by Ian McGuire
They passed a dismal scrapyard, the back of a new greenfield estate. Morris ground his teeth. He was thinking with all his might. Beneath the mop-top wig, his head was a bloated whirligig of thoughts and possibilities. Just past Nuneaton it came to him: it was a test of strength. Underseel and the Bangor calamity were the twin roots of Morris’s failure and now Zoe was giving him the chance to confront them, to vanquish them, to begin again. That was it. It was obvious. He would prove himself through a long-delayed victory over the bastard Underseel. He would show Zoe who he was, what he was truly capable of. He breathed again. When the trolley came round he ordered a miniature of Wee Hamish and a bag of BBQ Mini Cheddars. He removed from his briefcase a first edition of The House at Hough End and began to read it for the twenty-ninth time.
Chapter 30
Zoe Cable was not plotting for or against Morris Gutman. In fact, she had spent most of the previous week trying, not always successfully, to forget all about Morris Gutman and his odoriferous bedsit. She had a row of significant meetings coming up about Legless in Gaza, her proposed mini-series on art and inebriation, and the last thing she wanted was the memory of Morris’s catatonically gloomy life tugging at her chi. Yes, Morris had got to her, Rumpswick had got to her, a little at least. They had shown her her own edges, the distant line where what she was (which was a lot) ended and something else began. Ordinarily Zoe liked edges, limits. She saw them as a challenge – something to leave behind, something to blur. Indeed she had blurred her own so many times that she thought it likely that they would never come properly into focus again. But Rumpswick was different. She had a feeling that if she leapt over those edges – the edges denoted by Morris’s unholy lifestyle – she would land not, as usual, in a realm of heightened and expanded pleasure and possibility, but rather in a land of soul-sucking emptiness. It was not a place of death (death she liked) but of nullity. And Zoe didn’t do nullity. Nullity was her parents, nullity was Epsom, nullity was her years of crippling shyness. She didn’t go there any more.
When Thursday arrived she determined to see as little of Morris as possible. The meetings had gone well: they started recording the pilot in a fortnight. Morris was behind her. He had always been behind her of course, but now he was so far behind her he was out of sight. They had agreed that Bathsheba would do the interview and that Zoe would be unreachable all afternoon. There would be the green room of course, but that would be absolutely it, and with Conrad Underseel there (Zoe vaguely remembered some aggro between the two of them) Morris, with luck, wouldn’t show his face anyway.
Mid-morning, she was sitting in Pam’s office discussing strategies for Legless in Gaza when Bathsheba knocked and rapidly entered.
‘Zoe,’ she said. ‘Have you seen him?’
‘Morris, you mean? Is it the black eye? I thought that would be manageable with make-up.’
‘There are two black eyes. There are also stitches and some kind of wig.’
Zoe closed her eyes. She felt (irrationally, since she had herself invited him) that she was being stalked by Morris.
‘Tell Josh in make-up to lay it on thick,’ said Pam dismissively. ‘We’ll fiddle with the lighting. It’ll be fine.’
‘I really think you should see him,’ said Bathsheba.
The phone trilled. Pam picked it up. After a moment she placed her ring-laden hand over the mouthpiece.
‘Zoe, could you be a love?’ She wrinkled her nose endearingly. ‘I’ve got a Dimbleby on line two.’
Zoe stamped down the corridor.
‘You really don’t think this is doable?’ she said.
‘I think he might need prosthetics.’
‘Prosthetics?’
‘An eyebrow and a nose. It’s not normal but that’s all I can think of.’
‘Bloody hell.’
She knocked on the door of Morris’s dressing room and went in. Morris was sitting on the sofa; he looked like someone who had become confused about the date of Hallowe’en.
Seeing Zoe, he stood up with a barmy grin.
‘Morris,’ she said. ‘What the fuck is this?’
‘This?’ he pointed to his face. She noticed he was hobbling and that his left shoe had been slit open from tongue to tip. ‘Another accident I’m afraid. I did leave messages.’
Zoe had deliberately not listened to them.
‘Is that a wig?’
‘This? Yes it is. Ludicrous I know but I’ve had some complications with my scalp. I should really be on antibiotics, but you know what it’s like getting an appointment with a GP. It’s just a stop-gap. I’d happily wear a different one, or indeed nothing at all.’
