My Little Armalite

by James Hawes

  Since I was now on the telly, I came under increasing pressure to at least allow my family to be placed under armed protection for a while. I agreed with great (and public) reluctance to put my children before my principle. During the Newsnight debate on the subject, I came up with the rather brilliant idea, though I say it myself, that on grounds of liberalism and multiculturalism my loved ones’ weapons-trained police minder should himself be a practising Muslim.

  This caused some problems, there being no such officer available in the UK. The Home Office, however, so liked the idea that when, coincidentally, The Paper picked up on and featured a Bosnian Muslim (agreeably European and highly photogenic) who had trained with the British Army as well as the American Marines, and who was now seeking to join the SAS under the new US-style Service for Citizenship scheme (introduced to stem the impossible haemorrhage of home-grown soldiers due to Iraq), it was very easy for me to have somebody else suggest that this might well be the ideal man for the job.

  Rather fun, having George around the place. And what with him being so damn good-looking, so dangerously sexy and so often in contact, via me, with bored media folk, he has, of course, already landed his own TV documentary (and hence, book deal).

  As for my shows, well, the viewers, besieged by interest rates and fear of crashes, seeing all Europe voting for policies that would have been thought virtually fascistic just ten years ago, love what I sell.

  And what do I sell? Reassurance, of course.

  The avoidance of tragedy in a frightening world.

  They see a plump man who has been shot by terrorists and is still perfectly happy, perfectly liberal. And they shall get more of the same. I have just completed my new series, History’s Walls, in which I make the regulation epic journey in my trademark old-shape bonnet-badgeless C-Class Merc (for the continual on-screen use of which the grateful manufacturers have secretly promised me a spit-new E-Class whenever I choose to take it), wandering about in front of the Great Wall of China, Hadrian’s Wall, Offa’s Dyke, the Maginot Line, the Berlin Wall, once again, and the Arab–Israeli dividing wall. The final ep (I find it hard not to call it that, these days) ends with a cutesy dissolve from Checkpoint Charlie to Charlie Chaplin, with Arab and Israeli students laughing together at the warm-hearted tramp. I then sign off the series with the following blithe coda:

  EXT. THE ARCTIC. DAY.

  Dr John Goode smiles despite the evident pain in his left shoulder as he leans over the stern of a boat to watch a vast iceberg thunder into the sea.

  GOODE

  Yes, the sea may rise a few feet. I don’t deny it. A few species may become extinct. So did the Roman Empire. A few maniacs may attack freedom. I should know! Ow. Sorry, just a little twinge. But our children won’t have to dodge V-1s, like my parents did. And they won’t have to lie awake wondering if tonight’s the night some faulty computer unleashes the cruise missiles, like we did. Oh, some little things may get a little worse, and the line of human progress may suffer little blips, but it is a great, strong, ancient line, and in the big picture it is going only one way: up, and onwards. Goodnight, and sleep well. Because, you know, you really can.

  So here I am, on all our tellies and therefore, by the natural osmosis of the water-cooler world, in all the windows of all the bookshops, right up there with people who kick balls about, cook vegetables or suggest home improvements on TV.

  And, hence, in north London. Where else?

  Oh, I know it won’t last.

  But it doesn’t have to. The vital lump sums have put me back where I always should have been, and there I will stay, media career or not. You see, my academic salary is somewhat over double what it was last year. Many of our new universities offered me instant personal chairs in return for the recruiting-value of my name, so I was able to negotiate, with transatlantic heartiness, a thumping raise that cannot be reneged on.

  In short, I have been able to buck the free market and win back what I never actually had but always should have had: approximately the comparative social, financial and domestic situation of a senior humanities academic from the early seventies.

  Result? Happiness.

  It was a rather nice house-warming party this evening, I thought.

  Intelligent, well-educated people discussing the burning issues of the day as discussed in The Paper that morning (indeed, as discussed there by some of the very people present) over a little too much good red wine (and in the case of the assistant European editor and her Hungarian artist friend, a line or two of cocaine in the downstairs loo). All fine, liberal stuff.

