Vail Read online

  The wine bar is plush with polished brass rails and deep beige carpets, even in the gent’s toilet. Lithe-hipped waiters steal about. Vail orders avacado salad, which arrives in sufficient quantity to feed a family of four. The red-haired woman has a sliver of fish accompanied by a splodge of pink speckled sauce. Bottles of wine and Perrier appear and disappear with astonishing rapidity. Vail’s head swims. He has to summon up all his powers of concentration to take in what the red-haired woman is saying, the gist of which, it transpires, has something to do with the fact that she is seeking someone to ‘front’ a television programme whose subject, or theme, is aggressive self-reliance. The title of the programme is Bootstraps, which puts Vail in a quandary, because he can’t make the connexion between aggressive self-reliance and trapping boots. But then all television people (the two of his acquaintance) seem to talk in a code that excludes the greater part of humanity.

  ‘You want me at the front of this programme,’ Vail says, trying not to slur his speech.

  ‘No, I want you to front it.’

  ‘I see.’ (He doesn’t.)

  ‘Are those your own teeth? That shirt and those pants will do fine. Who’s your agent? Have some more Perrier. Do you like this place? I was in LA recently, you know. When can you start? Camera test and production meeting next Thursday suit? This is delicious, how’s the salad?’

  She spears a piece of fish and blows smoke from the corner of her mouth, takes a gulp of wine and puts the fish in her mouth and chews it while taking a quick drag with a sudden sharp intake of breath, dabbing her chin with a napkin through the cigarette smoke.

  ‘Will I get paid for this?’ Vail asks, bleary-eyed.

  ‘Minimum contract with stipulations and options. Three days’ growth of beard at least. The primitive look. More wine, waiter. Don’t lose the accent. Don’t endorse anything, not yet. Spoil the image. Who’s your accountant?’

  She waves to someone at another table and leans closer.

  ‘Current affairs at Central. Swine. Dessert or coffee? Leave the hair alone. Six weeks possibly extended to thirteen. Any commitments? I’ll have a brandy, I think. What are you doing this evening?’

  ‘I don’t have a yellow card.’

  ‘Immaterial.’

  ‘Will you investigate my past?’

  ‘Will if you want us to.’ The red-haired woman looks at the man’s watch on her wrist. ‘Coffee? Brandy? Milk?’

  Vail says uncertainly, ‘I’m not sure about this, Miss …’

  ‘Mzzz.’

  ‘I’m not sure about this, Miss Mzzz.’ Vail feels sick.

  ‘Then don’t have anything if you don’t want. Coffee, brandy and milk aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. Two thirty-seven.’

  ‘About the job.’

  ‘What about it? Have a mint.’

  ‘Will I be recognised in the street?’

  ‘Who by? Waiter!’

  ‘It could prove embarrassing.’

  ‘People aren’t that easily embarrassed nowadays.’ She lights a cigarette and puts it in the corner of her mouth, which means she now has a cigarette in each corner. She removes the shorter of the two and stubs it out in the overladen ashtray, sending up a cloud of ash, and bats it aside.

  ‘Shacked up with anyone?’

  ‘Are you sure I’m the man you want?’

  ‘Oh yes. Definitely. Will you take American Express?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  But she is speaking to the waiter hovering at Vail’s shoulder, who scoops up the plastic card on a silver tray and dematerialises.

  Vail believes it is time for some plain speaking. He launches in. ‘Look, Miss Mzzz, I don’t want to seem ungrateful, – ’

  ‘Miss Mzzz?’ laughs the red-haired woman, revealing all the gaps between her teeth. ‘I’m Mzzz Hance.’

  ‘Hance?’

  ‘Virgie Hance. Short for Virginia.’

  ‘You’re Virgie Hance?’

  ‘Absolutely. Always have been.’ She grasps his wrist in a grip of steel. ‘What about tonight? Are we on?’

  ‘You mean …’

  ‘My friend’s in Chicago on business. Just you and me.’ Her eyes bore into him. Her choppers gleam. He is gazing into the mouth of Hell. ‘Lord Napier Place, Upper Mall. Service entrance, nine o’clock. Stretched out on the rug, telly off, stereo on. And take your time, I’m a slow comer.’

