A moment passes, and he looks towards the door. ‘I’ll send Martin in, shall I?’
‘Please do.’
He heads to the door, then stops and turns. ‘I’m sorry, have I broken some sort of professional code? Can I say that to a member of my staff? That they look nice?’
‘Course you can,’ she says, but both know that ‘nice’ was not the word he had used. The word was ‘beautiful.’
‘Excuse me, but I’m looking for the most odious man on television?’ says Toby Moray from the doorway, in that whiny, pinched little voice of his. He’s wearing a tartan suit and his on-screen make-up, his hair slick and oiled into a jokey quiff and Dexter wants to throw a bottle at him.
‘I think you’ll find that that’s you who you’re looking for, not me,’ says Dexter, concise speech suddenly beyond him.
‘Nice come-back, superstar,’ says his co-presenter. ‘So you saw the previews then?’
‘Nope.’
‘Because I can run off some photocopies for you—’
‘Just one bad write-up, Toby.’
‘You didn’t read the
Mirror
then. Or the
Express, The Times
…’
Dexter pretends to be studying his running order. ‘No-one ever built a statue of a critic.’
‘True, but no-one built a statue of a TV presenter either.’
‘Fuck off, Toby.’
‘Ah,
le mot juste!’
‘Why are you here anyway?’
‘To wish you luck.’ He crosses, places his hands on Dexter’s shoulders and squeezes. Round and waspish, Toby’s role on the show is a kind of irreverent, say-anything jester figure and Dexter despises him, this jumped-up little warm-up man, and envies him too. In the pilot and in rehearsals he has run rings around Dexter, slyly mocking and deriding him, making him feel fat-tongued,
slow-witted, doltish, the pretty boy who can’t think on his feet. He shrugs Toby’s hands away. This antagonism is meant to be the stuff of great TV they say, but Dexter feels paranoid, persecuted. He needs another vodka to recover some of his good spirits, but he can’t, not while Toby’s smirking at him in the mirror with his little owlish face. ‘If you don’t mind I’d like to gather my thoughts.’
‘I understand. Focus that mind of yours.’
‘See you out there, yeah?’
‘See you, handsome. Good luck.’ He pulls the door closed then opens it again. ‘No, really. I mean it. Good luck.’
When Dexter’s sure he’s alone he pours himself that drink and checks himself in the mirror. Bright red t-shirt worn under black dinner jacket over washed out jeans over pointed black shoes, his hair cut short and sharp, he is meant to be the picture of metropolitan male youth but suddenly he feels old and tired and impossibly sad. He presses two fingers against each eye and attempts to account for this crippling melancholy, but is having trouble with rational thought. It feels as if someone has taken his head and shaken it. Words are turning to mush and he can see no plausible way of getting through this. Don’t fall apart, he tells himself, not here, not now. Hold it together.
But an hour is an impossibly long time on live TV, and he decides that he might need a little help. There’s a small water bottle on his dressing table, and he empties it into the sink then, glancing at the door, takes the bottle of vodka from the drawer once again and pours three, no, four inches of the viscous liquid into the bottle and replaces the lid. He holds it up to the light. No-one would ever tell the difference and of course he’s not going to drink it all, but it’s there, in his hand, to help him out and get him through. The deceit makes him feel excited and confident again, ready to show the viewing public, and Emma, and his father at home just what he can do. He is not just some presenter. He is a
broadcaster
.
The door opens. ‘WAHEY!’ says Suki Meadows, his co-presenter. Suki is the nation’s ideal girlfriend, a woman for whom bubbliness is a way of life, verging on a disorder. Suki would probably start a letter of condolence with the word ‘Wahey!’ and Dexter might find this relentless perkiness a bit wearing if she weren’t so attractive and popular and crazy about him.
‘HOW ARE YOU, SWEETHEART? SHITTING BRICKS, I EXPECT!’ and this is Suki’s other great talent as a TV presenter, to hold every conversation as if she’s addressing the Bank Holiday crowd on the sea-front at Weston-super-Mare.
‘I am a little nervous, yes.’
‘AWWWW! COME HERE YOU!’ She wraps her arm around his head and holds it like a football. Suki Meadows is pretty and what used to be called petite, and fizzes and bubbles like a fan-heater dropped into a bath. There has been some flirtation between them recently, if you can call this flirtation, Suki pushing his face into her breast like this. Like a head-boy and head-girl, there has been some pressure for the two stars to get together, and it does sort of make sense from a professional, if not emotional point of view. She squeezes his head beneath her arm – ‘YOU’RE GOING TO BE GREAT’ – then suddenly holds onto his ears and jerks his face towards her. ‘LISTEN TO ME. YOU’RE GORGEOUS, YOU KNOW THAT, AND WE ARE GOING TO BE SUCH A GREAT TEAM, YOU AND ME. MY MUM’S HERE TONIGHT AND SHE WANTS TO MEET YOU AFTERWARDS. BETWEEN ME AND YOU I THINK SHE FANCIES YOU. I FANCY YOU, SO SHE MUST FANCY YOU TOO. SHE WANTS YOUR AUTOGRAPH BUT YOU HAVE TO PROMISE NOT TO GET OFF WITH HER!’
