by Charlie Hill
In which Lauren speaks to the national press
Dear Ms Bevan-Jones,
I am writing to you in your capacity as critic for the Correspondent, with an invitation.
I am a professor of neurology at the University of Birmingham. Earlier this summer a hitherto unknown neurological condition – SNAPS – came to light. The condition results in brain death. Together with an acquaintance of mine, Mr Richard Anger (from whom I got your name), I have since accumulated a considerable volume of apocryphal trend data that points to the involvement of a certain type of novel in the development of the condition.
The novels in question are ‘male confessionals’. To be specific, male confessionals written by the author Gary Sayles. Mr Sayles’ latest book – The Grass is Greener – is due to be launched in London tomorrow and it is entirely possible that a significant number of SNAPS-related deaths will follow.
As a consequence of this, Richard and I have decided to try to bring the connection between the syndrome and Gary Sayles to the attention of the general public. Our strategy is to attend the launch and stage a ceremonial burning of The Grass is Greener. And it is to this demonstration that we would like to invite you.
I attach details of the launch. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Yours,
Professor Lauren Furrows
Artists for Hire. Nothing Considered
Pippa has much film in the bag and is nearing the end of the project. She has fucked the writer and now it is time to turn her attention to the bookseller from Birmingham.
Pippa does not normally waste time on people like this, from the sadlands. They are naive, backward creatures. They are sans clue, without gorm, they lack hap. They are not from London. On this occasion, however, she is aware of her good fortune. There are these books, the man had said, that kill people. Really? she’d said. Tell me more…
She knows better, of course. Art does not kill people. No lick of paint nor photograph nor piece of music has ever caused a single death. But the bookseller and his claims have introduced another element to her film. To the destruction of Art and the ragging of the deluded. For all of his antediluvian ‘more-tea-vicar?’ pish, he is actually saluting the Z&PTM pennant as it regally ascends the baby-oiled blue-veined pole.
We need you to create a spectacle, he had said, make a bit of noise. Leave it to me, she’d said. I’m on it…
And she means it. There’s no point in fucking people if no people are there to see it. She makes a list of het-ups and jokers. She contacts Unite Against Fascism, the English Defence League, Muslims Against Crusades, Not Ashamed (For the Christian Foundation of our Society), UK Uncut, the Salvation Army, Outrage. She tells them that books are going to be burned, bad books by good people and good books by bad people. She calls the BBC, Sky News, ITN, some people from YouTube. She tells them that there will be a shitstorm.
Not that it is just going to be about books, of course. It is about her and Zeke too. The surface. The space beneath the surface. The Sayles project. She Facebooks ‘is going to go nomnomnom with a portion of serious fun’. She tweets ‘come fuck with the stars #everylaststarfucker’ She corrals friendly freaks: a disco-dancing midget, a man with a monkey, a woman who eats light bulbs. She tells them there will be cameras.
And then she starts rounding up the people who’ll really make the party swing.
Rhetorical question
Lauren stood on the concourse of New Street station and waited for Richard. The place echoed like a swimming pool. As she tried to listen to the announcer, she found herself going under the surface of the hubbub. Her senses dulled. Muffled sounds came to her and then disappeared as she drifted in the currents of reverie. Now there was John Clare, inside her head and clear:
Is love’s bed always snow?
It was a rhetorical question. Love’s bed wasn’t always pristine, white. Sometimes it was less stark, more of a grey. Sometimes it changed colour, with an enticing shimmy.
Lauren thought of Richard. Even now, despite how far they’d both come, she wondered whether there was something missing between them. And yet, when it came to her experiment – when it came to how she felt about him – her interrogative impulse was weakening. Her hand had been forced by his sobriety, his efforts to change, the poem, her relaxed attitude to his advances at the art gallery. Other, less esoteric considerations had begun to make their presence felt, too. The practical arrangements of their trip to London, for one.
