High society

by Ben Elton

  ‘Fookin’ perfect.’

  PADSTOW HOLIDAY COTTAGES, CORNWALL

  The Leman family had been on holiday for two weeks when early one evening Craig Thompson met Commander Leman at the last bus stop before the holiday village in which the family had been staying. During those two weeks the Lemans had shown themselves about the place quite a bit, chatting at the post office and the local shop, always enthusiastic regulars at the ice-cream stall on the beach. Commander Leman, it seemed, had a very distinct holiday style, or at least he did for this holiday. He had let his beard grow and was enjoying the opportunity to wear sunglasses, an affectation he would never allow himself or his officers when in uniform, believing that a policeman should look the public in the eye. He also had taken to wearing the same sunhat every day, a wide-brimmed straw panama pulled low over his forehead. This he combined with a light windshielded jacket, the collar always turned up against the inevitable chill of an English summer. Sadly, of late he had developed a sore throat, and his voice had become no more than a whisper. All in all, Commander Leman on holiday had become a difficult man to miss.

  Craig Thompson had driven all the way from London on hot and crowded roads, but the journey had been no more or less arduous a way of spending the time than every other waking moment that he had endured since his daughter had killed herself. He had no life now, just a kind of existence, and the way in which he paced out the empty days that remained to him was a matter of no interest at all.

  He pulled into the bus stop and got out, leaving the keys in the ignition. Without a word, Commander Leman slipped into the front seat and drove off.

  Craig Thompson had also grown a beard. He wore a wind shielder the same colour as that of Barry Leman, and a straw panama hat. It also seemed that he had taken up a pipe, which was something else he shared with Leman. After about ten minutes, during which Craig Thompson struggled to light his pipe, a process with which he was clearly unfamiliar, Christine Leman walked up to the bus stop.

  ‘Come on, darling,’ she said. ‘Let’s walk the last half-mile. We’ll be just nicely in time for supper at the Angler’s.’

  THE EEEZY CLUB, BIRMINGHAM

  You’m Tommy ‘anson, roit?’ The man was shouting at the top of his voice in order to be heard over the ear-shuddering duf-duf of the beat, his beery, faggy, spit-filled breath landing heavily in Tommy’s face. Tommy had been in the club for half an hour and had consumed three pints of snakebite in the dark and thunderously noisy anonymity. Despite the heat he continued to wear his big coat and he had his beanie jammed down over his head. The gang of lads who had sidled up beside him were the first to recognize him.

  ‘Yeah, I’m Tommy Hanson!’ Tommy screamed back.

  ‘Buy us a drink then, mite. Go on.’

  FALLOWFIELD COMMUNITY HALL, MANCHESTER

  It’s the gobbing I can’t stand. Lads recognize you in clubs and stick their faces in yours and just fookin’ spray you. It’s always lads what comes up first. I’m lookin’ at the girls, but it’s always some big cocky lad that gets in my face. That’s the worst of it. It’s not like everybody in a club is going to be an arsehole, the problem is whatever arseholes there are about the place are going to come up to me. Don’t get me wrong, a fan’s all right, that’s fine, nobody minds an autograph, even a little chat. But in a club or a boozer, with a belly full of ale, it in’t a fan coming up, it’s some bloke what reckons he’s a rival, some bloke what reckonsIreckon meseP and he’s there to make it clear that I in’t so special. Like I give a fook. They just colonize you, these blokes. It starts with, ‘All right, Tommy,’ and next thing he reckons he’s got full rights of occupation on your fookin’ space an’ your evening. That’s why people ‘ave minders, not ‘cos they think they’re gonna get stabbed but just to stop arseholes comin’ up an’ shoutin’ an’ spittin’ about fook all in your face for half an hour ‘cos they reckon they’re as good as you an’ why shouldn’t they.

