Donald Thomas, sometimes despite himself, knew exactly what that meant. That there was a disjunction between the ornament he was and the function to which he aspired. That, unlike other professions with their guarded and self-sustaining worlds, the true Broadcaster had to both reach out to and yet reflect the audience. But most of that audience was indeed other. His colleagues, sensing this, and besides, not possessing his other attributes, readily took to those roles behind the camera, and so away from its relentless gaze, which higher executive positions or strategic production thinking could, along with higher salaries, bring them. He bridled at the tedium of committees and baulked at the even temper required for management team work, notwithstanding the compensation available in the darker enjoyment to be derived from the backstabbing of Corporation politicking and the arse-licking of superiors. He clung, for far too long, to his original, narcissistic dream.
Over the decades Donald Thomas, stalwart and veteran, was increasingly channelled as a presenter into those adjunct programmes and early evening series whose softness and cheapness could accommodate his now less than compelling presence. Worse, when he complained that such output only buttressed or perhaps occasionally heralded the changes shattering their accustomed world – the pit and steel closures, the destruction of established ways of life, the uncertainties of politics, from left to right, the uneasy rhetoric of a nation revived, former class divisions papered over – then, on the Third Floor, wise heads nodded and decided to find a way to use his talents, to note his desire and placate his ego. He was, all said and done, one of their own. They made him a producer… a senior producer… an executive producer… a producer by any other name for all that.
Donald Thomas was to be involved, as he had wished, in the big events, the big issues, the pressing matters, the State of the Nation debates, in all of the glamour and gravitas which the Corporation hoarded as the rightful cultural capital of the nation’s broadcaster. He worked hard to shape and direct these productions so that they might, in their turn, affect that culture. His ambition was no less than that. Yet, ruefully, and even as he chopped off as many of the Talking Heads of others that he could manage, he was inwardly confronted by the stubborn, deep and instinctive knowledge that though he had failed himself to be that automatic and personal connection between lens and living room, he had need of that power wherever its detestable source lay.
* * * * *
Bailey…Bailey…Bailey… the surname beat a persistent tattoo inside Donald Thomas’ head. He reached over to pick up his drink. Bailey. He gulped down some of the whisky and soda, snorting as the bubbles darted up his nose. Bailey. They always turned to Bailey. Whose principal concern, the producer so often lamented to those above him on the Third Floor, was only money, the fee, the dosh, spondoolicks, the loot, pounds, shillings and no fucking pence in the presenter’s own re-iterated mantra of demand. Bailey. Donald Thomas, whose own name credit-ended every decent programme Bailey had ever made let out an involuntary sigh.
How much he, Bailey, lacked. How much he, Bailey, seemed oblivious to all around him. Did he even know that, out of his hearing, for his temper was as ferocious as his fists were quick, they called him “Billy Boy”? Like a chirping budgie with an appetite for seed and an ever-open beak. Once a secretary, star-struck maybe, had sung “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” at a Christmas Do and dedicated it to her “Pal Billy”. Bailey had applauded her “lovely singing voice”. Someone had once christened him “King Arthur” in ironic tribute to the discrepancy between Bailey’s day-to-day behaviour and the regal flaunt of his TV persona. He seemed aloof, disinterested, untouchable. And then the green light went on and he was none of these things.
Donald Thomas said to May Onions as if she’d been sharing his thoughts all along, “The thing is, May love, the tosser is such, such…”, and he paused to let the exact and appropriate word arrive from his Oxonian hinterland, “such a boor!”. It was as if he’d had a sudden revelation ,or a returning one anyway: “He’s boor-ish, so ipso facto, he’s a boor.”
May Onions remained silent. She was not, herself, quite clear how Bailey was a boor, or what the category of boorishness fully implied. She wondered if it was a categorisation people like Donald Thomas invented, required even, to denote people like Bailey. To distinguish themselves from those others who were not, ever, capable of being like them. Donald Thomas was unaware of her lack of certainty. His own absolute conviction was now both infinite and specific.
He sipped at his double whisky. His reverie returned. Time was when, at the start of their careers, he’d tried to be sociable with Bailey. Never, even in those days, Arthur or Joseph days, certainly not “Bill”, and “A.J.” sounded too boardroom, so it was always to be “Bailey”, and no closer than that for Donald Thomas. He invited Bailey, and his wife – Rita, a nurse he recalled – to his house. His own wife, Nerys, had taken a day off school to prepare the dinner. None of that sickly pink prawn cocktail and glutinous boeuf bourguignon stuff which the world and his wife were dishing up at that time, usually to be followed by a crème caramel and the blue stilton with dimpled crackers. They were to have something to which the palate needed to pay attention. Something, for that time, exotically different. When the “Sopa fría de Ajo y Almendras con Uvas” appeared in its crock of white china, Bailey’s eyes had directed his nose to sniff. At the first spoonful of the thick, white, bread-soaked liquid of ground almonds, water and garlic – almost a perfect replica of the deliciously refreshing soup Donald and Nerys Thomas had tasted in the hills of Andalucia the previous summer – Bailey ran his tongue over his lips and glanced up first at the dutifully slurping Rita, and then at his hosts.