  My parents arrived dressed in a suit and twinset respectively, both of such fine cut and cloth that they had clearly been made to measure, though not in the last few decades and not for the present owners. Good old Oxfam!

  —Well, it looks like a pretty solid house, John.

  —I hope so, Dad!

  —But I still can’t believe you paid, what was it, half a million quid for this?

  —Half? Um, oh, yes, about that, Dad. Anyway, it’s ours now, eh?

  —Education will always win through in the end, John! We always said so.

  —You did, Mum, and you were right. Come on, come in. Will, Jack! Granny and Grandad are here. Come and get their coats, will you?

  Eamon was on top form, quite a hit in his heavily designed suit of sheeny black with many zips where no zips usually are.

  —Jaysus, beaten on to the box by Johnny B. Goode, who’d’ve thought it! Talk about a high-kicking serve to the backhand court! I have to say, I never thought you’d be able to change your grip that fast. How the fuck much is Hollywood paying you for that consultancy gig?

  —Eamon, Eamon, we don’t talk money in north London. The word is fun, here.

  —Sorry, the non-English fifty-acre farmer in my soul.

  —But actually, yes, consulting on Siegfried is very, very good fun.

  —As opposed to giving intellectual justification for a slaughterhouse of fascist shite?

  —Really, Eamon, Siegfried: The West Stands Firm is a serious, high-end filmic recreation of the dawn of northern European literature which employs the latest CGI techniques to bring Dark Age reality back to life.

  —A crisp return, my man! Excellent. But wasn’t it a bit full-on to have that many kinda-ragheads get disembowelled by our big blonde hero?

  —It’s all in the original poem, Eamon. More or less. And I always prefer the word slotted myself, don’t know why. Now, come with me and, ah, Daisy, there you are, I want you to meet my absolute best friend, Eamon.

  —Hello, Eamon. What fun that suit is!

  —It called, I bought, what could I do?

  —Daisy, I was just thinking, don’t we need a piece on socialist-realist art for the next series?

  —Yes. Do you know anything about socialist-realist art, Eamon?

  —That horrible shite? Not at all. Why the fuck would I? But by tomorrow I’ll be able to rally from the baseline all day about it. SoRe, I think I’ll christen it. Doesn’t that sound like fun to you guys? SoRe: the new PoMo, I see it all as plain as day.

  —I think Eamon would be fun on the show, don’t you, Daisy?

  —Yes. Oh well, that’s OK then.

  Poor old Brian from Sheffield was embarrassing, of course, and I know it seemed strange to have invited him. But I did have my reasons. I passed by him often, kept his glass full and tried to keep an ear cocked in his direction:

  —Excuse me, sorry, I just wondered, do you know if the literary editor of The Paper is here? John said he would be.

  —Actually, it’s she and I am and those are my shoes you’re pouring wine on.

  —Oh. Oh God. Sorry. Well, perhaps I am a bit, I mean, has John mentioned me to you? I’ve been trying to find you all evening, you see, I’m your man. I could review absolutely anything archaeological, historical, biographical, anthropological. I mean, obviously, I’m fully qualified, and, well, I am a friend of John’s! It’s great, what’s happened to good old John, eh?<
br />
  —Wonderful.

  —It’s so funny. You see, I’m sure I remember, not long before he got shot, we had a chat on the phone, I admit I did get a bit drunk afterwards, thinking about London and, well, The Paper and my idea for a televison series and things like that. It’s a fantastic idea. Perhaps we could work on it together? Well, yes, anyway, I’m almost sure, when I think back, that he said something about a machine gun. Before it happened, I mean. But obviously, he can’t have, can he?

  —Perhaps you were drunk.

  —Do you know, I may have been. I did ask him once about it, I called him when I was a bit drunk, but he just laughed and said I must be drunk, which I was, actually, and …

  —Eugenie, darling, there you are!

  —John, darling, there you are! (Who the hell is this?)

  —Brian, come out to the garden, will you? (So sorry, Eugenie!) There’s someone else I want you to meet.

