The Cat Wore Electric Goggles

by Ian Hutson

  The Humber coughed as the driver missed a gear, his double de-clutch manoeuvre turning into more of a frantic jab at random pedals than an elegant synchronisation of gearbox cogs. Such things were apt to happen if he allowed his attention to be distracted by the water temperature gauge creeping towards the red or the voltmeter swinging from one extreme to the other whenever he used the indicators. What was under the bonnet owed more to alchemy than to engineering, and the Ministerial fleet wasn’t so much serviced by mechanics as it was revivified on a weekly basis by oily chaps who did stage acts on the side. Those moving parts that needed to remain in close proximity to one another were held there largely by duct tape and fuzzy string, and those parts that needed to ignore each other’s oscillations were kept apart with measured, rationed applications of WD40. Generally, there was more Redex in the tank than there was petrol, which was handy because Redex wasn’t on ration, but it did mean that the exhaust pipe rather gave the impression that it was sucking the life out of a pile of burning tyres hidden somewhere in the boot. There was little to no chance of any government minister being followed about his business - any ne’er-do-well or foreign agent in his wake would have asphyxiated after half a mile.

  The driver checked (rather hopefully) for the hundredth time that the handbrake wasn’t still engaged, and he silently wondered if England was fiscally capable of putting a model sailing boat on a park pond, let alone a man on the moon.

  The DG of the EBC harboured similar thoughts about jumping cows and spoons, and he looked nonplussed. ‘We shall do anything required of us in the way of outside broadcasts, that sort of thing, of course. The technical and personnel resources of Alexander Palace are at your complete disposal, Prime Minister.’

  ‘Yes, I know that they are. They had better be. The English Broadcasting Corporation is going to be in charge of the whole mission.’

  ‘The EBC in charge? I don’t understand. Surely the English Space Agency will have control?’

  ‘The ESA is at your disposal, Fotheringham, it is you who will put my chap on the moon for us and it is you who will let the entire world know that we have done so.’

  ‘But...’

  ‘No buts. No ifs. I want it done. You have stonking great studios and special effects departments do you not? Nosegay from The Treasury will give you the necessary budget.’

  ‘Budget?’ queried Fotheringham, his lips moving without waiting for the benefit of connection to cogent neurological activity.

  Nosegay shifted on his little fold-out seat with his back to the driver. His trousers had risen up in his discomfort, and one of his socks was plainly made of less stern stuff than the other.

  ‘Two hundred and fifty quid’ squeaked Nosegay, tugging up the errant sock and trying to look even smaller and more obsequious than he already was in so many ways.

  ‘Two hundred and fifty quid?’ muttered the DG of the BBC, wondering absently quite where and how the word “thousand” might have been lost as it crossed the worn floor-carpet of the Humber. The car was big, but surely not big enough to swallow three very important zeros. The DG focused in on Nosegay, as one might peer over one’s spectacles at a housefly that had fallen on its back and was waving its legs in the air like some dreadful interlude act at the Baton Rouge.

  Nosegay seemed serious as far as the DG could guess, and indeed he consulted several sheets of pink Treasury-watermarked paper. ‘That’s what is left in the English coffers at the moment after setting aside this year’s lend-lease repayment, Mr Fotheringham.’

  The DG of the EBC turned porter-wine red, and he tugged at his collar. ‘We can’t even put out an episode of the Flowerpot Men for two hundred and fifty quid!’

  The PM, of course, pretended to have not heard his expostulation, and Nosegay and Puttlefrock put on some semi-amateur double-act, like a couple of caged budgerigars hopping up and down and twittering about spirit of the Blitz and make do and mend and for Queen and Country. Puttlefrock, needing to have the last word at least once a month, ended with needs must when the Devil drives. However good their performances, both of them were left with the feeling that they had just sullied the fresh newspaper beneath them.

