Vail (15 page)

A hidden telephone rings and Ed Flesh picks up the receiver
from a recess on the side of the desk. He listens and then speaks. ‘Input incurs if you haven't otherwise, but never mind why Selina mustn't. Drop it through twat and cancel Week 14, preferably instant access maybe shouldn't she could. Simple deviant.'

‘Bryce Ransom?' Vail says when Ed Flesh has concluded the conversation.

‘He wants to book Selina for
Feet
‘
n
'
Porridge
but her toes are already under contract to Coty.'

‘Is there any of her that's free?' Vail asks out of curiosity.

‘That's the problem. We've sold most of the bits of her and there isn't much left. The poor kid's in twenty different places at once as it is. He can have her knees but that would mean changing the format, which Bry is loath to do.'

‘What about her ears?' Vail suggests helpfully.

‘Sony.'

‘Elbows?'

‘Martini.'

‘Back of her neck?'

‘Bergasol.'

‘Cunt?'

‘C.U.N.T.'

‘Pardon?'

‘Conservative United National Trust.'

‘Liver?'

‘Pedigree Chum.'

‘Spleen?'

‘National Listeners' and Viewers' Association.'

‘Not much left,' Vail sympathises.

‘Not a fat lot,' Ed Flesh agrees philosophically. ‘Her nipples are worth their weight in Uranium 235. What about those phone calls you've been getting?'

‘Phone calls?'

‘People ringing you up and refusing to leave their name or names.'

‘How do you know about them?'

‘Naturally your phone is tapped. Your problems are our
problems, your life is our life, your phone calls are our phone calls. Leave us to deal with it.'

‘How?'

‘Trust Forte. We can put our security and surveillance people onto it.'

‘Who's that?'

‘Wayde Dake Ass. Inc. They'll trace the calls to source and deal unceremoniously with the perpetrators. You have to protect your image, Jack, now that you're in the public eye. Just say the word.'

Vail nods, though none too happily. He doesn't like receiving phone calls from a person or persons unknown, but he likes even less the prospect of discovering who he, she or they might turn out to be.

From the inset speakers either side of Vail's head issue the muted tones of Jimmy Young interviewing a cabinet minister. The atmosphere is jocund and cosily intimate and JY concludes the interview with a cheery ‘Don't leave it too long next time, Keith. Cheers. Bye.'

Then the sound of The Pox singing their latest chartbuster,
One For All and All For Freedom
infiltrates the padded interior, a protest ditty whose lyrics are concerned with the fate of dissidents in distant lands.

‘Saw it in the paper yesterday

Somebody killed half a world away

Shot in the back in broad daylight

Killed for what he believed to be right.

The Philippines, Uganda, East Timor

The names mean nothing to you and me

We're blind to the reason oh can't you see.'

Vail turns it off and reads about the latest attempt on the PM's life.

‘Who dat dey say respons'bull, bawz?'

‘The INLA, the Libyans, the CNI, the Red Brigade, Black September, – '

‘All of dem?' says the chauffeur, rolling his eyes.

‘One or the other, they're not sure which.'

‘Dey sure am bad people, dem teachers.'

‘Oh?'

‘Wouldn't cha tink dey'd act more respons'bull, dem folks on de Inner London Ed'cashun Aut-ority, what wid all der ed'cashun?' He shakes his vast head sadly. ‘What in de world is de world coming to, lawd a' mercy me, I don' know.'

‘They're up in arms,' Vail tries to explain, ‘about the cutbacks.'

‘De gov'ment cutting back on de Red Brigade?' the chauffeur says in tones of amazement, steering carefully round a bomb crater outlined with flapping orange flags. ‘Why dey do dat?'

‘No, the INLA.'

‘
Dey
cutting back on de Red Brigade?' More amazement.

‘No, it's the INLA who are up in arms about the cutbacks; that's why they tried to shoot the PM.'

‘Dat's a cryin' shame, bawz. De PM ain't to blame.' Something else seems to be bothering the chauffeur. ‘But why de business folks involve demselves in dis ruckus?' he wants to know. ‘Dey bein' cut back too?'

‘What business folks?'

‘Dose Confed'rashun business people.'

