by Charlie Hill
She talked it over several times with Garfield, in Garfield-speak. Just to keep her thinking fresh. Because whatever the significance of these details, Amy knew that Gary’s use of ‘enigmatic’ was not a good sign.
Artists at work
That same day, Zeke and Pippa arrive at a café in Notting Hill for lunch. The venue is the choice of Gary Sayles. The café is full of people in PR. The chatter is loud, the faces are pale. Time moves busily, goes nowhere. The café serves breakfast and lunch with an American twist. Pippa is wearing a thin eggshell-blue cardigan from Next and a white market blouse. Black Gap jeans held up with a market white belt. A pair of Crocs Crocband mules. Enthusiastically applied Revlon Super Lustrous lipstick. White Musk. She flutters her eyelashes.
Zeke wears Lee jeans and Wrangler trainers, a Ben Sherman shirt and an FCUK baseball cap. They have both spent a lot of time on their hair. Pippa’s is medium grilled, Zeke has a High Street number two. Pippa is carrying the bag.
Gary Sayles is sitting at a table in the window. He is wearing khaki chinos, loafers and a polo shirt. He has shades on his head. He doesn’t look like an author. He looks like he has stepped from an advert for wine in a glossy Sunday magazine, above another for commemorative plates.
Holding a menu, he glances around the café. Every now and again he drops his chin on to his chest, buries his face into laminated breakfasts. His eyes peer over the top of the menu. He is hammy like a pig. It is as though he is anxious to be seen to be incognito. As Zeke and Pippa approach his table he attracts the attention of a waitress.
‘Hi. I’m Gary,’ says Gary Sayles. Zeke and Pippa sit down. Pippa rests the bag on the floor, the camera focused on his crotch.
‘And you must be…?’
‘Susan,’ says Pippa.
‘Mike,’ says Zeke.
‘Hello?’ says the waitress.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ says Gary.
‘It’s a privilege,’ says Susan.
‘An honour,’ says Mike. ‘We never thought we’d get the chance.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I never forget the people who put me where I am.’
No one has acknowledged the waitress. She looks over her shoulder and then back to Gary. She says: ‘Are you ready to order?’ She has tired lines around bright blue eyes. Pippa has seen her somewhere before. She was at a party they threw a month ago. She is a friend of a friend. Pippa averts her gaze. Neither she nor Zeke can afford to be busted.
‘Have what you want. It’s on me,’ Gary says, and waves a hand dismissively in the direction of the waitress. He speaks to Mike: ‘I’m having an OJ.’
‘Large or small?’ the waitress asks Gary. She is still being ignored by Susan and Gary. She writes something on her pad. Mike thinks that by the look of her it isn’t ‘OJ’.
‘Really?’ says Susan, resolutely in character. ‘That’s good of you. I’ll have a coffee, milk, one sugar. With some of that froth on top.’
‘Tea for me,’ says Mike. ‘PG Tips if you’ve got it.’
The waitress nods and leaves. It is OK. Pippa and Zeke haven’t been recognised. Gary sits up straight, brushes a hair off the sleeve of his shirt. He leans forward over the table.
‘Thank you for coming,’ he says. ‘I’m glad you got in touch. I’ve been following your website for some time. You must be very dedicated.’
‘Who wouldn’t be?’ says Mike.
‘Indeed. Well, I’ll not waste your time,’ says Gary. ‘I want to ask you a favour. I want to start a campaign and I want you – as my biggest fans – to be a part of it.’
‘It would be an honour,’ says Susan.
‘What sort of a campaign?’ says Mike.
‘A campaign to reclaim literature,’ says Gary. ‘A campaign for the democratisation of literature.’
‘The democratisation of literature?’ says Susan.
Gary pauses. He is relaxing before them. He is speaking very slowly. He clearly has something important to say.
‘Yes. I’ll explain. You’ll be aware that I’m a bestseller. Three times over. Well, I don’t want to rest on my laurels. I want to change the face of books. I want to raise the profile of popular literature, to strike a blow for ordinary readers and what they read.’
