by Elton, Ben
Trent pressed the forward button on his control.
A boy band appeared. ‘We’re the Four Busketeers and we are in it to win it.’
‘No, you’re not. Fuck off. Next,’ said Calvin.
An overweight housewife with a strong Dorset accent and a lisp.
‘Moi name’th Thuthan an’ Oim goin’ ta thing “Thomething” by George Harrithon.’
‘Definitely. Love her for a one-shot Ming,’ said Calvin. ‘Next.’
Two nerdy sisters with glasses and big hoop earrings.
‘Fine,’ said Calvin before they could open their mouths. ‘Ming montage. Next.’
A boring-looking middle-aged man.
‘Hi. I’m Stanley.’
‘Why’s he here?’ Calvin asked.
‘He can sing and he’s a single dad,’ piped up a researcher from the back.
‘That’s right, chief,’ Trent reiterated unnecessarily. ‘He can sing and he’s a single dad.’
‘Does he have a job?’
‘No, he’s bringing up his kids on benefits.’
‘OK, we’ll have him. Next!’
A sweet old grannie.
‘Not sweet enough. Next.’
A cute, precocious five-year-old kid.
‘Not cute and precocious enough. Next.’
A plain-looking girl with a crew cut.
‘Hmm, not bad,’ Calvin said. ‘Tell me about her.’
‘Name’s Tabitha,’ said Trent.
‘Lesbian?’ Calvin enquired.
‘Yes,’ said Chelsie. ‘The girlfriend’s gorgeous, totally gorgeous, a real classic lipstick lezza and she strips. Professional pole dancer, don’t you love it? The guys want to screw her but she’s a lady’s lady.’
‘The girlfriend, not her?’ said Calvin, indicating the rather severe-looking plain Jane on screen.
‘No.’
‘So why isn’t the girlfriend fucking auditioning?’
‘Well, she didn’t—’
‘Will the girlfriend be prepared to feature?’
‘Definitely, she was with Tabitha at the audition.’
‘Good, make sure she’s there. Next.’
The next person to appear on the screen was Shaiana. Glancing at Emma’s notes, Trent could see that she had marked her down as a real prospect. MAJOR CLINGER was written across her photograph in the turquoise ink of Emma’s neat, attractive, feminine hand.
‘I think this one’s a goer, boss,’ said Trent. ‘Major Clinger.’
Calvin studied the young woman frozen on the screen.
‘Yes, she does look pretty intense, doesn’t she?’
Shaiana’s thick make-up and severe fringe gave her face a slightly masklike look, as if it might shatter at any moment.
‘Certainly wouldn’t want to meet her in a dark alley,’ said Calvin. ‘Right, she’s in. Next.’
And so the long day wore on. They plodded through the gruelling process of choosing the finalists and also-rans who would be brought before the three judges, that pre-selected group who would make up the principal ‘characters’ in the Chart Throb story and the ones who, after a lengthy period of ‘auditioning’, would or would not ‘win’ a place in the finals. It was of course possible that Calvin would change his mind along the way as characters developed; nonetheless, the decisions he was making in that room would effectively shape the course of the entire series.
This meeting was probably the most important one in the whole development process and yet, as the afternoon progressed, Calvin appeared to be finding it harder and harder to concentrate. He snapped at people unnecessarily, he asked questions twice, even lost his thread mid-sentence, which made him furious. Nobody had ever seen Calvin lose his thread. Nobody had ever seen Calvin distracted. Something was on his mind but of course nobody dared ask what.
Unemployed Girl
The reason for Calvin’s deteriorating concentration had sat in Soho Square for almost an hour, quite numb with shock.
After that she decided to go shopping.
She could think of nothing else to do with herself. She was certainly not hungry and she could not face going home to her flat in the middle of the day, that flat from which she had emerged in such a sunny mood only a few hours before and to which she must at some point return, rejected and unemployed.
