We sat down around the low coffee table, Everett unbuttoning his jacket. It already felt like a business meeting. I handed round the sandwiches. Everett declined.
‘Forgive me,’ Brendan had his hand on Everett’s arm. ‘You mind if I put Jules here in the picture?’
‘She doesn’t know?’
‘It’s a surprise.’
‘Sure.’ Everett looked briefly amused. ‘Go ahead.’
Brendan shot me the look I always got when there was a pressie in the offing. Then he began to talk about what I first assumed was a programme idea but the deeper he got into it, the more I realised that he was way, way past what we TV folks call ‘development’. The big juicy bone that Brendan was depositing at my feet was a pilot for a series, fully worked out and - more important still - fully funded.
The notion, in essence, was simple. It took a bunch of kids from one of the rougher big city council estates and put them under the care of an ex-SAS instructor for a month. While he worked the special forces magic, a similar bunch of kids, this time American, were jumping through the same kind of hoops with an ex-Green Beret. This brush with the world’s top supermen might just counter society’s belief that problem kids today were - in Brendan’s phrase - ‘under- challenged’.
At the end of the month, with plenty of training footage in the can, the two teams would meet on the Brecon Beacons for an elaborate game of Paintball. One of the two teams would be entrusted with a casket. They had two days and a night to carry the casket forty miles over gruelling terrain. The other team were tasked to stop them. Inside the casket, for real, was £10,000 - hard cash to be spent by the winning kids on sports facilities for their home estate.
It was, Brendan assured me, a wonderful concept. The British version would be followed by an American sequel. The latter, with the blessing of the Pentagon, would be staged at Fort Bragg, home of the Green Berets. If the two pilot shows went well, Doubleact were looking at a series order for another twelve. A big ITV company had already lined up a major sponsor. Working title, for the pilots at least, was Home Run.
Brendan broke off to demolish the rest of his club sandwich. I was still wrestling with the small print of his latest wheeze.
‘What are the Green Berets?’
Brendan gestured at Everett. The American threw me a casual half- salute, one sinewy hand brushing his right temple.
‘At your service, ma’am.’
‘You’re a Green Beret?’
‘Always. I’m technically on the reserve list now, but it makes no difference.’
‘But what are they? What do they do?’
‘Special Forces, ma’am. Uncle Sam’s shock troops. Infil. Exfil. Sabotage. Intelligence gathering. You want a la carte? The whole damn menu?’
I laughed. He was bright, this man. I liked him.
‘You had a hand in this idea? Cooking it up?’
‘Sort of, but it’s Brendan’s baby really. Him and Gary.’
‘Gary?’
Brendan reached for the phone again. I was looking at the fourth cup.
‘Gary’s our SAS lead,’ Brendan explained. ‘He’s an old tart really but at least he looks the part.’
‘And he’s due here?’
‘Any time.’
Gary arrived several minutes later. Apparently he’d been waiting in the lobby downstairs. Brendan ribbed him about this and I found myself wondering why. Maybe he expected something more dramatic, like Gary arriving through the window on the end of a rope.
I listened while Gary and Everett exchanged notes. It was evident at once that they’d just spent several days together. Compared to the American, Gary was a scruff: long, greasy hair, flat, slightly lop-sided face, bitten nails, scuffed trainers, but the two of them shared the kind of nerveless, laid-back rapport you often find amongst top windsurfers. They’d been there. They’d done it. Not very much got under their skins.
Eventually, I established that the germ of the idea had come from Gary. A fan of Members Only, he’d lifted the phone and asked to speak to Brendan, whose name - inevitably - was always last on the rolling credits.
‘Bold,’ I murmured.
Gary had cornered the club sandwiches.
‘Yeah,’ he said through a mouthful of tuna mayonnaise, ‘but it was Brendan who ran with it. My idea was shit. I hadn’t got much further than hide and seek on Pen-y-Fan.’
‘Pen-y-what?’
