MASQUES OF SATAN

by Oliver, Reggie

  I was left gasping: it was as if someone had tried to suffocate me. I went to my room and locked the door. The following day it rained, so we went home early.

  A fortnight later the Weetsheefs commercial was released. Nobody, least of all Harrison-Hargrave, had anticipated its effect. Weetsheefs took off like a rocket wherever the commercial was shown. People couldn’t get enough of the stuff, and, though it’s quite palatable as breakfast cereals go, it isn’t that spectacular. Realfoods were delighted with Harrison-Hargrave and decided to put their entire account in our hands. We at Harrison-Hargrave were also delighted, but delight was tempered with perplexity, not to say frustration. What exactly had we done right with this particular commercial? It was not spectacularly original: even, the creative team who devised it admitted that. Perhaps it was the sheer simplicity of the idea that did it. At one of our endless Creative Sessions, Selwyn suggested that it had something to do with that new phrase or word we had coined, ‘mmm-delicious’.

  It is true that the term ‘mmm-delicious’ became for a while horribly ubiquitous. I remember going to several dinner parties in Hampstead and Islington at which someone would say something like, ‘Sylvia darling, this cassoulet is positively mmm-delicious!’ Then, because they were sophisticated people, they would deplore their own use of this odious coinage and laugh a good deal. Nevertheless, they used it. It was almost as if they felt compelled to. As for me, I winced and stayed silent. Even my then boyfriend, Doug, started to use it, but I soon stopped that.

  Not long after, Harrison-Hargrave and Realfoods decided to launch a second commercial for Weetsheefs. It retained the identical formula of the previous commercial, the only difference being that this time it would not be Tony White who was translated from kitchen to corn field (or wheat field, we never knew the difference) but an attractive Mum and her two pretty children. Everyone at Harrison-Hargrave said, and Realfoods agreed, that the second commercial was even better than the first.

  It was, but the public is the final arbiter, and it did not agree. As soon as the new advertisement was introduced into the networks, sales of Weetsheefs, which had been doing phenomenally well, suddenly slumped to a respectable, but disappointing, level. Harrison-Hargrave held an urgent Creative Session at which I was present. All sorts of complicated reasons for the poor results were given, or rather were ‘kicked around’. For once that expression seemed appropriate, since tempers were frayed and real kicks were being aimed at the black leather upholstery, as well as metaphorical ones at other people’s ideas. It surprised me that no one had grasped the obvious solution. In a quiet moment I pointed out that sales of Weetsheefs were still at record levels in Northern Ireland, where the old commercial featuring Tony White had not been superceded.

  ‘Yes, Lucy, dearest heart, we did know that,’ said Selwyn. ‘The question is, why? That’s what we want to know. Now, do you think your mighty brain can tell us that?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  Selwyn did not take long to recover from his discomfiture. Assuming his most ironic tone he told me that the floor was mine, and that the rest of ‘us humble mortals’ were ‘all ears’. I told them that the difference between the two commercials was that Tony White was in one and not the other. I also mentioned that among the papers in front of them was a survey conducted on behalf of Harrison-Hargrave and Realfoods in which buyers of Weetsheefs had been questioned. Nearly ninety per cent of them had mentioned the phrase ‘Mmm-Delicious’, but always in association with ‘the bloke’,’the chap’, ‘the man’ who said it. It was therefore not so much the commercial which was making people eat Weetsheefs, but Tony White himself.

  The suggestion was greeted with derision by almost everyone except, to his credit I suppose, Selwyn. He quelled the hubbub.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ said Selwyn. ‘This is, after all, a brainstorming session. It’s an idea, even if it is from way out of left field. I like that. It’s blue sky thinking. It’s off the wall, but let’s give it a whirl. Let’s put it on the trampoline and see if it bounces. Let’s drop it off the edge of a cliff and see if it screams when it hits the shingle.’ Like everyone else in Harrison-Hargrave Selwyn talked in clichés, but at least some of them were his own.

  So the discussion turned to what, in the extremely unlikely eventuality of my being right, Harrison-Hargrave should do about it. It was Selwyn who came up with what he inevitably called his ‘brain wave’.

