Hugh switched the video off and tried to find the right remote for the telly. He’d already found the right CD and dimmed the lights.
What was I doing? I was about to be hypnotised by a stormtrooper and his spacedog! I needed more time…. I glanced about the room, desperate to find a distraction.
“Hugh, did you paint that picture?”
I pointed at a poster hanging on the wall.
“No …,” said Hugh. “That was Rembrandt.”
What else was there in here? What else could I use? And then I noticed something … something on the TV Something that actually genuinely intrigued me. A strangely familiar view. When Hugh had turned the video off, the picture on the screen had turned into … well …
“Hugh, what’s that?” I said.
“What’s what?” said Hugh.
“That view on the telly”—I pointed at it—“that’s the view out of your front window, isn’t it?”
This seemed very odd to me, whether buying time or not. Why close your curtains to block out the view but purposefully have the view piped into your TV? It seemed like something an extravagant rapper on MTV Cribs would do. Perhaps Hugh was more showbiz than I thought.
“Oh, that, yeah,” said Arlene, suddenly there. “There’s a camera on the windowsill.”
“Right. What, like a security thing?”
I was very grateful she’d arrived. She’d just bought me some time.
“No, no … nothing like that. It’s very safe here.”
“Well, why, then?”
“There’s a little boy next door,” said Hugh, studying the back of another CD. “Dean, his name is. He’s great fun, but he wants to come in all the time. Literally all the time. He always knows when we’re in, and so we close the curtains and put the camera on so we know if it’s him at the door. Otherwise I’d end up doing magic all day, every day. Usually we’ll hear a knock, so we’ll turn the telly on, and his face will be filling the whole screen. He presses his face right up to it so we can see it’s him.”
“So, he knows it’s there?” I said. As a distraction technique this was working wonderfully.
“Oh, yes,” said Arlene. “Doesn’t stop him. He loves watching magic, and Hugh just can’t turn him away.”
“I’m too polite. So that’s why I had the camera installed.”
This was brilliant. They had actually installed a camera in their window so that they could avoid the little boy next door. And they’d had to do it, because they were too polite to say no to him. They were trapped in their own home by a Yes.
“Can’t you just tell him to come back another time?” I asked, wondering what else I could use to stall for time.
“He’s crafty,” said Hugh. “As soon as you open the door for him, he puts his foot in the hallway so you can’t close it again. Sometimes we have to hide behind the sofa and keep quiet, like if we’ve forgotten to close the curtains, and he stands there with his face pressed up against the window for ten minutes or so, waiting for us to move.”
“Last week,” said Arlene, “he knocked on the door and when we turned the camera on, he was holding his school report card up to the camera so we could read it. I mean, you can’t really turn that away, can you?”
I loved Hugh and Arlene for this. I loved the fact that they were essentially being terrorised by a little boy who just wanted to be friends with them. I loved the fact that they wouldn’t just tell him to go away or complain to his parents or jade him for life by rejecting him outright. And I loved the fact that when they talked about him, they smiled broadly and with real love and enthusiasm in their voices. They loved the kid next door. They just wished he’d stay there.
“Look,” said Hugh. “He gave me this the other day….”
He pulled open a drawer and took out an A4 certificate. He read from it.
“It’s a Best Mate Award. It reads: ‘It’s hard to find a friend like you. Lucky people have just one or two. However, many good friends are rare. And you for me are always there!’”
“But you’re not!” I said. “You’re usually hiding behind the sofa!”
Suddenly there was a knock at the door. A loud one.
“Sh!” said Arlene, putting her fingers to her lips.
There was another knock now.
Bang.
Bang, bang.
Hugh sat perfectly still. Arlene sat perfectly still. I sat perfectly still as well. We all stared at the TV. Suddenly, he stepped into frame. A little boy, of around eleven or twelve, with short, blonde hair and big, blue eyes. He was staring at the camera now. He stepped closer to it and just stared and stared, and then tapped the window, and then stared.
No one said a thing. It was genuinely one of the most terrifying moments of my life.
