by Adam Carter
Still, Corsac and Liz were getting paid more, so it made Marie happy. Corsac had never been interested in the money, he’d just needed to get back into the spotlight. He was a star which had been unable to shine for too long and now he had been given an opportunity at last. He had run with it and it had paid off pretty well so far.
Now he just had to see just how far he could actually push it.
“Afternoon, all,” Corsac said to the camera. He had tried to inject a little less artificial joviality the more the show progressed, but Castle was adamant he remain a happy host. Corsac’s stand-up routine had never been one of supreme gaiety, but for the sake of being back on TV he was willing to pretend to be something he wasn’t. The best thing about the progression of the show was that he was now allowed to put more of his own jokes in. Before, he had ad-libbed what he could get away with, but now he was given entire segments where he could ply his trade. It didn’t make much sense to him that he had to always act it in a happy and carefree fashion, but at least it meant he was being watched by people again.
“I was on my way to work this morning,” he said. “Like many of you, I take the train.” Which at least was true. “You know those annoying people who don’t move in, even when you ask them to? And you find yourself shouting at them ‘Move in, please! You there with the bag, move in a bit!’ And of course they don’t. So you don’t end up getting on and as the train goes past you’re getting angry because of all the empty space you can see on the train where you could now be standing. Well, the next time that happens to you, the next time you’re faced with a crowded train, try this. Just push yourself on. Because if you push the people who are in your way, they’ll push against the people in front of them, who’ll push the people in front of them, who’ll push the people in front of them ... until the people who won’t move are themselves pushed and they think ‘Crikey, I think I’ll have to move’ and they move.
“And once you’re on the train,” he paused, “you hear someone say ‘Move in, please!’ and of course you don’t. Then you realise you’ve become that annoying person who doesn’t want to move up. Life’s strange like that. Anyway, folks, you’re here, I’m here ... so let’s play Deadlock!”
It was a weird start, but if Castle didn’t like it he could always have him change it later. This wasn’t a live performance, and Corsac felt it was affecting him. Corsac was used to performing live, where he could alter his act according to how much laughter his routines were getting. The worst thing (aside from actual assault, he supposed) was polite laughter. It was just quiet enough to let people know it wasn’t sincere and even the best comedian didn’t have a good enough comeback for it. Corsac sometimes used the line, “Don’t know why I ever use that joke, it never gets a laugh,” which had worked once or twice. But resorting to that line meant his performance was not up to scratch to begin with.
The problem with the studio audience was that they were told to laugh at his jokes. He would not get any hecklers within this crowd; and, if he did, they would be removed before filming could resume. Television was a false performance, so far as Corsac was concerned. It removed a lot of the spontaneity, the real meat of a comedian’s performance. Of course, a lot of comedians preferred television as a medium. Many of them, from Britain or America, had taken up careers as actors and starred in their own comedy programmes or films which were not their own. There was a vast difference, Corsac thought, between a comedian being handed his own show upon which to promote himself and a comedian appearing on someone else’s show. Sketch shows were fine, but Corsac could never imagine himself appearing in any of these Hollywood films some of the American comedians went in for.
Yet that was oft-times what television would lead to.
The programme was moving along and Corsac introduced the two contestants for the show being recorded. “Samuel Davenshaw, from Plymouth,” Corsac introduced the first of them. “Wow, that’s a long way to travel just for us. Excited to be on the first show of our new time slot, Samuel?”
Davenshaw was nodding and grinning like one of those annoying dogs in the backs of cars. Not the one from the advert: Corsac quite liked him. “Yes, yes,” Davenshaw was saying for some reason. “Long way to travel, yes.”
“And you’re confident today, Samuel?”
“Confident, yes, yes.”
“Says on my card your hobbies are reading and doing crosswords.”
“Crosswords, yes.”
“Well, no cross words on the show tonight, Samuel, or we’ll have to disqualify you.” Corsac moved on quickly to the next contestant. He had no idea why Davenshaw was annoying him like that but was kind enough to put it down to nerves. “Rebecca Woole.”
“Becky,” the contestant corrected him with a shy smile.
“Becky. So, the money’s up from now on. Any special strategies for tonight, Becky?”
“Maybe, Jack. But that would be telling.”
Corsac returned the smile. He didn’t know why, but he immediately liked this young woman. He checked his card a moment, but didn’t need to since he already knew what was printed there. “So, you work in a chippie, Becky?”
“That’s right, Jack.”
“Well, if you win the big money tonight, dinner’s on you, right?”
“It’s a date.”
The music took over, signalling they were moving into the first round. Corsac tried to concentrate on his work, but found the smile of the young Miss Woole intoxicating. He suddenly realised Liz was glowering at him and knew he’d missed a cue. He immediately resumed. “Well, the stakes are higher, the money greater, and I appear to have come out in a hot flush because of it,” he said, making a show of waving his cue cards at himself as though they were a fan. “If the lovely Liz would present the pyramid, we’ll get straight into round one.”
