That morning we act different portions of London Spy, often the same bit several times. Sometimes I’m a twenty-something Danny, sometimes I’m Scottie, the wizened civil servant to whom he pours out his story, and whose love for Danny goes unnoticed. Mary plays opposite me, she directs, she breaks into improvisation, all the time watching with something on her face. Is it a frown? A scowl? I can’t tell.
We start the afternoon with a DVD of silent video clips of Bob, walking, talking, sitting, standing. I’m glad we’re on to the real thing. For one thing I’ve got used to an extra inch in my observation of the world, which I resent. From thirteen I’ve told myself that the difference in our heights is nothing. I’m annoyed to discover that I was wrong. She gets me to move like Bob, doing the things we’ve just watched.
Then we listen to audio clips – short bursts of my brother in conversation, on the phone, canvassing in the street, Prime Minister’s Questions in the Red Lion, interviews, announcements, speeches, the lot. After each clip she asks me to say a few sentences. It’s childish stuff and it’s dragging.
By the end of the afternoon my confidence and my temper are slipping. I stand over her and glower. ‘You may be here for the money but I’m here because my friend had his ribs smashed and got dropped off a four-storey block. Just get over treating me like some shit acting student. Or do you do that with all your actors?’
Mary doesn’t move an inch. ‘So, you can do temper. Patrick wondered about that – it seems Bob can do quite a rage.’ She looks up at me. ‘Tomorrow you and I need to have a talk,’ she says. ‘Your acting’s not shit, but when you’re acting your brother you are shit. Both of us need to sleep on it and figure out why that is.’
Dinner is Tupperware chicken tikka masala (Friday). Weirdly, London Spy is re-running on Sky – maybe she chose that play so I could see what good looks like? I nurse my grievances with that and a rosé from the Co-op’s chill cabinet. I don’t know what Mary’s problem is but I know my brother. Not just his back story but my hacker’s back door into his soul. Something I’ve never shared with anybody. Mary Lee Gannon, stand by to be blown away.
31
London, May 1997
Saturday morning. May 1997, the dawn of cool Britannia. Sellotaped to my bedroom mirror is the question, What is revealed, and concealed, about the character of Macbeth by the scene in which we first meet him? I’m cramming for my English and history re-takes at an FE/FF college. FE as in ‘further education’, FF as in ‘fixing failures’. They’re fixing me so I don’t mind. Drama at uni will be my way out of an estate where all the blocks are named after Shakespeare’s plays. The confusion between the two parts of Henry IV is massive.
I try to get out of my bedroom but fly half legs block the way. Bob is propped against the hall radiator with a can of Tennents Super clutched precariously in his fist. A dead one lies by his side on the weather-beaten carpet. Early showers of 9% lager, clearing later, some risk of cigarette ash after dark – that’s the kind of weather the carpet has seen over the years.
This must be Bob’s first night at home since he went to live on that boat two years ago. That didn’t last nine months. Still, the money he nicked got him a flat-share.
Ma got in about three this morning. Getting her key in the lock takes ten minutes, but she does insist on banging a bottle of Château Shit against the door-knocker at the same time. That’s her out – as in ‘unconscious’ – till lunchtime. I didn’t hear Bob let himself in after three, so he might be half-sober.
‘Jack,’ he says, waving dregs of lager in my direction. He adjusts his limb position so I can get out of the bedroom.
Will getting to the bathroom be worth the bother if he’s thrown up in the sink? Thanks to the half-sober bit, the bathroom’s fine. I pick ma’s polyester dressing gown off the bathroom floor and wear it into the kitchen. In England the answer is always the kettle and a bacon sarnie. Like hell am I going to the corner shop to get Bob breakfast, though, if that’s why he’s come round. I assert this vigorously but of course I do. Twenty minutes later his three strips of bacon lie fraternally alongside mine, deliquescing white gunk into the pan.
Bob starts fishing for £50 from the emergency stash that he knows I keep. Well, someone has to – and someone has to keep moving it around to stop ma finding it. I tell him to eff off, who’s the one who keeps bending my ear about how much money he’s making? But he’s fishing out of habit, not need. Money isn’t the reason he’s come round.
