Much more of this and Tony will surely be sucked into a TV screen, destined to live in the alternative world of Sunday night costume drama.
‘More than this, I cannot say. And you, dearest Peter, know better than to ask. But as it
happens, I’ll tell you something of my predicament.’
Change of accent; change of writer. We’re in 21st century South London, aren’t we? So
Tony turns more Billingham than Dickensian.
‘There’s someone I buy cocaine from. Not often and not a lot.’
No, Tony, don’t stop to do Paul Daniels.
‘He’s in trouble,’ Tony continues, ‘and, so I hear, his usual way of getting out of trouble is to drag other people into it. Anything he can find to say about high profile clients, that might prompt the police to conduct additional enquiries. My name has never come up so far, so I guess I’m due a turn in the barrel. One of the unwelcome side-effects of public life nowadays.
‘What I mean, Pete, is that there might be some chapter and verse on some of the things I used to get up to in the old days. And it might be used against me. But whatever happens, whatever the blue boys are saying about me, just stay away from them, OK?’
So far, Pete’s unimpressed. The police would hardly be concerned about Tony’s
misdemeanours from, what, 20 years ago? Pop singer takes drugs; dog bites man.
Pete’s thinking that there’s got to be more to this than Tony’s letting on. Likely the bit about the drug dealer was just a preamble for telling me to stay away from the police, which means the kind of trouble he’s in is something completely different.
Bloody hell, if he wants to buy my silence, he could pay me some respect.
Start by telling it like it is.
‘Come off it, Tone. There’s something else bothering you.’ If I’m going to help out, Pete says to himself, at least I need to know what I’m helping out with. ‘Let’s have it’.
‘I’ve already said, Pete. You should know, you do know, when’s not the right time to ask.
All I need is to know that you won’t tell anyone about private matters, business that only concerns you and me –
and especially not the police, no matter what some people are saying about me.’
Pete hesitates. He who hesitates is lost.
Procrastination is the thief of friendship. It would be the end of our time, thinks Pete, if I don’t agree to his request. So I will, but not unreservedly.
‘It’s not easy to make a firm promise, Tony, when you’re being so flaky about...whatever it is you want me to commit to. But you know me. In principle, as a matter of principle, I don’t do police. I prefer not to have anything to do with them. Always felt like that, don’t ever expect to feel any different. That good enough for you?’
‘It’s good enough, Pete, yeah. And I know you’ve always stuck to your principles. But I want you to know how important it is that you stick to them through thick and thin.’
Robert De Niro is perhaps the most famous example of an actor reckoned to be far less
animated in person than the characters he impersonates. Who only comes fully alive when performing; living someone else’s life.
Well, Tony must be affected by the same syndrome. And now, for once in his life, he’s
stopped performing: no roles, no puns, no cultural reference points. His voice, his expression, are unusually straightforward (for him). On the level. Pared down. Hell, he’s not even looking askance.
Is this the same guy? You may well ask.
Unfortunately, it is; unfortunately – because without the performance element, Tony
Skance is lacklustre, nondescript, boring.
Reading the story so far, you could have criticised Tony for being a trickster; you may
dislike him because the games he plays are nearly always self-aggrandising. You might have wanted him to be on the level, but you surely didn’t think he’d be on this level; tedious, monotonous, boring.
Which is why what he says next is all the more shocking. It’s a mundane man doing a
straightforward thing: issuing a mean and nasty threat. But on this occasion Tony’s threatening behaviour can’t be ascribed to an exaggerated sense of drama, a predisposition towards the theatrical. This is plain Tony, cinema verite Tony – brutish and banal.
‘It’s so important to me to be able to think of you as a man of principle, Pete, that I’m going to remind you of something I don’t especially enjoy thinking about, and I reckon Carol would like to hear about it even less. But should you turn out not to be a man of principle, it might well come to her attention.
‘You remember a particularly pretty girl from our home town – what was her name?
Robbie, Roberta, Robin – whatever. The night before we did Top of the Pops for the first time, there was a party and we all lined up to give her one. She wore a blindfold – do you remember now? Said she’d know each one of us by our knobs.
‘Years afterwards – you’d already left the band so I don’t think you know about this –
she started saying it wasn’t an orgy, it wasn’t even a gang bang, it was gang rape. Which it was not. Bad sex is a much better description, and that’s the term my lawyer persuaded her to agree to. But apparently she’s been dining out again on the gang rape story. It’s doing the rounds once more. If she takes it further
– well, the courts can spot an old boiler who’s been taking all comers for 25 years, but you still wouldn’t want this story to circulate anywhere near Carol, would you, Pete?’
