Games Makers

by Andrew Calcutt

  she’s on her way to Asda right now. I’d put my arms around her and hug her, only it

  would scare her even more. But I don’t want her to live another moment in fear. She’d be better off dead than a leading a fearful life. Take her to the death camp. There’s nothing else to be done with her.

  No, course not. I never said that. Don’t know where it came from.

  I get off the bus at Beckton. I’m walking up the steps onto the DLR platform. Glance

  towards Arshad behind the counter at the coffee stall. Know him from my course. We were in a band together in my first year. No time to stop: train indicator says 1min; but as I catch his eye his head tips back towards the pretty girl he’s serving and he smiles, leers even, but not so she can see. Beep, my Oyster card. Beep, beep, beep, the doors closing right behind me. Just in time.

  ‘This train is bound for Tower Gateway’. Not me, though. I’ll be getting off at Poplar and taking the tradesmen’s entrance into Canary Wharf. Past the dingy bit that’s still boarded up – what have they been doing in there all this time?

  In a few minutes I’ll be threading my way between gleaming towers that are just about as old as I am.

  I’m 23 this year. One of Thatcher’s children (born just in time to qualify). And today I’ll be revisiting scenes from my childhood. For instance, me and my sister Shani were the first kids

  ever to try the children’s menu at Carluccio’s in Canary Wharf. How about that? (Between you and me, it’s McDonald’s for the middle classes.) We grew up in this part of the world. Coming to see Dad, going to a restaurant together – it was a treat for us. The Wharf, you see, is where my dad does the business I’d rather not talk about. Also where Tony Skance has his office, courtesy of the London Committee for the Implementation of the Olympic Games.

  A couple more stations to go before get off.

  Gallion’s Reach (no, the spelling is correct), then Cyprus, where the Docklands

  university campus looks out at the surrounding district like the bridge of a ship going nowhere.

  Another station and we’re in sight of ExCel. Is it a verb? No, an enormous conference and exhibition centre, so big it dominates the landscape from Beckon Gas Works to Canary Wharf.

  Just before that, though, there’s my favourite.

  Next to the flat plane of water in Royal Albert Dock (blue water today; when there are clouds above it can be milky white), the office block made only of plate glass. Of course it isn’t really, but it’s made to look as if it is. When I started my course, it was totally empty – no occupants.

  See right through it. Sheer emptiness, boxed up.

  Emptiness squared. Now occupied by Newhamlet Council, they’ve even called it

  ‘Newhamlet Dockside’. There’s lots of signage which spoils the overall effect. Or is it even better for the contrast, those hoardings and transparent meeting rooms, and little black figures set against all that white space?

  Don’t know what they are doing in there. Is it the council’s IT people, or something to do with the Olympics? That’s what I’ve heard. Or perhaps a bit of each: computer geeks working for the council on the Olympics Legacy? You never know, maybe everything adds up after all.

  Jackpot for me would be all that glass, breaking. I love the sound of breaking glass.

  Cliché alert, I know and I’m sorry, but it happens to be true. Even better without sound, though.

  Shards like arrows, piercing walls and clothes and flesh alike, puncturing veins and arteries so that blood pumps out like rich, red oil; or sprays everywhere like racing drivers’ champagne. But no soundtrack: movie without music, ballet without a band, just the pitter-patter of dancers’ feet, not necessarily attached to the torso they started out with.

  Then the orchestra of alarms and phones and muffled voices and the most blood-curdling screams you will ever hear.

  Didn’t choose to think those thoughts, so don’t look at me like that. Anyhow you can’t see what I’m thinking. You can’t, can you? Off the train fast, just in case.

  Fleeting feeling of vertigo as I glance up towards the Peeping Tower – that’s what we

  used to call it because of the warning light on top that goes peep, peep, peep. Then down the steps, avoid the clotted spit (‘Hunslet oysters’, my Dad says when he goes all Yorkshire, talking about Bradford and how his father met Ted Moult – farmer, broadcaster, professional Plain Man

  – on the train North out of King’s Cross). Walking quickly away from places the plebs live in (the problem with Poplar is it’s popular), towards the land of marble floors and Security, where light can be warm and pin-sharp at the same time.

  (4) Dinky and Tony: only connect

  Fuck you, missus. No, of course I don’t say it aloud. But I would if I could. Fuck her. She would be standing in front of her desk, as she is now. I would come up close, looking her over, up and down, then swing her round. Squeezing her right buttock in one hand, I would use my left

  hand to push her, face down, over the desk, then pull her skirt up and pants down so that her sweet fanny is smiling up at me. Meanwhile my cock is smiling back. Wye-aye! I might just dip my finger in her, and rest it there, savouring the moment before shoving in. And of course she wants me to do her like this.

  ‘I’ll show you in to Tony’s office,’ she purrs.

  No she doesn’t, but Dinky has been watching Mad Men and he wants to think that she

  does.

  ‘Mr Skance is expecting you.’

