The Right Man

by Nigel Planer

  ‘Do you want a biscuit, Grace?’ said Stella.

  ‘What kind?’

  ‘Funny Face.

  Grace put out her hand.

  ‘Say thank you,’ I said automatically, before she had had the chance to say it. She joined Stella on the bench and ate her Funny Face.

  I scanned the trees and looked up at the church spire, not sure whether to sit on the bench myself. Under the gable of the roof were knotty gargoyle faces. One of them was disgorging the leafy branches of an oak tree carved out of the stone. Like the locations of the ancient yew trees across England, around which so many of the first churches were built, originally this must have been a pagan site. Christianity merely grafted on over the top like geological rock strata. Tony would like it here. The Green Man, symbol of growth out of death and destruction. The anarchic and spoiling nature of man epitomized. The cheeky jokester. The one who knows that creativity sometimes comes out of breakage. The one who combats apathy but who doesn’t put his toys back in the right boxes. The one who stirs the water with a stick to see what’s lying on the bottom, just for the hell of it. Curiosity. Devilment. Surprise. An idea occurred to me. A wicked one. Grace bit the eyes off the top of her Funny Face. and held it upside down.

  ‘Look. It’s a face the other way round too,’ she said to the large woman.

  ‘Oh yes, so it is,’ Stella replied. I sat down on the bench beside her. Rooters were blaring in Wardour Street beyond the gates of the church, and some kind of argument was raging.

  ‘I don’t want to be rude,’ I said, somehow spurred on by the grinning gargoyles, ‘but I run a sort of agency myself, and, well … entertainment business agency, you know, TV, films, all sorts really …’

  ‘Huh! And you think I might be just right for a part in a film that might happen if I just pop along to a photographic session and whip my top off. Listen, Buster …

  ‘No, I don’t mean that. To tell you the truth, the TV business is not what it was and, well, to tell you the absolute truth, my business is very much not what it was. OK, I’ll be straight with you, it’s on its last legs, but… I do have all the contacts still and…’ I kept on going. I was grinning now like the Green Man. It was infectious; Stella smiled back at me. A wicked smile. ‘Well, some of my clients are very attractive, but unfortunately out of work, actresses and…’ She wasn’t helping me out, she just kept smiling. ‘Then there are the visiting film producers, some of them very well known, if you see what I mean?’ Looking over the top of Grace’s head, I said with exasperation, ‘Can’t you help me out here?’

  ‘You have a business proposition to make to me, Mr Guy Muffin? I think I know what you’re suggesting and I think, well, I know, that I might be able to help you here and that we could come to some agreement. Jasmine!’ she called across to her daughter. ‘You come here a minute, babe!’

  Jasmine shuffled halfway across towards us. ‘What?’ she shouted.

  ‘Jasmine, this is Grace. You play with her for a bit. Your ma’s got to have a talk with her dad.’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said Jasmine with unashamed reluctance, her eyes hitting the sky. And then, very politely, she came up and took Grace’s hand and led her to where she’d been playing.

  ‘OK, first off, why do you want to do this thing, big boy? And don’t you lie to me. I can always tell.’

  I thought for a moment. ‘Because they can all fuck off as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘Alrrrrright!’ She laughed wheezily.

  ‘Of course, there are practical reasons, necessities. Money, or lack of it … her.’ I indicated Grace.

  ‘I understand.’ She gave a big sigh. ‘I do.’

  ‘And I’ve got the contacts but it would have to be, well…’

  ‘Discreet,’ she said. ‘High—class … expensive.’ She smiled big now, and her teeth dazzled in the half-sunlight.

  ‘My thoughts entirely.’ I was relaxing into it. ‘Like escorts or something.’ I would wear the shiny suit, I would drive the Mazda. My shades would look £150 but cost £20 from a Carnaby Street booth. Stella put her hand on mine briefly.

  ‘Well, Big Jim, go slowly, my man.’ I gave her my line 3 number, my personal one. She popped it in her bag with a suggestive flash of the eyes and got up.

  ‘Jas, time to go, love.’ And then, more quietly to me, with a knowing wink, ‘Big Jim. Do you like it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your new name.

  ‘Oh, yes, thank you. Jim was my father’s name, actually.’

  ‘Yes, but was he big? Was he Big Jim?’

