by Jenny Colgan
Ross, though horrible, was at least efficient. As soon as they’d got the documentation from the European commission (‘who know nothing,’ he had pointed out. ‘They should just have “England – Country of Culture” forever and shut the fuck up about it’) he’d handed it to his idiotic and bouncer-like number two, Dave Gorman, who ran it through a computer programme so they could see what everyone else had done.
‘Flower festival?’ he’d grunted. ‘Crap. International craft exhibition? What unbelievable crap is that? Beer hall? Well, that’s not too bad, I suppose. Apart from being crap!’
He paced around the office. ‘See, the thing is, Fay love, nobody – including your beloved Arfur Pafetic (he thought this was hilarious) – has got a bloody clue, right? I mean, what people actually want.’
He stared at her meaningfully, and she wasn’t sure if it was a rhetorical question or not. ‘Ah mean, what do you want?’
‘I don’t know … um, a baby?’
Ross clearly hadn’t been expecting that.
‘Eh – I mean … I didn’t mean that. I meant, um, shoe shops open all night?’ said Fay quickly.
‘That’s more like it! That’s more getting in with what we’re thinking, right, Dave?’
Dave shrugged. ‘I don’t care much about shoes, like.’
‘No, not shoes, idiot. Consumer bloody choice, innit?’
‘Oh, yeah,’ said Dave.
‘Consumer bloody choice. Bloody free market. Fat lot those bloody bloated Brussels bureaucrats know about that, eh darling?’
Fay nodded, her face still burning as she thought of how her mouth had betrayed her. ‘Yes, definitely.’
‘That’s what we need here. Fun and Stuff to Buy. Makes sense, dunnit?’ He opened up some files he’d been working on. ‘Okay. Listen up.’
Fay and Dave sat attentively.
‘Fay-ona.’ She hated it when he called her this. She suspected he knew that. ‘What do you think when I say to you – theme park?’
She shrugged. ‘Um, vomiting … small children crying … danger … horrible hot dogs … immense queues in the midday sun or pouring rain …’
‘Alright, alright, shut up a minute. Dave, what do you think?’
‘Fun, boss,’ mumbled Dave. ‘Lots of people. Retail opportunities.’
‘That’s right,’ said Ross. ‘Do you see, Fay? Fun. Retail opportunities.’
Fay nodded, trying to look surprised by her own stupidity.
‘What I really wanted to do …’ Ross turned towards the window and sighed, in the manner of one forced to give up his life’s dream of inoculating children in Africa, ‘was to open the biggest casino this side of Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. Oh, it would have been fabulous. The Las Vegas of North-West of London, slightly East of Reading.’ He stared into the middle distance. ‘Twenty-four-hour licensing … people pouring money into machines like there’s no tomorrow …’
‘Organized crime,’ said Dave wistfully.
‘But do you know,’ Ross whipped around, ‘do you know those poxy bloody PC bureaucrats – they don’t fund casino start-ups! Can you believe that?’
Fay shook her head.
‘We give them our bloody sovereignty, our bloody queen’s head on a bloody plate and they can’t even help out with basic bloody fun. Bastards.’
‘So … What are we going to …’
‘FUN!’ roared Ross. ‘We are going to turn Slough into so much FUN you wouldn’t believe. Look at this!’
He lit up the overhead projector and put a slide on it. It was a picture of Slough town centre, complete with the clock tower of the Arndale centre – which now had a roller coaster around it.
‘Ever been on a roller coaster around a city, Fay-ona?’
‘No.’
‘Me neither! That’ll drag the bloody culture punter in. Look, I’ve got pictures of John Betjeman on the cars.’
He pointed to the street level. ‘There we go. Dodgems on the bus lanes. Who needs bloody bus lanes, anyway?’
‘Buses?’
‘Yeah, old people. But this is … A New Slough for a New Millennium. And it’s going to be FUN.’
Fay looked more closely at the drawing. ‘There seem to be an awful lot of hamburger outlets.’
‘Sponsorship, innit? The Brussels Sprouts can’t exactly argue with public private partnership, can they? They bloody invented it.’
