Simon Packham
The Opposite Bastard
2008, EN
Forced to take employment as live-in carer for a genius quadriplegic undergraduate, failed actor Timothy Salt is not optimistic. His charge, Michael Owen, is only at Oxford to please his devoted mum. When ersatz aristo Phillip Sydney offers the leading role in his student production of Hamlet to Michael, Timothy’s humiliation seems complete. Meanwhile, fellow student thespian Anna Jenkins, deciding that Phillip is the ‘perfect gentleman’ who Mummy so wants her to find, accepts the part of Ophelia. Then TV producer Nikki Hardbody (‘Kids with Cancer’ and ‘Pepe: The Boy with No Nose’) arrives to immortalise Michael in her latest documentary, and Timothy realizes that the only way he can salvage any self-respect is by sabotaging the production of ‘Hamlet’. Michael, meanwhile, is horrified to find himself falling for Anna. As rehearsals progress, Anna discovers that her perfect partner isn’t Phillip Sydney after all. No one is more delighted than cynical Nikki Hardbody.
The ‘Opposite Bastard’ is a dark comedy of manners. An uproarious and moving commentary on love, disability, dignity, political correctness and media opportunism, it is a strikingly original and provocative debut.
Table of contents
Prologue: Autumn 1999
The Actor
1: When Sorrows Come
The Virgin · The Quadriplegic · The Actor · The Quadriplegic · The Actor · The Quadriplegic · The Actor · The Quadriplegic · The Actor · The Quadriplegic
2: Springes to Catch Woodcocks
The Virgin
3: A Pestilent Congregation of Vapours
The Actor · The Quadriplegic · The Actor · The Quadriplegic · The Actor · The Quadriplegic · The Actor · The Virgin
4: Country Matters
The Actor · The Quadriplegic · The Virgin
5: The Actors are Come Hither
The Actor · The Virgin · The Quadriplegic · The Actor · The Quadriplegic · The Actor · The Quadriplegic
6: Spirit of Health or Goblin Damned?
The Actor
7: What a Piece of Work is a Man
The Quadriplegic · The Actor · The Quadriplegic
8: Let the Candied Tongue Lick
The Virgin · The Quadriplegic · The Virgin · The Actor
9: The Primrose Path of Dalliance
The Quadriplegic · The Actor · The Quadriplegic
10: What a Rogue and Peasant Slave am I
The Actor
11: For this Relief
The Quadriplegic
12: The Secrets of My Prison House
The Quadriplegic · The Virgin · The Quadriplegic
13: A Dream of Passion
The Actor · The Virgin · The Quadriplegic · The Virgin · The Quadriplegic · The Virgin · The Actor · The Quadriplegic · The Actor
14: The Play’s the Thing
The Quadriplegic · The Actor · The Virgin · The Quadriplegic · The Actor · The Quadriplegic · The Actor · The Quadriplegic · The Actor · The Quadriplegic · The Actor · The Quadriplegic
15: Toys of Desperation
The Quadriplegic · The Actor · The Quadriplegic · The Actor · The Virgin · The Actor
Epilogue: Autumn 2008
The Virgin
∨ The Opposite Bastard ∧
Prologue
Autumn 1999
The Actor
My Restart interview seemed to be going swimmingly. She was a middle-aged woman with glasses and Marks & Spencer clothes. I was charming her with ‘tales from the green room’ when all of a sudden she turned nasty: “This can’t go on, Mr Salt.”
“What do you mean?” I eyed her suspiciously. It was at this point that they usually asked if I’d been in EastEnders.
“We’ve given you more than enough time” (six paltry months) “to find work in your usual profession. I’m afraid you’re going to have to cast your net a little wider.”
Nigh on twenty years in the acting profession had given me a solid grounding in DHSS form filling. Somewhere along the line, however, I had made a crucial error. In a mad fit of affected altruism, which almost brought a tear to my eye, in the box titled ‘What other types of work are you looking for?’ I had foolishly entered ‘Working with the disabled.’ Set amidst my customary list of ‘impossibles’ (television presenter, university lecturer, jingles composer) I felt it represented a lovely touch of humanity in what was perhaps a somewhat media oriented and thrusting character sketch. I little realized that, six months later, it would return to haunt me.