  ‘You know, I haven’t the faintest idea,’ I said.

  ‘You mean you never looked?’ She laughed again. Jasmine joined us with Grace trailing behind.

  ‘OK, we’ll talk then.’ Stella took Jasmine’s hand and left the churchyard. Grace came up and sat on my lap. It made it worse having her for the afternoon in Soho, away from everything that was familiar to her. Just the two of us stranded together on a strange and hostile planet called Contact, where there was no bathtime, no familiar monsters or chips and ice-cream for tea. Surely abandonment, or at least absence, would be better for her than to have to comprehend this adult complexity. No, I know that’s just a cop—out.

  After delivering Grace through a gap in the front door no wider than Susan Planter had opened hers for fear of press intrusion, I returned to Soho via Hamleys and bought a duplicate musical dinosaur, pop-up spider book and Rosie and Jim rag dolls to keep at Meard Street. I would have to make the office home. I fell asleep on the cane sofa with the toys on my lap and a fag on the go. That was mature, wasn’t it?

  It was in my first week as an accredited absent parent — the week after that first shaky Saturday with Grace — that my recurrent dream took a turn for the nasty. The noise wasn’t like the roaring of waves or thunder, it didn’t have gaps in it, no bits that were louder or softer than others. Nor was it like a digital tone, it was too ragged and raucous for that. It was like an explosion extended beyond the seconds of impact. An eternal car crash. It was dark subterranean night. There was water, dark water. Grace was sinking fast. I was there to save her, but when I reached her at last we were pushed together into the turbulence, and I held her down under the water. I held Grace down, she struggled, I couldn’t look in her eyes. I was pushing her under with all my force. Neither of us could believe that I was doing it. I could only just breathe myself, but I made sure that she couldn’t. There was black splash over us both, I held her under the rage. There was wind, and in the dream I was weeping with guilt. I held her down until I woke up, fully clothed and shivering in full daylight. The window was open and the phone was ringing.

  ‘Hello, this is Muffin and Ketts. I’m sorry, we’re all busy at the moment, but if you would like to leave your name and number and the time you called, we’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Please speak after the tone.’

  Tilda’s voice. I would have to change the outgoing message soon, but in the meantime I had a few days’ grace in which to find out who was still in and who had flown. Naomi wouldn’t have bothered to have taken everybody with her. She’d have left behind the more boring ones. Simon Eggleston, no doubt. Joy Trainer, Amy Battle, Simon N’quarbo and anyone who hadn’t worked for a while. I was trying to blink away the dream, but its dark, treacly taste remained. This wasn’t meant to be my dream. Not drowning my own child. The images from it would not disappear back down the horrid hole of my subconscious whence they had come. There was no one to blame for them: no uncensored video, no foul American movie about infanticide which I could claim had influenced me. It was all mine, but I still could not own the dream. I made myself think about the day and work.

  I wondered about Barbara Stenner, dear old bat. Hadn’t managed to get through to her yet. Would she have fluttered across to Regent Street with the others? Probably. Been in the business too long not to know where bread gets buttered. She was the only one who gave me a tad of the sads. A voice came on the answer-phone. It was Neil. I g
ot up to catch him before he rang off I needed jolting into the day.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m not going to say.

  ‘Oh, come on, that’s stupid, Neil.’

  ‘I’ve taken three bottles of something. I don’t know what.’

  ‘What do you mean; taken?’ The sound of the dark rushing water was still in my head. The fear in the dream had been let out like a genie from a bottle, and was treading its dirty footprints all over the office.

  ‘You know, pills.’

  ‘Oh, Hinge and Bracket, Neil! Why?’

  ‘I can’t do it, Guy. I can’t write it. I’m just a cheap light— entertainment turn. I’m not a writer, I’m not anything. I’m not a man. I haven’t even got any kids like you. I can’t do it.’ The murderous aftertaste of my dream settled on the telephone receiver and projected itself down the line at Neil. At that moment, I would have liked to kill him.

  ‘Where are you, Neil? Where are you?’

  ‘What’s it matter?’

  ‘Well, it matters to me, Neil. You’re my client, for God’s sake. How do you think this makes me feel?’ I was working hard now. I extemporized. ‘How dare you go and take some bottles of pills without telling me first? Have you made a will or anything? Well, have you? What if it turns out that what you’ve written so far becomes a classic and gets made into a big Hollywood film and I can’t get my hands on the rights because you didn’t sign all the relevant bumf? Neil… Neil?… Are you still there?’

