by Nev Fountain
‘You see a lot of…lesser people…let’s call them TV reviewers…’
‘Smoky’ didn’t begin to describe her voice. ‘Cured like a kipper’ was a more apt description.
‘No, no, let’s call them by their proper name… You see, a lot of bastards…’
This elicited a polite chuckle from her followers.
‘They looked down on us; they looked down on me… They looked at Vixens and they said “What a load of rubbish”…’
Cue sympathetic noises.
‘And they were right of course… It is rubbish…’
As the sycophantic chorus were all fans of Vixens, this polite chuckle sounded a little more forced.
She meandered on. ‘But the mistake they made was going: “It’s rubbish, so it’s all rubbish… So the acting’s rubbish.” But it’s not. It’s the most marvellous acting there is. It’s better than the RSC, you know.’
‘Oh I agree,’ one was eager to chip in. ‘It’s just what I’ve been saying for years. It’s what I said in the piece I wrote for Into the Void fanzine… “Both Vixens and Shakespeare have metaphor and meaning that strike to the very heart of the human condition.”’
‘That’s right, Darren darling,’ Vanity agreed drunkenly, nodding vigorously but not listening to a word. ‘Absolutely… I mean, any old fart with a cravat and an Equity card can make Shakespeare sound good… But to make the crap we were forced to spew up week in, week out sound like it wasn’t written by an illiterate hack…’ She raised her voice so it could reach the other side of the room. ‘No offence, Mervy dear…’
‘None taken, dear,’ yelled Mervyn affably, who knew Vanity of old.
‘No, to make that old toss sound decent. That took real talent… Hmm? Hmm?’ Her head swivelled around glassily looking for endorsement, but she found only terrified smiles.
‘I’ve got a present for you. I got it at auction,’ cooed Darren, seizing his chance to stem her tirade. Reaching behind a table, he pulled out a Sketchleys bag. Tearing the plastic covering off, he revealed an eye-watering tangerine outfit which was a shiny basque combined with lycra sleeves and tights, and bedecked with silvery epaulets and a shimmering cloak. He also produced some fearsome-looking knee-length boots, and a hat which he perched on the ensemble—something not unlike a Roman legionnaire’s helmet, but with a very 80s-style mirrored visor fastened to the front.
‘Now this, would you believe…’ he said with a breathless pause ‘…is one of your actual costumes from the original series.’
Vanity wrinkled her nose and blew a drunken raspberry with her lips.
‘It smells a bit, I’m afraid,’ grovelled Darren. ‘I think it’s mothballs.’
‘More like fag ash and KY jelly…’ said a voice in an incredibly loud stage whisper.
The level of noise in the room dipped as every third conversation ended. Everyone knew that the ill-disguised whisper came from Katherine Warner.
Here we go, thought Mervyn, again.
Actresses don’t have face-to-face cat-fights. Mervyn had never seen the screeching, face-slapping, cheek-scratching, hair-tugging or blouse-ripping found in 1970s British sex comedies. In his experience, actresses do their scrapping while pretending to do something else—like magicians; ostentatiously flourishing their cuffs and talking nineteen to the dozen to distract the audience’s attention from what they’re really doing.
By way of example, Vanity Mycroft’s eyes didn’t flicker. She didn’t look over to Katherine Warner, or even acknowledge she’d heard anything. She simply carried on her conversation, patting Darren ostentatiously on the knee and raising her voice. ‘Don’t worry about the smell, Darren dear. It’s a lovely gesture…’ She held it admiringly. ‘It’s nice to have it. I don’t expect they kept yours, Katherine darling. They probably sent it back to the hire shop with all the other extras’ costumes…’
Over in the corner, Katherine continued talking to a man who’d been invited because he’d played one-third of a crab creature in 1988. She also acted as though she hadn’t heard anything, but her smile intensified, her conversation grew more animated and her laughter tinkled in the air as if crab-man was the most fascinating person she’d ever met. It didn’t escape Mervyn’s attention that the red-slashes of her fingernails were massaging the flute of her glass as if they were contemplating smashing it on the table and shoving the jagged remains into someone’s face.
‘But surely,’ one of the fans said to Vanity, with a touch of desperation, ‘you must have some affection for the time you spent on the show…?’