She decided to walk along Oxford Street and get the tube from Oxford Circus to Harvey Nicks. Who knew when she would next be in town? She was out of work and had been sacked from her last job, so she would scarcely get a glowing reference. What could she do now? Retire to South Wimbledon and try to make ends meet, she supposed. Leave London, which she could probably no longer afford, and try to find work elsewhere? Her first job had been writing features for estate agents’ magazines – perhaps she could do that again?
One good thing, she reflected as she stumbled along the crowded pavement, still clutching the useless, empty pink folders that had contained the research notes which Trent had now appropriated, was that whatever idiotic, self-deluded, romantic musings she might have been prey to over Calvin Simms were now exposed as the nonsense they had always been. Calvin was a bastard, she could see that now, he had always been one and yet she had been allowing herself to fall in love with him. Why did she always fancy bastards?
At least she would delude herself no longer over him.
There were even moments during that strange day, as she wandered aimlessly through Harvey Nichols and then on down to Harrods, when she experienced sudden inexplicable rushes of elation as if she had suddenly become wild and free. But as the hours progressed those moments became less frequent and the anguish of victimhood began to settle upon her. She found herself replaying her sacking in her mind, wishing she had said this, fantasizing about saying that, feeling abused and a fool. Memories of her days in crisis counselling came back to her, how often had she listened as tearful girls fixated on how unfair the whole thing was. Why them? Why had they got on to that bus? Walked past that doorway? Agreed to see that boy? Now she herself was the victim, torturing herself for having allowed things to develop as they did, dwelling on how things could so easily have been different.
As the end of the day drew near she began to panic. She did not want to go home yet, it was just too sad, and yet she could not bear to call a friend. She was embarrassed. Eventually people would have to know what had happened: that she had lost her job, her glamorous job, her often jealously resented job. Also that she had lost it at the hands of the man whom all her friends knew she had been developing a crush on. It would all come out in the end. Soon. But not yet.
Just then her mobile rang. The number was withheld and for a moment Emma considered not answering it. She was not in the mood for conversation with a cold caller, but on the other hand life had to go on. Perhaps it would make her feel better to tell some poor wage slave in New Delhi to piss off.
‘Hello,’ she said warily. ‘Emma speaking.’
‘Emma. Hi. It’s Calvin.’
She dropped the phone. It clattered to the ground and the battery popped out of the back. Scrabbling for it on the floor of the shop, she pushed the battery back in, half hoping that somehow the call would still be connected. Of course it wasn’t.
She got up, wondering what to do. What had he wanted? What should she have said? Above all, would he ring again? In a moment she had convinced herself that he wouldn’t. He had intended to apologize and grovel and prostrate himself over the phone and now he would never call again.
Then he did. And it came so suddenly and so sure had she been that it would not come that once more she dropped the phone.
This time, however, it fell into her bag, which she had put down on the floor beside her. It was still ringing, somewhere in the recesses among keys, her purse, loose change, crumpled paper currency, tissues, tampons, scraps of paper, half-eaten packets of mints, books of stamps, pens, an electronic organizer that she never used, receipts, an Oyster card and the tangled wires of her iPod headphones. She knew she had just four rin
gs to retrieve it, of which one and a half had already been exhausted. She did what she had to do: sweeping her bag up from the floor, she took two steps towards a perfume counter and upended it on the glass top. Keys clattered, coins rolled, fluff, dust, sweets and tampons lay about the polished surface. Surprised and angry-looking faces turned towards her. The over-made-up young woman behind the counter glowered and a security guard approached.
‘Doctor on call,’ Emma stated as she swept up her phone and thumbed the green key. ‘Emma speaking.’
‘Please don’t ring off again,’ she heard Calvin say.
‘I didn’t ring off. I dropped the phone,’ she replied as with her free hand she attempted to sweep up the bag debris that littered the counter. ‘But I ought to ring off now. What do you want?’
‘I want to take you to dinner.’
