The Thief of Time

by John Boyne

  The director called for quiet on the set, the boy’s magazine was whipped away to his protests, the technicians all stepped out of the shot and the playback began. Minnie and the boy sat up straight and chatted briefly while we all waited for the director to cry ‘Action!’ When he did, the scene burst into life.

  ‘I don’t care,’ said Minnie, lighting a cigarette. ‘You can say what you like about that Carla Jenson. She’s a bad lot and I don’t want you ‘angin’ aroun’ with ‘er, do you ‘ear me?’ Her accent was very East End, very Cockney, while I knew that in real life she spoke like a blue-blooded aristocrat. Nobody probably had the first clue as to what her real voice actually sounded like.

  ‘Oh, Aun’ie Minnie!’ cried the boy in despair, as if the entire adult world was ganging up against him and conspiring to keep him in short trousers and lollipops for ever. ‘We weren’t doin’ anyfink wrong. We were just playing my new Nintendo game, thass all.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ said Auntie Minnie. ‘That’s as may be. But if that’s the case I don’t see why she ‘ad to ‘ave her blouse unbuttoned down to her navel, do you, showin’ off her belongin’s as if they were there for all the world to see.’

  ‘That’s the way girls wear ‘em now, innI’?’ he replied in disgust at her traditionalism. ‘Don’t you know anyfink?’

  ‘I don’t need to know anyfink, Davy Cutler, ‘cept that you ain’t to see that tar’ no more! Do you ‘ear me?’

  ‘She ain’t no tar’, Aun’ie Minnie. I wish she were!’

  Throughout their dialogue, two of the cameras rotated slightly on their dollies while the other two shot both characters from over each other’s shoulder. As they got to the end of that part of the scene, one of the cameras spun around in preparation for the next shot and aimed towards the door. From behind me – as opposed to behind them where he was about to appear from – the sound of a door slamming was heard, and then my nephew appeared in the living room, slumping down on the ground before them, groaning loudly.

  ‘Flamin’ ‘eck!’ shouted Minnie, jumping up and going over to where her ‘son’ lay, even more blood having been applied in the minute or two since I had left him. ‘What the ‘ell’s after appenin’ to you then, our Sam?’

  ‘That’ll be that Carl,’ said Davy, looking remarkably pleased now that the heat was off him and his tar’ for a few moments. ‘He’ll have found out about our Sam doin’ his missus.’

  ‘You keep that out,’ shouted Minnie, pointing towards the boy’s nose. ‘That’s not it, is it son?’ she asked quietly, her face slowly moving from disbelief to disappointment in three well-trained movements.

  ‘You shut it,’ groaned Tommy to Davy, who was possibly a younger brother or a cousin or a foster child or just some stray who’d walked in off the streets and moved in with them.

  ‘It’s the troof,’ said Davy defensively.

  ‘I said ...’ long pause from Tommy. ‘Shut it.’ Another pause. ‘You ‘eard.’

  Minnie looked from one boy to the other as she cradled Tommy’s head in her hands and then, mysteriously, looked out towards me – or what I can only assume to be ‘the distance’ – and her face contorted into a sudden release of misery. The tears came, she dropped Tommy’s head on the floor where we could all hear it bang suddenly and then she ran through the living room door crying and, a moment later, the sound-effects man behind me slammed another one once again.

  ‘And cut!’ cried the director. ‘Lovely, people. Absolutely lovely.’

