The Wrong Story

by James Ellis

  Gerard: I don’t think there’s any kind of dark art to it. If it’s meant to be a funny cartoon then it has to be funny, and if it’s meant to be a political cartoon it has to be political. A satirical cartoon has to be satirical and a children’s cartoon has to work for children.

  Germaine: I mentioned Scraps and I know you represent many other cartoonists and syndicate many other cartoon strips; but with Scraps in particular there is a realistic element to the characters despite the fact that they’re talking animals. As you say, people relate to the cartoon, and in that sense the characters can assume a certain veneer of reality. Is that suspension of disbelief essential to a good cartoon, or is it part of what Tom Hannah referred to as the physics of cartoons – we accept them as inhabiting a different reality? Hannah was very interested in this aspect of his cartoons when I interviewed him.

  Gerard: Well, I don’t go into the mathematics of the stuff. To me they’re just drawings; lines on a piece of paper. They’re a product that I have to sell, that I want to sell.

  Germaine: I sense that it’s important to you to maintain a distance, a separation between the art and the artefact.

  Gerard: Is that a question?

  Germaine (laughing): Yes. Would you say that’s the case?

  Gerard: Between the art and the artefact… you mean between the paper and the picture, or the imaginary world and the real world?

  Germaine: I’ll take either.

  Gerard: I think it’s healthy to keep a separation in both cases.

  Germaine: Okay. Let’s talk more about the originator. What, in your opinion, makes for a successful cartoonist?

  Gerard: A good agent.

  Germaine (laughing): I deserved that. And are you a good agent?

  Gerard: I think so.

  Germaine: What makes you that? What are the qualities of a good agent?

  Gerard: A sense of perspective. And in my case, the ability to sell a considerable number of cartoon strips.

  Germaine: I can see that’s a valuable ability. But I wonder if there’s more to it than that. For example, to what extent are you involved in the creative process?

  Gerard: As little as possible.

  Germaine: That’s interesting… I… just to go back, what do you mean when you say ‘a sense of perspective’? In what way is that an important trait to you, the agent?

  Gerard: It’s a solitary business being a cartoonist. Most of my clients don’t work in an office or a studio, they work at home, alone. And if you’re going to sit at home all day, spending hour after hour working inside your head, then you need to connect with the real world every now and then. That’s what I mean by perspective. Creative people need to be able to compartmentalise, otherwise… it all gets mixed up.

  Germaine: And that’s part of your job? The agent? To keep them connected? To make sure they don’t get stuck in the wrong compartment?

  Gerard: I would say so. Yes. To a degree.

  Germaine: It’s interesting that you refer to the cartoons as a product. I wonder if the term ‘product’ captures the creative aspect of the work. Is it something that is produced or something created? Do you think that distinction matters?

  Gerard: No.

  Germaine: But is it a distinction that your cartoonists would make – do they see their product as art? Even if it is a dark art as you called it?

  Gerard: I’m sure they do – and I said it’s not a dark art. I sell cartoons and cartoon strips. It doesn’t matter to me whether a cartoonist physically gives birth to a drawing or doodles it into life with his toes. What I want, and what the public want, is a consistent, regular, saleable cartoon strip delivered on time.

  Germaine: It’s interesting that you use analogies of cartoonists bringing their cartoons to life. That suggests to me that it is something more than merely a product. Do you think that these characters take on a life of their own? That they are, in a sense, larger than life? Scraps, for example, is a huge phenomenon. I read in the magazine Psychology In Action that Scraps himself has been rated a key influencer on the opinions and moral values of 12- to 15-year-olds.

  Gerard: God help us.

  Germaine (laughing): Well, I think the ethics of an eco-friendly waste-adverse entrepreneur are quite laudable. You seem resistant to my suggestion that there is more to being an agent than just moving product. I don’t understand that. I know that you are far more involved with your cartoonists than just being the middleman and that you are highly regarded and praised, and rightly so, for the effort you put into developing their talent. Let’s take Tom Hannah as an example. You spent a lot of time working with him at the beginning of his career, with no guarantee of any financial reward. We’ve had him on this show, actually.

