Pretty Boy Tigh

by Richard Blandford

  ‘Whoever it is, it’s not the Health and Safety officer,’ said Martin, the reception area silent except for the hum of florescent strips.

  ‘I guess we just follow the lights,’ said Bronte.

  The three of them headed down an illuminated corridor. They passed the rehearsal room. They passed Angela’s office, then Martin’s. They came to a corner.

  ‘It’s the main studio,’ said Martin. ‘Look, the door’s open. There’s light.’

  Slowly, the three of them edged down the corridor and through the door of the studio. They looked around. The bare soundstage was flooded with light.

  ‘There’s nobody here,’ said Tigh.

  There was the sound of throat-clearing.

  ‘What was that?’ said Bronte.

  ‘Up here,’ said a voice.

  They looked up. There, high above them, above the blinding studio lights, someone was sitting on a beam of the lighting rig like a child on a swing.

  ‘Who is it?’ said Martin.

  ‘It’s me!’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Martin, ‘the lights are too bright. We can’t see you probably.’

  ‘It’s fucking Craig, isn’t it? Remember, the bloke you fired a couple of months ago? Am I really that unmemorable?’

  ‘Craig,’ shouted Bronte. ‘Get down from there! It’s not safe!’

  ‘I’ll come down, soon,’ he said.

  He shifted his weight, and leaned back. Tigh thought he was going to fall from the rig, a simple grid from which the few lights needed for filming hung. He righted himself, and Tigh let out a breath.

  ‘We’ve got the money,’ said Tigh, holding up the suitcase.

  ‘I don’t want the money!’

  ‘Well, that’s good actually,’ said Bronte, ‘because we made it ourselves this afternoon out of card. But come down, yeah?’

  ‘It was never about the money,’ Craig shouted down. ‘I just needed you to feel what it would be like… to lose this. I wanted you to see, just how much pain you’ve caused, Tigh.’

  ‘What? What have I done?’

  ‘Are you kidding? I loved this job, and it was safe, until you turned up. Another fucking pretty boy. The kids used to love me. But then they decided they loved you more. You know, all I wanted was my own show. But you’ve got it instead, a total rip-off of my idea, and I’ve got….’

  Tigh saw the outline of the figure on the grid shrug.

  ‘Yeah, but they’re paying for you for it, aren’t they?’ said Tigh.

  Martin shook his head.

  ‘You can’t copyright an idea,’ he muttered. ‘Just the expression of an idea. It’s all above-board and perfectly legal. Anyway, we didn’t really take anything beside the theme. His proposal was so badly spelt we couldn’t make head or tail of it.’

  ‘What are you saying down there, Martin?’ cried Craig. ‘How you fucked me over? Actually, don’t tell me, I don’t want to hear any more of your shit.’

  ‘How did you get the video?’ asked Bronte.

  ‘Martin, you left your office unlocked the day you fired me, you know that? So busy enjoying fucking my life up you forgot for once. So while you were otherwise engaged giving these two what should have been mine, I thought I’d just pop in there and take whatever of yours I could lay my hands on. Even things up a bit, you know? But there was fuck all in there worth taking except a smartphone, full of boring videos and pics of some woman’s kid in the same god-awful town I grew up in.’

  ‘But I deleted the video of Tigh!’ said Martin.

  ‘Martin, have you not heard of cloud technology?’ said Craig. ‘I knew there must have been something important on the phone or you wouldn’t have it. And right there on the phone was an app for uploading videos to the Cloud. So I have a look and besides more and more boring fucking videos of that kid, guess what I found? That’s right. Our friend, Tigh, bonking away with a giant heffalump.’

  ‘I didn’t want to,’ said Tigh, to no one in particular.

  ‘Craig, this isn’t like you…’ said Bronte.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Maybe you never really knew me. I thought you of all people knew you shouldn’t take people at face value. We’re all just pretending, really. Doing silly voices, singing our silly songs, doing our drugs, fucking our pretty boys, anything to hide that we’re frightened, and hurting. That we’re just still little kids, when you get down to it, wanting our mummies to kiss it all better. But I’m happy! I’m happy, because it’s all going to stop…’

  Tigh squinted. He could see something dangling from the figure’s neck. Hanging down, and then resting coiled, and then wrapped around the bar of the lighting grid. Craig moved, again. Again, for a second it seemed as if he would fall.

