frames: context, conflict, outcome. People say it’s like a three-act story structure but I think of it more as a boxing move: a feint, a draw and then bang – the punchline. There is nothing in any of those three frames that shouldn’t be there. And everything is always in the ‘now’, which is completely opposite to real life.

  Germaine: What do you mean?

  Tom: Well, in a cartoon strip each frame or panel is a moment, a moment frozen in time. But in life that’s not the case, is it? I mean, this moment, this thing we call ‘now’, has already gone, and so has this – and this.

  Germaine: You make that sound sad. Is that your tragedy?

  Tom: What do you mean?

  Germaine: That there is no ‘now’ for Tom Hannah.

  Tom: There is no ‘now’ for anybody. There is no time associated with now. It’s a point. A dot. It exists between what we remember and what will be, or what we think will be, or hope will be, or expect or whatever. So in that sense, everything exists in our mind – as a memory or an expectation. If not that, then it’s a dream. The world is in here, not out there.

  Germaine: That sounds like a solipsistic point of view – nothing exists outside of the mind.

  Tom: It’s not so much that nothing exists… it’s… well, if I tell you an anecdote that didn’t actually happen, you will still hear it and imagine it, and it will become a record stored in your memory. And a m
emory of something that actually did happen, that’s a record too. They sit side-by-side in your head and are equally imagined. And if you didn’t know that my anecdote wasn’t true, then to you they’d both be real. Right?

  Germaine (laughing): Right – I think. Let’s rejoin the interview, which I hope is real. You mentioned earlier a cartoon grammar. What did you mean by that?

  Tom: I meant there are rules that I follow. For example, Scraps always faces left-to-right, that’s because he is driving the action forwards. Obstacles, such as the always-angry restaurant owner, appear from the right. They are impeding the flow. If Scraps’s tail is up it means he’s happy, down and he’s not, similarly with Plenty’s claws – out and she’s getting cross. Billy’s quills, the Pelican’s eyes – they all convey consistent signals.

  Germaine: There’s a lot of violence in your cartoons. And the violent characters are the females: the always-angry restaurant owner and Plenty the Cat. The male characters are peaceful and put-upon. Why is that?

  Tom: I don’t know. I don’t think it’s intentional. It’s just how it’s become.

  Germaine: Are the Scraps characters based on real people?

  Tom: Partly.

  Germaine: But you won’t say whom?

  Tom: I’d rather not. Besides, mostly they grew out of each other. The Pelican, then the always-angry restaurant owner, then Billy and finally Plenty. Five’s a nice number. You can always have an outsider with an odd number.

  Germaine: The always-angry restaurant owner – she doesn’t have a name. Why is that?

  Tom: Because as far as the strip is concerned, she is important only as a foil to Scraps’s adventures. She doesn’t need a name. In fact, I prefer her not to have a name.

  Germaine: Isn’t that a bit mean?

  Tom: I’ve never thought of it in those terms.

  Germaine: You don’t feel obligated?

  Tom: To what?

  Germaine: To your characters.

  Tom: I don’t think so… no.

  Germaine: Can I turn the conversation towards a more recently painful part of your life for a moment? The death of your father.

  Tom: Yes.

  Germaine: Your mother struggled, I understand. Emotionally. With your father’s death.

  Tom: Naturally. We all did. A sudden death is unsatisfactory in many ways. There is no time to say the things you would have liked to say. And he was so healthy-looking: huge and hale and hearty and… well, we didn’t know there was anything wrong with his heart. He was a huge man yet so gentle. I can’t remember him ever being cross. He didn’t really suit the modern world. Mum always said he was a ditherer but he wasn’t, not in my eyes, he was just gentle. Gentle and wise. I suppose it was true you could never get a decision out of him, though. He had a lot of self-doubt.

  Germaine: He died two years ago?

  Tom: Yes. I wasn’t ready for it. I suppose no one ever is.

  Germaine: Did your art help you in managing the mourning process?

  Tom: You would think so but not really. When something like that happens nothing else seems to matter. At least, not to me. The hardest thing was being with other people. I resented their happiness. It became physically difficult to go out.

  Germaine: Did your father’s death have an effect on your approach to work? To your characters?

  Tom: I don’t think so. Are you still trying to work out who they're based on?

  Germaine: Not at all. Let's return to the early days. How did you first get into print?

  Tom: Five years after I saw the fox, about three or four years after I left college. At my final year’s showcase I met the editor of a weird little science magazine. She wanted to see more of my work, I didn’t have much but she was good enough to take me on as an illustrator.

  Germaine: Did you showcase Scraps?

  Tom: One strip. I didn’t feel ready and there was only Scraps and the Pelican. The others came later.

  Germaine: And why a pelican?

  Tom (laughing): Why not? I love pelicans.

  Germaine: So there you are, working on a science magazine and what, cartooning in the evening?

  Tom: Pretty much – and sending off to agencies and newspapers – anywhere really. It took those years to develop, to work out the characters. It was a slow burn. I was still working on my style.

