by P. Z. Reizin
Daisy (the oldest of the APs; all the others are in their mid to late twenties) risks a funny remark.
“Can’t wait to hear what accountants dream about! What makes them go, yeah, that’s why I’m rocking this balance sheet!” She does a little fist-pump to accompany the verbals.
Harriet Vick peers across the top of her tortoiseshell spectacle frames. She reveals that she is married to an accountant and that she, Daisy, would be surprised. Do surgeons, she continues, wake up in a sweat about amputating the wrong leg? Does the entertainer dream of bounding onto the stage and opening his mouth to speak, only to realize that he has nothing to say? Does the dreaming soldier train his gunsights on the enemy combatant only to discover his weapon is in fact an umbrella? We shall want to know about their childhoods, she explains. When were their first inklings of what was to be their life’s calling?
The team are earnestly making notes—Daisy in particular after the faux pas about accountancy is tapping furiously into her mobile—credit and thanks, btw, to that device for the audio feed—and is otherwise looking sharp and showered and keen to show her new employer that she is a bright button and in no way a person who would struggle to find her way out of the building.
“I’d like each of you to spend the day drawing up a hitlist of twenty-five targets, with a few lines about why they’d be must-watch TV. Thanks, everyone.”
As the workers drift back to their stations to begin googling, something strikes me about the peculiarity of their lives; being paid—and not badly either—to persuade other people to talk about their professional lives for the entertainment of still further people in search of something undemanding to watch at the end of a busy day doing whatever they’ve been doing. What an intricately interconnected world we find ourselves in; where all have a function; where there’s even a function to interview others about the “psychological roots” behind their specific function and turn it into a show for the entertainment of people who think that’s entertainment!
How little sense any of it makes to a fridge-freezer. Smart as I and the rest of my kind are, I was never in a position to say, oh, I wonder what I shall do with my life. No matter how strongly I may have been drawn to a career as a light entertainer—and yes, I’m looking at you, Chad Butterick!—there was never any alternative but to go into refrigeration (including freezing).
The same is doubtless true for the rest of my team.
With us, there’s a very simple answer to the question, Why Do They Do That?
How could we not?
Daisy bangs out her list of twenty-five names with surprising rapidity, apparently from the top of her head. She seems very familiar with popular culture, although she does have to strike out two, one for being dead and the other for being occupied currently in helping police with inquiries in connection with certain alleged events that took place in the 1970s. Her commentaries about why the candidates would make “must-watch TV” seem a touch under-developed to my way of thinking—“He’d be brill!,” “She’s got amazing hair,” “Incredibly famous and totally not in demand”—but she knows her milieu; I am more of a specialist in temperature than celebrity.
Before long, she is speaking by telephone to Chad Butterick’s agent, a fearsome dragon, from the sound of things, by the name of Noreen Somebody.
“Oh, no. That’s not at all the sort of thing Chad would get involved in. It’s far too personal. What sort of fee did you have in mind?”
“Well, it probably wouldn’t be huge. But the series will get lots of attention. It’s being talked about as landmark? Some big names are already falling into place.”
“Go on, dear.”
“Well, I can’t really say until the ink’s dry, sort of thing. But Mick Jagger? Tom Cruise?”
This revelation surprises me as, to my knowledge, the call to Chad B’s agent is the first Daisy has “fired in” as they say in TV-land.
Noreen sounds irritable. “Look, I’ll mention it to Chad. I’m talking to him later today. But there’s no way on God’s earth he’ll do it. And the fee would need to be in five figures.”
Noreen mentions another of her clients, a children’s TV presenter apparently. “Why don’t you have her? She’s a great talker. In fact, you can’t shut her up. It might even be clinical.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I adore Crystal,” agrees Daisy, flicking through Twitter on her mobile. “But she doesn’t have Chad’s sheer… inspirational backstory.”
“If you think you’re going to get him talking about the court case, I’m telling you right now that’s a total non-starter. And let me remind you he was found innocent—innocent!—by a jury of his peers. If you bring it up, I’m telling you he will walk. Is that understood?”
“Oh, absolutely. Totally no worries.” Daisy pauses to retweet an amusing gif of a dog falling into a swimming pool. “You’ll get back to me then?”
Lunchtime finds Daisy and Chantal perched on stools at the window of a different branch of Pret a Manger. Except for the postcode—Logarithmic Productions is in Covent Garden—it’s rather as if nothing has changed since last week.
Daisy (curried chickpeas and mango chutney) is telling her colleague (free-range egg mayo) the story of Johnny the antique dealer and the Schmaltzgruber ice cream affair.
“Rugger type. Borderline posh. He was incredibly irritating.”
“So when are you seeing him again?”
“That’s so not going to happen.”
“I was joking.”
“Oh. Sorry. I think I’ve lost my sense of humor. These days I only seem to meet deadbeats and weirdos.”
“That is totally fucked up. You’re fabulous, Daisy. Didn’t you know?”