‘I’ll do my best, Suki.’
‘YOU GOT FAMILY IN?’
‘No—’
‘FRIENDS?
‘No—’
‘WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THIS OUTFIT?’ She’s wearing
a clubby top and a tiny skirt, and carries the obligatory bottle of water. ‘CAN YOU SEE MY NIPPLES?’
Is she flirting? ‘Only if you look for them,’ he flirts back mechanically, smiling weakly, and Suki senses something. She holds out his hands to the side and intimately bellows, ‘WHAT’S UP WITH YOU, SWEETHEART?’
He shrugs. ‘Toby’s been in here, winding me up …’ and before he can finish she has pulled him to his feet and her arms are round his waist, her hands twanging the waistband of his underpants in sympathy. ‘YOU IGNORE HIM, HE’S JUST JEALOUS ’CAUSE YOU’RE BETTER AT THIS THAN HE IS.’ She looks up at him, her chin poking his chest. ‘YOU’RE A NATURAL, YOU KNOW YOU ARE.’
The floor manager is at the door. ‘Ready for you now, guys.’
‘WE’RE GREAT TOGETHER, AREN’T WE, ME AND YOU. SUKI AND DEX, DEX AND SUKI? WE’RE GOING TO KNOCK EM DEAD.’ Suddenly she kisses him once, very hard, as if rubber-stamping a document. ‘MORE OF THAT LATER, GOLDEN BOY,’ she says in his ear, then picks up her bottle of water and bounds out onto the studio floor.
Dexter takes a moment to look at his reflection in the mirror.
Golden Boy
. He sighs and presses all ten fingers hard into his skull and tries not to think about his mother. Hold it together, don’t foul this up. Be good. Do something good. He smiles the smile that he keeps especially for use on television, picks up his spiked water bottle, and heads out onto the studio floor.
Suki waits for him at the edge of the immense set, taking his hand and squeezing it. The crew are running round, patting his shoulder and punching his arm matily as they pass, and high above their heads ironic go-go dancers in bikinis and cowboy boots stretch out their calves in their ironic cages. Toby Moray is doing the warm-up, and getting big laughs too, until suddenly he’s introducing them, a big hand please for your hosts tonight, Suki Meadows and Dexter Mayhew!
He doesn’t want to go. Music thumps from the speakers: ‘Start
the Dance’ by The Prodigy, and he wants to stay here in the wings, but Suki is tugging on his hand, and suddenly she is bounding out into the bright studio lights, bawling:
‘ALLLLLLLLLLRIGGGGGGHHHHHT!’
Dexter follows on, the suave and urbane half of the presenting duo. As always the set involves a lot of scaffolding, and they climb the ramps until they’re looking down at the audience below them, Suki chattering all the way: ‘LOOK AT YOU, YOU’RE ALL GORGEOUS, ARE YOU READY TO HAVE A GREAT TIME? MAKE SOME NOISE!’ Dexter stands mute on the gantry next to her, the microphone dead in his hand as he realises that he is drunk. His big break on live national television and he is sodden with vodka, dizzy with it. The gantry seems impossibly high, far higher than in rehearsals, and he wants to lie down but if he does this there’s a chance that two million people will notice, so he assumes the manner and offers:
‘Elloyoulothowareyouallfeelingalright?’
A single clear male voice sails up to the gantry.
‘Wanker!’
Dexter seeks out the heckler, a skinny, grinning twerp with Wonder Stuff hair, but it gets a laugh, a big laugh. Even the cameramen are laughing. ‘My agent, ladies and gentlemen,’ replies Dexter, and there’s a ripple of amusement, but that’s all. They must have read the papers. Is this the most odious man on television? Good God, it’s true, he thinks. They hate me.
‘One minute everyone,’ shouts the floor manager, and Dexter suddenly feels like he’s standing on a scaffold. He searches the crowd for a friendly face, but there are none and once again he wishes Emma were here. He could show-off for Emma, be at his best if Emma or his mother were here, but they’re not, just this leering, jeering crowd of people much, much younger than himself. He has got to find a bit of spirit from somewhere, a bit of attitude and with the laser logic of the drunk he decides that alcohol might help, because why not? The damage is already done. The go-go dancers stand poised in their cages, the cameras glide into place, and he unscrews the lid of his illicit bottle,
raises it, swallows and winces. Water. The water bottle contains water. Someone has replaced the vodka in his water bottle with—
Suki has his bottle.
