One
dark evening a few days later a second-hand car salesman with an ill-lit car
lot sold for cash a Mark One Landrover Discovery on an M plate, to a tall ugly
woman.
Clive
hid it in the parking garages underneath the Brunswick Centre. The Discovery
leaked black diesel smoke from its rusty anus and the inappropriate pale blue
clunky interior designed by Sir Terence Conran was filthy and falling to bits,
but Cicely felt it would do the job. The huge pitted chrome bull bars screwed
to the front of the Disco would be especially good at mashing up a biker.
Cicely
had great fun clothing herself as a middle-class mum on the way to pick up her
kids from one of the posh private schools in Hampstead, then she went hunting
for a cyclist pedalling the wrong way down one of the many streets of Camden
Town.
As she
drove, her eyes swivelling back and forth, Cicely daydreamed about her family
life, her husband, her kids, the dinner parties she’d cook for his boss at the
bank.
Kate
Maguire strapped her small son into the child seat of her bicycle. She was late
getting to her friend Carmel’s place where she was going to drop off Milo then
go on to work on the night shift at the Neurological Hospital near Russell
Square. She had been forced to go back to work at the Neuro after her husband
died and the old pig-pink Raleigh ladies bike was the most economical way for
her and Milo to get around town. If she’d had to pay bus fares or, heaven
forbid, own a car, she and Milo would be having privet leaves for tea every
night. Today, though, she had a problem: if she didn’t somehow shave fifteen
minutes off her journey she was going to be late for work. That was the thing
about bicycles, you always knew to the second how long a journey took. Not like
a car, where in central London the same hundred yards could take twenty seconds
or two hours to drive depending on what butterfly was flapping its wings in the
Brazilian rainforest that day. The simplest way to make up the time would be
for her and Milo not to turn left into the long one-way system on leaving her
little house in Lyme Street. That was suited to fat-arsed car drivers sitting
down but it was an annoying detour when you are pedalling yourself, taking you
down Bayham Street along Pratt Street across the High Street and up Delancey
Street. It would be much quicker for her to ride the wrong way past the tube
station then go against the flow of traffic, up the hill at Parkway, the way
she had seen thousands of other cyclists doing. Many times she had sensed other
bicycle riders’ perplexity as she stopped at the lights and waited while they
bumped up onto the pavement or raced through the traffic lights even though the
little green man was showing, scattering pedestrians left and right.
Kate
buckled up her shiny plastic helmet, gave the straps holding in Milo one last
safety check and set off, resolving, for the first time ever, to go head on,
into the traffic.
But she
didn’t, she couldn’t force herself to do it; she went through the one-way
system as usual and was a bit late for work.
Instead
Cicely drove into and killed a bicycle messenger called Darren Barley who was a
complete waste of fucking space and deserved to die.
CLIVE HOLE
1
Tatum and Cherry were two
television producers who were married to each other and who both worked for the
BBC. They were having a proper tea at Cherry’s mum’s house. They both liked a
proper tea with cakes and sandwiches and scones and clotted cream and home-made
jams but Tatum refused to pay inflated hotel prices when Cherry’s mum would do
it for free. Cherry was a very handsome woman, like her mother (Tatum sometimes
fantasised about shagging them both). Tatum wasn’t handsome, he was the other
thing, with prominent buck teeth and a haystack of black hair. What attracted
Cherry to him was that he was funny — with an instinctive understanding of
comedy, he could make her laugh for hours on end. This was what she loved about
him; for her it even excused his remarkable meanness, an unlovely aspect in any
man.
Every
time Cherry’s mum went out of the room they talked about Clive Hole. Cherry’s
mum, who had been an SOE agent in France during the war, had been captured and
tortured by the Gestapo and then, after her husband’s suicide, had had to bring
up six children alone but who did not work in television and therefore had not
had an interesting life, came into the conservatory carrying a spare cake she
hadn’t thought she’d need and finding her daughter and son-in-law waist-deep in
the same conversation they’d been having since last Christmas said, ‘Who is
this Clive Hole you keep talking about? I’ve never heard of him.’
