Wildlife

by Joe Stretch

  Two years ago Anka Kudolski went to take a laxative-induced shit on her family toilet and fell through the wooden seat and got stuck. She was too thin. She couldn’t get out. Too weak. As she sat there, completely trapped, pelvis wedged, waiting for her parents to return home from work, she decided it was time to have herself sectioned. This was a good idea. Two months of monitored eating in an Ealing clinic got her weight up dramatically and she never fell down a toilet again.

  A psychiatrist told Anka that her anorexia was underpinned by manic depression and by a desire for control. Had she considered getting a job? Building a routine? She hadn’t, but she could see the sense in it. Anka finds little comfort in the activity of shopping. It’s too anarchic, she feels. There’s too much choice which, for Anka, means indecision, self-doubt, panic, a loss of control and then weeks of living on mineral water and one Jacobs Cracker a day. Anka is twenty-two now. She moved from London to Manchester in January ’05 and began applying for as many jobs as the week would allow. She works at Selfridges, selling designer bags. She works as a barmaid at the Press Club, an all-night celebrity dive on Deansgate. She’s also the presenter of QUIZ TV on the Urbis-based TV station, Channel MANC. She’s not sure what any of these jobs have got to do with the Wild World.

  Anka leaves Selfridges via the staff exit on Corporation Street. She turns left.

  Anka does enjoy selling. Shopping is like shitting; it feels too normal, but selling is much more fun. Anka particularly enjoys selling the designer bags at Selfridges. She likes the laughable designs and she gets to meet a gone-off bunch of leather-loving piss-drinkers.

  It’s a short walk across Exchange Square to the Urbis building. On arriving, Anka eats a gratin of mussels with melted Camembert and foaming hollandaise. She drinks a bottle of Indian beer. She’s downing the dregs as she enters the Channel MANC studio and approaches her producer, a ginger-faced boy called Ben.

  ‘Which one was it today?’

  ‘Flogging bags,’ says Anka, taking a sheet of instructions from him.

  ‘You eaten?’

  The studio is basic. Two cameras and a cheap set designed to mimic what might best be described as a boudoir. There is a bed draped in imitation velvet which Anka often lies on, tits puffed out, imploring people to phone in and answer questions. Behind the bed is a false wooden wall painted gold.

  ‘Well, there’s nothing new,’ says Ben, pointing out to Anka the usual spots marked with red tape where she is permitted to stand. ‘But please, babe, do your best. We have to triple the amount of calls. Yeah?’

  Ben is a boy that shouldn’t say ‘babe’.

  The background music for the show is already playing. It contains atmospheric synth strings and a foreboding bass line. The bass line goes dum dum din dum, dum dum din dum. Anka and the young crew find its incessant promise of disaster very annoying. It’s the first thing they switch off at the end of the show.

  ‘We’re all going to Room for dinner after if you fancy it,’ says Ben.

  ‘Room?’ Anka replies, raising and bending the pitch of her voice. ‘Very Wild World. I can’t make it.’

  Ben nods and turns from where Anka has begun to perform her pre-show breathing exercises to where the two cameramen are awaiting his instruction. Anka can’t be certain because she’s breathing so loudly, but she thinks that Ben whispers, ‘Keep the cameras off those limbs. Tits and face, right, tits and face.’ Anka’s about to ask Ben how he can be so rude when he spins unexpectedly and addresses her abruptly through a smile.

  ‘Anka, unbutton, we need a tit shadow.’

  ‘Right,’ she replies, looking down at one of her arms, assuring herself that it is coated in flesh, as limbs should be, yes, we humans should have flesh. Satisfied, she releases two of her shirt’s buttons so the white rim of her bra becomes visible. So simple, she thinks, the channel-hoppers will see this bra. They will. They will see the shadow cast by my pushed tits and they’ll reach for the phone.

  ‘Try not to speak too much,’ says Ben, putting Anka into position. ‘Just stare. Open your eyes wide. We have to get them calling!’

  When Anka got this job she was required to speak a great deal. It was her pretty face and her ability to speak in sentences that made her such a strong candidate.

  ‘OK. On in ten, everybody,’ shouts Ben, retreating out of shot and placing a hand on the shoulder of the principal cameraman.

  But QUIZ TV is changing. The public has become wise to the format. They’ve been fucked over too many times. People watch it for the funny guys and the fit girls but don’t bother calling any more. There are too many horror stories of people going bankrupt because they couldn’t stop calling. Hundreds of times a night. Quid a pop. Pile of shit. TV’s dead.

