27
2007
‘I think this is the most normal place we’ve ever been to together.’
Bel laughed. ‘I’m sorry if our – if my – urban… wanderings get a bit much for you.’
I leaned over and kissed her.
‘It’s nice to be somewhere that’s… objectively beautiful. No concrete.’ She shoved me. I went back to my book, and a short while later a dog barking in Italian distracted me. I looked up and saw Bel was staring at me now.
‘Si?’
She pressed her warmth into me. I ran my right palm over her hips, her skin oily from suntan lotion. My hand filled the gap in her back where it arched inwards. Her head was on my chest now. I stroked her hair with my right hand and held my book aloft with my left. I saw her right hand pop out from beneath her like a spring-loaded clown toy. She reached round the back of herself and pinged the clasp on her white bikini top free. Muffled laughter came from the direction of my chest. She sat up and her top stayed resting on my chest.
‘What do you reckon?’ she said, looking down at herself, smiling to herself, then looking back at me, winking.
I said, ‘Wow,’ and then after a pause to take it all in, ‘The teenage boy inside me is very grateful.’
She laughed. ‘I hope I make a good holiday buddy. Come for a swim? It’s so hot.’
‘Absolutely.’
I put the book down and ran after her towards the shore.
As we splashed into the water, I asked her, ‘Are there jellyfish in Sardinia, do you think?’
‘I don’t care!’ was her response. ‘Let them sting us.’ She plunged straight up to her neck and started swimming away, yelling, ‘Catch me!’
I replied, ‘Oh, I’ll catch you!’ and she screamed. I caught up with Bel and threw my arms around her. She locked her thighs round me and we bobbed in the water. The sunlight dappled on the water, refracted in a million different ways. I sank my head beneath the surface, and the sound in my ears changed from the squall of birds and children to a dull, muted gloop of comings and goings as gentle waves washed across us.
The sea here was an unusually bright colour, the kind of azure you see in holiday brochures but seldom in real life. The waters were calm. The whole bay was a geographical anomaly.
‘Look at the tower!’ said Bel.
My eyes were drawn across the horizon to a ruined brown fort on a little sandy spit.
‘It’s called the Hairy Tower,’ I said.
She sniggered, wiping saltwater from her eyes with her hand, squinting in defiance of the sun. ‘What?’
‘Seriously. You don’t believe me? You can look in the guidebook back in the hotel room. I read it on the balcony after breakfast.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ she purred in my ear, running her left hand slowly across my jaw, seeming to savour it, to be making a mental mould of it.
‘I’ll show you.’
She swam in front of me.
‘Look at me,’ she ordered, sternly.
‘I’m always looking at you.’
‘I want you to look at me. Whatever I’m doing. I want your eyes on me. Always. Mine will be on you.’ Her mock seriousness broke into laughter.
‘I can do that.’ I stared into Bel’s eyes.
She paused. Everything seemed so still and calm; everything was so well balanced. It was a mirage. The world is tilted, the universe so big we can only know the most minuscule fraction of what’s out there. Horrors are everywhere; disasters come from nowhere, sneak up on you. But sometimes you can be tricked into thinking that, for a few ticks on the second hand, there is no more terror, there is no more anxiety. The equilibrium can be so perfect for such a short period that it blinds you; it hypnotises you. Chance can seem like fate, a bit of good luck like a masterplan successfully implemented. We bobbed in the water. I felt no steel on my shoulders, no tungsten in my knees, no lead in my ankles. Just floating. Just living. Life. A pure evocation of life. A scene someone would write in a novel.
‘I want to eat clams and spaghetti tonight,’ Bel said, her face painted with excitement. ‘And I want to drink Asti.’ She ran her hands through wet hair. ‘Do you want to join me, my love?’
28
2008
The empty studio was eerie. It was tricksy with space. Was it really a cube that could contain thousands of people stacked on top of each other? When Kate walked in I wondered if perspective was about to play a joke on me. Would she be towering over me, then pick me up in her hand?
