Holloway Falls

by Neil Cross

  He realized what had changed.

  There was a new bed.

  The cat sashayed in there after him. It leaped upon the new bed and curled on the pillow. It stared at him with eyes like headlamps.

  He looked at himself in the full-length mirror.

  He wanted to come home.

  But there could be no coming home. The people who lived in this house had marked his death, and had been sad. But that sadness had been accommodated within their lives. The farther he receded in time—as his children became adults, as his wife bought a new bed, as the cat grew older and more cantankerous, as the apple tree in the garden added another inch, as new school years were started and completed, and office politics ran their circular and repeating course, as Christmas came, and Easter, and summer holidays and bonfire night, and exams, and university, and promotion, as friends divorced and remarried, as new lovers enticed—the fainter grew the mark he had left here, the impermanent stamp of who he had been. He was fading like the Polaroid of a good moment; like something broken and left outside, blanched now with sun and swollen with rain.

  The cat followed him to the kitchen door and into the garden. It watched him replace the key in the bag under the potted plant under the kitchen window. He was tempted to say goodbye to it, to stoop and caress it under the wishbone of its jaw, to feel the muscular squirm of its skull in his palm.

  But the cat wanted no part of him. When it was convinced he was not coming back, it returned to the house via the catflap he had fitted when it was a kitten, while the children played badminton in the garden behind him and Rachel spoke to her mother on the telephone about who would be coming to who next Christmas, fully five months early.

  Shepherd was back in London in time for EastEnders. Eloise had cooked him a fish pie.

  The police had already spoken to Lenny. He felt grieved and betrayed. For two or three days he didn’t speak to Shepherd, and for a week after that he was curt and rather clipped. But soon enough he got over it.

  14

  Somehow, a researcher for a satellite television station tracked Shepherd down. He never learned exactly how. He supposed a police officer somewhere had benefited financially from the transaction.

  All he knew was this: one day he picked up the phone to a delighted young woman called Chloe, who, when he dolefully expressed his unwillingness to appear on camera, responded: ‘Oh, absolutely,’ and proceeded to bully him into doing exactly that.

  His identity would not be revealed. He would appear on screen in silhouette and his voice would be electronically altered. He would be paid £500. Cash.

  He asked what the programme was about.

  She told him: ‘The supernatural.’

  A new Rover 200 arrived for him at 11 a.m. on the day of recording. Through the curtains, Eloise and Lenny watched him leave. They looked like proud parents. Eloise gave him an abashed, supportive little thumbs up.

  He didn’t say much to the driver, who listened to Capital FM all the way. The television studio was located in a low-rise industrial complex on the extreme north edge of London. It was as if commuter-belt suburbia segued into an internment camp, upon which shone a triumphant imperialist sun.

  He stepped from the car and thanked the driver. Clearly, the driver didn’t give a shit either way. Shepherd brushed himself down and walked into Reception. He smiled at the receptionist. After a very few minutes, during which he sipped delicately at a cup of tea, he was introduced to Chloe. She was surely no older than twenty-one or twenty-two, perhaps five foot two. She wore a spiky, pixie haircut, heavy-rimmed spectacles and very baggy clothes in shiny modern fabrics. Shepherd felt old. He cast an obelisk shadow over her.

  She led him like a trained elephant through the natty reception area into the working corridors of the building. Young people in various states of high anxiety bustled this way and that. Chloe showed him the Green Room. He had always associated the name with the glamour of television. Sean Connery sat in the Green Room and told golfing stories with Jimmy Tarbuck before appearing on Parkinson.

  He was disappointed. The Green Room was about the size of a double bedroom. There were threadbare carpet tiles on the floor. Pressed against the walls were the kind of chairs that might be found in a dentist’s waiting room. In one corner, on a wheeled stand, stood a large, rather ancient television. Its screen showed an empty row of superior chairs in a darkened, empty studio. Some black loops of cable were in shot. Along the lower edge of the screen he saw the brief, lateral movement of a camera dolly.

