High society

by Ben Elton

  ‘How pathetic is our society, ladies and gentlemen! How utterly debased our culture! How petty our priorities and our resolve when year after year we allow the streets to be flooded by the likes of Jessie, the prisons filled with Sonias and the hospitals and cemeteries filled with baby Rickys. And yet we have not the courage or the intelligence to pull the rug from beneath the feet of the entire rotten network that creates these tragedies!

  ‘This party has never been afraid to take tough decisions and we have never taken a tougher one than that which we are joined here together to endorse. Tough! But also easy, easy in that we have no choice! Just as in the past right-thinking men and women had no choice but to proceed towards universal suffrage, universal literacy, universal health care and universal welfare benefit, today we have no choice but to move towards universal sanity and face down the demon of worldwide organized crime! We must have the courage to acknowledge that which is self evident! We can deny it no longer. You don’t like it. I don’t like it. As the father of teenaged girls I would rather it was any other way! But the fact is that the only option that offers even the remotest chance of success in the battle against drugs is to bring them under government control. Our control. Let us take these dangerous substances out of the hands of the criminals and place them firmly in the hands of the Home Office and the Exchequer! Let us be the first but certainly not the last nation to legalize drugs! Not to decriminalize a few, or even all — that way leads to further madness, a confused, half-baked policy which the criminals will exploit — but to legalize all of them and legalize them now!’

  That which had been unthinkable merely months before had now become government policy and would, considering the size of the government’s majority, not to mention the sympathetic ears on the opposition benches, shortly become law.

  It was all much more difficult than Tommy had imagined. Gemma had not wanted to be pulled, and it had taken all of Tommy’s wiles even to coax her back to his hotel, let alone up to his bedroom.

  Nonetheless, he had managed it. The impossibility of Tommy’s sitting exposed in a hotel bar had given him the excuse he needed to suggest that they seek sanctuary in private. The bar was particularly crowded that night because of the Labour Regional Conference dinner taking place at the hotel. Tommy was of course a magnet for politicians looking for photo opportunities and he had been invited to join the Home Secretary and Peter Paget, his old friend from Parky and the Brits, for a private drink. Under normal circumstances Tommy might have been interested. Like everybody else in the country he had heard of the Paget Bill and now that he understood it he supported it.

  But Tommy was not a politician, he was a rock star, and when it came to a choice between Jigging with suits or cracking onto a beautiful girl, there was no choice. However, even though Gemma had agreed to accompany Tommy to his room, she was suspicious, very suspicious.

  ‘Look, I’m not going to just sleep with you, Tommy. Believe it or not, some girls don’t.’

  ‘What’s wrong with just sleeping with someone, then? It’s great.’

  ‘Tommy, I don’t know you.’

  ’

  ‘Course you know me. I’m Tommy Hanson. Everybody knows me. In’t that where this started? ‘Cos you know I’m Tommy?’

  ‘Well, yes, of course. I know you as a star and I think you’re great. Gary was right, I’m easily as big a fan of yours as he is, and I don’t mind admitting I was always going to use his condition to try and get to see you. We once met Neil Kinnock by the same method. That was brilliant too.’

  ‘Eh, he didn’t try and pull you, did he?’

  Tommy, not everyone is a sex maniac like you. He was amazing, though, so funny, and he talked to us for over an hour about European policy on travel for the disabled.’

  ‘Sounds fookin’ dull if you ask me.’

  ‘Not if you’re my brother, Tommy. Anyway, he was truly kind, and he cracked all these jokes as well, and — ’

  ‘Why are we talking about Neil Kinnock?’

  ‘I…don’t know.’

  ‘You were saying that you’re my biggest fan, which is why, apparently, you won’t sleep with me.’

  ‘Tommy, it’s not that I don’t fancy you. Obviously. I love your stuff and it’s pretty obvious that you’re a bit gorgeous.’