I saw something on the other side of the studio; it must have wanted to be seen. It looked like a giant… bone? I walked over to the corner of the cavernous room and tried to yank the bone out. It was actually flat and seemingly made from some kind of wood, like pine?
‘Kate!’ Kate was standing by the studio doors, holding a clipboard and writing something. ‘Kate!’
‘What do you want? I’ve got to do some paperwork. And there’s some videos I want to show you.’
‘Come and give us a hand. I saw this from over there. I want to…’
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know. Help me get it out from behind here, will you?’
‘God, it’ll tear my blouse.’
‘Pull it.’
‘I am.’
‘Harder.’
I yanked the bone until I heard a monstrous tearing noise. I fell on my back, and tears of laughter erupted from Kate’s eyes. I looked at the giant bone.
Kate read aloud from the two lines of text: ‘“I Lo My D.” I lo my d? What the fuck does that mean?’
I realised. ‘I Love My Dog! I wish I hadn’t seen the damn thing.’
A pause. A crack. A pain emanating from the crown of my head. Something had just smashed down onto it. A twelve-foot-long arboreal approximation – and written on the side of it were the words ‘The Wrong Tree’.
I dusted myself down and threw the stupid props to one side.
‘Edit suite?’
‘Yup.’
The edit suite was a vomitorium of yellows and beige. All shades were represented, from citrine to camel. The flimsiness of the whole set-up never ceased to amaze me. The exterior of the studios was so tough, so rugged. Inside, however, everything was clad in crappy half-finished padding and botched paint. It was as if we were being constantly reminded that we were just here for a while, that we could be kicked out at any moment; further, that everything which went on here and the stuff we made, the programmes we produced, were forgettable, temporary pieces that weren’t anchored to anything, that didn’t matter to anyone.
A row of shelves along one wall was labelled with things like ‘PV’ and ‘TX’ and ‘Cam 1, 2, 3, 4, 5’. Above the shelves was a clear light, and imprinted in red capital letters on the front of it was the word BOMB. I pointed up at it.
‘Don’t you remember the 1970s?’ said Kate. ‘You know… all the fucking bombs and stuff?’
‘Yeah but I’ve never seen that sign before,’ I said.
‘Well let’s hope we never have to see it again.’
Computers did the work today, but there were still old editing machines and video players scattered around, cables trailing out of them like they were on a drip in an intensive care ward.
Kate sat at a desk, her face cradled by both palms. She pressed a couple of buttons to rewind what she was watching.
‘Look at this.’
The tape whirred and the picture jumped around on the screen.
‘Old Mids TV idents.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘From the 1970s.’
‘Ah, right!’
*
[A pushy voice argues from the speakers.]
‘This is Mids!’
[A backing track twinkles; fingers run over all the keys of a piano; a jazzy drum and trumpet double act pipe up. A montage of pictures begins. A crash-zoom from the top of the Rotunda down onto two girls in their twenties walking along New Street; a crash-zoom into a group of four girls in a nightclub, giggli
ng away and drinking Martinis (factually inaccurate – it would have been sherry or a snowball); a crash-zoom into a row of girls in bikinis standing (and smiling) under a sign reading MISS MIDS TV 1974; a crash-zoom into eight girls frolicking in bikinis by a swimming pool. At least it looks like a swimming pool, but there’s something big and concrete and angular right behind them. They’re not in Sardinia.]
*
Kate looked over her shoulder at me and raised her left eyebrow at this point.
*
[A crash-zoom into a single stripper wearing a fur coat and some knickers, gyrating on a podium at a club somewhere on Broad Street. Then a spinning M appears, and the angry sod doing the voiceover returns.]
‘Television… that’s also… for HER!’
*
I guffawed.
‘Do you see what women in this region used to have to put up with?’ Kate grumbled.
‘There were girls wearing bikinis in I Love My Dog!’ I confessed. ‘I’m as bad as the rest of them.’
