The Opposite Bastard

by Simon Packham

  He says he’s an actor, but I’ve never heard of him. Is there anything sadder than a middle-aged man in a baseball cap? A middle-aged man who wears his baseball cap the wrong way round perhaps? That’s Timothy Salt all over. With his monastic slaphead and blubbery paunch tumbling out of his easy-fit jeans, he’s got ‘sad fucking failure’ written all over him. But he’s always going on about his brilliant career. Unfortunately for me, slitting my wrists is not an option.

  The Actor

  Have you ever seen Hamlet? If you move to the bottom of the cast list – I don’t mean Osric, not Fortinbras, not even a Norwegian Captain or one of the English Ambassadors – then, in a top-of-the-range, uncut, sixty-five-hour Hamlet, you will notice the Lords, Ladies, Soldiers, Sailors and Attendants. For two years I was one of those attendants. (First cover English Lord. Second cover Osric.) If I ever catch up with the prize cunt who claimed that there are ‘no small parts in Shakespeare’, I shall have a few choice words for him.

  I cannot pretend that the Attendant, or Blandio as my agent (Bunny Michelmore at Bunny Michelmore Management) klepped him for the purposes of my curriculum vitae, is the most rewarding part in the Shakespearean canon, yet it was for this role that I was offered some of my most encouraging criticism. It transpired that during the London run of ‘The Happy Prince’ we were asked to give a Sunday afternoon matinee in Broadmoor. Some of the younger actors were very excited about it, but I have to be honest and say that having played my Attendant both in Stratford and at the Barbican some hundred times already, the prospect of giving up my Sunday afternoon to entertain a bunch of psychopaths did little to enhance my customary joie de vivre.

  During the informal gathering for tea and biscuits after the show, a rather shy serial killer sought me out. At first I thought he must have been looking for Rosencrantz. Everyone was always saying how alike we were. You might remember him from those amusing life assurance commercials where he finds out that although he’s got cancer, insurance wise, he’s well set up for a slow and lingering death. Well, if you think of him you’ll get some idea of what I’m like. Physically, that is – personally, he’s a total arse-hole.

  But the point is, it was me that he’d been searching for. He didn’t look me in the eye, just stared at my feet. His voice sounded flat, like a comedian on a chat show trying to prove how dull he is in real life: “I wanted you to know that as soon as you came on stage I couldn’t take my eyes off you. That way you had of being there and yet not being there. It felt like my life – thanks”

  As an actor that’s the sort of thing you live for.

  The Quadriplegic

  I was born for the first time on 21 January 1980. I don’t remember much about that but according to Mum, I was the best-looking baby in the universe. I was born again on 8 August 1989. Not Pastor Reg’s kind of born again, but the quadriplegic kind. I dived into the shallow end of Croydon Lido as Superman and – after six months in a metal straitjacket, sharp spikes twisted into my scalp to keep my neck in place—I emerged again as Wheelchairboy: a drooling, fin de siecle superhero. What could be more perfect for the ironic nineties?

  Now for the science bit: I am a C4 ‘high’ quadriplegic. I have full head and neck movement, but I’m completely paralysed from the neck down. I can breathe without a ventilator, but require assistance to drain my secretions. Despite the assumptions of the average loser in the street, I am more than able to think for myself. The trouble is, it’s easy to get the wrong idea about someone who’s totally dependent on the kindness of strangers for his bowel management. To put it in layman’s terms, my head is in full working order, but the rest of me’s totally fucked. I can nod, raise my eyebrows (but not independently like Roger Moore) and even touch my nose with my tongue. I can also talk, but because my lungs are well dodgy, my voice sounds like an effeminate nine-year-old’s, so I have a special microphone built into my wheelchair.

  Mum thanks God, about once every five minutes, that he’s given me the opportunity to study at the ‘finest university in the world’. Believe me, it’s small consolation for the fact that I can do sod all else.