And then the little boy shook his head, crossed his arms, and walked off.
“Anyway,” said Hugh. “He’s a lovely lad. But sometimes when he comes in, he’ll take his jumper or one of his shoes off, and he’ll hide it in here, so he can come back to get it later. And he’ll leave little presents. He gave me an ashtray he’d nicked from the pub the other day.”
“We call him ‘The News of the Valleys,’” said Arlene. “You tell him something, and the whole valley knows before the end of the day.”
“Just before Christmas,” said Hugh, “I told him he was doing my head in, so I’d decided to move to Bosnia. The next day he turned up with a card that read ‘Bon Voyage’ and a biscuit for the trip. I couldn’t move, because people kept coming up to me in the town and wishing me good luck in Bosnia.”
Suddenly, and with no warning whatsoever, we heard the letterbox flip open quite violently. It was Dean. He was trying to catch us out. The letterbox remained open for ten or twenty seconds, while we all sat in our chairs, wide-eyed and silent. It started to close, but as it did so, Murphy let out a short sneeze, and the flap slowly opened up again. It was like something out of Jurassic Park. I held my breath. Moments later it slammed shut, and we watched the screen as a little boy, who’d obviously tried to avoid the camera, walked sheepishly away and headed, grumpy-faced, back down the road.
“Anyway,” said Hugh. “Are we going to get you hypnotised or what?”
And then, out of the blue, it hit me.
“Hugh! That show you need a title for!” I was excited all of a sudden.
“Which show?”
“The one where you audition dogs to try and find a new Hypnodog!”
“Yes?”
“You should call it Pup Idol!”
Hugh’s face lit up.
“Pup Idol! Brilliant! I told you! The subconscious! You concentrate on something else, and the answer comes to you! Right, hang on. I’m going to make a phone call….”
* * *
An hour later, and I had just woken up.
My Pup Idol revelation had bought me some time … but nowhere near enough.
I had undergone hypnosis.
I couldn’t tell whether the dog had been involved at any point—which is always worrying when you wake up in a stranger’s house—but he was certainly staring at me now. And so was … a little soldier.
The tiniest soldier I had ever seen, in fact.
I recognised him more or less straight away. It was Dean. The kid from next door. He was sitting on the sofa opposite me.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hello,” he said back.
He was wearing a large, black beret, camouflage gear, and shiny black boots. I wasn’t sure quite what was going on, to be honest with you. It was like I’d fallen asleep, and next door had invaded.
“Hey, Danny, I thought I’d let you wake up naturally,” said Hugh, walking into the room and throwing Murphy the last spare wonton. “Have you met Dean?”
“Yes,” I said. “But have you hypnotised me to make children look like soldiers? Because if you have, you should stop that right now.”
“Dean’s on his way to ACF.”
“ACF?” I said.
“Armed Cadet
Force,” said Dean.
“Oh,” I said, impressed but yawning. “What are you armed with?”
“Nothing,” Dean said.
“His wit!” said Hugh. “Hey, he nicks all my jokes, this kid.”
“They’re not yours,” said Dean. “They’re Tommy Cooper’s.”
“We like watching Tommy Cooper videos, don’t we?”
Dean nodded and smiled. Suddenly the fez made sense. And it was brilliant, seeing the way the two bantered. They were clearly great mates.
But while all this was lovely, there was only one thing on my mind: Had it worked? Was I now a Yes Man, whether I liked it or not? I tried asking myself a question in my head. Shall I have a cup of tea later? … Yes. It certainly seemed to be working.
“Danny, did you know Tommy Cooper lived down the road in Caerphilly?” said Hugh. “Quite a few people lived around here. Tommy Cooper, Tom Jones …”
Suddenly Arlene poked her head around the door.
“Dean, you’d better be off to ACF …,” she said.
Dean nodded, gave us all a little salute, and said he’d be back round later, at which Hugh secretly rolled his eyes.
He walked toward the door, and I was about to ask Hugh how the hypnosis had gone, when he turned around.
“By the way, I came round earlier, but you didn’t answer,” he said, accusingly.