  On a coffee table next to the television was a tinfoil tray of sandwiches and some flasks of the kind that might be found at a sales conference in a Midlands hotel.

  ‘Tea’s on the right,’ she said. ‘Coffee on the left. It’s no smoking but you can ignore that if you must. We all do.’

  He looked at her meaningfully.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Chloe. ‘We don’t bite!’

  He said: ‘What do I have to do, exactly?’

  She put her hands on her hips and made a face that told him he was very naughty.

  She said: ‘When the times comes—’

  ‘It’s not live or anything?’

  ‘Oh no. It goes out on Thursday night. In the eleven o’clock slot. When the time comes, we’ll lead you to the studio and sit you down. You’ll be miked up and Geoff will ask you some questions—’

  ‘There’s no audience?’

  ‘No. Don’t worry. The discussion will be edited and shown to a studio audience tomorrow. The panel on tomorrow’s programme will debate what you’ve said.’

  ‘Who else is coming?’

  ‘They’ll be here in a minute,’ she said.

  Next door, in an even smaller room, he was invited to perch on a revolving stool before a big mirror. A pleasant Glaswegian woman with a face the colour of a satsuma smeared make-up on that bit of his face still visible above the beard. She dabbed it with a triangle of sponge on his bristly scalp. Then she offered to neaten his beard and moustache. He thanked her. Her scissors clicked hypnotically.

  In a matter of minutes he looked like a scholarly lumberjack.

  When she was finished, he experienced a brief moment of panic.

  He went next door to the Green Room. He was still wearing the hairdressing gown. Chloe was deep in conversation with a young man in a Gap T-shirt.

  He interrupted them. He said: ‘Why do I need make-up if I’m going to appear in silhouette?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. She made a concerned moue. ‘Did nobody speak to you? Did nobody call? It’s OK,’ she assured him, ‘we changed the format. Don’t worry. You would’ve been in silhouette if we were going live with an audience. As it is, it’ll be edited so that only your eyes or your mouth or whatever are on screen at one time.’

  His legs were numb.

  ‘You absolutely promise?’

  ‘Oh, absolutely.’

  ‘Do I sign something to that effect?’

  ‘If you like,’ she said. ‘Absolutely. I can sort that out with Colin in ten minutes. Don’t move!’

  He never saw her again.

  He poured himself a cup of tea. He spilled UHT milk on his shoes. The little drops looked like sperm.

  One by one, three more guests arrived. Each was accompanied by a Chloe clone. One of them was a slim young Brazilian man with long legs, who suggested they call him Tony.

  The first guest was a stout, somewhat tweedy woman. She introduced herself with the kind of abrupt civility that suggests a Tory bigot. He made her a cup of tea. She thanked him distractedly, as if a hot beverage was her ancestral due.

  She and Shepherd watched the silent screen, upon which technicians dragged cables and huddled in urgent-looking conversations.

  Next to arrive was a popular scientist called Julian. Shepherd recognized him from the television. Lenny had angrily dismissed him as a prof
essional sceptic. Julian’s clothes were slightly donnish, but his accent had a touch of Estuary round the edges and his hair was luxuriant and dandified.

  He said, ‘Hello again!’ to the woman. Hearty and cordial adversaries, they shook hands.

  They heard the fourth guest arriving at Reception. He announced himself with a series of raucous cackles. The loud presence was followed into the room by the man who projected it. He was squat and powerful. He moved like a bouncer. He wore a grey suit and purple silk tie. He had a shaved, bowling-ball head and a grey beard that bristled like a boar.

  He marched up to Julian and pumped his hand.

  ‘Nice to see you again, mate,’ he said. Then he moved to the old woman, whose powdered cheek he kissed with exaggerated delicacy, like a thuggish fop in a powdered wig.

  ‘And how are you, doll?’

  He squared up to Shepherd. He rubbed his hands like a barrow boy.

  ‘I don’t think we’ve met,’ he said. ‘Have we?’

  Shepherd wiped a palm on his thigh and extended his hand.