  I wish they’d all leave me alone. The same thing happened when I went back to school. The other kids fussed around me for the first few days, but as soon as they realized I was never going to be up for a kick around, they left me to it. I’m hoping the same thing’s going to happen at Oxford, but right now I’m quite the celebrity. Every society in the university wants a piece of the Spackmeister: the Christian Union, the Gilbert and Sullivan Society, the Humanist Group, Gay Soc (a homosexual quadriplegic, what a feather in their camp that would be), the Model Railway Society, the Munchkins (some sort of drinking club) and even the Boat Club have all sent representatives. This really pisses off my thespian jailer. From what he’s told me about his so-called ‘career’, Timothy Salt isn’t exactly used to being the centre of attention, but by the way he mutters under his breath when they walk straight past him, you’d have’ thought he was some kind of superstar.

  The Actor

  I’ve spent most of the first week (there’s probably some fancy Latin name for it at Oxford) lying in my cell, railing against the injustice of it all. It’s my intention to keep all contact with Ironside to the bare minimum. Consequently, I avoid our shared sitting room whenever possible, emerging only to scrutinize the soaps for all the talentless bastards who got the jobs that I should have had.

  Although our domestic arrangements might seem palatial to an undergraduate at the University of Littlehamp-ton, for a man accustomed to his own heated towel rail they are indescribably squalid. I’ve had to settle for the bare essentials: transistor radio, coffee-making machine, electric grinder, a limited selection of pornography, the Purrfect Pussy, a little tome entitled Be Your Own Psychotherapist in One Weekend, and some photographs of myself. Mrs Owen insists on enquiring after her son at least twice a day; consequently (horror of horrors) I’ve been shanghaied into purchasing my first mobile telephone. At least it means I don’t have to tell my agent (Bunny Michel-more at Bunny Michelmore Management) that I’ve moved out of town.

  It seems that the world and his wife want Michael to join their clubs. I feel like good old Jeeves. The raspberry ripple isn’t exactly a treasure domestically speaking, so I’m forced to play the faithful retainer. Incidentally, I do think, in a couple of years’ time, it’s quite possible that I may have acquired sufficient gravitas to graduate to butler roles. Bunny is always complaining: “The trouble is, darling, you’re neither fish nor fowl. You’re not quite the typical young husband, but you’re not exactly the vile seducer either.” I’m not even forty until next month. It’s only a matter of time before I come into my own.

  ♦

  “I need to speak to Michael. Is he around?”

  You may have noticed that I can’t be arsed with all the Oxbridge bollocks. Descriptions of ancient limestone buildings, amusing old blokes in bowler hats telling you to keep off the grass, and willows weeping into rivers that aren’t pronounced the way they’re spelt. I can’t be arsed because for one thing Oxford is so beautiful that it makes me want to vomit (Stendhal’s syndrome, I believe) and for another, it’s all summed up for me in the spotty twenty-year-old standing in the doorway.

  “It’s Sidney,” he says. “Philip Sidney as in…” For the most part he looks like any other twenty-year-old: combat trousers, several layers of slightly too big stuff, old-fashioned trainers, stupid little beard, and a stud in his nose. But there’s something in his voice, a pimply confidence, call it arrogance if you like, so that even the way he shuffles his feet has a thin batsqueak of Oxbridge self-importance about it. Already you can detect the latent judge, chat-show host, drugs baron or prime minister inside the adolescent’s body. Walk through the corridors of power – the BBC, the House of Commons, even the sodding National Theatre (if I get really pissed I’ll tell you what that bitch of a casting director said to me) – and it’s a voice you’ll hear again and again and again. Call it red-brick peevishness i
f you will, but I do know what I’m talking about.

  Consequently, I make a point of ignoring the grubby hand that Master Philip Sidney has extended in front of me. “I’ll go and see if he’s available.”

  The Quadriplegic

  I’ve been having some fun with De Niro. I can see how much he hates it, so I rub in the master⁄servant thing at every opportunity. “Would you mind getting us a cup of tea, Tim? I’m parched.”

  “No sugar, just a dash of milk,” says the guy with the nose stud, waving imperiously at De Niro as he slopes off to commune with his kettle.