  Anka corrects her straight blonde fringe with her fingers and stares down at the first question on the card of instructions. Gold lights illuminate the scarlet boudoir. ‘Five,’ shouts Ben. Anka stares into the camera. The cameraman zooms in on her pretty face, her blue eyes, her happy tit shadow and her red cheeks, not knowing that two years ago this face was only bone and the flesh that cared to remain was grey. The clock on the studio wall says ten. ‘Action!’

  ‘Good evening!’ Anka explodes with enthusiasm. ‘I am Anka. Anka as in wanker. Welcome to QUIZ TV!’

  She’d used this line at her audition and it quickly became her catchphrase. Anka points at the thin air beneath her tit shadow, saying, ‘This is the number you need. This is the number you’re going to dial. Isn’t it, guys?’

  QUIZ TV has been getting more and more forceful as the number of callers falls. Anka stares into the camera with a look of contempt. She pictures the late-night losers slumped on their sofas, staring into her top, into her pretend eyes, hands round cans or hands round cocks. She purposefully eyes them with disdain. To make the pretty girl speak, you have to make her happy, you have to make the call.

  ‘Tonight’s question is simple,’ she says, climbing onto the bed and appearing to relax amid the cushions. ‘What beats beyond your ribs?’

  She turns away as if bored by the camera.

  ‘The question is easy: what beats beyond your ribs?’ she yawns.

  Two work-experience girls are hunched over the telephone switchboard, waiting for red lights. ‘What beats?’ says Anka, staring down the camera with a sudden and slightly evil enthusiasm. ‘Come on. For five thousand pounds. What beats beyond your ribs?’

  Time passes.

  ‘I’m getting very bored here.’

  Anka Kudolski stares sternly into the camera. Shit shows like this are one of TV’s final attempts to get cash. Advertising revenue is declining rapidly. The talent/reality shows like The X Factor, Celebrities on Ice, Best Twat, they’re good because people pay to vote for their hero or their villain. But they’re more expensive to produce than shows like QUIZ TV. The profit margins aren’t as easy to realise. Anka Kudolski stares sternly into the camera.

  Around Greater Manchester, people sit on creamy leather sofas. They watch as Anka attempts to bleed and intimidate them with silence. Give in. Go on. Reach for your phone. But the people on their sofas know better than to call. They’re desperate. They’re not desperate. They’re desperate.

  Behind the camera, Ben whispers into his mouthpiece and Anka presses her finger against her earpiece to listen. ‘Anka,’ she hears, ‘try slagging them off, yeah? Try taking the piss, babe.’

  Oh, Ben, never say babe again! Anka smiles and returns her gaze to the camera. She knows what’s going on. All her life has led to this moment. The talent. The art. The beret. The Sunday Times. The eating. The not eating. The falling down the toilet. Now, look at us, here we are!

  ‘Go on,’ whispers Ben. ‘Try it.’

  ‘You lot,’ Anka mutters, picturing her audience, shaking her head a little, exhaling in pretend disbelief. ‘Sometimes I don’t know why you bother. I mean, you sit there on that sofa you haven’t finished paying for. You tip all that shit into yourself every single day. You’re mad. Take a look out
of your window, if you’ve got one. Look at the world, sniff it, walk on it; it’s changing. You’re going to need the money. You’re really going to need the money. What beats beyond your ribs?’

  Anka gets a round of thumbs ups from the Channel MANC crew. The two work-experience girls smile at her in genuine awe. Red lights are already beginning to ignite on the switchboard. The wankers will always rise. The economy told me so. Anka suppresses a rush of pride and excitement. She grimaces into the camera.

  ‘The fact of the matter is this: you’re a loser. Deep down you’ve always known. All day every day you are two things. You are noisy and you are boring. Every night you are two things. You are alone and you’re a wanker. You really need this money. The Wild World will watch you drown. Tell me what beats beyond your ribs?’

  The more TV channels people acquired in the early twenty-first century, the more the large audiences of the past were broken into pieces. To watch TV, particularly late in the evening, particularly complete crap, is to feel inconsolably alone.