  Again that heart-melting blush. The nervous shift of shapely legs, the skirt, just above the knee. So proper. So tantalizing. So nice not to see it all at once. These days Tommy felt girls wandered round nearly naked. You saw the lot before you’d even had time to be intrigued. Whatever happened to subtlety?

  ‘Of course I fancy you,’ Gemma repeated, ‘and I’m completely amazed that you seem to fancy me, being as how I’m not exactly a supermodel, although from what I’ve read in the papers you fancy all girls…’

  ‘To a degree, I do.’

  ‘But I don’t know you at all, and I’ve never in my life slept with a man I didn’t know. How could you? You’d feel such a slapper.’

  ‘Nowt wrong wi’ slappers, love.’

  ‘I’m sure that there isn’t, but I don’t want to feel like one.’

  ‘All right, then, so you don’t know me well enough. What do you want to know about me?’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that: date of birth, brief resume of schools and early love affairs, sex.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it doesn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Tommy, stop saying, ‘Why not?’ You’re not a three-year-old. Or perhaps you are.’

  ‘Well, what else do you want to know? I’ll tell you anything you want to know.’

  ‘Do I have to promise to sleep with you?’

  ‘No, but you have to admit that you want to.’

  ‘All right, I admit that I want to sleep with you, and I promise you that I’m not going to.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  She was so fresh. So different. Tommy was enchanted. Once more he found himself staring at the cute knees, the couple of inches of leg that the skirt revealed above them. It was as if an angel had got a job as a secretary and then dropped in on his gig.

  ‘Come on, then, first question.’

  ‘All right. Have you ever had a gay experience?’

  ‘Blimey, what makes you ask that?’

  ‘I don’t know, I just thought I would. Have you?’

  Tommy laughed. ‘How about I’ll tell you if you take off an item of clothing?’

  ‘Strip questions?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I’d rather die.’

  Gemma put down her Diet Coke and got up. ‘I think we’re both getting very silly now and that I should be going home.’

  He was losing her. The skirt was being smoothed down, the coat picked up.

  ‘I’ve only had one gay thing in my life, but I admit it were pretty full on. I mean, we slept together more’n once…‘ He was gratified to see that the pale-pink blush was suddenly beetroot coloured. She picked up her drink once more, seemingly in order to hide behind it.

  ‘It were with one of the judges on Pop Hero.’

  Gemma nearly choked on an ice cube. ‘Wow! That is big goss.’

  ‘Yeah, in’t it? It were the smoothie, you know, the record producer guy that everybody hated. But that weren’t why I won, though,’ Tommy added defensively. ‘I won ‘cos I was the best. The gay thing only started near the end.’

  ‘Except that he was a judge and he clearly fancied you.’

  ‘Well, what’s wrong with that? You’re supposed to fancy your pop heroes, aren’t you? That’s the whole point.’

  ‘So did you do it because you thought it would help your chances, or are you bisexual?’

  ‘Dunno. Well, if I’m honest, and for some stupid fookin’ reason I’ve decided to be with you, I were seduced. That’s the best word for it. He seduced me wi’ his wiles. I don’t think I’m bi, I mean, I’ve never noticed myself fancying men before or since. On the other hand, I did it, didn’t I? I mean, there weren�
��t no bum shaggin’ or nowt like that. No way. I couldn’t ‘a handled that. But there were an awful lot o’ slappin around an’ blowjobs an’ all the other business.’

  ‘So you liked it?’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose, sort of. The first time, anyway. I think I were flattered and I admit he had some superb drugs to go with it. Sextasy, he called it, the very best pill I ever had sex on. He always ‘ad the best of everything. I loved that. I were still only seventeen an’ he was so fookin’ cool, an’ elegant an’ powerful an’, yeah, all right, I were very aware that ‘is vote and support were going to make me the biggest thing in the country that week. Like I say, I were flattered. I loved the sextasy pills an’ the vintage champagne an’ the fancy food an’ all the goss ‘e had on all my rock heroes. It was like a different world an’ when one night he stuck his tongue in me mouth I thought what the hell. I reckoned it were like John Lennon going on that holiday wi’ Brian Epstein. Didn’t John say he tossed ‘im off? Experimenting, really.’