  I was pleased by Tommy’s invitation to spend an afternoon with him on the set of his soap as I desperately needed a break from my own affairs. Caroline and I were developing a somewhat tempestuous relationship and I was beginning to regret her presence. I couldn’t fault her for her work ethic; she arrived before I did in the mornings and was always still there when I went home – although it was perfectly possible that she was simply waiting for me to leave before calling it a day herself. She buried herself in short reports on the relatively brief history of our station and long ones on the condition of the broadcasting world in Britain today. When she spoke to me, she used terms such as ‘market share’, ‘demographics’ and ‘core audience’ as if they would be new to me, slowing down and speaking up when she used them in case I wasn’t keeping up with her, when in fact I had been thinking in such terms – if not actually using those very words – two hundred years before. She kept three small pocket-sized televisions on her desk, with their volumes turned down, one tuned in to our own station, the other two tuned in to the BBC and another rival. Every so often she would glance up, look from one to the other and decide which programme would be more appealing to her if she was simply sitting at home, her feet up on the settee, settling down for an afternoon’s viewing. She made a note of how many times our programmes won out and presented her results to me at the end of each week.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘only twelve per cent of the time is there something on here that I actually want to watch. The other two stations pull in an eighty-eight per cent share between them.’

  ‘Well, twelve per cent is a lot more than our current market share, Caroline, so I find that terribly encouraging.’

  She frowned and stared at me, unsure if she was wrong to condemn our programming after that response and retired to her desk to do some further analysis. I found that I enjoyed winding her up, to use the current parlance, and that her extreme enthusiasm made her an easy target for jokes. She appeared to be devoting every moment of her day to her work which, in general, is no bad thing in a senior employee, but then I have never been the kind of man who has seen constant and unrelenting work as the ultimate test of a person’s character. Caroline was attempting to convince me that she was the right woman for James’s job, when all she was really doing was proving how far from that position she currently was.

  In the meantime, I continued to slave away for six, sometimes seven, days a week. I grew tired of working, and the fact that I was less than interested in the mundane, day to day aspects of our business did not help matters any. I continued to hold weekly meetings with Alan, which Caroline also attended in her capacity as P.W.’s representative, but I broadened them now and sought opinions from our various department heads as well. Caroline always sat on my right hand at these meetings and tended to want to direct the manner in which the conversation went. I gave her a fairly free rein most of the time because her opinions, while not always correct, were generally interesting and everyone agreed that she was bringing a fresh point of view to the station.

  ‘Of course,’ she pointed out at one of our regular meetings, when we were discussing a 5 per cent drop off in market share between 6 and 7 p.m., ‘the big mistake you made around here was getting rid of Tara Morrison. She was perfect for pulling in the tits ‘n’ ass crowd.’

  ‘We didn’t get rid of her,’ I snapped back, noticing how she liked to impress the male dominated room by acting like one of the boys. ‘She left of her own volition.’

  ‘Tara Morrison was one of this station’s few true stars,’ she said.

  ‘There’s Billy Boy Davis,’ said Alan predictably. ‘The Kid.’

  ‘Oh, please,’ she said. ‘I’ve got grandparents who are younger than him. Sure he’s a name and he’s got something of a history but that doesn’t cut it any more. We need new, fresh talent. Raw talent. Now if we could just lure Tara back ...’ she said quietly, and I shook my head.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘She seems quite happy at the Beeb. Roger?’ I looked towards Roger Tabori, the head of our news department, who looked like a member of Michael Corleone’s family with his swarthy Italian looks and slicked-back hair.

  ‘I’ve heard some things,’ he said, shrugging lightly. ‘She’s not ecstatic about what’s going on there but she’s under contract so

  ‘She was under contract here,’ said Caroline.

  ‘No,’ I said forcibly, irritated now by the manner in which she was speaking of something that she didn’t fully understand. ‘
Her contract came to an end. She chose not to renew it. She got a better offer.’

  ‘Then you should have offered her more money, shouldn’t you?’ she asked sweetly. I stared at her, blinking a little, and my smile faded.

  ‘Apparently she wanted six O’clock,’ continued Roger, defusing the situation slightly. ‘But they wouldn’t give it to her because Meg would have walked if they had. So she asked for one O’clock and they said no. Not sure why ‘cos she could have worked there. They wanted her for Breakfast TV and she balked at that of course. They’ve lined up a few documentary things, some “Celebrity Ready, Steady, Cook”, a few segments like that. Nothing solid as yet.’