  ‘Let’s give Tony the Chimp Chips,’ he said.

  There was a silence, reverent and still, like the silence at the close of a Quaker meeting. Chimp Chips had been known throughout Harrison-Hargrave as ‘the poisoned chalice’. It was another product of Realfoods which they wished to promote. Chimp Chips were a peculiarly disgusting kind of packet snack, in texture half way between a crisp and a biscuit, vaguely cheesy in flavour. The novelty lay in the fact that each individual ‘chip’ had been moulded into the shape of a chimpanzee, hence Chimp Chips. For weeks we had been trying to think of a way to market these repulsive comestibles.

  I said: ‘Just get Tony to say: ‘I chomp Chimp Chips. They’re mmm-delicious.’’

  ‘Okay,’ said Selwyn. ‘We’ll run with that. Or does anyone else want to add some spit to the soup?’ Nobody did, so we ran with it.

  Dinah seemed quite unsurprised that we wanted Tony again, and she drove her usual shrewd bargain. He was filmed in the simplest possible manner, in a studio in front of a screen of jungle fronds. He said his memorable words over the faint subtext of drums and monkey hoots. The whole thing was made and released as a ten-second commercial within a couple of weeks, and the effect was instantaneous. Suddenly everybody — and I mean perfectly sane, well-educated people, too — was buying Chimp Chips. Realfoods was inundated with requests for emergency consignments of these horrible morsels to be delivered to shops and supermarkets which had sold out. They were everywhere. You could not go to a drinks party without being offered a Chimp Chip. ‘Have you tried these?’ people would say, ‘they’re rather fun, I think.’ And the worst of it was, your host would look rather offended when you refused. Chimp Chips were even to be found in little bowls at the Private Views of Cork Street art galleries, served as an accompaniment to the tepid Muscadet.

  As a result of this remarkable coup, a high-level emergency session was held at Harrison-Hargrave to which I was invited. It would not be true to say that I was exactly a guest of honour, because my part in their triumph was regarded as fluky, almost uncanny. All the same, it was a step up for me to be thought of as a necessary part of the process.

  ‘Okay,’ said Selwyn. ‘I may as well begin by saying that Realfoods wants Tony to do the Lemongingas ad.’

  Let me get this out of the way now. In case you didn’t know, Lemongingas are ginger biscuits, crisp on the outside but with a kind of lemony goo inside them. They taste quite nice the first time you have one, but they cloy very quickly.

  ‘But that’s not our main talking point,’ he went on. ‘Let me stress that what I say goes no further than these four walls. Arses are on the line here; it’s crunch time. It seems that our hunch was correct: this character Tony White has a unique ability to sell product. At the moment only we know this, and that puts us ahead of the game with our competitors, but if it gets out they’ll all be after him and our arses will be toast. Now we have been in discussions with Realfoods and they want us to get Tony to sign an exclusive contract to sell their product. Obviously we get him for as low a fee as possible, but Realfoods want him at any cost, and we’re cut in on the deal. There is one wasp in the ointment. Tony’s agent, as you know, is Dinah Shuckwell, the biggest über-bitch in the business. Now we want to separate Tony from the Shuckwell ASAP, and get him to sign to us exclusively. The obvious solution is to approach him independently from the Wicked Witch of Bolton Mansions. The only problem is we know nothing about him — absolutely nothing. We don’t even know where he lives.’

  I said, ‘Surely the car that picked him up for the shoots must have known his home ad
dress.’

  ‘Yes, Lucy love, believe it or not we are not completely stupid,’ said Selwyn. ‘Of course we checked with the car firm. That was the first thing we did. But apparently he arranged to be picked up outside Dinah Shuckwell’s flat in Bolton Mansions.’

  ‘Perhaps he lives with Dinah Shuckwell then.’

  ‘Lucy dear! I never knew you had such a filthy mind.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s her son. I don’t know.’

  ‘Well then find out, lovey. That’s your little job. This Tony White is a bloody walking gold mine for some reason. We want him out of the Shuckwell’s clutches and in ours. You find out everything you can about him: what drugs he takes, what his shit looks like, the lot. You do everything it takes. We have a window of opportunity because he has already been signed up for the Lemongingas. I want you, Lucy, my pussy cat, to devote all your waking hours to getting Tony White for us. He is the proverbial goose with the golden eggs up his fundament, and we want them for breakfast. Got it?’