‘The CNI, you mean?' The chauffeur nods. ‘That is a puzzle,' Vail admits, and frowns. ‘Unless they're not getting the subsidies they're entitled to. It's a very complicated situation.'

‘You can say dat ‘gain, bawz. I'se utterly baffled, buggered and bewildered by all dese politacul goin's on.'

So is Vail, though he does his best, from his meagre store of knowledge, to elucidate:

‘As I understand it, there are various groups, or factions, or cells, attempting to overthrow the
status quo
. They all have the same object in mind, though for different purposes. None of
them, apparently, gets on with any of the others. Why I don't know, so don't ask me. Some of them are a bit upset because Urop was devastated by a nuclear blast and the Govt refuses to admit it …'

‘Devastated?' the chauffeur interrupts, glancing at Vail in the mirror. ‘Is dat de same as destroyed? Urop bin destroyed? Since when? I ain't read ‘bout dat.'

‘No, you won't have because the Govt won't admit it. That's why the factions are a bit upset.'

‘No damn wonder.'

‘You could say dat. That.'

‘When dis happen?'

‘Nobody seems to know. Perhaps it never did happen, – hasn't happened yet, I mean. Some factions insist that it did, others disagree.'

‘Don't nobody know for sure? Either it did or it didn't, can't be no two ways ‘bout it.'

‘Then there's the Libyans.'

‘How dey come into dis?'

Vail thinks hard, trying to remember what he has been told. ‘I seem to recall they were working hand-in-glove with the INLA.'

‘What dem Libbys and de Inner London Ed'cashun Aut-ority got in common, for de lawd's sake? Dey's poles apart, seems to I. Dis is very confusin', bawz.'

Vail has to agree. And how did toxic waste and radioactivity fit into the picture? Were the Red Brigade and Black September trying to spread the contamination or contain it? Could they be described as urban guerrillas, freedom fighters, subversive terrorists or what? And who was funding them, – the Confederation of British Industry? And supposing they did succeed in overthrowing the
status quo
, what then? Would the British Isles be devastated as allegedly Urop had been? His head was starting to throb and he hoped the chauffeur wouldn't ask any more questions; how had they started this conversation in the first place?

The city unfolds around them like a sour dream. A yellowish miasma (toxic pollution? acid rain? radiation cloud?) hides the sun.
Yet the people in the streets are fat and sleek and prosperous and the tourists are buying up Oxford Street as though there were no tomorrow. Perhaps they know something?

The Merc is diverted round the sterile area of Knightsbridge by a police roadblock. Now that Harrods has an average of ten bomb alerts and three actual blasts a week it is no longer permissable to approach within one hundred yards of the proud and battered building except on foot, and then only after a rigorous body search. Vail had paid a visit two or three days ago. It was a sight and a symbol that brought a mist of patriotic fervour to the eyes of any true Brit.

Huge banners draped across the cracked and shattered face of the building proclaimed: GRAND RE-RE-RE-OPENING (the third, in fact, this week) and BUSINESS AS USUAL and WE NEVER HAVE AND NEVER WILL CLOSE. A fortune was being spent on the continuous rebuilding and refurbishing programme. Hours after the latest current blast the builders and glaziers and decorators moved in to repair the damage. A special high-powered Govt fund had been set up, – chaired by a cabinet minister, – which promised to match penny for penny what was raised by public donations. Millions poured in every week. Those damn subversive scum would never make the country's finest and most famous emporium, with its decades of heritage and tradition of doughty British trading, knuckle under to cowardly terrorist blackmail. Just who did these spineless greasy foreigners think they were dealing with?

It grieved the heart and at the same time lifted the spirit to wander through the blitzed marble halls, the crunch of glass underfoot. Most of the counters were matchwood of course, their place taken by trestle tables and doors propped on wooden boxes. All the chandeliers had been wrecked, splinters of crystal dangling limply on broken chains from the ceiling. The goods on display, despite being bomb-blasted and blackened by the smoke, were still of the usual first-rate quality, and amazingly varied.  – Black Mamba snakeskin belts. Piano-shaped fudge in 3 kilo boxes. Platinum ‘His ‘n' Hers' roller skates. ‘Country Recipe'
Cotswold Pizzas. Pearl-inlaid toilet roll holders. Fourteen-piece alligator luggage with matching personalised brolly.

