by M Y Alam
Before he knew it he had crossed the room and entered the office in which he now found himself. Two men and a woman faced him across a wide desk and introduced themselves. By the time he had slid the heavy manuscript from his satchel he had forgotten all three names. He noticed that his hand was shaking slightly as the older of the two men started to speak.
‘Hey Leonard, glad you could make it. We’ve had a look at the screenplay and we want you to know that we’re all very excited about this project.’ The man smiled hard as Leonard’s heart quickened slightly. He was still digesting these words as the woman took up the thread.
‘We feel that, at this stage in production,’ she left this to hang for a moment, ‘it’s advisable for us all to put our heads together and make sure that we’re all agreed on our vision for the project.’
‘We like the screenplay,’ the younger man volunteered.
‘Oh, yes,’ the others agreed, nodding and smiling.
‘It’s great…’ he continued.
‘Really great,’ added the older man, still grinning.
‘And this is a great studio…’ the younger man paused. After a second Leonard recognised this gap as being his to fill and nodded vigorously.
‘That’s why we’re so excited about the project,’ the woman’s smile showed no signs of flagging.
‘Just as a great screenplay requires…deserves the best resources and skilled professionals, a great studio has needs of its own,’ the older man’s face was a picture of fairness.
‘We feel that to make this dream a reality it needs to grow, to gain another dimension,’ the younger man somehow managing to sound even more enthused than before.
‘It seems to me that the strength of this project lies in its subtlety, and because of this we need to give it a hook, a pull, just to catch the attention, grab the eye. Once we get their attention this little baby will carry itself.’ The older man arranged his eyebrows to appear wise above a grandfather smile as he patted his copy of the manuscript.
‘Now this guy George, he was away from his family a lot…’ The woman adopted a very serious expression, Leonard suddenly felt that things were about to happen. ‘That must have been hard for him.’
‘It was,’ Leonard agreed, glad at last to hear some real confirmation that this wasn’t some kind of mistake.
‘And of course this was in the swinging sixties, drugs, free love…’ the younger man seemed to be making excuses for something but Leonard didn’t know what it was.
‘The temptation must have been there for him, yet there’s no real mention of either in the screenplay,’ the older man seemed genuinely puzzled.
‘Hinckley was devoted to his wife, there was never any suggestion that he was unfaithful and as…’ Leonard’s uncertain explanation was interrupted.
‘So we don’t know for sure that he didn’t, it just makes sense to have some more direct love interest,’ the younger man shrugged and all three nodded. Leonard opened his mouth to object but the woman turned back to him.
‘You were about to tell us about Hinckley’s drug habit,’ the serious look again.
‘Drug habit?’ Leonard frowned, ‘Well he used cannabis…’ The three nodded.
‘Often the way it starts…’ the old man alternated to shaking his head. For a moment Leonard saw the three of them as some absurd modern art installation, nodding, shaking and smiling. Once more Leonard recognised the meaning of the silence between them.
‘That’s it,’ he said with a shrug, turning the silence back to face the three. The pause gave Leonard time to remember that he was already annoyed and to realise that he didn’t like where this discussion seemed to be headed.
After looking at each other briefly the three shrugged and returned their attention to Leonard. The older man spoke first, ‘Now, the closing scene. Wow, very powerful, very moving, very…’ he seemed to be unsure how to continue.
‘Dark,’ suggested the woman.
‘Dark! Exactly. We were thinking that perhaps it didn’t have to be quite as dark as it is; that perhaps a very slight lightening up of that final scene could really help the project as a whole.’
‘Hinckley killed himself when he heard that his wife and newborn child had been killed in a car wreck. How do you lighten that up?’ Leonard heard the tone in his voice but didn’t regret it. The younger man responded defensively.
‘Hey now, we know that the final scene is not entirely a happy one…’ Leonard huffed but the woman cut in.
