In May the All Stars, having conquered all before them at home, won in the European final in Paris. Jimmy scored the winning goal. 3-2. Alfredo hoisted the cup. The picture made the Buenos Aires Herald. Gavin had not travelled with Ed, Selçuk and Mac to see the game. He pleaded revision for his first year exams, which he passed with comfort. Jimmy came back to fail all of his own tests. He was re-slated to sit them again in September. Instead, he dropped out, never to return. Someone told Gavin that Jimmy had found a job in a warehouse, back home, packing and distributing books world-wide. He’d been reconciled with his wife.
Gavin had a last Christmas card from Jimmy. It said, “Keep playing, butt!” But he never did. In his second year he gave up Classical Studies for International Law. His parents were pleased.
The Bailey Report
“Here he comes,” said Geraint Owen, the sound engineer, to his cameraman.
“At last,” said Mickey Britt. “Stand by for irruptions, and assorted earthquakes, Ger.”
The two men were dressed for the weather, any weather, in Corporation issue black anoraks and wide waterproof trousers. They were dressed for waiting. They both looked down the funnel of the terraced street, houses on each side for almost half a mile and cars parked nose-to-tail, to where the street sloping down to the valley bottom abutted onto the main road. At the junction, where only double-yellow lines were free of vehicles, the car they recognised as his had stopped, and parked on the double-yellow lines. It was a silvery blue Bentley, a coupé, with amber tinted windows and low-slung doors which closed with an assuring clunk when he stepped onto the pavement and shut the one on the driver’s side. Right hand over left shoulder, without looking, he locked the car electronically.
A.J. Bailey was a man in late middle age. He had the broad, but loosely-held, shoulders of a middleweight boxer and the heavy legs of an Olympic oarsman, so he appeared to be longer above his tapered waist than below it. The late November morning was dank, edged with a coldness seeping down from the hills into the streets, but he wore neither overcoat nor raincoat, and no Corporation anorak, against the chill, only a bespoke single-breasted suit of grey worsted over a cobalt blue shirt with a button-down collar left open at the neck. As he strode up the street toward the waiting team he ran a comb through his thinning sandy-coloured hair, and he whistled, rather tunelessly, to himself.
At the far end of the long street, Donald Thomas, executive producer, sprawled across the back seat of a leased Corporation Volvo saloon. It was a diesel model, painted in Forest Green and with brown leather seats to match a walnut dash. The car came in the middle range of hired vehicles deemed suitable for someone at executive producer level. Donald Thomas curdled with resentment at the car’s silent signifying of his rank. He hated what it registered, that he was nearer sixty than fifty, and that this was it for him. He had his eyes closed as he sat and waited in the car. He drummed his fingers against the headrest.
From the front seat of the Volvo, May Onions, his PA for over a quarter century, had been keeping watch. She half-turned to the back, “He’s here, Donald,” before staring back down the street past the patient, immobile Geraint Owen and Mickey Britt. In the Volvo, Donald Thomas opened his eyes, but only to glare at the back of the seat in front of him. “Oh, he is, is he? At fucking long last… at fucking long last… as fucking usual.” Then, with a wrench of the handle, he opened the rear left-hand door of the Volvo and pulled himself up, and into the street. After the warmth of the car he shivered in the outside air and buttoned over a heavy cable knit sweater his fur-lined suede coat around his stomach. Not much of a belly, he felt, given his height, almost six foot, but maybe, he’d decided, enough of a belly to drive him to a gym someday soon. He ran a hand through the muss of back curls, with only a hint of becoming grey around the temples, and rubbed his prominent nose between finger and thumb. The twat, he thought. He stood stock still, as his presenter approached with a studied nonchalance, an insolent ease, which Donald Thomas hated even more than he disliked the Volvo the Corporation had bestowed upon him.
The late arrival waved at the crew of cameraman and sound recordist as he drew near, and blew a kiss, one made somehow into a lascivious gesture by sliding it off the palm of his turned over hand with a puff of his breath, to May Onions. She sucked on her lower lip and turned her back on him as she reached for a clipboard of notes in the car. May wore a woollen black bobble-hat over her auburn hair and a shiny black coat of stitched panels over blue jeans and suede ankle boots, so that she was, apart from a freckled face and sage-green eyes, quite covered up. The presenter smiled. He swivelled to greet his producer.