‘You definitely going, Jack?’ he says.
‘Going where?’
‘To the University of the…’
‘…Elephant and Castle.’ I voice Bob’s sarcasm for him. ‘You found your way out; this is mine.’
‘More classrooms and no money is out?’
The fact that it makes no sense to him may be the reason why I’m doing it, but I don’t say so. Instead I serve up on the kitchen table. Bob’s left arm reaches for ketchup, exposing his scar. ‘I’m hoping you haven’t got any more of those,’ I say, pointing.
‘No,’ he replies. His eyes light up at an unopened two litres of Coke in the fridge. He pours himself some. ‘Do you want to know how I really got that?’
Do I look like I give a shit? But he’s going to tell me. This is the reason he has come round: I’m to see one more time his certificates from the University of Life.
‘I make it a few months after Jules tops himself. People come for the boat, I get into a flat-share. I start to make some money doing what I learned from Jules, and reading up. Did I tell you I started reading the Financial Times?’
I groan inwardly and start another roll-up. Only thirty-five times, mate. I guess a paper full of numbers is no bad choice for a useless speller.
‘Yeah, I’m getting a proper head on my shoulders. In ’95 the markets are stonking. In ’96 not so bad. And this year so far – pretty good. They’re going to turn, markets always do. It’s like the two halves of a game, except you don’t know when the ref’s going to blow the whistle. Punters keep cheering and whistling, thinking this is the life, except they’ve never seen the players change ends. When that happens they’re stuffed.
‘Anyway I’m not reading the pink ’un in 1995, I’m hanging out with mates who are still in school. I’m showing off some of the money, nothing too heavy, but the attention’s cool. A few guys from the gangs hang round. A bit is respect, we’ve all shown we can fuck the system and do our own thing. And a bit is they’re sniffing around to see if I am dealing, and if I am and it isn’t drugs, what the fuck is it, and is it something they want a slice of. And Tel, the kid who ends up on the slab, he’s one of those. You remember Tel? For a youngster he had a lot of mouth.’
When Bob tells a story, he tells a story. He has to be the centre of attention. To be honest, it gets on my tits. ‘Yeah, Bob, I got it. You’re with Tel, his gang are somewhere else, another gang jumps you, six against two, heroes all round except one of you dies – and that’s Tel. Needless to say, the Old Bill and the CCTV caught nothing.’
‘You remember well, Jack. Maybe that’s why you want to become an actor, all that remembering they have to do.’ Bob cuffs me on the cheek, not friendly, not unfriendly. ‘When someone makes up a nice story, someone remembering it is appreciated. Put a bit more energy into it when you’re on the big stage, though? They need to hear you in the cheap seats.’ He scrapes back his chair and picks up his plate. ‘Thanks for the brekkie, I appreciated that and all.’
He puts rind into the bin and the plate into the sink, letting the hot tap run. ‘There weren’t no gangs that evening, just Tel and I. We had an argy-bargy. He was a bit of a racist cunt, as it goes. He pulled a knife but didn’t know what the fuck he was doing. Neither did I, but I thought I did. I grabbed his knife and stabbed him. Fuck me he bled so much, it was all over my shoes. I thought about it, picked up the blade, ran off towards a call box, cut myself and chucked the knife. I dial
led an ambulance. When they asked me if anyone else was in trouble, I said no.’
The hot tap makes gurgling sounds. I’m feeling feverish and sick. My brother thought about it and left Tel to bleed to death. He’s conned me, he’s conned all of us. He’s lived this lie for a year and a half, effortlessly.
Bob finishes the torture. ‘’Course they questioned me about that later, why I said there was no-one else. But I was faint, wasn’t I? Losing blood, didn’t understand, saw Tel showing a clean pair of heels. Must’ve got confused.’
Bob’s hand has landed on my arm. I back away.
