Games Makers: A London Satire

by Andrew Calcutt

Empty, now empty my mind, and let the song come through.

  It’s the same old...ssshhh! This is my time – now!

  A rush of light, then the camera grabs her as she moves down stage. She is there for the taking. Come to us, little girl with lustrous eyes and blue black hair and breasts more tender than you seem to know.

  We’ll take you by the waist and bolt ourselves on to your delicious body. Now we’ve found you, we know it’s true: this country’s got talent.

  A whole orchestra playing that riff. Then her voice: strong, tensile, reeling in the audience with a mixture of warmth and oh-so-casual disdain.

  ‘I bet you wonder how I knew...’

  By the time these words are out, she’s taken over.

  Before she’s got to the end of the line, even. Two almost indecipherable syllables and the cadence between them, that’s all it took. How’d it go?

  ‘Aaah-uuh-I bet you wonder...’ Aaah-uuh, twisted up. Not Marvin Gaye’s straightforward anguish, hers is younger than that; but more complicated.

  The way she sings, she’s not even talking to the guy who broke her heart; instead she’s looking in a mirror, putting on make-up, rehearsing how to break his. Or maybe she’s doing it to webcam, for uploading on YouTube. Hey, people, look at me: this is me acting heartbroken. And there beyond the webcam that isn’t really there, the television camera that really is.

  Gonna make her a star.

  Name of Rupa.

  Ripped-up jeans. Face split between frightened eyes and a kiss-me mouth, ready to smile or snarl. We’ve all been ripped apart, haven’t we? Then put back together in that face.

  And her voice is like skin. She touches us with it.

  It is how she surfaces. She uses her voice to break through to you and to hold herself together, both at the same time.

  And she can do it, this double-act. In a few seconds they’ll all be cheering her, because she’s doing it absolutely right, right now. At this very moment, she’s the do-right woman.

  Only because of before. Before tonight, all those evenings through the rain and wind to the after-school music school.

  When she started there, aged six, Dad would hoist her up and jog through the streets of East London, carrying his little girl on his shoulders. In sunlight, twilight, and wrapped up warm for winter nights, they kept on going. Then there were vocal exercises to do at home. Brush your teeth, sing your scales; brush your hair, sing those scales again. And now, as she moves down stage for the camera to take her, just as she gets to her mark and hears the cue for her first note, she can let go. She can afford to. Tonight she can spend, spend, spend. Because she has all those years in the bank.

  When next she notices, after a burst of applause not for a high note but for having held a low one longer, so much longer than a young girl should, she finds she’s still in credit.

  Her voice is on the money; the audience feels enriched by it. Her singing is like an exceptional payment for all the time we have lost. Whenever she hits a note dead-on, then plays with it in her mouth, wobbles it, pulls it over like a loose tooth, we can all have a little of our life back.

  Rupa’s singing for her life, for the kind of life she wants to lead; and we can hear our own lives accumulating in the grain of her voice.

  Last note. She curtsies. As if auditioning for the  corps de ballet. Can you believe that? The West, the East, the Past: this girl’s got it all.

  In the auditorium, the audience goes wild for her. The judges can’t get them to shut up. They have to roll the credits with cheering and foot stomping still going on. Somebody’s already written tomorrow’s headline:

  ‘Supa Rupa’.

  (2) Pete at home