‘But how?’ asks Susan.
‘I have a new novel out soon. It’s going to be called The Grass is Greener. It’s about a thirty-five-year-old author who has a midlife crisis. He buys a sports car, has an affair and loses everything. You’ll like it. Even if you haven’t actually been there, it’s all about recognition, it’s all about familiarity. That’s my gift.’
‘Of course,’ says Susan.
‘You’re a national treasure,’ says Mike.
‘That’s very kind of you. My idea is to do with the promotion of the book. You may have seen things about how the internet is changing the way we live. Well I’ll let you into a little secret: that’s true of books too.
‘Nowadays, when you bring a new book out, it’s important that you do all you can to really connect with your readership. The old idea of the writer in the ivory tower, working away with a quill pen, has gone. Now it’s all about being accessible. Showing your readers that you’re really just like them.
‘It used to be that you could do this by doing a reading tour. In bookshops, that sort of thing. But these days, everybody’s doing readings. It’s the internet that’s done it. There are readings everywhere. People who aren’t even published are reading their own stuff. It’s making a mockery of the way you’re supposed to bring a book to market.
‘So I’ve come up with a little twist. No, please don’t be alarmed! With The Grass is Greener. I want to take a back seat and let my readers represent me. I want to give readers the chance to read something from books that have been published. From my books. Mike, Susan, this is where you come in. On the next tour, I want you to read from my new book. I want you – the people – to take it to the people. Readings can be small, exclusive events. I want something more. I want to show what literature means to ordinary people, to the hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who buy my books. I was thinking about calling the tour the Fixed Rate Mortgage Tour…’
‘What the fu—’ says Pippa.
‘It’s got a ring to it,’ says Mike.
‘There’s potential,’ says Susan, ‘definite potential.’
‘But I’ve decided on the People’s Literature Tour.’
‘I see,’ says Mike, ‘like the People’s Princess.’
‘Aha,’ says Gary, ‘you see, I hadn’t thought of that. But yes. Just exactly like the People’s Princess. And let me tell you, the people will certainly be heard, let me assure you of that. This is just the beginning of it. I’ve got plans, big plans. So. Are you with me? Do you want to stand up for what you believe in? Shall we do this together? Will you take my book on the road?’
And Susan and Mike say: ‘When do we start?’
They exchange details. Gary says he will be in touch. He leaves the café just as the waitress brings their drinks.
‘It’s OK,’ says Pippa to the waitress, nodding her head at the retreating author, ‘he’s with us. We’re on the case.’
‘Yeah?’ says the waitress. ‘That figures.’
She walks away. Pippa shrugs. Turns to Zeke.
‘So. Gary Sayles, author. Diss—’
‘cuss,’ says Zeke. ‘Did we get it all on tape?’
‘I think so.’
‘And are you thinking what I’m thinking?’
‘I am, I am.’
‘He certainly has something, doesn’t he?’
‘And the rest.’
‘“Everybody’s doing readings because of the internet”?’
‘It would appear so.’
‘The People’s Literature Tour?’
‘You’d better believe it. All we need to do is keep filming—’
‘Throw in a bit of the usual—’
‘Ironic detachment—’
‘Allusion to stuff—’<
br />
‘And the punters’ll love it. I can see it now. It’ll be very clever and a little bit naughty. Either way we’ll fuck him.’
‘Fuck him good.’
‘True dat. There’s prizes for this sort of thing.’
‘I see galleries…’
‘A return to television…’
‘The Turner…’
‘Zeke? This could be the start of a beautiful friendship.’
A wary wife writes
Amy Sayles was beginning to wonder about her husband. About his stories.
She knew that everyone created stories. Everyone lived in parallel realities, make-believe worlds in which they were just a little bit bigger or happier or more organised or popular or successful or interesting or daring or normal than they were in their real lives. This was healthy. It was how people worked. It was how relationships worked. Men and women just far enough apart to be comfortable with each other’s fictions. These stories became a threat only when they interfered with the lives of other people.
