Amazing Disgrace (24 page)

‘Well, Nanty, it can’t be my body so it must be my mind. Or maybe even my suit.’ Those pop eyes swim up into my mental vision, reminding me of my passing ailment and by extension of my repeat consultation with Benjy Birnbaum this
afternoon
. I push them firmly under again. ‘Anyway, Nanty, I have your note and here I am, calling you as requested.’  

‘Cool. What I need to know, mate, is are you on ter write this book about me? Thing is, me agent really went for that plan of ours before I had me deliberate – that’s what I call me accident, because it wasn’t; it was a carefully planned heist, like the papers said. You remember: that idea of yours to build me up for the future.’

I certainly do remember. It was a plan of campaign for
nothing
less than the later career of a rock star whose days as Brill, the plausible leader of a boy band, are severely numbered. There is a limit to how much longer a bald man of thirty-two can continue to hold the attention of thirteen-year-old girls in a way that won’t lead to his arrest. With the famous Samper ad-libbing skill and over a glass or two of Fernet-Branca I had sketched out a scenario for which any PR company would probably have charged him at least fifty thousand pounds. It was to begin with a bestselling autobiography and continue with a plot to associate Nanty increasingly with the sort of serious mainstream artistic projects that get huge publicity. True, they commonly give scant pleasure to anyone except the celebrity in question, but at the barest minimum he usually gets the OBE, much as the fat boy at the back of the class gets a merit mark for trying. I rather think I suggested an AIDS Requiem (African instruments, Liverpudlian guitars, Kiri Te Kanawa and the singing strings of the LSO); but that could now easily be transformed into a Mass for the Planet (words by Nanty, translated into Latin and sung by the pious monks of San Bernard augmented by Balinese instruments,
Liverpudlian
guitars, selected Sperm, Blue and Minke whale soloists plus the singing strings of the CSO under Max Christ).
Whatever project is chosen its theme should be agreeably
tragic
. It ought to involve celebrity performers far enough past their sell-by date to merit adjectives like ‘well-loved’, and the whole thing would have to contain that irreducible quotient of tackiness that gives British public enterprises their
unmistakable
character. This, I reasoned, would propel Brill out of the kiddie-band charts and Nanty into the wrinkled pantheon of those whose eventual knighthoods in the Birthday Honours List elicit peppery remarks such as ‘
Who
?’ and ‘Good Christ!’ in Tunbridge Wells.  

On the other hand, the project need not necessarily be
musical
. Obviously there is always room for another Holocaust memorial somewhere – you can never have too many of them and they usually win prizes, too, like Paralympians. Possibly a little ambitious for the likes of Nanty, however. Maybe wacky as well as tacky was the way to go, with a postmodern ‘event’ of sorts? From time to time I’d wondered if it was the right moment to resurrect the old idea of tear bottles: tiny flasks in which pining lovers once caught their tears as a way of
quantifying
their hurt. I fancied it might be possible to conduct a global weep-in on behalf of the environment. Well, if not
actually
global then confined to the EU or just to the UK, like Red Nose Day. Brill could lead a day of weeping in which people meditated on threatened species, dying pandas, starving koalas, bludgeoned seal pups and similar mammalian
tearjerkers
while catching their lacrimosities in little plastic vials which they would then drop off at collection points in
shopping
malls, post offices, etc. This would lead to a nationally televised ceremony when great vats of British blubberings would be poured into an empty swimming pool. Brill would compère the show while an immense ballcock moved the hand of a Weepometer. Thus would the nation gauge the literal depth of its concern for environmental matters. A bit on the weird side but surely worth a CBE at the very least. By one means or another I was aiming for Nanty’s regular inclusion as a well-loved figure in Christmas TV spectaculars by the time
he was forty. Thereafter he was on his own and free to follow the normal trajectory of yesterday’s celebrities: a divorce or two, a drug bust or two, a newspaper outcry following the assault of a paparazzo outside a nightclub, a crotchety letter to
The Times
about the scandalous unavailability of Vegan food in motorway diners. Meanwhile …

‘Does that mean you’re keen to start?’ I ask him.  

‘Oh yeah. Yeah, man. I wanna get going on this thing. Getting shot, you know? Makes yer think.’  