De-blurring
The moment it had dawned upon Calvin that by sacking the cute senior researcher who was blurring his focus he had not restored his clarity at all but actually blurred it further, he resolved that he must meet her and deal with whatever it was that was disturbing him. Therefore, as suddenly as he had sacked her, he decided that he would have to take her out to dinner.
Calvin called a brief coffee break and retrieved Emma’s number from the staff file in his computer.
‘I know you’re free tonight,’ he said, ‘because we might have been working through.’
‘Thanks to you, I’m free for the rest of my life,’ Emma replied.
‘Then come to dinner.’
‘What is this? What’s going on?’
‘I want to buy you dinner.’
‘I don’t want to have dinner. I want my job.’
‘Well, perhaps we can talk about that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Over dinner. We can talk about your job if you want.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t understand. What’s going on, Calvin?’
‘Nothing’s going on.’
‘What the fuck is going on, Calvin?’ she asked angrily. ‘Is this some game you like to play with women you employ?’
‘Look, Emma, nothing’s going on, all right? I do things. I say things. I act on instinct.’
‘You sack people.’
‘Well, I’m sorry. Let me buy you dinner.’
‘No! I don’t want dinner and I don’t like this conversation at all. I don’t like being played with. What’s going on?’
‘I’ve just said nothing’s going on. Stop asking me what’s going on,’ and Calvin’s bossy, commanding tone was already returning. ‘Now listen, I’m mid-meeting, Emma. You know how important today is, you’ve worked on it yourself, damned hard, so I’m not going to continue this conversation until we can speak about it in a more relaxed—’
‘You’re a married man!’
‘I’m not.’
‘You are. The wedding was in Hello!’
‘All right, I am, but she’s history.’
‘Did you sack her too?’
‘No, she . . . Look, what the hell has this got to do with my wife?’
‘Because you’re asking me out to dinner.’
‘Yes, dinner. I’m not proposing marriage.’
‘Well, what are you proposing? What’s going on?’
‘Stop asking me what’s . . . Look . . . Emma, please, you know that I have to get back to this bloody meeting. So stop asking me what’s going on and say you’ll have dinner with me.’
There was a long pause.
‘Emma?’ Calvin insisted. ‘I really have got to get back to my meeting.’
‘All right. Yes. But . . .’
He did not allow her time for caveats.
‘I’ll send a car to your home to pick you up at eight.’
And with that the call ended. Emma stood for a moment staring at her mobile and suddenly she was furious. Livid. The bastard! Who did he think he was? She should never have agreed. Why had she agreed? Why had she not told him to fuck off? And . . . what was she going to wear?
Refocusing
Calvin felt instantly better. For a moment at least he had the best of both worlds. She was not in the room blurring his focus but neither was she blurring his focus by not being in the room because he would shortly be seeing her again. Therefore, for the time being he could address his intellect in its entirety to the job in hand.
‘Next.’
A ‘hilarious’ Goth appeared.
‘I am a member of the Undead and I’ll—’
‘Fine, good. Next.’
Another hilarious Goth.
‘I come from a galaxy far, far—’
‘Pause it. Do we have enough for a Goth montage?’ Calvin asked.
‘I’m afraid not,’ said Trent.
‘What if we throw in the Trekkies and the mystics and make it a weirdo montage?’
‘Then yes, definitely. We’ve got four Elvis reincarnates and a Patsy Cline.’
‘Still no one with the guts to tackle John Lennon, eh?’ Calvin said. ‘OK, keep him. Next.’
More grannies, more cute kids, more ugly nerds, more chippy thugs who thought they were Eminem, and more fat slappers with amusingly strong regional accents.
‘Oim gown t’sing “C’mon Byeby Loit Moy Foyer”.’
‘Love her,’ said Calvin. ‘Next.’
A sad, bald near-midget who confessed to being in love with Beryl: ‘She’s my perfect woman. She’s so kind and lovely I don’t think my restricted height would be an obstacle. With her I could feel ten feet tall.’
‘We keep doing that,’ Calvin snapped angrily. ‘Come on, Trent! Don’t waste my time.’
