1982 Janine (33 page)

After the show we all cleared the place up then went downstairs and found, as usual, the English company and its friends at the table reserved for our company and its friends. The stranger was sitting beside the English director who told us, “Meet Binkie.”

This struck our company almost totally silent, though our director said, “O.”

Diana and Helen stiffened while the joints of Roddy and Rory seemed to slacken and their manly faces began to smile vacantly. We hesitated until the stranger, with a slight nod and turn of a hand, indicated that he expected us to sit at our own table. I sat as far from him as possible beside an English actress who was straining to hear the conversation. I asked her who he was. She whispered, “Binkie used to own the whole of the West End but he still has quite a slice of it. Shh.”

This sounded like a line in a highly improbable novel so I asked Helen the same question. She whispered, “He's a great producer. We get lectures on him at the drama college. Shh.”

In the bright light of the restaurant Binkie no longer looked strange, he looked like a plump, elegant, ageing but not yet old man. He sometimes smiled or nodded but said almost nothing. It seemed that he neither wanted nor was expected to speak. The other English kept entertaining and informing him by talking loudly to each other in a strangely ritualistic way. Nobody spoke about themselves, except indirectly, but all praised each other while pretending to tell stories against each other. The English director looked modestly embarrassed while his cast gave different versions of a tale which demonstrated how, under stress, he became forgetful and rude in ways which strengthened, almost by accident, his superb qualities as a director. The subject of this tale suddenly interrupted it by crying, “I've had enough of this! I may be pretty bad but what about you, Judy?”

He pointed at his leading lady and told a story about how comically prone to sexual misadventure she was in ways which somehow enhanced, or showed up by contrast, her qualities as an actress. As he came to the titillating details of the story Judy hid her face in her hands and cried, “Oh no! Please stop! Don't let Binkie hear about that!” and afterward her friends emitted a burst of laughter which the director bridged by shouting, “And then! And then! And then she …”

Binkie was being steadily told that they were all eccentric, silly, lovable, efficient, talented, and related to important people.

And now the English tried to widen the game. Their director told an obliquely flattering story about our company, and appealed to our director for confirmation, and our director answered with a monosyllable. The English director hesitated, but Judy took the story from him and continued it with great energy for a minute, then tried to pass it to Rory, who grinned and nodded, then to Roddy, who grinned and nodded, then to Diana, who seized it and brought it to an end with one bright hysterical sentence. The English laughed appreciatively and then there was silence. The Scots could not play this game. It was not a game in which we could be beaten, like football, it was a game in which we displayed ourselves, like beachball, and we had been taught
not
to display ourselves, taught that it was wrong to talk in class, unless the teacher asked a question and we knew exactly the answer he wanted. So the Scots were silent until Binkie, who should have been silent too because the game was being played for his benefit, decided to join in. He asked our director a question, and our director answered with three monosyllables. I was ashamed for him, ashamed of the Scottish. I wished he would turn into the old glib garrulous Brian with the phoney accent and the sickening catch-phrases. The English would despise him for these but they would also notice an energy they could not despise, an energy which could be useful to them or useful to someone. But he spoke three short words. Binkie nodded as if he had received weighty information, then asked another question and our director pointed at me. The English director jumped up and shouted, “Jock! You're being very quiet at that end of the table. Come up and join us.”

He placed a chair between Binkie and himself and I sat down in it determined to be as dour as the rest of my company. On my right hand was a man people treated like God. I did not think he was God yet my heart beat as hard as if I was on holy ground. I despised the illogical action of my heart, so I wanted to despise him.

Binkie gave me no chance to do that. He smiled and murmured something polite. The English director said, “We've all been telling Binkie about the strikingly original lighting effects you produced for the show.”

I said, “I tried to produce suitable effects.”

The English director said, “Could you adapt these to a more traditional theatre space?”

“Certainly not. I would devise different effects for another theatre.”

“How would you go about doing that?”

“First I would examine the acting space, because I have never visited the stage of an ordinary theatre. Here we had to build our own. Then I would familiarise myself with the lighting resources, and find how much money was available to extend them.”

The English director said, “Extend them?”

I said nothing. Then Binkie spoke in a remote, rather sleepy voice: “The lighting resources of a well-equipped modern theatre are pretty extensive already, and I gather you have done something quite stunning with a few ordinary floods and spots.”

I shrugged and said, “If you want the best from a creative electrician you must expect him to enlarge his scope.”

“Creative electrician!” said Binkie, and somehow conveyed, without smiling, that he was amused. I said sternly, “What is the nature of
your
connection with the theatre?”

After a pause Binkie said, “I make money by it. I find it an interesting way of making money. I meet such very charming people.”

