Helen
looked up from her work as the door was thrown open and Tatum and Cherry
bundled in. Before Helen could speak Tatum started talking in a rush.
‘Alright,
Helen, we’re here for our four o’clock meeting with Clive and don’t tell us he’s
not in because we’ve been watching his office since he came back from lunch and
we know he’s still in there.’
Cherry
added, ‘And he can’t say we haven’t got an appointment like he’s done the last
five times because I recorded him saying we’ve got an appointment on my
Psion…’
She
held up her personal organiser and pressed a key. First there was the sound of
some muffled shouting then Clive’s voice came out of it sounding agitated.
‘Please
Cherry, for Christ’s sake, I’m trying to donate sperm here for my wife’s IYF, I’m…
oh, oh, oh, Jesus, shit … too late.’ There was a pause, then Clive again:
‘Look are
you satisfied? That is never going to come out of suede.’ Then there was some
more mumbling, followed by: ‘Alright. OK. This is stupid but alright… do I
speak into this here? I, Clive Hole, swear on my word of honour as head of
media facilitation that I have a meeting with Tatum and Cherry in my office at
four on Thursday… Are you happy now? Can I have my magazine back if you’ve
finished with it?’
Helen
leant forward and spoke into the intercom on her desk. ‘Clive? Tatum and Cherry
are here for their four o’clock meeting.’
Clive’s
voice came out of this other machine.
‘Sure,
just give me a couple of seconds and then send them right in.’
Tatum
and Cherry smiled in triumph, hovered and then entered Clive’s office. The two
producers stared about them in consternation: the office was empty, the summer
breeze blowing through the open window stirred the curtains.
4
Tatum was feeling terribly
agitated because of Clive Hole. He blamed Clive for the fact that he was having
this little relapse. He said to the young man, ‘We’ve written this detective
thing called
Bold As Bacon,
it’s about this father and son team who go
around the markets of Lancashire selling bacon from a stall, they’ve still got
some fabulous Victorian markets… Preston, Lancaster… but they don’t just
sell bacon, they solve crimes as well! Plus it’s set in the Seventies so you
get all that great glam music for the soundtrack. Took us nearly a year and a
half to write six one-hour episodes, I gave C live the scripts nine months ago
and since then nothing! I’ve called, I’ve e-mailed, I’ve sent jokey little
cards on Valentine’s day and he just won’t speak to me about it. I bumped into
him in the street a few weeks ago and he pretended he was a Portuguese tourist.’
The
young man just looked bored so they went to the cemetery. Once they had found a
nice mausoleum the young man got down on his knees, undid Tatum’s trousers and
began to suck his cock. All the time while this was going on the only thing
Tatum could think of was Clive Hole, Clive Hole, Clive Hole. On his face was an
abstracted and worried expression, his mind miles away and not concentrating on
the blow job in hand.
5
The five-a-side pitch was
part of the sports centre, the sports centre was part of Arsenal’s football
ground. In the British style the building had no aesthetic attributes
whatsoever. It was a big ugly shed with a lattice of girders holding up the
roof and pitiless neon lights shining down on the ten middle-aged men who
huffed and limped up and down the pitch chasing the ball. Their shouts and the
squeak of their trainers bounced off the shiny brick walls. Several of the men
were strapped into corsets or their legs were encased in bright blue supports, velcro
and carbon fibre vainly trying to hold up their drooping muscles. One of the
men wearing the most body armour was Clive Hole, he was pretending to be a
striker dropping off behind the front two and pulling defenders out of
position: in reality he was an old man stiffly running about.
On the
sidelines in the banked seating Tatum and Cherry sat watching the men. Tatum
was dressed in football kit. He pointed at the men playing football, ‘Look at
them, the heads of every major TV channel and production house in the country
… what do they think they look like?’
Cherry
said, ‘They think they look quite … well, alright; not great, like when they
were young but OK. They think that at least they keep fit. And that’ll mean as
long as they keep fit and can keep playing football then they won’t die. They’re
not playing each other, they’re really playing death.’ Tatum hadn’t been
listening.
‘And
you think this is a good place to force him to talk to me?’
‘He can’t
get away from you if you’re on the pitch with him.’
‘How do
you know I’ll get a game?’
Cherry
laughed. ‘Look at the state of them. There’ll be an injury in the next five
minutes, I guarantee it.
Tatum
gave voice to a variant on the only thought he’d had for months.
‘It’s
bloody ridiculous this, why won’t he make a decision about anything?’
‘Cos as
long as he doesn’t make a decision he can’t be wrong about anything. He can’t
be accused of making mistakes if he doesn’t make anything at all.’
‘But he
fought so hard to get the job, remember those rumours that went round about
Tony Cliff who everybody thought would get the job? Well, it turned out Clive
had bought the goat… Oh he loves the job, he loves it so much he doesn’t want
to do anything to lose it… like making any programmes. The other neat touch
is that he doesn’t like the thought of anybody not liking him. He won’t tell
anybody he’s not going to make their show because he doesn’t want to upset
them.’
‘But
everybody fucking hates his guts!’
‘But he
doesn’t know that because people are always nice to his face, they still think
he might green light their shows…’
At that
moment one of the fatter, balder players dove wildly for the ball, from inside
his groin came a snap that could be heard all over Islington. He squirmed on
the green-painted ground yelling in pain until he was taken away by paramedics.
‘There
you go,’ said Cherry. ‘Paul Feinberg, head of programming at LWT and winner of
the Christopher Reeve award for self-inflicted sports injury.’
Tatum
got up and stood by the pitch.
‘Er …
you need another player?’ he said to the men. Several of them recognised him as
BBC, one of themselves, so they gave their assent before Clive Hole could stop
them.