For much of their relationship, Amy had chosen to believe that Gary’s stories were like his novels. Unthreatening. But she was beginning to wonder whether his personal fictions were more exotic than his novels let on.
It was unlikely. After all, he wasn’t the most inventive of people. She knew that whenever he wrote about ‘The One’, he was writing about her. Whenever he wrote that a child was ‘a bundle of joy with his daddy’s ears’, he was writing about Garfield. She remembered what had happened when he was working on his last book. He told Amy he’d run out of other people’s experiences to gussie up his own with and had to resort to his imagination instead. He couldn’t put anything down on paper for a week. Claimed it was writer’s block. Took to not shaving or getting dressed. Bought a box set of Guy Ritchie films (one of his ‘guilty pleasures’). Commandeered Garfield’s Lego, built a Death Star. He’d only come round after locking himself in his study for a whole day with a bottle of White’s Lemonade, a six-pack of Golden Wonder Spicy Tomato Snaps and a copy of The Best Ever Nineties Tunes Ever! To get his ‘mojo working again’.
But even so. There had been times when his fantasies had impinged on their life together. When he’d allowed himself to be diverted from what really mattered. In the lead-up to the publication of his second novel, for example. Gary had noticed that passages in the proof copy of the book bore no resemblance to what he’d originally written. Amy had tried to be diplomatic. Gary had been angry and precious. ‘How dare they?’ he’d said. ‘Who do they think they’re dealing with? I swear, if they’re not careful, I’ll go off-piste. Sign with someone else. There’s plenty of people want a piece of Gary Sayles, I can tell you that for nothing.’
On that occasion, the digression had been harmless enough. Gary had stuck with his publisher, returned to the narrative they shared. This time Amy wondered whether he would.
Publishing phenomenon
Gary Sayles did his business at the printer’s and set off home. He was late and had planned to take a cab but found himself instead at the nearest tube station. Standing on the deserted platform, he turned his collar up against the wind as it whistled noisily through the tunnel, reminding him of the Eurythmics song ‘Here Comes the Rain Again’ from the album Touch.
Gary had originally thought up the People’s Literature Tour as a way of reaching more readers. After all, the name of the game was sales, and you couldn’t afford to be complacent in this game, not with the internet getting involved. But since he had been exposed to the Ready Brek-like warmth of Mike and Susan’s adulation, Gary had begun to believe his own press, or at least the press of the people who read his books. And now the idea had started to build up the momentum of a runaway lorry rolling full throttle down a hill with its handbrake off.
What was it that Mike had called him? A ‘national treasure’? The People’s Princess? At the time – and despite his distrust of false modesty – he’d let that go. But he was only speaking the truth. Was he not an icon? Was he not an outsider who was taking on an elitist establishment that had lost touch with popular opinion? It was funny to think of himself as an outsider, but it was what he was. There were plenty of people queuing up to criticise him, to poke fun at his brainpower. The critics for the national press. The people who wrote blogs dedicated to books that nobody read. The bookish. They were all running scared now, like the Iroquois Indians ran from Daniel Day-Lewis in The Last of the Mohicans, afraid he’d ruin their cosy little game. He knew that the secret to his success was that there was no secret. There were too many people with vested interests who made a big deal out of writing, when if you really wanted to make money out of it you just had to read books, see what everyone else was writing and then write the same.
Not that he was doing himself down, of course. He was unique, probably more unique than any of his rivals. The trick was to add just enough of your personality to what you were doing to make it stand out from the rest: he himself, for example, had been the first person ever to reminisce about 1980s synth bands.
It was this talent that had turned his very life around. Gary’d had it tough as a boy, growing up among people who thought he was a thicko and being kicked out of gangs by the ‘tower block terrors’. He was too nerdy to be one of the boys and not mean enough to be one of the girls. It was only through his writing that he felt he’d really laid that ghost to rest. Oh, he was nerdy all right. Nerdy like a fox! On a trip back home to Birmingham, he’d seen a boy called Peter, who, in his schooldays, hadn’t let Gary kick a ball because he hadn’t helped to steal it from the sports shop. Peter drove a taxi now. Gary hadn’t said anything. He’d just insisted Peter took a signed copy of his first novel by way of a tip. The taxi-driving former bully hadn’t said anything in response. How could he? Gary had quite literally left him speechless.