  What is it this time? Do the rugger buggers want me to be their mascot? “I’m Michael by the way. But I expect you knew that.”

  “Look, Michael, I’ll come straight to the point,” he says, making to shake my hand, but realizing straight away that he’s made a terrible faux pas. “Shit…sorry.” One of my few pleasures in life is watching the ‘able-bodied’ squirm as they attempt to decide the correct way to greet a quadriplegic. In the end he settles for a French-style peck on both cheeks, which I guess is quite cool. “It’s Philip, Philip Sidney, as in…I’m at Wuggins.”

  “So, Philip, what can I do for you?”

  He has the same gleam in his eye as Pastor Reg when he’s about to ‘lead someone to the Lord’ or a timeshare salesman moving in for the kill. “Actually, it’s what I can do for you. I’m from Histrio-Mastix.”

  (Who are they when they’re at home?) “Right, yeah…great.”

  “We’re not the biggest dramatic society in Oxford, but I’m pretty damn sure we’re the most exciting.”

  When I was in year six, Miss Minnings had the happy task of casting me in The Grumpy Shepherd. A speaking part was obviously out of the question, so she covered me in an old rug, clipped on a pair of sticky-out donkey’s ears and sat me behind the manger. “Right – OK. I’m just not sure how I can help you, Philip.”

  All the time he’s been casing the joint; nosing around for things to make him feel superior, like an uncool book or CD. I do it all the time. Suddenly, he drops his voice to a seductive whisper. “Do you know Hamlet, Michael?”

  De Niro totters out of his room with three mugs of Earl Grey on a plastic tray; ears pricked priapically, like my non-speaking ass. “Did someone mention the Bard?”

  The Actor

  I’m intrigued. The thing about being an actor is that you must always be on your guard. On no account reveal your best credits straight away, just in case the spotty young bloke, who says he’s in the business, turns out to be playing the lead in the new Mike Leigh film. (Don’t you hate it when English people call them ‘movies’?) Of course, eight times out of ten all he’ll have done is some German Expressionist buffoonery in a phone box at the Edinburgh Festival. In which case, you may feel free to destroy them with all the self-effacing name-dropping you can muster. The bearded twerp is only a student, so, clearly, I have nothing to fear.

  The Quadriplegic

  It’s pathetic. Why do actors always piss their pants when someone mentions Shakespeare? “I did the last Hamlet at the Barbican, actually,” says De Niro, looking as if he’s expecting a standing ovation.

  “Ghastly, wasn’t it?” says Philip. “I took Mother. She was pretty angry, I don’t mind telling you.”

  Three mugs of Earl Grey almost go flying. “Well, Michael Billington said that – ”

  “Do you mind, I’m talking here. Come on, Michael, you haven’t answered my question. Do you know Hamlet?”

  Now it’s my turn for a bit of shameless bragging. “I know it.”

  To be fair to the arrogant tosser, it’s virtually impossible for anyone other than a child not to look down on someone in a wheelchair. “How do you mean, you know it?”

  “I mean I know it.”

  “What, you mean you’ve read it a few times, seen Gibson in the movie?”

  Out in the quadrangle, I catch a glimpse of that fit bird from the staircase above. I know her name’s Anna because she came down to introduce herself at the beginning of the week. She must have been the only person in Oxford who hadn’t heard about the cripple in residence, because when she saw me, her face turned the same colour as her baggy red jumper and she could barely string a sentence together. Put it this way, I don’t think she’ll be making a return visit. “Come on, Michael. I’m waiting.”

  “I mean, I know it by heart. The…er, First Folio.” Like I say, I’ve got a brilliant memory. But don’t be too impressed, it’s just a party trick. Or it would be if I ever got invited. What you’ve got to understand is that spending your life in a spaz-chariot is like being one of those old buggers who keeps banging on about how great it was before television – you have to make your own entertainment. Incredible though it might sound, I’ve never been in huge demand as a tennis partner, so I’ve had to amuse myself by doing stuff like memorizing the England football teams since 1900 (including the war-time friendlies) or 1938 railway timetables. Mum’s always on at me to have a go at the New Testament, but on the whole, it does have to be something you believe might have some practical use.