‘It’s a hill on the Beacons. Bloody vertical. Goes on forever, real bastard of a climb.’ He wiped his chin. ‘The rest was down to Brendan, like I say. He was the one who dreamed up all the stuff about the kids. That’s the key, isn’t it? That’s what unlocks the dosh.’
I found myself looking at Brendan with something close to respect. He’d spent a lot of the last two months telling me about his documentary days but I’d come away with the conviction that this was a chapter of his life that was firmly over. Market forces had turned him into a businessman, a machine - as the office joke had it - for turning bad coffee into worse quiz shows. When I inquired what had possessed him to flirt once again with a social conscience, he looked wounded.
‘You don’t think it’s any good? The concept?’
‘I think it’s great.’
‘And you’re serious? You don’t know where it comes from?’
‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘I haven’t got a clue.’
He looked wonderingly at the other two and then told them about my precious undergraduate video. It was, he said, the best piece of student film-making he’d ever seen. It had sat on a shelf in his office for months and months while he watched me soil myself with Members Only. One day, he’d sworn, he’d figure out just how to marry the two disciplines, how to combine what he called my very special documentary talents with the demands of the commercial marketplace. The trip hadn’t been easy, but over the last month or two, in the course of several million phone calls, the three of them had come up with something pretty workmanlike and now the rest - the really important bit - was down to me.
I glanced over my shoulder, impressed by this little speech, wondering just who he could possibly be talking about. Only when I heard their laughter did I realise he was serious.
‘You want me to produce this thing?’
‘Sure,’ he reached for a stray prawn. ‘And direct it, too.’
Much later, we took a cab to a Cajun restaurant called Baby Jakes on First Avenue. Everett had been a regular at the place for years. A waiter showed us to a table at the back and we were halfway through fried catfish and salmon fajitas before I was quite certain that this wasn’t another of Brendan’s elaborate showboating gestures. He really was making me responsible for the UK end of the shoot. And I really would be in charge.
I’d squeezed his hand in the back of the cab. Now, under the table, I did it again. He was talking about production schedules. It sounded nearly as exciting as sex.
‘We shoot in the hills in November,’ he said. ‘All the prelim training stuff during the summer.’
‘November?’ I began to argue about the light, about short days, about the weather.
‘Shit weather,’ Brendan agreed. ‘But that’s all part of the story. The network’s bought challenge, the sponsors too. That’s what’s fired them up. We’re going to give these kids a fucking great mountain to climb, and November’s part of that mountain. It’s about confrontation. It’s about self-esteem. It’s about…’ he nodded, ‘… manhood.’
I’d seen Brendan in these moods before, bless him. He was a genius at pitching an idea, at marshalling little squads of cliché and sending them into battle. The fact that he so obviously believed in whatever he was trying to sell simply added to his appeal, and that night in the restaurant was a perfect example of Brendan losing his grip on the real world. Within minutes, at this rate, Home Run would have solved the nation’s crime problem. The series
would doubtless end with a guest appearance from a grateful Home Secretary and knighthoods all round.
I tried to bring him back to earth. Half a year in television had taught me that Home Run, like anything else, would only be as good as the facilities we threw at it.
‘Talk to me about helicopters,’ I said.
Helicopters are a good test when you’re talking high-performance ideas. At £700 an hour, even one would make a hefty dent in any Doubleact budget I’d ever seen.
‘Two,’ Brendan said at once. ‘Minimum.’
‘For how long?’
‘As long as it takes.’
The others were nodding. They could afford to. They wouldn’t be the ones running the figures past Sandra. I looked inquiringly at Brendan a moment, then decided to let it pass. The evening was too lovely an experience to muddy with the harder questions.
‘And ground level?’ I asked instead. ‘What do we do there?’
‘Handheld mini-cams with video uplinks.’ Brendan was helping himself to the fifth bottle of wine. ‘You’ll have recorders on the choppers.’
‘How many cameramen?’
‘None.’
I paused, wondering whether I’d heard him properly. No camera- men? Was he serious?