  ‘She should have sorted these things out before she left us then, shouldn’t she?’ I muttered, smiling at Caroline now. ‘Who knows, maybe she’ll walk out on them and come running back here with her tail between her legs.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Caroline and in truth, so did I, although I found that I did miss her a little for, if nothing else, she was always good company. As James had been. But he was dead and she was working for the competition. ‘But, anyway, there is one other issue we should discuss. We have to get rid of Martin Ryce-Stanford. And quickly.’

  There was an audible intake of breath around the room when she said this and I leaned back and tapped the edge of the desk quietly with my pencil. Martin Ryce-Stanford was the man who lived in the upper three storeys of the house in which my own basement apartment was located. He had been a senior minister during the middle period of Mrs Thatcher’s reign of terror and had lost his job when he got on the wrong end of his boss during a debate about the future of the coalmines. Martin thought they should close them all down and hang the consequences. Mrs T. felt the same way but knew that it would be too dangerous a thing to do; better to announce the closure of many, then give in slightly after the inevitable outrage and allow some to remain open while succeeding in closing the ones that she wanted to get rid of in the first place. Curiously, considering his own position, Martin thought this was the ultimate act of political cynicism and gave a scathing account of Mrs Thatcher’s plans on Newsnight one evening. By midnight she had phoned him, fired him and threatened to have him castrated, after which he became something of a bete noire for her during her remaining years in power. He was one of those characters who helped John Major to power in 1990, despite the fact that the pair could not tolerate each other, and he had hoped that this unexpected assistance would secure him a place in the Lords. Unfortunately for him, favours do not always get repaid and so he was reduced to writing scathing articles about the leadership in whatever newspaper would have him. He developed a previously untapped skill at political cartooning and began to illustrate his articles with line drawings of ministers as different types of hybrids, their bodies the bodies of appropriate animals, their faces their own. Thus, John Major himself waddled around with the gait of a small duck, Michael Portillo stretched out his arms to reveal the plumage of the peacock, and Gillian Shepard scampered around the page with the body of a small Rottweiler. Eventually, it became clear that Martin’s writing was a little too one-sided – he criticised absolutely everything, no matter whether it was a good idea or not. He was the ultimate no-man. He was considered politically unsound, incredibly biased and ridiculously prejudiced against anyone still in any position of power. There were those who believed he was mentally unstable. Naturally, the time had come for his promotion to television.

  I got to know Martin quite well after I moved into the apartment in Piccadilly. He invited me to dine with him from time to time, along with his young, shrewish wife Polly and whichever partner I could muster up for the evening, and our evenings were always absurdly hilarious. His right-wing beliefs were so far gone that they could only have been an affectation. He appeared to take a delight in outraging people with the things that he said; Polly barely listened to him. I believed I had the mark of him and wouldn’t fall for his games, but whatever lady I brought with me to the table inevitably found herself growing more and more outraged as the night wore on, to the point where she would either stand up and leave or attack him in return, a terrible social faux pas, the very kind of extreme reaction into which he enjoyed goading his guests in the first place.

  It occurred to me shortly after the launch of the station how entertaining it would be to translate the madness and provocation of those dinner-time conversations to the television and I invited Martin to host his own thrice-weekly political chat show. The format was simple: a thirty-minute show, twenty-four not including commercial breaks and titles, with two guests each episode. Usually a political figure and an Outraged Liberal. The political figure would say all the right things for the sake of their own career. The Outraged Liberal – usually an actor, singer, writer or some such thing – would run the politically correct line. And Martin would throw in nuggets of bad taste just to rile them both. As the show progressed it became clear that the politician was doing all he or she could to embrace the party line while never going so far as actually to condemn Martin’s obviously ridiculous points of view. And at the same time, the Outraged Liberal would grow more and more furious, using phrases such as ‘this whole thing disgusts me’ or ‘my God, man, how can you continue to think like that?’ and there was always a chance that the O.L. would throw their glass of diet-still-water-no-ice-no-lemon over the monstrous figure sitting before them. All in all, it was great fun and one of my better ideas.