‘It’s just one aspect,’ she assured him. ‘At the end of the final scene we see George throw himself from the window. Now obviously this has to do with him finding out about his wife and child…’
‘Terrible, terrible…’ the older man shook his head.
‘Driven crazy with grief he wants nothing more than to be reunited with them, obviously we understand that, that’s great…’ the younger man flashed the smile again.
‘It’s the monologue. George kind of sounds like he’s given up on love not just life.’
‘Given up on life we understand.’
‘Of course, under the circumstances.’
‘But giving up on love? That won’t sit too well with the audience, Leonard.’
Leonard had closed his eyes and let the relentless words flow over him. At the mention of his name and during the pause that followed, he opened his eyes and sat forward in his chair.
‘Love is the peak and the pit, but no thing lies between.’ The three looked at him expectantly, blinking. ‘That’s what Hinckley wrote on the wall before he jumped.’ The three looked relieved and nodded to one another. Leonard continued, still in a measured voice.
‘He was saying that we are all slaves to love. We live in either deluded euphoria or doomed despair because of love. Love had ultimately brought Hinckley nothing but pain and as he died he cursed love with his final words. That is the story of George Hinckley and that is the only story I’m interested in telling.’
With this Leonard leapt to his feet, violently forced his screenplay into his satchel and stormed from the office, through that room and out into the real world; his and George Hinckley’s world, he thought.
***
George Hinckley walked slowly back to his hotel room, watching the bright sun sparkle between the branches and leaves of trees. He had had an enjoyable lunch with an old school friend, followed by a couple of hours of conversation. Just before George had left they had been discussing love in a philosophical and slightly drunken manner, and it was this subject that George continued to ponder as he approached the hotel lobby.
Ever since the topic had arisen at the café George had entertained the most extreme frustration. Years ago he had written a short essay on love which had culminated, as all his essays had at that point, in a simple, yet slightly cryptic, slogan. These words, he had felt, summed up perfectly his ideas concerning love. With a knowing smile he had reached back into his mind to pluck this beautifully efficient phrase from his memory to find it missing.
Irritated, he snatched the telegram and his key from the porter and stormed into the stairwell. As he climbed the stairs he racked his brains. What the hell was it? Love is a…but there is nothing… Padding down the carpeted corridor to his room he clicked his tongue as he continued to wrestle with his memory.
George slammed the door behind him and immediately opened all the windows fully. Sitting on the edge of the bed he opened the telegram absently as he stared at the blank wall before him. He cast his eyes down to read the telegram but saw no letters as, in a flash, the golden phrase fell from his lips.
He breathed the eleven words over and over, a desperate mantra to try and combat the fraying that had already begun. Tiny slivers of gold were slipping away, back into the dark recesses of his mind, as his eyes tore about the room looking for paper and pen. Turning, he spied a pen laid just to the side of the bed but still no paper. Actually growling his frustration, George dropping the telegram onto the bedside table, snatched up the pen and at
tacked the wall.
‘Love is the pit and the peak’ at this point he reached the mirror and so continued beneath, ‘but nothing lies between’ He sat back on his elbows and let out a satisfied sigh of relief. At that moment the air itself seemed to echo his sigh as a gust of wind flowed coolly through the room.
The telegram fluttered for a moment, as if being tickled lightly on its underside, before leaping from the table and swooping across the room. Instinctively George sprang from the bed to catch the fast moving slip of paper. It flitted just beyond his reach as it approached the open window and so focussed upon it was he that he didn’t noticed his bathrobe heaped on the floor. Tripping over the damp towelling George lunged forward and felt the paper come within his grasp as he fell headlong through the window.
What a ridiculous way to die he thought as he cleared the windowsill. From there to ground he thought only of Anna and Josie. A second later and George Hinckley lay still and silent, his empty eyes staring through the unread telegram he still clasped before him.