  He gave a sort of resigned half-laugh, half-cough. ‘Yeah, I’m still here.’

  ‘Well, where is that?’

  ‘Aha, trying to trick me, eh? In Sussex somewhere, Edinburgh. What does it matter?’

  ‘Whereabouts in Sussex?’ With my free hand, I switched line 2 off the answer-phone and picked up the receiver. I dialled his home number in West Hampstead with the thumb of my left hand.

  ‘And who’s going to play you in the film, you silly old bugger? Or when it goes to series?’, I said.

  ‘You know, Guy? I don’t give a monkey’s,’ he said, and chortled quietly. ‘Noel bloody Edmonds for all I care.’

  I got through to West Hampstead but it was engaged and had that irritating Call Holding voice on: ‘The person you are calling knows you are waiting,’ etc. I hung up. I held the line 2 receiver away from line 3 into which I was speaking so that Neil wouldn’t hear it. I dialled the operator with my left-hand thumb.

  ‘Neil, listen, hang on a second. I’ve just got to switch off a tap but I’m still here, I want to talk to you. You hold on, OK?’

  ‘Yeah, all right, Guy, but there’s no point in ringing Karen, you know.’

  ‘You still there?’

  ‘Yeah. Guy?’ He was slurring now.

  ‘Yes?’ I replied.

  ‘You know what? You’re a bastard, Guy. You’re a complete shit.’

  ‘Yes, I know that, Neil, tell me something new. That’s what I take my ten per cent for. Someone’s got to do it. It’s what you pay me for.’

  ‘Listen, you old shit, I’m upstairs at home. That was you trying to call just now, wasn’t it? I wish I was in Sussex, or anywhere, that’d be nice, that’d be . .’ He went silent.

  ‘Neil? Neil?’ God, I was angry with him. A day at the hospital I did not need. There was clicking down the line, and another voice joined us.

  ‘Hello? Who is this?’ It was American, a woman. Karen, I presumed. ‘Neil? Are you using this phone, honey?’

  ‘He says he’s taken some bottles of pills. He doesn’t sound very well. I’m Guy, his agent, by the way. Hello.’

  ‘Oh, not again,’ she sighed, and then, shouting to him, ‘Neil baby, I’ve had enough of this already, do you hear? You put down the phone and get downstairs now!’

  ‘Is he alright?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course he’s alright. The ones who say they’re going to do it never do it.’ She shouted at him again, this time away from the phone. ‘And have you tidied your room yet?’

  I couldn’t imagine what sort of relationship they had, how on earth it worked, but who am I to comment? I haven’t exactly found the key, have I? She spoke to me again.

  ‘Are you still there, Guy? Listen, don’t you worry, you go on and have a nice day. I’m sorry about all this. Really.’

  I couldn’t leave it like that, I had to double-check. Despite wishing him drowned, I said, ‘Only if you’re sure he’s alright.’

  ‘No, he’s not alright. He’s driving me mad, if you really want to know. But physically speaking, yeah, he’s fine. You can relax. Really. I’ll take care of this.’

  I said goodbye. Ketts Stanton-Walker had not bothered to take Neil with them to Regent Street, as you can imagine. No, I was stuck with him. Muggins.

  And so the second week of non-contact went by. Christ! In Neil’s TV sitcom the idea of every other weekend had been so amusing, the men so humorously hopeless — particularly Neil, who usually got the dumber laughs. The kids had been cute and knowing, the dads had been quaintly sentimental but completely incompetent, hence lovable. Good telly. They didn’t dream nightly of slaughtering their own offspring in a raging torrent of cold black water, and wake shivering with sweat and admonishments. I had put the Rosie and Jim dolls and the wind-up dinosaur into a filing cabinet now;’ I couldn’t bear the sight of them and what they stirred.