Thankfully, this mean and malicious man is about to snap back into the Tony we know
and love. Nasty, yes, but at least he’s normally stylish with it.
‘Your Carol’, says Tony, relishing what he’s going to say next. ‘Still a bit of a feminist, isn’t she?
If she knew about this, she’d have your balls for earrings.’
As Tony intended, Pete is aghast. It’s not that he’s having visions of Carol getting the knife out, but he can picture the shameful way he behaved – they all did – in that drunken scenario, all those years ago. She was the best looking girl in town, they were the rising stars, and they all had her as if by right. No, it wasn’t rape because she didn’t object.
But would it have made any difference if she had?
That’s what they were capable of, then, in the name of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll.
And now we are older and more cynical, Pete thinks, what else could we bring ourselves to do, given half a chance?
Tony’s managed to plague Pete with self-doubt. He’s pretty much succeeded in making
him hate himself.
But Pete’s holding on for his life, in defence of the other life he’s made in the past 20
years.
You’ve done all right, he tells himself.
You got out and you made a go of it. No need to go back into that Tony world. Certainly not for his benefit.
Pete knows he’s spread dangerously thin. Partly, he’s back there and then, partying
before TOTP, and sick at the sight of himself doing it – doing it to that girl. But even in the here
and now, there are two of him: one with Carol, in their home, living a life of long term plans, with the prospect of growing old in reasonable comfort and seeing their children have children of their own. The other is in Tony’s territory, where the dialogue is sharper and it can get very unpleasant but you can be sure there’s more to life than growing old gracefully.
Just get him out of here, Pete. Whatever happens between you and him, this is not the
place for it to happen.
Carol and I, thinks Pete, will go through the motions of seeing Tony out of the house.
Thankfully, he’s already walking down the stairs, me behind him. She will have heard us making our way down. As we get to the bottom, Carol duly emerges from the kitchen, wiping her hands.
Tony’s saying no to a drink. ‘Sorry, can’t stop’. She mak
es as if she’s making conversation but really it’s all part of scooting him out, shooing him away: ‘It’s a shame we can’t ask you to stay for supper, Tony. If I’d known...’
Or something like it. It’s working anyhow. Tony’s stepping out of the house, the door is shut behind him, and Pete glances back at it to make sure there are no demons coming back in.
Keep out, he thinks. Let’s keep the whole world out, at least for tonight.
(2) Set ups and press-ups
Desired login name: osamaobama. Check availability.
Hey! Actually is available. Didn’t think it would be. Nah, can’t use that, they’ll know it’s a joke straightaway. But the joke’s on Tony Skance, so who cares?
Password: London2012explosion. Very secure, it says. And so it should be.
Don’t want London 2012 to be anything less, do we, Dinky? And now for your security
question, will you write your own? I see: how long is Tony’s prick?
But even his has to be longer than that.
And Tony appears again, I notice, in the ‘recovery email’ address box: tony.
[email protected]. You know that means he’ll be implicated, don,t you? Coz
they’ll trace every connection to the new email address the moment they get the pictures. Of course, you do. Silly of me not to catch on.
Makes you wonder, though, whether Tony’s putting you in the frame, same as you’re
doing it to him. What is it between you two, anyway?
Dinky alone. It’s getting dark but there are no lights on in the house, only the blue-white glow of his laptop. He’s following Tony’s instructions and setting up a new email account, though the details, from Tony’s point of view, leave a lot to be desired.
Anyhow, Dinky’s just pressed the button: I accept.
Create my account. And now there’s a Welcome message coming in from the Email
Team, ‘Congratulations on creating your new account, osamaobama’.
With so much assonance in that wonderful name, you’re bound to do something foolish.
Dinky hasn’t eaten anything all day. There’s stuff in the freezer, not very appetising but edible enough, if only he could make the effort. He won’t, though. Eating seems sort of chavvy, right now.
‘Gross’, his kid sister would say.
Anyhow, he’s feeling light-headed for lack of food, suffering occasional dizzy spells, and quite enjoying it.
‘Wow! That was a good one’. He catches himself saying this aloud when the top of the
kitchen table jiggled in front of his eyes; and it still hasn’t come right back into position.
Not-eating is the new amyl nitrate.
Should I stay or should I go? Do I dare, or will I turn back and descend the stair?
Dinky wanders around the empty house, looking through windows into the softening dark
(and catching your own reflection, brown-eyed, handsome boy), sitting on various chairs, a sofa, the bottom step of the staircase, the kitchen table, a cushion on the bedroom floor, before getting up for a drink of water, to pee, pick up a magazine, find a book, or put it back where he found it.