He gave me a small charming smile then transferred it to Rory who sat across the table from him. Rory no longer looked manly. His head lolled so far to one shoulder that the neck seemed broken. He had the face of a wistfully dreaming girl. The English director said loudly, “Creative electrician, yes, an interesting idea. You see in the professional theatre only the artists – the directors and actors and designers – are expected to be creative. The technicians do what they're told, though they're well-protected by their unions, and very adequately paid.”

I shrugged and said, “Most folk who train for a trade or profession become mindless tools of it, even in engineering. Even in architecture. Even in banking, I believe. But in Glasgow – Glasgow Tech – we have a different approach.” This was a lie. I had no reason to think our Glasgow lecturers were more inspiring than in other technical colleges. It was
Alan and his friends who had made me feel that great new things could come from us, but I enjoyed suggesting that I had a city and an institution behind me.

“Of course,” said Binkie thoughtfully, “some people have to be mindless tools. If our hammers refused to hit our nails because they were sorry for nails then nobody would have a decent roof over their head.”

I said, “Men and women are not hammers and nails.”

Binkie nodded and pursed his lips in a way which indicated perfect tolerance of my opinion and perfect understanding of why I held it. And I saw a world where most folk were ignorant wee nails, like Denny, being struck again and again by cleverly forged hammers, like me, in the hands of directors and designers and artists who were encouraged to be charming human beings by a few people, like Binkie, who found this an interesting way of making money. And these few folk thought they were producers! They really believed that without them roofs would not be built, crops planted, cloth woven or plays performed. And people agreed with them. All the actors, Scottish and English, knew that Binkie could not build a stage, or write a play, or light one, or act in one, but they reverenced him as A GREAT PRODUCER because he had once owned the whole of the West End and still had quite a slice of it. No doubt he also had theatrical judgment, but probably no more than the young English actor-director who was now acting as his adjutant-in-the-field, or Secretary-of-State-for-Scotland, or highly intelligent flunkey. What made Binkie a power was his wealth and the intelligence he used to keep it, and this intelligence was not necessarily his own. As Old Red once said, “Capital can always buy brains. Brains swarm to it like flies to a dungheap.” Yes, intelligences go whoring after money more than bodies do, because we are not taught that it is whoredom to sell a small vital bit of our intelligence to people we don't like and who don't like us. The worst crime in the world is murder, but selling your intelligence comes close behind because murder follows it, gaschambers, Dresden, arms manufacture, napalm, body dumps and every sort of massacre. I now know that that sort of selling is exactly the great whoredom and mystery and manyheaded creature of the Apocalypse
which the rulers and nations of the world worship to this day. Except in Poland. Recently some Poles refused to bow the knee, but I cannot possibly have seen that the world was like this in the early fifties.

In the year which followed The Conquest of Everest and The Coronation of the First Royal Great British Elizabeth I cannot possibly have seen that the world was like this. I did not know if Binkie's power was inherited like money or rented by money but I did recognise it. I recognised and admired and desired the power of this elegant, plump old man. I felt my mouth soften into the effeminate smirk which disfigured Rory's face, and when I noticed that, my small spark of dislike became hatred and my mouth hardened again. He turned and faced me with a courteous glance of mild inquiry and I wanted to lean forward and bite his nose off without in any way touching the rest of his body. This impulse was so astonishing that I could not move, I merely gaped and perhaps bared my teeth a little. I felt the English director's hand on my arm. He said urgently, “How would you go about expanding the resources of modern theatrical lighting?”

“Eh?”

“Modern theatre lighting. You spoke about expanding its resources. Were you talking randomly or had you something in mind?”

It was plain that if I did not suggest something interesting (in the theatrical sense of the word) the English company would feel they had patronised a gang of inarticulate, truculent louts. I said, “Stage-lighting today should be more positive in its use of shadow. Darkness could be as distinct a dramatic element as light is. With a little more invention we could use blocks and beams of it.”

The English director said, “What exactly are you referring to?”

I said, “Imagine a big stage sticking quite far out into the audience from the … the … that square arch the curtains hang from.”

“The proscenium.”

“Thanks. On this stage we have people doing things in front of what is supposed to be a house, but the house is repre
sented by a block of darkness. I will call it negative light instead of darkness, because the eye can always pierce the darkest shadow a little when there is light near by, but it couldnae pierce this black block. The block can contain whatever furniture you like, and actors who step into it become invisible. Yes, and we could surround the blocks with pillars of negative light which people could come out of or vanish into on cue. Then at the touch of a switch the negative and positive light zones are reversed. We see a well lit room surrounded by spotlights with people in them.”

“Is this practical?” said Binkie.

“Certainly not. The concept of negative light is a recent one. But a team of people I know will make it possible in ten years, if you give us the money.”