Tatum
jogged onto the pitch and took up the same defensive position as the injured
man. After a time Clive got the ball and despite the fact that he knew Tatum
was waiting for him he headed for goal. The younger man skilfully got in front
of Clive and prevented him from moving forward while at the same time not
taking the ball off him. At one point Clive even tried to ‘pass to a team-mate
but Tatum simply kicked the ball back to his feet. ‘Clive, I’ve really got to
talk to you about
Bold As Bacon,’
he whispered into his ear.
‘Can’t
we talk about this at the office?’ gasped Clive.
‘I
tried to talk to you at the office and you climbed out of the window… And I
want you to make a decision, right now, about whether we go ahead or not.’
A look
of complete panic came into Clive’s eyes. Abandoning the ball he ran full tilt
into the wall, knocking himself out cold. Tatum looked on in exasperation as
everybody else gathered round Clive’s prone form. Back in the seating Cherry
rose and took off her coat. Underneath she too was wearing football kit.
‘Looks
like you need another player, boys?’ she said.
6
Tatum and Cherry were
going for dinner at the home of their friends Victoria and Miles. Victoria was
a make-up artist and Miles was a set designer at the BBC. They were buzzed into
the mansion block via the entryphone. It sounded like Victoria was sobbing but
those things often made you sound like that.
The
couple got up to the flat and knocked on the door. It was flung open and a
naked Victoria threw herself into Tatum’s arms, weeping solidly. Tatum tried to
comfort her without touching any body parts with his hands, in the end he
resorted to stroking her with the inside of his elbows while sticking his behind
out so his groin didn’t rub up against her triangle of thick black pubic hair.
‘Vic,
Vic, what is it, babe?’ he said but there was no room between the crying for
her to speak.
Over
her lovely naked shoulder he could see into the entire open-plan apartment. The
whole place had been painted black, not just the walls but the furniture, the
carpets, vases, the flowers in the vases, pictures, posters, the TV, coats
hanging by the door, everything.
‘So,
you been decorating, Vic?’ said Tatum.
This
seemed to unlock Victoria’s words.
‘It was
my Miles … he did it. See he’s spent months working on the set designs for
this production. Then Clive Hole … Clive said he wanted some changes in the
script, like the lead character should be a dog rather than a woman and it
should be set in Finland rather than Barnsley … stuff like that. So last
night he came home and he did this and now he’s in a mental institution and… Oh
hell.’
A big
black dog came out of the bathroom barking madly.
Victoria
sobbed. ‘That was a Dalmatian yesterday …’
7
Deep underground in a long
corridor at Television Centre, Clive Hole was walking along accompanied by a
large group of tourists trotting behind him. Speaking to the group he indicated
one of the doors leading off the corridor.
‘And
this is one of our new digital editing suites, each machine contains a thousand
gigabytes of memory and can perform ten million processes a second. Would you
like to see inside?’
A
Spanish woman said quickly, ‘No, no, Mr Hole, you really have given us too much
time already. To meet the head of production at the Media-facilitation was
thrill enough, at Disneyland you do not expect to be shown around by Walt
Disney Junior himself, certainly not for three hours anyway…’
‘Oh it’s
no trouble at all, it’s important to keep the licence payers informed, after
all you pay our wages.’
‘Well,
we don’t actually,’ said the Spaniard, ‘seeing as we are all foreign tourists.’
‘Yes, but
. .
At that moment an older
man in a Savile Row suit with the big flaps at the back that denote an
aristocrat came out of one of the offices. He showed surprise at seeing Clive
in this technical place, then quickly approached.
‘Ah
Clive, it’s handy bumping into you like this,’ he said in a languid patrician
drawl, ‘I’ve been trying to track you down for weeks.’
Clive
looked uncomfortable.
‘Oh ah,
erm… Yes. Oh can I introduce you to some of our foreign guests.’ He turned to
the group. Indicating the older man he said, ‘This is Sir Marcus Wilbey, our
head of finance.’ Then turning back to Sir Marcus, ‘This is Senora Aznar from
Seville, Mr and Mrs Nomura from Kobe, the Willigers from Boise Idaho, Mr—’
‘Yes,
yes, if I could just have a quick word I’m sure the ladies and gentlemen will
excuse us …
The
tourists gave their fervent assent, Marcus took the reluctant Clive’s arm and
led him a few yards away. The tourists took the opportunity to make a run for it,
Clive watched them go as if they were the last hovercraft out of Khe San. Sir
Marcus spoke.
‘Really
a corridor isn’t the place to discuss this but seeing as you’re so elusive …
I was at a board of governors meeting last week and one of the first items on
the agenda was your spending…’
Clive’s
heart began to quiver and flutter in his chest like a caged canary.
‘Yes, well
. .
‘And
everybody agreed what a terrific job you’re doing, you seem to have got the
spending on programmes right down…’
The
canary thumped to the floor of its cage, claws up.
Clive
didn’t know what to say. The bad voice suggested he might like to speak in
Spanish for a bit.
‘Si,
bueno pero mi amigos esta argh umpmm… yes, no, yes ergh … well, we
certainly aren’t spending as much as we used to on shows… Though there may be
a slight shortfall in … erm, product … actually in actual programmes in a
few months but…’
Sir
Marcus smiled indulgently.
‘Oh
that doesn’t matter, somehow something always gets put on, doesn’t it? I mean
people have to have their telly, don’t they? Whatever awful rubbish is showing.
After all if there was no telly they’d have to look at the appalling terrifying
random meaningless nature of existence and nobody wants to do that, do they?’
Sir Marcus smiled and patted Clive on the arm.
‘This
expenditure cut though, excellent work, well done, keep it up.