  ‘And you did win Pop Hero.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s true. Maybe it were just because I were a great wanker.’

  Gemma looked away coyly, refusing to meet Tommy’s stare. She was wearing a sweet little pale-pink cashmere cardigan over her white blouse. She began to unbutton it.

  Perhaps because she was hot, although it was not particularly warm in Tommy’s hotel suite. She did not explain herself or look at Tommy at all, she just undid the buttons slowly, one by one. When she arrived at the last one she raised her head and looked Tommy in the eye before undoing it and finally taking the garment off. Her lacy bra showed vividly beneath the white of her blouse as she pushed her shoulders back in order to take the cardigan off.

  ‘So. You won a garment. I wasn’t going to play your rule but, wow, I think you deserve it for that. Can I ask another question?’

  ‘You certainly can.’ Tommy simply could not remember anything arousing him quite the way Gemma’s combination of tortured innocence and obvious desire were doing.

  ‘Why do you act so stupidly most of the time, Tommy?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re a brilliant performer and a damn good songwriter, you have such talent and charm. You’re rich and you’re beautiful.’ She was blushing again but also proud and defiant. ‘You are. You’re a very, very, very beautiful man, and what’s more now I’ve met you I can see that you’re a real person, a lovely person, a complex person. So tell me, please, why is it that everything I read about what you say and do makes you sound like a complete idiot? At best a rather immature jack the lad and at worst an insensitive bullying moron. Why, Tommy?’

  Tommy just sat there. He didn’t know what to say. And then suddenly he was crying. He wept and he wept, just as he’d done on the day when he ran out of the Soho AA meeting, and he didn’t know why.

  The drugs, probably. The bitter residue of previous highs, the paranoid tightrope of the current evening’s ingestion. The gut soup of booze and dressing-room catering that left him feeling permanently slightly nauseous. The exhaustion. So many things to make you cry. And now this. This nice, pretty, clever girl poleaxing him with her clear-eyed honesty. So perfectly putting her finger on the Tommy Hanson dilemma. Why was he such a complete arsehole?

  He didn’t need to be. He didn’t mean to be. But nonetheless he knew that he was. A complete arsehole. He had long suspected it, but now Gemma, the first trustworthy witness he had met for a very long time, had confirmed it. He looked at her through his tears. He was no longer trying to get her into bed, he really wanted to try to make her understand.

  ‘I don’t know, Gemma. I don’t know. Drugs, o’ course, too many of them…But, then, I think maybe it’s the power thing…You know, I’m just so fookin’ famous. I never expected it, I don’t even like it most of the time, but I’m addicted to it. I hate it but I’d die if I lost it…’

  ‘Why do you hate it, Tommy? It’s everybody’s dream.’

  ‘Yeah, and I ain’t complaining, honest, really I’m not. It’s just like, well, for instance, when everybody’s paid to be nice to you, who do you trust?’

  ‘Well, I suppose you trust whoever you feel like trusting. You have to judge people by what you see in their character. It’s up to you, Tommy. Everybody risks something when they give their trust. Not just superstars.’

  ‘Well, yeah, sure, but once you’ve decided to trust someone…Can you trust them? It’s like Princess Di were always getting betrayed, weren’t she? I really empathize with her.’

  ‘But I think that perhaps Diana was naturally vulnerable. You aren’t, Tommy. You’re strong.’