“Morning, Colonel,” he said. “Are we set? Best get cracking, eh?” and, infuriatingly, he treated the annoyed recipient of his off-hand delivery to a lop-sided grin which was not contemptuous at all, no need for that, just intentionally dyspeptic in its effect. On Donald Thomas, that is. No apologies, and absolutely no explanation, for this, after all, was Bailey, and Donald Thomas knew in an instant, as he had been forced to know it many times before, that his anger, without any real means of redress, would be futile, and that even reasonable complaint, albeit merely verbal, would be self-defeating in the face of the tantrum it would undoubtedly cause. So, he just grunted, in a mutter of an aside, “For fuck’s sake, Bailey,” and gestured vaguely to the patient, indifferent crew who had balanced their Styrofoam coffee containers on the bonnet of their white Ford Estate car, and were waiting for the action to begin.
Bailey strolled across the street to talk with Mickey Britt. In the recent past the cameraman would have had an assistant to lug the gear, to set up the camera and even to pull the focus for the shot, but no longer. Nor was there a lighting man with his array of blondes and brunettes and redheads, the aptly named devices, to derive or deny tint and colour from the glare or dimness of the natural light. Nowadays there was only the camera, its reduced operator, and a soundman to mike-up or point the muffled microphone to the talking head. Bailey often reflected on the incremental disappearance of the latter, of people like himself, from documentaries and factual programmes. Yet, thank God! he would add, not from the gritty nit-picking of the investigative reports in which he had long specialised. His gift, so to speak, and, he’d conclude looking at the accumulating pension pot any freelance was required to feed, the gift that kept giving… for a while yet anyway. He suddenly felt, and looked, genial.
“Where do’you want me, Michael, me old mucker?” asked Bailey of his cameraman, and both nodded at each other in the shared recognition that any star presenter knew with whom his best interests rested. And it was certainly not with any producer.
Mickey Britt gestured towards the backdrop behind them where the sloping street began to climb further upwards to the mountain which was more of a protuberance than a peak. It was one of those squat, rounded hills of bracken and boulders which clamped a sullen presence over all the vistas to be glimpsed from the valley’s floor of road, rail and river. To the left of the hill where it abruptly fell away and flattened out as if a shovel had cut into it was what they had come to investigate, or rather to show since the actual investigation, researched by May Onions and scripted by Donald Thomas, would be revealed by the footage Mickey Britt had already taken for Bailey’s final voice-over in studio. What they were about “in situ” was precisely that: to add the authenticating touch of actual presence and perceived involvement – the Bailey trademark.
In the near distance, through the camera’s viewfinder, men in yellow slipover jackets, and all with white or orange hard hats on, could be seen moving around the site. The soft thrum of dumper trucks mingled with the harsher revving of lorries in a suspension of whiteness, a dust flurry which never settled but floated amongst and beyond the encircling iron railings and open gates. This, in plain view, was the Mynydd y Caws waste disposal site, an open refuse disposal unit, set down on the cleared ground of a closed colliery’s former tip. That signifying pyramid of coal, once teetering to an insolent height over ho
uses and a school, had been levelled and grassed over after the Aberfan disaster of 1966. But the debris of industrial waste, just like the waste which had once spewed over these valleys, was still being re-cycled here for use elsewhere. If Bailey did irony he could have joined up the dots. Only Bailey did not do irony. Nor did he have any discernible political allegiance, not even cynicism or compassion. In life this made him, for those who did, like Donald Thomas, almost insupportable. On the box, however, it made for a strength of conviction that had all the direct simplicity of the best acting.
“We’ll use that behind you, Bill,” Mickey Britt told him. “You can assume it, there, over your right hand shoulder. It’ll be in sight all the time… for the viewers…great picture, Bill.”
Bailey allowed the liberty with his name. Some could, and some could not. For Mickey Britt, fellow incomer two generations removed, and as monoglot English a Celt as Bailey himself, there was no problem. Anyone else, though, had better know Arthur Joseph Bailey as “Mister Bailey” or call him “A.J.”, or, better still, just “Bailey” if they knew what was both good for them, and appropriate for him.
Donald Thomas had stood off to one side. He ambled forward in a proprietorial shuffle and with a self-announcing cough. He looked through the viewfinder as if his opinion of the shot was the one, in the first and last resort, which mattered. Bailey had already moved centre frame. Donald Thomas jiggled his bent-over head in approval. Mickey Britt took a final look-see, and gave Bailey the thumbs-up. Donald Thomas moved between Bailey and the camera. He held out his hand. May Onions hurried forward with a script. To check… to be certain… ins and outs… for continuity. He conferred with Bailey who simply shrugged. Geraint Owen confirmed there were: no aeroplanes, no cars, no vacuum cleaners, no music, no troublesome kids, no rowing households: only the ambient buzz of traffic and industry and a soughing wind off a bedraggled copse on the otherwise bare bones of the hill. Perfect.
“Right,” said Donald Thomas. “A run-through?”