  ‘Like I say, if it were some nice bird, or even a bloke with a brain an’ a bit o’ conversation comin’ up, I wouldn’t mind, but out on the town it’s always the club arsehole, the big, nasty, chippy bastard that reckons he’s boss. I fookin’ hate ‘em. An’ there I was with six o’ the bastards on me ‘ands. Six big pissed up Brummie dick’eads full o’ beer an’ KFC. They appropriate you as their property, even to the point of warnin’ off other interested parties…It’s like, ‘Don’t yow worreh, Tommy, we’ll keep yow safe from the arseholes…‘ Supremely confident in their pig-ignorant arrogance that they in’t the biggest arseholes themselves. They’re shoutin’ and laughin’ an’ sayin’ stuff to me an’ o’ course I can’t hear a fookin’ word ‘cos the music is makin’ everybody’s ears bleed. Not that I could ‘ave understood them anyways what with them being so pissed up and their Black Country accents thick as a brick sandwich. Funny that about the Midlands, fook me, can they rock or what? I mean, they done the lot, didn’t they? Led Zep, Purple, Sabbath, Slade, loads. It’s true to say that no part o’ the country has contributed such consistently awesome, humungous power throbbers to the mighty pantheon that is British rock music as the Brum/Wolverhampton axis, but you ‘ear ‘em talk an’ they all sound like fookin’ hod carriers! That were part o’ the charm o’ that whole MTV thing Ozzy Osbourne done wi’ his missus. It were the accent that made it funny.

  ‘Anyway, what I’m sayin’ is I know a bunch o’ cocky, nasty, leery bastards when I’m stuck in the middle of ‘em, an’ I wanted out. Quite apart from anythin’ else I weren’t in no mood to talk to anyone. I mean, after what ‘ad ‘appened wi’ Gemma, if that was her fookin’ name, I didn’t think I ever wanted to talk to anyone ever again. Yet there I was. Chief mascot o’ the arsehole gang, principal talkin’ point, conversation piece and general humorous diversion for a bunch o’ shaven-headed, tattooed apes.

  ‘Right, I thinks, I’m off out o’ this sharpish. If I’m gonna feel sick wi’ self-pity I’d rather do it on me own or wi’ a bird. All them big red beery faces leaning inta me, hands on me shoulders, noses in me ear, was making me feel dead uneasy. So I shouts that I was off. Now I couldn’t hear what they was saying and they couldn’t hear me, but they knew I’d said I was leavin’ an’ I knew exactly what their reaction would be. It’s always the same, no matter how much time you give to the sort o’ person who sticks his face in yours when you’re tryin’ to ‘ave a nice pint or chat wi’ a mate. When y’try an’ move on that’s when ‘e gets all chippy an’ hurt an’ says, ‘What? So that means fook off, does it? I see, goodbye, done wi’ you, then. Is that it?’ or summat similar. Which is why so many celebs don’t talk to anyone but other celebs. Honest, that’s the truth, an’ then everyone calls ‘em arrogant. Like I say, the problem is, out late, on the piss, it is always, invariably, definitely, for certain, the person you would least like to talk to who gets in your face.

  ‘So I know what these lads are thinkin’ an’ I’m thinkin’…Move quick, get out, fook off. So I’m over to one o’ the bouncers and lettin’ him see my face and then o’ course it’s all lovely lovely Tommy. I’m straight inta the VIP bit, the manager’s over wi’ the champagne an’ there’s three or four lingerie models already hoverin’.

  ‘But that’s no better, is it? Believe me, the VIP area in clubs is a con. Just because you’re a VIP don’t stop you being’ borin’. An’ of course now I’ve got two local footie stars, the club DJ an’ the manager shoutin’ an’ spittin’ in me face an’ all I actually want is t’ be on my own an’ contemplate just how totally sorry I am for myself, how beaten up I feel, how abused, how used, how angry. How I must be the most put upon and misunderstood bastard in Britain.

  ‘ ‘I’m off,’ I says.

  ‘ ‘Can we get you a car?’ they says.

  ‘ ‘No. I’ll walk.’

  Big mistake.

  THE BULL RING CENTRE, BIRMINGHAM

  Or roit, then, Tommeh?’

  ‘Yeah. You?’

  ‘I’m foin. Why d’yow piss off, then?’

/>   ‘ ‘Cos I were sick o’ the music.’

  ‘Ow. We thought yow was sick of us.’

  ‘Nah, just wanted to fook off, that’s all.’

  ‘Gi’s some moneh then, eh, Tommeh? Ow much yow got, Tommeh?’ Took off.’

  ‘An’ your coat. Top coat, that, Tommeh. Gi’s that too.’ Took off.’

  THE HYATT REGENCY, BIRMINGHAM

  Neither Peter nor Angela Paget had felt like sleeping, and as the dawn came up she lay on the bed listlessly flicking through a magazine while he sat on the couch nursing a minibar brandy.

  ‘D’you think she’ll cause a scandal?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘And you’ll lie?’