  Philip Sidney sounds like one of those Old Testament prophets that Pastor Reg is so keen on. “Michael, that’s…terrific. I don’t like to say this, but it must be fate.”

  “Fate, eh?” says De Niro. “I like the sound of that.”

  “You see, Michael, I’ve thought long and hard about this, and I’ve come to the unassailable conclusion that there is only one man in Oxford with the requisite skills and experience to play Hamlet.”

  The Actor

  Perhaps I’ve misjudged the young tyro. I’m not one to trumpet my successes abroad, so I don’t have a clue how he discovered that I’m an actor; I’m just relieved and delighted for him that he has. He’s spot on about one thing, of course: Hamlet is no part for a student. I’d almost reconciled myself to the idea that I might never get to grapple with one of the Shakespearean ‘biggies’. As Sidney said, it must be fate. Quite what all this has got to do with Ironside is beyond me. Although my duties, where he is concerned, are never less than onerous, surely, what I do in my spare time is up to me.

  The Quadriplegic

  Philip Sidney looks like some dickhead maverick cop who’s about to announce the murderer. “I see Hamlet very much as a metaphor for our times. Mankind, bereft of his metaphysical crutches, alone in a universe which the more he understands, the greater his feelings of impotence and rage. What better symbol of this than a Hamlet who couldn’t kill Claudius even if he decided that that was what he really wanted: a Hamlet in a wheelchair, frozen from the neck down?”

  My corpulent carer looks like the gobsmacked butler who thought he was in the clear. “What about the sword fights?” he protests.

  “Oh, God,” snorts Philip Sidney, “not another refugee from the Peter fucking Hall school of dead theatre.”

  “What’s wrong with Peter H – ?”

  “Now, come on, Michael, this is a fantastic opportunity, you know. Ask anyone who saw my Elephant Man. We’re not talking about some crass West End revival here.”

  Every Sunday Mum used to wheel me down the aisle, like a reluctant bridegroom. She’d park me at the front where everyone could have a good gawp and thank God they’d been spared the misery of a spacko child. It was the worst bit of the week; fifteen minutes of fame I could have well done without. And I’ve lost count of the number of times my mum used me as a visual aid on one of her numerous trawls around the local hospital wards and old people’s homes. I was Mum’s not very subtle way of pointing out to some miserable octogenarian that when it came to the frailties of the flesh, they had a long way to go before they caught up with the Spackmeister.

  So there’s no way I’m going to be part of Philip Sidney’s nasty little freak show. I’d rather play a grateful cripple in one of the boring bits on Comic Relief. And anyway, if you ask me, Shakespeare’s pretty overrated.

  The trouble is, when I look across at De Niro, it’s obvious that the idea of me playing Hamlet is
so totally doing his head in, that I can’t resist prolonging the agony. “It’s a great idea, Philip – really challenging. I tell you what, though; give me a couple of days to think it over. I’d love to be in it, of course. I’d just hate to let you down. All right if I let you know by the end of next week?”

  ∨ The Opposite Bastard ∧

  2

  Springes to Catch Woodcocks

  The Virgin

  “My God,” he says in that weird drawl of his, “you must be the last virgin in Oxford!” He returns the unused condom to a silver cigarette case, and I can’t help wondering if he’s right.

  “So what if I am?” I say, blinking back the tears. “It’s not a crime, is it?”

  “Had we but world enough and time,” he sniggers, “perhaps not. But it is practically the twenty-first century, you know.”

  His rooms reek of sweat and those horrid deodorants that adolescent boys douse themselves in on Friday night. We’ve been on his bed at least half an hour, underneath a black-and-white photograph of Bertolt Brecht. And he keeps doing that guy thing; you know, where they make out they’re really into snogging, but all the time they’re brushing your bits with their tentacles because they think you’ll find it irresistible?

  “I want the first time to be special, that’s all.” (I defy anyone to feel in the mood with a dead East German playwright staring at them.) “I’m not ready for this yet.”