  —Oh. Um, so, if you’ve got anything, absolutely anything on history, anthropology …

  —This way, Brian. You know, Brian, you’re a bit drunk.

  —Yes, I suppose I am. Sorry, John. I mean, it is nearly Christmas, isn’t it?

  —It is, Brian.

  —Do you think she’ll give me anything to review?

  —Oh, I think we can do better than that.

  —Better than reviewing for The Paper?

  —Jayne from the BBC was telling me she’s got a new series about archaeological discoveries in the Middle East.

  —I could do that! John, I could! Really! Will you tell her I could? Will you?

  —Well, the thing is, it’s a little bit of a hot potato, Brian. It’s about events right after the Prophet himself, you see, and it does rather seem to contradict some of the stuff in the Qur‘an. A couple of Iranian archaeologists have already been beheaded for working on the material. I know you wouldn’t be afraid of the physical danger, Brian, but as a liberal man, obviously, you’d have to consider whether any Western infidel has the cultural right to even discuss issues of such importance to the ummah, and which –

  —I could do it, John! You know I could! Please let me do it!

  —Well, I’ll have a word. Look, Jayne’s over there, why not go and tell her yourself right now. Make sure everyone realises you know the dangers and aren’t afraid of them. That’ll impress her.

  —God, John, right, thanks!

  —See you later, Brian. Hello, Jago, hello, Caspian. Hello, darling. Enjoying the party?

  —Mmm. Leticia’s got two spare tickets for that lieder recital at Wigmore Hall tomorrow. Shall we go?

  —Absolutely. Ah, there’s George. Will you excuse me, darling? I just need to grab him for a sec. You do look lovely, you know. Ah, George.

  —Yes, Jonni?

  —I wonder if you could come with me just for a second. So sorry, Tamsin.

  (—My God, John, your friend George is so …

  —Yes, isn’t he?)

  —George, I think Brian may be a problem. I got him down here to see what he remembers. I’m afraid he remembers enough and gets drunk enough to say it.

  —This can be very bad for us, Jonni. For our children too.

  —I know. Brian’s going to be in the papers soon because he’s about to agree to do a programme that might offend some Muslims very much indeed.

  —He has children, Jonni?

  —Yes, but there’s no mortgage on his house and his pension’ll be paid out for ever. His sons will be all right, George.

  —Poor man, if he offend Him with a hundred names!

  —I’ll call Phil tomorrow.

  —You call only from phone box, Jonni. This is very important.

  —Well of course, George.

  —Tell him I bring new bootleg Erbyerk DVD for him, special live show Erby do for army and police only. My friends in SAS give me. Extra funny. Erby’s Big Bayonet and Truncheon Show, not for easily offended, ha ha!

  —Oh yes, I must look at that one too.

  —I do not think you like Erby so much, Jonni.

  —Well, you see, I think I’ve just sold Channel 4 my idea for a postmodern reinterpretation of Hubby Huck’s humour. I mean, the way Hubby boldly foregrounds racism and misogny witnesses a true fascination with otherness, don’t you think?

  —Ah! You are clever man, Jonni, too clever for me.

  —Oh, it’s a classic Freudian erotic transference, which clearly suggests that underlying Hubby’s apparently offensive humour is a genuinely liberational dynamic that is systematically rejected by the elitist media establishment precisely because it’s implicitly, um, implicitly, er, oh fuck, I’ve forgotten how it goes after that. Never mind, Eamon’ll remind me. Well, see you later, George. Tamsin, here he is, you can have him back now, lucky you!

  —John, there you are!

  —Antonia, darling, there you are! How was the street music in Brixton?

  —Just vibrant! And it all ended with the most impassioned plea for the end of stop-and-search powers for the police. We’ll get that in tomorrow, just you wait! So much for that racist bloody cop on the radio the other day, eh?

  —The black one, you mean?

