The Man From the Diogenes Club Page 28

  His gloomy toast sounded odd in the leather-upholstered interior of the Rolls-Royce ShadowShark. After all, his own, ‘natural’ voice was a legacy of listening to the clipped, posh urgency of Dick Barton, Special Agent and Journey Into Space. Still, he dreaded the idea of newsreaders, cabinet ministers and Harley Street specialists who sounded like Mavis Barstow.

  The car slid down a narrow lane, with tall hedgerows to either side, and a tree canopy that gave the road ahead a jungle dappling. He remembered Barbara was supposed to be his ‘native guide’.

  They were waved past a barrier by a uniformed guard who didn’t check the authorisation Lady Damaris had provided. Anyone in a Rolls was entitled to enter the lot. After they had passed, the boom came down before a carpenter’s van, and the guard executed a thorough inspection of a load of lumber some production designer was probably fretting about.

  A young man with hair past the coat-hanger-shaped collar of his tight-waisted lemon-and-orange shirt was waiting in the car park. He carried a clipboard and a shoulder-slung hold-all that could only be called a handbag.

  ‘Lionel Dilkes,’ said the Professor. ‘PR. An old enemy.’

  For an old enemy, Lionel was demonstratively huggy and kissy when Barbara got out of the ShadowShark. He looked at everything sidelong, tilting his head one way or the other and peering through or over aviator shades. Richard estimated that he was envious of Barbara’s plunging crêpe de Chine blouse and pearl choker.

  ‘This is Richard Jeperson,’ she said.

  Lionel tried looking at him with and without the tint, and from several angles.

  ‘The ghost-hunter?’

  ‘Think of me as a plumber. You have a funny smell coming from somewhere and damp patches all over the living-room ceiling. I’m here to find out what the trouble is and put a stop to it.’

  Lionel shrugged, flouncing his collar-points.

  ‘Make my job easier, luv,’ he said. ‘All the rags want to write up is the bloody curse. Can’t give away pics of Ben Barstow’s new bit on the side. And she’s a lovely girl. She’ll show her tits. She says she won’t now, that she’s an “actress”, but a flash of green and it’ll wear off. No worries at all on that score. You’d think she was a natural for the Comet or Knight. But no, all the pissy reptiles care about is the sodding curse. They’re all running girlie shots of that horsey cow Della Devyne! All she’s ever done is kill someone, and not in an original way. I voted to sue her for plagiarism. It’s getting to be a complete embarrassment. And guess who Mavis Upstairs blames?’ Lionel thumbed at his own chest.

  ‘Mavis Upstairs?’

  ‘June O’Dell, luv. Round here, she’s Mavis Upstairs. You can’t get near her, I should warn you now. She’s leading artiste and is always in her own head-space. When she’s not on set, she’s in her “trailer” – that’s a bloody caravan to you, luv – surrounded by joss sticks, chocolate assortments and botty totty.’

  ‘I will need to “access all areas” if I’m to do any good.’

  ‘You can need all you want, sunshine. I’m just telling you Mavis Upstairs isn’t covered by the law of the land. She’s a National Institution, though some round here who say she ought to be in one. Ooops, pardon, slip of the tongue, naughty me.’ Lionel extended a wrist, limp enough to count as a stereotype all of its own, and slapped himself. ‘Lionel mustn’t let his tongue flap like that. Slappy slap slap!’

  Richard raised an eyebrow.

  ‘You’ll get used to it, luv,’ said Lionel. ‘We’re all indiscreet round here. You don’t get appointed to a job on The Northern Barstards, you get sentenced to one. No time off for good behaviour, so don’t expect to find any.’

  Lionel turned and walked away. His dayglo green velvet trousers were too taut at the hip to allow circulation to the legs, but flared so widely at the ankle that he could only progress with a peculiar wading motion.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, looking back over his shoulder, lowering his shades, ‘meet the Barstards…’

  VI.

  Lionel took Richard and Barbara up to what looked like a Zeppelin hangar and touched a black plastic lozenge to a pad beside a regular-sized door, which sprang open for thirty seconds to let them in, then slammed shut and refastened like an airlock. The PR led them up a rickety staircase to an ill-lit nest of desks and couches, where people were shouting at each other while talking on telephones to (presumably) other people elsewhere.

  ‘Welcome to the Bad Vibes Zone,’ said Lionel.

  ‘Interesting expression,’ commented Richard.

  ‘Came up with it on my own, luv. Now, don’t take this wrong, but walk this way.’