“No,” said Bailey. “Come on. Let’s just go for it.”
Mickey Britt chortled, and looked up at his producer, and then slyly at Bailey. “One Take Bill” was what camera crews had gratefully christened him. He never “corpsed” with the private, inexplicable inner glee at the absurdity of his role; he never fluffed a line or suffered sudden memory loss; he never tried to better what he’d already accomplished the first time. All this, over many years, had been a constant source of friction with his various producers who remained determined on the self-justification of having various takes from various angles: “For choice in the cutting room. Just in case. You never know. In the final edit.”
So far as Bailey was concerned such professional belt-and-braces trainee school stuff was a waste of time, his time, valuable time when money at business conferences and government seminars and training videos was begging to be made elsewhere. This time, Donald Thomas didn’t bother to argue the toss with the insufferable Bailey. He would get Mickey Britt to do some hand-held GVs later, for mood and for ease of editing, but for now all there was to do was to mutter, “Yeah. Go for it then. Ready, Mickey? Geraint? Right. Camera rolling.”
Bailey rocked slightly on the balls of his Gucci-shod feet. It pulled him, almost imperceptibly, into the camera’s lens. His face was immobile and his light blue eyes seemed transfixed for the heartbeat or two in which he said nothing. Then he half-rotated his upper body, but without ever taking his eyes off the camera, to suggest the presence of the Thing behind him. His voice when it finally came out of the silence he had created for himself, was in a resonant, rumbling, button-holing conversational tone. This was to be the opening of the programme. It was to be a signature Bailey piece-to-camera.
“Look… there… behind me. Would you like it behind you? Behind your street? Looming above the rooftops of your houses? Lurking in the air above the fields where your children are at play? Would you? I know I wouldn’t.
But that’s where they’ve put it, though, this Thing.
That’s where their Council has put it. A State-of-the-Art refuse site, they say. The Mynydd y Caws Dump. And I say Dump, because that’s what they do, that’s where they dump, on open ground, close to these streets, not just household waste but untreated building materials, plastics, chemical matter, toxic stuff some say, biological and pharmaceutical discards.
And I’ll tell you this, as I stand here in this street on this workaday morning, it’s noisy, its filth is in the air, and it stinks in my nostrils. And the good people of these streets have to listen to the Thing, see the Thing, smell the Thing and breathe in its noxious fumes, day by day and night after night.”
Bailey adjusted his stance and took a pace nearer the camera. He gave the camera a wry smile, an over-the-garden-wall confidence: “They… the Council… They say it’s all within acceptable limits for legal emissions. They say it’s not a health risk, or indeed any kind of hazard to public health. It’s safe. It’s necessary. It’s well-managed.”
His smile became a grim memory in an instant.
“They…the People who live here, who have to live here, say the Thing, that Thing behind me, has caused birth defects, chest problems, stinging eyes, sore throats, premature deaths of the young, and of the old, and a terrible psychological blight on all the lives of those who have no choice but to live here.” He paused. The tone was level once more. “Who’s right? And who’s wrong?”
Bailey let the silence wrap itself around him. He looked deep into the camera. His knife-edge of a mouth widened to a resolute crease, and he said: “Well, there’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?” He turned his back to the camera and walked with a slow, purposeful step up the slope of the long terraced street towards the mountain and its tumorous waste tip. After no more than fifty yards, he pivoted on his heel and lengthened his stride until he was almost back to his starting point.
“OK, Squire? You get all that?” he shouted out as he walked, but not to his Producer, only to the cameraman who, again, gave him his customary thumbs-up signal. Donald Thomas gnawed at the sore spot on his bottom lip. He waited for Bailey to be within earshot for a whisper.
“Fine… fine… though you missed out on the health statistics we discussed, and the reasons for its being there in the first place, and such stuff. So we’ll need to pick that up later, in studio, won’t we? One way or the other. But since we were so late in starting, we’d better break now, hadn’t we? For an hour. Be back, at the gates, while it’s still light.”
This last was mostly for May Onions who looked down at her clipboard and then, in a voice louder than Donald Thomas’ musings, told everyone that there was a chippie on the main road or an Italian for frothy coffee and corned beef pasties, if they preferred, and outside the gates to the dump in an hour then, at one-thirty, OK?
Mickey Britt and his sound engineer began to pack up their equipment into the back of their car. They would drive it wherever they were going, no matter how near or far it was, and park it in full sight to foil the “thieving bastards round here”. And everywhere else they ever went. May Onions glanced at Bailey, trying to gauge his mood, and assess his needs now that Donald Thomas had exerted a producer’s timetable control. But Bailey said nothing and did nothing, other than to give them a perfunctory nod. He jangled his keys in his trouser pocket as he walked away from his colleagues. He zapped open the Bentley, slid into the driver’s seat and turned the car around in a tight circle before accelerating away onto the main road where a passing van had to brake and sound its ignored horn.