He began to unpeel a sideburn.
‘That really, really won’t be necessary,’ said Bathsheba preemptively.
Zoe was speechless. Was this a deliberate attempt to embarrass her? She swiftly decided it was. It seemed Morris was more gutsy but significantly less sensible than she had once imagined.
‘We’ll have to cancel the interview,’ she said magisterially. ‘The state of your face just makes it impossible to continue.’
‘No, no, no,’ said Morris. He limped forward rapidly and placed his hand on Zoe’s elbow. ‘I’m absolutely ready to do the interview. I’m prepared. The face is unfortunate, I admit, but Bath … er.’
‘Sheba.’
‘Bathsheba mentioned prosthetics. We could do prosthetics or even a stand-in. Why not? I have something important to say.’
Zoe hardened herself. Yes, she had made a rather large mistake, but no, there would be no more repercussions.
‘We’ll still pay you,’ she said.
‘That’s not it.’
‘It is it.’
‘No it isn’t.’
Bathsheba stepped in. They had been standing too close, and the hand on the elbow had been a giveaway. Any idiot could have guessed that they had once slept together. Zoe stepped back.
‘Why don’t we just go to make-up?’ Bathsheba said steadily. ‘See what Josh has to say.’
* * *
Conrad Underseel was the most pompous man that Zoe Cable had ever met. They were introduced in the green room later in the day by an eye-rolling Bathsheba.
‘Professor Underseel,’ Zoe said, shaking his hand. ‘I got quite a kick out of Arthur Alderley: Portrait of a Confused Young Man.’
‘And your name is?’ said Underseel.
‘Zoe Cable,’ repeated Bathsheba.
‘Ah. And you are the producer?’ He was still gripping her hand.
‘No. I’m the presenter. Have you not watched the show lately?’
‘I live, I’m afraid, without the benefit of a television set. I don’t approve, you see.’
‘Of television?’
‘That’s right.’ He finally released her hand. ‘Judging from my undergraduates its effects on the brain are quite … catastrophic.’
He said the last word as if it was a punchline, as if he expected a burst of applause.
‘Yet you’ve decided to join us anyway,’ Zoe said. ‘How lovely.’
‘Occasionally it is necessary to sup with the devil.’ He grinned as if this too were a winning remark. Bathsheba’s mouth dropped open. ‘I’d like to be clear, Ms Cable,’ continued Underseel without pause. ‘My purpose in appearing on your programme is not to promote Arthur Alderley but rather to protect him.’
‘They say the Alderley revival is already underway,’ said Bathsheba, who had quietly regathered herself.
‘Yes, that is my fear, and I would like to do what I can to stop it. In my experience popularity is universally corrosive.’
‘You’d rather no one read Alderley then?’
Underseel offered a pained smile.
‘The horrors of misinterpretation are hardly to be exaggerated, Ms Cable. If there is a paperback, God alone knows the kind of people who might get their hands on it.’
Underseel was wearing a beige safari suit and a purple paisley cravat. He seemed to have brushed his eyebrows especially for the occasio
n.
‘So the purpose of scholarship, as you see it, Conrad, is to stop people reading books?’
‘Certain people, Ms Cable, certain books. I believe in vocational training, you see, and so very few people,’ he leaned forward and brushed Zoe’s arm with his fingertips as if to honorarily include her in this privileged number, ‘have the vocation of scholarship.’
‘Have you watched the film?’ asked Bathsheba.
‘Ah, the film, yes.’ Underseel turned aside and cast a disinterested glance at the buffet table. ‘But I would prefer to reserve my comments on that, until the programme begins. I believe we have an hour or more.’
Bathsheba nodded. ‘Please help yourself to refreshments. There’s wine.’
‘Wine, ah.’ Underseel’s cakey eyes twinkled as he scanned the room with sudden vim. Bathsheba indicated the ad hoc bar and Underseel, who seemed to have forgotten Zoe Cable completely, toddled over and began reading labels.
‘He’s a total wanker,’ said Bathsheba when Underseel was more or less out of earshot. ‘Why does Arthur Alderley attract such freaks?’
‘Pam’s gone too far this time,’ said Zoe. ‘I’m all for eccentricity, but this guy’s Mussolini in a toupee.’
‘You should have seen the interview,’ said Bathsheba.