The more he thought about his morning’s encounter, the more Gary realised his relationship with his readers was the relationship that he had been looking for all his life. He loved Amy and Garfield, of course – his marriage certificate was proof enough of that – but writing was a great and exciting love, perhaps the great and exciting love. For too long he’d thought that he’d be nothing without the people. Now he could see that the people would be nothing without him.
As he stood on the platform, fresh from his meeting with the besotted Mike and the lovely Susan, this love washed over him like a tidal wave. It was unconditional, like water, yet it filled him with a sense of responsibility, as though he were a lifeguard on the beach of life. It provided him with the fulfilment of Gary Sayles, the man himself, that he had looked for for so long. So this, this was what it meant to be a writer!
The train arrived and Gary found himself a seat in a carriage. This was apt. Journeys, life was all about journeys, he could see that now. Where would he go from here? His thoughts drifted like crisp white snow. He would hitch his wagon to a rising star – his own – and see.
And how!
Underestimated
Gary presented the T-shirts to Amy with a flourish. They were thick cotton and coloured in a variety of funky shades. The front of each was printed with the heads of Gary, Amy and Garfield. They had been taken from a family portrait they’d had done the year before. Amy and Garfield were in the foreground with Gary behind them. Amy couldn’t be sure but at first glance it was almost as if Gary’s head was slightly out of proportion.
‘What do you think, then, Angel Cakes?’ asked Gary.
Amy was sitting reading to Garfield on the sofa. All week Gary had been shutting himself off in his study. Keeping most unsociable hours. Garfield had begun to ask questions. Amy had answered him truthfully. She had defended Gary’s right to take himself away. But that was as far as she would go. Now she had questions for her husband.
‘I don’t know. I’m not sure. What are they for?’
Gary flipped a T-shirt over. On the back, Amy read:
GARY SAYLES
PRESENTS
THE PEOPLE’S LITERATURE
‘I don’t understand,’ she said.
‘They’re promotional shirts for the launch of The Grass is Greener. It’s time for Gary Sayles to get the credit he deserves.’
Amy looked at Gary. She had read the odd page of The Grass is Greener, of course. She’d read parts of all of his books as they were being written, with Gary pointing out wordplays and the occasional pun. The latest wasn’t to Amy’s taste but – the age of the protagonists aside – it was not significantly different to any of the others he had written. So why was he introducing T-shirts now? And why was he talking to her as if she were an idiot? She picked up Garfield, hefted him on to her lap. Claimed him.
‘OK. But why am I on there? And Garfield? And what’s the People’s Literature?’
‘I’m spreading the word,’ said Gary, ‘just spreading the word. You see, Amy, literature isn’t just about telling stories. It’s about creating other people’s lives for them on and off the page. Giving them something to look up to, showing them the way. This is the responsibility I have to my readers. Do you know, I met two people the other day, two of my biggest fans? A couple of ordinary people. And they put a few things into perspective for me. What I mean to them, to my readers. I hadn’t realised before, not quite. They didn’t say much, these two. They were tongue-tied. I see now that this is how my readers must feel all the time. Inarticulate. They look around and they struggle to make sense of the world. They need a voice. They need to be heard. So they turn to me because they know that whatever else may go on, Gary Sayles will keep writing novels that will give them their voice.’
‘But…’
‘Wait. This is important. The funny thing is, all these years I’ve been working towards this moment. I’ve got everything I’ve always wanted. I’m successful. I’m married to a lovely lady. I’ve got a beautiful son. And now I’m there, I’ve realised it’s only the beginning. That’s what the People’s Literature Tour is all about. Amy, I think I’ve found my destiny.’