“Actually, there is something that’s just come in,” she said, running her tongue along the suspicion of a Ronald Colman tash. “It might be right up your street.”
I smiled a horrible smile.
“You’ve got a degree, haven’t you?”
“Yees.” (Drama BA Hons – red brick.) “But I don’t see how…”
When I first entered the acting profession dole offices were cold uninviting places, with lino floors, that smelt of cigarettes and damp clothes. By the late nineties they were carpet-tiled throughout and in my view they’d started overheating them. I think it must have been the heat, because for the next ten minutes I caught only snatches of what she was saying: “Very bright…profoundly disabled…virtually twenty-four-hour care.”
My hands were sweating. All I could do was nod confusedly.
“You see, you did turn down the job at the butcher’s and the trainee financial adviser. So I’m afraid, if you don’t go along for the interview, we’ll have to stop all your benefits.”
♦
Actors get used to futile journeys to far-flung corners of the capital. Tattered A to Z in pocket, we brave London Transport for a couple of minutes in a church hall with the director and the seldom-kept promise to ‘let you know’. It was in this spirit that I set off for East Croydon, not thinking for one minute there was any danger of a job at the end of it. The sight of an efficient-looking lady, clad in full nursing regalia, coming out of the house just as I arrived merely confirmed this.
I was met at the door by a harassed, bird-like figure in a flannelette tracksuit. With her pale, elfin face, and hair scraped back into a ponytail, she had the look of a fifty-year-old schoolgirl who hadn’t had a decent night’s kip for about a thousand years.
“Hello, dear, I’m Valerie Owen. I’ll be with you in a minute. I’ve just got to see to Michael.”
She ushered me into a cold sitting room with flowery wallpaper and some Wedgwood Victorian ladies in a mahogany cabinet. At some stage they’d ‘knocked through’ into the back room and put up some sliding doors. Behind the frosted glass I could just make out the glow of an electric fire, and the sound of the lady who had admitted me offering words of encouragement. “There we are, Michael, all done.”
There was a framed copy of that ghastly religious poem ‘Footprints’ on the mantelpiece and, lurking in the shadows, a fading photograph of a young family on a beach somewhere. My eyes were drawn immediately to the pretty young mum in a flowery bikini, handing out sandwiches.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Timothy,” said the flannel-etted lady. “Now, they said at the jobcentre you’ve had some experience in this area.”
So confident was I that this was but a slight inconvenience on the road to my next giro that I felt quite at liberty to come up with a little white lie. “Not particularly, but I did do some work with disabled youngsters during my university vacations.”
She seemed strangely unperturbed. “Experience isn’t everything, you know, dear. It’s a gift. You’ve either got it or you haven’t.”
It was at this point that I started to panic. If only I’d had the presence of mind to come up with a watertight excuse, things might have worked out
very differently.
“Before we go through and meet Michael, let me just tell you a bit about him.”
She was one of those people who find it difficult to keep still; perching for a moment on the edge of an armchair before rising suddenly to brush some imaginary dust from an ornament. “When he goes up to Oxford, he’s going to need a permanent carer. I’ve offered to do it myself, of course, but Michael thinks it would be too much for me.”
It was a pretty comprehensive job description. The ‘successful’ applicant would be responsible for keeping him clean, feeding him, dressing and undressing him, administering his medication, putting him to bed and getting him up, as well as accompanying him to tutorials and taking notes where necessary. In fact, it made working at McDonald’s sound like a wonderful career opportunity.
“I think it’s about time you met Michael, don’t you?”
I nodded grimly. She drew open the doors to reveal a shrivelled figure in a wheelchair. His small floppy body, coupled with a huge-looking head, gave him the appearance of a ventriloquist’s dummy. With a computer screen in front of him and a Dalek’s plunger strapped to his forehead, he continued to make a series of jerky nodding movements.
Mrs Owen looked on proudly. “It’s wonderful, isn’t it? He controls the wheelchair by sucking and blowing, and uses the wand – that’s the thing attached to his head – to work his computer.”