  ‘Jack,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I hope you’re all right, Jack,’ said Rex Dryden. ‘I’m Rex.’

  They shook hands. Then Dryden said: ‘Let me get at those sandwiches.’

  He peeled back the Clingfilm like the skin from a rabbit.

  Shepherd felt vaguely affronted and proprietorial, as if sole rights to the sandwiches were his.

  Dryden scanned them with an index finger.

  ‘The trick,’ he said, ‘is to find something without avo-fucking-cado in it. That’s why they call them green rooms.’

  He picked up a sandwich and shoved it into his maw. He champed on it in a way that aroused in Shepherd a protective feeling towards his distant children. He watched a sliver of chicken riding those cheerful lips like a dingy in rough weather.

  Before Shepherd could subtly push himself past Dryden and get to the sandwiches, they were joined by the presenter. His name was Geoff. Shepherd had never heard of him. Geoff’s hair was bouffant in a way that marked him out as second-rate. His eyes had the ingratiating slipperiness of one who glances over shoulders at parties.

  When Geoff had introduced himself and appealed to them to be at their ease, Dryden, Julian and Patricia visited Make-up. Each returned the colour of a different citrus fruit.

  Shepherd was prepared for the studio to be surprisingly small. Famously, everything and everyone involved with television was surprisingly small.

  Nevertheless, its smallness surprised him.

  One by one, except Dryden, they were guided into swivelling, leatherette chairs. Impassive and wordless young people urged them to pass microphone cables through their clothing.

  Shepherd was seated in a chair slightly to the left of the main group.

  Geoff walked off to consult with some clipboard-holding young men and women in the corner. He sipped professionally from a waxed cardboard cup of coffee.

  There were five cameras: four pointed at the leatherette chairs, another at a wooden lectern that had been erected in one corner. Each camera was operated by a man in his early forties. Not one of them gave any sign that he gave the least proportion of a flying fuck about what was going on. Their assurance, like that of mechanics in a backstreet garage, was subtly emasculating.

  The guests took their seats and each was asked to speak into their microphone. Each pushed their chin into their throat and said: Hello. One-two. One-two, before a bored floor manager told them to try again, pretending the microphones weren’t there. They were told to speak to Tony on camera 2.

  While attendants fiddled with his microphone Geoff the presenter ran through his introduction. In repose, his face looked older.

  Dryden took his place behind the wooden rostrum, and then, with less perturbation than Shepherd thought possible, the taping began.

  The studio went dark. Camera dollies moved like daleks across the polished floor. Stooping young runners moved trailing cables out of the way of their casters. A single light fell on Geoff the presenter. He fixed the camera with his serious gaze, behind which there twinkled what he thought of as his trademark ironic sauciness.

  ‘Hello and welcome to the programme,’ he said. ‘Well: after all the doomsaying and the soothsaying, life as we know it did not come to an end. Planes didn’t fall from the sky. The microwave ovens didn’t stand up in open revolt. The River of Fire turned out to be—well, a river of water. It’s the year 2000. Summer’s here. Suddenly, we’ve got new concerns: our decaying transport infrastructure, Big Brother. But cast your minds back, just a few short months, to the turn of the twenty-first century. What happened to all the prophets of doom? All the millennium buggers? All the scientists and the New Age gurus who stood in line to say our time was up? Do they still insist there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy? Or have they packed up and gone home? Has the New Age gone to ground?

  ‘Our guest speaker requires little introduction. Nowadays, Rex Dryden describes himself as a transcendental comedian. But it wasn’t so very long ago that he was responsible for duping several hundred perfectly ordinary people into believing some outrageous claims he made on behalf of his so-called religion, the Temple of Light. To kick us off this week, we asked Rex Dryden why there are so many people who will believe in anything—except, that is, a future.’

  The light dimmed over Geoff’s head. A second picked out Dryden. He clutched the sides of the lectern and leaned forward slightly.