“Supposed to be cold, is it? Only asking, my old flower, but I’ve got a grape in mine, too. Afters first, is it?”
He had spooned up half a bowl and declared himself to be “full as a tick” and “ready for mains”. In those days the great oenophile had not achieved his transubstantiation out of the form of the beer-swilling Bailey, but he smacked down a glass or two of good claret with a hint of the wine bibbing future he might yet care to embrace. A platter of rice and pine nuts dotted with minced lamb meatballs and a layer of sticky brown dates and gooey orange quinces steamed onto the table in an aroma of sweet fried onions, and with the subtle herbaceous hints of Middle Eastern spices. “Oh, good,” said Bailey, “Main meal and pudding in one. We’ll get home early, Rita.” The invitation was never reciprocated and, so far as Donald Thomas could recall, he never set eyes on the wife of the surprisingly uxorious Bailey again, though from time to time there was abrupt news of children being born whilst he and Nerys, her choice more than his, kept their parallel careers on track, and the lives of the executive producer and the headmistress of a primary school in the city proceeded in agreeable, childless fashion.
Donald Thomas chewed it all over again.
“You see, May,” he said. “Someone like me looks at a Bailey and, well, should, in some ways, admire him. And why not? He didn’t go to a particularly good school, one of the second-rate grammars in the city, and he didn’t have the advantage of an Oxbridge education. Not even a university one… the local poly in fact… some kind of Mickey Mouse law and accountancy course. He never practised either. A stint in the Army hoping for a commission, but he gave that up to marry. Pregnant, probably, knowing him. Straight into local news reporting and then broadcasting… despite having no Welsh… not even passable Welsh, like mine was then… so, yes, of course, to be admired.” Donald Thomas drained his glass. “But then why, oh why, is he so bloody obnoxious?”
It was not, of course, a question. Not one of any kind. In any case, May Onions had no answers to questions she would never have posed to herself in that or any such way. For her, Bailey was a phenomenon, a force of nature even, difficult and undeniably unpleasant when he chose to be, but, as she also felt, utterly distinctive, to the point of being unstoppable, whereas Donald Thomas was, well, nice enough, self-deprecating, charming when he stopped w
hining, but self-absorbed where Bailey was self-directional. She had been sucking up her pale green lime-and-soda drink through a colourless plastic straw. She finished when the sump at the bottom of the glass filled with air and made its slightly farty sound in the mouth at the final suck. Donald Thomas had not stopped talking – to himself of course – so she tuned in again.
“And what’s all that Army stuff all the time with him? Where does that all come from? He was only there long enough for basic bloody training. I’ll tell you why… cos he’s a snob underneath it all, underneath all that weepy stuff about council houses, an abusive, alcoholic and then absent father, and a saintly mother out scrubbing floors for her Joseph. Onwards and upwards for him. He loved swanning around an Officers’ Mess, I bet… losing his twang quicker than he could wink. I bet he sucked up there. Colonel! Major! Captain! Sergeant-Major! General! My arse.
“Let’s face it…we put up with him but for how much longer? He’s insufferable… Tony Hancock on speed! Decades out of date and snide to boot.”
Donald Thomas needed rescuing. They could all feel it. May Onions didn’t know where to start. Mickey Britt was pensive. He’d heard the diatribe, in one of its many forms, and more than once, from his nominal boss. Since Bailey and he were akin in their upbringing so far as working-class parents of second generation Brummie origin went, and with a disciplining, yet socially limiting, education to match, he could himself understand and so excuse Bailey’s mix of combative aggression and touchy sensibility… more readily, anyway, than Donald Thomas ever could. Mickey Britt even admired the brute manner in which Bailey had spurned the drummed in, leaden persistence of the know-your-place education which they had had in common. Bill Bailey, Mickey Britt knew, was no gent, and never would be. Donald Thomas, though, personified the caste, at least in its local guise, and was always courteous to his staff colleagues. As a mark of respect for the issue before them, an attempt at reassurance for Donald Thomas, in a gesture of almost professional solidarity, Mickey Britt tried to help with a definition of his own, one closer to home.
