Games Makers

by Andrew Calcutt

  A straight, true flame with all distortion distilled out of it. Now, miraculously, Tony’s dram-to-share is tickling his neck and walking down his spine, taking all the time in the world.

  Yes, there is time, there will be time, Pete thinks. After all we have been through, us two, there is still time to get it right.

  Pete feels his lower back...lowering itself. For a second he acts taller, like he was seven years old, playing at Randy Yates in Rawhide. Then he remembers how many years have passed and pulls himself back in. At least for the now.

  (8) Oversharing

  They emerge from the Jubilee Line at Green Park.

  Must have been a short, sharp shower while they were underground. On one side of the

  street, moistened paving stones gleam like aluminium in the final few shafts of low, slanting sunlight. Pete giggles at the sight of four hefty youths in hiking gear (shorts included) and skull caps. Is this a tribute band for Pink and Perky, he muses, or a Jewish contingent of the Hitler Youth?

  Tony makes another announcement: ‘Got to have solids. Absolutely must have something

  to eat.’

  He leads Pete into the foyer of his club. Already the noise of the street has been shut out.

  They walk downstairs to the Art Deco restaurant (small steps, designed to be taken fast; for a moment, every man going downstairs to eat gets to feel like Fred Astaire). Just inside the double doors (ebony inlaid with parallel lines of gold leaf), there is a lectern with the bookings book placed solemnly upon it. Our pilgrims respect the temple, and here they wait.

  In a few seconds the acolyte appears. She is a young woman from Eastern Europe – girl, really, looks less than 20 – and their arrival causes her to flutter.

  This evening it seems there are many bookings, and even the one or two empty tables you can see, are due to be filled at any moment.

  ‘Of this I can assure you, Mr Skance.’

  But of course Tony knows the head waiter, who is just moving away from a table within

  hailing distance of the lectern.

  ‘Bona noce, Marcelli,’ he calls out, raising his voice above the diners’ intimate murmur, but not so loud as to break in upon them.

  And Marcelli comes over, with a warm smile on his small, quick face. He and Tony seem

  genuinely pleased to see each other. And then Tony breaks out into his sheepish grin, asking if maybe, perhaps, at a pinch... And Marcelli nods: of course, of course; and both of them are smiling at each other until Tony takes a step back.

  ‘But I wouldn’t want to spoil your timetable, Anna.’

  Already he has it from Marcelli that she is indeed Anna.

  ‘It is no problem,’ she reassures him, at the same time trying to reassure herself that she has not been made to look foolish.

  Anna squares her shoulders and puts away Pete’s satchel – ‘you will not be wanting, no?’

  – while Marcelli shows them to their table. They sit. Tony tucks his napkin under his chin like Hercule Poirot.

  Pete sits and looks intently at the table, a man staring out to sea. That whisky is hitting on the wine he drank on campus. Getting to the right spot, too!

  This is the coolest, creamiest table linen I have ever seen, Pete thinks. If it were the sea, I might drown in it. If only it were a bed, I could crawl into it and never come out.

  Tony has waived away the wine list and called for his regular bottle of vin ordinaire

  (Henri Le Boeuf). It’s there in a trice. No need for the tasting ritual. ‘Just pour’, he insists.

  Aggressively but not unpleasantly sharp, the white wine cuts through all the wasted hours and lost days. It brings us, Tony and me, to this moment. After so much time, to this moment and no other, this moment now.

  Pete, dear Pete, is thinking that he really shouldn’t let his thoughts run free like this.

  You’d be embarrassed, Pete, if you ever find yourself thinking these thoughts again. So think again. But no, he’s not going to. Tonight’s the night for not thinking right.

  There are so many things I want to say to you, Tony, and maybe this is the time when I can say them, now that we are at this table, now that my voice is richer, creamier.

  But at least for the time being, Pete keeps his lyrical thoughts to himself. Dear Reader, perhaps you’re thinking, thank goodness for small mercies.

  Meanwhile Marcelli has brushed the crumbs from the table. Tony is signing the bill,

  £76.34 on his club account. And something for your weekend, Marcelli, he smirks and waves a note. Marcelli inclines his head, bows – not too much – in return.

  Come on, Pete, afore ye go you’d better pee in the Art Deco pissoir. Looks exactly like the one exhibited by Duchamp. Thank goodness they haven’t ripped it out and replaced it.

  (9) Pete remembers how to growl

  ‘Charge!’ Now Tony is running down the steps into a bar that nestles under a theatre in Charing Cross Road.

  They are away from the genteel restaurant, out on the town again. For their next drink, these clowns might even choose whisky and Coke because the Mods did, but will probably pass on Mateus Rose (even if The Faces really liked it).

  Having me a real good time, thinks Pete.

  What with the swirl of it, the joy of letting go which also feels like (but all the time you know it’s not) being more... no, not in control, more in charge.