  ‘He’s got a rope round his neck!’ Tigh whispered. ‘He’s going to jump!’

  ‘Maybe he doesn’t mean to do it,’ said Bronte, a look of panic in her eyes. ‘Maybe it’s just a cry for help.’

  Martin looked hard.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘He’s got a long rope and a longer drop. That’ll break his neck, no problem. No one cries for help like that.’

  ‘Fuck,’ said Bronte, ‘what do we do?’

  ‘How do we get up there?’ said Tigh.

  ‘Same way he did,’ said Martin, ‘there’s a ladder up against the far wall.’

  ‘I’ll go up,’ said Bronte. ‘Get his attention and just keep him talking. And get ready to catch him. Or me.’

  ‘Craig,’ Martin called up. ‘We can move past this. You’re angry about the show. I understand that. We did wrong by you. But we can fix things. We can give you credit. We’ll pay you for the idea. Or a slice of merchandising profits. Both. Whatever. Just take the rope off your neck and come down, and we’ll thrash out a deal.’

  Tigh watched as Bronte slipped away, took her shoes off, and headed for the ladder– before he realised that watching her would give the game away, and looked straight up. He realised he was squirming again. He tried to stop.

  ‘You’re lying,’ said Craig. ‘That’s the thing. I know that about you, Martin. You lie. You’re not an honest man. You’re a company man. You’d do anything to protect the channel. The people who work for it – they’re nothing to you. We’re all dispensable. You’ve probably already auditioned my replacement. ’

  ‘What if I dropped out of the road safety programme?’ said Tigh. ‘Then you could bring Craig back, couldn’t you, Martin?’

  ‘Oh, er, yes,’ said Martin. ‘We could do it like that, if you like, Craig.’

  ‘Nice try, Tigh,’ said Craig. ‘But it would never happen. You should watch yourself, though. You could fall from grace at any time. It doesn’t take much. Maybe the kids will like my replacement more than you. Then you’ll be vulnerable. Then you’ll be gone.’

  Tigh could see that Bronte had made it to the top of the ladder. The grid had clanged and swayed when she transferred her weight to it. He prayed Craig hadn’t noticed.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Tigh, ‘but is that really so bad? I mean, there’s other work out there for you, Craig. Kids theatre, panto, um… school assemblies…’

  To Tigh’s astonishment, Bronte was slowly walking along the bars of the grid like a gymnast on a beam. The chains from which the grid hung provided occasional support, but even then, she could put little of her weight on them lest they cause the grid to swing. If she fell, he knew, she could end up paralysed or worse.

  ‘Oh Tigh,’ said Craig. ‘You’re not being serious. Once you’ve been on TV, especially kids’ TV, and then you’re not, you’re a has-been. A joke on the internet, an ironic act for student unions, kidding yourself the kids who used to love you are laughing with you, not at you. You’re over. By the way, why are you dancing about like that? You’ve got ants in your pants.’

  ‘I have, um, an infection.’

  Craig laughed. ‘I wonder why, you filthy slut.’

  Tigh forgot to respond. Bronte had made it to the bar running parallel and behind to where Craig was sat. She turned ninety degre
es, and began walking along the linking bar. She wobbled. Tigh fought the urge to cry out.

  ‘Your ideas are good, Craig,’ said Martin, nerves quickening his speech. ‘You could make it in production. Go the other side of the camera. You have a future.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re a liar, Martin. This is it.’

  Craig gracefully pulled himself up and stood on the bar, the rope hanging down from his neck.

  ‘I know you’re there, Bronte,’ he said. ‘Don’t try and stop me. You’ll probably die.’

  He jumped. Tigh stood below, helpless and mute, his weight shifting madly from foot to foot. Bronte jumped too. She caught the bar from which he had leaped with one hand, grabbing the coil of rope as it slipped with the other.

  Craig fell. Tigh waited for his neck to break above him. But the fall was too short. Bronte had anchored herself to the bar with her legs, and was hanging upside-down. The coil was in her hands, Craig dangling beneath her.

  ‘What do we do?’ said Tigh.

  ‘Give me a piggy back!’ said Martin. ‘No, get the ladder!’

  Craig gasped for air, his face turning bright red as he hung, halfway down.

