by Jonathan Coe
‘I suppose …’ said Danielle. She was softening.
‘I mean, we’ve all got to do our bit, that’s all, if we’re going to get through the next couple of weeks. “We’re all in this together,” as our beloved Mr Osborne would say.’
‘Who?’
‘George Osborne. The Chancellor of the Exchequer?’ Danielle’s face showed no comprehension, and Val could not stop herself from laughing. ‘Oh, Danielle, you really are the limit. What planet do you live on? Eh? Don’t you ever read the newspapers?’
‘I don’t have time.’
‘You should make time. Everyone should know what’s going on in the world.’
‘I work hard, you know. I’m in the gym at six thirty every day. And then all day, I’m either on a shoot or in a recording studio.’
‘Recording studio?’
‘Yeah. I’m a singer. That’s what I really want to be. I’m making a record at the moment, but, you know, it takes a long time to get the notes right and everything. I haven’t been trained, or anything like that.’
‘Do you play an instrument?’
‘I can play “Yellow Submarine” on the guitar. You know, the Beatles’ old song.’
Val felt a sudden wave of tenderness towards her. She looked so young; and not just young but lonely, and vulnerable.
‘Bet you miss all that at the moment, don’t you?’
‘I miss everything,’ said Danielle. ‘It’s horrible in here. They keep making me do tasks with Pete and everything because they’ve sold lots of stories to the magazines about our big romance, but we can’t stand each other. I don’t like any of the people in here. They’re all old and boring. I want to go home. I miss my Mom and Dad. I miss my sister. And the one I miss the most – the one I really miss – is Caesar. Our boxer dog.’
‘Oh, I know, love,’ said Val, putting a sympathetic hand to her shoulder. ‘I heard about that. Your Mom told me just before I came in. It’s awful, isn’t it, when a pet dies. I had a cat called Byron, and when he passed away –’
‘What?’ said Danielle, sitting up and staring at her. ‘What are you talking about?’
Val put her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh my God. You didn’t know.’
‘Has something happened to Caesar? What’s happened to him? Tell me!’
After that, Val had no choice but to break the news to her, and, as soon as she heard it, Danielle burst into tears. She sobbed in Val’s arms for a few minutes, and Val dabbed at her eyes with a tissue, which was soon soaked through.
‘Sorry – I’ve spoiled your Kleenex,’ was the first thing Danielle said, when she was able to talk again.
‘Never mind – I’ll go and get some more,’ said Val. She gave what she hoped was a comforting laugh, trying to lighten the mood. ‘There’s plenty more where that came from.’
As she set off on this errand, she threw one glance back, and saw that Danielle was gazing after her, her face not quite as blank as usual. Her baby blue eyes were now limpid pools of sadness, her lovely young face streaked with tears.
*
‘Shit,’ said Alison. ‘SHIT! Mum, you fucking idiot – what are you playing at? What did you go and do that for?’
She sat forward on the sofa, gripping the remote control so tightly that it might have cracked in her hand. Panic seized her; her breathing accelerated rapidly; she was starting to hyperventilate. Not wishing to listen to the show’s closing theme tune, she muted the TV, rose to her feet and began to pace the room, doing her best to slow down her breaths. On the screen, telephone numbers for voting off the different contestants scrolled by silently. Finally Alison paused in front of the television, turned it off, put her head in her hands and said to herself, one more time: ‘Oh Mum, why did you have to do that?’
It had been bad enough watching her mother perform the trial, having to put that huge creature into her mouth and hold it there while everyone around her stood watching and laughing. She knew that Val was afraid of every kind of insect. The terror and revulsion had been written all over her face, but as far as the programme makers (and, Alison supposed, the viewers) were concerned, that just made the whole thing funnier. But then, after that, at the end of the programme … the conversation between her mother and Danielle: how had that happened? What the hell was going on there?
Val had spoken a little sharply to Danielle after dinner. She had asked her to help with the washing-up, and pointed out that she didn’t do much work around the camp generally. Danielle had looked offended, and had wandered off to lie down with Pete, at some distance from the camp. Then a few minutes later, Val had interrupted them, apparently with a view to renewing her complaint. The conversation as broadcast had gone like this:
VAL: I didn’t break up a romantic moment, did I?
DANIELLE: Don’t worry. What did you want anyway?
VAL: It’s about the washing-up.
DANIELLE: Yeah? What about it? You didn’t show me much respect in front of the others. I know I’m younger than you, but, you know, I think I deserve to be treated in a certain way …
VAL: Oh, come on, you lazy cow, when are you going to start pulling your weight around here?
(Close-up on Danielle’s face, shocked.)
VAL: What planet do you live on? Eh?
(Another close-up on Danielle, who now bursts into tears. Val immediately walks off.)
VAL: (glancing back, laughing) There’s plenty more where that came from.
(Close-up on Danielle gazing after her, her face streaked with tears.)