Taxi Driver
M Y Alam
When I first hit these roads, I was itching to scrap with every other fare. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. Didn’t like the turn of my wheel, the bounce to my ride, the clothes on my back or the bass in my voice. Nothing but a piece of shit cabbie with only money on my mind: charge too much, drive too fast but still manage to take too long in getting them where they want to be. Every fare stepping into your ride can take one kind of liberty or another: chat some shit, damage the trim, piss on the floor or chip without coughing for the miles. Driving a minicab wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for all the arseholes out there. You shrug your shoulders, grow yourself a thick old skin and you learn to live with it.
I pick up in Headingley to drop in Hunslet. Tall but scrawny looking, despite the all-round shave. Tracksuit, trainers, tats on his hands – spider web on one, snake coiled around a sword on the other. Real fidgety kind, acting like he’s been on intravenous caffeine for the last week, continually scratching at his scab-covered neck and face, glancing at his snide Rolex timepiece: more wired than the National Grid. Get to the last Give Way before journey’s end and in one quick and fluid movement – belt off, latch pulled, door open – the itchy son of a bitch has bolted on me, whatever abuse his imagination can conjure up trailing behind him as he scrams round the corner. David Copperfield isn’t this quick. I imagine giving a vague kind of chase but that’ll mean turning around which isn’t so easy on a road so narrow; more so with a gearshift that hasn’t found reverse once in the last four months. Besides, I don’t have the energy. What’s more, don’t want to face the risk, considering what happened to Luckman four nights ago. Better to lose a fiver than an eye to a strung-out junkie packing a rusty blade up his sleeve.
Don’t usually get runners in the middle of the week. Like everything else that’s lousy about this line of work, I put it down as experience. Thing is, and no matter how long you’ve been cabbing, you can never tell when it comes to fares even though you know any and all travellers are capable of being a pain in the arse, especially on a night. After a while, you begin to see them with a Government Health Warning stuck on their foreheads the moment you spot them but now and then, you can’t help but to let one slip through. It’s nice to be nice but when you are, you tend to get it slapped right back in your face.
Nights I don’t mind too much. During the day, things are a bit safer but you’ve got busier roads to cut through and there’s an even greater army of drivers out there. Working moonlight hours, it’s got a kind of a rhythm to it. I don’t know so much about anyone else, but for a guy like me who’s got nothing or no one during the day, working nights is the one thing that probably keeps me sane.
Back at base, a driver called Ten, and Tab, the operator, are looking up at the box, perched on a chipboard shelf with more angle than the loan shark outfit next door. It’s an old black and white portable set – lousy picture, crackly sound – but they’re engrossed all the same. As soon as I step up to get a better fix on the screen the picture turns to snow and the sound to a hiss. In unison, they tell me to move the fuck out the way. I head toward the coffee machine but keep watching the screen now that sound and image are back with us.
Most times it’s either fake tits and fat arses or professional pundits and their fantasy football that grabs the attention but this night, it’s something else. Some news programme by the looks of it. A few people sat on designer chairs and one guy – the presenter most likely – sat separately, asking some shit or other. The camera cuts to an Asian looking guy. Beard, glasses, smock covering him up to the neck – some kind of cleric or holy man, maybe. Not exactly what the integration mafia would dig, but it’s still a free country; free enough for folks to wear what the hell they want. Hell, Friday nights you got all these damned students wearing all manner of creepy garb; flares and platforms and other bright and psychedelic bullshit. No one seems to mind about them let alone the ones with painted pallor and black everything else including fishnet stockings, stacked heels, super-straight hair, shiny lipstick, and shinier nail polish – and that’s just the blokes.
The holy man opens his mouth and starts talking even more shit than the presenter. This guy seems pissed off – firing on more cylinders than he’s got. Within a few seconds, he’s got himself real worked up. Ranting. Unhinged. Maybe, I’m thinking, maybe he’s one of us. Then again, maybe not – maybe he’s one of those crazy A-rabs you keep hearing about. Either way, there’s no relief because he’s there as a Muslim – to present his point of view which is ready to be taken as a widely held one. Could be I’m wrong but his performance looks bad and sounds a hell of a lot worse. Just what we need, another loony tunes pissing oil all over the flames.