Standing in the waves, another line came to Lauren, from a different poem, by a surrealist poet of her recent acquaintance:
‘I sleep on my feet prey to all the forms of life and love, and you, the only one who counts for me today…’
Rattling along…
Lauren glanced across the table as Richard drank from a can of McEwan’s Export. ‘It’s the law,’ he’d told her as they’d pulled out of Birmingham, ‘on a train I mean,’ and she’d received the news with enthusiasm. ‘I’ll have a gin and tonic,’ she’d told him, ‘for old times’ sake,’ and sure enough their chat had soon settled into a rhythm that she was coming to relish.
‘Could you please run the arrangements past me again?’ said Lauren. ‘You’ve been a bit hazy on the details.’
‘We’re meeting someone down there,’ said Richard.
‘And who might that be?’
‘She’s some sort of artist, I think.’
‘I see.’
‘Her speciality is making a noise. There should be TV cameras and hopefully the Old Bill will get involved at some stage. All good stuff by the sounds of it. We need her too. People have got to see what we’re doing, so we need someone who knows their way around the place. Someone who knows how things work down there.’
‘How things work down there?’
‘Yeah. London’s different, you see.’
‘And why might that be?’
‘It’s full of mountebanks and shitheads, for a start.’
‘How very pleasant.’
‘Why, thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’
Lauren drummed her fingers on the table, sipped her G&T. She told Richard that she had contacted the Correspondent, filled them in on her latest clinical research. Then she checked her watch – was that all it was? – and tried to slow down the connections that were firing so spectacularly in her brain. She turned her attention to the world outside the window. Tried to focus on the flat countryside, on blurred snapshots of dull towns. They passed through Long Buckley, Wolverton, Bletchley. It was no good. They were in-between names, transitional places. What fun a mediocre writer could have with the metaphorical implications of such an environment!
‘I get the impression she’s one of these ironic types,’ she heard Richard say, and was minded to continue the ritual to-fro.
‘I thought you didn’t “do” irony? I thought you said irony was a “cop-out”?’
‘Only when it becomes the message. When it’s trowelled on without finesse by people piling irony on irony, taking all substance out of the equation. What do they want us to do? Engage with shadows?’
‘Ah yes, but isn’t life about that in many respects? Engaging with the indefinable? With what has gone and what might be? It’s not all about the here and now.’
‘Yes, but something has to have been there in the first place. Words, just words, aren’t enough, however smart or pretty they are. Smart and pretty with nothing beneath is just as mediocre as dumb and generic.’
‘But I thought you said smart was good?’
‘Typical you. Analytical to the last. Smart arse, then. It’s a fine distinction. And do you know what? Today, Lauren, I’m the man to make it.’
Lauren raised her eyebrows, theatrically and without compunction. When she was with him, she was somehow more aware of her body. Of what it could do. Of its possibilities. As they pulled into Beaconsfield she felt herself flush. She hoped it was from the gin.
‘Would you like another dr
ink?’ she asked.
‘Are you having one?’ replied Richard and then, before she answered, he added, ‘Nah, don’t think I’ll bother,’ and this felt right too. She was giddy enough as it was and London was looming.
The train eased away from the platform and Richard saw Lauren’s eyes flitting self-consciously around his face. He flashed her his patented bad man’s grin, tried to relax into it, couldn’t.
‘So what do you reckon, then?’ said Richard. ‘How do you think we’re doing?’
‘I think it’s going to be a struggle,’ said Lauren. ‘I really am rather afraid of how it might all turn out.’
‘I think you’re right to be. I mean, I sometimes wonder what I’m going to do next, so what chance have you got?’
‘Very droll,’ said Lauren. ‘But I think you protest too much. I think you’re quite focused on a happy ending.’
‘Please don’t say that. I don’t believe in happy endings.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘Well, they’re such a cliché, aren’t they? And who likes a cliché?’
But the joviality was now forced. As the next station came and went and then the next, they both became quiet and the happy rattle of their conversation was replaced by the other sounds of the train as they got closer to London and to the books that killed.