*
Alison didn’t dare check on Twitter that night. She went straight to bed, and after lying awake for an hour or two, wondering what demon could have possessed her mother out there in the Australian jungle, provoking such an outburst of rudeness and casual cruelty, she fell at last into a fitful sleep. But it didn’t last long. She was awake by six o’clock, and after making herself a double-strength cup of instant coffee, she fired up her laptop.
The news was bad. Terrible, in fact. Her mother’s account was haemorrhaging followers – she was down to just over 3,000 – and the abusive messages now seemed to be coming in at the rate of four or five every minute. Most of them had the hashtag #team danielle, and it was fair to say that the model’s million followers were not happy with what they’d seen on the television last night.
Bitch from hell
Fuck off I want to kill you
You are just a fucking big bully ugly cow
Hello Crabs I hope you get vd youself but that wd mean some1 wd have to fuck you 1st so not very likely haha
You made our angel cry we will make you suffer bitch
Have never hated someone like I hate u. Hope u die of cancer
Fuck you cunt
You big cunt bully. You deserve to be raped till your dried out old gash is sore and bleeding
Alison felt physically sick when she read that: she had to go to the bathroom and kneel in front of the toilet for a few minutes, convinced she was going to throw up. Nothing came, though: just dry retching. After that, reluctantly, out of filial duty and nothing more, she forced herself to do some more quick searching. She looked her mother up on Google Images, and where once she would have found a few ancient publicity shots and grabs from her Top of the Pops routine, there were already hundreds of new pictures. Where had they all come from, and how had they been uploaded so quickly? Most of them were from yesterday’s trial: horrid, grotesque close-ups of her mother’s face, every pore and wrinkle showing, her eyes screwed up behind tho
se plastic goggles and her face contorted in a mixture of terror and loathing as she took the stick insect into her mouth. Pictures from the last few moments of the trial, showing her bent double over the table while retching, with a trail of vaguely green-coloured drool dangling from her lips, seemed to be especially popular. But there was nothing that Val, or Alison, or anybody else, would be able to do about this. This was how her mother was going to be remembered online, from now on.
It was all too depressing to contemplate. Alison glanced briefly at Google News, where she learned that, according to a new poll, her mother was now the most unpopular contestant in the show’s ten-year history, and then she went back to bed.
*
Val warmed her hands at the fire, smiled around at her fellow campers and felt a spreading glow of happiness. Today had been a wonderful day. Really relaxing and enjoyable. First of all, Dino, the handsome and relentlessly macho TV chef from New York who was the show’s token American presence, had been voted to undergo the daily trial. It was something to do with gathering plastic stars from the floor of a water tank filled with eels, and he had done spectacularly well, which meant not only that they’d all had a full complement of food that evening, but after dinner – any minute now, in fact – they were also to be provided with a surprise ‘luxury’ item. Naturally, this had put everyone in a good mood. In the afternoon, chilling out in their hammocks, Val and Roger the historian had struck up a conversation, a proper conversation, which started by being about the British weather but had then somehow turned to the coalition government and whether it really had a mandate from the voters. It had been the first real discussion, the first time anyone in the camp had actually talked about something important, since Val had arrived three (was it three?) days ago, and had proved so interesting that after a while everybody joined in, even Pete and Danielle; both of whom were amazed to hear that Britain had a coalition government at all, since this piece of news seemed to have passed them by last year, and indeed Val still wasn’t at all sure that either of them had really grasped the concept of a coalition despite a good deal of patient explanation from Roger. Anyway, that was by the by. It wasn’t a great victory, maybe, but this conversation had been a small step towards bringing everyone together, creating a more cooperative atmosphere, which Val had decided was her true role in the camp. And now she could see the result: for the first time, all twelve of them were sitting around the fire after dinner, chatting and telling stories. True, it was pretty inane stuff, but she was not really listening. She was content to let the chatter wash over her, becoming one with the other noises of the forest at night: the mysterious rustles in the undergrowth, the chirruping of cicadas, the occasional distant, plangent cry of some unknown inhabitant of the nocturnal jungle. Such a long way from Yardley! Such a privilege, when all was said and done, to be here at all! She knew now that she would always treasure this experience, whatever came of it.
Just then they heard footsteps on the edge of the camp.
‘Hey up, that must be our surprise,’ said Pete, and rose to his feet. He went off to investigate, and came back a few seconds later carrying an acoustic steel-string guitar tied up in pink ribbon. ‘Look at this – brilliant!’ he said. ‘Can anybody play it?’
The guitar kept them entertained for a further couple of hours. Val was the only real musician in the camp, and she was happy to play until her wrist was aching and the tips of her fingers felt as though they were about to bleed. They sang songs by Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Madonna and the Kinks; they crooned their way through ‘House of the Rising Sun’, ‘Scarborough Fair’ and ‘Dancing Queen’. Her only respite came for a few minutes when Danielle insisted on attempting her version of ‘Yellow Submarine’, with Pete on backing vocals. It was hard to say which was worse, her playing or her singing, and neither of them could remember the words to the verses, but everyone was feeling so cheerful by then that the whole thing was just carried through on a wave of laughter. It put them all in an even better mood than before.
