Being Light 2011 (14 page)

‘On a ley line.’

‘On a beach,’ says the woman in the maroon cardigan, with authority. ‘Is anyone interested in doing it? What picture shall we make?’

‘A crocodile.’

‘A hunter.’

‘A circle.’

‘A face,’ says Sheila, bending again and taking a photocopied poster from her handbag. ‘My husband, Roy. I think they’ve taken him.’

‘You want to construct a missing persons advertisement, featuring your husband’s face?’

‘Yes.’

Sheila’s proposal seems to go down very well with the assembled company, generating an excitement that breaks down the awkwardness and inhibitions between the group members, whose defence of entrenched positions (dolphins, prehistoric man, Millennium Dome) is apparently part of an ongoing weekly battle.

‘We could plot the face on a graph and use light and dark stones to build up the likeness and shade in the features,’ suggests the lad with the cowlick.

‘It would be like using pixels on a computer image,’ enthuses the man wearing Reeboks.

‘Or a knitting pattern.’

‘Like Myra Hindley’s face made from children’s handprints.’ Alison has not yet entered into the spirit of the meeting.

‘I’m Rosy,’ says the woman in the cardigan.

‘Sheila.’

‘Come to our meeting, same time next week, and we’ll plan the picture.’

‘I’ll collect the car and bring it round to the front,’ Alison tells Sheila, ‘and then I’ll drop you home. I’ll give you a shout when I’m ready, yeah?’

‘There’s no need to shout, I can hear you perfectly well.’

‘Alison?’

‘Taron? Whenever I think about you, you ring me.’

‘Beware of a man on a high platform.’

‘Are you still off the drugs?’

‘Yes. Although it turns out that I ingested some animal tranquilisers at that party the other week. I think I may have hallucinated the Doberman reading the newspaper. Sorry about that, I hope it didn’t affect your report on Joey’s mother.’

‘Never mind, I didn’t really believe you anyway. What’s this about a platform?’

‘My mother’s been having visions. Look out for a man on a platform. I suppose it could be someone about to jump. Check out the bridges whenever you cross the river to go into town. That’s what I’m doing. I’ll let you know if I see anything.’

Mrs Fitzgerald is reading
Monica’s Story
on the 137 bus. Reading while sitting in a moving vehicle always makes her feel queasy. Today is no exception. Mrs Fitzgerald fears for Monica Lewinsky’s mental health. She pities even those who court fame, especially the young. How can they understand the irreversible impact it will have on their lives? ‘Never, never, never, never’ says Mrs Fitzgerald aloud, her hanky at her lips. She feels as if the tentacles of the world’s press extend so widely that any innocent woman, even she, might be in danger of brushing against them and getting spun into some whirlpool of notoriety. Her head is full of sea monster and whirlpool, Scylla and Charybdis. She seems unaware that she is making a groaning sound as she shows her Travelcard to the conductor.

Miss Lester and Jane Memory are a bit tipsy. They are drinking dry white wine in a wine bar at Miss Lester’s expense.

Jane is looking round for a waiter and holding a conversation with Miss Lester at the same time. ‘I think, don’t you, that we’re all quite empty inside. This dating agency of yours is a sign of the times. We’re part of a generation - well, I call it the Donut Generation – we’re part of a generation that’s disappointed with life.’

‘Yes.’

‘So you have prostitutes mingling with your clients at the dating agency?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are any of them transsexuals?’

‘No’

‘Are you?’

‘No.’

‘I really don’t think this story is going anywhere. I’m looking for something I can pitch for network TV.’

‘Oh yes, Jane, you’d be able to spend a bit on your hair.’

‘Yes, madam?’ The waiter is here at last.

Jane Memory earns £45,000 per year plus expenses. She does her hair at home because she doesn’t want to pay the money to a hairdresser, not because she can’t pay. ‘Another bottle of wine, please.’

‘I thought you might be able to expand on your donut theory and interview some of my clients, with their permission of course.’

‘Thank you. I’m afraid there are so many empty people in
London
that I have no shortage of subjects.’

‘Oh well, it doesn’t matter. I really don’t like the genuine customers very much. The women are so desperate and the men are so crass. There is no tenderness or humanity in them. I much prefer the prostitutes. There is someone I’d like you to meet – Ella Fitzgerald, she runs a detective agency. She’s not empty at all; quite the opposite. She’s a very inspirational force - grand, capable and reassuring.’

‘Is she middle-aged? Maybe I could do something as part of my empire builder series. They do some lovely photos. I see her alone on stage, blinking in a spotlight, sequinned dress, noticeably past her prime. We could play with the idea that she follows and exposes people and we could expose her vulnerability.’

‘Sequins?’

‘It would be better than photographing her in a Dick Tracey outfit, wouldn’t it?’
 

‘Well, if that’s the choice. Maybe I should speak to her first.’

Roy
has placed a garden hose in a straight line on the ground. One end stretches out towards the sea. The other end leads back towards the tap on the stand pipe in the elephant’s quarters, where it is usually attached.

Arms wide, at shoulder height,
Roy
slowly places one foot after the other along its length. He is concentrating on balancing, on feeling that he can walk on a thin rope. He is dead. If he falls off the rope he cannot kill himself and yet when he steps off the platform for the first time, he wants Sylvia to know that he is trying to do it right.

‘A geography student came to the door last night trying to raise sponsorship money for a project he wants to join,’ Sheila tells Alison. ‘About a dozen of them are going abroad, including geologists, anthropologists and marine biologists. They’re going to map uncharted territories and learn about the people there. He spent quite a lot of time explaining it and he left me some literature.’

‘Did you give him any money?’