‘I didn’t figure on telling anyone,’ Bob says, ‘but you’re my bro. You want go to college and do make-believe, good luck to you. Why would I tell you what to do? But when the make-believe bits are over, you might need somebody’s help to see the world how it really is, not how you fancy-pants imagine it might be. Guess what? That somebody might just be a shit-bag like me.’
Ma wakes up gone two o’clock. She sees two plates in the sink and vomit in the bathroom. The vomit’s mine but fortunately the little carroty bits come without ID. I threw up after Bob left, craving the sweet relief of toxin that’s gone. I tell her Bob came round. I also tell her I’m going to be finding myself a stage name.
She smiles. ‘You’re a nice boy, Jack,’ she coos. ‘Choose something nice.’
‘So fucking nice I’ll make it my real name.’
32
Brixham, Saturday 30 May 2020
On Saturday morning I’m cut with a scalpel by Tadeusz, who is to be my digital ghoster, and then slain with an axe by Mary. Tad introduces himself after my work-out with the trainer. He is a pimply twenty-year-old, the sides of whose spectacles are fat and the colour of custard. Somehow he hasn’t joined the Vigilance. Tad is to see me twice a week to re-arrange my digital footprint, so that on the beach of social media my track will stagger erratically towards the water’s edge. He adds short posts dated a few months ago to allude to a possible directing contract somewhere hot. A couple of pictures show cautious experimentation with beard growth. More recently I make a lame joke about becoming a tax exile and ‘like’ Islam for Dummies – all with the appropriate metadata, of course.
A few bits I have to do in person – a row with Troy, for example, in which we will fire each other in clouds of telephonic spittle. The plan is marvellous. Troy will decipher the fake row in a flash: if Zack, the lowest of the low, is dispensing with his services, then a contract is in the offing and Troy’s ten per cent is about to be stolen. In the meantime Tad will create some desultory gossip among my acquaintances that finally something might be happening for Zack, one year tax-free in a Middle East country which is burning money to create the incense of cultural capital. It’s nothing of artistic interest but tax-free moolah in the bank, but keep it quiet because Troy will be on it like a truffle hound.
The scalpel moment comes when Tad explains how easy the job is, because apart from Kathy I have no real friends.
An hour later Mary completes the job. Archie, her Labrador, scampers ahead of us on the concrete slipways built to embark soldiers for D-Day. We walk the length of Brixham’s breakwater. It’s almost June but the locals aren’t fooled: English coastal wind chill is showing what it can do. I have my wig and Saltrock hoodie on. Still, the breakwater, a mile away and extending half a mile from the shoreline, should afford us privacy. I tell Mary the true story of Bob’s scar – a story I’ve never told anyone before. I’m glad the wind whips my shameful words away.
Except that for a few seconds we’re not alone. A windsurfer blasts past ten feet from us at the speed of a motorbike, heading out into the Channel. The speed comes from a sail twice my height, held taut by the weight of the surfer’s body adjusting to the south-westerly gusts. She is being filmed from a drone which misses us by inches, paralleling the surfer’s track, both moving with no sound except for the hiss of the surfboard’s wake. We watch both recede and vanish.
Mary uses her walking stick to ease herself into a sitting position on the breakwater’s edge, so I follow her. Archie climbs into her lap. ‘That’s a big story to carry around on your own – for how long?’
‘More than twenty years.’
‘Obviously, it might be true. I’ve no magic window into that, since I wasn’t there.’
Where’s she going? Of course she wasn’t there.
‘And you weren’t there either, when the fight happened.’
She’s not just getting under my skin, she’s drawing blood. I’ve shared something profoundly private and distressing about the person I have to become, and her reaction isn’t anything I could have anticipated. ‘No,’ I protest. ‘But Bob’s my brother. I’ve known him since I was this high. He told me. He didn’t have to, but he did.’
And so to the axe blow. ‘What strikes me as important about the story you have told, given the work we have to do, is that you so very badly want it to be true.’
Why would I want a fifteen-year-old, any fifteen-year-old, to die on London’s streets? To faint and bleed to death at my brother’s callous hands? How could I want a story which made me physically sick to be true? I nearly hit her, and we argue for forty minutes.
