by Peter Wild
‘Like what?’
‘Well, mainly I’d have to change the big revelation that breaks up the friends.’
‘It’s essential to the plot.’
‘Couldn’t I make it…I don’t know…that maybe “Danny” has been secretly seeing “Adam’s” sister?’
‘It’ll lack emotional punch then.’
‘Well, what if Adam turns out to be gay?’
‘The gay thing has been done to death.’
‘Well, what if it turns out that “Danny’s” girlfriend “Kate” had an affair with “Adam”?’
‘Look, I can see where you’re going with this. But I have to say, I’m not liking any of what I’m hearing. The book’s great. You’ll just have to trust me.’
‘What about if you tell the publishers to give me a couple of weeks to soften what I say about some of my other friends–I mean, I’ll definitely have to take the stuff out about the character “Leon” being an ugly bird magnet. The fact is, Jakey–who he’s based on–is one of my best mates in the world.’
‘The thing is, Keith, if you start letting people mess around with your art like this, I can’t see your career going very far.’
‘OK,’ I replied. ‘Maybe I’ll leave that. But I’ll have to change the stuff about Marco being fat because my mate Alan will never forgive me.’
‘Look,’ said Christian. ‘I can tell you’re getting cold feet about this, so let me put it on the line for you. I think this book is great as it is. It has bestseller written all over it. If you start arsing around with it, I guarantee it won’t be half as good as it is now. And the fact of the matter is I only represent books that I think are the best. I don’t want to put any pressure on you because, you know what? I’ve only spoken to you a few times and I already like you a lot. But, at the end of the day, the choice is yours about whether you tell me to go ahead with this deal or not. At the same time, it’s my choice about whether I represent this book or not. And, yeah, maybe there’ll be another agent out there somewhere who’ll take your book on once it’s been butchered and sanitised but I guarantee you they won’t be as good as me because I am the best there is.’
‘I don’t know what to say,’ I replied.
‘Just trust me, Keith. That’s what the agent–client relationship is all about. Trust. So what’s it going to be? Have we got a deal or have we got a deal?’
‘It’s a deal,’ I replied.
‘Good. Then that’s all I need to know.’
It’s all been a bit of a blur since then. I’d never dreamed in a million years of earning the kind of money that Cooper and Lawton were offering for my book. (Briefly, the realistic plan for the rest of my life had been something along the lines of: try not to get sacked from housing job, move in with Becky one day, get married, have children, Becky goes out to work while I raise family, drift into middle age, lose hair, become fat, return to work, continue soul-destroying career in housing, move up a staggering two grades on career ladder, get divorced because Becky’s finally given up on me, be made redundant at fifty-five, fall into deep depression, sit around in underpants on sofa and wait to die.) So, no matter how I went over it in my head, I always came to the same conclusion: I’d be a fool to give up on all this just because I’d insulted a few mates.
The next few months went by incredibly quickly. I handed in my notice at the housing office the Monday after I signed the contract with Cooper and Lawton, much to the consternation of my boss. No one could believe that I was actually leaving for good and my boss actually told me that there would always be a job waiting there for me if I wanted it. I was very polite and told him that if I ever found myself working in housing again it would be because I had died and was being eternally punished for all the wrongs I’d committed during my life.
