Jammy Dodger (24 page)

Relations between me and Rosie, which had remained frosty longer than expected, had, I felt, begun to thaw. And then, during a telephone call she casually mentioned she'd been offered a place on a training course. In London.

‘Great. Are you going to take it?'

‘It's at the LSE, I'd be a fool not to.'

‘Absolutely. When does it start?'

‘Next week.'

‘That soon? I see. How long?'

‘About a month.'

‘Really? That long?'

There was a silence.

‘Look Artie, I'm going to be pressed for time, things to sort out at home and stuff, so I probably won't see you before I go. Okay?'

I sat for a few minutes afterwards, staring at the phone, listening to desultory gusts of hail against the office windows. (I was alone. Oliver had headed off after lunch, lugging a bag of books.) I felt oddly bereft. It seemed the flare-up with Rosie may have been more serious than I realised, more than just a shot across the bows. More, in fact, of a point-blank opinion, that I was actually irredeemable. In fact, (I was blinking rapidly now), was she cutting me adrift? I overcame the urge to ring her back.

Images from the previous few months flickered past. One day in particular: a Sunday afternoon in September, following the Lagan out of the city. We had risen late and eaten well at a café (our appetites sharpened by our earlier labours) before strolling through fields and woods to join the river. The air still had the soft quality of summer, and smelled of meadowsweet and mallow and silt. We felt good in our skins: healthy animals at large in a benevolent world. As we rounded a bend, suddenly, from the iridescent shadows under the trees on the opposite bank, a kingfisher broke cover and shot low-down over the water past us and back the way we had come. We both saw the flash of blue-green – stood stock still – caught his intense singularity of purpose; a microsecond drawn out. Rosie turned to me in wonder, and in her eyes, in the reflected light, I saw all the colours of the riverbed, and something else as well: a green-blue blaze like the ghost of the bird itself, and I thought –

The phone rang and I snatched up the receiver.

‘Artie, it's Stanford. Have you got a minute? We've had an idea …'

 

Those guys up on the hill had far too much time on their hands, it seemed to me. The plan they'd hatched, Winks and The Hawk between them, was this: instead of our next scheduled issue of
Lyre
, we were to publish a booklet, a chapbook of Tyrone Dunseverick's work; a nicely-produced edition of, say, twenty or so poems, with a modest print-run of, say, a thousand. A collector's piece. The budget would allow for a little strategic advertising and, even better, (‘to help give the lad the leg up he deserves') for a public reading and a launch party.

‘We're not talking champers and caviar here, just nibbles, say, and the usual glass of wine, you know the sort of thing.'

I did.

‘Well?' Winks's voice was breathy. ‘What do you think?'

I wasn't sure it mattered
what
I thought so long as I agreed. As for the plan itself, it was something of a double-edged blade. On the one hand it did away with the need to squeeze out another problematic magazine, on the other it meant our phantom would become further entangled in the material world and, more worryingly in the short term, be subject to intense scrutiny by just the kind of people we would be wise,
say
, to avoid.

‘I think it's a brilliant idea,' I said.

Which is exactly how I put it to Oliver the next morning.

Looking on the bright side, we already had the dozen poems that had appeared in the last
Lyre
, so in theory, the back of the job was almost broken. We reckoned that to make our chapbook convincing we needed another ten solid pieces. There were a few possibilities left over from our previous frenzy that might pass muster with a bit of surgery, and I'd made a start in recent weeks on another couple that showed promise. That left just five poems to write from scratch. Put that way, it didn't seem too bad. Time, however, was tight.

We knuckled down, Oliver attempting to rehash the left-overs while I pondered the new. It has to be said, it didn't get any easier. Oliver had turned in a love lyric (of sorts) and a piece set in the mountains of Donegal (
Bluestack Lightning)
that we were counting as a West of Ireland Pastoral. I had almost completed one about a Woolworths store being blown up (
Burnt Sugar
) but had accepted my mushroom poem (
The Morel of the Story
) was unlikely to see the light of day.

 

Dunseverick's final engagement before the big launch was at an old people's home in the north of the city. It should have been child's play, but when we arrived at Fisher's flat that morning there was a problem.