  Can I go through with this? How can I not? Dinky Dutta, prize winning graduate from a

  low-score university, dark brown eyes, caramel skin, whippet thin. Here to ask Mr Fairly Big for a nearly-job in his something office for the not quite Olympics, and why the fuck should I be asking to join this shit, except if not this shit what else?

  Big space, minimal decoration. I notice two gold discs on the wall above Tony’s desk.

  Take a step towards the meeting area (is that what it said on the blueprint?): three leather seats that look like they’re from an E-type Jag; coffee table in between.

  But Tony waves me back towards his desk. I’m to occupy the single chair in front of it.

  What do young people really want?, Tony asks himself as Dinky is delivered unto him.

  What’s this one looking for, really? He is sharp and neat and really quite elegant; and he says he wants to work for me.

  Like fuck.

  ‘Let’s skip the pleasantries, shall we?’ Tony begins. ‘Tell me about yourself, Mr Dutta.

  What is your ambition?’

  Dinky has his answer down pat: ‘I hope to be a revolutionary writer but I fear it’s too early to tell.’

  ‘Noted as a small but beautifully formed response,’

  replies Tony. ‘Very much in character.’

  Touché! Got you in one, didn’t I? Dinky’s downcast eyes concede the point.

  ‘But of course,’ Tony continues, ‘it only prompts another question. How does the

  Cultural Olympiad come into this? It’s not going to make you a revolutionary, is it?’

  Dinky hesitates, then decides – too strong a word, perhaps – that he has nothing to lose. If Skance doesn’t get what he’s about to say to him, he won’t get the job. But anyway it isn’t a proper job and Dinky won’t starve even if he doesn’t get it.

  There’s Dad; there’s always Dad. So here goes:

  ‘If it works, if it’s done right’...Head cocked at an angle, Dinky is looking at Tony in a pantomime of consideration, evaluation, appraisal. It could almost be Tony looking at Pete; it could very nearly be Pete looking at Tony. Either way, Tony is hooked.

  ‘...if it’s done right, Games Time – that’s what you call it, isn’t it? Games Time will be the moment when the people of London get back together. London will start to feel young again.

  But from where I am, looks like no one knows how to get the party started. There’s your kind of people on the inside and then all the other people outs
ide... and there’s not much connection between them. No lively, dynamic connection, anyway.

  ‘Next problem’, continues Dinky. ‘How do you drag them out of their coma? Both sides

  are like brain dead. Do you shock ’em out of it or can you kiss ’em into life again? I bet you don’t know. As soon as I walked in here I could tell you really don’t know.’

  Pause, nicely timed.

  ‘But maybe I can help,’ he concludes.

  Dinky sits back: there it is, daddio, that’s how it is. At least, that’s how he’s played it, like he’s one of those street kids who really knows the score, Man.

  Tony is taken aback; tries not to gasp in amazement.

  If you’re seen to be shocked, Tony, it’ll mean total victory for the young. You’ll be Bill Grundy the rest of your life. But Tony’s not gasping because of the generation gap between Dinky and himself; he’s amazed how close they are.

  The kid knows, this kid really knows. There is a sensation, familiar but rarely felt in recent years, half-way down Tony’s spine, half-way between shivering and tingling: it works its way up, spreads across his shoulder blades and further up past his neck, pricking him (tiny, little needles) on the back of his head. Might even burst into tears, Tony is so relieved to feel excited about someone again.

  ‘And just how do you know all this?’ he asks, stonewalling.

  No response. Does Dinky have anything else to say?

  Maybe. Maybe not, since he’s just made a do-ordie, all-or-nothing statement. Either way, he says nothing. Nothing is said. Doesn’t do anything, either, except for the tiniest, repetitive twitch of his right leg, Tony notices. But what he’s really noticed is Dinky’s nervous appetite, the hunger for something to do; something real. Dinky’s so eaten up by it, he may have handed himself to Tony on a plate.

  Mr Skance leans back to consider the menu.

  Let,s pick our way through him. Let,s see how much of him can be consumed. The boy

  (he,s not much more than that) is looking away, but Tony stares into his eyes and dares Dinky not to look back at him. He speaks only when Dinky has met his gaze.

  'Are you prepared to do something about it, then?' Tony demands.

  ‘Of course, that’s what I’m here for.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mean the usual stuff, Dinky. I’m not talking about a bit of Facebook and

  some Tweeting that’ll make it look like we’re in with the social media generation. Of course, I’m sure you could do that for us. If that’s all you can do, I’m happy to arrange for you to do it. But I’m really thinking about something exceptional, that only an exceptional kind of person could do. You are that kind of person, aren’t you?’

  ‘Depends.’

  ‘You’re right. Absolutely right, old darling.

  Absolutely fucking right, my sweet.’

  Ttcch! Even a camp version of intimacy

  - hamming up ‘the seducer’ in order to seduce - is coming on too strong. Tony has to

  remind himself to slow down: sober syllables; precise enunciation. Still sounds too much like John Gielgud and not enough Alec Guinness.

  ‘How right you are, Mr Dutta. There is a lot depending on it. More or less as you

  describe, London could come together again in the next few weeks, the same way it did over Princess Di, or during the Blitz, or on 7/7.’