He can’t settle because he still hasn’t decided. The question is...
Och, you know the question.
Do some press-ups, then. At least it’ll put a stop to this fidgeting. Shoes off, and find a space on the bare wooden floor. Breathe out, push your hands down and outwards in that tiny, private ritual of yours –
a familiar gesture to expel the noise in your head, the interference running wild through your body.
Now stretch yourself out, at arm’s length above the floor, and look, think, only of that pattern, there, where the grain of the wood curls into a swirl. Cut out everything else, starting from...
Now.
Slowly down; count (out loud); slowly up. Repeat.
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat... So far your body doesn’t seem to weigh anything at all. You’re cruising.
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat...
Dinky is on 50 repetitions, and his arm muscles are starting to feel the strain. Don’t tense up! Admit it (yes, it’s going to hurt), accept it, and keep going. Up to 80: his arms are beginning to wobble on the ascent; 84, 85 – now also on the descent. At 90 his mouth is splayed out in a twisted grin, and the sinews in his neck are sticking out like lengths of string. Head and shoulders would make a page in Gray’s Anatomy (the medical textbook, not the TV
series).
But now he’s taken his big breath – holding it in, and he’s determined to get to 100. One at a time, Dinky: 96, 9-7, 98, 9-9, 100.
Struggling up to 100, he’s down again on the instant; face on the floor, left cheek resting on the cool wood.
Refreshing. This surface feels refreshing because I did it. 100, just as I said I would. Can't decide what to do with my life. Can’t decide whether to destroy my life. But this much I can do, to put myself at rest.
Tomorrow, perhaps, the test.
(3) Tweet, Tweet, Yeah!
In the morning, Dinky logs on and gets straight to it.
I am a writer, right, going to write my way out, write a way through, write myself into the centre of things.
He's logged onto his Twitter account. Fires the first one off straightaway, without a
second's thought: Brutal,bloody and degrading.The spectacle I shall make of myself will not be pretty,but it will be true to the way we live now.
Tweet.
It's out there immediately, the first indication that Dinky is up to something. But what is he up to? And who's going to know? Does he even have any followers? Until now only a handful of people have ever read his tweets (though that may be about to change).
He's typing again. Not so fast this time.
Shall we go then,you and I,to launch ourselves into eternity?
Tweet.
Come on, Dinky, you mean you haven’t decided yet?
It’s make your mind up time, Boyo, or people are going to get bored.
Swang off with me,and we will explode together,me and the other me that’s looking at
me all the time.
Tweet.
‘Swang’? Oh, really? I suppose that’s something you do with your ‘wang’, is it? It’s not for you to make up words, y’know. Dr Johnson, you ain’t.
Like two pirates dropped from the gallows at the same time.
Tweet.
Now that’s more like it. Anything to do with Pirates of the Caribbean, got to be good.
You know they were filming in Greenwich a few months ago, and Johnny Depp turned up at a primary school that was doing a project on pirates. Top man.
Tappety-tap-tap. No, it’s not Blind Pew from Treasure Island, but the sound of Dinky’s fingers on the keyboard, rattling away again: tappety-tuppety-tap. Chirpy, chirpy, tweet, tweet.
I would be the ambassador, mediator, host.
Tweet.
I’m sure you would, mate. Don’t we all want to be Jesus Christ?
In the destruction I shall cause,you and you and you,will be connected through me. That is the best I Tweet.
That’s really the best you can do? Certainly not the best at counting, are you? Even when it tells you how many you’ve got left, you can't manage to stay inside 140 characters. Duuh!
Not that I want nirvana for myself. Just a clear night's sleep every night and wake up to a good cup of coffee.
Tweet.
And you expect us to believe that? You expect us to be interested in you when that’s all you want out of life? And death. Y’ know, life and death really matter to some people.
COME AGAIN, LAD. I’M SURE YOU CAN DO BETTER THAN
THAT.
I never asked to be Judas. Neither did he. I would prefer to stay a crazy dumbsaint,but I cannot return the cold stare of the stars.
Tweet.
Too bloody cryptic, mate. Too clever by half. Just give it to ’em straight. Here, I'll do one for you: Boom! Boom! Lights are going out in London town.
Dinky Dutta will be doing it for real.
Tweet.
Better, much better. Now get on with the next one.
Those women with bodies like grapes, their bodies will be crushed in the explosion. I will cause them to die so that London may live.
Tweet.
Way to go, Dinky. Tell it like it is. Tell them how it’s going to be. Anyone that’s
listening, that is.
(4) Locating the materials
Games Makers Page 10