  Eventually, however, the fun simply wore off. Martin Ryce-Stanford began to appear not so much provocative as just plain stupid. Quality news shows caught up with him and his brand of personal right-wing bias took on the appearance of a man who was simply out of time. It became more and more difficult to find credible guests for his show; its nadir coming when the political figure was the wife of a political secretary to a newly elected health spokesman from the Liberal Democrat party, and the Outraged Liberal was a young man who had enjoyed a number three pop record six years earlier and hadn’t been heard from since, but who was suddenly relaunching his career as an author of children’s books featuring a hobgoblin with a variety of magic powers. Market share didn’t just decline so much as evaporate. The show was a dud and we all knew it. But, still, Martin was my friend and I for one still enjoyed his company and didn’t relish the idea of giving him the boot.

  ‘We have to get rid of Martin Ryce-Stanford, Matthieu,’ repeated Caroline. ‘The show’s a joke.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Roger Tabori, nodding his head wisely.

  ‘I didn’t even know we still ran that show,’ said Alan, looking surprised by the revelation.

  ‘We need change,’ said Marcia Goodwill, head of light entertainment, tapping a pen on her blotter.

  ‘Something to bring the young people in,’ said Cliff Macklin, director of imported programming, joining in the Greek chorus.

  ‘You need to fire him. And soon,’ said Caroline.

  I shrugged. She was right, I knew she was right, but still ... ‘Isn’t there any way that we could just change the format of the show?’ I asked. ‘Bring it a little more up to date?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Caroline. ‘We could get rid of the host.’

  ‘But isn’t there anything else we could do? Other than firing him, I mean?’

  Caroline thought about it. ‘Well, I suppose we could have him shot. That might bring back the viewers. Create a bit of publicity. Bring in a new host then. Someone with a little sex appeal.’ I stared at her in surprise, unsure whether she was being serious or not. ‘Kidding,’ she said eventually, seeing my expression. ‘Honestly, it’s like you’re auditioning to be the Outraged Liberal yourself

  ‘It seems to me’, said Roger Tabori, ‘that the problem isn’t so much with the format of the show as with the host. I think the political chat show still has some life left in it. We just need to find a new front for it. Someone with a little more ... I don’t know ... appeal to the public. Someone with balls, frankly.’

  ‘And tits,’ said Carol
ine. ‘If we can get someone with balls and tits, we’ll have a winner on our hands.’

  I laughed. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Balls and tits. What exact corner of Amsterdam do we travel to in order to find someone who fills that description?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think we need go as far as Amsterdam, Matthieu,’ said Cliff Macklin.

  ‘Not when we know someone who can bring back the viewers in their droves,’ said Marcia Goodwill, warming to the attack. I began to feel like I was being ambushed, as if this entire conversation had been rehearsed in advance, only with my part being spoken by an actor.

  ‘Who exactly are you thinking of?’ I asked with a sigh, looking directly at Caroline, their ringleader, who I began to think might have rather more going for her than I had realised before.

  ‘Well, it’s pretty bloody obvious, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘We have to win her back. No matter what the cost, we have to win her back. Pay her whatever she wants, make whatever deal she asks for, make the station revolve around her if we have to. But win her back, that’s what we’ve got to do. Tara says: it’s time to come home.’

  I shook my head and sighed, closing my eyes and blocking them all out for a few moments. I never wished that James was still alive more than at that exact moment.

  ‘It’s very impressive,’ I told Tommy as we sat in his dressing room after the close-ups and point-of-view shots were finished. ‘I never realised it took so many people to make a show like that. It was a lot simpler in the old days.’ I had never told my nephew about my NBC days, for obvious reasons, but the differences between the two could not have been more pronounced.

  ‘Don’t you ever leave your office and see what’s going on at your own station? he asked me with a smile.

  ‘Most of our stuff is imported,’ I said honestly. ‘Dramas, comedies and so on. All the home-grown product is news programming and current affairs stuff. It’s just a couple of people sitting around desks talking. We don’t need an awful lot for that.’