  After delivering this typical rhetorical flourish, Selwyn left the room rapidly. Someone even gave his exit a round of applause. I felt sick.

  I tried all the obvious methods — and drew a blank. Equity had his address listed as Flat 5B, Bolton Mansions, Dinah’s address, as did the Spotlight actor’s directory. I got my boyfriend Doug to ask around his actor mates to see if anyone knew him. None of them had even heard of him. I even contacted the Cliff Richard fan club to see if he was on their mailing list. He might have been, but the fans appeared to be an oddly secretive bunch.

  My only chance of finding out about him was during the shoot for the Lemongingas commercial. The idea that some idiot, probably Selwyn, had come up with was as follows. We would put Tony in a sunlit lemon grove and surround him with scantily clad, ginger-haired girls, who would prance round him singing a version of Cole Porter’s ‘It’s De-lovely’. You have probably guessed by now that the word (or words) ‘mmm-delicious’ had been inserted into Porter’s butchered lyrics. I’d rather not say any more about that.

  There are no lemon groves in England and, as our budget did not run to foreign travel, the idea was to use a Kentish apple orchard, strip the trees of its fruit and hang plastic lemons from the branches. It was now August, so we were reasonably confident of the weather. I organised the accommodation for the three day shoot. We would be staying at the Red Lion in Caversham, and I arranged that my room was next to Tony White’s.

  Everybody arrived at the hotel on the evening before the first day’s shoot. At dinner time, I first made sure that Tony was safely settled in the dining room, where he had chosen to eat alone at a single table. I then slipped upstairs with the pass-key I had secured from the hotel management on some pretext, and entered his room.

  His bag had been unpacked, and clean clothes were stacked in neat piles on one of the twin beds. Two pairs of shoes stood smartly to attention on the floor facing the wall, and there was an orderly row of bottles containing herbal remedies lined along the dressing table. On the bedside table were Tony’s Walkman and Cliff Richard cassettes, and a neat pile of pornographic magazines. I felt compelled to examine their titles: they were a varied lot, catering for all tastes from the mildest and softest to the hardest and most brutal. I could find no distinct orientation: it was not even exclusively heterosexual, or, for that matter, exclusively human. A quick look in drawers and cupboards revealed nothing further. I did my job very rapidly, as every second in that hotel room was torture to me.

  I took the stairs down to the dining room so that I could have time to compose myself. The question of why I was doing all this had occurred to me more than once, but I kept putting it away, along with a lot of other issues in my life that I did not want to think about.

  In the dining room Tony was methodically eating an omelette. I looked round, as if searching for friends and acquaintances, then went over and asked Tony if I might join him at his table. There was a hint of suspicion in his look, but he made a little gesture of consent. I sat down opposite him.

  ‘What are you eating?’ I asked.

  ‘Omelette.’

  ‘What kind of omelette?’

  ‘Mushroom omelette.’

  ‘Are you vegetarian, then?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘All right.’

  I could tell that this was not going to be a sparkling evening, but I am good at chatter, or so my friends tell me. I nattered away, occasionally throwing in a question to him, casually, so as not to appear inquisitive, but I got nowhere. When he was not eating he looked at me with a detached interest, like someone watching an early evening news programme on a dull day. Once I thought I had a breakthrough.

  ‘These commercials are rather a gas, aren’t they?’ I had said inanely. ‘Do you enjoy doing them?’

  ‘It pays the rent,’ he said.

  ‘You rent a place, do you? Whereabouts?’

  ‘I move around a bit.’

  ‘Where are you at the moment?’

  ‘I’m here,’ he said, ‘opposite you.’ And he just scraped my ankle with his shoe. His expression did not change, the same almost unblinking stare, the same half smile. I could not speak for a while after that.

  When we had had dinner I went off to the bar and downed four large vodkas with the camera crew. I don’t know what Tony did. I assumed he had gone to his room, but, when I eventually got into the lift to go up to my room, he was in it.