  Where’s he going with this? Dinky is starting to look askance at Tony.

  Don’t pause there, but don’t be in too much of a hurry, either, Tony says to himself.

  ‘But if that doesn’t happen,’ he continues, ‘if London doesn’t take the opportunity to be what only London can be, it could lose its own identity. It might turn into one of those has-been

  cities that used to be important.

  ‘Venice, Vienna, Genoa...

  No, mate, don’t even think of saying it.

  Not ‘Jamaica’, either.

  ‘...cities that gripped the world until they fell into the grip of their own, personal Alzheimer’s.

  And that’s what could happen to London if we don’t fire it up this time.’

  ‘You mean you want London to burn, Mr Skance?’

  Dinky’s turn to play up the formalities. He cocks his head another 20 degrees to the right, looks up at Tony with his cat’s eyes and a simpering mouth.’

  Dinky, are you asking for a smack, or what?

  ‘It’s the Olympic Games we’re talking about,’ Dinky insists. ‘Not Towering Inferno.’

  Siamese cat meets lumbering bulldog; Tony has never felt so British, or so cumbersome.

  Knows it, but he just gets more pompous.

  ‘Partly a metaphor, my dear Mr Dutta. And partly not. Have you read James Baldwin, by

  the way?’ Not that Tony waits for the answer. ‘The point is, even the best buildings and the best run facilities in the world, won’t make the Games a success if London doesn’t have any atmosphere.

  ‘Do you know what it’s like here in Docklands on Saturdays? When the big money’s

  gone away for the weekend and the hotels take in poor provincials on short breaks, who eat too much of the breakfast buffet because they’ve already paid for it. Never mind the architecture or the décor, every Saturday afternoon, it all looks tawdry, desultory, sad.

  Saturday morning’s OK because there’s a hangover from last night. Sunday evening, it

  starts gearing up for tomorrow. But round here, Saturday night and Sunday morning are a foretaste of London losing it. The whole place dies a little. It’s London’s petit mort.

  ‘OK, you’re too young to know what that feels like. I bet you can do it and get hard again straightaway... But I digress. Just think about the day in the last decade when London came most alive.

  Not even the day we were awarded the Games, was it?

  ‘Of course you remember the camera panning round to the multicultural schoolkids

  jumping for joy.

  Whoosh! They came up off their chairs like chubby little rockets. Happiness missiles plus puppy fat.

  “Momentous day”, said Seb. Lord Coe, to you. But we both know what topped it, don’t

  we? The biggest hit wasn’t the sixth of July 2005, it was the day after that when the bombers struck. Death and destruction on the streets of London, and the Cockneys came together like their grandparents in 1940.

  ‘It was a golden moment. The oldies would have been proud.’

  Tony is at full stride now. There ain’t no stopping him:

  ‘The question is: how can we make our people proud of the London Olympics? As you so

  astutely put it:

  “do we shock ‘em or kiss ’em?” The answer is that we shock them into kissing each

  other, we frighten them into feeling like a community. And, yes, I know it’s as daft as a Jimmy Savile tracksuit. But nothing else can fix it.’

  Can’t decide whether to get up and leave.

  Did I hear him right? Have I got it right, what he’s getting at? Dinky has that feeling of being there and observing the whole scene from the outside, of being on stage and in the audience at the same time. He doesn’t move. Thinks he should, knows he should, thinks about saying

  ‘I must be going now’. But nobody moves.

  The seconds are clocking up. There’s a phone ringing, unanswered, in the outer office.

  That PA person must have gone to the loo, or she’s having a cigarette, or having a shag in the loo and then a fag, afterwards. Suddenly – it seemed sudden but it probably wasn’t, Tony has walked round from behind his desk, now he’s squatting down directly in front of Dinky. Hand on his knee, even; and he’s close enough to kiss him.

  Of course he’s not going to push his tongue in Dinky’s mouth. Then again, it couldn’t be any less absurd than the speech he’s just made. A stolen kiss between interviewer and

  interviewee - what’s that compared to talking mass murder? But that can’t be what he really meant, can it?

  No let up from Tony: ‘You know the sto
ry of Orson Welles, don’t you, Dinky? You

  know what made his name? The spoof radio broadcast of the Martians attacking America.

  Imagine something as dramatic as that, but before anyone gets to know it’s fake, the story goes out that the bombs have been defused, in the nick of time. And our hearts go out to the guy who breaks the story – you. “The terrorists may have managed to escape but London can breathe a collective sigh of relief that their murderous scheme has been thwarted”, reports citizen journalist Dinky Dutta. You’ll be a household...

  ‘Now you want me to be a Martian’, Dinky interjects.

  Tony is unruffled, though a lock of hair falls down over his forehead, so that his face forms a perfect oval. The effect is less Michael Heseltine and more, well, Christ-like.

  So which of them will be lamb to the slaughter? Tony or Dinky?

  ‘Nobody will know that the terrorist plot against the Games was just a work of