  James (surname Hunt) took the Devil drives comment as a sulphurous indictment of his personal hygiene, and he caused the Humber to roll to a halt outside Boodle’s with as much squeal from the brake drums as possible. The PM had a vital lunchtime appointment at Boodle’s with several thousand grass-fed bovine calories, three very restrained bottles of Biddenden Gribble Bridge Dornfelder and a mountainous lady of easy but discreet virtue and very little underwear. The PM stuck his head back in the Humber’s rear door, nose to nose, ample face to ample face with the DG. They looked like two iced currant buns about to kiss or fight.

  ‘It goes without saying of course, but cock this up Fotheringham and we may have to review the whole concept of the Radio and Television Licence Fee in re the EBC. Liaise with Nosegay and Puttlefrock, they have the schedule we’ve laid out. Don’t be shy about reporting your progress. Chin-chin.’ Then he slammed the door, popping the loose exterior doorhandle back through the open window as though it were the most natural and domestic motoring manoeuvre in the world. It hit the floor-carpet of the Humber with a heavy thump, and lay among their feet like some small part of a disintegrating prosthetic limb.

  Right on cue the Ministerial Driver slipped the Humber back into gear and moved off, unfortunately backwards initially, but then he found a relatively forward gear and everyone pretended that they hadn’t in fact rolled with a metallic bumper on bumper clank into the old Jaguar parked behind. The doorman of Boodle’s was very professionally occupied looking elsewhere at that moment, knowing entirely on which side his bread would have been buttered, had there been any butter to be had on his wages.

  Fotheringham peered at Nosegay over his NHS horn-rims while the driver searched the car with a stick for a second or even a third gear. ‘Two hundred and fifty quid? In total?’

  ‘Less, if you can manage it - we had hoped to put a little aside this year towards Suez.’

  Fotheringham groaned as he was driven, very kindly indeed, back to Alexandra Palace, to the cool of his office and the efficient bosom of his secretary. Once there he sat at his Utility Mark almost solid pine desk with his head in his hands. His head was still attached at the neck of course - the situation was desperate, but not that desperate. Not yet, anyway. Eventually Miss Tompkinson brought him a nice cup of tea and the last of the office fig biscuits. The milk in the tea was powdered of course, but it still tasted as though she had given him first soaking from the daily tea-bag, and he wondered once again if perhaps Miss Tompkinson didn’t harbour some sort of emotional designs upon him. He called to stop her as she took her thirty words per minute on a well-maintained Smith-Corona buttocks back towards the outer office. Her buttocks frequently reminded him of nothing so much as two soft, recently-shorn ewes wrestling under a slightly below-the-knee, demure, Harris tweed parachute.

  ‘Miss Tompkinson - thank you, the fig biscuit is much appreciated, very much appreciated indeed. Er - would you call together the heads of department please? Half an hour, in the boardroom. We have rather an emergency on our hands. A crisis, if you will.’

  Miss Tompkinson was far too well-trained to enquire as to the nature of the emergency, but the angle of her patent shoes and the dangle of her spectacles chain told him in no uncertain manner that, cometh the hour, whatever the need, cometh Miss Tompkinson. She would be there at his elbow in battle, comething. Miss Tompkinson rather secretly admired the Director General’s elbows, and in the quieter, sun-lit moments at her desk, she often fancied herself Flag Captain to his Admiral of The Fleet. Kiss me, Hardy, was a phrase that often found its Pitman shorthand way onto the margins of her spiralbound notebooks, along with sketches of engagement rings and cottages with roses around the doorway.

  In the boardroom the general consensus was also that it wasn’t even possible to put out an episode of the damned Flower Pot Men for
two hundred and fifty knicker. The upper (and, fortunately, the lower) deck of the red W3 route London bus came and went at the window once every six minutes as the meeting carried on late into the evening, long past Captain Pugwash and The Magic Roundabout. The W3 was the only bright thing on the horizon, as far as might be seen from the boardroom table. Sensing the inescapability of the orders from on high, the meeting moved from forming expostulations of incredulity to storming about, ridding themselves of angst, followed by the usual helpless normalising and, eventually, contriving notions about how to perform the impossible. They formed, they normed, they stormed and, as they knew that they would have to in the end, they performed.