  For a second, Tigh thought that everything was going to be all right, that Bronte could hold Craig there until they could get him down, or they could get help. But Bronte was crying out in pain as the rope slipped through her hands and cut them open, and Tigh watched, as Craig dropped a second time, and the rope tightened, and his neck cracked.

  Bronte dropped. The sound of struck metal as a part of her body hit a floodlight on the way down. Tigh looked up into the blinding lights, used all of his will to block out the sensation from his groin making him dance on the spot, and held out his arms.

  ‘You should be using the wheelchair, not crutches,’ said Tigh, as he and Bronte walked out of reception at the studio for the first time since that night, weeks before. ‘Your hands will never heal otherwise.’

  ‘I know,’ pouted Bronte, a plastered foot hovering above the ground. ‘But I get so twitchy. I need to keep moving.’

  Colleagues filed past them, patting them on the shoulder, murmuring that it was good to have them back. They stepped through the open door and out into the sunshine.

  ‘I’m not sure people really know what to say to us,’ said Tigh, a finger-splint the only remaining outer sign of his own injury. ‘Or what they really think.’

  ‘Yeah. People liked Craig. Even though everyone knows it was suicide, there’s probably a part of them thinking how come we didn’t stop it, and isn’t it nice how us and Martin have come out on top.’

  ‘I know, it’s crazy,’ said Tigh. ‘Angela gone, Nats gone. Martin’s Controller now. Everyone was well-behaved in that meeting but you could feel the tension.’

  ‘At least we’ve got out of doing that crossing the road programme, for the time being, anyway,’ said Bronte.

  ‘I’ll have to break your other leg.’

  ‘No, don’t. “Around the World with Tigh and Bronte” is definitely going to happen.’

  ‘Oh, I’m on the last packet of antibiotics, just so you know.’

  ‘Hey, once my hands stop looking like two black puddings, we can really party. Get you up to speed.’

  ‘Up to speed?’

  ‘I’m going to teach you everything I know,’ she whispered.

  ‘That sounds dangerously like a commitment.’

  ‘Well, maybe not everything…’

  She leaned her head on his shoulder as Martin approached them, a young man in tow.

  ‘Ah, Tigh, Bronte,’ he said. ‘Good to see you again after all that’s happened. I’d like you to meet Bradley. He’ll be joining the presenting team in September.’

  ‘Hello,’ said the young man, his blonde hair flopping in front of his face.

  Tigh shook his hand, Bradley gripping his loosely.

  ‘So you’re the new n…’ Tigh found himself saying. He corrected himself. ‘Presenter. Good to have you aboard, Bradley.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I have to say, I think you’re great, the pair of you. My step-brother is three and he just loves you.’

  Tigh smiled. His gaze carried over Bradley’s shoulder, down the steps, where a figure wearing a long coat and trilby, at odds with the warm day, was smoking.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse me,’ he said. ‘I just have to talk to someone quickly before he goes.’

  Bronte kissed his shoulder as he departed. Martin slapped him on the back.

  At the bottom of the steps, Toby nodded.

  ‘So it all worked out then?’ he said. ‘Got the video thing sorted and everything.’

  ‘Well, a man committed suicide in front of me because of things he reckoned were my fault and my girlfriend suffered some quite major injuries, but yeah. It’s not online or anything.’

  ‘Good to hear it.’

  ‘You ok?’

  ‘Well, you know. Same old, same old. Crippling loneliness, fear of the future, the unstoppable approach of death. But other than that, yeah, fine.’

  ‘You’re welcome to come round our – I mean, Bronte’s place, you know. It’s local.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll bear that in mind.’

  ‘I am sorry, you know,’ said Tigh. ‘That we said what we said.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Toby. ‘You were right to suspect me. The things I’d got you involved in were… peculiar.’

  He turned towards the sun as it ducked behind a cloud, and took a deep breath.

  ‘Her name was Melissa,’ he said. ‘They called her Mel. She was a presenter here, at the beginning. She was the first sporty girl they had. Cheated on me with a nancy boy. The shame. If it had been the pretty boy, I wouldn’t have minded so much. She replaced me. I made sure they replaced her.’

  He looked down, the brim of his hat obscuring his face. Still, Tigh could tell he was crying.

  ‘Anyway, the past is the past, isn’t it?’

  Tigh put his arm around him. The cloud drifted, and the sun shone once more.