Vail (16 page)

The ‘philosophy' behind the show, as explained by Virgie Hance to newspaper reporters, is to make cripples get up off their stumps and do something with their lives instead of just lying back on their bed sores begging for sympathy and suppurating and whingeing about it. You had to learn to crap in nests other than your own. It was no good, for instance, patients in terminal cancer wards bemoaning their lot and blaming society; since when had society given them cancer? So why they expect society to feel sorry for them and pick up the tab?

Similarly, Virgie expounded, who was to blame for bringing deformed imbeciles into the world? Certainly not the state. Accidents of nature were God-given, not man-made. Unreasonable, therefore, to look to secular tax-payers to foot the bill for what the Almighty, in all His omnipotent wisdom, had thought fit to decree. Didn't the Church say, ‘If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off?' The Church didn't say anything about relying on subsidised health care to cut it off for you: the emphasis, surely, was on self-reliance and doing your own dirty work.

One of the most successful shows (ratings-wise) had been the one in which a paraplegic basket case and a thalidomide victim had been encouraged to crawl through a pipe of untreated farm slurry to reach a key that unlocked a casket containing two phials of golden liquid. One was cider, the other urine. The winner of the ‘race' had the choice of which phial to drink, but once having chosen then had to drink the liquid straight down, even if he discovered he'd picked the wrong one. This led to much gleeful anticipation and hilarity from the studio audience as they breathlessly watched the faces of the two contestants at the moment the phials touched their lips. It was felt (at the most senior executive levels) that this particular show best combined a moral tract with a spot of harmless fun, sugaring the pill of the message as it were.

Another rib-tickling wheeze, dreamt up at one of the weekly programme planning meetings, was to have someone with Parkinson's Disease administer an insulin injection to an aged diabetic already in the final stages of toxic shock coma. Would the old crock get the needle in time, – and in the right place, – or would he end up like a pin cushion before the medics rushed in at the very last moment to save him with ‘red alert' emergency procedure under the full glare of studio lights and the mesmerised stare of the goggling millions? Here were knockabout farce and tension combined, – laughter one minute, white-knuckled suspense the next, – making the point that, even supposedly suffering from the jitters of Parkinson's Disease,
nobody's
hand shook to such a degree that he couldn't control it when occasion demanded. Although in fact he did miss the vein fourteen times before locating the spot, and then more by accident than design.

Despite being in an off-peak slot the show climbed high in the JICTAR ratings, even outplacing
Feet
‘n'
Porridge
. It tickled the nation's funny-bone, inspiring a craze for such jokes as: ‘Where's the first place spastics go when they attend school in the morning?' ‘Assembly.' And ‘What do spastics do before the school holidays?' ‘Break up.' Saloon bars and hairdressing salons all over the country rocked.

Rumours percolated down to the studio to the effect that the show met with the approval of certain people in Govt circles, and that the PM was said to be a keen viewer; supreme accolade indeed.

As a result of this success Vail was invited to meet the Head of Documentaries and Current Affairs, Laine Vere Jumper, an immensely tall aristocratic man with a noble brow and a failing chin, spotted bald head, pink glasses and velvet bow tie, whose drawling speech was out of sync with his lip movements. First came the empty mouthings followed seconds later by the appropriate matching sounds. This gave the impression that at the start of every sentence the unfortunate man was gulping water like a goldfish in a bowl.

Laine Vere Jumper himself never watched TV on principle, though he studied the ratings with a savage analytic eye and heard about the programmes from his secretary, a homely body with a blue rinse by the name of Mrs Stretcher. Mrs Stretcher had no time for arty-farty nonsense; she liked medium two-shots interspersed by profile close-ups, interviewer and interviewee darkening to silhouette against a pale cyclorama as the credits rolled up, and a signature tune you could hum as you went to make the cocoa and put the cat out. Legend in the building had it that Mrs Stretcher could spot a stinkeroo even before the station ident had faded. She thought
Bootstraps
‘so true to life' and ‘hilariously funny without resorting to smut and innuendo'. It was the ultimate stamp of approval.