  He flounced – deliberately – into a labyrinth of partitions, leading Richard and Barbara along a twisting path, hurrying them past perhaps-interesting individuals in their own cubicles.

  ‘We need more space,’ admitted Lionel. ‘ART like to keep O’D-S in a tiny box. Stops us getting too big for our boots. In theory. Guess what? Theory don’t work. They don’t make boots ginormous enough for how big this lot think they are.’

  They came to an area where a small, bald, damp-cheeked, middle-aged man in a cheesecloth sarong sat cross-legged on a giant mauve cushion with appliqué sunflowers. The Buddha-like figure was surrounded by long-haired youths of both sexes who were waving long strips of yellow paper like Taoist prayers. On the strips were scrawled arcane symbols in biro.

  ‘This is a script conference,’ whispered Lionel. ‘Hush hush, genius at work. That’s Mucus Squiers. It’s his fault.’

  ‘For creating the programme?’ asked Richard.

  ‘For not throttling Mavis Upstairs in her sleep when he had the chance. They used to be married, though that’s not a picture anyone should have in their head, luv.’

  Richard looked again at Squiers. The writer-producer would be happier in a bowler hat, collar and tie, carrying a rolled-up umbrella. The guru look was the only way he could get respect from his staff writers. For a moment, Richard thought the man was holding a blue security blanket – but it was a large handkerchief which he was using to mop his freely perspiring brow.

  Two girls with beehive hairdos, whose general look was ten years out of date rather than the normal-round-here five, took shorthand dictation on big pads, like courtroom stenographers. Squiers was assembling a script by taking suggestions from the circle, rejecting a dozen for every one he took. Whenever he let a line or a bit of business through, the originator glowed with momentary pride and the rest of the pack looked at him or her with undisguised hatred even as they agreed that the contribution was a work of genius. The genius in question belonged to Marcus Squiers for making the selection, not to any of the acolytes for chattering forth stream-of-consciousness material, tossing out notions to burn and die in the sunlight, in the hope that one or two might grow up to be concepts, then get a thick enough carapace to become actual ideas.

  ‘Next, after the ad-break…?’ asked Squiers.

  ‘We’ve not seen Cousin Dodgy Morrie for two weeks,’ put in a girl with glasses that covered four-fifths of her face. ‘His plots are still dangling.’

  ‘Uh-uh, Mavis won’t have it. She’s in a sulk with Morrie since he got that good notice in the Financial Times.’

  ‘He could have an “accident”,’ pressed someone, seeing an opportunity.

  Squiers shook his head. ‘We still need CDM. It’s poor bloody Sydney who got the review.’

  ‘Sydney Liddle plays Cousin Dodgy Morrie,’ whispered Barbara.

  ‘Could we “Darrin”?’ asked a smart-suited Pakistani man.

  Squiers blotted droplets from his temples. ‘We’ve used up our “Darrin” this year, with the Bogus Brenda.’

  ‘To “Darrin” is the practice of replacing an actor in a continuing role with another,’ said Barbara. ‘It comes from the American sitcom Bewitched.’

  ‘The BB wasn’t a full “Darrin”,’ said the girl with the glasses. ‘That was a “Who”.’

  ‘A “Who” is a modified “Darrin”,�
�� said Barbara, ‘from—’

  ‘Doctor Who?’

  Barbara patted him on the shoulder. ‘You’re learning to speak TV, good. A “Who” is when you do a “Darrin”, but have an excuse, like the Doctor regenerating from one star to another, or plastic surgery, which is what they did with the Bogus Brenda, who—’

  ‘…returned, having had the face-change she had previously only claimed to have had, intent on getting revenge on Mavis Barstow for cutting her inside man, Mavis’s nephew Ben, out of the family business.’

  ‘You’re a fan!’

  ‘No, I just paid attention in the last two weeks.’

  Squiers looked up and fixed them with watery eyes.

  ‘Who are these people, Lionel, and do we pay them to mutter during script time?’

  ‘This is the… um, plumber.’

  Lionel made all sorts of eye-rolls and contortions. Squiers squinted, blankly.

  ‘He’s come about the… you know… thing we do not mention… the c-word?’

  The penny dropped. At least with Squiers, who took another look at Richard. The writer-producer was in the loop on the investigation, but the rest of the pack were best kept in the dark. If this was where the ideas came from, this was the likely source of the problem.