“I was out,” lied Hugh.
“But your car was here.”
“I … walked.”
“No. You were in.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I looked through the letterbox, and your keys were in the door.”
Hugh went a bit red.
“Okay. I was in. Now get out.”
Dean shut the door behind him.
“You let him in, then?” I said.
“Arlene was putting the bins out, and he ran in while her back was turned.”
“Nice kid, though.”
“The best.”
There was a slight lull in the conversation. I knew what I wanted to say, but I didn’t quite know how to put it.
“So … um … I don’t … y’know … feel all that different.”
“No?”
“Nope. I mean, since the … you know. Since you …”
“Since you fell asleep?”
“Yes. Well, no. I mean, since you put that Richard Clayderman CD on and … hypnotised me.”
Hugh sat down.
“Danny, listen. Don’t be annoyed, but… I decided not to hypnotise you. Not properly, anyway.”
“Eh? Why? I thought that’s what you did? You and Murphy?”
“Well, it’s mainly me. Murphy’s a dog, after all. And I decided not to.”
“But why?”
“I talked to you when you were under, and … well … you don’t need it. From everything you’ve told me, you’re doing this because you want to, and because you need to. It takes a certain amount of dedication, and that’s what you’ve done … and it means more if you can fail. Because if you can fail, then you can also win. The way I see it, it means more if you do it yourself. As humans we seem to go to more effort to avoid trouble and pain than we do to make things better. Avoiding rather than doing. Am I anywhere near the mark?”
“I think so,” I said, knowing he was. If I was going to do this, if I was going to survive until the end of December, I was going to have to do this myself. What good is sorting out your own life, if it’s not you that’s sorting it? Where’s the achievement in being programmed to do something? What’s the lesson? That someone will always be there to help? If I was going to act irresponsibly, the least I could do was be responsible for it.
Hugh dropped me off at the station half an hour later. We sat in the car as rain began to spatter the windscreen. Hugh offered me a carton of Ribena as we waited for my train to arrive.
“When you think about it,” he said, “probably some of the best things that have ever happened to you in life, happened because you said yes to something. Otherwise things just sort of stay the same.”
We let the thought hang in the air.
“I mean, just ask Arlene. She can’t get enough of bloody wonton now. She wants me to pick some more up on the way home.”
I smiled. I’d never realised that wonton could be a real symbol of hope in this world.
“But some things we have to do for ourselves,” said Hugh. “I mean, take me … I had a fear once. A terrible one. But I conquered that fear. Through hard work and self-belief. Not hypnotism.”
“Oh. What were you afraid of?”
Hugh blushed.
“Dogs.”
“Dogs?!”
He nodded. “Dogs.”
I rode home to London and braced myself for the final push.
SELECTED EXTRACTS FROM THE DIARY OF A YES MAN
September 28
On the way home from Wales the other daf, I noticed an advert in the paper, reading, DO YOU WANT TO BE A WRITER? and then dutifullf sent off for the information pack. They asked for a three-hundred-word sample of my writing in and genre. I chose science fiction and wrote the following this morning. I have called it, rather ominously “Future War.’
Tex McBellamy cast his eyes to the skies and smiled the smile of victory He had done it. He had single-handed taken on the entire Kraxxon race with only his trusty friend and robot, Figgy5000, for backup.
’I don’t think they’ll be coming back for more,” said Tex, which was true, because they were all dead.
“MEEP. I think that—MEEP—we should both go to the—MEEP—” said FiggfÇooo, but he was stopped from saving and more by the sudden sound of an explosion on the horizon.
“What the …,” said Tex, never intending to finish the sentence and actually leaving it at that.
“MEEP,” said FiggY5000. “MEEP.”
It was a heli-chopper, a futuristic cross between a helicopter and a chopper. It was the vehicle of choice for Senator Greenglove, the evil senator who had first imprisoned Tex all those fears ago in that cell he was in.
“Greenglove,” said Tex. “So, he’s come back to finish the job himself….”