  ‘Hello again,’ I said. ‘We always seem to meet in lifts.’ He said nothing, but as soon as the doors were closed he started to paw me. It took all my will-power not to recoil, because I had a plan. The vodkas helped; the vodkas had probably made the plan.

  When the lift doors opened and we got out I said, ‘Come on. There’s something I want to show you.’ I took his cold, sweaty little hand and pulled him to the door of my room which was almost opposite the lift.

  I opened the door and beckoned him inside. He stood half in, half out of the door. I told him to shut it. He did, but slowly. I took my top off.

  ‘Is this what you want?’ I said. ‘Would you like to take my bra off for me?’ I even managed a smile. ‘Come on.’

  His complacent stare turned to a look of still, cold horror and loathing. Very deliberately he spat at me, then he left rapidly, slamming the door behind him.

  I did not sleep that night.

  Tony avoided me the following day. Filming went as well as could be expected with such a complex scenario. The sun shone in the fake lemon grove and the ginger-haired girls danced around Tony to a pre-recorded tape. During a tea break I overheard two of the dancers talking. They were sitting on the grass, their ginger wigs resting on polystyrene wig blocks on the table above them. One of them actually had real ginger hair under her ginger wig.

  ‘Do you know what he said to me?’ said the Real Ginger.

  ‘No. What?’

  There was some whispering from Real Ginger and a pause. Then the other very deliberately said, ‘That’s disgusting,’ and, after a further pause for thought, ‘that is absolutely disgusting.’

  ‘And he meant it,’ said Real Ginger. ‘I could tell.’ I felt guilty that I had not warned them about Tony.

  I had already made my plan for after the shoot. It was my last chance to uncover Tony White. I had taken my own car to the location, so that I could follow the car that was driving him back to London. The original idea had been to offer to drive him back myself, but that was obviously out of the question.

  I had told Tony’s driver of my intentions, so the following was no problem. The driver dropped Tony at the door of Bolton Mansions, a giant brick building the colour of dried blood, slathered in opulent Edwardian decorative features, its black, wrought iron balconies, Art Nouveau in feel, twisting like snakes across its façade. It was seven-thirty and still light. I watched Tony ring a bell and go in.

  I parked round the corner and found a vantage point from which I could watch the building. I had checked tha
t the door by which Tony had gone in did indeed give access to Dinah Shuckwell’s flat. There were several times during the two hours I waited that I told myself that this was idiotic, I must give up. But I didn’t; rage prevented me.

  It was nearly ten o’clock and the street lamps were on by the time Tony emerged. I was puzzled that he was not carrying his overnight bag. He zipped his leather jacket up to his chin, dug his hands into the pockets, hunched himself, and began to walk. I set out to follow him.

  If I thought he knew I was following him it might have consoled me. His actions would have been less baffling, but I really don’t think he did. He rarely paused; he never looked round; he never stopped to look into the reflective glass of a shop window, as they do in the films; he just tramped. I followed him down the Brompton Road, into South Kensington and through Knightsbridge into the West End. He walked on at his unwearied, dogged pace, looking neither to left and right. He kept to the middle of the pavement and never gave way to anyone coming in the opposite direction. Sometimes he elicited strange looks from people who had had their group divided by his relentless onward march. Once or twice passers-by commented loudly on his inconsiderate progress, but he did not respond; he showed no sign of even noticing.

  The pace was deliberate, but the itinerary seemed haphazard. He turned up side streets and threaded his way through an intricate series of byways until he returned almost to the place from which we had started. It was close on midnight when we reached Soho. There the exhausting, patternless pattern of his wanderings changed. He began to enter every sex shop that remained open. After a few minutes he would emerge with a magazine or two. Once he saw a woman in a short leather skirt leaning against a doorway, half in shadow. He went up and stared at her. I saw her speak some words to him, but it was clear that he did not respond. He did not move; he continued to stare. I now saw a look of fear in the woman’s eyes. She turned and looked at me, but I backed into a doorway, turning my head away in case Tony saw me. I heard the panicky clatter of platform heels on the pavement as she passed me. When I looked round the woman was gone and Tony White was on his travels again.