Read (2008) Mister Roberts Online
Authors: Alexei Sayle
(2008) Mister Roberts
For
Linda
Contents
The summer air was thick
and viscous, like the poisonous water drawn from polluted Chinese rivers that
was used to fill up the souvenir snowdomes of London laid out with the rest of
the tat on the shelves of the tourist shops. Laurence strode purposefully
through the West End, though by now he knew he was far too late for the
meeting. He admonished himself over what a stupid waste of time it was to fly
all the way from Spain, spend an uncomfortable night on his cousin’s foldout
bed, get a train in from Brockley that was so small and cramped it seemed like
a half-sized model of itself, and then not to get to Soho House at the
appointed time.
Laurence
told himself he was being melodramatic saying that snubbing the producers of a
TV series, who’d been considering him as their costume designer meant the end
of his career. After all, it wasn’t absolutely certain that he would never,
ever, work again. On the other hand, even in the television business where
people could, in this play-it-safe century, still be pretty wayward, turning up
for the interview was generally considered a basic requirement for getting a job.
And everybody said you didn’t upset the people connected to the particular,
diminutive star who was attached to this project. Short, light-entertainment
stars were inclined towards being highly vindictive: everybody in the industry
was aware of the story of the young runner who’d spilt a tiny amount of soup on
Charlie Drake — a strange comedian who’d been big in the sixties — and was more
or less blacklisted. The runner had ended up taking a job as a traffic warden,
though subsequently he was able to ticket Charlie’s Rolls-Royce up to five
times a week.
Laurence
was in two minds over the prospect of not working: up until a few months ago,
he would have considered it a catastrophe. Back then, his sense of himself had
been completely tied up with career success, but each day he felt his former
ambition recede like the ache of a healing wound. In some ways he missed his
old unhappy self, as if for many years he had lived next door to a football
stadium that had recently moved, and now he was nostalgic for the noise and
mess and the men peeing in his front garden.
He was
more certain that he never wanted to return to London. It had been over four
years since Laurence’s last visit and during that time surveillance cameras and
chain coffee shops seemed to have grown and expanded like bathroom mould. From
where he stood now at a road junction completely blocked by one of the
incredibly long buses that had appeared since his previous trip (he wondered
whether you didn’t just get on one and then walk to your destination so seldom
did they seem to move) he could see two branches of Subway, two Pret a Mangers,
three Starbucks and twenty-one video cameras on fat black poles. Laurence
couldn’t shake the idea that travelling through modern London was rather like
being trapped in one of those cartoons they showed on the TV when he was a kid
where, if a character was running, the background would go round and round on a
loop behind them, the same few objects flashing past time after time. Laurence
had always resisted the temptation to moan about the state of the UK in the way
so many expat Brits did. He’d always had the vague feeling that to disrespect
your own country was to disrespect yourself in some fashion but he had to admit
that London seemed like a sordid mess to him now.
All
this wasn’t why he hadn’t gone to the meeting. Laurence knew for certain that
the reason he hadn’t shown up at Soho House was to do with what had occurred in
his village in Spain over the Christmas holidays. Even though it was now early
summer, since ‘the Events’ he’d had a great deal of trouble taking the idea of
work seriously. Money might become a bit of a problem in the future but he
liked the idea of being frugal. He thought he might get a plot from the town
hall and grow his own vegetables.
There
was only one high and difficult hurdle that had to be got over before his new
thrifty life could truly begin. It had been at the back of his mind in Spain
shouting to be heard but since he’d been in London it had grown like a
government subcommittee. Laurence had this overwhelming urge to tell somebody,
anybody, every detail of what had happened. If he lived in a normal place he
would, perhaps, be able to discuss it with those who had been there, but in
Spain there was something called
el pacto del olvido,
literally the
‘pact of Forgetting’. It was an unspoken and collective decision taken after
the death of Generalissimo Franco: the only way Spain could survive the end of
fascism without succumbing to savage retribution, as had happened in so many other
countries, was by a tacit, communal agreement never to talk about the awful
incidents that had taken place. The foreign community in his village
over-enthusiastically adopted all things Spanish, so they too had taken on
their own
pacto del olvido,
which over the years had come to encompass
a lengthy list of things which they could never discuss. The events Laurence
had the irresistible compulsion to talk about were currently at the top of that
list.
Laurence
supposed this need to unburden himself was connected with him being out of the
valley for the first time since it happened. After all, it was something many
travellers did. Liberated from home and amongst strangers whom they had no
chance of seeing again, people were often overcome with an irresistible desire
to tell another person their darkest secrets. Over the years Laurence had had
men and women in airport lounges, hotel bars and train stations relate to him
the most intimate and disturbing confidences: how they were in love with their
sister, how they binged on jam, how they’d sold nuclear material to Chechen
separatists. Now he wanted to do the same thing, but the problem was he didn’t
have any idea who to talk to. Whoever he confided in needed to accept certain
far-fetched things as being true. If he didn’t choose carefully there was the
danger that some stranger might pretend to accept the things as being true just
to humour him but really think he was deluded. That wouldn’t be nearly good
enough. He was certain he’d pick up if they were humouring him, and then he
wouldn’t get the sense of release he so desperately craved.
Right
at the moment he was thinking all this, Laurence noticed the man standing in
the middle of the pavement not twenty metres away: poised as if he’d been
placed there by one of those interventionist deities people prayed to, an
all-powerful life form who cared whether or not they passed their cookery exam.
Laurence knew at once that here was somebody who he could easily tell his
whole story to. This man would regard as true everything that the average
stranger in the bus station waiting room would think were the ravings of a
delusional psychotic.
With
what he thought was a big friendly smile on his face Laurence approached the
man. He was younger than he’d seemed from a distance, with black, unkempt,
curly hair and skin that was a waxy white, even though he must spend a good
part of the day outdoors. Up close his eyes were bloodshot and darted from side
to side as if he’d once lived somewhere where there were a lot of wasps. His
suit seemed too big for him and the wrinkled white shirt he wore was cinched in
at the waist by a ratty leather belt.
At
first the young man seemed a little surprised to encounter such eagerness,
Laurence assumed that usually he had to do at least a little cajoling to reel a
contact in. Never the less he seemed gratified by the interest and invited the
older man to step inside a nearby building.
Despite
its rather home-made-looking interior the place was dark and cool and fiercely
air-conditioned and Laurence immediately felt the sweat evaporating from the
small of his back. He thought that no matter how things went he could still be
grateful to get in from the street. Soon they were sitting facing each other
across a plain wooden table with a little clear plastic cup of chilled water
beside each of them.