“Yeah, Don,” he said, his own original inner city vowels as sharply defined and slicing in intonation as ever, “proper old fuckin’ ba-a sta-ard when he wants, inne?
Donald Thomas coughed in disdain at the distasteful language. May Onions flashed Mickey Britt the chiding look of an intermediary smoothing matters over for the great and good. Geraint Owen, as he had learned to do since leaving the north for the south, kept his private thoughts close to himself. May Onions decided to intervene, but in a lesser, more amused vein of recollection.
“Then again, Donald, what about the time we were filming that Welsh-restaurant-in-the-Dordogne story, Michelin stars for Merthyr-born couple, and all that? Lovely meal, wasn’t it? But A.J. so grumpy, and off to bed early, only the adjoining hotel I’d booked, corporation rates in play, wasn’t to his liking, so he came back to the restaurant and I had to drive to that chateau on the edge of the town. Set in parkland… lovely… and charming English-speaking proprietor… nice-looking, too.
Anyway, our man barges up to reception and blurts to the young woman behind the desk, “Bonjour, my Cherie, chamber large, yes?” And the owner steps in and says he’s had my call and reserved a special room for the “Famous Corporation” and before he can finish, speaking perfect English, mind, Bailey jumps in and says, “Splendido, my frère. But, listen, this is just for moi, see, so ensure, comprendee? that it’s a Grand Chamber with private sale-de-bain. Gracias mucho, count.” The Marquis, I’m sure he was, looked as if a dog had vomited all over his Aubusson. That’s a carpet, Mickey!”
Donald Thomas permitted himself a pouting smile.
“Yes, you told me over the cognac later. Embarrassing git… what he is, at heart, what he truly is, because I don’t believe he doesn’t know what he’s up to, is… feral.”
Mickey Britt had liked the modest French hotel May Onions had booked. But he had also seen the Dordogne chateau when they picked Bill up in the morning. He had waved from a sun-dappled terrace, the remnants of his breakfast of freshly squeezed orange juice, coffee, rolls and croissants, scattered in disarray before him, and the Marquis laughing with him, but in service at his side. Mickey Britt had sensed a flush of pride rising. One of our own. In the pub, now, he considered that “feral” was perhaps “Fair Do’s”, but that Bill Bailey was better understood as “fierce and fearless”. Donald Thomas pushed his empty glass to the edge of the table. He watched Mickey Britt and Geraint Owen snaffle the untouched ham rolls. In the far corner of the echoing bar-room an old man left his high stool at the bar. He shuffled over to an old-fashioned juke-box set against the wall, inserted a coin and punched a button without looking. In a whoosh of slithering strings the chord-roasted tones of Nat King Cole swooped in and warmed the room:
“Unforgettable, that’s what you are
Unforgettable though near or far
Like a song of love that clings to me
How the thought of you does things to me …”
“Oh, Christ!” said Donald Thomas. “That’s the tin lid, that is. Come on, let’s go.”
* * * * *
Two o’clock outside the gates, Bailey had not appeared. The camera was already up on its tripod in a fixed position. To the north-west of the council refuse site the winter sun was fast sliding down the mountain ridge. Bailey refused to give his mobile number to anyone. Besides, it was permanently off, subject to his view that he used it to reach people when he wanted, not when they required him. In the back of the car Donald Thomas and May Onions sat in silence side by side. She wondered if she should pat his hand… or perhaps not.
Donald considered what he had heard other people in command call available “nuclear options”… an official complaint… a dressing down… an enquiry… a sacking… or perhaps not. He sighed.
May Onions looked again at her own option. His hand… then at her right, free hand. In her other hand, the left, she held her mobile. It buzzed and she grabbed it with the hand that had been momentarily free. She pressed Answer. It was Bailey.
“Hiya, love… A.J. here…been delayed… on the way, OK? Fifteen mins… see you babe.”
“Well,” said Donald Thomas. “Well? What excuse has the shit got this time?”
May Onions contemplated the moods to come. She rehearsed in her mind the tempers that would fray. She surveyed mentally the best outcome for the show. She acted in its best interests.
“It’s his mother,” she said.
“His mother? His fucking mother?” gasped Donald Thomas.
“Yes. I should’ve said earlier, Don, but he asked me not to. Was why he was late this morning, too. He said he didn’t want to cancel or make a fuss. She fell in the night. She’s in sheltered accommodation, you know. On her way to the loo. They only found her this morning. They called an ambulance. Hospital. It seems she’s broken her hip. They, uh, after this morning’s shoot, A.J., uh, belted back down the dual carriageway to see her. She’ll have to have an op. She’s about 96. Not his fault this time.”
All That Lies Beneath Page 7