Kate looked drained. ‘Almost.’
‘That is truly awful. Are there any more?’
‘I’ve been through the looking glass. Dozens.’
‘And Miss Mids TV 1974?’
‘That got your attention, didn’t it?’
‘I’m fucking appalled, OK. Is that what you want to hear? I want to be scandalised.’
‘Do you want to see it?’
‘Go on then.’
Kate got up and fetched a battered video.
*
[Some footage of Birmingham at night, trying to set the scene for glamour.]
A camp feather duster of a voiceover intones: ‘Direct from the centre of fabulous Birmingham… it’s Miss Mids TV 1974!’
[A title track begins. It sounds like it should be the music to open a programme of live horse racing. There’s a clomping rhythm and some jaunty synthesisers. The pictures accompanying it are of the contestants in daily life – a girl on a supermarket checkout, another cutting hair, someone acting up for the cameras as a secretary in an office, another girl in a stewardess uniform walking through the doors leading out from Birmingham Airport. Now the programme begins, and the building they’re filming it in suddenly becomes all too familiar.]
The soppy voiceover again: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this year’s Miss Mids comes live from Birmingham’s brand new Central Library. Where, for today’s girls, it’s not the words that matter, but the figures! So join us as we find out which of our region’s most beautiful lovelies will triumph, to be crowned… Miss Mids 1974!’
[Now more shots of the girls standing by that pool outside the library, wearing bikinis, under the MISS MIDS TV 1974 sign; then the girls walking around among the shelves and ostentatiously picking books up. One of the girls, wearing a navy ballgown and a sash which says MISS COVENTRY, picks up a tome, on the cover of which is an elevated motorway cocking its slip road leg against the ground. The words on the front read Birmingham’s Concrete Dreams. She flicks through it in ten seconds then puts her right index finger up to her lips and makes an astonished face.]
*
‘Fast forward it,’ I said to Kate.
‘My pleasure.’
*
‘…think it’s a case of dialectics or just the subjectivity of the human experience, the…’
*
‘Fucking hell… is that? It can’t be.’
Kate stared at the screen. ‘Baxter. Exactly.’
‘Well I’ll be…’
‘Why in the name of God is Baxter presenting Miss Mids 1974?’
‘Why is Baxter wearing a shirt with a huge collar and frilly front?’
*
‘…individual at the centre of things, the individual experience trumping the objective, the collective…?’
Miss Coventry, now in a canary-yellow one-piece swimsuit, and with a hugely bouffant and impeccably blow-dried hairstyle, flashes a huge grin. ‘Well, bab, we certainly don’t have many customers in the bakery by the Lady Godiva statue talking much about dialectical materialism when they come in for their cob at lunchtime and have to choose between cheese or ’am – I think it’s just a case of “whatever you fancy at the time”, to be honest. But I’ve been learning about Marx’s writings in my social sciences course at Essex University, and I’d be happy to teach you anything you wanted to know about the ins and outs of political philosophy. Just say the word.’
[Baxter is stunned into an awkward silence.]
*
‘Good on you, girl!’ yelled Kate. I nodded agreement. ‘That’s enough of that,’ she said, reaching for the stop button.
‘Why have you been looking at this disastrous tripe?’
‘The 50 Years of Mids TV special. Didn’t I tell you?’
‘Maybe. Will it be good?’
‘It will be good, because we’ll make it good. And if I’m honest I’ll quite enjoy telling the story of this TV station. Though, as you’ve seen, it was a fucking risible place for women to work for most of its existence, an existence when it was churning out mostly very, very bad programming. We’ll have to point that out in the doc.’
‘Good old Mids.’
‘Good old Mids.’ Kate picked up a phone. The wire hung loose from the handset; it had been sliced clean through. ‘This place is falling apart. Nothing works and everything’s old.’ She paused. ‘Like you. We’re still working on bloody VHS. If they shut us down, this 50 Years of Mids film will be the only memory people have left of us.’