  By the Wednesday morning I couldn’t take it any longer. I had become seriously worried about Grace. Well, I’d become obsessed, to be sure. Liz hadn’t returned any of my calls for a week and, frustrated and depressed with the sight of my empty office and with the lonely toys calling me from inside the filing cabinet — ‘Let us out! Let us out!’ — I packed the day in after lunch and went down to Fulham by bus to see if I couldn’t find out what was going on. Man of action, love, that’s me. A big boy with a mission: steely gaze, steadfast purpose, square chin. This whole thing needed fixing and I was the soldier boy to sort it. It had taken me ten days to file the horrible, murderous dream under ‘stress at work’.

  The upstairs of the number 14 was completely overrun by a gang of thirteen-year-old kids in semi school uniform, throwing insults, sweet papers and cigarettes at each other. I was the only adult up there — the conductress having given up on them — and I retreated into my inner thoughts: fantasies of a dramatic scene at my front door in which Liz refused to let me in to see Grace and I kicked the door down and, finding Hendo in my kitchen, stabbed him with one of the chopping knives which had been given to us as a wedding present by her mum. Then the police arrived and I was taken away with Grace screaming and Hendo pumping blood from his neck wound. I couldn’t decide whether Ken Loach, Quentin Tarantino or Martin Scorsese would have been the most suitable director for this scenario. Or was I on my way to kill them all?

  ‘Cheer up, mate, might never happen,’ said an untidy schoolgirl as half of the kids piled off the bus and jumped out at the lights. It was true I was looking deranged. I looked at my watch. If I got out here I could go round to the day nursery first. It would be pick-up time in about twenty minutes. I followed the school kids and hopped off dangerously, even though the bus was now going too fast, arriving on the pavement at a trot. I felt like some SAS guy with weapons in both socks.

  It was hot again, and my thin linen jacket wasn’t really strong enough to hold my mobile, which was dragging a bulky lump out of the left-hand pocket. I took it out and hooked it on to my belt. Whichever way you wear a mobile you look like a prat, but it was appropriate today to sling mine like a holster. I bet Hendo has one of those wafer-thin ones that fits in the top breast pocket easily and tells the time in Los Angeles and Tokyo.

  As I walked along the Fulham Palace Road I rang Malcolm Viner and asked if he wanted to meet later for a drink. His little terraced cottage in Shepherd’s Bush was about fifteen minutes from here. I couldn’t get him off the phone as I approached the Little Fledglings school in Harcourt Road, and so, since I was early, I hung about outside still talking to him, feeling like
a yuppie dad who fits his children into business schedule windows. Well, I suppose that’s what I am really, but then what’s in a label?

  Malcolm’s ex-partner Geraldine was evidently intending to move to Dublin, taking his daughter Nerily with her, and Malcolm, unsurprisingly, was vociferous on the implications. She had found a new boyfriend and claimed to want to start a new life in Ireland. Malcolm was considering whether to go and live there too in order to be near his daughter.

  ‘Trouble is, Guy, mate, I think the whole Dublin thing is just a scam. She knows she couldn’t move back to America legally speaking, well, not without a helluva stink from me, so she’s using Dublin as an interim measure which takes her outside English custodial waters, so to speak. And from there she could go to America, and there’d be nowt I could do about it.’

  ‘What about your work?’ I asked.

  ‘Ha! All this Nerily business put an end to anything resembling a career years ago.

  ‘Look, I’ve got to go,’ I said. ‘They’re coming out. I’ll catch you later.’ I said ‘catch you later’. You see, I really am a yuppie.

  Various parents had accumulated on the street. One or two were sitting in double-parked Volvo estates. Children holding tissue-paper collages and large poster-paint pictures were coming out and being bustled away by mums, nannies, sisters and one or two sheepish dads in summer suits. Liz was not there. The. nursery had nearly emptied. A mum from one of the Volvo estates was extricating her two children from the front playroom.

  I stood half in, half out of the open front door. A third child of hers sat in the child-seat in the car. The woman was making more noise than all of the children put together. A certain braying upper-middle-class type have naturally grating and resonant voices — from being brought up in baronial dining halls, I presume — and this woman had the kind of volume that would reach beyond the back of the auditorium of the Olivier at the National and right out into the LWT car park beyond.

  ‘It’s ainly one week they’ll miss, so thet’s Ay Kay. You see, all the flights back from the Dordogne are full. It’s a nightmare getting a seat at all. It’s outrageous.’ I would like to be allowed to shoot her now, with a big Clint Eastwood gun. Blow her, face across the nursery wall.