Acquired Tastes (27 page)

The collection filled every room of what would otherwise have been a neatly kept, two-bedroom flat.

'When mother was alive, I had to keep them in my room. She said it wasn't proper for a grown man to collect dolls. But since she passed on a year ago last Spring, I've been able to expand,' Alfred explained happily.

Vijay dazedly wondered whether the departed Mrs Burton had known what the dolls were for.

'I hope you don't think me morbid, but Elsie here,' Alfred indicated a doll wedged into a high-backed chair beside the gas fire in the main room, 'reminds me of mother, so I gave her one of my mother's wigs, and dressed her in mother's favourite lilac chiffon. She liked lilac chiffon, same as the Queen Mother. They even had the same birthday. She never missed a year at Clarence House. It was her birthday treat, too. She would get done up to the nines in chiffon, with matching hat and gloves. Sometimes tourists used to think she
was
the Queen Mother and take pictures. It fair tickled her pink.'

Alfred wiped a little nostalgic tear from the corner of his eye. 'Anyway, I thought it was right she should have pride of place in her throne, so to speak. There'll never be another one like her, she understands royalty. Now I'll give you that her daughter wears some nice hats, but the rest of them are a bit common to my mind. '

Sitting opposite Elsie, her wig askew and her splayed legs sticking out at right angles from several layers of dusty chiffon, Vijay sipped tea, squeezed between a redhead and a brunette on the couch.

Alfred studied him coyly from his perch on a stool beside Elsie. 'I've got this plan, see, and I thought the telly might be able to help,' he began.

Vijay quailed at what might come next.

Alfred gave a self-important little cough.

'I thought I might do sort of, guided tours. People pay to see all sorts these days, so why not my dolls? I've been thinking I might dress them up in different national costumes, one for every country in the world, so it would be educational.' He reached across and patted Elsie's arm. 'My mother would have liked it, being like a stately home.'

He looked hopefully across at Vijay.

With as much tact as he could muster, Vijay explained the purpose of
Forbidden Fruit.

Alfred went quiet and replaced a half-eaten bourbon on his plate.

'So you see,' Vijay finished, 'what I really came here to talk about was your, er… relationship with your dolls.'

Alfred looked mortified. 'But they're like family! I wouldn't dream of treating them improperly,' he protested indignantly. 'It would be like, well,
incest.'

Outside the front door, Vijay crossed Alfred off his list. His next visit was to a Mr De Vere who, much to Vijay's relief, lived in a neat 1930s semi-detached villa near Highbury. The door had been answered by his home help, a cheerful black girl with elaborately corn-rowed hair.

'Mr De Vere's really excited about meeting you,' she said over her shoulder, as she led the way. 'He doesn't get many visitors, which is a pity as he's a really nice old man.'

She made them tea and then left.

Mr De Vere had the air of a faded dandy about him. His three-piece grey suit, though old, was spotless, and a freshly-laundered handkerchief was tucked with a flourish into his breast pocket. His shirt had an old-fashioned, starched collar and, although it was fraying at the cuffs, he wore gold cuff links. His rheumatic hands gripped a silver-topped walking stick.

He leaned eagerly forward as Vijay looked through his collection of erotic Edwardian postcards. Page after page of sepia coloured photographs of buxom young women, with their mountainous breasts bursting out of tightly laced corsets, and thighs which now only a body builder would dare show in public, encased in demure black stockings.

When Vijay had finished, Mr De Vere handed him an old penny. 'Drop this in the slot and turn the handle,' he commanded pointing his walking stick at an old machine standing in the corner of the room.

Vijay nervously did as he was told and pressed his eye to a small peep hole. As he cranked the handle, he saw the grainy, jerky figure of a girl being undressed by her maid, and stepping naked into a hip bath. As the maid sponged her body, the girl became playful and splashed her, so that the maid too stripped naked. Suddenly the door to the bathroom was flung open by a butler with an impossibly large, handlebar moustache and eyebrows which could only be described as beetling. The two girls covered their mouths with alarm but no other part of their anatomy, as the butler advanced towards them - at which point the film flickered to a halt.