  Gerard: I know, I’m his agent.

  Germaine (laughing): Of course, but you mentored him and stayed with him even at a time when animal cartoons weren’t selling.

  Gerard: I had faith.

  Germaine: And what was it about his cartoons that gave you that faith?

  Gerard: I thought he had a point worth making.

  Germaine (laughing): Is this a glimpse of the real Gerard Borkmann I’m seeing? Tell me it’s not just about the money.

  Gerard: I thought it would sell and I was right.

  Germaine: Do you enjoy cartoons? I mean, are you a fan?

  Gerard: I have an interest in them, yes, of course. I would have gone insane a long time ago if I didn’t.

  Germaine: I want to explore a bit more the extent to which you advise, suggest, shape your cartoonists’ cartoons. Would it be fair to say that Scraps is your biggest… product?

  Gerard: It’s the highest earning.

  Germaine: And your relationship with Hannah, the chemistry between you two, is that important in the agent-cartoonist relationship?

  Gerard: I am his friend.

  Germaine: Can we return to your point about whether or not it’s healthy to spend too much time in one’s imagination? When Tom Hannah was on this show, he mentioned his interest in what happened between the frames, the life of his characters when they weren’t captured in the panel – is it a panel or a frame, by the way, I’m always confused?

  Gerard: Whatever you want to call it. A box.

  Germaine: Hannah was interested in what happened outside of that box.

  Gerard: Really?

  Germaine: You don’t share that interest?

  Gerard: No.

  Germaine: Not even from a merchandising or spin-off perspective?

  Gerard: No.

  Germaine: Since I last spoke to him, Tom Hannah has all but disappeared. How hard does it make your role as an agent to have a recluse on your books? I’m thinking about our earlier conversation; about how you see yourself as keeping them connected to the real world.

  Gerard: You say recluse as if there’s something wrong with that. If he wants to live his life anonymously, that’s his business.

  Germaine: I don’t mean in terms of lifestyle, I mean… well, access. Public access. Isn’t part of your job to publicise and promote?

  Gerard: The cartoon – not the cartoonist. There is no automatic right-of-way to his front door.

  Germaine: I asked Tom when he was here whether he thought he had any obligations to his characters, to his creations. Do you think that he, and through him, you, have an obligation to the fans, a duty to perpetuate the cartoon strip?

  Gerard: No.

  Germaine: No?

  Gerard: No.

  Germaine: Okay. Without dwelling too much on one individual, I understand you were a huge support to Tom Hannah during his… domestic difficulties.

  Gerard: I was on hand. But I’m not comfortable with this line of questioning, Germaine. Is this interview about me or Tom Hannah?

  Germaine: That’s a fair point but I’m trying to explore the dynamics of your role as an agent. Scraps is hugely popular; I think it’s reasonable to ask how you work with Tom Hannah.

  Gerard: Fine, but I am not going to discuss his personal life,
or anybody else’s personal life for that matter.

  Germaine: I understand that and I’m not interested in the details. I’m pursuing the notion of obligations. You have said that there is no obligation to the fans but thousands of readers every week buy newspapers simply to follow the exploits of the Scraps characters – and they pay good money to do so. I think that there might be some kind of obligation to them, and I’d like to explore that further. It’s your role in the process that I’m seeking to explore – what you see as your responsibilities and how you act upon them.

  Gerard: But if you found yourself being relentlessly hounded, how would you feel about those that were hounding you? Would you think it’s because they can’t live without hearing some new pearl of wisdom drop from your lips, or would it be because they wanted the kudos they’d get if they were the first to successfully flush you out?

  Germaine: Gerard, I am not trying to seek out Tom Hannah, or flush him out, as you call it. I am asking a valid set of questions about your interactions as a business agent with your creative clients.

  Gerard: What I would do is leave a man, who clearly wants to be left alone, alone.