  ‘It’s a well-known fact,’ he began, ‘that, when members of the public recognize celebrities in the street, they’ve usually got one thing to say. John Cleese was driven mad by people reminding him not to mention the war. Now, I’m not what you’d call a celebrity, but occasionally, people do recognize me. And they always ask the same question. “Rex,” they say. “Whatever happened to the end of the world?”’

  Dryden bared his teeth in a smile.

  ‘I always give them the same answer,’ he said. ‘The end of the world hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s just round the corner. It always has been.

  ‘A few months back, several hundred people drank poison, just because I asked them to. Or at least they thought they did. Actually, they were drinking Lucozade.

  ‘Who would do that? Who would kill themselves, just because somebody asked them to? Were these people mad? Most people would probably say yes. But I’m not sure I agree.

  ‘A few years back, I saw the movie Braveheart. At the film’s climax, Mel Gibson is being tortured to death at the order of the English monarchy. They’re cutting off his arms and legs and slicing him open and rooting around in his guts with hot tongs. And while this is happening, he’s shouting one word at the sky. He’s shouting the word Freedom.

  ‘Now, if I was in Mel’s position, I’d be making a lot of noise as well. But it wouldn’t be freedom I’d shout about.

  ‘The first time I saw Braveheart, I thought it was a comedy. I thought it was Monty Python. I thought Mel was going to jump up off the torture table and hop around on one leg, telling everyone it didn’t hurt, that it was only a flesh wound, that the English were all cowards, that he would take them all on.

  ‘I remember thinking: I wouldn’t let a kid watch this. Not in a million years. That’s not heroism, that’s idiocy. It’s one thing truly to die in the name of freedom. It’s another thing to be killed for your country. Too often, we assume the two are equivalent. But they’re not. Quite the contrary. After all, what is a country? It’s an abstract. It’s an idea sometimes (but not always) expressed by geography. Countries expand, countries contract. A country is legislation, specifically designed to restrict your freedom, intellectual and physical. A country exists to make you a productive unit. A consumer. You’re fuel to your country’s economy. And all over the world, and all through history, people have been happy to kill, and to die for exactly that idea. For this
Monty Python idea of what freedom is.

  ‘A government provides one freedom. It frees us from the tyranny of true choice. Modern democracy dazzles us with ephemera and calls it liberty. Meanwhile, the important decisions are made on our behalf. Partly, that’s because we long to be told what to do.

  ‘Stanley Milgram proved that to us. His experiment proved that perfectly decent, upstanding American men in short sleeves and flat-top haircuts would electrocute an innocent man to death for no other reason than that a stranger in a lab coat told them to. And this, remember, was not in pursuit of national and racial ideology. The subjects were told they were taking part in an experiment about learning. For that, they were literally willing to kill: just as long as the man in the white coat agreed to accept legal responsibility for any consequences arising from their actions.

  ‘We shouldn’t kid ourselves. We love to obey orders, to disavow ourselves of responsibility. We abhor what happened in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s. We comfort ourselves that we would have sheltered Jewish families in our garden sheds, in our attics, our cellars. Our cupboards would be bursting with grateful little Jewish children. It’s a comforting idea. But it’s an illusion. We’re lying to ourselves. We would’ve done exactly what was done. Because we’d’ve been too scared to do otherwise.

  ‘We could save lives every day—just as we dream we would’ve done back then. Every 3.6 seconds, somebody in the world dies of hunger. That’s 24,000 people a day. But don’t listen to me. Read the newspapers. Do the sums yourself.

  ‘Every ounce of excess fat we carry on our bodies, all this lard we hike around and get depressed about on the beach: every surplus ounce of it could’ve been used to keep alive one of those starving human beings. Every CD we buy, every nice new tie, every tank full of super unleaded, every pint of Stella Artois: everything we consume, we consume at the cost of human life—because every penny we spend on our whims and desires, every time we act as a consumer, we contribute to the grand sum of human misery. Every single night, we could go to bed knowing that somebody, somewhere, is alive because of our direct action. But we don’t do it. We don’t want to, because we don’t think it’s worth it. A Paul Smith suit, a holiday in Greece, a pair of Nike shoes is worth more to us than human life.