‘I can't do it.'

He was sitting in his armchair clenching a can of Headbanger Extra and smoking in a particularly urgent fashion, the red-hot tip accounting for nearly half the length of his cigarette. He was unshaven and his hair was greasy.

‘Easy there, big fellah,' I soothed. ‘What is it you can't do?'

‘This – ' he gestured floppily with his fag hand. ‘… This morning. I can't do it.'

Oliver and I were seated on the sofa opposite. Oliver got to his feet. ‘Why don't I make us a nice cup of coffee?' he mumbled, and headed for the kitchen.

‘William, it's just a touch of stage-fright,' I said. ‘Happens to everyone. You'll feel better when we get you into your costume.'

‘No. No, that's not it. It's … you see – '

‘Yes?'

‘I've got another job.'

His chin fluttered. He mashed out his cigarette and tossed back the remains of his can. (Watching him drink high-voltage soup this early in the day was making me feel distinctly queasy.)

‘What?'

‘I've got another job,' he repeated, more defiant this time.

‘But William, we have an agreement. Today's been in the diary for weeks.'

‘I know, I know, but this is important.'

A sequence of clatterings concluded in the kitchen and Oliver appeared in the doorway.

‘I can't find the milk,' he said.

‘There isn't any,' Fisher conceded.

Oliver turned on his heel.

‘Ours is important too,' I said.

‘Yes, but yours is temporary. This other one could be regular.'

‘What exactly is this other one?'

Fisher explained that the previous month, in a bid ‘to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend', the government had banned groups believed to support terrorism from broadcasting directly on the airwaves.

‘And?'

‘Well, instead, the media companies are going to dub their voices using actors.'

‘
What
?'

‘Yeah. I know.'

Oliver had arrived with the black coffee.

‘Dubbing voices? What are you talking about? Porn films?'

We ignored him.

‘You mean,' I said. ‘We'll hear their words but it won't be them actually speaking?'

‘Yes. No. It'll be actors reading transcripts.'

I was conjuring images of grown men being operated like ventriloquists' dummies (not for the squeamish). Except the dummies were telling the ventriloquists what to say. Except they'd already said it. But no one was allowed to hear them … It was too confusing. And surely it made even less sense on the radio?

‘Hold on, let me get this straight. We'll still see spokesmen for whatever band of militants on the screen with their lips moving but it won't be their voice coming out?'

‘That's right.'

‘It'll be yours?'

‘It could be. If I play my cards right. That's why I can't be Dunseverick. I've got a recording spot at the BBC and if I don't show up, that's it – every out-of-work actor in town's going to be on it like a cheap suit.'

So that was his game.

‘William, is it a question of money?'

‘No, of course not! How could you say that? Give me some credit. This is an opportunity for me to expand my horizons, to get in with the right people, start building a name for myself. You know how hard it is to – '

‘We'll double your fee.'

‘You're on.'

I regretted my offer as soon as it was out of my mouth. It was an expensive way to avert this particular crisis and I should have at least tried to haggle. Ah well, I'd worry about the money later. I was still having trouble getting my head around the idea of having an actor read someone else's pre-spoken words over silent footage of that person saying those words in the first place; how this would decrease the killing and maiming, and how, exactly, anyone was being deprived of any kind of oxygen. Apart from those wasting their breath. I gave up.

While Oliver assisted Fisher with his hairy transmogrification, I thumbed through the latest issue of
Greasepaint
, which carried a double-page spread on the West End phenomenon that was
Suspicious Minds
, complete with a competition to win tickets to ‘the hottest show in town' and meet the ‘Top Dog himself'. There was a picture of the author in his cape attempting a smile. As he should, the standfirst trumpeting that the play was ‘the box office cash machine of the year'. I read (and re-read moving my lips) that it had been confirmed the play was moving to Broadway (
Broadway!
) for a six-week run, with none other than Sylvester Stallone and Meryl Streep mooted for the leading roles. It was also believed, the article said, that discussions were under way to take the show on a tour of trouble-spots in the Middle East as part of a U.S.-funded conflict resolution programme. I rubbed my eyes. And, as if all this weren't enough, a side panel disclosed that the playwright's autobiography,
Hard Man Out
, was being fast-tracked by a team of ghost-writers in time for Christmas. I swear to God, you couldn't make it up.