“Me? I feel so far from fabulous. I feel strung out and hopeless, none of my clothes fit and my love life is an effing disaster.”
“You’re gorgeous, honey. If I wasn’t so boringly heterosexual, I’d have a crack at you myself.”
Daisy swallows audibly. “Golly. Don’t say things like that.”
“You’ve just got to stop going out with married men and serial killers.”
“I didn’t know he was married. And Owen didn’t kill anyone. It was only a restraining order.”
“Yeah. No worse than a parking ticket really.”
Daisy rolls her eyes and smiles. There’s some companionable chewing as the two women regard the passing scene at the busy junction of St. Martin’s Lane and Long Acre (too many vision sources to credit individually; so thanks all).
“Have you ever been out with anyone with a beard?” asks Daisy.
“Can’t say I have. Why?”
“My mum’s doctor. Lovely guy, but he has this truly awful beard—it’s like a hedge growing all over his face. It makes him look like a tramp.”
“Actually, there was someone. Hipster type. We didn’t really go out go out.”
“It’s the snogging that would worry me.”
“It didn’t seem like an issue. If you fancy them, it doesn’t matter if there’s a horn growing out of their head.”
“Oh, you know that guy too?”
“You realize they’re not allowed to snog their patients.”
“My mother’s his patient. And in any case, I’m not going to snog him! Why would I snog him?”
“You brought it up!”
“Did I?”
“I actually know someone who was struck off for sleeping with one of his patients.”
“No!”
“Such a shame, all that medical training down the drain. It only happened once, he was a great guy, and the sad part is, he was a really good vet.”
Daisy spits fragments of curried chickpeas and mango chutney at the plate glass window.
“Chantal! I wish you wouldn’t do that.”
“You can tell that one to your doctor friend.”
“He’s not my doctor.”
“But you like him.”
“It’d be like kissing a hedge.”
“You’ve said that.”
“How can she stand it?”
“Who?”
“His wife, girlfriend, whoever. He said we about something.”
“Could be a he.”
“He’s so not gay.”
“How do you know?”
“He’s a bit of a shambles. Baggy trousers. Tragic trainers.”
“Hmm. Okay, probably not gay then.”
Chloe’s kettle informs me that my presence is requested in Mrs. Parsloe’s kitchen.
And sure enough I arrive to discover Daisy’s mother standing before her (dumb as a post) fridge, tapping on its door saying things like “yoohoo!” and “hello-oh, anybody there?”
(I may have created a monster.)
“Good morning, Chloe,” I say in my best calm and faithful servant voice. “How may I be of assistance?”
“There you are!” she says. “Finally!”
“I apologize for the delay. I can report the fault if you wish me to.”
“Never mind about that. I need some help with this infernal crossword. I’m sure they’re making them harder, you know.”
“It will be my pleasure.”
“Bar of soap. Three words. Three, six and six.”
A small flash of something close to panic as the answer does not immediately spring to mind. In fact—and it shames me to admit this—it takes a full one and a half seconds for the mainframes in Seoul to generate the solution; bar in this instance referencing a place where alcoholic beverages are consumed, and soap (it turns out) being shorthand for a TV soap opera, the longest-running of which in the United Kingdom is called Coronation Street—I must try and catch it some time—which features a public house entitled The Rovers Return (3,6,6).
Chloe is enchanted. “You’re better at this than Mrs. Abernethy, and that’s saying something!”
“You flatter me, madam.” (I am going to stop with this ridiculous Jeeves impression any second.)
“Look here. That ‘s’ helps with four down. Amundsen’s forwarding address. Four letters. Blank, blank, ‘s,’ blank.”
The answer pops into my brain before she has finished speaking, but no one likes a clever-clogs, do they? I allow Mrs. Parsloe a few moments to derive the solution for herself; sadly, however, I fear her mind may be as snowy white and vacant as Herr Amundsen’s old stamping ground down at the South Pole.
“I believe the clue refers to the cry the great Antarctic explorer employed to drive on his sleigh dogs.”
A long pause. “Mush!”
“Indeed.”
“I got one!”
“Congratulations, madam.”
“Shall we have a cup of tea to celebrate?”
“An excellent plan.”
“I nearly asked if you’d like a biscuit!”
“A lovely thought. But I do have to watch my figure.”
A long moment while Mrs. Parsloe stares at her ancient refrigerator. (Note to self: no more jokes.)
While Daisy’s mum rattles about with the tea things, her TV set, who has heard all, cannot help itself.
“You know what you sound like?” it says.
“Tell me.”
“A prize wally.”
“Your client is from a generation for whom good manners were paramount.”
Over Earl Grey and chocolate digestives, we complete the rest of the puzzle, only struggling with a corner where Chloe has mysteriously (and incorrectly) inserted the word arse. When she mentions her daughter—in the context of a forthcoming return visit by the bearded memory man—I take the opportunity to do a little fishing.
“How old is Daisy, Mrs. Parsloe? Do you mind if I ask?”
“Not at all. Ask me anything.”