  Germaine: Gerard, I understand that. I’ve upset you and I didn’t mean to. Can we take the heat out of this conversation? I really do not want to talk about Tom Hannah’s private life.

  Gerard: Good.

  Germaine: I do want to briefly discuss your business, professional, interaction with him during the recent past, briefly, as a means of exploring your role, as an agent, in the creative process. If you don’t like the questions, you don’t have to answer them – but trust me, I am not trying to exploit your relationship, business or otherwise. Is that all right? Can we resume?

  Gerard: Let’s see how it goes.

  Germaine: Thank you. Okay. So… can we pick it up with Tom Hannah taking a break from drawing Scraps?

  Gerard: He’s taking a break; I think it’s fair to say that. And I am fine with that. Fifteen years is a long time with one set of characters. We have a stockpile – a set of unsubmitted cartoons – so there is no immediate syndication issue. Tom has enough unpublished strips to take a year off if he chooses to do so. We are in contact with all of our markets. It’s giving him the space he wants.

  Germaine: I believe he’s worked on another cartoon strip, a new project… can you tell me anything about that? How you feel about that?

  Gerard: How do I feel about it? I feel fine.

  Germaine: Is it another animal cartoon?

  Gerard: That’s not for me to say.

  Germaine: There’s been talk of alcohol-related issues…

  At this point Gerard Borkmann stopped the interview.

  19

  Tom was in his airy eyrie, twitching like an anxious bear and desperate for another drink. He put down the telephone and listened hard, looking first this way and then that, not even blinking. Was that cigarette smoke he could smell? Had the stairs creaked? If so, who was smoking cigarettes while they crept up towards his ladder?

  His growing unease had a taste and a texture, a weight and a presence all of its own. It was like a poison running through his veins and clogging up his heart and clouding his brain. He was used to his fear of heights, which was rooted in imaginings of self-destruction. But in the real world he could at least turn away from a tall building and not expect it to pursue him through the streets, and besides, it was always preferable to be alone when choosing not to cross a bridge, because no one could persuade him to do otherwise.

  But standing alone in the attic, listening to noises from below, brought with it a different fear. To face confrontation alone, with no one to witness how brave or otherwise he might be, was a frightening feeling in itself. There would be no one to help him, no referee to intervene, no grown-up to step in and stop the fighting, and he knew that the people-pleaser in him – the soft, weak, pliant, leave-me-alone-please Tom – would be unable to overcome that fear, in the same way that he had been unable to overcome his fear of heights. Despite his size, he was not conditioned for conflict. He had no background in aggression, no instinctive desire to hurt anyone. He did not know how to defend himself. He needed a weapon.

  He looked around the room and picked up a metal ruler. He tried to imagine grappling with a genuine assailant, being face to face with a violent ruffian who wanted to fight. How could a person who did not want to fight overcome a person who did? It was tempting to roll over and die and get it over with, and avoid all the shouting and running and bleeding.

  Tom tried a few practice slashes with the ruler; downwards, upwards, sideways. The Roman legionaries had used short, upward thrusts when they fought, stepping out from behind their shields and disembowelling their enemies with their razor-sharp gladii, and he’d heard that commandos were trained to kill in the dark with only a matchbox. How much better than that was a metal ruler? A commando would be able to wreak havoc with the contents of a stationery cupboard. A commando could probably gut and fillet an enemy with a metal ruler. While he slashed the air, part of Tom wondered whether or not he would be able to gut and fillet his enemy. He doubted it, as he couldn’t even gut and fillet a fish. He couldn’t even kill a fish. He put the ruler back on his desk.

  He listened again for sounds from below and wondered about his mental state. People didn’t normally lock themselves in their attic after sharing a takeaway with their wife and children, did they?

  ‘Am I going mad?’ he said, and he found the sound of his voice in the silence more troubling than the question.