Thirty seconds to air. She has picked up the wrong bottle. She is holding it in her hand now, a clubby little accessory.
Twenty seconds to air. She is unscrewing the lid.
‘Are you keeping hold of that?’ he squeaks.
‘THAT’S ALRIGHT, ISN’T IT?’ She bounces on her toes like a prizefighter.
‘I’ve got your bottle by mistake.’
‘SO? WIPE THE TOP!’
Ten seconds to air and the audience starts to cheer and roar, the dancers hold onto the bars of their cages and start to gyrate as Suki raises the bottle to her lips.
Seven, six, five …
He reaches for the bottle, but she knocks his hand away laughing.
‘GET OFF, DEXTER, YOU’VE GOT YOUR OWN!’
Four, three, two …
‘But it isn’t water,’ he says.
She gulps it down.
Roll titles.
And now Suki is coughing, red-faced and spluttering as guitars crash over the speakers, drums pound, go-go dancers writhe and a camera on wires swoops down from the high ceiling like a bird of prey, soaring over the audience’s heads towards the presenters, so that it seems to the viewers at home as if three hundred young people are cheering an attractive woman as she stands on scaffolding and retches.
The music fades, and all you can hear is Suki coughing. Dexter has frozen, dried, dead on air and drunkenly crashing his own vehicle. The plane is going down, the ground looming up to meet him. ‘Say something Dexter,’ says a voice in his earpiece. ‘Hello? Dexter? Say something?’ but his brain won’t work and his mouth won’t work, and he stands there, dumb in every way. The seconds stretch.
But thank God for Suki, a true professional, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘WELL PROOF THERE THAT WE’RE GOING OUT LIVE!’ and there’s a relieved little flurry of laughter from the audience. ‘IT’S ALL GOING VERY WELL SO FAR, ISN’T IT, DEX?’ She jabs him in the ribs with a finger, and he springs to life.
‘Sorry about Suki there—’ he says. ‘The bottle’s got vodka in it!’ and he does the little comic wriggle of the wrist that suggests a secret drinker, and there’s another laugh, and he feels better. Suki laughs too, nudges him and raises a fist, says, ‘Why I oughta …’ Three Stooges-style, and only he can see the glint of contempt behind the bubbliness. He latches onto the safety of the autocue.
‘Welcome to the
Late-Night Lock-In
, I’m Dexter Mayhew—’
‘—AND I’M SUKI MEADOWS!’
And they’re back on course, introducing the Friday night feast of great comedy and music, appealing and attractive like the two coolest kids at school. ‘So without further ado, let’s make some noise please—’ He flings his arm out behind him, like a ring-master ‘—and give a big
Late-Night Lock-In
welcome to Shed! Seven!’
The camera swoops away from them as if it has lost interest, and now the voices from the gallery are chattering in his head over the sound of the band. ‘Everything alright there, Suki?’ says the producer. Dexter looks at Suki pleadingly. She looks back, eyes narrowed. She could tell them: Dexter’s on the booze, he’s drunk, the man’s a mess, an amateur, not to be trusted.
‘All fine,’ she says. ‘Just went down the wrong way, that’s all.’
‘We’ll send someone to fix your make-up. Two minutes, people. And Dexter, keep it together, will you?’
Yes, keep it together, he tells himself, but the monitors tell him there are fifty-six minutes and twenty-two seconds to go, and he’s really not sure if he can.
* * *
Applause! Applause like she has never heard, rebounding off the walls of the sports hall. And yes, the band were flat and the singers sharp, and yes there were a few technical problems with missing props and collapsing sets, and of course it’s hard to imagine a more forgiving audience, but still it is a triumph. The death of Nancy leaves even Mr Routledge, Chemistry, weeping and the chase over the London rooftops, with the cast in silhouette, is a spectacular coup de théâtre met by the kind of cooing and gasping that usually greets fireworks displays. As predicted Sonya Richards has shone, leaving Martin Dawson grinding his teeth as she soaks up the largest round of applause. There have been ovations and encores and now people are stamping on the benches and hanging off the climbing apparatus and Emma is being dragged on stage by Sonya who is crying, God, actually crying, clutching Emma’s hand and saying well done, Miss, amazing, amazing. A school production, it is the smallest imaginable triumph but Emma’s heart is beating in her chest and she can’t stop grinning as the band play a cacophonous ‘Consider Yourself’ and she holds the hands of fourteen-year-olds and bows and bows again. She feels the elation of doing something well, and for the first time in ten weeks she no longer wants to kick Lionel Bart.