‘Not about mortality, I hope.’  

‘Give over, Gerry. Nah, just that there’s so much yer can’t do while waiting to heal up yer may as well write a book, know what I mean?’

‘Only too well, Nanty. We’d better get the formalities out of the way, then. Your agent contacts mine.’  

‘Cool. But what about this other book you’re supposed to be doing for Millie?’  

‘I promise that won’t get in the way. In fact, between you and me, I don’t think that will be going anywhere. I’m
predicting
her imminent change of heart about Neptune, though don’t quote me. She’s got herself in with a pretty flaky crowd.’  

‘Sure,’ says Nanty equably, quite used to the idea of a
sudden
leap in midstream from the slippery back of one hobby horse on to that of another. I recall a similar equestrian feat he himself had been obliged to perform some years ago when his much-publicized, much-revered guru of the day, a sunny rogue from Benares with the usual robe, beard and mantras, failed in a foolishly undertaken test under laboratory conditions to make even a postage stamp levitate using the power of thought. This gentleman had previously convinced Nanty and another member of his band that within a month of
embarking
on his levitation course they would be able to rise two metres into the air while in the lotus position. The guru with the off-world powers was swiftly exposed as a businessman with offshore accounts. Nanty had leaped adroitly, although I
can’t now remember which fresh steed he’d alighted on: I shall need to find out when researching his book. ‘Yer know,’ he says, ‘I always did think there was something a bit daft about those voices on the seabed. Stands to reason.’  

Dear, brainless child. Why is their reason the last thing these credulous creatures ever actually consult? Let alone their agents? Talking of which, with any luck Frankie will be able to secure me a pretty good fee for writing The Life of Brill, though it may not be as munificent as the one Millie and Lew were offering. I am prey now to chiller thoughts than those I managed until yesterday to suppress. Fifty years old, and still hacking out biographies of people I essentially despise, although often amicably? So be it, Samper. The toad pays Le Roccie’s bills and keeps you in suits of chocolate corduroy. Such parameters define life on earth, which makes the mind of a Divine Planner inscrutable indeed. However, the next item on today’s agenda might be evidence that the Divine Planner has a quaintly human need for light relief. It is nearly time for Samper’s appointment with Benjy Birnbaum, and no ‘erotic eventuality’ has taken place in the last twenty-four hours. I turn up on his doorstep in Beaumont Street with an
apprehensive
schoolchild’s feeling of being already scolded. I have to remind myself that not only am I about to turn fifty, but I’m also about to be billed by the good Benjy, meaning that he is in my employ.  

The same empty waiting room, the same aquarium, the same fish glooming in a fossil dream. Even the plastic
swordfish
, poised in its proctological whimsy, seems to have lost hope of ever plunging head-first into the rubber-suited diver, just as the diver’s doubloon-inspired gloat has frozen into everlasting indifference to all loot. It is not clear how wise it was to have placed a tableau in a waiting room that so
efficiently
expresses the hopelessness of waiting. Perhaps it was an unconscious comment on the necessity to patients of patience, and the Latin denominator of suffering common to both. Suddenly the matronly Virginia opens the door, not a
moment too soon, and together we once again succeed in finding the doctor’s consulting room on the other side of the wall.  

Benjy is gracious, even warm, maybe because we no longer share the stiffness of strangers. Inevitably I interpret it as an attempt to soften the blow he is about to deliver.  

‘Do please sit down,’ he says, waving me into one of those steel and black leather chairs that win design prizes and in which no one would ever instinctively sit. Today his nylon overall is pale blue and buttoned to the neck as though he anticipates another good drenching. His magnified glance passes damply over me. ‘Now, your results.’ The schoolchild feeling returns. Benjy Birnbaum flips through a sheaf of forms headed in red print. ‘Overall, I’m glad to say my original impression has been borne out and there’s nothing much to worry about.’
Great
. ‘However …’
As you were, Samper
… ‘however, there does seem to be a marked elevation in your moticular gammaparandrogens.’  

‘Much as I suspected,’ I agree gamely. ‘Far too many of them.’  