But the most wonderful, heart-warming thing of all was the staff. Pale, twitching, hollow-eyed and battle-scarred, wearing steel helmets stencilled ‘Harrods' and flak jackets edged with royal blue piping, they were as unfailingly polite and knowledgeable and helpful as ever. A warning siren might sound at any moment (and invariably did), yet they carried on with their appointed duties, bloody but unbowed. They knew at once where to find the nearest Red Cross post, could dress a splinter wound as ably as wrap a parcel or charge to credit, would lead thirty or forty people in community singing during a blackout with stoical aplomb. Indeed, it was strange but true, – and much quoted by the media, – that applications to join the staff had quadrupled since the bombings began; the greater the wreckage and human carnage, the more people flocked to do their bit at this great heart and soul of the nation's indomitable commercial defiance.

Reporters set up a permanent bivouac in Raphael Street in order to interview and photograph survivors on the spot. There was a good deal of competition between the tabloids to sign up victims to an exclusive contract, the most horrendously injured naturally commanding the top prices. ‘£££s-Per-Stitch' became the bargaining factor, so that a fifty-stitcher, as it was known in the trade, could demand a high fee for an exclusive, while anything over eighty stitches, providing it was face and neck, could ask the earth and get it, with BUPA and three weeks' recuperation in Honduras thrown in. Amputees, especially children, did well, as did pet dogs; poodles, setters and Labradors being the favoured breeds.

Stories went round of people walking up and down Knightsbridge all day long hoping to get caught in the next blast. Some victims were devious, and had been known to extend superficial wounds with concealed razor blades, transforming them from a mere scratch into a lucrative ‘fifty-stitcher facial'.

But, as ever, competition was fierce and getting fiercer. Now the loss of an eye was coming to be regarded as the minimum for a front-page splash. There were those who dreamt of the dream
scoop: an eighteen-year-old nubile bride-to-be scarred and blinded (both eyes) while out shopping for her trousseau.

The roof of the building is hazed in smoke from an incendiary device, glimpsed by Vail as the car completes the detour and heads west once more. A news bulletin within the hour will give the names of a dozen or so groups, factions or tendencies squabbling to claim responsibility.

Oddly, the newspaper story has awakened in Vail a sickening unease. Ever since he became rich and famous his resolution to kill somebody has atrophied, and now he feels an unaccustomed stirring of guilt. He is riding high on the hog in his white Merc with his black chauffeur, why rock the boat? He has his yellow card and his Resident Alien permit. He has sufficient fuckable material to last him a lifetime, – more than enough, what with Angie and Virgie and the twenty-three thousand four hundred and seventy-nine members of his fan club.

It is so easy to ignore and forget. In any case, his little girl will have rotted into the ground by now, along with the tartan blanket.

He settles back into the deep moquette and turns to the FT Index. In the mirror his chauffeur's broad black face switches to full beam as he steers the Merc along the Kensington Road.

At the studio in the carpeted, quiet and calm dressing-room Vail changes from dark puce double-breasted blazer, tan Daks slacks and slim patent slip-on shoes into soiled muffler, torn jacket, frayed trousers and laceless ripped pumps.

He has already plastered used diesel oil on his hair, worked grime into his eye-sockets, smeared his cheeks with soot and finished off with a light powdering of coal dust. He nearly forgets his fingernails: scrapes them through a tub of gas-cooker grease and dunks them in fresh dog turd. Per-fect.

The call comes. ‘VTR in Studio 9,' and Vail shuffles off to tape the show in all his glory.

Reliable sources had it that
Bootstraps
had found favour at the most senior executive levels and as a consequence of this the producers of the show, – Bryce Ransom and Virgie Hance, – had been given the green light to extend its run into the indefinite future, which in television terms is thirteen weeks. Everyone was cock o' hoop at the news. Champagne was opened and supped from polystyrene cups. Secretaries were chased into filing rooms and interfered with. Ed Flesh sent a cablegram of congratulation sprinkled liberally with percentages and £ signs. Bryce Ransom voiced the opinion, which seemed to be shared by everyone, that it was, ‘Super uptight fuck cunts finally it just have didn't to break!'

(Vail has come to the conclusion that he is either talking backwards or in anagrams, but still can't decipher sense or meaning.)