I only wish now I’d followed my instincts and made a run for it, but I was drawn inexorably towards the edge of the cliff and the rocks below. “Yes, that’s most…”
“Now, Michael, I want you to meet Timothy Salt.”
“Hello, Timothy,” he said in a breathy treble. “I hope you know your way around a colostomy bag.”
♦
When Mrs Owen phoned me that evening with the ‘good news’, I tried to persuade her that as I was a jobbing actor there was always the danger that some theatre work might crop up. This didn’t seem to bother her unduly. “We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.”
Given my lack of references and a total ignorance of all matters quadriplegic, I couldn’t have been more surprised if they’d offered me a year’s contract at the National Theatre. Naturally I tried to worm my way out of it, but down at the jobcentre they were adamant. I was faced with what I believe is known in literary circles as a ‘catch-22’: accept the worst job in the history of the world, or forfeit all my benefits and end up sleeping in the doorway of one of the theatres in which I have sometime performed.
∨ The Opposite Bastard ∧
1
When Sorrows Come
The Virgin
Sod formal hall. Mummy’s been texting me again, so I’m gasping for one of my specials. You won’t believe this, but I honestly thought that teaching Mummy to use her mobile would be a bit of a giggle. How was I supposed to know she’d only use it to torture me with?
Plus which, this morning I had the shock of my life. Can you blame a girl for wanting a well-balanced meal after all that? I scoop an emergency saucer of 20p coins into the front pocket of my rucksack, slap on another coat of lippy, and hotfoot it through college to the vending machines outside the buttery. I hover while that hideous nympho from the Ents committee makes off with her Mars Bar, and then I pounce. I’m getting good at this. I force-feed the machine thirty pieces of silver and tap in the combination. It helps when you know it off by heart. Two minutes later I’m cantering back across the quad with a bag full of swag slung carelessly over my shoulder.
And that’s when I see him: the shock of my life I was talking about. He’s sitting by the window with that pointy thing stuck to his forehead, staring into his computer; all lit up like something out of the Chamber of Horrors. He did tell me his name, my new neighbour, but, quite frankly, I was trying so hard not to stare at all his…paraphernalia that I hardly caught a word he was saying. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s really sweet that there’s a guy like that in college. I just wish someone had warned me about him. If I’d been expecting a funny little man in a wheelchair I wouldn’t have made such an idiot of myself; which is why I cover my face like a convict as I scurry past his window.
Safe at last; Quatuor pour la fin du Temps on the CD player, the door locked, and I’m already feeling calmer. I clear a space on the desk between my Italian Lute tablature and that lovely picture of Tom and Maggie (God, how I miss them), and pour out my contraband.
There are usually about forty-five Jelly Tots in a packet. I sort them into colours (eight green, fifteen purple, ten orange and eight red this time) before opening the Hula Hoops (thirty-four plus one broken one, which I eat) and breaking the KitKat. It has to be symmetrical – my confectionery collage of Mummy – otherwise it doesn’t work: Diet Coke for the body, KitKat arms and legs, and Jelly Tots for the fingers, eyes, nose and mouth. Hula Hoops are perfect for her hair. They remind me of when she went blonde for her thirtieth birthday party, just before she and Daddy had their big falling out.
I don’t know why it makes me feel better, but it does. And don’t go thinking it’s one of those fashionable new ‘eating disorders’, because actually it’s quite the opposite—the order is the most important part of all. I start with the hair (savoury first, of course), next the arms and legs, followed by the fingers and three sips of Diet Coke. I leave her eyes until last. It’s only after I’ve swallowed the final Jelly Tot that I feel strong enough to re-read her message: “If you don’t bring home a boyfriend a.s.a.p., will kill myself.”