‘The interview?’
‘Morris Gutman.’
‘Oh.’ Zoe had the uncomfortable feeling that Bathsheba, who had previously been satisfyingly awed by Zoe’s combination of coolness and learning, was now rather milking her privileged if vague knowledge of Zoe and Morris’s previous intimacies.
‘Josh patched up his face and they buggered about with the lighting; to be honest I think it looks like Nosferatu, but Pam says it’s OK.’
‘She does?’
‘Yes, but then I think she’s looking ahead now anyway. This Dimbleby thing’s in the pipeline for her.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘Oh yeah. But anyway, you should have heard Gutman go on. I asked him why Arthur Alderley might appeal to a contemporary readership, and his answer lasted twenty minutes. No one could understand a word of it. At one point he started madly quoting Firenze Beach, from memory. Pam’s salvaged something in the end, but Jesus.’ She shook her head.
Zoe swallowed and lit a cigarette.
‘Sorry Zoe,’ said Bathsheba with a quite obvious and quite maddening tone of pity. ‘I don’t mean to be rude. I know he’s a friend of yours.’
‘That’s OK,’ said Zoe. ‘Do you happen to know if he’s coming?’
‘Here? Oh yes. He’s very keen to meet everyone. He asked me for directions several times.’
‘You stressed that Underseel would be here?’
‘That only seemed to make him keener.’
Toby Royale entered breezily, trailing a make-up girl and laughing into a mobile phone.
‘Oh God,’ said Conrad Underseel, who was sampling an Australian red, ‘a mobile telephone. How ghastly.’
Toby Royale looked at him.
‘Toby Royale,’ he said, sticking out his hand.
‘Conrad Underseel. Are you a stagehand?’
‘I’m a panellist.’
‘Ah. You see I don’t watch.’
‘Television? Neither do I mate. I’m on so much it’s hardly worth it.’ Toby laughed.
‘Judging by my undergraduates,’ Underseel continued imperviously, ‘its effects are quite … catastrophic.’
Bathsheba had left to hustle up Deirdre Pluck, who was compulsively late; Zoe was eating an egg roll and concentrating on her seventh chakra. She could already feel an orb of warm white light emanating from her loins, growing, flattening until it encircled her like a neon hula-hoop. She had had more than enough of this. It was time to crush a few fingers.
Toby sidled over. ‘We’ve got a right one there,’ he said, nodding at the still-glugging Underseel.
‘I say we gang up on him,’ said Zoe. ‘Do him in.’
Toby wobbled his jaw mischievously. ‘Fine by me, but Deirdre won’t go for it. You know her, she’s all donkey sanctuaries and open dialogue.’
‘She will when she hears him speak,’ said Zoe. ‘He may dress like Alan Whicker but he talks like Enoch Powell.’
‘Sweet.’
Bathsheba returned with Deirdre Pluck, who seemed as always to be looking for her reading glasses. She noticed Zoe and Toby. ‘Oh God,’ she said after the hugs. ‘Slim pickings this week, isn’t it? I mean the Alderley film’s bad enough – there are no strong women in it at all.’
‘Isn’t there a chambermaid?’ said Toby. Deirdre poked him.
‘The opera I could just about manage. But, Zoe, why do we have to do computer games? Can’t you speak to Pam about it? At my age the thumbs just aren’t there. It’s embarrassing.’
‘I did mention it,’ said Zoe, untruthfully, ‘but I think her mind’s elsewhere.’
‘The Dimbleby thing you mean? Yes I heard about that.’
Zoe frowned despite herself. Deidre peered about. ‘Gosh, is that Conrad Underseel?’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen him for years.’ Deidre wafted across. There was a flurry of greeting.
Toby winked and chuckled. Zoe cornered Bathsheba near the melon chunks.
‘Where’s Morris?’ she said.
‘Gutman? He’s on his way. Did you and he have a thing?’
Zoe moved half a step closer to Bathsheba. Bathsheba’s denim-skirted bottom grazed the crudités.
‘Time, Bathsheba,’ Zoe said in a fierce whisper, ‘is a great destroyer. And contrary to misogynistic rumour, male beauty is not impervious to its ravages. Orson Welles, Marlon Brando, Muhammed Ali – you’ve seen the pictures?’
‘Does he have Parkinson’s?’