  ‘I’m not. It’s like The Who said, in’t it? Who are you? It’s like you think, well, hang on, at least I can trust me old mates, they were with me before any of this…But then you go back and everyone’s so strange. They say, ‘Warra you doing back ‘ere, then?’ People act like you must be thick to want to get sat in the shithole pub you used to drink in, or else that you’re patronizing them an’ slumming it. Honest, even my best mates from the old days say things like, ‘Ooh, now you’re a millionaire why in’t you drinking champagne wi’ Kate Moss ‘stead of coming back ‘ere, then?’ It makes you feel dead uncomfortable. An’ confused. Honest, Gemma, I’m that confused sometimes I don’t know me arse from me elbow.’

  And once more Tommy began to cry. Gemma murmured words of sympathy. He was kneeling on the floor beside her now, his head upon her lap. She stroked his hair. ‘It’s like I’ve got everything, but it ain’t what I expect it t’be, and I’ve forgotten what it was I thought it would be anyway. So I don’t know what it was that I used to want, and I don’t know what I want now. All I know is that I don’t like what I’ve got.’

  ‘Well, if you don’t like it, give it away.’

  That’s the point, Gemma, I can’t. ‘Cos although I may not like what I’ve got, I’ll still fight like a fookin’ maniac to hang onto it.’

  Gemma smiled. ‘Well then, you’re a hopeless case, Tommy Hanson.’

  ‘D’you know that old song? By Peter Sarstedt? ‘Where do you go to, my lovely, when you’re alone in your bed?’ ’

  ‘Yes, I know it.’ That’s me, that is. I’m the lovely. Except I ain’t very fookin’ lovely.’

  Gently Gemma lifted Tommy’s head from her lap and cupped his face in her hands. ‘You are lovely, Tommy, and you don’t have to be alone in your bed tonight.’

  A few rooms up the corridor from Tommy’s suite, Peter Paget was experiencing what was thus far the most excruciating moment of his life. He and Angela had emerged from the lift with the intention of heading for their room. The girls were still downstairs bopping to the party disco which, despite the disdain they’d shown for it, had still drawn them. They were of course celebrities now, up there with the Prime Minister’s kids and the young Princes, and they were discovering that fame was an intoxicating thing.

  Their parents, however, had decided to retire early. The back slapping and constant cheering had been fun for a while but the question mark about Peter’s health still hung over them both and the fact that every single one of the people at the conference knew it too had become wearing. It was all the manly hugs and handshakes and painfully sincere pecks on cheeks. Everyone seemed to be saying, ‘We know you may be dead soon, but you’re our hero.’ A few days hence all would be well, they hoped, but for the time being, Peter’s triumph notwithstanding, the Pagets still felt slightly like freaks. And so they slipped away.

  And now, as the lift door closed behind them and escape was impossible, they realized that Samantha was waiting for them.

  ‘Peter, I’d like a word with you, please.’

  ‘Um…really, Samantha, tonight? Can’t it wait?’

  ‘No, it can’t.’

  Angela Paget grimaced. ‘I’m going to bed, Peter. Give me the key.’

  ‘Angela…!’

  ‘I think you should stay, Mrs Paget. You should hear this.’

  ‘Do you, Samantha? Well, I don’t. Anything you
have to say about any private arrangements you and my husband have enjoyed can remain private as far as I am concerned.’

  ‘So you’ve told her, then?’

  ‘Give me the key, Peter. If you’re going to be late get a copy from reception.’ Angela Paget took the key and started to walk away.

  ‘Give him up, Angela. He loves me.’

  Peter grabbed Samantha’s arm. ‘Samantha! Please! Are you out of your mind?’

  ‘Will you give him up, Mrs Paget?’

  Angela did not reply. She turned the corner of the corridor and could be heard letting herself into her room. Samantha and Peter were left staring at each other. Now it was Samantha’s turn to grab Peter.

  ‘Come to my room tonight, Peter. Sleep with me.’

  ‘For God’s sake — ’

  ‘If we do this now, if we make a clean statement of our love, you’ll survive it, I know you will. Come to me now. Let me put you inside me.’

  Her face was a mask of tears, her eyes swollen, but they flashed nonetheless. She looked mad.