‘I gave him £20. I’ve been thinking about it all night. It has made me look differently at the space around me. Have you seen those Police notices everywhere appealing for witnesses to crimes, with the date and time they were carried out?’

‘The yellow boards?’

‘Yes, they’re about three feet high, in tall, narrow tent shapes. The police put them as near as possible to the spot where a crime has happened. I walked past one this morning on the way to the paper shop. It makes it look as if the whole area has been labelled. If you leave aside that the police are involved, it looks as if the notices have been put there to guide anthropologists exploring the neighbourhood. I started to think, maybe they really are signs, and maybe there are others left around unobtrusively so that Londoners going about their daily lives won’t think twice about them.’

‘When you look at it that way, there are signs everywhere in
London
if you think about all the graffiti and posters.’

‘There are also sensory ones for smell and hearing, as if the labellers have never met the anthropologists and they aren’t really sure how to present the information to make it most useful to them.’

‘Every time you walk on a path in
London
you have to do that dog shit dance, trying to avoid the steaming piles dotted everywhere. I suppose it might be easier to bear if it hadn’t just been left there indiscriminately, lying warm and stinking right where it’s dropped from a dog’s arse. Do you think dog shit could be there for a reason, Sheila?’

‘What about the drum and bass music that comes from the open windows of the houses and flats? That could be a signal of some kind. It might serve the same purpose as fishermen banging on the hulls of their boats to attract fish. And then there are the cars driving around and around a small area playing equally loud music. It’s as if there are squads of counter agents trying to create confusion by obliterating the music signposts coming from the houses.’

‘But who are these signs for, Sheila?’

‘They could be aimed at anthropologists from outer space.’

‘Well, that’s one possible explanation.’

Venetia Latimer sits in her living room with her feet on an ottoman and tries to put flesh on the bones of her scheme to entrap Mrs Fitzgerald. The meeting at the café went well. Mrs Fitzgerald appeared intrigued by Venetia’s ideas about testing the serum on football crowds. Now
Venetia
has to come up with a viable plan that will hook Mrs Fitzgerald and lead her into the hands of the law.

Mrs Latimer likes the geographical complexities of selling drugs at football matches. She can appear to implicate herself by pretending she is the other side of London selling to a rival team: ‘You take Chelsea, Ella, I’ll cover the Arsenal,’ without raising Mrs Fitzgerald’s suspicions. Unfortunately she has never been to a football match and her plan stalls in the detail. Do drugs dealers frequent the local pubs at football matches or do they stand right outside the grounds looking as if they have something to sell? The plan is too sketchy and an experienced operator like Mrs Fitzgerald will never bite. Which other area of life is predominated by males? Venetia Latimer sighs. Which isn’t?

Possibly Mrs Fitzgerald could be persuaded to sell the drugs in City pubs? If she had any success the effects might be interesting. Trading would slacken as the traders, their aggression curbed by the serum, tried to reach deals with each other that accommodated both sides.

Even better, Mrs Fitzgerald might agree to set up a hotline from her office to supply the serum. It would be perfectly plausible to explain that Mrs Latimer cannot use her own phone number in case it is recognised by Stephen or Joey or their colleagues.

Venetia Latimer reaches for the phone and calls
The News of The World
to sound out their interest on the story. She reaches the honey-trap team.

‘I can supply evidence that a
London
private detective is selling drugs in the City. Will you run the story if I play Linda Tripp to her Monica?’

The tired journalist places the phone receiver on the desk and shouts ‘Lady with a drugs story about a harmonica. Any takers?’ There are none. His colleagues are gathered at a desk near the window, reviewing a muddle of photographs of a nude sports hero smoking crack in the presence of one of the newspaper’s reporters.

The journalist offers to take the skeleton details of the story from Mrs Latimer over the phone but it is not long before he interrupts. ‘The problem, madam, is that you are telling me that this person is selling dog tranquillisers to city traders. It is not illegal to sell drugs unless they are banned substances. I’m afraid it won’t make the front pages.’

Mrs Latimer gets up and walks around her living room, momentarily stumped. She vows she will not rest until she gets Mrs Fitzgerald’s licence revoked, however tiresome the process of making this happen. Mrs Fitzgerald must be punished. There is nothing else for Venetia Latimer to do but to obtain an illegal substance and add it to the phials of serum before passing it to Mrs Fitzgerald for sale in the City.

As Jeremy opens the lid of the suitcase, even before Jane sees the piles of used purple £20 notes stacked neatly in rows on the left side of the grey lining, she catches the elemental smell that used money has - metallic, like soil.

‘Why is the money just on one side of the suitcase?’

‘Well, I’ve spent the money that was on the other side. I take what I need, going along the rows, top to bottom, right to left. I don’t see the point in rearranging it just to make it symmetrical. Sylvia gave it to me before she ran away. She asked me to pay someone to investigate her employer. There’s so much money here that I’ve been able to use some of it to fund the traffic campaign.’

‘What’s the investigation?’

‘Sylvia wanted to ensure the animals she’d been working with weren’t being ill-treated after she left. Personally, I think it’s all right to make a profit from animals if you feed them properly and exercise them.’

‘Are the animals being ill-treated?’

‘I don’t know. I try not to get involved. I drop off the money anonymously and collect a monthly report from a post office box to forward to Sylvia so that the detective agency can’t trace the money back to her. I saw the agency boss on a bus once. She looked straight at me, as if she knew me.’

‘Guilty people always think everyone else knows their secrets. Did you see any of the reports?’

‘Why?’

‘I’m always looking for stories. Animals make good telly. Come on Jeremy, help me out here.’