Eventually they ran out of songs. At which point, Val asked: ‘Do you mind if I play you something that I wrote?’
Nobody minded. Everyone was eager to hear it.
‘It’s not the song I’m famous for. It’s a new one.’
‘Ooh, lovely,’ said Danielle.
‘It’s not very jolly,’ said Val. ‘In fact it’s quite sad and … sort of introspective.’
‘Stop apologizing and get on with it,’ said Roger.
‘All right.’
She smiled around at them all, nervously, suddenly remembering that she was addressing not just an audience of eleven friends (she thought of them as her friends now) but more than ten million television viewers. This was, in effect, the most important performance of her life. But she felt up to the task. If she could do that thing with the stick insect, after all, she could do pretty much anything. And she knew this song intimately: it was part of her body, by now. Singing it to these people would be as natural as drawing breath.
The fingers of her left hand arranged themselves to form the first chord – an F major seven, with an open A-string as the bass note – and with the thumb of her right hand she struck the six strings of the guitar with firm, tender authority.
Watch the water take me home, absence makes me fonder
Choose a path where you can go, days are getting longer
She knew at once that she had caught their attention. A great stillness had descended on the camp. The music brought everything to a halt: the passage of time was suspended. Val reached for the highest note in the melody, found it easily.
Still I try to do my best but I need your breath
As the moonshine controls the water, I will sink and swim
The two chords underpinning the word ‘swim’ were a D minor and then a darker and more ambiguous F minor sixth. Val had been singing without thinking until this point, vocalizing the words in a semi-automatic state, but with the next lines, she realized that she could almost be reflecting on her current situation:
Turn around and look at me, in many ways I’m stronger
Choose a path and set me free, to beyond and yonder
It was true: this experience had made her stronger. Started to restore her confidence, her confidence which had been shattered over the last few years by a series of disappointments in her career and her personal life. That confidence was expressing itself, now, through the movement of her fingers on the strings of the guitar, the strength of her voice ringing out through the attentive night air. Once again it felt – at last – that she was doing what she was born to do.
The song was over. There was silence around the fire for a few moments, except for the crackling of the embers. Then the eleven campmates began to applaud, slowly and feelingly, and when the applause had died down, they hugged Val, and kissed her, and told her how beautiful the song was, and asked if they could buy it and when she was going to record it, and she could not keep herself from crying and telling them, truthfully, that this was one of the happiest moments of her life.
*
Alison did not think that she could bear to watch another episode of the programme by herself, in that empty living room. Remembering Selena’s invitation to come over for a family dinner whenever she felt like it, she phoned and asked if she could drop by and watch the show with them that night.
‘’Course you can,’ said Selena. ‘Come round about seven. We’ll have something to eat first.’
Just as Selena had promised, the atmosphere in her house was cheerful and raucous, with everybody crowding into the kitchen to help her mother with the c
ooking, apart from her father Sam, who sat at the kitchen table reading the Evening Mail, and her brother Navaro, who was in the living room, bent over his Nintendo DS, which was emitting a constant series of pops and beeps.
There was the latest edition of some celebrity gossip magazine on the kitchen counter, and Alison picked it up, recognizing the two faces on the cover: ‘PETE AND DANIELLE’, the headline said. ‘GET THE LOWDOWN ON THE HOTTEST JUNGLE ROMANCE EVER.’ She flicked through to the relevant article.
‘I already read that,’ said Ashley, Selena’s mother. ‘They don’t mention your mom. I suppose they printed it before she went on the programme.’
‘Probably a good thing,’ said Alison, putting it back on the counter after a half-hearted glance. ‘She doesn’t seem to be doing herself any favours out there.’
‘I think your mom’s doing just fine,’ said Ashley, who was stirring a pot filled with some peppery, aromatic fish stew. ‘Takes guts to go out there and do what she’s doing. I hope you’re proud of her.’
Over dinner they could hardly avoid talking more about Val and her Australian adventure. Selena and her family had not been following the online response so they had no idea how vitriolic most of the reactions had been. They thought that Val had been rather harsh to Danielle the night before, but apart from that their main complaint was that she was being given so little airtime. Alison was relieved, and reminded herself that not everybody spent hours poring over the internet. Most of the population had better things to do with their time. So perhaps all was not lost yet, for her mother. Sam asked her, straight out, how much Val was being paid for her participation, and although his wife scolded him for being so rude, Alison saw no reason why she shouldn’t tell them: it was twenty thousand pounds.
‘Well,’ said Ashley, ‘I thought it would be more than that, actually. And what’s she going to spend it on? I hope she’s going to take you somewhere nice at Christmas. Maybe buy you a few nice things to wear as well.’