It was difficult to know what to tell my friends about my news. On the one hand, without them I wouldn’t have been in the fortunate position I was in now; on the other hand, once they read it I knew there would be big trouble. In the end, I decided to tell them all the Friday that I signed the contract. We were all in the Griffin and I just sort of stood up and announced: ‘I’ve got a book deal and it’s so good I can pack in my job and write full time.’ To say they were stunned would be something of an understatement. I don’t think any of them thought that I would ever make it as a writer because I hadn’t even believed it myself. Once they’d got over the initial shock, however, I spent the whole evening drinking congratulatory pints, after which I took them for a celebratory meal at the Star of the Punjab in Kentish Town, which I paid for with my already overextended overdraft. Of course, they spent most of the evening making jokes at my expense, mostly along the lines of recounting stories about me to sell to the tabloids if I ever became really famous. But it was all good humoured. They really did wish me well. At the end of the night they all demanded their own free, signed copy of the book when it came out. On hearing this, I just laughed a lot and no doubt looked shifty and promised them that they’d get their copies in good time. Tim said he wanted five signed copies because, if I got famous, they’d make half-decent Christmas presents; Jakey informed me that he only ever read factual books about gangsters and/or serial killers but promised me he’d get his girlfriend Sarah to read it and tell him if it was any good; Graham said he would read my book on holiday with his parents but he strongly doubted whether his mum would want to read it because she was more into Barbara Taylor Bradford; Alan announced proudly that he hadn’t read a book since To Kill a Mockingbird had been foisted on him at school and wasn’t about to make an exception for me, but he did concede that if they made it into a film he’d probably get it when it came out on video; Liam assured me he’d read it even though it was written by me and if he liked it he’d write a glowing review on amazon.co.uk for me; and finally Phil revealed that he’d put it on his “to read” list ahead of Bridget Jones’s Diary but well behind the complete works of Kurt Vonnegut. Phil made out like he was joking, which he was to a degree, but I could tell there was more to it than that. I think of all of us, myself included, he was the most surprised at my success. And, while he’d been very successful in his career so far, I couldn’t help but feel that he wished more than anything that what was happening to me was happening to him. I tried to talk to him a few times about it but he never took the bait. I think he knew I knew how he felt and even that was too much.
I was told by my editor at Cooper and Lawton that, although they loved the book, it still needed some work, so I spent the next few weeks carefully addressing each of the one hundred and thirty-seven queries that he had about the plot, characters and structure. I ended up working on it most nights, emailing him one revised chapter of the book at a time (which, after a few days, he would return to me with further ‘queries’). A number of times I tried as subtly as possible to tone down/ further disguise some of the more unpleasant things I’d said about my friends, only to have him catch every single one of them by circling them in the manuscript with a red pen. To make matters worse, he told me that the character of Adam (aka Phil) needed a darker streak to be more three-dimensional, so I did just that. Did I feel bad doing this? Absolutely. Did I do it? Yes, I did. Honestly, Machiavelli had nothing on me.
In the meantime, the book just kept getting bigger and bigger. About a month or so after signing the deal, I received a call from Christian. By this point I was receiving calls from Christian or his assistant on a daily basis. I got a sense that there was always something new to know. On this particular day, however, there really was something new to know.
‘Hi, Rob,’ said a female voice. ‘It’s Javine here, Christian’s assistant. He’s just on another call at the moment but he’ll be with you in a moment.’
I had to admire Christian’s skill in reminding the world just how important he was. I loved the fact that, moments earlier, I had been minding my own business, sitting on the sofa, watching daytime TV–and now, seconds later, I’m holding for someone who hasn’t even called me. It was amazing.
‘Hi, Rob,’ said Christian, eventually. ‘Sorry for keeping you on hold, mate.’
‘No problems,’ I replied.
‘How are you today?’
‘Good, thanks,’ I replied. ‘How about yourself?’
‘Me? I’m always great. But today I’m even better. Are you ready for some more good news?’
My heart skipped a beat. I wasn’t sure I could take any more good news. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I bet you thought things had gone quiet on the film front.’
‘Well…’ I began. ‘I just reasoned that you had it under control.’
‘That’s good because I did. Brace yourself for the best news you’re going to hear for the rest of this week…We’ve sold the film rights to This Charming Man to a major studio.’
‘A major studio?’ I repeated needlessly.
‘A major Hollywood studio,’ expanded Christian. ‘Sony, Miramax, Paramount and Universal were all bidding for it but then, out of the blue, we were offered a killer deal from Globalcom. Have you heard of them?’