‘And what’s that?’ She pointed to a huge tent in the centre of the shopping area.
Ross leaned over the table. ‘What,’ he said, ‘is the one thing that binds our world together through the eyes of the young? That moves us on, that keeps us together no matter what the colour of our skin, our religion, our dreams?’
‘Sunny Delight?’
‘Computer games,’ he said proudly. ‘We’re going to have the best, most fuck-off, brand newest computer games festival in the world. If you can shoot it, punch it, blow it up or drive it off the road, we’ll have it.’
He stood back as if expecting applause.
‘So you’re saying pretty much,’ said Fay, ‘that you’re designing a European festival of culture entirely for fourteen-year-old boys.’
Ross grinned wolfishly. ‘They’re going to inherit the world, aren’t they, pet? There’s your babies.’
Marcus was staring at the spreadsheets in disbelief, as Arthur, Rafe, Cathy, Sven and Gwyneth sat across the table looking like guilty schoolchildren. Sandwiches was sitting on a chair looking martyred; whatever was going on here, this was nothing to do with him.
‘But,’ Marcus said in his pained way, ‘I thought you meant – when you said “management exercise”, I thought you really did mean that it was going to be just a “management exercise”. “Concept” … “Direction”. You know, for imaginations and brainstorming and stuff.’ He said ‘imaginations’ as if he were pronouncing it in a foreign language. ‘I didn’t think we were actually planning to do any dumb idea someone shouted out just because they were cold and wanted to go home.’
The rest of the group looked at him impassively.
‘What next? Do you want to build a wall around the city and dig a moat?’
‘Yes!’ said Arthur, Rafe and Sven simultaneously.
‘I’m being sarcastic. I mean, have you any idea what these kinds of things cost? It’s like, do you want magic elves?’
‘Yes!’ said Cathy and Gwyneth.
‘I’m obviously going to have to work at this sarcasm thing,’ said Marcus, patting his papers carefully. He sighed and sat back in his chair.
‘I mean – it was fun going out and everything, but you’ve read the scroll … I mean, the guidelines. We have to provide sustainable achievable goals to attract people to our environment; to make them happy, and awe-inspired, and give them a sense of learning and wonder.’
‘Do you know what happened the last time someone said that?’ said Arthur, fiddling with his pencil.
‘What – goals?’
‘Yes – goals, targets, sense of learning, sustainable … all that bullshit. Do you know what you get with that?’
‘Projects finished in time and on budget?’
‘You get the bloody MILLENNIUM DOME!’ said Arthur. ‘We are going to have to think just a teeny bit beyond the spreadsheets for once.’
‘I thought the Millennium Dome was quite good,’ said Marcus, straightening his spectacles on his nose. ‘But, I mean, what’s instructive about building the biggest maze in the world?’
‘What’s instructive about having a festival of culture in the first place? We should just give the budget to the hospital to fund kidney machines!’ said Arthur.
There was a long and uncomfortable pause around the table.
‘Um,’ said Gwyneth.
Everyone looked at each other.
‘Well, it’s not called the European City of Kidney Machines,’ said Gwyneth.
‘Maybe it should be,’ said Marcus.
‘Look,’ said Arthur. ‘If we write on our entry forms, “our plans to ma
ke Coventry the European City of Culture are … seventy-five kidney machines,” we’re all going to be back-stapled to our cubicles by the spring.’
‘We need culture,’ said Gwyneth. ‘Have you ever driven past the Angel of the North? Doesn’t it lift your heart when you see it?’
‘Not as much as the sight of a kidney machine would if I was dying of …’ began Sven.
‘Okay, okay,’ said Arthur. He looked around the table. ‘I’m here because I believe in this project.’
‘And to avoid getting made redundant,’ said Sven quietly to Sandwiches.