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Squiers. ‘Sit comfortably at the back, and don’t speak up unless you’ve got a better idea than any of these serfs. Which, on their recent record, isn’t unlikely.’

  There were only large scatter-cushions available. Richard settled on one, achieving perfect lotus. Barbara managed sidesaddle. Lionel leant against a wrought-iron lamp-post that happened to have sprouted in the middle of the office, and cocked his hip as if the fleet were in.

  ‘Now, CDM is out until the Moo cools down…’

  Barbara mouthed the words, so Richard could lip-read. ‘M.U. Mavis Upstairs. The Moo.’

  ‘Besides, we’ve got other patches to water.’

  ‘D-Delia D-Delyght is about to go to t-trial,’ stuttered a fat fellow who wore a school cap with a prefect’s tassel.

  ‘Last month’s story, Porko,’ sneered Squiers. ‘You lose the cap.’

  He snatched it away.

  ‘B-b-but…’ began Porko.

  Squiers waved the cap about by its tassel.

  ‘Who wants the thinking cap this week? Come on, you fellows. Pitch in. There’s all to play for. Yaroo. What about Ben’s new bit?’

  ‘Lovely Legs,’ said someone, approving.

  ‘That’s right. The lovely Lovely Legs. The bogus Brenda, of whom we just spoke, people! More formally, Miss Priscilla Hopkins. Grand-daughter of… come on, anyone, it wasn’t that long ago? I know you were all in nappies when the series started. Come on…’

  Blank looks all around.

  ‘Barnaby Hopkins,’ said Barbara. ‘Da Barstow’s original partner, whom Mavis cheated out of his share of the business.’

  Squiers nodded approval.

  ‘Thank you, whoever you are. It goes to show we do better with strangers off the street – I beg your pardon, madam, but I’m making a point – than with you bright new graduates and ashram dropouts. With my producer’s hat on, I have to wonder why we pay you all so much.’

  Faces fell in shame.

  ‘Yes, Priscilla Hot-pins,’ emphasised Squiers, ‘away being Eliza Doolittled to extreme poshness, not to mention tending and caring for her remarkably glamorous gams, and now back for… what?’

  ‘Revenge,’ suggested Glasses Girl, tentative.

  ‘One of your basic plot motors, yes. But what else? Is she cracking a bit? Learning to love the enemy? Has Ben’s crooked smile and sans-gorm charm worked a spell on her? Who knows? I don’t. But let’s get them together a bit more and find out, eh?’

  The business of putting a scene together seemed a lot like Cluedo – Colonel Mustard in the Library with the Candlestick. This was Priscilla in the Barstow Boardroom with the Suspender Belt. About the first thing Richard had noticed about The Northern Barstows was that every other scene involved sex. The writing pack got excited as they frothed up the seduction of Mavis’s nephew. With the Bogus Brenda back as a new face, a whole spiral of story possibilities fell into place. It was another Barstows standard procedure: over the years, especially since the Bona Fide Brenda was written out, several other women had been brought in as antagonists for Mavis, built up either as villains or martyrs, and eventually ejected in some cataclysmic plot event, such as the murder which had just removed Delia Delyght from the screen. Richard wondered if these women tended to depart soon after the actresses started to get as much fan-mail or column inches as June O’Dell.

  He tuned out what was being said and tried to get a feel for the room, for the way the meeting worked. Squiers was in control, but barely. He tossed the prefect’s cap to whoever was in favour at the moment, and other rituals established a tribal pecking order, and ways to jostle for position, claim or forfeit advantage or be expelled from the light. At times, Squiers was like a preacher, at others like an orchestra conductor. The stenos kept taking it down in shorthand and yellow strips were waved, spindled or shredded in the writers’ fingers.

  ‘The Moo tells Ben that Priscilla is the Bogus Brenda, that she has always known this, that – in fact – she was responsible for getting her out of jail and bringing her to Bleeds with a new face,’ said Squiers. ‘Ben stunned, as usual. Close on Junie’s Number Two Expression: Smug Triumph. In with the oompah-and-custard music, and we’re done till next Tuesday. And God bless us every one. Now scatter and make babies.’

  He waved and the writers moved away. Porko’s face was wet with tears. Glasses Girl, who had proposed Mavis be behind the Bogus Brenda’s return, looked flushed under the prefect’s cap, as if experiencing the aftershocks of the best orgasm of her life.

  Squiers discarded the now-soaked handkerchief in a receptacle and slumped on his raised couch. Then, he noticed Richard and Barbara were still in the circle.