‘I think so,’ I replied, and then, for my benefit, Christian reeled off a long list of films that I’d definitely heard of featuring everyone from Benicio Del Toro to Jude Law and Jennifer Lopez to Nicole Kidman. I was speechless.
‘Anyway,’ continued Christian. ‘It’s like this: they love This Charming Man. They’re seeing it as a kind of a new generation Brat Pack romantic comedy. They want to relocate the action from London to San Francisco, and they’ve already attached Ben Affleck for the lead and Kate Beckinsale for the love interest.’
‘Ben Affleck?’ I echoed.
‘You know,’ said Christian. ‘The Good Will Hunting guy.’
‘And Kate Beckinsale?’ I echoed again.
‘The girl in Pearl Harbor.’
‘I know who she is, Christian,’ I said impatiently. ‘It’s all just too surreal. Up to a few months ago, my mate’s nickname for me was The Man with No Ambition. I worked in a mind-numbingly tedious job in a housing department in north Haringey. The nearest I’d ever got to having anything to do with Hollywood was the Odeon Leicester Square. And now you’re talking about real Hollywood stars being in the film version of a book that came out of my head. It just doesn’t make sense. You’re telling me that Ben Affleck–a man who has appeared on the front covers of thousands of magazines–knows who I am. And, on top of that, Kate Beckinsale–a woman who appeared in one of the most expensive films ever made in Hollywood and, let’s not forget, the daughter of the late, great Richard “Lennie Godber” Beckinsale–also knows who I am.’
‘That’s absolutely what I’m telling you,’ said Christian. ‘I’m telling you, my friend, that you have absolutely hit the big time.’
Just in case I was under any impression that I hadn’t hit the big time, two days later there was an article about me on the front page of the Daily Telegraph under the headline: ‘Housing officer earns millions in book deal’. The article began by describing me as a ‘lowly thirty-something officer clerk’ with a ‘secret passion for writing’ who had been ‘discovered’ by ‘twenty-eight-year-old wunderkind agent Christian Kennedy, from the world-renowned literary agency JPM’. It continued by stating that there has been a ‘ferocious bidding war’ between several publishers resulting in a ‘very significant six-figure deal’. The article also featured several fictional quotes from me saying that I was ‘over the moon’ with how things had gone and that ‘never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine that This Charming Man would be this huge’. The article then went on to reveal that, through a combination of the film deal (if it were to go into production), the book deal, US publication rights and foreign translations, I would be earning £5–5m from my debut novel. A phone call through to Christian that morning (following several hours’ worth of phone calls from stunned parents, relatives and friends) revealed that the article was in fact all down to him. He’d provided the quotes and massaged the figures, name-dropped ‘Ben’ and ‘Kate’ and given the newspapers exactly what they wanted to hear. Thanks to Christian, I then spent the next three days being interviewed by the Evening Standard, the Daily Mail, the Radio Four programme Front Row, the Guardian, The Times, the Sunday Times, the ITV programme This Morning, Newsweek and the New York sodding Times.
So, as I stand here, surrounded by all these well-wishers, I think about my big question: do I have any regrets about everything I’ve done to get here? The friendships I’ve betrayed, the loyal girlfriend I left behind and my general lack of integrity? And the answer is: of course not. Because I can get another book out of it. Or at least a short story. Maybe even a short story like this short story. After all, life is art. Art is life. And everybody’s got to make a living somehow.
Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now
Kate Pullinger
For me, the iconic Smiths song is ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’, which is, at the very least, one of the very best song titles ever. The character in my story keeps recurring in all the short stories I’ve been writing lately; his life is on the edge of becoming miserable, but somehow he resists despair and rises up again. This story is, to my somewhat biased view, funny in the way that The Smiths’ music is funny–dark, strange, but deeply amusing.