I bit my fingernails and hummed. ‘Show me another ident.’
‘Do we have to?’
‘Go on.’
Kate sighed. ‘This one’s creepy.’
*
[The same pushy voice argues from the speakers.]
‘This is Mids!’
[A different backing track, more dreamy. Keyboards dance and I sense a flute about to drop in. A flute drops in. A montage of pictures begins. Dawn. The sun is rising. A scene showing two tower blocks framing a roundabout. A crash-zoom in on a blonde woman sleeping on a bed in the centre of the roundabout. A fisheye lens pans from ground level, past the same blonde woman sleeping on a bed in the middle of a jagged white concrete plaza, then heads up, up, up, scanning an enquiring eye over the totality of a craggy collection of buildings: it’s the Mids TV HQ. Next: a tower, skinnier than Mids. It’s the BT Tower. The camera pans down, this time from top to bottom, and the blonde woman stands at ground level. Now an empty plaza, again with a bed in the middle of it and the same blonde woman lying on it. The camera pans up to show two cliff walls of concrete and windows converging on a point. Now the view is of the same place from above. A square is marked out by the sides of the Central Library. The white bed is in the centre of the square. A spinning M appears perfectly centred on the square. Another voiceover.]
‘It’s a new day… and a new era!’
*
It was eerily familiar. ‘I’ve been dreaming about the idents.’
‘You’re in a worse place than I thought.’
‘Seriously. That blonde woman is in my dreams. Constantly.’
‘The one from the idents?’
‘Yes! I’ve seen her in photos too. What the hell is happening?
‘Shut up, you’re imagining it.’
‘Maybe. Who is she?’
‘Some woman… some model?’
Kate went back to looking for pieces of film she could use.
I spied the tapes lined up on a shelf along one of the side walls of the room. They were marked with sticky labels, titles written in capitals in felt tip pen.
‘This place is about as low-tech as you can imagine,’ I said, ostensibly to myself. ‘The public probably think there are hundreds of people working here, shiny offices, computers everywhere, glamour. It’s a fucking joke.’ I scanned along the titles. ‘This one looks good.’
‘What’s that?’ Kate looked up.
I pulled the tape down and gave it to Kate. She read aloud from the sticky label.
‘HOW DO YOU MAKE A TV STATION? THE SETTING UP OF MIDS TV.’
‘Bang it on.’
‘Give me a ciggie, I will.’
I pulled out a pack. Kate daintily removed a fag, sparked it, put the tape in and pressed play.
*
[The colours in the film are saturated, as if they’ve been turned up too high. Tracking shot along a brightly lit corridor. Quite skilful camera work. Elegant. A plummy voice appears from nowhere.]
‘1968. Britain is changing. The Midlands is changing more than any other part of it.’
[Now an aerial shot of Birmingham, dwelling on cranes and roads and office buildings. A lingering overhead of the Bull Ring, which looks like a kind of child’s toy set. Blocky and overblown. Fat and symmetrical. Cars circle round and through the complex like ants, moving slowly, smoothly, steadily. Next is an overhead shot of Paradise Circus. The middle of the roundabout is a huge mass of building materials and construction machines. Now the camera lingers on the Mids TV HQ. The whole thing appears blindingly white, freshly finished.]
‘A dynamic region needs a dynamic television station. Mids is that. Years in the planning and now ready to open, Mids Television will revolutionise the way the Midlands and its go-ahead residents get their media.’
[Men in suits in a boardroom, talking and smoking. Fat men.]
‘Various panels and government meetings in the 1960s. The conclusion? Something had to be done. The Midlands needed its own television station. Step forward a progressive bunch of true visionaries who would make it happen. These men knew what it took to bring television to the Midland masses. They certainly weren’t doing it for the money. They were doing it because it was a vocation. Visionary men like these needed practical men who could make things happen on the ground.’
The Wall in the Head Page 17