She looked at him pityingly. ‘Oh, I suppose so… One does sometimes get misty-eyed for the old days.’
The voice from the corner floated up again. ‘That’ll be the cataracts, dear.’
Vanity continued talking without missing a beat. ‘But it’s so difficult to be nostalgic about it… Unlike some actresses it wasn’t my whole career, just a very small part of it…’
‘Yes… You did have a very long career. What was it like, working with Muffin the Mule…?’
‘No dear, I’m so forgetful about those days…faces…scenes…scripts… I can’t remember any of my lines any more… What about you Katherine? Do you still remember your line?’
Thankfully, it was nearly ten o’clock, and a couple of stewards came in to take the actresses to the stage. They all set off to tell the attendees their chummy backstage anecdotes. For an hour, their bitchiness would be buried beneath a practised air of bonhomie. Mervyn smiled. Through their networks, fanzines and exhaustive research, the fans knew about every temper tantrum and spat the women ever had. Vanity and Katherine wouldn’t be fooling anybody.
Simon glided past, and Mervyn grabbed his arm.
Simon recoiled like he’d been touched by a passing vagrant. It was always the paradox of these conventions, Mervyn thought. The fans love us, and want us to be with them, but hate us for having nothing better to do BUT be with them. ‘Actually Simon, I wondered—’
‘Lumme, it’s been an utter nightmare out there, I have to say. The dealers are at war over their tables. One’s got a wobbly one and is worried about souvenir mug breakage…’
‘Actually Simon; could I have a word about my room? You see, it’s right over the car park, and I did ask if I could—‘
‘Ah, sorry Mervyn, hotel’s completely chocka. I’d like to help, but they’re being difficult as it is, and I don’t want to give them more ammunition in the Blu-Tack war.’ Simon pulled a tight little expression intended to show some kind of regret, which was as insincere as a spam e-mail informing you that she’d seen your profile on a website, was waiting for you at the end of a phone line and was as horny as hell.
‘Is that all right?’
‘No problem,’ said Mervyn lamely, but his response was drowned by an eruption from the other side of the room. Morris had just told Vanity something she didn’t like.
‘What? I’m where?’ she screeched. ‘First floor? With the plebs?’
Simon hurried over and flashed his teeth. ‘Vanity, the room you’ve been given is perfectly adequate.’
‘Well that’s easy for you to say. You rub shoulders with these “people” all the time. There’s an aura I have to cultivate, a distance. They’ll be pushing notes under my door and trying to pick my lock to get at my knickers.’
‘Husband finally got you to wear that chastity belt, then…’ muttered Simon, not quite under his breath.
If Vanity heard him, she chose not to mention it. ‘God knows, I can see I’ve done far too many of these things. I’m old news, far too ubiquitous to be given decent treatment any more. I’m a convention whore. A fixture.’
She gestured around the room to the inoffensively offensive hotel décor and focused on Mervyn. ‘I’m always here, Mervy. You can just nail me up on the wall with the fire-regulations and pictures of fruit. Oh no. He wouldn’t do that.’ She eyeballed Simon. ‘Not allowed to use nails on the hotel walls are you? Perhaps you could stick me up using a combinatio
n of Blu-Tack and pin boards?’
Simon glared at her. ‘We do have a rule, don’t we Vanity, the one about hissy fits at conventions…?’
‘Not this time, Simon!’ She levelled a finger at him and jutted her jaw defiantly. ‘Not now my autobiography is out! Not this time and not any more!’
She turned abruptly, the coat draped on her shoulder swirling around her like a cloak, and left.
CONVIX 15 / EARTH ORBIT ONE / 10.00am
EVENT: VANITY MYCROFT, Katherine Warner INTERVIEW
LOCATION: Vixos Central Nerve Centre (main stage, ballroom)
EVENT: ‘ASSASSINS OF DESTINY’ PART ONE, EPISODE SCREENING
LOCATION: The Catacombs of Herath (video lounge—room 1024)
EVENT: PHOTOS, PAUL CHESTER-ALLEN
LOCATION: Transpodule Chamber (room 1030)
EVENT: AUTOGRAPH PANEL—NICHOLAS EVERETT, WILLIAM SMURFETT, ANDREW JAMIESON LOCATION: Arkadia’s Boudoir (room 1013)
EVENT: WHAT IS ‘CANON’? VIXENS EXPERTS PANEL with Graham Goldingay, Fay Lawless,Craig Jones, Darren Cardew
LOCATION: The Seventh Moon of Groolia (room 1002)
CHAPTER FIVE
The convention was getting under way.