‘If anyone wants to go off and help the world in some other way, they can. But this is our way, right here. And it’s the best we’re trained for and the best we can do, so I think it’s valid that we try and create something great and wondrous and just brilliant, without focus groups and desperate marketing specs and a million small-minded consultants – sorry, Gwyneth …’
‘Did you mean me in there?’ said Gwyneth. ‘I didn’t think you thought about me like that before. But now I do …’
‘No, I didn’t mean you at all …’
‘Really? Cos it sounded like you did. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have brought it up.’
‘I really wish I hadn’t brought it up.’
‘Yeah, me too. But I guess that’s just because I’m so small-minded.’
‘Ooh, a lovers’ spat,’ said Sven. They shut up after that.
‘We’re going to make this thing work because we believe in it. And that’s all I wanted to say,’ said Arthur, and he sat down again. ‘Now. Marcus. Help us.’
And, inside, he felt strangely excited.
‘Ah, there you are.’ Arthur popped his head round the door. Lynne looked like she was picking something out of a large pile of soil on the floor, although it was hard to tell amongst the haphazard detritus. Outside the window, some beautiful red and gold leaves were gently falling, and there was a smell of bonfires in the air.
Lynne looked up and smiled kindly, taking off her half-moon spectacles and rubbing her nose tiredly.
‘Oh, hello, Arthur.’
‘You haven’t been here when I’ve tried to see you the last couple of times,’ said Arthur. ‘If I wasn’t such an obviously sane person I’d think that my therapist was rejecting me.’
Lynne smiled faintly as if she hadn’t really heard and indicated for him to sit down. ‘How are things?’
‘Better, actually. Since we met you that night … people seem to have been getting more into the spirit of it. Well, apart from going on about the money being better spent on kidney machines.’
‘What’s a kidney machine?’
He squinted at her. ‘You’re joking, right?’
She shrugged.
‘Umm … well, I don’t know what it does. Filters the blood, kind of thing. Does the work of your kidneys if they don’t work properly.’
‘A humer cleanser,’ mused Lynne. ‘Very clever.’
She moved over to the table and started packing away some very old books and some fish skeletons.
‘Anyway, that’s irrelevant. On the whole, apart from Sven’s ongoing deodorant issues, it looks like we might be starting to pull it together.’
Lynne smiled and nodded.
‘What?’ said Arthur instantly when she didn’t say anything.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Just …’
‘Lynne, you’re being almost coy. What is it?’
She lifted a stuffed mongoose down from a high shelf. ‘Give me a hand with this, will you?’
Arthur looked around the office. ‘You’re not leaving, are you? You are. Where are you going?’
‘Oh, Arthur.’ She sighed. ‘I’m not leaving. Well, not yet. But it’s time.’
‘Time for what? What are you talking about? Are you just tidying up and I’ve developed full-blown acute psychosis?’
Lynne sat down. ‘I knew this wasn’t going to be easy,’ she said. ‘You’re all such smartarses these days, and nobody believes in anything.’
‘Huh?’
‘Much easier in the old days, you know. Much.’ She shook her head.
‘Lynne, you’re going to have to tell me what you’re talking about.’
She sighed deeply. ‘Okay, here it comes. You may want to sit down.’
Arthur shrugged his shoulders and didn’t sit down. Lynne prepared her face as if this was a speech she’d had to make dozens of times.
‘Arthur Pendleton, you are a descendant of the once and future king.’
‘I’m a what?’
‘You’re of Arthurian lineage.’
‘Yes, my name’s … What are you talking about?’
Lynne explained it again. ‘You’re a descendant of King Arthur. Pretty directly, in fact. And, as part of that lineage, sometimes you get called when you are needed.’
‘Nope,’ said Arthur. ‘You’ve lost me completely.’
Lynne rubbed her head. ‘Okay. Let’s try this. Been having any strange dreams recently?’
‘No, none at all … except, yes,’ conceded Arthur.
‘Hearing things? Feeling called in any way?’
‘Um, I’m not sure.’
‘But you’ve felt differently, though?’
‘Well, yes, kind of. Yes.’
He was still staring at her. ‘Is this why I think I can ride a horse?’
‘That sounds about right.’
‘So – what … Explain it again.’