  ‘Yes, I will. I’ve thought about it a great deal. I know now that Samantha won’t let me simply walk away. She isn’t entirely balanced and has conceived some fantastical notions about me as a father figure. Whatever I might say to try and let her down gently would never be enough. She’d try to ruin me just the same, just as she did to the professor I told you about. Therefore, I’ll have to fight her, and I intend to do that by denying everything and claiming to be the victim of a deluded and besotted girl being manipulated by a corrupt media.’

  ‘Jesus, Peter. The point is that you did screw her.’

  ‘No, Angela,’ Peter said very firmly. ‘I did not. That is the point I am making. I did not have improper relations with that woman.’

  Angela looked down at her magazine for a moment, trying to collect her emotions. Did Peter realize he was virtually quoting Clinton?

  ‘Supposing she has proof?’

  ‘She has no proof, because as I have just said, it never happened.’

  ‘Peter, you don’t have to play this fucking game with me. Do you want me to lie too?’

  ‘Yes.’

  FALLOWFIELD COMMUNITY HALL, MANCHESTER

  D’you know what? I’ve never been beaten up before. Not properly. I mean I were in fights at school sometimes an’ all that, but somehow I’ve avoided what most lads have to go through at some point, which is being in a proper fight. Or in this case a proper massacre, which I can assure you is a whole lot worse. I’d been wandering up the road that runs around the Bull Ring Centre, or at least what were the Bull Ring Centre till they started knocking it down, thank God. I’d been looking for a little West Indian cafe or drinking club. There’s loads of them in Brum. Y’know the sort o’ place, where they do them weird curries that in’t Indian at all, wi’ them big thick tough bananas that in’t bananas either. Plantains? Whatever, I’m not sure. I were thinking that maybe some rum and a bit o’ yam an’ lamb curry would be nice. I s’pose in my persecuted mood I reckoned that black people would be the best company. You know, proper people, people what had suffered the kind of abuse an’ prejudice I’d suffered. I think I had some idea o’ sittin’ round ‘avin’ a big fat spliff wi’ some real down-home Rastas who thought I were great and gassin’ on about the pain o’ being an original and what cows women were. ‘What I actually got was dragged into a Marks and Sparks delivery dock an’ mugged good and proper. It were the lads from the club. They slammed me up against the steel roller door a couple o’ times, callin’ me a fookin’ arrogant cont, an’ then I’m down on the ground an’ the boots are goin’ in. I’m curled up in a ball pleadin’ an’ spittin’ blood and they’re standin’ round me in a ring, kecks in it. I also had a couple of back-up credit cards and a second phone. I go through phones like bags o’ crisps, me, so I always ‘ave a few about the place. I only use ‘em to ring out, I never answer one, so Tony just buys ten a week, programmes all the production numbers into it and puts one in every bag and pocket I’ve got.

  ‘I know Birmingham pretty well and was able to get back to the Hyatt in about half an hour. I reckoned the hotel would probably let me have another room if I grovelled hard enough and did photos with all the chambermaids. Of course they would. I’m a celebrity. In fact, I’m the celebrity, and when you’re top of the A-list you get what you want. It were a Sunday morning so there was no one about and I was beginning to start thinking about a nice bath and a bit o’ brekkie. It wasn’t that I felt better or anything, no way, I still felt like the most exploited, used, sad, lonely bastard on earth, and I were proud of me new tattoo, ‘Victim’, which said it all. Victim of everybody. Everybody wanted a bit of me and I got nowt in return. I was the ultimate anti-hero in a shitty little world. In fact, I were beginning to think about a song…Victim/Anti-hero…not bad. Have to avoid ‘zero’. Everybody does that. ‘Nero’, obviously…‘anti-hero. Modern Nero…playing guitar while England burns.’ Fookin’ brilliant. I wondered whether the hotel would let me have a piano in me new room if I promised not to push it out of the window.

  ‘Some fookin’ hope. A room wi’ a piano? I couldn’t get past the doorman, could I? At first they didn’t even believe it was me, but once I’d convinced them, I soon found out that they hated me. I hadn’t realized just quite how badly I’d fooked up their night. I’d woken half the guests up, totally trashed a room, they’d had about a million complaints, and apparently the fookin’ Home Secretary ‘imself had been ‘having a go, ‘cos him and his missus ‘ad been disturbed. The front desk had been inundated and they just hated me. Now suddenly I turn up again. All I’ve got on is a T-shirt and jeans. Me face is half covered in blood, I’ve got a fat lip and a black eye, me head’s completely shaven, with tattoos on it. What I looked like was a completely screwed-up, burnt-out, drugged-up, sad load o’ trouble, which was, o’ course, what I was.