“And you are a lecturer in a Glasgow polytechnic?”

“No. I'm a second-year student in the Glasgow Royal Technical College founded by Professor John Anderson, author of
The Institutes of Physics
, in 1796.”

“It sounds enchanting,” said Binkie in his sleepy voice. I thought he had decided that the Scots, when not inarticulate and truculent, were a race of boastful fantasisers, but I felt friendly toward him now. My sudden conception of negative light had restored my confidence. I even had a notion of how to achieve it. I believed that after a few discussions of the problem with Alan I would be able to map out a research programme. I relaxed and became voluble, remembering a speculative article in one of Alan's old technical magazines, probably
The Scientific American
. I said, “If you are interested in more immediate practicalities I offer you the hologram. It is possible to project a small solid-looking image into an open space, an image people can view from every side but not touch, because nothing is there but reflection. With adequate funding my team, two years from now, will project on to a stage the solid-looking image of a big tree in the Amazonian rainforest. The branches will sweep down over the audience until they appear to touch the back row of the stalls. We could even project a pro, what did you call it? a proscenium with all those daft plaster cherubs and gilded twiddly bits, and a curtain that looks like scarlet velvet and seems to open, and private boxes on each side with posh people in them who lean out and even applaud at certain
moments. I am not talking about an image projected on a screen, don't think that, I refer to an image projected upon a space. Looked at from any angle in the auditorium it will appear three-dimensional. Looked at from the stage it need not appear at all, if we do not want it to. The actors would know the position of the illusion by marks on the floor. If one of them placed a kitchen stepladder a few inches behind the trunk of my big tree, and climbed up and stuck his head forward, the audience would see a living bodiless head stuck to the trunk of a tree twelve feet above ground.”

“Stupid conjuring tricks!” shouted the writer, “Good theatre gives us men and women acting as if they are loving and governing and tricking each other and dying, yes dying! Aristophanes, Shakespeare and Ibsen didnae need these daft pyrotechnics and neither do we.”

The success of his play had not changed the writer. He was as gloomy and critical as he had always been, so we ignored him as usual, though I thought Binkie gave him a sympathetic nod. I said to the English director, “These devices would be especially helpful to you. Think of the freedom you would have. You could enter any big hall which had a platform and in two or three hours, with the help of a single skilled electrician and his projectors, you could make it look like the inside of La Scala Milano. You wouldn't need the London West End then to put on a play in an expensive-looking setting.”

The English director stared hard at the tip of his cigarette. The Scottish director suddenly guffawed. Binkie said, almost loudly, “Your device would certainly enable us to dispense with a lot of scene-shifters. But you have forgotten the seats. The audience like a lot of comfortable seats. Experimental theatre people always forget the audience.”

I nodded at him approvingly. I said, “Correct. I forgot the seats, and my team, which does not yet exist, will take at least sixty years to project an image people can sit upon. Your profits are safe till the end of the century.”

It is queer to think that I was perfectly sober when I said all this, or else said something very like it. I was only partly joking. I laughed at Binkie in a knowing way, daring him to take me seriously. He was old enough to have been wooed
by several people using this gambit, but he looked slightly pained, I thought. He said vaguely, “It all sounds enchanting.”

Judy stood up and spoke out decisively.

“Jock, I had better dance with you, because you are clearly a man with an important future. May I have the pleasure?” As we edged between the tables toward the dancing floor I told her, “You Oxbridge lot are great wee managers.”

She said, “Well, the conversation was becoming rather fraught.”

“Did I annoy your friend?”

“O Binkie is too grand to be my friend. I suspect he's too grand to be anybody's friend. And he's far too grand ever to be annoyed, he knows it's a waste of time. Still, it would be a mistake to get on the wrong side of him.”

The dance was the spasmodic jive sort so I tried to lift her off the floor and nearly succeeded. She said, “Better not. I believe Binkie has gone now so we can go back to the table and get deliciously sloshed.”

At the table everyone was now chattering as excitedly as a class let out of school. The English director cried, “Jock, these solid mirage projectors and solid shadow projectors, are they possible or were you just imagining them?”

I said icily, “Since I imagined them of course they are possible.”

He said, “That makes no sense to me. Can anyone here tell me what Jock means? Geoffrey, you keep in touch with science and dreary things like that, can you tell me what Jock means?”

He was looking at a friend who studied architecture. The friend said, “He means that science can solve any purely technical problem it recognizes. By the end of the century, for example, we may have men on the moon. Any adequately qualified, sufficiently funded research team which tackles the problem of projecting big holograms with portable equipment will eventually do so. But not in two years. Ten or twenty years, perhaps. Confess that when you said two years you were romancing.”

I said stolidly, “I will not confess that. My team could do it in two years. My team will contain a genius.”