  The Special Effects Department said that they could hold their end up of course, so long as no-one minded things moving around a bit in the studio draughts. Fotheringham didn’t doubt that wonders would be worked with tin-foil and plywood, and perhaps some seaside sand and rocks for the lunar landscape. With the DG’s approval, most of what they needed could be nicked from the sets of Blue Peter and Tomorrow’s World. At the deliberate risk of stepping on the toes of Casting, Special Effects suggested that it might even be a good idea to get Valerie Simpleton and Raymondo Baxter involved, perhaps as the voices of authority commentating from Ground Control so to speak.

  Casting Department ignored the suggestion, as they always did until it was possible to slip the inspiration in later as their own. They distracted everyone by tackling the astronaut problem. Impossible, they said, impossible - the actors’ union Equity just wouldn’t stand for non-card astronauts with no experience of acting to appear in a live drama in front of the cameras. Actors it would have to be or there’d be an industry-wide strike. Moreover, with this being a global production they wouldn’t allow just anyone to play the astronauts, they would need to be big, experienced names for that kind of audience. Special Effects then interjected, wanting it noted in the minutes that whomsoever was cast in the parts, they would have to be chosen to fit the space-suits left over from The Quatermass Experiment.

  Fotheringham said that he had the full backing of the PM, and that Equity could kiss his Arsenal Villa are doing awfully well this year, are they not? Casting looked unconvinced by such blustering, but demurred all the same, knowing that they would not be the ones to resolve the matter should the luvvies call a riot on the streets.

  Studio A would have to be the venue, since it was the only studio large enough that might also be sealed off from the attentions of the press and the public - plus it had better catering facilities and two flush lavatories.

  Fotheringham let them all voice their objections and then work out their own ways to work around the problems before he finally drew the meeting to a rousing close. This tactic was exactly what he considered made him great.

  ‘Look chaps, our corporate back is against the wall. I don’t mind telling you that there’s going to be some pretty top-level interest in this production. Moreover, we must put it out live, not just to the nation, but to the world, reasonably developed or otherwise. The audience is expected to run into the hundreds of thousands. The reputation of the EBC and the reputation of England is at stake here, so let’s just get this done eh? That’s all I have to say. We’ll meet again at the crack of dawn tomorrow - shall we say back here for ten or ten-thirty?’

  There were nods of assent, and a general feeling that one or more of them was likely to break out into a Vera Lynn song at any moment. Scheduling was tempted but refrained from crying hip-hip, just in case there was another unfortunate incidence of no-one answering with a huzzah. Once burned, twice shy.

  Miss Tompkinson looked aghast among her HB-pencil minutes, her protective instincts having been stirred. ‘I am aghast’ she said. ‘Forgive me, Mr Fotheringham, but is it really the place of the EBC to mislead Her Majesty’s public in this way?’ She was imagining all sorts of terrible legal ramifications and a little name-calling, should the tabloids catch wind.

  Fotheringham understood her concerns, having met just such questions many, many times in his formative early careers at the helm of large corporations such as the Co-operative Society of Ealing South, and the Brighton and Hove branch of Manders’ Domestic Radiograms. He sought to lay her fears to rest in any way that he could, for he knew that in the coming days he would need a strong woman at his side, shuttling between the tea-kettle and the telephone.

  ‘Miss Tompkinson, I have not always been a leader of men, a heavyweight in the world of industry. There have been many times when the question of ethics has raised its head in my life. Should I split the Society’s member’s funds between Government Bonds and speculative investments at Messrs William Hill in re equine blood-lines at Kempton? Should I advise the customer of the socio-political and historical drawbacks of multi-valve thermionic technology vis-a-vis the current parlous state of home audio entertainment and thus compromise my duties to Kawasaki Nagajimo International Radios Inc? In my experience, these dilemmas always boil down to one, simple question; what is best, not necessarily for the public at large, but for Queen and Country?’