Then, with the slow purposefulness of a salvage master righting a wrecked ship, Mary persuades me to entertain the possibility that thousands upon thousands of gallons of certainty which have seeped into my holds during childhood and ballasted my adult life should be pumped out.
Mary says that the path to my succeeding in my mission is blocked by unhelpful certainties. I’m convinced that I know my brother deeply. And most likely, once upon a time we did understand each other and were close. But then not being him – not in appearance, not in name and certainly not in character – became the foundation on which I built three decades of my identity. A foundation whose certainty we now need to disturb, because – says Mary – it’s obstructing my seeing him as he actually is. A wrinkling of his brow, edges like flint in his voice, the swoop of his shoulders: I see what I know is there, not what’s there.
‘You want me to change my beliefs about Bob. You want me to believe something else killed Tel.’
Mary shakes her head emphatically. ‘No! I’ve told you already. How would I know? Believe the story but don’t hold on so tight.’ She clenches both fists and then unbends her fingers. ‘Something else might be true.’ She taps her forehead. ‘Acting with a closed mind is acting with closed eyes.’
‘So what else might be true about Tel?’
‘Lots of things. The obvious one is that Bob made up a story which he wanted you to believe. He comes one night for no very apparent reason. There isn’t much love lost between the two of you yet he trusts you with something which, if true, he has every reason to keep to himself. It’s ghastly. Because it’s ghastly you believe it. Your brother knows you well enough to work that out.
‘Maybe there’s nothing accidental about the timing. You are about to go to university, a chance he probably won’t have. Of course, Bob makes very loud noises indeed to say you are the foolish one. We all do this. What’s Bob’s payoff? The story will big him up in your eyes – big in hate rather than admiration, but needs must. Also, he gets to pull the wool over your eyes – you might go to university but he is smarter. But there’s got to be a payoff for you as well, or else you wouldn’t have clutched the story so tightly for twenty-five years. Is this the payoff: however poorly things go in your life, you will never, ever, be as bad as your brother?’
‘That could be. I’ve never thought about it like that.’ A cast iron bollard which can carry the weight of my world appears, and I sit on it. Where in a life do you find the rewind button?
A few minutes of silence lie between us before Mary wraps up. ‘One final thing. Stop thinking that you’re being asked to play the “real” Bob, some essence of Bob that starts with his secrets and seeps outward. It’s a natural mistake, but there would be
no point in substituting you for your brother if you were going to be exactly the same. No-one’s asking you to live as Bob for several months without being noticed. Your challenge is to do something – we don’t know what – which he would never do, and have people say, “Bob, what the fuck?” and not, “Who are you?”’
33
London, Tuesday 2 June 2020
From the BBC’s lunchtime news:
The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Justin Welby, wore a ‘B’ at the funeral this morning of murdered banker, Alan Tinker. At the request of the Lord Mayor, the funeral was held at St Paul’s Cathedral. All the banks in the City were represented.
The Archbishop told a packed congregation that Jesus had mixed with the disreputable money-men of his day as well as with the poor. Moreover he died when the government washed its hands of the consequences of mob rule.
Alan Tinker, 73, fell to his death in a car park in Wandsworth on 22 May. Parts of a Vigilance drone were found at the scene. A police spokeswoman said that investigations continue. ‘The drone may well have come to Mr Tinker’s aid but succumbed to the ferocity of his assailants.’
Archbishop Welby worked for many years in corporate finance and served on the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards. His office did not know whether he would be permitted to wear a ‘B’ on state occasions. Although the Archbishop and Mr Tinker both studied at Eton, their periods there did not overlap.
34
Brussels, Thursday 11 June 2020
From the weekly media briefing by the President of the European Commission:
Journalist 1: What about the new directive on minimum qualifications for high office?
Ducros: I find it not that interesting.
Journalist 1: In future members of the Commission and heads of national governments will need a minimum of three years’ full-time education post-18.
Time of Lies Page 17