‘Morris? No, but there’s a continuum. It’s grim I know, pathetic perhaps, funny even.’ Here she paused to allow Bathsheba to writhe a little. ‘But I try to think of what he was, not what he is.’
Chapter 31
All afternoon, Morris had been sitting in the BBC bar sipping Wee Hamish and meditating on the splendidness of his interview. He had given Alderley a theoretical makeover, he had brought him up to date, he had spruced him up as he had never been spruced up before. Zoe was bound, he thought, to love it. It was, after all, aimed directly at her. And, almost as importantly, Conrad Underseel would hate it. He would see it, Morris hoped and expected, as a personal insult, a slight which would have to be revenged. As he limped down the corridor to the green room, the prostheses, which he rather liked, still glued like translucent leeches to his face, Morris felt gladiatorial. The bastard Underseel and his recherche neo-humanism were going down at last.
As he firmly pushed open the door to the green room, however, and immediately and without fair warning saw Underseel pouring a goblet of red wine and whooping it up with Deirdre Pluck, Morris was struck by a violent combination of awe and dread. He felt all of a sudden tiny and unmanned, as if his puberty had been rudely ripped from him. While Underseel, in contrast, whom he had not seen or spoken to (except in recurrent nightmares) for six years, loomed – in his beige safari suit, his purple cravat, his triangular toupee – utterly unaffected by the passage of time, as large and immovable as the pyramids of Giza. Morris felt a strong urge to run, or at least hop, away and never return. He gripped the anodised aluminium doorknob as though it were an amulet against his fear. He saw Zoe. She was dressed in black silk pyjamas embroidered with images of Muffin the Mule. Her hair had been goaded into a bleach-tipped aileron. Morris sniffed – dandelion and swarfega. She was looking at him. It was a look, he decided, of trepidatious anticipation. She surely knew what was about (if he could only release his grip on the doorknob) to occur. He thought of the harsh slenderness of her hips, the sacred point where her tattoo of Jacques Derrida met the valley of her bottom. By a gargantuan effort of will, Morris pulled himself into the room. He limped across the carpet as though it were the bed of a deep, malicious ocean.
‘Professor Underseel.’ He offered his hand. Underseel
looked at him, opened his mouth, closed it, and looked at him again.
‘Is it … Morris Gutman?’ he said eventually.
‘Yes it is.’ Morris stuck out his hand still further. Underseel shook it.
‘Have you had reconstructive surgery Morris?’
‘No, it’s the make-up from my earlier interview. You’ve heard about my earlier interview I presume.’
Morris imagined that everyone was looking at him now, that the whole room, indeed the whole television centre, was hanging on his words.
‘Have you met Deirdre Pluck?’
Deirdre Pluck unsqueamishly kissed him.
Morris swallowed.
‘Morris is a student of mine,’ Underseel explained. ‘I might say former student except I prefer not to think of the apprenticeship of a scholar as bounded by the brief period of Ph.D. Three years really.’ He was talking to Deirdre Pluck now. ‘It’s hardly enough for a decent annotated bibliography.’
Deirdre chuckled. ‘Oh Conrad,’ she said. ‘You’re such a terrible old fart. You always were, even when you were twenty-five.’
Underseel faked astonishment. Morris got a strong and horrible sense that he and Deirdre Pluck might once have had a thing.
‘Now Morris,’ Deirdre went on, ‘you’re not still working on dull old Alderley too are you?’
Morris sensed an opening. ‘No,’ he said, ‘my interests are a great deal broader now. I recently finished a book on physicality and ethics.’ Deirdre raised her eyebrows encouragingly. ‘But I still dabble in Alderley occasionally, more for amusement than anything. Hence my earlier interview.’
‘There you go Conrad,’ said Deirdre coyly. ‘Someone seems to have escaped your reactionary clutches. Physicality and ethics sounds fascinating. Do you know Firenze Beach?’
‘Yes,’ purred Underseel cheerily. ‘I obviously gave Morris rather too long a rein.’ Was it the wine, Morris wondered, or the presence of Deirdre Pluck that was producing this unwelcome mellowness? He glanced at Zoe, who seemed not to be watching at all.
‘Firenze Beach? Yes I do,’ he said. ‘Indeed, in my earlier interview, I applied her work on dismay to Helga in The House at Hough End.’