‘How come?’
‘The kids shoot their own pics.’
‘The kids?’
Brendan nodded vigorously.
‘All part of the game,’ he said. ‘All part of the challenge.’
‘So who teaches them?’
‘We do.’
It was Gary this time. I couldn’t help noticing how little he’d drunk. Even Everett, Mr Clean-Cut, was at least a bottle ahead.
‘While you’re training them to survive? Is that what you’re saying? You’ll turn them into cameramen as well as everything else?’
‘Yeah,’ Gary looked me in the eye. ‘That’s exactly what we’ll do.’
I ducked my head, not wanting to take the exchange any further, but Everett pressed the point.
‘I guess you’ll be wanting them raw, these pictures,’ he said. ‘I don’t know about English kids but the guys over here are pretty familiar with camcorders and stuff. I guess that generation grew up on camera.’
‘Raw?’ I queried softly.
‘Everett means alive, as-it-happens, in-your-face.’ Brendan was pitching again, this time to me. ‘I see using the kids themselves as a positive advantage. What we don’t need here is art, polish, four-man crews, wide-shots, close-ups, GVs, all that horseshit. These kids are out on the edge, out in the wild. That’s where we’ve put them. That’s what we’ve done to them, that’s what society’s done to them. The pictures need to reflect that. SIY does it for us, Jules.’
‘SIY?’
‘Shoot it Yourself.’ He beamed at me over the table, encouraging me to laugh. I did, of course, but for the first time I felt just a twinge of anxiety. My three years at Bournemouth may not have qualified me for Hollywood but it had certainly bred a healthy respect for the basics of traditional film-making. Those basics included most of the list he’d just dismissed and I knew that without them we were in danger of ending up with a soup of meaningless close-ups. The helicopters would help, of course, but there’s a limit to what you can do from five hundred feet.
Gary was still watching me. Disguising himself as a tramp had certain advantages. One was a dangerous temptation not to take him too seriously.
‘Where have we gone wrong?’ he asked me. ‘What haven’t we sorted? No bullshit.’
I tried to flannel but I could sense at once that the issue wouldn’t go away. Gary had flattened me with a direct question and the least I owed him was an honest stab at an answer.
‘I think it’s a great idea,’ I said slowly, ‘but I think there are problems.’
‘There are always problems. That’s what makes television fun.’
There was no avoiding Brendan. I gave him the grateful nod he was after.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘And nothing’s insoluble.’
‘But?’
I looked at Gary again. The restaurant went in for red candles wedged in empty wine bottles, hopelessly sixties, and the dancing shadows spilled across his face, emphasising its strange contours.
‘Take the kids,’ I said. ‘I assume we’re looking for the hard cases, the loners, the real misfits. Am I right?’
‘Yeah,’ Gary nodded. ‘For sure.’
‘Then getting them onside won’t be easy. Not in a month.’
I paused, only too aware of just how little I knew about these kids. We’d met them on the estate in Southampton, dozens of them, but that didn’t make me an expert.
‘You’ll have all summer,’ Brendan was saying. ‘That should be long enough.’
‘I thought you said a month?’
‘It works out to be a month, all in.’
‘It’s not one long chunk?’
‘No, it’s bits and pieces, has to be.’
‘Why?’
‘That’s the way the schedule works.’
‘Whose schedule?’
‘Ours. And Gary’s.’ He glanced across at Gary. Gary nodded, still watching me.
‘That makes it worse. A month solid, no distractions, no fucking about, you might have a chance.’ I shrugged. ‘What you’re saying now sounds like Scout meetings. Every Wednesday night. Weather permit- ting.’
Gary was grinning. In some strange way, I sensed I’d answered his question.
‘No problem,’ he said. ‘With the kids?’
‘No, love.’ The grin widened, then his hand closed over mine. ‘With you.’