‘Well, you know who King Arthur was, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, he’s still King of Britain. Technically. And he is there in times of need. And you are a part of his blood, so you are here in a time of need. That’s why I’m here, too. To make sure you realize that, and stay here, and do your duty.’
‘My what?’
‘Your duty – to this city.’
Arthur sat, looking as if he’d just been hit on the head with a heavy weight. His mouth tried to open, but nothing came out.
‘But –’ he said.
‘Ah …’ he said.
‘This is bullshit,’ he said.
Finally, he thought of something. He sat up straight and looked back at her. ‘Do I … do I get any superpowers?’ he said.
‘No,’ said Lynne.
‘But I have got …’
‘You’ve got a mission,’ she said clearly.
‘Really? What? Will I need a sword?’
She shook her head and smiled. ‘You’re on it, Arthur.’
‘What … what do you mean?’
She spread her arms around. ‘This is it.’
‘What?’ His face fell. ‘Oh, you don’t mean … you don’t mean the City of Culture project?’
Lynne nodded.
‘No. You don’t.’
‘It’s your destiny, Arthur.’
‘What? What! No. You’re telling me I’m a member of this famous lineage and I come from this blood – which is very nice of you by the way, so thanks, although of course I don’t believe you or anything – but if I did, I can’t believe it would be to run a town planning unit on an industrial estate.’
Lynne patted him on the shoulder. ‘You know, most people are very proud.’
‘Yeah, that’s probably because they’ve got dragons to slay and lots of beautiful maidens,’ said Arthur petulantly.
Lynne raised her eyebrows.
‘Are there a lot of us, then?’
‘A few. Some have bigger tasks than others.’
‘Are there any alive now?’
‘I can’t tell you that, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh, go on. Just tell me one.’
She half-smiled. ‘Well, John Lennon was one.’
‘Get out!’
‘No, seriously. Very nice chap.’
‘My dad always said he was our second cousin or something.’
‘Twice removed,’ said Lynne. ‘But yes, he was.’
‘Who else?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Lynne.
She put both hands on his shoulders. ‘What matters is, you have a sacred trust. This city is crying out for beauty, and fairness, and change. And it’s in your hands. This is your Camelot, Arthur. And you must shape it. It’s your destiny.’
Arthur was shaking his head. ‘Who are you?’
Lynne looked at him straight over her glasses. As he looked at her more closely, he finally realized what was so odd about her. Her eyes were hardly those of a person, but those of a hawk. Yellow surrounded an elongated iris.
‘Who do you think?’
‘Oh, this is PREPOSTEROUS!’ Arthur shouted, leaping out of his chair. Lynne turned to pack away some parchment. By the time she turned back, her eyes were completely normal again.
‘There will be dragons, Arthur,’ she said. ‘Just be careful what they look like.’
‘What if I can’t do it?’
‘I’ll be here to help you.’
She patted him once more on the arm. He thought of something.
‘So, presumably, this is where I got my name from?’
Lynne blinked rapidly. ‘No, that’s just a coincidence.’
‘Oh.’
He headed towards the door. Just as he left, Lynne called out, ‘Speak to Fay.’
‘What … Why should I? She’s taken a set of compasses to all my Bruce Springsteen albums and left them on the doorstep.’
‘I mean it, Arthur. You must speak to her.’
‘And tell her what – to leave my albums alone because she’s dealing with a friend of the once and future king?’
She smiled.
‘Godspeed, Arthur.’
Arthur sat up in bed. Since he’d got home, every so often his head would twist around and he would almost feel like giggling. Perhaps this was one of those new management techniques he was always reading about. Convince your workers that it is their true destiny to work ridiculous hours and kill themselves in the process.
How did they ever employ such a nutter anyway? Surely if they really had a therapist he’d at least know something about it? She must be some crazy person. God, yeah, look at her office. She’d obviously walked off the streets and into the right office – after all, there, everything was always somebody else’s job. They’d all just turn a blind eye, even if a crazy woman walked in off the streets with a dead mongoose and set up a fake therapy practice.