In which Zeke approves of James May
Zeke is getting ready to meet Gary Sayles. He has read most of The Grass is Greener. It has been like eating Jaffa Cakes.
Zeke’s disguise is growing more convincing by the day. He has been ringing up the traffic people on Radio 2, with news of localised delays. He has booked himself into a gym. He has started to watch Top Gear. He has changed his mobile phone to get a better deal and downloaded a new ringtone. It is Katy Melua’s instant classic from the noughties, ‘Closest Thing to Crazy’.
He likes the feeling the book has given him. It is almost as though he has tapped into a former life that he didn’t know he’d had. From a time when things were simpler.
Mike meets Gary Sayles outside the church in Bloomsbury. There are columns, a tiered tower that looks like the wedding cake on the cover illustration from the author’s collected works. Gary greets him as he would an old acquaintance who has fallen on bad times. They go inside.
The church is decorated down either side of the nave with eight six-foot-high posters of Gary Sayles’ face. They have red borders. In some he is thoughtful, staring into the middle distance, his fist to his chin. In some he is looking down and laughing at a private joke. There is a small stage and a microphone stand where the pulpit should be. Hanging behind the stage is a backdrop bearing the legend ‘The People’s Literature Tour’. The words are laid over a bright yellow sun. Mike feels the hairs standing up on the back of his neck.
‘What do you think?’ says Gary.
‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘I didn’t want to go over the top,’ says Gary, ‘I just need to let these people know that in these difficult times they can turn to me for guidance. Because that is what I offer. Something important. Something more important than pop music or television or even film.’
Patsies
In a pub around the corner from the church, Pippa meets the bookseller from the boondocks and his doris. Pippa has ingested half a gram of sweaty base, a line of posh and half a little fella to take the edge off. She is in control. The bookseller is wide-eyed and sweaty. Worn by a Sue Ryder suit. He is inhaling a Guinness. The woman looks as though she would be very pretty if only she’d take her glasses off. Except she isn’t wearing glasses. She is drinking Bombay Sapphire and tonic. Pippa wonders why she is here. She looks at people with interest and when they look back she turns away. She is not well practised at life. There is something between her and the bookseller, almost like sexual energy. It is coincidence maybe, or bad timing.
Anger says to Pippa, ‘So is it all ready? Have you got everything ready? We’ve sorted out the books. I hope everything’s all right at your end.’
‘Yeah, everything’s ready. You said you wanted to make some noise? I’ve organised some noise all right. There’s two terrestrial, a broadsheet, a red-top, a satellite, some cable and three glossies on stream. The usual denizens of the social media scene. You won’t know what’s hit you. Just make sure you’ve got your part sorted out.’
‘Oh, we’re just here to fan the flames,’ says Anger.
‘Quite literally,’ says the woman.
They both try to laugh, but they are not looking cool. They are looking jittery, as though their fantasy is taking its toll. The woman glances at Pippa, on the sly. Anger picks at the shoulders of his whistle. Puts his hand in his trouser pocket, dresses from the right to the left and back again.
‘Remember,’ he says, ‘we’re not the bad guys here. We aren’t burning the books because of what they say, but because they say nothing.’
This is too easy, thinks Pippa. They are close to the end now. Everything is in place. Zeke has surpassed himself. He has immersed himself in the Method. She knows she can rely on Gary Sayles. Which leaves this Angry sort and his Little Miss Nothing Eyes. Fools they may be, but turbo-keen too. And her film means nothing without the enthusiasm of fools.
Pippa laughs.
It is good that they are all here.
For her.
For Zeke.
For their triumph.
A film
It is later. Pippa is filming. It is a good turn-out. A freak show, a riot, a circus. A cacophonous mass gathers in front of the church. The air is violent with screams, whistles, bagpipes. The crowd has stopped the traffic on the Euston Road. At the edges of the scrum the press roves, with booms, in frowning bunches. There are three television camera crews. What’s it all about?