  ‘I’ve just lost my wife.’

  ‘She’ll turn up again. Nine o’clock. Bring an erection.’

  [3]

  A person or persons unknown had been trying to get in touch with Vail on the telephone. He, she or they wouldn’t leave their name(s), and this Vail found unsettling. Was it a lone psychotic or an organised group? There were millions of cranks in the world, – stood to reason he would get his fair share. Still, he didn’t like it. His past was too near for him to breathe easy.

  Also, events had moved fast. It seemed to Vail that he had been taken in hand by people and forces beyond his control. Not that he objected to this: he was of a mind to be swept along willy-nilly, the pawn of obsessional careerists, sexually ambitious women, and the whimsical ebb and flow of arbitrary circumstances. In his numbed state it was a relief to, as it were, let go. Sooner or later an Opportunity would present itself, of this he was confident.

  – No, he didn’t believe in justice, but he believed in good and evil, and just as in nature every action has an opposite and equal reaction, the callous and the sordid and the meretricious were ultimately balanced and rectified by other, positive forces, completing the algebraic equation, wiping the slate clean. This was so, had to be so, otherwise the universe would not function, would collapse under the weight of its own inertia, spiralling downwards into entropy and annihilation.

  [It doesn’t occur to Vail that this may be the truth of the matter: that the exquisite symmetry of the atoms and the majesty of celestial engineering are a shameless hoax, a blatant deceit, and that we are all doomed to the pit. An electromagnetic god is no respecter of moral stances. Who is to say, in a purposeless universe, that we shall not all end up squashed flat like gnats? Ask a squashed gnat what it thinks of moral stances and you will get a dusty answer.]

  [4]

  ANOTHER ATTEMPT ON PM’S LIFE!

  screams the hoarding. Vail orders the Merc to pull over. The newsboy, a man in his fifties with a knobbly face and bad teeth, stares at Vail transmogrified and touches the peak of his cap. Vail parts with a pound coin and waves away the change elegantly. The Merc re-enters the heavy flow of traffic.

  ‘I tink he wreck’nised you, bawz,’ says the big black chauffeur with a split melon grin. He is six-feet-four, wears a grey uniform with tightly-buttoned collar, breeches and polished knee boots with swinging gold tassels.

  Vail has been advised that he needs such a person for protection. But protection from what, from whom?

  ‘You need to be handled,’ Virgie Hance has told Vail fiercely. ‘And who better to handle you than the Ed Flesh Personality Promotions Agency? He’s a smart cookie. None smarter.’

  Ed Flesh is small and slim and softly spoken, Vail discovers. He is the brother of a famous comedian and was once a television director, which didn’t satisfy his mad lust for power, wealth and prestige, in that order. He wears smoothly expensive suits and never raises his voice above an artificially cultured murmur. Hence the things he has to say are doubly impressive and shocking.

  ‘We can push your gross up to one hundred grand minimum and launder it through an endowment trust so you don’t have to pay tax. Endorsements in the first annum could realise thirty to forty K; book, recording and video advances about the same. Journalism doesn’t pay much but it’s good profile-building. We take a twenty-five per cent cut off the top, thirty per cent of overseas and US earnings. We might try for charitable status, which means you’re exempt from tax and VAT and can invite contributions from the public. You’ll need image-enhancement and protection and a press cuttings service. We can provide them for an additional five per
cent of gross. Libel suits, litigation and writs you settle out of your own pocket. If you need to dry out, kick the habit, go into an AIDS clinic or require under-age sex, we can handle it. Glad to have you aboard. Sign here.’

  ‘What about my past?’

  ‘I’ll have our writers work one up for you. Fill in the questionnaire before you leave.’

  It is a rare day when Ed Flesh smiles and today is no exception. He smokes large cigars which make his hands and head look small. He sits behind a large empty desk which reinforces this impression. The illusion is that of a man seen through the wrong end of a telescope; Vail feels he ought to yell and scream at the top of his lungs in order to be heard by this diminutive figure sitting marooned on the far side of an acre of glass-topped walnut veneer. Yet Ed Flesh’s low, modulated, reasonable voice reaches Vail easily, without undue strain.