  ‘Charge!’ Tony is running into a curtain of red velvet. At the last moment, he stops and pulls it aside. Behind the curtain, the bar is eerily quiet.

  Too late to keep the peace, Tony only gets louder.

  Strides across to the copper-topped bar. ‘Two pints of your finest ale, landlord’, he

  bellows in best mock-thesp. By now he’s brandishing a ten pound note. ‘You may keep the change,’ he solemnly declares.

  The bar steward is wearing a short white jacket and strawberry blond hair straight out of a bottle (this is a theatre bar, sweetie). He pours two pints of Fuller’s London Pride and puts them on the bar, goes to the till with Tony’s tenner and comes back with two pound coins on a small silver plate. He says nothing.

  Be like that, then. And I’ll have my change, if you don’t mind.

  Tony scoops up the quids and they head off to a table. When Tony sits down, he leans

  absurdly far back. Hands behind his head, legs akimbo. The deckchair pose.

  Chalk to cheese, Pete sits bolt upright, and when he starts to talk, his voice sounds

  guttural, almost menacing. As he means it to be.

  ‘Embedded’, says Pete. ‘You used the word,

  “embedded”. You spoke of “embedded” and my good self in the same breath. Do you

  think my life is some kind of joke, or what?’

  Is this a comedy, or what?

  There had been a short taxi ride, from Tony’s club (near Green Park) to the Charing

  Cross Road. Paid for by Pete (Tony already coughed for the dinner, remember?). In the back of the cab, there was talk of Pete’s job at the university. Or rather, Tony was talking about it. Didn’t stop till they arrived at their destination, right here.

  ‘You have the satisfaction’, Tony pontificated, ‘of seeing something grow that will

  outlive even you.

  Because it is embedded in the surrounding area – the poorest area of London that is

  served like no other by your university and its sense of obligation to local people.’

  Only Tony. Only Tony after a few drinks could forget it’s me he’s trying to load this stuff onto.

  ‘The word “embedded”,’ Pete reminds him. ‘You used it spontaneously, of your own free

  will, in a conversation with me, about me. Don’t ever use that fucking management jargon shit with me, Skance.’

  Pete is growling. So far, so good. But to play the role to maximum advantage, he should remain visibly, physically intense: leaning in towards Tony, eyes fixed on him, fixing him.

  Instead Pete finds himself leaning b
ack, the better to explain himself. Ever the teacher, even in anger – yes, Dear Reader, there’s more here than mere performance, Pete feels the need to expand, to provide an account.

  ‘That management jargon shit – my job is crawling with it. Every sodding little thing I try to do, it infects. It chokes the courses I write, squeezes every ounce of integrity out of them. And I don’t write them, I don’t teach them so they can be re-written according to the sacred text of holy management shite.

  ‘And now I come out on a night with you’ (he’s no Geordie, our Pete, so where do these cadences come from?), and I find the same stuff spewing out of your droopy, fat arse-mouth.’

  Pete puts the beer glass to his lips. He keeps the glass to his lips. The beer moves out of the glass.

  By the slight movements in his neck you can see it is swilling down Pete’s throat. He

  keeps the glass to his lips until there is no more beer in it.

  He’s downed the pint; the pint is downed. He takes the empty glass from his lips. He

  makes out he’s going to bang it down on the table; then, when it’s less than half a centimetre away, he stops; and puts it down very slowly, delicately. You would be inclined to think that it

  was not a beer glass at all, but a rare piece of Suzie Cooper china.

  Meanwhile Pete is staring way past Tony, as if he’s too angry to look at him. Until – click

  – he looks him in the eye and says:

  ‘I’ll go to the bar, then’.

  What a scene! What a player!

  But Pete doesn’t actually move. Now he remembers he hasn’t got to the end! His

  speechifying resumes where he left off:

  ‘In case it isn’t clear, Skance, I don’t want to hear it from you ever again. And if I hear it again, from you, it’ll be the last thing I hear from you because I’ll be out of here, you’ll be out of my life. Out.’

  Staccato. Machine-Gun. Wilko Johnson on guitar (if you don’t know, Google): ‘Do. You.

  Understand?’

  Hardly a question. Pete nearly said ‘capice’ but that would have been too much. He’d be obliged to laugh even before Tony did.

  Dear Pete, how did you get to be such a ham? But acting up was always their way of

  playing down. Insurance against not being up to the task; defence against the fear of being Malvolio instead of Mercutio. In their book, the one they wrote for each other, to be angry you had to perform it properly, with just the right quantity of knowingness and exactly the right amount of really meaning it. Capice?

  For you must understand, Dear Reader, that underneath the goofing, spoofing, playing

  around, there was real malevolence in Pete’s words. Not just fear of Malvolience. That

  ‘management jargon shit’

  and all that goes with it, really is the bane of his life; and he was close to walking out, never to be seen (by Tony) again.

  He might just possibly have leant right over and smacked Tony in the face. Bang. Blood.

  Broken nose.