  ‘It’s a scramble. It’s always a scramble,’ snaps Anka, exaggerating the vindictive tone in her voice. ‘And the fact is you’re too fat and too thin to scramble to safety. Your bank account is a joke. You daren’t check your balance. Your debts to the old world will make you unviable in the Wild. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but unless you win some money soon, you’re fucked.’

  ‘Keep going,’ mouths Ben through a smile. The girls by the switchboard are leaning backwards in amazement. This is the economy getting angry, thinks Anka. I am the old economy getting angry. This is fun, she thinks. I’ll remember this when I’m safe and working and eating in the Wild World. I’ll tell this story. I’ll tell it to people, in the future, when I’m happy.

  ‘Come on,’ she shouts, leaping off the end of the bed and skipping close to the camera’s lens. ‘The one thing you don’t have is time. It’s New Year’s Day. What beats beyond those ribs of yours? How will the debts be paid? Come on. I’ll give you a clue: it rhymes with tart. It beats dirt around your tracksuit. Put your cock down. Take that cushion off your fat tits. Call in. I just know you want to keep living. Call in and tell me what beats beyond your ribs? For five grand. What beats beyond your ribs?’

  Ben nods to the switchboard girls. They can afford to take a call. The pre-recorded voice of a crazy bastard shouting ‘WE HAVE A CALLER!’ echoes round the studio. The crew are in hysterics, they’ve gathered round the camera to watch Anka deal with the caller. Anka’s finding it difficult to keep a straight face. She’s completely forgotten Ben’s remark about her limbs. Her reddening cheeks keep rising into a half-smile.

  ‘Hello, who’s there?’ she says.

  Silence. Then the sound of accelerated breathing. Ben flicks to the next line.

  ‘Wanker!’ shrieks Anka.

  ‘WE HAVE A CALLER!’ shouts the pre-recorded, craziest of bastards.

  ‘Hello, who’s there?’ says Anka.

  Same again. No answer. Just breath. A slight groan. Vague ecstasy. The line goes dead.

  ‘Wanker!’ shouts Anka.

  ‘WE HAVE A CALLER!’ shouts the wacky, recorded shithead.

  ‘Hello, who’s there?’

  A Northern woman: ‘You skinny southern slut, why don’t you try –’ Cut!

  ‘WE HAVE A CALLER!’ Zany-brained, dead cunt.

  ‘Hello, who’s there?’

  The sound of breath being drawn through a very dry throat.

  ‘Do you have an answer?’ asks Anka. ‘Come on, what beats beyond your ribs? Come on. Quickly. What beats beyond your –’

  ‘Nothing,’ interrupts the voice.

  ‘Nothing?’ says Anka, smiling.

  ‘Nothing beats there,’ says the voice. It is male and panting. It is almost completely breathless.

  3

  JANUARY 2. JANEK Freeman is sitting in silence in the dining room at Reel World. Reel World is a state-of-the-art recording studio, built by the former Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel on the site of an old watermill in the Wiltshire village of Box. Gabriel saw the point in Wiltshire. He was happy to settle here. ‘Seriously,’ he told his friends, ‘it’s actually quite nice.’ He’s here now, Peter Gabriel, he’s staring out of the dining-room window at the lake that lies at the centre of Reel World. Behind him, Janek is pouring himself coffee. The atmosphere is tense.

  Janek Freeman has been waiting his entire life for something to matter. Twenty-five years in total. He’s numb. Numb from all the waiting. Janek’s yet to slip and fall and get soaked from head to toe in reality. Nothing matters, he thinks. So weird that nothing matters! Janek is preoccupied with this idea. He has lived his life with his breath held, waiting to burst and breathe with enthusiasm when something, anything, finally seems important. But this hasn’t happened. It’s incredible. A quarter of a century on earth and you’d expect something to seem important. But nothing has.

  During these twenty-five unimportant years, Janek has been circumcised, schooled and raised in Bristol by his Polish father, a keen Jew, and his mother, a West Country native with very shallow lungs. He was taunted while at secondary school in Bridgewater. The other pupils called his mum ‘the breathless willy-wanger’.

  What else hasn’t mattered? Loads. Janek won a scholarship to study music at Berkeley in California at the age of sixteen. It didn’t matter. By the time he returned at the age of twenty he’d become one of the most sought-after session bass players on earth. This didn’t matter either. While in America, he’d recorded bass lines for Stevie Wonder, Gwen Stefani, Bruce Springsteen, Snoop Dogg and many others. This seemed very unimportant. He’d even released his own record: ‘Twelve Decisions in the Key of Bass’. It had enjoyed critical success, made him a legend in the world of bass guitars and, incredibly, hadn’t really mattered at all. Shame, Janek constantly thinks, shame that nothing matters.