Back at the hotel, I realised how exhausted I was. Twenty-seven hours on my feet, most of them fuelled by alcohol, had taken their toll. I sank into the enormous bed, letting Brendan enfold me. In the cab, coming back from the restaurant, he’d told me what an impact I’d made on the other two, and how certain they both were that the pilots would be a smasheroo. The UK end of the series would be shot on the Beacons but if the formula worked (the merest detail) then there was no limit to the geographical reach of subsequent series. He told me there were tourist boards across the world just aching for the screen exposure of Home Run, and Brendan was still rhapsodising about the places we could recce together when I drifted off to sleep.
I awoke before dawn. I could hear the wail of a siren from the street below. I made my way to the bathroom in time to throw up. I was sick twice more after that and I dimly remember wondering just how much I’d allowed myself to drink at the restaurant before returning on tip- toe to bed.
Twenty-four hours later, still nauseous, I was back at my desk in London, trying to decipher a scribbled message from the girl who’d been standing in for me. ‘Phone Mark,’ it said. ‘Urgent.’
This time, Mark’s preferred rendezvous was the office where he worked. I’d borrowed Brendan’s Mercedes to drive across to Napier Road to feed the cat, and I left it on a double yellow line on the Seven Sisters Road while I ran inside to find Mark. He offered me coffee but I said I was in a hurry. The moment I’d seen his face, I knew I was back in the real world.
‘What’s happened?’
Mark had the form ready on his desk. He picked it up, shielding it from me while he told me about his latest visit to my flat. He’d gone round yesterday, only to find the prospective buyer standing on the pavement outside surrounded by broken tiles. The tiles, he said, must have come off the roof. It hadn’t been the best advert for what the details were calling ‘a solid, well constructed turn-of-the-century property’.
‘You’re telling me it was deliberate ?’
‘Has to be.’
I nodded, wondering whether this little act of vandalism might qualify as harassment. If so, it might be time to lift the phone to Gaynor.
Mark had his eye on Brendan’s Mercede
s. He obviously thought it belonged to me.
‘So what about the buyers?’ I asked him. ‘I blamed it on the weather.’
‘Has it been windy?’
‘No.’
‘So did they believe you?’
‘What do you think?’
Mark at last gave me the form. It came from the Law Society. Across the top it read ‘Seller’s Property Information’. When I looked blank, Mark opened it, indicating Section Two. Section Two was headed Disputes. Four separate questions invited my thoughts about my neighbour. Question 2.3 read ‘Have you made any complaint to any neighbour about what the neighbour has or hasn’t done?’
‘If we get a buyer,’ Mark said pointedly, ‘you’ll have to fill that bit up. If you don’t, you can get sued.’ He nodded. ‘It happens a lot.’
I read the Disputes section again, beginning to understand. It was a matter of record that I’d been less than happy with Gilbert. In fact I’d been to the police about him. Twice. The two lines provided for the answer to question 2.3 were quite enough, therefore, to see off any potential buyer. After the cat, the tiles, I thought grimly. And after the tiles, this innocent little form with its nice blue logo.
I checked the car. No parking warden. No ticket.
‘You might as well be honest,’ Mark said. ‘What’s the score with the bloke upstairs?’
I fought the urge to lie. What would be the point?
‘He’s a bit odd,’ I admitted. ‘You’ve had problems?’
‘One or two.’
‘That cat? You think he might have…’ Mark was looking at me.
I nodded glumly. I’d buried Pinot in the one corner of the back garden that Gilbert’s windows didn’t overlook. God knows how I was going to explain any of this to Nikki but it gave me a dogged satisfaction to deny Gilbert the sight of the grave.
‘So what happens next?’ I asked. ‘Are you giving up?’
‘Course not. Just wondered if you could have a word, that’s all.’
‘Who with?’
‘This geezer upstairs. Tell him he’s out of order. Tell him whatever you like. But get him to back off, eh?’
I folded the Law Society form and slipped it into my pocket. The notion of facing Gilbert, of having a quiet word - so logical, so obvious - brought a smile to my face. Mark was shepherding me towards the door.
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