It might sound like a joke, but I know Mummy better than that. She’s absolutely desperate to get me started on a breeding programme; anything to take her mind off her own miserable existence. All summer, she touted me round Hampshire like a best of breed: “Toby Morton’s a terribly decent young man. You’d make such a lovely couple, Anna darling” Every weekend, she’d frogmarch me to the Range Rover so Daddy could chauffeur me to another grisly melange of marquees, jazz bands and industrial quantities of champagne, Chablis and al fresco copulation. Every weekend, I’d find the table furthest from the disco and lose myself in the Penguin edition of Middlemarch; exchanging George Michael for George Eliot whilst everyone around me exchanged email addresses and bodily fluids. As a general rule, I prefer to get hot and sticky with a melted packet of Opal Fruits.
So I haven’t told anyone about tomorrow night. Mummy would put a full-page announcement in Horse and Hound if she knew I had an ‘appointment’ with a young gentleman – especially a young gentleman with such good breeding potential. And I’m certainly not admitting to anyone (not even myself) that I’m actually rather looking forward to it. He’s different all right. Daddy always said I was a hopeless romantic.
The Quadriplegic
Oxford sucks; a piss-poor combination of pretty-boys on bicycles, double-barrelled Victorias, and rotting, Gothic follies specially designed to be a total nightmare for a guy in a spaz-chariot.
They’ve never had a proper crip in college before. Must have been almost as traumatic as when they had to start letting women in. That old git in the porter’s lodge nearly shat himself when he saw how they’d desecrated his beloved college with a skateboarder’s paradise of concrete ramps, just to accommodate Wheelchairboy.
I didn’t want to come here anyway. There’s a much better course at Sussex. I mean, who gives a gnat’s bollock about Beowulf? I picked up enough Anglo-Saxon on the streets of East Croydon. But according to my sponsors (thanks to my abnormally high IQ I’m a pin-up boy for state-of-the-art surgical appliances and kick-arse spaz-chariots) it’s essential for product recognition to be seen in all the ‘right’ places. So that’s how I became the first all-non-singing, all-non-dancing, ‘high’ quadriplegic at Gloucester College Oxford – that and to please Mum, of course.
Mum’s been wetting her knickers ever since I got my acceptance letter. At last, she had it in black and white; written proof, on posh notepaper, that all the years of blood, shit and vomit had been worth it. But more than that (much, much more) it meant th
at – in a ‘God moves in a mysterious way’ sense – her prayers had been answered.
Every Saturday, she played hostess to the Women’s Prayer Group. She’d dump me in front of The Generation Game and I could hear them, through the sliding doors, praying for a miracle. I’d sit there sipping drinking chocolate through a stripy straw, wondering if Jim Davidson was truly happy in his work and wishing that Mum would take up something more worthwhile, like bingo. At the end of the evening, one by one, they’d stick their heads in and ask me how my studies were going. The weekend before my Oxbridge interview, Pastor Reg led the whole fellowship in an all-night fast and meditative vigil. How come they call themselves charismatics when they’re all so fucking boring?
Put it this way, I owed her one. Mum hadn’t had much to cheer about on school sports days, so who was I to deny her her one moment of glory? And to tell you the truth, I couldn’t wait to get away from her endless yakking. Mum loves to talk, you see; in tongues when the spirit moves her. Dad claimed he’d had a premonition that he was going to die in a car crash. Mum thought it was dead romantic. Every time they went for a drive, he’d kiss her on the head and whisper, “I love you,”’ and then refuse to speak for the rest of the journey because in the event of an accident he wanted those to be his final words.
Me? I don’t talk much. It’s called laconic. But I’ll tell you something; when I do open my mouth, you can bet everyone is listening. It doesn’t look good to ignore someone like me – especially if you’re out shopping with your girlfriend. Which is why people tend to remember a quadriplegic’s name first time. Although in my case, the fact that I’m called Michael Owen probably helps.
You’re probably wondering how I ended up with a carer like Billy No Mates. There were five applicants for the Mcjob, four of them female – two quite horny. But Mum couldn’t stand the thought of another woman emptying my colostomy bag, so the gig went to the no-hope bit-player who’d been ‘resting’ long enough to qualify for the latest government rent-a-slave scheme. If you could see his look of disgust when he’s cleaning my teeth, or the way he winces when he’s creaming my bedsores, you’d understand why it wasn’t exactly love at first sight.
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