Mervyn remembered the routine. All around the hotel, confused convention attendees who didn’t know when anything was happening were talking to other confused attendees who didn’t know where anything was happening, and seeking out stewards who didn’t know when or where or how anything was happening, if indeed anything was going to happen at all.
There were one or two elusive people who did know when, where and how everything was going to happen, but they were hiding in the green rooms with the guests who didn’t need to know what, when or how everything was going to happen as they were shepherded everywhere by attentive staff for the whole weekend.
Even further down the evolutionary scale from those getting their bearings in the foyer was the sad collection of people who had just got to the hotel, and were milling around reception, carrying coats, lugging holdalls and dragging suitcases on wheels.
Mervyn did know where he was going. He didn’t trust anyone to show him anywhere, so for his journey to the autograph room, he’d marked it very clearly on his little map with felt pen. He didn’t like nasty surprises. But he got one anyway.
The moment he left the hospitality room, someone leapt out and grabbed his arm. He screamed with sheer brain-addled terror.
‘Roddy! You nearly gave me a heart attack!’
‘Is he about?’ Roddy blurted.
‘Is who about?’
‘You know very well, old chap. Him. The Quisling.’
He must have meant Simon. ‘He’s just left.’
Roddy stared at him with wide, poached-egg eyes. ‘He keeps us here against our will you know… We can’t leave.’
‘Roddy. It’s a hotel. You can leave whenever you want.’
‘Nonono… He won’t let us… Because his masters won’t let him.’ He nodded his head downstairs. ‘The ones…down there. His robot masters.’
‘What?’
‘It’s like the Japs all over again. The war’s over, but they won’t admit it… There’s only one way out of here and that’s in a wooden box.’ A thought seemed to strike him. ‘Unless…well, there is a way out, isn’t there?’
‘What’s that?’
A sly look flickered in the old man’s eyes. ‘I’m not going to dig a tunnel, am I, old boy?’
Not for the first time, Mervyn wondered how much of Roddy’s bewildered bluster was an act, and how much was a whisky-induced plunge into fantasy.
‘Really, Roddy… That’s very… Interesting.’
Mervyn retrieved his sleeve from Roddy—not without some difficulty—and stumbled to the lifts.
CONVIX 15 / EARTH ORBIT ONE / 11.00am
EVENT: THE DVD TEAM INTERVIEW: ROBERT MULBERRY, TREVOR SIMPSON, IVOR QUIGLEY LOCATION: Vixos Central Nerve Centre (main stage,ballroom)
EVENT: ‘PRISON PLANET’ EPISODE SCREENING
LOCATION: The Catacombs of Herath (video lounge—room 1024)
EVENT: AUTOGRAPH PANEL—VANITY MYCROFT, BERNARD VINER, MERVYN STONE, PAUL CHESTER-ALLEN
LOCATION: Arkadia’s Boudoir (room 1013)
EVENT: PHOTOS, RODERICK BURGESS
LOCATION: Transpodule Chamber (room 1030)
EVENT: WRITING VIXENS FAN FICTION, FAN PANEL with Graham Goldingay, Fay Lawless, Craig Jones, Darren Cardew
LOCATION: The Seventh Moon of Groolia (room 1002)
CHAPTER SIX
Back in the mists of history, when he was introduced to his first ever autograph session, Mervyn thought it looked like a sweatshop.
Two hours and several hundred signatures later, after he’d lost the feeling in his wrist, he realised it was a sweatshop.
This one was like most others. There were the stars sitting behind tables against the far wall, and there was an incredibly long queue of fans stretching through the hotel lounge, clutching books, posters and bits of paper. Every so often the stewards would allow a half-dozen of them through, and they would rush eagerly to their chosen idol.
Posters were everywhere (attached to the wall with Post-it notes, which weren’t proving very effective as some were already peeling off). On them, scrawled in fat, hostile capitals, were the words:
PLEASE NOTE!!! 1) ONLY ONE AUTOGRAPH PER PERSON! 2) ONLY OFFICIAL MERCHANDISE! 3) PUBLICITY PHOTOS WILL BE AVAILABLE FROM THE STARS FOR A FEE IF YOU HAVE NOTHING TO SIGN!