The bookseller is burning the books in a brazier in front of the church. The books burn quickly. The flames are red and yellow, orange, blue and brown. Two fire engines are parked on the road. Their crews are agitated, togged up, waiting on the word. The crowd is stopping them from reaching the flames. Overhead a chopper circles; on the ground Police Support Units have overtime on their mind.
The throng is impolite. Over to one side, the EDL and Muslims Against Crusades are involved in a stand-off. A copy of Mein Kampf is set alight then thrown into the air, followed by a Koran. A white van turns up, Dave’s Meats on the side. Within minutes, the air is thick with pork tenderloin. Two members of Outrage have hung a banner between the columns of the church. It says Perverts Undermining State ScrutinY. Now they are showering the crowd with Boys Own condoms. This seems to inflame the evangelical Not Ashamed, who have been waiting for some time to be offended. They respond by reciting the Lord’s Prayer through loudhailers. The Sally Army contingent bangs tambourines and tries to minister to a George Clinton tribute band whom they’ve mistaken for the homeless; their uniforms cause similar confusion among the hitherto angrily unfocused Unite Against Fascism. Ugliness ensues.
There is more. Pippa skirts the fringes of the melee and has a spin around the car park at the back of the church. A mariachi band strikes up as a troupe of burlesque dancers start to remove items of clothing. ‘Where do you want us, Pip?’ asks a man in a Babygro, ‘and where’s all the photographers?’
And then, at the front of the building, at the centre of it all, she focuses on a queue of people, buttressed by coppers, winding through crash barriers like a gut. They are waiting to get inside the church. They are smart casuals. They are wearing Cotton Traders, Timberland, Rockport. Pippa looks at the faces of the people in the queue. Some are anxious. Some alarmed. Most bemused.
We need to shock them out of their complacency! the bookseller had said. But the people in the queue are clearly not to be shocked, not by any of it. And certainly not by burning books. Pippa knows that they have a more straightforward relationship with the world than this. They are consumers. They know what they like and they like Gary Sayles. They are not concerned with the context in which his books appear. Why would they be
? All they are interested in is the three hundred pages of their next moralistic nod-in.
It is a motif moment.
The people in the queue will make the final cut.
Richard fails again
Richard shrugged off the attentions of a Hassidic Jew in a shtreimel and a tutu and threw another book on to the fire. He was hoarse but still he hollered:
‘MEDIOCRITY KILLS! SAY NO TO MEDIOCRITY! PROTECT YOUR MIND!’ and as he ran out of energy:
‘DON’T READ SHIT AND DIE! READ FOR YOUR LIVES!’
It was no good. But then he’d clocked that from the off. As soon as he’d started shouting, Lauren had disappeared into the melee and without her there Richard had been overcome by the familiar feeling of pissing into the wind.
He’d blamed the artist, at first, for the debacle. What she thought she was doing was beyond him. Sure, she’d provided a fire. And he’d seen some flyers decorated with the face of Gary Sayles and the word ‘murderer!’ But there was also a monkey in a studded leather collar. A stilt-walker in a kilt. An old dear in a latex nun’s outfit. Some twat in a gas mask. Not to mention johnnies, everywhere johnnies.
But it wasn’t her fault, not really. He hadn’t been clear enough about what he wanted. And even though the spectacle had been empty, it was undoubtedly spectacular.
It was the response of the people in the queue that had been most disappointing. They were here for Sayles, of course, but even so. Half an hour he’d been standing there, hollering and beckoning like a nutter and barker, spittling love and vitriol and reason. The least they could have done was come over to him, ask him what he was shouting about or why he was burning the books. Then he could have opened their minds. Explained about the perils of mediocrity, talked them back from the brink. Yet no one seemed to care.
It didn’t matter that he’d always been on their side. Given them the benefit of the doubt. Give people the choice, he’d always said, give them the choice and they’d wake up, discover new ways to engage with the world, new ways to entertain themselves. Even new ways to switch off, if that was what they wanted. Here they were. Hunkering down. Uninterested, passive, supine. Walking right past him and into the arms of Sayles with not so much as a pause to think about the implications of the flames.