  (10) A long time back

  For there once was a group of townies in a crowded Art School pub. Full of themselves.

  It was Pete who glassed one of them. Somewhere in nowhere town, the scrawny little bastard – I bet he’s fat by now –

  will still have the scar.

  The Heaters were on tour, gigging that night at the art college of a provincial city.

  Finished the sound check and into the pub across the road. Heaving.

  In the back room there were four blokes wearing designer shirts, perms and ’taches (that long ago), holding cigs between thumb and forefinger in a show of prole culture. They teased the art school boys (too many earrings and nose rings, just asking to be ripped out in a fight), and leered at the melancholy girls, pressing against them in the crush.

  One of the townies grabbed Tony’s porkpie hat, and they all tried it on, posing with it and snickering and pretending to gob in it before tossing it back.

  Four against two; no scope for fisticuffs. Our protagonists carried on drinking for a few minutes, then Pete told Tony to stand by the door. He picked up an empty bottle of light ale (long time ago, right?), and held it by the neck, half-hidden up his sleeve.

  It felt heavy; his whole arm felt heavy. He felt too heavy to move. For a moment (how

  long?), Pete could see himself not moving.

  Not now, not ever. If not now, then never.

  Never doing it, never moving at all.

  Pete raised his arm and brought it down very fast so that the bottle smashed against the side of the table. There was a crashing sound, but no time to hear it. The back of his hand was sprayed with the tiniest glass fragments, so delicate, but there was no time to feel it.

  Now the neck of the bottle was a thick, stubby thing, a cock in his hand with a swollen, jagged knob at the end of it. He used it to fuck a young man’s face. Which one, any one of the four townies.

  ‘Prick,’ he said, as he pushed it in and turned it, splitting the man’s cheek – he felt flesh giving way, then pulled it out, and ran out of the pub still holding the broken bottle.

  Pete and Tony weren’t there to see the blood running slowly at first, then turning to a torrent. Or the back room up-ending into a wholesale brawl (even the boys-with-earrings had a go). By the time the police arrived at the pub, Pete and Tony were safely stowed away in their dressing room, waiting to go on stage, been here since the sound check, OK? Except Pete was still breathing fast and loud.

  ‘Christ, Pete’, said Tony. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to do that.’

  ‘The point’, replied Pete, finally regaining control.

  Just in time: they were due on stage five minutes later.

  (11) All together on stage

  Pete stock still, playing two saxophones at once.

  Tony hanging on the microphone stand, dancing with it, dancing with himself, beaming,

  leering up at the crowd and schooling them like Fagin, or Richard III, or the snake in Jungle Book.

  Come to me, little darlings. Come to me, believe in me. Show me who you are and there

  will be plenty to share. I will give you shares in togetherness. I will help you share each other.

  Suddenly (oh, but we all knew it was coming), there is no sound, no movement. In a flash the stage goes dark. The whole band could have fallen into a crevasse, never to be seen again.

  Yet there is a single spotlight, picking out Tony, his arms outstretched and head bowed like Christ on the Cross; until even this light is extinguished.

  You don’t need me, you don’t need to see me, for tonight you have each other.

  But the congregation is restless. They whistle and cry out. They love him and they insist that they love him. They want him, they want to be with him so they can love each other.

  From the down beat when the last light goes off, thirty-one more beats of nothing, eight bars of silence. Then the band blasts back in, Tony’s voice soaring even above screechy Pete and his saxophones, and the stage lights have come crashing back on, so bright and loud it hurts to look and listen.

  The band had rehearsed this over and over again, then over and over again with the

  lighting crew. No safety net; no drummer hitting sticks for the last four beats before re-entry. It’s stand or fall, do it or not at all.

  Most nights it works wonderfully. On stage and off, the whole hall comes together round one man rising to new heights. In the dark, Tony has climbed onto a trapeze and now he is strung

  up high enough for everyone to adore him. They would kiss him if they could get close enough, and wipe his face tenderly.

  They all want to be his Veronica.

  (12) Back to the future

  ‘Finally’. There’s a word; an unexpectedly attractive word. I hope you can understand

  why such an ordinary adverb sounds so alluring to our friend Dr Pete Fercoughsey (former rock musician and radical journalist, now a senior lecturer in Journalism Studies an
d Creative Writing)? In Pete’s job, he never gets to say never. Neither does anyone else, really; perhaps not even the university’s vice-chancellor. Nothing is ever finalised. Nothing is absolutely the last in the series; and nothing lasts, either. Soon ‘last’ might not even be a word.

  Which only makes ‘finally’ sound doubly attractive.

  The unexpectedly difficult task of making clear shapes, identifying a beginning, middle and end, these are troubling Tony, too; although his local difficulties are of greater significance, since he has the privilege (right now it seems more like a burden) of being the director of the Cultural Olympiad.

  And now that Pete, for all his aggressive posturing, has started confessing his troubles, Tony is sure to follow.

  ‘I can’t get my project to work properly, either,’