The Doughboy lowers the reports and regards me through his thick lenses. His eyes swim like oysters on the half shell. ‘I’m happy our professional opinions coincide,’ he says
amiably
enough. ‘You know how awkward it can be when
specialists
disagree.’  

‘No, come on, Doc. I’ve not the remotest idea what these vehicular pandagens are.’  

‘Good. Then I can blind you with science. Basically,
something
in those pills you’ve been taking – rather nobly, as you describe it – has managed to raise a particular one of your
hormones
to a level more appropriate to adolescence. Sadly, as you have probably discovered, it won’t have had an equivalent effect on your libido. I fear that trick works only once in a
lifetime
. In the intervening years we have acquired too much experience to be able to kid ourselves that we’re still floating across life’s surface on a raft so thin we’re never more than a thought away from boundless and unplumbed deeps of erotic
passion. In short, we’ve been there and done that many times too often. Hormones can do a lot of things but they can’t
reinvent
novelty. In the present instance your flesh appears willing but it is the spirit that’s weak. Would this summation describe the facts?’  

‘All too well.’  

‘You’re about to tell me of your failure to have brought about a climax as I requested yesterday?’  

‘I am.’  

‘Nothing to be ashamed of. At fifty it should take more than a doctor’s orders to set the pulses racing.’  

‘I’m pretty sure the same would have been true at forty.’  

‘And why not? Meanwhile, you’ve had no further
recurrence
of the priapism?’  

‘Not a smidgin.’

‘I think we’ll just have one further look, if you wouldn’t mind slipping onto the … excellent … and just lowering the … perfect.’ Again he retreats to the dispenser on the wall and comes back with freshly sheathed hands. His fingers begin squeaking busily.  

Again the
Dicktionary
and other titles. This time I note Jackelby & Sprutt’s monograph
The Ageing Male
, which takes my spirits several notches lower.  

‘Terrific,’ says Benjy Birnbaum. ‘Beautifully drained and flaccid. Tell me, as a curious medic,
have
you noticed any
overall
growth as a result of taking those pills? Honestly?’  

‘I did for a while. Might that have been down to early onset priapism, or is that a new medical condition I’ve just invented?’  

‘The pills could well have begun to affect your capacity to drain fully, yes.’  

‘Well, the tape measure cannot lie. But I haven’t done any measuring recently. I’ve had rather a lot of other things on my mind.’

‘Like writing your article?’  

‘Er … exactly. Difficult to get the tone right, you know.
Manly frankness? Veiled discretion? Brutal realism?’ I climb off the trolley, zipping defensively.  

‘Well, I really would suggest no more unknown pills, Mr Samper, not even in the interests of science or your readers. There’s a real danger that some of those rogue
pharmaceuticals
could cause lasting damage. Much better content yourself with the entirely adequate and even quite elegant appendage which nature has given you. Continue to keep a close eye on it and don’t hesitate to call me at the least sign of irregularity in its behaviour. Since you tell me you’re no longer a resident in the UK you should take these lab reports with you as a record. They are, after all, yours. I think you’ll find Virginia has the rest of your paperwork completely up to date.’

‘Not expressed in guineas, you mean?’  

‘No. But should you wish to pay in sovereigns I certainly won’t stand in your way. Failing that, I’m sure a conventional cheque will serve most adequately.’  

We take leave of each other, not too sadly, and soon I am standing once more on the doctor’s doorstep, this time more stunned than apprehensive. ‘Not cheap’ was Derek’s way of putting it and he wasn’t wrong. Still, Benjy Birnbaum’s is not a job I should care to have myself and he has definitely cheered me up by ruling out surgery. Overall, though, I’m left with an obscure sense of disquiet. Below-the-belt consultations
undeniably
represent a milestone. From now on such things will only become more frequent, the dysfunctions more gross, the paper-sheathed trolleys more familiar …
Samper! Get a grip! Think ‘periodic checkup’ and quit moaning
. And he did say the old veal was not only entirely adequate but elegant as well: quite a compliment from someone for whom genitalia are his daily meat and two veg. He would hardly be in the habit of overusing a word as precise as ‘elegant’. One couldn’t imagine him saying the same thing to Derek, to take an example at
random
. This is a thought worth singing about. Back to
Durance Vile
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