  ‘Like I say, maybe if I’d grovelled, but the minute the doorman and the head of night security started givin’ me attitude I got all chippy again, sayin’, ‘Gi’ us a fookin’ room. I’m Tommy Hanson.’

  ‘Well, I may be Britain’s biggest pop star, but they were one of Britain’s biggest hotels an’ the big hotels get all the celebs through. If you trash your room an’ you fook them off, it don’t matter who you are, ‘cos you don’t pay any more than all the businessmen whose sleep you’re ruining.

  ‘ ‘Fook you!’ I shouts. Sort o’ provin’ their point, and that’s it, I’m back out there, alone in the night.

  ‘Right, I thinks, get back to the gig. The boys! That’s who I need. They load out at night, can’t have finished yet. Even if they | don’t recognize me I know names, heads of security, chief rigger, I’ll soon convince them. Fook me, what a story it’ll be when they see me. I expect they get sat in an early opener when they’ve 1 finished de-rigging. I’ll get stuck in with them and we’ll have a | laugh.

  ‘The gig! My boys, my people, my posse, my crew That’s where 1 I need to be. As Liam famously remarked when probably no less J fooked up than I was, ‘I want all my people right here right | now.’

  ‘So I ran through the streets of Birmingham, following signs to i the NEC. I’d hoped to find a bicycle to nick. That would ‘ave I been funny, if the lads saw me turning up on that…But as it I happened they didn’t see me turn up on anything because the | bastards were just too efficient, and as I ran sweating and gasping towards the vast scenery docks of the arena, that same arena where the night before I’d been king, the last of me juggernauts thunders out and past me. The last of my awesome, twenty wheeled rock ‘n’ roll armoured strike force guns its gears and thunders off towards London, where I’m supposed to be doing ten nights at Wembley Arena starting Thursday. The last of my trucks. Mine. Well, mine for the period of rental anyway. Every nut, every bolt, every headlight and nodding dog mine and everything in ‘em, what’s more, including the people.

  ‘ ‘Stop, you bastards! I own you!’ I shouted, but they didn’t and that were that. I was stuck, well and truly. Birmingham, eight o’clock on a wet Sunday morning. I’ve got no money, no phone and I don’t know any of the numbers to call even if I had one. I’ve got no clothes to speak of, no cards or ID of any kind. I’m bald and I’m covered in blood. The only thing I possessed was a mandy that I found in my pocket so I dropped that, but it didn’t help. I had one last try at r
etrievin’ the situation by turning up at a police station.

  ‘ ‘I’ve been beaten up,’ I said, and they said, ‘What do you want us to do about it?’ I said, ‘I want you to catch the bastards,’ an’ they said, ‘How would you suggest we do that, sir?’

  ‘I mean, fookin’ hell, what’s the world coming to? I’m not a copper, am I? So I tells ‘em it don’t matter anyway, and that I’m Tommy Hanson and I needed to find out the phone number of my road manager or one o’ me PAs. Well, the copper just looks at me, an obvious casualty. Bald, bleeding, penniless. Tommy Hanson? No chance.

  ‘ ‘Fook off,’ he says. An’ I did.

  Millbank, SW1

  Detective Sergeant Archer of the Drug Squad approached the parked car in which Commander Leman waited and got into the passenger seat.

  ‘Thank you for coming, Sergeant Archer.’

  ‘That’s all right, Commander. I thought I might hear from you sooner or later.’

  ‘I want you to know that I intend to drop all investigations into corruption within the Drug Squad.’

  ‘Yes, I imagined you might, and I learn from your website that you’re giving up on the Paget campaign as well. Sounds like a sensible move to me.’

  ‘I do these things on the understanding that I have your absolute assurance that no further threats will be made against my daughter or anyone who is acquainted with my family.’

  ‘Ah…I suppose you’re talking about the sad case of that girl who got date-raped, right in the middle of your manor. Very nasty. Killed herself, didn’t she? No need for that, eh? Kids’ve got no spirit these days.’

  ‘Are you going to lay off my daughter?’