 

The old people's home was a converted Georgian mansion deliquescing at the end of a long driveway amid dank horse-chestnuts and immense rhododendrons. Ominously, the receptionist could find no mention of our visit in ‘the book'.

‘Are you sure it's today?'

‘Yes.'

‘That's strange, you know, ‘cos we only had the puppet man yesterday – ' She ran her finger down the page again. ‘I have to say, the puppets went down
very
well …'

She asked us to take a seat, and disappeared in search of the administrator. The place was stiflingly warm and smelled of suet. We could hear the murmur of distant voices, the rumbling of the building's ancient digestive system. On an easel nearby was propped a wooden noticeboard of the kind you might see in a school or a church, with slots for words. It said, Today is: Thursday; The weather is: Frosty; The next meal is: Lunch.

‘That's all the information you need, really,' Oliver observed. ‘If you think about it.'

An assortment of residents came and went, moving at fish-tank speed. They paid us scant attention. Then, a very old, hairless man in heavily-taped spectacles and a maroon dressing gown shuffled into view, propelling a Zimmer frame. He glanced at us and grunted, then stopped and trained his crusty eyes on Dunseverick.

‘Fitzie? Is that you Fitzie?'

The poet squinted in the direction of the old boy, who was doddering towards him at full tilt.

‘Fitzie?' The man's voice was reedy, breathless.

Dunseverick looked bewildered.

‘Fitzie, is that you?'

‘I um … What?'

The old man came to a rocking halt, peering at Dunseverick, uncertain now.

‘Fitzie?'

The receptionist returned with the administrator.

‘Sorry about that,' the older woman said, as the younger one eased our new friend away. She smiled. ‘Listen, there was a bit of confusion with the staff changeover and you just slipped through the cracks but they're ready for you now.'

‘What the hell was
that
about?' Oliver whispered to me as we followed her.

‘I have no idea,' I said. ‘He seemed interested in the suit. Maybe it was Fitzie's suit.'

The reading took place in the ‘day room' (as opposed, presumably, to the more sinister ‘night room') and was timed to coincide with tea & biscuits doled out by inanely upbeat nurses in pale blue scrubs. The inmates accepted their elevenses with good grace but seemed unnerved by Dunseverick who had recovered from his earlier encounter and was keeping himself busy with a little light sparring practice on the sidelines. (This he abandoned when a stray punch dislodged a basket of boiled sweets from the top of the television.)

After two false starts, the first interruption due to a bout of hearing aid adjustment, the second to an ‘incontinence event' (in the audience), he managed to get his repertoire under way. Despite a degree of premium lager-fuelled gusto, his performance was greeted with impassive silence throughout. He finished, and with some apprehension, opened it up to the floor.

We listened, in the subsequent void, to little more than the tinkle of cup on saucer, the hiss of surgical stockings and the faint static of various bronchial conditions. This, for what seemed a very long time. And then, from the back of the room … not a question about the metaphysical provenance of the poet's inspiration, no, not even a query regarding the whereabouts of the crowd-pleasing puppets; instead, a hesitant, piping voice: ‘Fitzie? Is that you Fitzie?'

 

No one was saying much on the return journey. I tried to raise morale.

‘Well, that wasn't
too
bad, all things considered. I think it cheered them up.'

In my peripheral vision I detected Oliver giving me a hard stare from the back of the taxi. The poet coughed.

‘Miserable old gits,' he muttered.

I let it go and gazed out the window instead. We were in a part of town I didn't know: leisurely avenues swinging down the lower slopes of the mountain to connect with the dense mesh of the city centre; on either side, Victorian redbricks with white-frosted roofs against a cold, cobalt sky. The driver twiddled again with the heating control but it was refusing to give out more than a tepid breeze. He swore and tugged his scarf up over his nose.