“McBellamy!” screamed Greenglove from out of the big tannof on the front of the helichopper, and shaking his trademark green-begloved fist at Tex. “So, we meet again! Well, prepare for four doom! You know that it’s a crime now that we’re in the twenty millionth century for you to have four own thoughts and ideas! Well, you’ve had far too many of them, and you’ve had four last! So it’s back to the big prison made out of ice that I made for f ou!”
Tex groaned. He hated that big ice prison.
“You dumb bastard!” he shouted. “Why don’t you and your frozen cell just melt off! I will not return there!”
“Yes, you will!” retorted Senator Greenglove.
“FiggfÇooo,” Tex whispered. “On mf order, reverse the polarity on four positron deactivators.”
“MEEP—okay,” said Figgy5000, who, by the way, was shaped like a beautiful woman.
“Well, Senator Greenglove, I suppose I’ll have to come quietly, then …,” said Te*, but Greenglove couldn’t hear him, because he was still miles away, and Tex didn’t have a tannoy on his front like he did.
I enclosed a note with the words “To Be Continued …” and I told them that this was merely a small part of an epic Tex McBellamy trilogy I have in the pipeline. Hopefully they will like it and we can publish sometime early next fear.
October 5
Paul Lewis was the boy at my school who used to bull people. He has just found me on Friends Reunited and said we should go for a pint sometime. I had to say yes.
My most vivid memory of Paul Lewis is from the end of every school day, when he used to give Anil Patel, a boy in a wheelchair, a dead arm—just because he liked “watching him go round in circles.”
We are meeting nexf Thursday in forth.
October 7
Saw something in the Standard. WOULD YOU BE INTERESTED IN PARTICIPATING IN A CLI
NICAL TRIAL, INVESTIGATING WOMEN’S SEXUAL LlBIDOS AFTER MENOPAUSE?
I rang the number, but it turned out I was ineligible.
Sometimes it surprises me how deep the discrimination in this country runs.
October 8
My mum has sent me an article she things I might be interested in. A girl called Laura, who I Knew when I was twelve, is now twenty-six and has opened a dried-flower shop in Trowbridge. When I unfold the article, I see that the bottom half of the paper read in very bold type, DISCOVER MIDSOMER NORTON!
It is an advert paid for by three local businesses—Dock’s Delicatessen (“As well as selling a wide range of continental cheeses, Dock’s also sells baguettes!”); the barber Shop (“After sixteen >(ears in the business, Emma, the inspiration behind the Barber Shop, noticed a gap in the market and decided to open a men’s hair stylists in Midsomer Norton!”); and Katona Cast Stone, Ltd. (“Come to Katona Cast Stone, Ltd.—Pots, Garden Ornaments, Bird Baths, Urns, Etc.”).
Midsomer Norton is a small town near Bath. I will discover its three shops on Thursday, before meeting Paul.
October 13
Paul Lewis thinks we should stay in touch and become great friends. He is in the Territorial Army now. He says it gave him goals and focus and changed his life. He thinks I should apply too. That way we could be comrades as well as great friends. He has invited me to his stag weekend, which will take place on a barge with his army pals. I think Paul Lewis may be planning to abduct and Kill me.
I discovered Midsomer Norton. It was all right but Dock’s was out of baguettes.
October 14
A reminder e-mail from celebrated bully, Paul Lewis, about my joining the Territorial Army. He says I should fill in their on-line application form to get more details. I go to the site and fill in the boxes. At one point it asks me if I would liKe to offer any particular skills to the TA. I click yes, and it presents me with a huge list of options. I choose “receptionist.”
October 15
I have three hairs on my chest—but not for much longer. Today I accepted a no-risk, thirty-day, money-back-guarantee trial pack from the people at HairBeGone, an “amazing new product that says good-bye to shaving, tweezing, and waxing!” I will receive my two tubes of hair-removal cream and a hair growth-inhibitor spra very soon. However, I noticed no recommendations from doctors and no safety notices, either, so who knows what it will do to my hair. It is at times like this that I wish Stuart the cat was real. I know animal experimentation is wrong, but something that hairy has to get self-conscious every now and again.
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