‘........ I trust that we're looking after you,' Laine Vere Jumper drawls at Vail in his delayed-action voice. They are sitting in his fifteenth-floor executive office suite sipping chilled golden wine from green crystal goblets. One complete wall is all blank television screens while another is all glass, overlooking a London skyline crumbling at the edges from the effects of sulphuric downpours. The hissing of the rain is no longer merely onomatopoeic. ‘........ You seem to have adjusted remarkably
quickly to fame, fortune and success ........ Getting plenty of tit and fanny?'

The last three words of this sentence are vibrating the molecules in the air even as Laine Vere Jumper is sipping his wine, which is a cute trick if you can do it. Why, thinks Vail, the dying words of this man could be still ringing in your ears after he had actually expired.

‘More than adequate, thank you. Yourself?'

‘........ Oh, I'm queer as a coot,' Laine Vere Jumper confides. ‘........ The female form disgusts me........ So verbose ........ An abundance of epidermis.'

‘I'd never thought of it in quite that way before.'

‘........ You heterosexuals never do ........ Leanness and sparsity of form are what appeal to me.' He shudders with exquisite distaste and crosses amazingly long tapering legs. ‘........ I detest grossness however it chooses to manifest itself ........ And the world today is too unutterably gross ........ One despairs ........ Every time I see Selina flashing her pudendum in public I feel positively dire.'

‘I suppose it is a bit overfacing,' Vail has to concede.

‘........ And goodness me, tits that size oughtn't to be allowed out of captivity ........ Did you know, for instance, Jack, that life on this planet is in danger of being swamped by mammaries? ........ My God, they're
everywhere
........ There are probably more tits per hectare than hairs on a navvy's arse ........ And I should know. Imagine, this inordinate plentitude of tit might well signal the end of civilization as we know it.'

Laine Vere Jumper seems genuinely distressed at the prospect and takes another sip of piss-coloured wine with eyes painfully screwed tight.

Vail wonders whether all heads of departments in television companies are homosexual, and if so, why there was so much breast and female pudenda filling the screens of the nation night after night. Of course, it takes but a moment's thought to realise that ratings dictated content just as content determined ratings, and therefore there wasn't all that much of a paradox about it after all. Aristocratic homosexual he might be, but Laine Vere Jumper isn't fool enough to deny the great public sufficient sub-Freudian tit with which to smother itself.

Wayde Dake Ass. Inc. reports in person:

‘Howdy,' the Texan booms, looming over them like a sandstone cliff and wielding a thick file which he slaps on Vail's ceramic and glass coffee table. ‘These phone calls. Guy by the name of Tex Rivett. Heard of him?'

Vail shakes his head.

‘Sneaky little bastard. Member of a subversive underground cell seeking to overthrow the
status quo
. Arrived in London on August 6 in a milk tanker.'

Vail goggles in disbelief and terror.

‘Known associates include a guy by the name of Urban Brown and the leader of the cell, Fully Olbin. There's a girl too, but we can't trace an ID on her. Sure you don't know any of these people?'

‘Not that I'm aware of.'

Angie sets down a tray and they all sip coffee in silence. Vail ponders the remarkable coincidence of two people arriving in London in a milk tanker on the same day. The only other explanation he can think of is that
he
is Tex Rivett, but as he knows he isn't he dismisses it. No wonder there were questions in the House.

‘Any idea why they should want to contact you? Money? Blackmail? Drugs?'

‘Jack doesn't deal in drugs,' Angie says quickly.

‘No, Rivett does,' Wayde Dake says. ‘That's how they finance their operation and get people to do them ‘favours'. For some reason they must want you.'

‘What can they possibly want me for?'

‘To do them a favour, I guess.' The coffee cup is like a thimble
in the American's giant sandstone fist. ‘You can get into places they can't. You meet people they can't get access to.'

‘Are they dangerous?' Vail asks.

‘Extremely. They've been known to kill people who annoyed them, even one teensy-weensy little bit. Sometimes for no reason at all. The person Brown already has a murder-one rap hanging over his head. Strangled and dumped a woman on the A422 outside the wire. But we'll get him or my name's not Weird Ache.'

‘How do you know it was him?'

‘Did it with the belt from his overcoat. Forensic identified his prints.'

‘On a fabric belt?'

‘On her pantihose and undergarments. He interfered with her before, during and after the incident, then snuck through the wire.'