  ‘Not writers, luv,’ explained Lionel. ‘They don’t vanish when you clap your hands.’

  Squiers looked at them again, as if this was all new to him. Richard realised the writer-producer’s brain had to contain all ‘the evolving totality’ of The Northern Barstows. He was like a medium, a conduit for all the voices of Bleeds. Whatever was going on here was transmitted through the mind of Marcus Squiers. Unlike some people Richard had dealt with, he did not have invisible, evil entities perched on his shoulder. He might well be mad, but it seemed that most folks in his business were.

  ‘Just so long as they don’t rattle the Moo cage.’

  VII.

  After lunch – Richard had taken the precaution of bringing a Fortnum’s hamper for Barbara and himself, thus avoiding the O’D-S ‘hostilities’ table – Lionel took them onto the studio floor, where the seduction scene discussed at the script meeting was already being rehearsed in front of bulky television cameras. Lionel told them the pages had been typed over the break. If a stenogs couldn’t read her own shorthand she was empowered to make up whatever she thought would fit. It usually wasn’t any worse than what came out of the writing pack.

  There was quite a bit of excitement at the entrance of Lovely Legs. Stagehands, camera assistants, make-up people and cast members not in this scene all crowded around to get a look.

  ‘See,’ said Lionel. ‘Star is born.’

  Lovely Legs wore only a shortie bathrobe and stockings. She did indeed have lovely legs.

  ‘Odd stage-name,’ Lionel admitted. ‘She’s really called Victoria Plant.’

  The alias had been Fred’s idea. Vanessa was a plant, so she might as well be called one.

  ‘That girl knows you,’ Barbara said to Richard, perceptively. ‘She looked over here, then away. Really fast.’

  ‘What’s that, ducks?’ asked Lionel.

  ‘Nothing that matters,’ said Richard. ‘She’s a very pretty girl.’

  ‘Just watch what happens when Mavis Upstairs clocks her. She’ll be out of that nightie and into flo
or-length winceyette with mud on her face and her hair in curlers for the next scene. It’s always the way. Still, enjoy the view while it lasts, eh?’

  Richard had an insight. ‘You’re not even slightly homosexual are you, Lionel?’

  ‘Shush, luv, think of my position if talk like that gets out. For shame. You can’t get a job in telly PR unless you’re bent as a twelve-bob note. ’Sides, I like the frocks.’

  He pantomimed another wrist-slap.

  Richard shook his head.

  ‘Look, this really is how I talk, dearie. Can’t help that. Blame Round the Horne.’

  Another victim of the media. When he’d first seen Barbara, Lionel hadn’t been envying her blouse but trying to peer down it.

  ‘If you need a proper poof for some reason, apply to Dudley Finn over there, aka Beefy Ben Barstow. Forget all those stories about him in nightclubs with models and pin-up girls. I planted them all personally. When those long legs wrap round his middle, he’s not going to enjoy this scene one bit. Dud the Dud and Geordie the Security Guard make a lovely couple. Oh, slap my wrist and call me Mabel, I’ve done it again. Talking out of school.’

  Richard had learned a valuable lesson. No one around here was who they pretended to be, and most of them weren’t even the people they seemed to be behind the obvious pretence at being someone else again. The onion layers peeled off, and there were sour little cores in the middle.

  As it turned out, watching The Northern Barstows being made was even duller than watching it on television. Even the rapid pace of twice-a-week production meant an enormous amount of waiting around for things to happen, while tedious tasks were repeated ad infinitum. Barbara, of course, was rapt – like a historian with a personal time machine rubbernecking at the first read-through of Hamlet at the Globe or the huddle of commanders around Alexander as he scratched out battle plans in Assyrian dirt.

  He found a quiet space behind some flats – painted backdrops of Bleeds which hung outside windows on several different sets as if every home and workplace in the city had the same view – and let down his guard, extending mental feelers, opening himself to the ebb and flow of immeasurable energies. This could be dangerous, but he had to do a full psychic recce. It wasn’t an exact science. The emotional turmoil around regular humans at the studio was complicated enough to blot obvious traces of the supernatural. Many paraphenomena were overspill from ordinary people’s heads, anyway. No ghosts, demons or extra-dimensional entities were required to whip up a mindstorm of maelstrom proportions. Maybe a little ritual, conscious or unconscious, to unlock the potential, but it could just be a crack in the skull, allowing boiling steam to jet into the aether.