They started laughing. I shouted, “Not me! Not me! I have a friend who is going to astonish you all!”

“Yes, genius can speed a team up,” admitted the architect,

“but genius is terribly lacking in team spirit. That's why we discourage it.”

“You two are saying things which I have no wish to know. They terrify me,” said the director, who seemed not terrified but very cheerful. He poured me a glass of wine. It occurred to me that I would not get very drunk if I drank only wine so I began drinking a lot of it quickly. We were all cheerful in an overstrained way which was soothed by alcohol. Binkie had been among us so we felt ourselves on the edge of a dangerously exciting future.

From the edge of a dangerously exciting future I looked forward to myself standing on a gantry over a space as vast as London, though it was also a stage and a television studio. My skills had enabled my friend Binkie to regain the whole of the West End, so we had gone on to take the North, South and East Ends, then the Centre, then the Provinces. (Were you drunk again?)

And happy, because my projectors were equally effective outside the theatre. Our hologram navy was the most visually terrifying in the world, being based on a film of the British Spithead review in 1910. At the speed of light I could make it appear anywhere at any altitude, but we preferred moving it slowly at ground level. The steady advance of these huge dreadnaughts through the streets of Prague, or was it Budapest, had driven the Russian tanks out of Hungary, of was it Czechoslovakia, or both. In the same year they had mysteriously appeared in the South Pacific, sailed north through Chile, crossed the Andes and driven the hirelings of the American fruit company out of South America. Bombs and guns had no effect upon these ships, nor could they themselves do damage, but armed forces which tried to ignore them were isolated in vast negative light fields which blinded them long enough for the local patriots to win bloodless but practical victories.

(What happened next evening when Binkie saw the show?) You ought to be more interested in world peace because I finally established it. Populations basked, undressed and
danced in the warm floods of light and music I poured upon them, Hollywood actresses parked their rocketplanes on the Thames embankment having crossed the Atlantic through a tunnel of rainbows cast by my projectors, Jane Russell, Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe yearned to meet me. Whoever was touched by my spotlight became famous, but I did not light only lucky people. My searchlights and cameras showed the bad schooling and housing of folk whose work was essential and the arrogance of public servants who behaved as if they were overlords. Social reform always followed these revelations, but like Binkie I preferred to stay out of the limelight. Even so I was a legendary figure. When the sun shone brightly the Londoners told their children, “The Scotch electrician is smiling again.”

(What happened on the next night when Helen came to you?)

That is unimportant because actresses were not the only women who loved me. In order not to seem inhumanly grand I let myself be seduced by all of them just once, while never failing to fly up north for weekends and holidays, for that was where my wife and children lived. Yes, Denny and I had married at last. Our home was a six-room-and-kitchen Hillhead flat with oriel windows; also coalburning fires and quaint art-nouveau mantelpieces and beaten copper fenders, even in the lobby; also a wally-tiled close with carved bannisters on the stairs and the landings inlaid with four colours of geometrical mosaic. The whole world was astonished by my devotion to a plain wee woman in a Glasgow tenement, but the Scots understood me. They knew I was still one of them, even though my spotlight on corporal punishment had abolished the use of the belt in schools (chew on
that
, Hislop) even though I had refused to make Glasgow the capital of the British Commonwealth. “The centre of a properly lit land is everywhere,” I had declared. “The exact spot in which our public servants confabulate is unimportant.”

The truth was I did not want to be involved in politics. While working hard in every field of energy and communications I was helping my friend Alan establish the proper place and destination of man in the universe.

(What did you do when Brian was arrested by the police?)

Bear with me a while longer, God. It is true that I felt above and beyond myself when I imagined such things and here I am imagining them again. Yes, I feel almost your equal again as I survey the universe from my imaginary future, and of course this will lead to a fall again, but in this exalted state I glimpse an insight which, properly worded, will clear you for ever of those Stalinist crimes imputed to you by your most ardent admirers and which the intelligently decent have NEVER been able to thole. Allow me a few more overweening minutes then let me fall gently. With a parachute, please.

Alan was principal of the Glasgow Royal Technical College, originally founded by Professor John Anderson, author of
The Institutes of Physics
, in 1796. In his early days Alan had given the world the Caledonian sunmill, a delicate toylike structure of shaving-mirrors, coloured steel cubes, guitar-strings and a simple beam balance which, mounted on a chimney head, could supply a room below with all the domestic heat and light it needed at no cost. He now perfected the negative light probe, a delicate toylike structure of shaving-mirrors, coloured glass balls and copper wire which, attached to a common television aerial, allowed the owner of the set below to view any part of the universe above his house at any degree of magnification whatsoever. Mankind could now make an up-to-date map showing the position and features of every galaxy, star and planet which existed.