I didn’t mean to become a laughing stock. I made a virtual birthday card for a woman I work with, nothing more than that. Not because I fancy her or anything, I’m a happily married man! Though I do fancy her, to tell you the truth. It’s a work thing, you know how it goes, she is kind and clever and good looking and when I’m with her I’m funnier and sharper and a little bit more alive. And it was a simple enough gesture, really–give your colleague at work a birthday card, nothing sinister about that. But things got out of hand. Things always seem to get out of hand. ‘A laughing stock’–what in God’s name does that mean? I should know, because that’s what I became.
In my job I don’t spend that much time on the computer but I do use it for work email, timekeeping, logging complaints, that kind of thing. And YouTube videos do the rounds, like in any office–that pop band dancing on the treadmills, the baby whose fart sends a mushroom cloud of talcum powder up into the air. That was where I got the idea. I had all the right bits of technology at home; I kept our computer up to date with the latest software and hardware because I want my boy to be an active user of technology, it might help him out when it comes time–perish the thought–for him to find his own way in the world. I’d never been that big a Smiths fan–my father wouldn’t let me listen to pop music when I was a kid, so my passion for the stuff came along a while after the Smiths had departed the scene, if a band like that can ever be said to have done such a thing. But there was one song I’d always liked, and I thought it would be funny to make a video of myself lip-synching to it.
For some unknown reason–unknown to me, at any rate–I decided it would be a good idea to perform the song naked. A man singing along to the Smiths is one thing, but a naked man singing along to the Smiths–that would be funny! I wore a skinny necktie and a pork-pie hat that I had purchased especially for the video on one of my trips through the West End of London. I positioned the camera in a place where I was sure I’d be filmed only from the waist up and I planned to jump into the air a couple of times, rock-star stylee of course, as I thought that might make the video even more amusing.
Downloading the track and setting up the webcam took longer than I expected–I wanted to be done before my boy got home from school–so when it came time to record my performance there was only long enough for one take. So I recorded it, and then I uploaded it, and I wrote a short and, I thought, carefree and light-hearted birthday greeting email to my work colleague, containing the link to her birthday treat. I pressed ‘send’ and thought nothing more of it. Finished buttoning my shirt as the boy came through the front door.
That night my boy woke up with some kind of stomach bug; he came into our bedroom to tell us he was going to throw up and then he did throw up, right there in the
middle of the carpet. He continued to be sick for a couple of hours and afterwards I sat with him in his room and stroked his forehead until he finally went back to sleep. I called in sick the next day so that I could stay home with him; this was the arrangement my wife and I had made years before as her job is both much more lucrative and substantially more important and interesting than mine. I didn’t mind, to tell you the truth; staying home with the boy was kind of like a mini-break for me.
I work in the secure psychiatric unit of a large teaching hospital here in south London; I work part time, mornings only. My job title includes the word ‘administrator’, but really I’m a kind of glorified orderly. I have had a certain amount of trouble in my own life with mental health, mostly when I was a teenager, and mostly because of my father, but I won’t get into that now; the people in the secure psychiatric ward put paid to any real doubts I’ve ever had about my own sanity. Most of them are stark raving lunatics. On my first day at work when I went into the men’s toilet the sink was missing; the night before one of the patients had accidentally torn it from the wall when he used it as a launch pad in an attempt at suicide-by-hanging; he’d almost drowned instead when his not inconsiderable weight brought down the sink and flooded the bathroom.
This craziness, and the trauma and drugs that accompany its treatment, means that here in the hospital among the staff there is a hardy camaraderie which translates into a lot of joking and a certain amount of drink-fuelled high-jinks in the pub after work. At least, that’s what I am told; I tend not to socialise much, actually not at all, with my colleagues, mainly because of my duties at home with the boy. At the end of the day, I’m not really a very sociable person, a bit shy even. But at work we all get on famously, or so I thought. My favourite colleague was always very kind to me, sweet and good natured, even though she was a high-up consultant and I was a low-down orderly.