  Janek’s image, which certainly doesn’t matter, comprises a jet-black beanie hat that he never takes off. It fits snugly over his curly brown hair, framing his chestnut-coloured eyes and accentuating his strong, handsome, Polish jaw. Apart from his incredible musical talent, this hat accounts for Janek’s appeal among America’s leading hip-hop artists. It lends him a frisson of unimportant cool and they love him for it; the likes of Snoop and Jay-Z, they pay him for it. He’s wearing the beanie now, of course, in the dining room at Reel World. He’s looking up at Peter Gabriel and smiling. Janek knows full well that, for Peter, loads of things matter: world music, entertainment, performance, African instruments, sex, family, Janek’s career, music technology and probably much else besides. Janek finds this touching but strange.

  Peter is still staring out at the lake. He’s watching as a gigantic swan parades around on the small island, hissing at the reeds that grow there. This swan is as much a feature of Reel World as the antique sound desks and the acoustics and reverberations of the live rooms. Peter smiles, remembering how the swan had once hissed at Brian Eno and petrified him, how the swan had chased Kylie Minogue across the patio, into the games room and then pecked at her through the glass door. Peter sighs. He massages the back of his neck with his hand. He’s bald nowadays, what hair remains has turned grey. But his skin is still smooth, his eyes attentive. He is trim. Still virile somehow. There is life in him. Outside, beside the lake, the vegetable patch is covered in January frost. Inside the air is cold, scented with coffee.

  ‘Would you like a cup, Peter?’ asks Janek.

  ‘No. I don’t drink that stuff any more.’

  Janek watches as Peter continues to stare at the swan. Peter’s lips are quivering a little, as if he’s letting out dozens of small inaudible words. Janek places a cigarette into his incidental smile.

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Gabriel, turning from the window and walking across to the stone carved fireplace. ‘Things are changing. I do think that things are changing.’

  ‘There’re no bands here at the moment?’

  ‘We’ve had to let Mary go. The kitchen’s closed. Such a
shame.’

  Peter takes a seat beside Janek. ‘It’s a shame because they eat terrible food, these young musicians, nothing natural. They need to be fed. I’m eating the vegetable patch single-handedly.’

  Janek lights his fag and drags an ashtray across the table. The cigarette packet tells that ‘Smoking Kills’. To Janek these words mean nothing.

  ‘You see,’ says Peter, wafting smoke, ‘they make the music in their bedrooms nowadays, on their laptops. There’s even software that claims to replicate the acoustics of Reel World. And it’s a good thing, of course. Technology for all. The creative democracy, it’s a marvellous thing. But . . .’ Peter sighs; his eyes are once again drawn from the room to where the swan is clambering out of the lake. It beats its enormous wings and shakes the water from its white feathers before marching proudly across the patio. ‘Good music,’ says Peter, ‘and good life for that matter, requires great performances. People need inspiration. They do. You need inspiration, Janek. And so . . .’ Peter trails off.

  ‘And so here I am?’ offers Janek.

  ‘Yes. You’ve returned.’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘But for adverts,’ says Peter, lurching forward in frustration, offering Janek his crooked, gesturing hands. ‘I didn’t build this place to record advert jingles and I didn’t help you so that you could –’

  ‘I’m doing this for the money,’ interrupts Janek. ‘You know how much these people pay.’

  ‘I do,’ says Gabriel, instantly subdued, leaning back in his seat. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I got the call. The Wild World? I said. No thank you. But when they told me the price I had to reconsider. I had to say yes. Since the kids stay in their bedrooms, money is thin on the ground.’

  The two men drift into silence. Janek grinds out his cigarette and finishes his coffee, confirming as he does so that neither activity matters. Peter Gabriel tries to get lost in thought. He occasionally turns suddenly, prompted by some noise, and stares at the window or the door. He’s seen some grand days, Peter has. The video for his 1986 hit, ‘Sledgehammer’, is commonly regarded as the greatest music video of all time. He did some magnificent stuff onstage with Genesis. He dressed up as a large and very entertaining flower. A sunflower. People laughed at him. Enjoyed him. He performed with his head peeping out of a gigantic yellow cone, too. He actually did that. To entertain people.