  ‘The first step is a complete biophysical profile for the press launch. Shots of you sleeping in a cardboard box under a railway viaduct, eating out of dustbins, on your knees licking grease from discarded chip-wrappings in Trafalgar Square late at night, that sort of thing. Perhaps interfering with a child in a public place, although we’ll have to give that some thought. We don’t want to tarnish any potential sex image. Kicking an old lady along the gutter would be safer. Nothing homosexual, I don’t think. No, too alienating. Then we move onto the gradual process of rehabilitation. You sell French ticklers to Japanese tourists in Leicester Square. Each item carries a one hundred and forty per cent mark-up and you plough back the profits and open your first shop in Islington. You buy up a shipment of Taiwanese video porn dirt cheap and rent a booth in Charing Cross Road and clear your entire stock in under two weeks, which gives you the working capital to rent larger premises in Greek Street. You now have two shops and a booth and employ five people, and three months later it’s five shops and three booths employing twenty-seven people, plus your own warehousing facility. You begin to diversify. You move into sexual prosthetics for disabled Falklands servicemen. For this you need your own injection-moulding and extrusion plant, and very soon you find yourself supplying inductance capacitance cores to Sinclair for flat-screen TV production and plastic formes for anti-personnel landmines to the MoD. Within a year, we’ll make that eighteen months, you’re a self-made millionaire with houses, cars, yachts, Learjet, so on and so forth. You still jog and you’re into aerobics. Whims and charming idiosyncracies are standing in the crowd at a football match when you can afford an executive box, hell, the whole damn stand, and taking your kids by Rolls to Battersea Fun Fair on Easter Sunday. The public loves that common detail. It leads them to believe you’re still human and have ordinary feelings.’

  ‘I don’t have any children,’ Vail feels like yelling at the small man, but constrains himself to speaking normally.

  Ed Flesh reaches below the desk with a miniature manicured hand and brings up a leather ring binder containing colour photographs of children sealed inside clear plastic. ‘Pick one of each, aged twelve and seven. Or you could have adopted a half-caste Indonesian kid whose parents got wiped out in a drought. That gives you heart with a capital h.’

  ‘What about a wife?’

  ‘Would you like one?’

  ‘Well, I thought with two kids …’

  ‘Smart thinking. However, – a wife knocks the PSA on the head, which is a prime factor. Consider that?’

  No, Vail hasn’t considered that, for the simple reason that he doesn’t know what Ed Flesh is talking about. ‘PSA?’ he inquires diffidently.

  ‘Puberulent Sexual Angle. Girls of the pre- and post-pubertal period, or P-4, don’t relate to men with wives. We’ll never get them to cough up £5 a year fan club membership if you’re happily married. And presupposing a bottom line of 30,000 units, that could mean one hundred and fifty grand down the chute over a guesstimated three years.’

  ‘Do I need a fan club?’

  ‘Do you need hot raunchy sex with a big-titted black chick every other day? Of course you need a fan club. It’s the base for your merchandising programme. Vail pics, Vail discs, Vail videos, Vail ashtrays, Vail egg cups, Vail tablelamps, Vail pizzas, Vail lawnmowers, – ’

  ‘I can’t help feeling this is getting a bit out of hand, Mr Flesh.’

  ‘Call me Flesh.’

  ‘Flesh.’

  ‘What’s getting a bit out of hand?’

  ‘Will pre- and post-pubertal girls really go for this stuff?’

  ‘What stuff?’

  ‘Egg cups and lawnmowers.’

  ‘I was speaking metaphorically. This has got to go through our market research department before we select key target groups. The P-4 rating could be the wrong one for you, we don’t know yet. We have to run your BPP through the Apple and see what it comes up with.’

  ‘BPP?’

  ‘Biophysical Profile Potential. Did you know I was the brother of a famous comedian who has since died?’

  ‘I think Mzzz Hance may have mentioned it. What did he die of?’

  ‘What do all famous comedians die of? Drugs and alcohol necessitated by unsatisfactory personal relationships and a broken marriage.’

  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: