Nikki is also having difficulty seeing the funny side. “I’d like to, of course,” she says in the soft and reasonable tones of the hired assassin, “but that’s why I always get my subjects to sign consent forms first. It can save an awful lot of unpleasantness.”
“I’ve changed my mind,” says Michael. “My life is degrading enough without broadcasting it to the nation.”
“Yes, well, this is my life too,” says Nikki, “and I can’t afford to have it ruined by a bashful teenager.” Suddenly she reminds me of the DHSS official who first consigned me to this hellhole. “You see, you and your mother did sign those consent forms, Michael, so I’m afraid you have no choice.”
I’m surprised as anyone that the next voice I hear is my own. “Sorry to be a bore and all that, Nikki, but I didn’t sign anything. Equity are rather particular about that sort of thing, I’m afraid.”
Her mocking laughter sounds like a cat trying to exorcise a hairball. “And what a loss that would be. Still, it’s up to you, Tim. If you don’t want to be in it, I’ll just have to edit you out – easy peasy.”
“One would have thought so. However, I think you’ll find I feature rather heavily. In fact, I do believe I’m in virtually every shot.”
Nikki looks momentarily flummoxed. A few seconds later her face relaxes into a triumphant grin. “I think you’re forgetting something, Timothy. If there’s no documentary, then there’s no voice-over. I thought that was an area you were rather keen to get into.”
Twenty years of humiliation processes in front of me; a long line of theatrical managements and producers, critics and casting directors, anyone to do with the National Theatre, that woman from The Bill, each one of them finding a slightly different way of conveying the same message: “Fuck off and die, Timothy.” Wheelchair of Fire could change all that. Nikki hovers above me in her helicopter; the rope ladder of dignity dangling just above my head. All I have to do is jump.
“Do you know,” I say, not even pausing to question my sanity, “I’m really not that bothered about it. You’d better give Martin Jarvis a ring.”
Nikki has no doubts about my mental state. “What, are you crazy? I mean, take a look at yourself, Timothy. I don’t want to be unkind or anything, but you really are one of the saddest losers I’ve ever come across. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You’re not really going to throw it all away out of some ridiculous sense of misplaced loyalty?”
“I’m with Michael, actually. As you so rightly point out, my life is also degrading enough without broadcasting it to the nation.”
“Well, I didn’t mean…” Nikki looks like a cornered animal; an instinct for self-preservation leading her to yet lower depths of desperation. “Actually, you’re quite attractive in a strange sort of way.” She walks towards me, hips swinging. I try to divert my gaze from her mesmerizing mammaries. “In fact, I thought we could get together some time. How about tonight? Do you see what I’m saying, Tim?”
“Sorry, Nikki, you’re not really my type. What price dignity, eh, Michael?”
For once, the actor and the quadriplegic are in complete agreement. “You’re not wrong there, Tim.”
“Think you’re so clever, don’t you?” says Nikki. “Well, it might be funny to you, pissing all over someone’s hard-earned career, but actually, it’s just pathetic.” She stabs her index finger at us and backs towards the exit. “And don’t give me all that bullshit about dignity. Every man has his price – I should know, I work in television.”
It’s late, and probably highly inadvisable with my middle-aged prostate, but it seems to me that there’s only one appropriate way to celebrate her departure. “Tell you what, Michael, I’ve got something rather special in my room. How do you fancy a coffee?”
At £16.54 per 250 grams the Jamaican Blue Mountain is a rather expensive olive branch. Fortunately, Michael seems to savour it as much as I do.
“Cheers, Timothy. You know something? For a sad loser, you make an excellent coffee.”
∨ The Opposite Bastard ∧
Epilogue
Autumn 2008
The Virgin
It must be a London thing. A couple of times a year, I feel so guilty about not getting my state-recommended dose of culture that I toddle off to the Tate Modern to stock up on arty postcards, or brace myself for lunchtime Lieder at Wigmore Hall.
Last week, I was coming out of a matinee at the National Theatre when I stumbled into a chance meeting right out of one of those nineteenth-century novels a certain Oxford acquaintance of mine was so snotty about. Given that I hadn’t set foot anywhere near a stage since that too too shaming performance of Hamlet and that, ordinarily, wild horses wouldn’t have dragged me within a hundred miles of a play about pimps and drug dealers (thank you very much!), it really was the mother of all coincidences.
Drizzle was the order of the day, as it so often is on the South Bank. I stared into the grey, choppy waters and wondered whether I should have found little presents for the children. I was on the point of making a mercy dash to the gift shop for something slyly improving, when a roar of communal laughter averted a Pavlovian lunge for my credit card.
A crowd had gathered on the walkway. At first I thought it must be another tiresome demonstration. When I realized it was just the audience for a rather feeble-looking pair of buskers, I decided to have a look-see. I don’t normally do crowds, but something I’d read in a book I picked up at the South Ken Cancer Shop had made me a tiny bit braver than usual. My husband thought that Be Your Own Psychotherapist in One Weekend was a splendid joke – which is why I stopped reading it in bed. But I was still working my way through the ‘Rules for Life’ and if it hadn’t been for number twelve (’Try to go beyond your current ‘mindset’ by exploring parts of yourself that you are reluctant to expose’ ), I would almost certainly have given the buskers a miss. So I hovered at the back, not wanting to be drawn into some vile act of audience participation, poised to make my escape should an accomplice with a hat suddenly materialize.
The two performers were fast approaching their climax. The Prime Minister was bent over a unicycle, exposing his plastic, comedy bottom. The crowd whooped deliriously as the President of the United States buggered him with a stars-and-stripes dildo. Quite frankly, it was actually rather sick making. As my husband is always saying, “Political satire’s a piece of piss when you don’t have to come up with a single bloody policy.”
I suppose I’m a bit of a sucker for waifs and strays. I can’t think of any other reason I would have stuck around to watch the pair of them getting changed. I didn’t recognize him at first. It was only after he’d squeezed his comedy bottom into a canvas holdall and taken out his tobacco that I realized who he was. His hairline had retreated a couple of centimetres, but age had not withered his finely chiselled features, and he still smoked like a 1950s movie star.
I thought it would be kinder not to make myself known; by the age of twenty-nine he ought to have been running the National Theatre, not being buggered in the streets outside. And anyway, I wasn’t sure if he’d forgiven me. He’d been quite convinced that I was responsible for Michael’s withdrawal from Hamlet, and when that ghastly woman’s documentary failed to materialize he stopped speaking to me altogether.
In the end, it was Philip who made the first move. “Anna? It is you, isn’t it? Didn’t recognize you with your hair like that.”
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done anything new with my hair. “Philip, hi…nice to see you…shame about the weather.”
“Hey, Klaus,” he called to his acting companion, “over here, there’s someone I want you to meet.” He was a lot more affable than the last time I’d bumped into him, on Magdalen Bridge, when he’d accused me of ‘trying to ruin’ his ‘fucking life’. “This is Anna. We were at Oxford together.”
Klaus wasn’t half so scary without his strapadicktomy. “Pleased to meet you, Anna.”
“Tell you what,” said Philip, “got time for a quick co
ffee? You don’t mind, do you, mate?”
Klaus shook his head and wandered back to his juggling balls.
“Sorry, Philip, I really should be getting back.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” he said. “You must be a very busy lady.”
The moment he popped his fist into his mouth, I had to relent. “Well, maybe a quick one then – for old times’ sake.”
♦
Philip insisted on the National Film Theatre cafe. He was engrossed in a continuous loop of a black-and-white Hungarian masterpiece when I arrived at the table with his coffee.
“It’s nice in here,” I said, trying to ignore the terrible china and the organic-muffin-infested beards.
“The coffee’s not up to much,” he said, “but they show some interesting movies now and then.” He emptied four sachets of demerara into his cappuccino and I tried to think of a subtle way of bringing the conversation round to Hamlet.
“You remember that rather sad character who looked after Michael for a bit? The one who always said he was an actor? We saw him on telly the other night. You’ll never guess what he was doing.”
Philip shrugged. I noticed an angry scar where his nose stud should have been.
“It was ever so funny. He was in that ad for piles cream. You always said he was a pain in the arse!” My fake laughter was not as infectious as I’d hoped it might be.
Philip attacked his froth with a teaspoon. “I suppose he’s only doing what he has to do. It’s a tough world out there.”
“Yes, I suppose it is,” I said, half wondering if he still carried his silver cigarette case. “Listen, Philip, I never did get to say sorry about Hamlet.”
“There’s no need,” he said. “I was a prat. I didn’t know who the hell I was back then. You did me a favour. It should be me who’s apologizing.”
I couldn’t help smiling; nine years ago Philip’s admission would have made the front page of the Oxford-Gazette. “I guess I had a few issues of my own!”
“I hear you two have got kids now,” he said. “That’s amazing.”
I didn’t say that we’d been forced to adopt. “Two boys, Theo and Jack.”
It was Philip who brought it up; I wasn’t going to mention it. “Michael seems to be doing very well for himself.”
“Yes,” I said, trying not to sound too triumphant, “I’m really pleased for him.” There was no need to go into detail. Like the world and his wife, Philip was bound to have come across Michael’s blog. (Postcards from the Veg is a wry look at the often hilarious life of a disabled guy in the twenty-first century.) And I was quite sure he’d have read the rave reviews for his one-man show A Wank at Oxford. He might not have known about the Five Live phone-in yet, or the fact that I had it on very good authority that Mike was about to be created the new Tsar for the disabled, but I didn’t say anything because it might have looked like bragging. “Don’t listen to all that nonsense about how much he hates being ‘Britain’s favourite celebrity cripple’. He loves it, I know he does.”
“What did you think of the show?” said Philip, after a long pause.
“You know me,” I said. “I’m not terribly knowledgeable about crack whores.”
“Not that crap,” he said, waving at my programme, “the show, Klaus and me. Great, wasn’t it?”
“To tell you the truth, I only caught the, er…finale, but it looked very interesting.”
“Like I said, you did me a favour, babe. Building-based projects are so last century. 9⁄11 changed everything. I wouldn’t touch the RSC now if they got down on their bended fucking knees and begged me to.”
“Really?”
“We call it Theatre Bombing,” he said, eyes flaring like they used to. “My idea, zeitgeisty or what? One minute we’re on the South Bank, next minute we might turn up in the Arndale Centre Manchester or the Metro. Believe me, Anna, it’s the only way to win hearts and minds.”
“Yes, right, if you say so.”
“I always knew I was a great director. I didn’t realize I was a brilliant actor too.”
I could hear my gin and tonic summoning me all the way from Chiswick. “Gosh, is that the time? Sorry, Philip, got to dash, I’m afraid.” I know it was naughty of me, but after all that gumph about ‘hearts and minds’, a little parting shot was impossible to resist: “Will we be seeing you at Michael’s movie premiere?”
“No,” he said, the light in his eyes clicking off abruptly, “I’ve got far more important fish to fry.”
“Yes, well, catch you in the Arndale Centre perhaps.” When I looked back, he was chewing thoughtfully on his knuckles.
EOF
The Opposite Bastard Page 21