  Germaine: Let’s come to Gerard Borkmann and the Borkmann Creative Agency. That was your breakthrough?

  Tom: It was. The science magazine had folded and I had no income. I decided to walk my work around the agents in London. It was a tough assignment. The feeling in those days was that animal cartoons were tired and not saleable in an adult market. Urbanites with angst were taking all the column space. The last agent on my list was Borkmann’s.

  Germaine: He had a fierce reputation.

  Tom: Oh yes, and he still does. He didn’t give me any time at all. I didn’t get past his receptionist. But I left six strips anyway. A week later he called me, him personally, and spent about half an hour shouting at me about why it wasn’t a commercial proposition, why the situation was poorly conceived, why there weren’t enough characters – what I didn’t realise then, and I do now, is that for him, that was constructive feedback.

  Germaine: And he took you on?

  Tom: Not quite. He said I could draw but Scraps needed work. So, I did some research, staying out and watching the night creatures come out to play – hedgehogs, cats, foxes. Dawn and dusk are the best times. And one night I was walking past an alleyway and I saw a cook chasing a cat away from his dustbins. That was when it all came together. I went back to Borkmann a few weeks later and he still shouted at me, but this time he took me on.

  Germaine: Do you have a good creative working relationship?

  Tom: We’re friends. He is an old-school agent. He talks about percentage-points and break-clauses. ‘Points off the top, I want points off the top,’ he shouts whenever I visit his office. I have no idea what that means but I love that phrase.

  Germaine: Going back to your style, some people have compared you to a draughtsman rather than an artist.

  Tom: That’s nice of them.

  Germaine (laughing): But the order and structure in your work seems at odds with your appearance. You have a very individualistic look, if you don’t mind my saying. Is the moustache part of your Tash persona? I’m wondering if Tash is one person and Tom Hannah is another.

  Tom: The man behind the moustache? I like that idea but it’s not true. We’re all one Tom in here. At least I hope we are. But my advice to anyone out there is never grow facial hair, not even a little goatee. Once you’ve got something like this on your face you can never get rid of it. You look naked if you do; pale and insubstantial.

  Germaine: It gets you noticed.

  Tom: Only in social situations – not in terms of selling my work.

  Germaine: You mentioned earlier that Scraps is a voice you can use to express opinions, and in some respects he must mirror your values. Is the same true of the other characters? Do they represent other facets of your personality?

  Tom: I don’t think so. I know them, I know their personalities, I know their voices, but I don’t always know what they’ll say next. In that sense they are distinct from me, they have their own lives. But that’s true of any author-character dynamic, isn’t it?

  Germaine: I sometimes think that Scraps has a fondness for Plenty.

  Tom (laughing): Let’s not go there. I get parodied enough as it is.

  Germaine: I’m sure. But what about the relationship between creators and their characters. You don’t feel any obligations, no responsibilities towards them at all? Come on, don’t you think the always-angry restaurant owner really should have a name?

  Tom: I suppose it’s fun to wonder about them. You know, imagine what they do when the lens isn’t on them.

  Germaine: What do you mean by that?

  Tom: Well, let’s take the term ‘creator’. While I was still at college I did a photography project about border
s and what lies beyond them. I took pictures of faces and cropped them and put them in larger frames, and the black border that surrounded them was the bit we couldn’t see, the bit that exists outside the photograph. In the end all I had were a lot of crop marks with a thin line of the original photographs joining them up. I called the whole thing What the Creator Sees. That’s what I mean about the lens, it captures only part of a bigger picture. You know, what’s outside the photograph, what’s in between the frames?

  Germaine: In between the frames?

  Tom: Don’t you ever wonder what happens in between the frames? What happens in that dark line that separates one frozen moment from the next?

  7

  On the Tuesday following his admittance to hospital, Tom was taken for another CT scan and again the results showed no damage or abnormalities. When Mister Wiley came to see him afterwards, he had with him the doctor who had wordlessly assessed Tom the previous day. Her name was Doctor Irma Muller and while Wiley again sat horizontally on the chair beside his bed, she stood and stared at Tom.

  ‘So,’ said Mister Wiley. ‘How do you feel today? Better than yesterday?’

  ‘Much better, thank you.’

  ‘And the memory? Still gaps?’

  ‘Just Sunday. I think.’

  ‘Good.’

  Mister Wiley passed the notes he had brought with him to Doctor Muller. She looked through them, taking her time. They asked him to walk up and down the ward, and then they asked him the same questions they’d been asking since he’d arrived – how he felt, what he remembered, what his thoughts were. They asked him cognitive questions and watched him closely. Finally, Wiley shifted in his seat and looked at his watch. ‘I would say this patient is medically stable and fit for discharge, Doctor Muller, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘We should keep an eye on the short-term amnesia,’ she said. She tapped her notes. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Good,’ said Wiley. ‘I think we might have our bed back. Will there be someone at home today?’

  ‘My wife.’

  He nodded. ‘Try to take things easy. And I want you to contact your doctor if you start to feel agitated again. Any questions?’