Tatum
and Cherry thought themselves pretty unshockable (after all they had devised
the TV show
Anal Animals)
but they were shocked.
They
said in chorus, like in one of the bad sitcoms they produced, ‘You’ve never
heard of Clive Hole!!!?’
2
‘But I’m Clive Hole,’ said
the man sitting in the front passenger seat of the black BMW 7 series, with his
feet awkwardly propped up on the dash. The man in the car was wearing a baggy
unstructured Armani suit and frantically clutched a silver metal briefcase to himself
with both arms. He was in his mid-forties, balding, with a grey-flecked beard.
The BBC
security guard on the gate of Television Centre was unmoved.
‘I know
who you are, sir, but it doesn’t make any difference, we are at Security State
Tangerine, which is a high state and I have to search everybody’s bags.’
‘But I’m
Clive Hole, I’m head of media facilitation.’
‘And I’ve
still got to look in your bag.’
Clive
thought for a minute, had an idea, then pretended to think for a bit longer. ‘Oh
… erm, yes … I’ve just remembered I’ve got a meeting with some people from
the circus .
He
spoke to the large black man who was his driver.
‘Clayton,
take me to the circus.
Without
a beat, Clayton threw the car into reverse with a cry of, ‘Righto, Mr Hole!’
The car
shot backwards into Wood Lane did a hand-brake turn like in the movies and sped
away, northwards, fishtailing strips of rubber onto the road. The security
guard watched it depart with bemusement.
‘Loony!’
he said to himself in Armenian.
At
Clive’s instruction Clayton slowed down and turned left so that they were now
running round the rear of Television Centre. On a quiet service road they came
to a back lot that was being cleared to build more offices. One part of the
chainlink perimeter fence of this building site was sagging so that it was only
about two metres high. In the distance between the buildings he could see his
office window.
Clive
shouted, ‘Clayton, here, stop here!’
When
the car stopped he climbed out and stood looking at the fence. ‘Could you give
me a boost over?’ he asked his driver.
‘Certainly,
Mr Hole,’ replied Clayton. He cupped his hands. Balancing unsteadily on one leg
Clive put his foot into those hands and Clayton tossed the other man up into
the air and on top of the fence like a little Jewish caber.
Clive
straddled the fence like a man clinging to a wild horse that he’d unexpectedly
found himself riding, one hand still holding on to his briefcase.
‘Shall
I pick you up from the reception as usual at four, Mr Hole?’ asked the driver.
‘Yeah,’
mumbled Clive, then: ‘No, meet me here instead. At this hole.’
‘Righto,
Mr Hole.’
Clayton
began to get back in the car. Clive hung still semi-impaled on the fence. A
thought occurred to him.
‘Oh erm
… Clayton, did you get a chance to look at that series proposal from Tatum
and Cherry?’
A
thoughtful look crossed Clayton’s face.
‘You
liked it? You didn’t like it?’ guessed Clive as he swung in the breeze. ‘Not enough
black people in it?’
Clayton
finally delivered his verdict.
‘I
liked it, Mr Hole …’
‘Really?
Right … OK … I might speak to them … about it then.’
And
with that he fell to the ground, then he jumped up again, waved at Clayton and
scurried off through the building rubble in the loping crouch of a member of
the Special Boat Service. Taking the back roads of the complex where the little
electric tugs rattled past, towing trailers of scenery labelled ‘Gen Game’ and ‘Kilroy
— not wanted’, the top executive eventually arrived at the ground-floor windows
of his office suite. He tapped on the glass of the secretary’s office. Helen,
his assistant, a middle-aged, competent-looking woman glanced up from her work.
She did not seem to be fazed to see her boss standing in a flower-bed.
‘Helen,
can you open my office window please?’ he mouthed through the double glazing.
Helen
got up, went into Clive’s office and opened the window. He clambered gratefully
inside.