Liz’s job was pretty much summed up in that one sentence. She would stand beside the pyramid, smile a lot, make sure the camera always caught a good view of her sideways so all her curves could be seen by the viewers at home, and that was about it. She did other things, little things, but nothing that really warranted her presence. The show had got along just fine without her. That was not saying Corsac was suggesting they should be rid of her, far from it. It was just that he worried sometimes someone would complain about her being there purely to make men turn on the TV set. Which was, in essence, what she actually was doing there.
Still, Corsac wasn’t complaining.
Liz would also provide some answers the contestants couldn’t get themselves, just to prove that there were answers to be found. Whatever she did, of course, she always had to do it with a smile.
*
The view from the audience was something people like Jack Corsac would never experience. Starke had come dressed in a loose T-shirt and jeans. He desperately wanted to be wearing a heavy trench coat and dark glasses, perhaps even a fedora (he was certain he had one somewhere), but while it would mask his features, it would be a disguise which disguised nothing about the fact he was meant to be in disguise. It was, he had heard spoken many times, far better to hide in plain sight. Hence the T-shirt and jeans. Thus far he did not believe anyone had noticed him in the crowd, and he was keeping as low a profile as he possibly could. Still, that did not mean anyone had not seen him. He had taken a huge risk in coming here today, but knew he had no choice. He had to see where Liz worked, had to watch her while she worked, if he wanted to obtain some clue as to her predicament. Thus far he had seen only that she was forced to wear that ridiculous costume, like a trained monkey in a clown’s outfit at the circus.
He watched as Corsac nattered on about some rubbish or other. His jokes were terrible and Starke only began to listen to them properly when he considered that perhaps there was more to these ‘jokes’ than met the eye. If there was some hidden meaning to the comedian’s words, perhaps that would explain what Liz was so upset about.
It was like the scare of the Commies in the fifties and sixties, where writers and presenters wer
e afraid to air their views for fear of disappearing overnight. Americans in the public eye became quite famously extraordinarily patriotic, making sure all their opinions were solely pro-American and always against the Red Menace.
The comedian was presently droning on about something and the audience was laughing. He joined in, knowing that if he would just allow himself to sit and enjoy the show he would find himself having fun. But he was not here for fun and could not afford to fall into the trap of thinking otherwise. Liz was in trouble, and he was here to help her.
Perhaps this involved the reason for her breaking up with him. Perhaps it was all interlinked. Perhaps Corsac was a Commie.
At this stage, Starke figured, anything was possible.
*
The first round was over and it had been Rebecca Woole who had taken it. The category for the second round was “Names of four or five letters” and the round was progressing without a hitch. Corsac, for reasons he could not explain, felt this show was moving along particularly well. He glanced across to where Liz was standing and smiled her way. She returned the smile and added a wink and Corsac looked away, embarrassed. He had no idea why he was embarrassed. He had, after all, worked with Liz for all this time now and they knew one another as well as could be expected. They were friends and they were confidants, yet he still felt a flush of guilt whenever he looked at her, or when she looked his way.
The two contestants were busy spouting off names and Corsac was thankful Davenshaw had proved he could say more than “yes, yes.” Corsac put his earlier hesitation down to taut nerves and could see the rest of the show running smoothly.
Woole fumbled for a name and Corsac held his breath, hoping she would not be able to produce an answer in time. It wasn’t that he necessarily wanted Woole to lose (Corsac usually preferred to have the young and pretty women win) but that she had won the first round. If she lost this one, they could have a third.
The gong sounded, which meant only one thing.
“Ooh, bad luck, just out of time there,” Corsac said. “You’ve hit deadlock! That means, of course, we’re headed into the decider round.”
There was some music played and Corsac (over time) had taught himself the precise moment to come in. He also knew now that the music played on set wasn’t the same as the music going out with the show on TV. But that didn’t matter right now.
“So, it’s one a piece,” he said, “anyone’s game. Samuel, why don’t we take a breather and you can tell us a little bit about yourself.”
“Yes, yes.”
Corsac tried not to laugh. “Says on my card you work in a bakery, is that right?”
“Yes, a bakery.”
“Well, let’s see whether we can get you some real dough to play with by the end of the day, shall we?” He shuffled his cards. “And, Becky. Seems you have an avid interest in ...”
*
The violin!
Starke sat bolt upright. The violin! Yes, she replied, I’ve been playing the violin since I can remember and I always carry it around with me.
That would, for many people, be sufficient explanation as to why she would carry around a violin, but Starke knew better. He recognised her now, had not been looking at her before but he was looking at her now. And he saw the girl from the fish-and-chip shop, the girl who had walked into his bookshop that one time with an Uzi and quizzed him about where to find Alexandre Dumas.
Why do you always carry it around with you? the old comedian was asking.
Because you never know when you might need to pluck a chord out the air, was her reply.