'Better than any of those new-fangled video games, isn't it?' Mr De Vere asked. 'I rescued it from the end of the pier at Bluehaven twenty years ago. Some woman councillor had got all hot under the collar about it.' He looked mournful. 'You know, I really can't understand women these days. Half of them want to act like men and the other half spend their time getting skinny so they can look like them. A woman should have a bit of flesh on her so as a man can get a good hold. I can't abide skin and bones.'

He pointed his walking stick at Vijay. 'You don't know what you're missing, young man. Women were really women in my younger days. Now if that home help's gone, there's a bottle of whisky in that cupboard over there, so let's forget about tea and biscuits. Women spoonfeed you milk when you're a child and tea when you're old. They think they know what's best for us, but we know better, don't we?'

Despite Mr De Vere's attitude to women, Vijay rather liked him. He seemed somehow innocent, rather like the seaside postcards he collected. As Vijay walked to the underground station, fortified by two glasses of whisky he decided he would suggest Mr De Vere as a participant for the show. His fantasy was to be the peeping butler in the slot machine, but only if the two girls had, as he had put it - 'real meat on their bones'.

The fantasy had a certain historical relevance to it, Vijay thought, but he had another motive. Mr De Vere could only walk with difficulty, and had a wheelchair, although his vanity rarely let him use it. But if he had to work on a programme about sex, then he would make sure the elderly and the disabled had their say too. At least then he would feel he had struck a blow for two neglected minorities, Vijay thought determinedly. Only he wouldn't mention the wheelchair to Vanessa, at least not yet.

He began to whistle. He still had to visit a Dominatrix in Penge, a checkout girl in Bromley who wanted to work the evening shift at Sainsbury's topless, and a team of naked synchronised swimmers in Orpington. It was going to be a long day.

The now all too familiar sensation of an iron band tightening around his chest woke Philip before his alarm clock could. Without opening his eyes, he felt for his pills on the bedside table and gulped down two, ignoring the instructions to chew slowly before swallowing.

His fingers closed round the pile of newspaper cuttings which lay on the bed beside him. He had fallen asleep reading them. Philip reluctantly opened his eyes. Even without his bifocals he could read the headlines:

FLUCK HITS OUT AT TV MUCK

SLEAZE-FINDER GENERAL IN TV FILTH HUNT

ONE FLUCK TOO MANY - TV COMEDY BANNED

Philip reached for his glasses. There simply had to be a weak spot in Sir Norman's arguments, all he had to do was find it.

He scanned one of the articles which recounted verbatim yet another of Sir Norman's barnstorming speeches: 'TV executives sit in self-appointed judgement on the behaviour of politicians and other public figures, subjecting their every move to close scrutiny and demanding they answer for their every action. Yet when someone dares sit in judgment on those self-same executives, they yell “censorship”! They lecture us on the freedom of the press, but the freedom they want is the freedom to corrupt and to criticise,' Sir Norman had raged. 'How long can we allow these men to consider themselves above the moral codes the rest of us choose to abide by?'

Philip shuddered and picked up another cutting: 'The tide of filth that is sweeping across our TV screens is a canker in the very soul of our great nation. Even if it means the wound is deep we must cut it out. Better the pain of a clean wound than a slow death by gangrene.'

He shakily removed his glasses.

The sudden shrill of his alarm clock startled him, but for once it was welcome. He set his computerised rowing and treadmill machines on to higher programmes than usual and for forty minutes, twenty minutes on each - stretched and pulled his muscles to their limits. Panting and dripping with sweat, Philip turned the fierce jets of his specially installed massage shower on to full. Feeling invigorated, he breakfasted on two cups of freshly-ground, decaffeinated coffee, some hi-bran, low sugar muesli and two capsules of extra strength Royal Jelly and Ginseng.

As he carefully knotted his silk tie, he looked in the mirror. There was a time when he had been young and idealistic enough to consider a career in politics, he thought wistfully. He had been quite a rebel in those days. Philip patted some Chanel cologne on his cheeks. It wasn't that he cared any less, it was just that he had matured. His ideals were still intact, but tempered by responsibility and a necessary pragmatism. After all, he had a business to run and employees and investors to consider. It was crucial that he didn't let the situation get out of proportion because of his unfortunate brush with Sir Norman and a few hysterical headlines. The tabloids always distorted the truth, and Sir Norman was probably nothing like the blinkered, right-wing moral crusader he appeared to be.