‘Thanks
… thanks a lot. Now I’d like no calls for half an hour please, Helen.’
‘Certainly,
Clive,’ she said and left.
Clive
crossed purposefully to his desk and sat down, placing the briefcase in front
of him. From inside it he took a large colourful box marked ‘Rainbow Valley Ant
Farm’, and a jar of honey. Humming happily to himself he crossed over to a
corner of the room where there was a large TV and a VCR machine. Kneeling down
he took the ant farm out of the box and broke it open. He then poured honey
over the fleeing ants. Next, using a pair of tweezers, he began to stuff ants
through the loading slot of the VCR, then he poured more honey into the
machine. Clive then repeated the process on several VHS tapes that were lying
by the machine. He surveyed his handiwork with contentment and then returned to
his desk, picked up the phone and dialled an internal number.
‘Paul
Cliro, please,’ he said, ‘it’s Clive Hole . .
He
continued to hum to himself while waiting for Paul to come to the phone.
‘Paul?
Hi, it’s Clive … about those tapes you sent me of actresses for the
supporting role in
Airport Padre
…
No, I haven’t looked at them
… It’s the strangest thing, when I came to try and play the tape it wouldn’t
work and when I looked inside the machine, well blow me, it was full of ants!
… Yeah, ants and honey! … You couldn’t make it up, could you? And then I
remembered you said once that one of your kids had an ant farm… so I guess
somehow the ants got into the tape when it was at your house and then into my
VCR … and it’s not just your tape, there are several other tapes ruined,
pilots for shows I’m supposed to decide whether they should go to series. Now I’ll
have to put the decision off… bloody nuisance, eh? … No, it’s not your
fault, mate … no … What I suggest you do is wait about a month then send me
the tape of the actresses again because it’ll take that long for Helen to order
me another machine … you know how useless she is … no, don’t apologise.’ He
laughed merrily. ‘Just tell your boy to keep his ants to himself… speak to
you soon, mate… yeah, bye.’
He put
the phone down and sat looking at it for a minute then picked it up again.
‘Helen
… can you get me Monty Fife’s agent? I’ve decided to give the go-ahead to
that thing about otters.’
He was
swiftly connected.
‘Betty?
… How are you? It’s Clive Hole here … fine, fine … Listen I’ve got good
news for Monty, I’m finally going to green light
Mudlark Springs.’
His
expression changed. ‘What … dead? When? … A year and a half ago? … Well,
I guess I must have … no .
He considered
for a second. ‘What about the otters? Extinct, really? … Oh well, bye then.’
He put
the phone down and stared as if it was an untrustworthy dog.
3
The next afternoon Clive
sat at his big desk made out of logs from New Mexico. He didn’t want to be
sitting at his big desk, he wanted to be drinking a diet coke from his fridge,
the fridge hidden behind an adobe-coloured door that was built in the South
Western-style bookcase that was in the opposite corner of the room to where he
sat at his big desk, and was stocked with New World wines, juices and other
beverages twice a week by the licence payer. A couple of minutes before the
automatic part of his brain, the part that usually gets on with stuff and that
you hardly listen to, said, ‘Right, let’s get up, go over to the fridge hidden
behind the adobe-coloured door, built into the New Mexico-style bookcase and
let’s have us a Diet Coke.’ He was just about to do that thing when another
voice, the voice that had for months been stopping him making any decisions
about programmes by endlessly weighing the pros and cons of every tiny detail,
chose this moment to expand its operations into other areas of his life. It
said, ‘Hang on a minute, Clive, are you sure you really want a Diet Coke, how
do you really know that is what you want? How do you know you don’t want to
have a fruit smoothie? Or how do you really really know that you don’t want to
get up and wee on your Navaho rug? How do you know anything, Clive?’ So he had
sat there now for twenty minutes, impaled on uncertainty; he was only brought
back from this internal inferno of boiling thoughts by the sounds of shouting
from the outer office.