That made no sense to Starke. He knew writers carried pen and paper with them wherever they went (he did the same himself, in case a pathetically depressing poem should come to mind), but to carry a violin? It was implausible. No, the only logical explanation was that she had a machine-gun. Perhaps even the mob had sent her.
But where was the violin case now? He couldn’t see it.
Starke noticed the person beside him glancing his way and he knew his reaction had been suspect. Slowly leaning back in his seat, Starke continued to watch the show. Things were now getting interesting.
*
The contestants whizzed through the final round and Corsac was overjoyed. He hated rounds where the players would stumble over everything, purely because the easier it was, the more chance the people at home were enjoying themselves as well. If the viewers weren’t having fun, they’d stop watching and the ratings would go down, but Corsac wasn’t bothered by that so much. What he wanted was for people to enjoy watching him, to laugh at his jokes, watered down as they may have been on this show. Deadlock was a far cry from proper stand-up and he was beginning to feel that while television offered him a broader platform, it limited him in what he could say. For decades now (possibly even centuries, but he hadn’t been alive quite that long) society had been trying to censor comedy. And the more pressure there was to censor, the more comedians fought back. Politically correct comedy may not have been quite so much fun, but it was the way society wanted them. Even Tom and Jerry had been told to become more PC and had crashed and burned forever.
And here he was accepting more money than he had in a long time, if only he would sell his morals down the river.
It was a temporary situation, he promised himself. Once he was a household name again, he would find something else. He would host Live at the Apollo or something. He would be big once more, he just had to get himself famous again.
Yet, with the move in the schedules, was that not telling him he had already made it? Should he not now consult with Sam to get him something even grander?
After the show he would consider it. That was a promise he made himself. After this show he would re-evaluate his life and see what his options truly were.
The girl with who always carried the violin (but had neglected to bring it today) went on to win the third round and made it to the final. Corsac bade farewell to Yes Yes Davenshaw and introduced the final with a joke about violinists and fish. It was not especially funny, but he knew he couldn’t say the obvious joke with the show going out at the time it was.
The final was spectacular, for Woole selected the category: words which begin and end with the same letter. Woole sped through the first ten, even managing to get one for that (usually) pesky X (Xerox). She slowed down a bit for the next couple, then shot off on top form. Nor did she repeat her letters, which always tended to slow players down. She had aorta and bomb, dad and endgame (had a problem with C and F), gong and hah, got stuck at I but moved straight on. She systematically broke down the pyramid into alphabetical order and worked out each letter in turn, skipping over the ones she couldn’t get. It was a system Corsac had never seen used before, at least not to this great an extent, and he happily said his yes to each of them, finding no need to provide any prompt at all. In fact, she was getting them so quickly he couldn’t even think of answers himself for any of the ones she had missed. And it seemed rude to make suggestions for letters she had yet to reach in case he broke her concentration.
J posed a problem, but kayak, lull and mum were fine. Nan, obo and pop were accepted and at Q she stopped for a moment. Roar, she said, along with sass and tat. U she skipped over, and V, but had wow (already said Xerox at the beginning for some reason, probably because psychologically it was the most difficult to get), said yearly and got stuck at Z.
Then she went back to the beginning and scanned over those she hadn’t managed to get.
All of this she managed with plenty of spare time on the clock.
Corsac waited tensely, not even daring to inform her she had a lot of time remaining. He didn’t want to spoil her flow and could see Becky Woole becoming the first person ever to clear the pyramid; and all on the first show in its new time slot. People would assume it was fixed, of course they would, but it would be great publicity for them either way. And more publicity meant more viewers and more viewers meant more people watching him.
And that meant he c
ould escape all the sooner.
She said fluff and Urdu a moment later, followed closely by cathartic and illuminati.
Here she stopped. With just four letters remaining she simply couldn’t get any further. Nor was her face filled with the anxiety of most players with so few remaining, and Corsac sensed within her an inner calm far in excess of her years.
The gong sounded, although Corsac had seen her lips move at that moment. “Sorry,” he said, somehow believing she had just given four answers, “could you repeat that? I couldn’t hear you clearly over the gong.”
“Already said gong,” she smiled (always smiling). “I said zizz, Jack.”
“And you’ve certainly finished with a zizz,” he said, having no idea what it meant; but no one had said anything down his ear-mike to him so it meant the word was acceptable. “Now, let’s have a look at that pyramid. Ooh, it seems a shame you’ve left those three squares still lit, Becky.” He was impressed: that much wasn’t an act, even if most of his routine was. “Shame I can’t offer you the grand prize anyway, but I sure can’t think of anything for those final letters.” The letters remaining were J, Q and V. He didn’t know whether there actually were answers for those – particularly Q – but he wasn’t about to bring such to people’s attention, either in the studio or at home. “Still,” he continued, “look on the bright side. Old show, I’d be rewarding you right now with one hundred pounds per five correct answers, which would be four hundred pounds. Now, though, it’s one hundred for each correct answer, which means, Becky, you’re walking away here tonight with two thousand three hundred pounds!”