Philip's pulse was nearly back to normal by the time his taxi arrived, and, as it drove through the morning rush hour traffic to the offices of the Committee for Media Morality in Knightsbridge, he chewed two more tablets just to be sure. The last thing he needed was another attack of nervous indigestion.

Sir Norman strode briskly through Green Park, having eschewed an offer of a taxi by the porter at his club in St James. The walk to Knightsbridge would do him good, not that he needed it. Sir Norman felt like a man reborn since he had been appointed head of the Committee for Media Morality.

In his own modest way, Sir Norman liked to feel he had served his sovereign and his country well. His military service during the Second World War had not been quite as distinguished on the battlefield as he had wished, but it was not for want of trying. He had joined up as soon as he could, and had volunteered for dangerous duty at every opportunity. Not that he would have been insubordinate enough to complain, but he privately felt that his superior officers had shown their lack of military competence by confining him to the Pay Corps. When his father retired as an MP after forty years, Sir Norman had stood for Parliament himself. He regarded it as another chance to serve his country, and if once again he was not called upon to be other than a foot soldier, he was still happy to do it.

As he neared Knightsbridge, Sir Norman's pace quickened and he began to whistle. He had not expected to be offered another tour of duty after his retirement from Parliament, but when it was suggested he allow his name to be put forward for the chairmanship of the Committee for Media Morality, he had readily agreed. He suspected that other people had assumed that the chairmanship of the committee was tantamount to putting him out to grass, but he had proved them wrong. He had found a cause that was worthy of a fight to the finish.

He had long been uneasy about the weakening moral fibre of the country, something which he put down to the twin evils of socialism and Europe, but when, as a result of his appointment, he sat down to watch television for the first time in his life, he instantly realised where the real danger lay.

At first, he had found it disconcerting that his main allies in his crusade were the tabloid newspapers, but a General sometimes had to form strange alliances in order to defeat the enemy. In a war, the end justified the means. But he had recently met a new ally, someone he felt was fired by the same passion to preserve all that was good and right about the English way of life, and he had appointed her as his lieutenant on the committee.

Sir Norman did not normally approve of women in the battlefield. They were bad for military discipline and took a man's mind off his duty. But after years as a dedicated bachelor, he had at last met a woman who could stir him, a woman with the heart of a warrior - a veritable Boadicea.

He pushed his way through the revolving doors into the offices of the committee and was greeted by the receptionist. He glanced down at the visitors' book and what he saw there written in a large, clear hand made his heart quicken: Mrs Mildred Proudfoot, Chairwoman of the Campaign for Decency and Family Life. With an explosive 'Harrumph' he set off down the corridor to the main meeting room.

A minute later, Philip presented himself at reception. As he waited for the receptionist to announce him, he surreptitiously checked his pulse. It was beginning to rise again. He concentrated on controlling his breathing, it was a technique he had read in a book about stress management.

The receptionist directed him to a couch but almost immediately an efficient looking woman in her early fifties emerged to greet him. The squashy leather sofa on which Philip had been sitting made dignified posture impossible, and he struggled awkwardly to his feet.

'I'm Jenny Haigh, the Committee Secretary. I'm sorry we've kept you waiting, Mr Pryce, Sir Norman has been packing a lot meetings in since his appointment. He's keeping us all on our toes.'

She talked over her shoulder as she led the way briskly down a long corridor and through several sets of swing doors.

'As he is not over-familiar with the workings of the television industry, Sir Norman is trying to get the feel of the job at the moment. In order to help him, I've been arranging a series of meetings with producers selected on an
ad hoc
basis in order to canvass their views about the committee,' Jenny Haigh continued. 'The meetings are purely on an informal basis so as to allow a full and frank exchange of views. The full complement of committee members will not be present, so please feel free to raise anything you choose, we have no set agenda.'