Simon Josh was there, a grin sliding around his face. Mervyn remembered Roddy’s words, and it did strike him that Simon was strolling around in a way not unlike that of a Nazi commandant of a prison camp.
Tucked in at the end of a long line of tables, Mervyn could see a spindly man with greasy hair and shiny black eyes, sitting like a sinister teddy bear, magic marker at the ready.
He couldn’t be here could he? Signing autographs? Not him? But yes, it was Bernard Viner.
Bernard was the special effects supervisor on Vixens, and a deeply angry person. He was a man who constructed grudges as slowly and methodically as he constructed little model spaceships, and he had a huge grudge against Mervyn. Mervyn had lost Bernard his job on Vixens, and even though it was pretty much Bernard’s fault, he hadn’t forgotten and hadn’t forgiven. Mervyn made a mental note to avoid him as much as he possibly could.
Bernard hadn’t lost his touch. Every so often he would snarl at a luckless fan: ‘I told you—I do signatures only! I don’t do personal messages. Are you deaf or something?’ When he did sign a picture, it was done slowly and methodically and in complete silence.
Mervyn hoped this wasn’t going to be too arduous. With any luck this convention was full of fans uninterested in the behind-the-scenes team and they would flock to the actors instead.
As if on cue, one of those actors made a fashionably late entrance into the hall. Vanity Mycroft sashayed in through the double doors like a catwalk model, surveying the room with a graceful sweep of her whole body before striding in. Assorted fans and hangers-on chugged along in her wake, like tiny boats tooting the homecoming of a mighty battle-scarred warship.
At first, Mervyn assumed she had dressed down—jeans, jacket and plain blouse—but as she got closer he realised that the ensemble was a riot of labels; Gucci this, LaCroix that, Paul Smith the other. Mervyn wasn’t an expert on such things, but even he could recognise the studied casualness of designer clothing when he saw it.
Wait a minute… As she got closer…?
She was heading straight for him. Mervyn realised with a start that the seat next to him was empty, and the tiny printed card on the table by his right elbow read ‘V. Mycroft’.
She threw herself into the seat, and addressed her entourage. ‘Right. Mummy’s on duty now. Off you fuck.’ Her fans dribbled away, save for one thin-faced girl in a cardigan who produced a number of sparkly magic-marker pens, an ashtray and a packet of Benson and Hedges and arranged them in front of Vanity. The girl
then pulled a number of photos from a folder and fanned them out on the table. Vanity pulled her sunglasses down her nose and turned her bottle-green eyes towards Mervyn.
‘Mervyn darling, what a lovely surprise. How are you?’ She grabbed his knee with surprising force.
Close up, Vanity was impressive. She had a striking, chiselled face, well preserved by alcohol and botox. A face which had only recently begun to curl at the edges. In ten years’ time it would probably implode, the wrinkles would mesh together to form the gnarled look that was the trademark of oak trees and the long-term chain-smoker, but for the moment she was an impressively attractive woman.
Vanity didn’t bother to introduce the girl, who had meekly taken a seat and was lurking somewhere to her right. Presumably she was a personal assistant and general dogsbody.
The actress pulled a cigarette out of the packet, slotted it in her mouth and ignited it with a huge gold lighter (did anyone ever have the courage to tell her the hotel was non-smoking? he wondered). Her face almost turned inside-out with pleasure as she took a grateful drag.
‘Ready for another hour of legalised slave labour under the lash of Mr Josh?’ she drawled. ‘Greasy little bastard wants a pound of my flesh. I should have sent him the off-cuts from my last surgery.’
‘I noticed you weren’t happy with him,’ said Mervyn.
‘You could say that, darling. All settled now. Tripled my fee and got a better room so I don’t have to choke on the great unwashed’s BO. I showed that pubic-headed prick who’s boss, thanks to my book. If the pen’s mightier than the sword, I’ve given him a good hard jab in the arse with my biro.’
Mervyn was curious. ‘Good autobiography is it?’
‘Of course it is, darling. It’s all about me.’
‘Am I in it?’
‘Darling! How could you not be in it?’ And she winked slyly.