‘It’s shit,’ says Tab. ‘This is so fucking shit, you know that.’
Ten, one of a few older drivers that I don’t know too well, seems just as annoyed:
‘Typical,’ he says. ‘But what do you expect? These fools, they find them, give them a platform and make us all look bad.’
‘Bastards,’ says Tab. ‘Fuckers do it on purpose.’
The presenter asks someone else to come in and respond. It’s a middle-aged looking guy but he seems okay: grey suit, a greying beard and a nice pair of cufflinks occasionally sparkling off the studio lights. He seems moderate. Calm, rational and peaceful. Hell, when he starts to speak, the man seems intelligent. As one, we breath a mental sigh of relief.
‘This is more like it,’ says Tab. ‘This guy’s alright.’
‘Better than the maniac,’ agrees Ten.
As the man with the mind gets into his flow, the holier than thou loony tunes pipes in and starts having a go, calling him a sell-out, a hypocrite and not a proper Muslim. The presenter asks Loony Tunes to shut up but he’s not listening. Keeps going on and on. For the next few minutes, the other people on the panel try getting in their tuppence worth but Loony Tunes won’t let them. Some young Muslim woman, scarf on her head, Oxbridge education under her belt and middle-class upbringing coming out of her mouth tries speaking over him but he’s not having it for a second.
‘Fuckinell,’ says Tab. ‘This is a joke, man.’
‘But without being funny,’ adds Ten.
Sitting opposite the mad and not so mad Muslims is a local MP woman. Skinny, tall, grey haired and more self righteous than a reformed smoker, she tells him off, rude motherfucker that he is.
‘She’s a right racist bitch, this one,’ says Tab. ‘Always moaning on about thick pakis and that.’
‘I was reading about her,’ says Ten. ‘I call her Enoch Powell in a skirt.’
‘Only she’s older and uglier,’ chips in Tab.
Ten looks at Tab with surprise.
‘How do you know who Enoch Powell is?’
‘Was,’ says Tab. ‘Old fucker died a while ago. Gave him a state funeral and everything, didn’t they? Funny that, innit?’
I never figured Tab for anything other than wh
at he looks to be: young punk wallowing in the fact that he’s had little or no schooling to speak of. Should be doing something else – a proper job, maybe studying even – but not whiling the nights away as a pissant taxi operator. Only things I ever seen him express an interest in are his ten years-old Bimmer, his growing collection of bling and biatches. Seems I was wrong but that’s okay. Hell, wish I was wrong about all the other Tabs I see kicking around, too.
‘You hear that? You hear what that bitch just said?’
‘I missed it,’ I say. ‘What she say?’
‘Don’t believe I heard it,’ says Tab, shaking his head, looking shocked to hell and back.
‘She said it,’ nods Ten, gravely. ‘Got some nerve, this one.’
‘What’s she said?’
Tab takes a breath, looks at me like a doctor about to hit me with some cancer or other and says:
‘My Muslims. She said, My Muslims. My Muslims? Where the fuck does she get off? Her Muslims? Since when was she made Caliph?’
‘She said My Muslims?’ I find myself asking. ‘She didn’t say that, did she?’
‘That’s exactly what she said.’
All I can manage is:
‘But –’
‘My Muslims as in my niggers as in I’m the plantation mistress around here and I own you stupid motherfuckers.’
I walk away, not wanting to see or hear no more, and flop on to the old settee that’s been there more years than even the longest serving driver. Can’t deal with this thing no more. A done but bum deal and me, I’m more than happy to be the first to fold. Some of the other drivers go on about the state of things all the time. To them, and maybe even to me, there are lots of smaller parts that make up this one big thing, whatever the hell it’s supposed to be. All I know is I’m not playing any more.