‘Not in a milk tanker?'

‘In the trunk of the limo belonging to the world champion snooker player Steve Davis. Stole some of Steve's gear too, the little rat.'

‘I hope he was insured.'

‘Who'd insure terrorist scum like that?'

‘I meant Steve.'

‘Oh sure, Steve was insured, luckily.'

Something beeped in Way de Dake's breast pocket and he leapt up, towering above them like a fissured pillar of rock in Monument Valley, his head very near the ceiling. It was a Priority Z call and he had to leave right away: a person or persons unknown had made a threat against the life and property of the Honourable Guy Naecological, Scottish chairman of the sex shop chain that bore his name.

Vail is quite seriously worried. ‘What do you think I ought to do?'

‘Flesh would like you bugged. Protect his investment.'

‘How does that work?'

‘Simple implant. Minor surgery. Nothing to it. You can hardly see the lump.'

‘I suppose that means I walk round transmitting signals all day long.'

‘No problem. Except maybe sometimes you interfere with radio-controlled mini-cabs, – send them to places that don't exist,' Wayde Dake tells him. ‘And providing you don't go near any terrorist devices you have nothing to fear.'

‘Terrorist devices? Why … what happens?'

The massive American wraps his brown hand round Vail's, – ‘You tend to activate them', – and departs.

In Room 709 they congregate every Tuesday morning at eleven to plan the following week's programme. Excitement today because Laine Vere Jumper has received a personal appeal from a Govt minister to publicise the Deformed Imbeciles Fund, which is being sponsored by a famous multinational pharmaceuticals corporation whose head office is in Switzerland.

Virgie Hance gives them the lowdown.

‘The theme is ‘caring sharing', which both the Govt and the drug company are particularly anxious to get across. Our job is to make a selective choice of suitable Dis and feature them in the show.'

‘Wonderful,' somebody enthuses. ‘Pure JICTAR.'

‘Schedule tight too fingers out don't we pull,' Bryce Ransom reminds everyone sternly, temples throbbing.

(Vail is secretly amazed: he practically understood! Either the producer is becoming more coherent or Vail is adjusting to the lingo.)

‘Do they have to crawl through anything?' asks a slender-arsed PA in denims, sharpened pencil poised to stab a note. ‘Treacle, diesel oil, slurry? We have to order tankers of the stuff weeks in advance.'

‘I wouldn't personally view that as conducive to attaining the right image portrayal,' says the man from the drug company. ‘The little bastards will induce enough public sympathy as it is.'

‘Agreed.' Virgie Hance smiles at him with her gapped teeth
through which smoke writhes as smog through tombstones. ‘We need basket cases. We're into stumps, boys and girls. Wiggly protuberances in place of fingers. Malformed heads and glassy eyes, – you get the picture. Ideas?'

The director of the show, who enthused earlier, has one. ‘I could crane-mount a fisheye and dolly in, slice through to a long shot with Jack in the middle of a whole pack of them surrounded by dry ice.'

‘Blaize,' Virgie says wearily. ‘We're talking concept, not focking execution. You'll get your chance to dazzle. I'm after angles, pegs, hooks. Where do we
find
the little sods for a start?'

‘U.M.P.S.?' somebody chimes in from down the table.

Virgie sneaks a frowning glance at Bryce Ransom. ‘That's under wraps isn't it? No, too sensitive. They've got plenty of DIs, but no. Zilch that.'

‘I could lay a family on you,' Josh Rogan tells the assembly fliply. ‘Mom, Pop, uncles, aunts, kids.'

Virgie's green eyes are alight. ‘That is brilliant! Really? Are they all DIs, the whole focking shebang?'

‘Pop's intact, a pretty straight guy. But the kids are fantastic. ‘The legs of the lame are not equal: so is a parable in the mouths of fools.' Proverbs 26, Verse 7. Wait till you eyeball them.'

Josh Rogan, the California Baptist, or ‘CB' as he is known to his friends, has been called in to act as religious adviser to
Bootstraps
. Vail cannot understand how he comes by his tan and sun-bleached hair; the weather has been dour and overcast for weeks past. And why does he speak in a sliding transatlantic jive when he comes from Basingstoke?