‘I thought perhaps it could be a running theme,’ Trent replied bravely.
‘What, you mean that Beryl attracts midgets?’
‘Yes, it always works so well. You know, what with Beryl’s whole sexy mum thing. I mean midgets can be sort of cute, can’t they? And they’re child-sized men. It sort of subliminally combines sex and mothering. When she hugs them they get lost under her tits, sort of sexing them and suckling them all in one.’
‘Suckling them? Beryl is a transsexual!’
‘Oh, I really think people have got over that now, boss. She’s everybody’s mum these days.’
‘That is fucking sick. I love it. Keep him in for now. Next.’
A strangely dated-looking young couple who looked like they had dropped in from the 1930s: ‘We are mad about Noel and Gertie,’ the boy said, ‘and would like to sing “Someday I’ll Find You” from Bitter Sweet.’
‘Yes. Good for a quickie. Next.’
And so it went on until eventually Trent’s supply of Ming, Cling and Bling ran out and it was over.
‘That’s it, boss. The best we could find. Of course we probably missed a few but I reckon we got the cream. Apart of course from . . .’
Calvin knew to whom he was referring. They all did.
‘Yes. Now regarding HRH,’ Calvin said, ‘obviously it’s something of a coup for us at Chart Throb that the Prince of Wales has independently applied to test his singing talents and personal mettle against his future subjects and I’m sure we’re all terribly honoured and all that, blah blah blah. But let us never forget that if, and I say if, this man is chosen to proceed through selection it will also be an honour for him! An equal honour, if not a greater one! Yes. Never forget that we are number one, not him! We are number one and he, my friends, is number zero. We at Chart Throb are everything that he as future head of state would like to be but isn’t. First and foremost we are popular! Hugely popular, as popular in fact as he is generally ignored. Also we are democratic. We are as democratic as he is oligarchical, elitist, unaccountable and posh snob snooty. We are modern Britain. He is fuddy-duddy, out of touch, boring old Britain. We represent the people, he represents an outmoded upper class which is struggling to find a role for itself in our meritocratic society. He has come to us, my friends, because he needs us. He wants to reach the people that we reach and show them who he really is. Well,
so be it! He shall have his chance but on a level playing field only. He will receive no special treatment beyond that which meets the minimum requirements for security and the prevention of terrorism. He will be exposed to the public as all our candidates are exposed to the public, for we are judging the man, not the position. He will play by our rules. If, for instance, he wins through to the second round but it clashes with him hosting the Commonwealth Games or attending the State Opening of Parliament, then he’d better be here with us singing “Stand By Me” or he will be OUT. Because we are what matters to the British public today. WE are the masters! So it’s my way or the highway! The Prince of Wales can either shape up or ship out! If he does well then he will have his chance to reach his people. If he comes on all lah-di-dah, posh snob and hoity-toity, and expects special treatment, then he will find himself reduced to a five-second clip in a Minger montage or my name isn’t Calvin Simms and we are not the greatest show on television!’
After a brief pause to ensure that he had finished, the room burst into enormous applause and the meeting broke up on a genuine high.
‘Trent?’ Calvin said, gathering up his papers. ‘In my office.’
He looked at his watch: it was already nearly seven o’clock and he wanted to shave.
‘Well done, Trent,’ he said. ‘Good selection, mate.’
‘Thanks, boss. Great speech about the royal thing. Love it. Dig it. Nobody is bigger than the Throb, right? We can love him or shove him.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, you idiot. Of course we’re not going to shove him. He wants to face a popular vote and he’s going to face one. He’s going through to the finals.’
‘Right. Yes. Of course he is.’
‘That’s why he has to appear to be treated normally.’
‘Yes. Mmmm.’
‘Or it’ll look rigged.’
‘OK. Copy that, boss.’
‘He’s worth a lot more to us on the show than off and the way to keep him on is to give the public a chance to get to know him and like him. They will never like him if they think he’s getting special treatment, will they?’