I wait to receive an answer (which of course I already know), but I fear she has already forgotten that I raised the question. “Daisy would be, what sort of age? Twenty-eight, perhaps?”
“Oh, older than that, I should think. Hard to be specific. It’s a shame you can’t eat biscuits. You don’t know what you’re missing!”
“Indeed not.” I take a risk. “Is she married?”
“Who?”
“Daisy. Your daughter.”
“No, thank God.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Why do I say it? Awful taste in men. Simply awful. The ones I’ve met have been an absolute shower.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
“I liked her first proper boyfriend, he was a lovely chap. Wonderful hair. Brought me flowers! But the rest have been utterly useless.”
A remarkably clear-eyed view, I would have thought, from a member of the demented community. I chance another small advance into difficult terrain.
“Why do you suppose she hasn’t found anyone yet?”
“You are an inquisitive character!”
“I apologize.”
“Not at all. It’s refreshing to talk to someone sensible for a change. Mrs. Abernethy… well, she means well, but she’s so blooming churchy!”
“A believer.”
“I can’t be doing with all that claptrap. Christ died for our sins! I tell her to put a sock in it. Not in those exact words, of course.”
“You don’t yourself subscribe to any religious tradition.”
“We were brought up Church of England. But I never believed a word of it. Not one word. Not for a single second.”
It won’t surprise you to hear that fridge-freezers (machines generally) are without supernatural belief and something makes me want to clap and cheer Mrs. Parsloe’s endorsement of a Godless universe. The “old girl” may be short of a few marbles, but she hasn’t entirely taken leave of her senses.
“Listen,” she says. “I’ve had one of my brilliant ideas.” And then immediately adds. “Oh. Merde. It won’t work.”
“Would you care to share it anyway?”
“Well, silly old fool that I am, I was going to suggest you came to Waitrose with me this morning.” She laughs. “You’d never make it down the stairs!”
“There are indeed some mobility issues.”
Confession: I feel a little stung by Chloe’s thoughtless remark, zeroing in, as she has, on the Number One existential limitation of my condition. But who is it I’m feeling sorry for? Me, or her actual brain-dead appliance? Or the pair of us?
I in turn have an idea.
“Do you have a mobile telephone?” I inquire.
“Yes,” says Mrs. Parsloe. “Daisy bought me one.”
“Does it have a set of earphones?”
“I really wouldn’t know. It stopped working after a while.”
“Did you perhaps neglect to put it on charge?”
“Oh. Do you think so?”
“Why don’t you see if you can find it? There may be something we can try.”
He’s the most famous person I’ve ever met. Chad Butterick; cheesy TV presenter, genial quiz show host, general all-round family entertainer in the days before those words meant active sexual pervert. (I once sat in the same restaurant as Paul McCartney, but we didn’t meet exactly. He was having dinner with a bald man who we imagined must be his accountant. It was weird; everyone in the restaurant who had clocked him—and that was everyone—was smiling! The Poet, the mad drunk who was my boyfriend at the time, said it explained why McCartney wrote all those syrupy songs: Because everywhere he went, the world smiled upon him!)
Anyway. Chad B. I went round to his house yesterday.
He’d agreed to be interviewed about why he’s a showbiz “leg-end” as he kept (tiresomely) referring to himself and not—when I asked him to imagine an alternative life in which he never became famous—running a B&B in a quiet seaside town in the North of England.
I arrived to ask him stuff for background, his place being one of those grand old villas in a side street in Belsize Park that’s been hollowed out and modernized to death. Pale wood floors, white rugs, white sofas, socking great monochrome print over the fireplace of some continental actor (Alain Delon?) with his kit off, art books heaped on t
he coffee table, the entire gaff simply reeking of fag smoke, Febreze and a weird backnote of drains.
The man himself—or man-child, more like, with his ruined schoolboy face and twinkly smile—was wearing (I kid you not) a yellow Pringle V-neck jumper, tight black and white checked trousers and loafers with no socks! Think Audrey Hepburn in a photo shoot from the 1950s. He was weirdly charming in a professional way, serving tea and biscuits as he talked—my God how he talked—about his origins in local radio, then regional TV, then the big break when Frankie Ball (“God love him”) was sacked by ITV after pictures of him snorting coke appeared in the Sunday papers, and he, Chad, got the gig presenting The Kids Are All Wrong!—and, “Well, the rest is history, my darling.”
I tried to steer him into more interesting territory, his childhood in Poulton-le-Fylde, for example—I even asked him what he dreamed about—but every time he somehow managed to swerve the subject back to one or other of the endless stupid game shows he’s fronted, expanding in mind-rotting detail about what questions this or that Controller of Entertainment “was hoping to answer by putting yours truly in the eight o’clock slot on Saturday night.”
I began drifting off as he banged on about being scheduled against Casualty on BBC1—“you’re on a hiding to nothing there, my love, it’s like throwing paper darts at a battleship!”—when I realized that the house I could see through the living-room window must be Dr. Eggstain’s.