The Thief of Time (44 page)

‘You've been fired?' I asked in surprise. ‘When did this happen?'

‘Yesterday,' he replied quietly, slightly ashamed I thought. ‘Stephanie phoned to see how I was, or so she said at the start anyway, and then she said that she thought I should take a break from the show for a while. Said that my extra-curricular activities, as she put it, reflected badly on them and they couldn't afford to have me there any more. So, like, thanks for nine years' worth of your life but
sayonara
baby.' He ticked off his hand against his forehead, like a military salute.

I shook my head. I wasn't surprised but it annoyed me that they couldn't wait until a more appropriate moment to tell him this. After all, he would be on sick leave for the next month or so anyway, during which time he would
hopefully
be getting his life back in order. There was no need for such immediacy.

‘I'm sorry,' I said. ‘I'm sorry that's happened but -'

‘But you knew it would,' he interrupted. ‘Yeah, you don't have to tell me you told me so. You've been saying it for years.'

‘That wasn't what I was going to say,' I said. ‘I was going to say that maybe the time has come when you
should
leave the show. I mean you've been in it since you were, what, twelve?'

‘Fourteen.'

‘You don't want to spend the rest of your life playing one character, do you?'

‘It's a job, Uncle Matt,' he said, sitting up now and staring across at me with a look of enormous self-pity on his face. ‘The fact that I've been in it so long is what's going to hurt me. You think that any casting director from any TV show or movie is going to look at me and see Tommy DuMarque? They don't! They see Sam Cutler. Stupid Sam. A heart-of-gold boy with about two brain cells to rub together. I'm typecast now. I mean whatever happened to Mike Lincoln, eh? Or Cathy Eliot? Or Pete Martin Sinclair? Where do you see any of them now?'

‘Who?' I asked, not initially seeing his point, only grasping it a moment too late.

‘Exactly!' he roared. ‘They were just as big as I was once. And where are they now? Nothings! No ones! Probably working in a restaurant somewhere, asking whether you want fries with that, sir. That's my future. No one will employ me in TV. I'm unemployable!' He bowed his head in his hands and for a moment I was afraid that he was crying, but he wasn't. He just wanted darkness. He wanted to see nothing or no one. He wanted to remove himself from the lot. ‘I wish I'd died,' he said simply when he came back up for air. ‘I wish that OD had killed me.'

‘Now that's enough,' I said furiously, coming over and sitting beside him on the couch. I took his face in my hands but his eyes looked away; he looked so tired, so utterly exhausted by life, that my heart went out to him. And in his face now, this dying boy's face, I saw the faces of his ancestors, each of them in turn dead or on their way to dying by his age. Defeated, depressed, Tommy was ready to join their number. ‘You're not going to die,' I said firmly.

‘What have I got left?' he asked.

‘A baby, for one,' I said and he shrugged. ‘Tell me this,' I added after a moment. ‘You've told me over and over again how much you hate the attention of being famous, how much you wouldn't miss it. You've said that you can't stand people looking at you all the time -'

‘Well, not
all
the time,' he muttered, a gentle spark of humour still present in his misery.

‘How much would you really miss it?' I asked him. ‘How important is fame to you? Tell me, Tommy. How important is fame? How much does it mean? How much does it matter having dozens of celebrity friends hovering around you all the time?'

He focused for a moment and thought about it, as if he realised that his response could be important here. ‘Not much,' he said, and it was almost like a revelation to himself. ‘I've been famous. I
am
famous. It doesn't mean that much. I just want to be successful. I don't want to be a loser all my life. I've got ... I don't know ...
ambition.
I need to feel that I've succeeded in life. That I'm
somebody.
I can't remain static. I have to ...
achieved
he roared. ‘My life has to end up having some meaning.'

‘All right,' I shouted triumphantly. ‘Now do you mean that? Do you really mean that? You're looking for success?'

‘Yes.'

‘Good. Then this, all of this, means nothing. Forget about the show. There's so much more that you can do now. Look at you, you're in your early twenties, for Christ's sake. You've got your whole life ahead of you. You've achieved so much in the last decade, ten times more than most people your age have. Just imagine what you can do in the future! You pull yourself together or you're going to die. You're going to end up killing yourself just like you almost did.'

‘Big fucking deal,' he said, sinking again.

‘All right Tommy,' I said quietly. ‘I want you to sit up and listen to me. I'm going to tell you about your family. Your father, and his, and his. Something I've never done before, believe me. I'm going to show you where they went wrong and, by God, if you can't change your life because of it then there's no point in either of us continuing on here. There're nine generations of DuMarques whose destiny you know nothing about but who you're following into the grave so predictably. It ends now, Tommy. It ends here and now. Today.'

He stared at me as if I was mad. ‘What are you talking about?' he asked.

‘I'm talking about history,' I said.

‘History.'

‘Yes! I'm talking about you repeating the same old pattern of all your ancestors because you're too stupid to open your eyes and allow yourself to live! Every one of you didn't give a damn about life and so sacrificed it. I've been given all your years. And I've had enough, all right?' I was shouting and saying things I hadn't imagined I would before.

‘What are you talking about?' he asked. ‘How can you tell me any of that? I mean I know you must have known my father and, I guess, his, but how could you -'

‘Tommy, just sit back and stay quiet and let me speak. Don't say anything until I finish, can you do that for me?'

He shrugged. ‘OK,' he said in a defeated tone, leaning forward and picking up his cup of tea.

‘All right then,' I said, moving back to the armchair and taking a deep breath. I would save Tommy's life, I decided. I
demanded
of myself that I save him. ‘All right,' I repeated, taking a deep breath and gearing myself up to begin my story. ‘Here's the thing, Tommy,' I began. ‘This is the story. So just listen to it. There's one thing about me that you don't realise and it's probably not going to be easy to grasp but I'm going to try anyway. And it's this.

‘I don't die. I just get older and older and older.'

Over the next few days I was surprised by the public reaction to Tommy's dismissal. Although the initial response to his overdose had been one of tabloid horror at the excesses of a spoilt youth who had thrown away so much – a predictable and entirely hypocritical reaction on their part, considering that they were the very ones to build him up in the first place – public opinion slowly began to alter that viewpoint into one of sympathy and understanding.

The fact was that Tommy DuMarque had become part of the nation's life over the previous nine years. They had watched him grow up from a violent, tortured adolescent, to a responsible, albeit sexually promiscuous, man – or rather they had watched Sam Cutler grow up, but the two names were interchangeable to most, as were their lives. They had followed his adventures in the newspapers, bought his records, pinned his posters to their bedroom walls, bought the celebrity magazines where they invented a house for him to pretend was his own. They had bought a magazine one week because the cover showed Sam Cutler and Tina embracing; they had bought it the following week because it showed Tommy DuMarque and his latest girlfriend. The lines between the two were thin; the distinctions blurred. They had bought into this life, whoever's it was, Tommy's or Sam's, and they weren't going to give it up without a fight.

News stations began to carry reports on the number of letters which the producers were receiving, condemning them for cutting him loose at a time when he most needed help. Having nurtured him for so long and made him a star, these letters pointed out, it was despicable that they should fire him for embracing the very lifestyle which their programming demanded of him.

An appeal was made through one newspaper that all of those who were opposed to Tommy DuMarque's dismissal should tune off from the Tuesday evening episode of his television show, and indeed the viewing figures on that night sank from their regular position of around fifteen million, to only eight. I had no idea what was going on at the show's production meetings, but I suspected it wasn't pretty.

I phoned Tommy to see whether he was encouraged by the news, but he wasn't at home. ‘He had to go to a ground floor flat and out the side window,' explained Andrea. ‘We've got what looks like half the world's media camped outside here. They're all waiting for some response from him.'

‘Tell him not to make any,' I told her firmly. ‘The last thing he needs right now is to get into a war of words with his producers. Tell him to stay quiet on the matter. If he really wants back in, that's his best shot.'

‘Don't worry, that's what he's doing.'

‘And how is he anyway?'

‘He's not too bad actually,' she said optimistically. ‘Much better than last week. He's gone back to the hospital for a check-up. Says he's going to join a group for reformed drug users, so that can't be bad.'

‘Really?' I said, delighted to hear it. ‘Well, that's good news.'

‘
If
he actually sees it through. You know what he's like.' She paused. ‘Do you think he's going to get his job back?'

I hesitated before answering. ‘I don't know,' I said. ‘I wouldn't hold out much hope. The public are fickle. This is big news right now but it won't be in a couple of weeks' time. All they've got to do is invent some enormous storyline to get everyone hooked again. Why, is he holding out for a phone call from them?'

‘I think he's thinking about it, I'm not sure. He hasn't said much. He's been in a funny mood, to tell you the truth, ever since the other day, the day you were here. His whole attitude has changed since then.'

‘Really,' I said, aware that she was in fact asking a question but unwilling to supply her with an answer. Tommy's reaction to what I had told him had been one of disbelief at first, naturally enough. He was the first person I had ever told about my life and he had laughed, thinking that I was playing some joke on him.

We talked back and forth for hours and I told him many stories of his own forefathers as well as tales of incidents in which I myself had been involved. I told him of my youth and of an early, doomed love affair which had ended in tragedy. I even acknowledged how it is possible to fall in love with someone who is undeserving of that affection. I told him everything. I spoke of the eighteenth century, the nineteenth and the twentieth. The settings shifted from England to Europe to America and back again. I told him of people he had heard of from history and those whose names had vanished after their deaths, only to live on in the memories of their counterparts, who in turn had died, leaving only one, leaving only me, the eldest of them all.

In the end, while still not fully convinced, I left him in a state of bewilderment. ‘Uncle Matt,' he asked as I made my way through the door. ‘All of these people, my father, my grandfather, my greatgrandfather and so on. Is it supposed to be some sort of metaphor for me? Are you making this stuff up to make a point?'

I laughed. ‘No,' I said simply. ‘Not at all. These things happened. They took place, that's all I'm saying. Make of them what you will. And now it's your turn, that's all. I'm telling you this and I promise you I never told any of your ancestors. Maybe I should have. Maybe the knowledge could have saved them. But, either way, you know now. What you do with the information is your own business. Just one thing, that's all -'

‘Yes?'

‘You keep it between you and me. The last thing I want is your level of fame.'

He laughed. ‘You and me both,' he said.

‘He's probably still feeling the effects of the last few weeks,' I told Andrea. ‘Give him time. He'll come round. How are you feeling anyway? You can't have that long left.'

‘A couple of weeks,' she said heartily. ‘I just hope he or she isn't born on Christmas Day, that's all. Before or after, I don't mind. But not Christmas Day.'

‘As long as he's healthy,' I said, as people do.

‘Or she.'

‘Right,' I said, as if there was any chance of that happening.

Caroline was becoming the bane of my life. Although she worked hard, she was too eager to please. She had an opinion on everything and in spite of being new to the industry, she didn't mind sharing every single one of them at the board meetings. Sometimes there was a naive charm to what she said – to be fair, she had an ability to cut through industry jargon and tended to take me to task for the wide chasm between what the public wanted to see and my perception of what they should actually be watching (which was nothing) – but more often than not her lack of experience shone through and she succeeded only in infuriating those colleagues who saw her as arrogant and incompetent. I had made a mistake in hiring her in the first place, at least at such a high level in the station, but in fairness I had been left with little alternative at the time. After all, she controlled her father's shares and P.W. remained an important member of the board as well as one of the owners of the station. Whether I liked it or not, she was there to stay. Unless I could persuade her father to return, of course, although that still wouldn't necessarily see her off.