  Was it possible that there had been something in the food, a bad mushroom or an undercooked chicken chunk, or a careless sprinkling of narcotic to spice up the Pad Thai? And if the food had been bad and his senses were not to be trusted, had that been a creak on the stairs? Or was it all nothing more than the normal moans and groans of a house settling down for the night? He wished again he’d kept a store of alcohol in his study. Alcohol was an accepted ingredient in battle preparation, and smoking too. Tom cursed his lack of foresight.

  It was only now, listening for sounds in complete silence, that he realised how bad his tinnitus had become: the hissing, humming and throbbing, the occasional pop, the unexpected ping. His head was noisier than a submarine and for a moment he couldn’t help but imagine a periscope appearing from his scalp.

  ‘Get a grip, Tom,’ he said. ‘Focus.’

  Now was not the time to think about periscopes emerging from his scalp. He got up and walked as quietly as he could to the trapdoor and lay down on the floor with his ear to the floorboards. The bolt looked puny from such a close proximity; it might deter a weak person, he thought – possibly a child with low strength, or a strong gust of wind – but surely not an adult. Holly alone could reduce that trapdoor to splinters without registering any resistance. Holly alone could reduce the entire house to splinters if she put her mind to it.

  He pushed from his mind the thought of Karen, Dan and Holly creeping silently up the ladder, their faces inches from his, separated only by a thin board and a flimsy lock, and found himself instead thinking about how nice it would be to die lying down. He imagined himself at the end of a long and fulfilled life, lying outside on a comfortable patch of grass, beneath a tree in an orchard, smoking a cigarette and looking up at the sky, with a light, warm rain drizzling on his face; his clock winding down, eternal peace building up inside.

  A loud commotion kicked off outside. It was the sound of animals fighting. He heard scrabbling claws and feet. He heard something being knocked over, something rattling down the road. He heard more running and barking; more crying and snarling; a cawing from the sky. He looked up at the skylight.

  His brain felt loosely constructed and he knew he needed to keep all the parts in place until he could tighten it up again.

  ‘Hold the line, Tom. Hold the line.’

  He lay on the floor feeling the weight of his moustache, uncertain of what to do. He couldn’t see the road because the skylights pointed upwards; he didn’t
dare go downstairs because he was frightened of his family.

  ‘How can you be frightened of your family?’

  The noise outside stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Tom held his breath and listened for a resumption of the fight; for a sniff, or a snort, or a hiss, or a click, or any sound at all. Had they gone or were they all dead?

  He imagined the scene outside. The cul-de-sac would be a smoking ruin: cars would be overturned; dustbins and their contents would be strewn across the road; bodies – mashed and mangled – would be lying in the gutters or hanging from lampposts. Dazed householders would be emerging from their houses and gathering together in fearful groups as they surveyed the carnage. Perhaps one battle-hardened survivor – weary, battered, broken but unbeaten – would stand amongst the wreckage and light a hand-rolled cigarette, blowing smoke into the night air…

  The doorbell rang.

  Tom awoke with a start. He had nodded off lying on the floor with his head by the trapdoor. He sat up and listened, waiting to hear if anyone downstairs would answer it. He wanted to hear the normal sounds of movement; to hear someone call, ‘I’ll get it’, to hear the front door open, hear voices, and, with luck, the sounds of Borkmann entering, full of bluster while he took off his overcoat. Instead all he heard was the doorbell again. A longer, more impatient ring. Surely it had to be Borkmann pressing that button. Only his gimlet-like finger could sustain the note for so long. Tom got up, retrieved his metal ruler, pulled back the bolt and lifted the trapdoor, ready to slam it shut if anybody leapt upwards.

  Nobody leapt upwards.

  He crouched down and tried to see if anybody was keeping out of sight further along the landing. He couldn’t see anybody. He climbed down the ladder and listened. The only sound he could hear was his own uneven breathing. The doorbell rang again, followed by a heavy rapping on the front glass. The noise accentuated the silence in the house, magnifying it to the extent that it sounded like a giant’s hand rapping on the roof. Tom walked down the carpeted stairs and waited at the end of the hallway. There were two silhouettes on the other side of the front door.