“The bugger”, Donald Thomas said. “The bloody, arrogant, self-centred sod… the bastard.”
May Onions saw his point. She had acknowledged it for herself some time ago. No point in going there, though, she thought. She enquired instead, “Coffee, Donald? Join the Boys?”
“Sod that,” said Donald Thomas. “And sod him, too. Come on, there must be a pub around here. I need a bloody drink.”
* * * * *
Do
nald Thomas fished out a twenty pound note from his wallet and asked May Onions to “get the drinks in” whilst he “paid a visit”. His PA took the money and pulled a face behind his retreating back.
“I expect that includes you, boys. Mickey, what’s yours? And Geraint?”
Drinks were ordered, and fetched to their adjacent but separate tables. A large whisky and soda for Donald; pints of lager for the boys; and a lime-and-soda with ice for May. Home-cooked ham and chips to follow for the boys, with ham rolls for her and Donald.
Donald Thomas returned and sat, in a glum contemplation, slightly to one side of their table. It was warm, a steamy iron radiator heat, in the back bar of the cavernous red-brick Victorian pub which they’d found in the town. He took off his sheepskin coat and threw it over the back of a Windsor chair. It fell to the floor. May Onions retrieved it. She hung it up on a peg. She gave him his change. She sat down and waited for the mood music to begin. She knew it would. Donald Thomas always simmered before he boiled over. The crew were quietly sipping their drinks and tucking in. She nibbled at a chip. She waited. Donald Thomas had not touched his drink or his food. Instead he stared, as in a trance, at the cone of weak sunlight which was being beamed through a blue-and-red lozenge of a stained glass window so that it funnelled through the air a mote of dust which flickered, particle by particle, in a whirling suspense.
Donald Thomas was not actually thinking. He was free falling. Into his own past. A past that had once been so full of promise. Like himself. Into the present he tumbled. So unfulfilling. Like his unfulfilled self. Was it his fault? He couldn’t see why. He still “had it all”, as a former Controller had told him, back then at the beginning, and indeed thereafter as he occasionally inched his way without real conviction or desire, up to the famed Third Floor, but where he never secured a foothold beyond being there “in an acting capacity”. His telegenic looks – the phrase used in the 1960s for being conventionally handsome – had weathered but had not deserted him. Some had even thought his brooding eyes and sensual lower lip had a touch of Richard Burton about them. It was the same lip he was biting now. And, he thought as he bit it, he’d had a proper degree at Oxford, not like Burton’s wartime dalliance there but a 2nd Class in PPE at Jesus. The Welsh College, as it was known, despite the fact that its Welsh intake was in a minority even then. Still, lifetime connections could be, and were, made amongst those who would, chrysalis-like, turn into the professionals which a Welsh secondary education, whether good Grammar or minor public schools, intended for their academic caterpillars: barristers and solicitors, civil servants and professors, executives and diplomats, administrators and managers. Playing rugby football was not, of course, compulsory but it had added a sheen to the polish to be brought to becoming a “Professional Welshman”; and he’d been good enough, once or twice, to play not just for his College as a loose wing-forward but also for the university Seconds, the “Greyhounds”. College societies allowed him to brush up on the hesitant Welsh of his boyhood, the tongue his solicitor father and housewife mother had scarcely used at home between themselves, or in the family at all, in the City in which, as with so many post-war contemporaries, they had settled after their own college education. Donald was to be set on an even more upward social path. Paths to be trodden carefully and gratefully in exactly the way of others like him before him. Yet by the Sixties, more enticing opportunities, particularly for those of his generation and upbringing, were accruing almost daily in a country busily creating a living, for some at least, out of itself as a cultural artefact. There were new highways that could as easily to be taken to public prominence, the fame that whispered of fortune, as any of the more traditional routes to security and comfort. If he had made a mistake at all in the early days of his broadcasting career, it was only perhaps in scorning the steady labour, and subsequent rewards, of the offered management training courses. He was, so many sirens assured him, with his looks, his intellect, his charm, his sonorous speaking voice, his quintessence of being a modern man in a Welsh idiom, a star-in-the-making. And from the off he had loved the attention he had been able to gather for himself by being, however instantly or briefly, at the centre of the moment, those moments only radio and television could conjure. He was a Presenter. He was a Personality. He was a Face. He Voiced Over. He read the News. He chaired and he interviewed. What he never became, as if there was an ingredient missing in his make-up, was a Broadcaster.
All That Lies Beneath Page 6