  Fotheringham went to stand at the window, for emphasis. Another red W3 bus came and went at the stop. The cheery “ding ding” of the conductor did nothing to ease the gravitas of the situation.

  ‘England needs us, Miss Tompkinson, she needs us to help her win the Space Race, and my goodness me - I’m going to answer her call. What say you? Shall we give a little back to the nation that only so recently sheltered us behind Lady Britannia’s shield? What say you Miss Tompkinson? Are you game? Shall we do this? For Queen and Country?’

  Miss Tompkinson looked game. Miss Tompkinson quite often looked game. She was a martyr to her hormones. ‘Oh yes, yes and thrice yes, Mr Fotheringham! Let’s do it! If England needs me then England shall have me and have all of me, willingly!’ She dabbed at something facial with her handkerchief and assumed her very best pose of romantic abandon, saved from some sort of falling injury only by the arms of an office chair and one foot strategically braced under the table. One day those arms would change. One day those arms would be warm and enveloping.

  ‘Splendid. I’ll see you back here tomorrow at ten-thirty then. Goodnight.’ With that Fotheringham marched out of the building, leaving the rotating door of the foyer spinning behind him.

  Miss Tompkinson savoured the agonising ache of the tragedy of their romantic situation, and then she went home to feed her cats, water her house-plants and sleep in a layer of some expensive anti-wrinkle cream made from whale gizzards and lavender.

  Inter-departmental memos being what they are, the script presented for the Moon Landing was more of Biddy Baxter than of Raymond Baxter, and two chaps from the University of Sidcup were drafted in to edit it and to add a little technical jargon. When one of them tried to break the ice by joking that jargon was his favourite element he was met by the somewhat awkward silence born of non-comprehension. The EBC in-house writers were then instead introduced to solar prangs and orbital ceilings and on-board ack emmas and landing pip emmas and chocks mostly definitely away. This, they could handle. Some very sound Sound Technicians would work the rest of the magic by overlaying a little fizz and crackle to simulate space-radio communications, or suchlike, sufficient to convince even the hardiest of ham radio enthusiasts that part of the broadcast was coming, if perhaps not from Earth orbit, at least not directly from the tower at Crystal Palace.

  The running order sheets had it that an outside broadcast unit would show a Black Knight rocket launch into the evening sky, and then attention would turn to a studio discussion for half an hour or so to allow the “mission” to “reach the moon” with some degree of plausibility. The main lunar vessel would launch the lunar landing craft at about seven pip-emma, and would then remain “in orbit” under control of George, the auto-pilot character. Once on the surface of the studio the “astronauts” would then hop out, do a bit of exploration and a few experiments, and then the lander would be lifted out of camera range on wires and the action would cut
to Mission Control and to some more shots of the interior of the orbiter. Everything should be nicely finished and cleared away in plenty of time for the National Anthem and evening close-down at midnight. Job done, time to hand out the accolades, the plaudits and the gongs; arise, finally, long after time, Sir Fotheringham.

  When Fotheringham walked into the studio set he tripped over a recumbent Sousaphone and had to steady himself on a kettle drum, thus providing his own fanfare to the common man.

  ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why is there an entire bloody philharmonic orchestra in the studio?’

  Apparently, Union rules required it whenever they weren’t playing on Mrs Dale’s Diary.

  ‘Where are the astronauts?’

  ‘The Union wouldn’t allow them on set. I did mention that you had the PM’s full backing and that the indications were that they could kiss your Arsenal Villa on both cheeks, but they just laughed and said something about a “drop-kick”, whatever one of those might be. We’ve had to make one or two substitutions.’

  ‘One or two?’

  ‘Well, three substitutions - all of the astronauts in fact. Major Thom is now being played by Mr Gielgud who is on a rest from the West End, Commander Straker will be played by Alastair Sim who is between films and Captain Scarlet has been replaced by Margaret Rutherford.’

  ‘Margaret bloody Rutherford? But Captain Scarlet is a man. Rutherford’s a woman isn’t she?’