  —Yes, him. Claiming that the black community might want more police about. I ask you, who on earth is the ridiculous man listening to? Well, he should have been there tonight! The youth on the street’ll be partying till dawn. So edgy. I thought we’d never get home. They just don’t have real taxis down there, it’s quite extraordinary. We had to take the vilest minicab in the world and I’m quite certain the driver had never been north of the river in his whole life. Such fun. Now, John, have you signed the petition yet?

  —No, actually.

  —Hilary darling, John hasn’t signed the petition yet!

  —John hasn’t signed?

  —He must sign!

  —You must sign, John. Everyone has.

  You see, our local comprehensive school, Jack and Will’s school, Mariana’s future school, has a catchment area rather unusually deficient in pupils from poor and/or ethnic backgrounds. For some reason it always scores well over double in every respect what the average north-London state school can manage. The new head is threatening to take advantage of the government’s proffered route to greater independence. Selection through the Back Door! is the cry of we stout defenders of the comprehensive ethos, who have paid a million quid and upwards to make bloody sure our children will go to a good school full of nice people, irrespective of whether or not they have any brains.

  I signed, prominently.

  —And we must try to get the story into The Paper, John.

  —Well, it was in there last week, wasn’t it?

  —So it was. Then we must try to get it in again.

  —I’ll ask Deborah.

  —Will you, John? This is so important for the people of Muswell Hill.

  —And, by the holy God, your selfless intervention on their behalf will earn you all crowns in Heaven!

  —I beg your pardon?

  —Oh, don’t worry, Antonia, this is my friend Eamon. He’s from Ireland.

  —Oh well then.

  —But, Johnny, surely this is East Finchley?

  —East Finchley?

  —East Finchley? Here? Who told you that?

  —Well it did kinda suggest so on the tube station, and I’d almost swear I saw N2 on the street sign outside and –

  —Now, now, Eamon.

  —Hey, people, I jest, I jest.

  —Well, thank God for that!

  —Dad?

  —Hello, Jack, hello, Will. You still up?

  —Dad, George said next time you go abroad on work he could take us paintballing.

  —Special paintballing!

  —Night-time paintballing!

  —With like night-sights!

  —Über-cool!

  —He said we really should go.

  —Just in case we ever need it.

  —He said it’s just like being a Scout, really.

  —Be prepared, y
ou know, Dad?

  —Only much, much cooler.

  —Can we, Dad?

  —I’ll talk to George. Now off to bed. You’ve got the school skiing trip tomorrow and you need to get some sleep.

  —Ski-ing? Like, nooo, Dad.

  —Dad, it’s snowboarding. G’night.

  —What charming young men. Now, John, there’s someone else from the BBC who wants to talk to you …

  Yes, a very nice party.

  Having said all my goodbyes and filled the dishwasher, I was having my second and very last cigarette out in the garden, watching through the window as Sarah played the piano to herself, alone in her secret little world, just as I always loved to see her.

  I had made everything all right and –

  And then a voice spoke from the darkness behind me.

  —Thou hast it now, King, Cawdor, Glamis, all.

  75: Normality at any Cost

  —Ah, Eamon. I thought you’d gone.

  —Oh, I’m in no big rush. You happy-family folk have to score your sleep, of course, and where better than Nwhateverthefuckthisis, but the party starts late in the bad old parts of Zone 1, where degenerate wealth meets impatient youth. That’s entertainment, begob! I just wanted to clock you by moonlight before I head off.

  —What was that you just said about Cawdor and Glamis, Eamon?

  —You wha’? I was merely complimenting you on the legwear.

  —You were saying you like my trousers?

  —Fantastic-looking, corduroy, glamorous and all. They go so well with the tweed. Not an original combo, but always effective.

  —Oh. You see, I thought you said something else.

  —About corduroy? What else is there to say?

  —Eamon, I’m not going to even try to play word games with you.

  —I wouldn’t. I hit too deep and too hard for you, Johnnyboy. Though I suspect that when it comes to reality you have the odd shot in your locker that I just couldn’t live with.

  —Hmm. Shall we leave it at that, then?

  —Absofuckinglutely. You can count me in for the long march, Johnny, and rely on me to help dish out the shtick.