The Dead Side of the Mike Page 3

  ‘I don’t really regard myself as part of any movement, avant garde or –’

  ‘No, well, I don’t think it’s necessary to get bogged down in definitions. What I was –’

  ‘Definition, and particularly self-definition, is very important to me as an artist. I regard the music I write as unique and I rather resent being bunched into some blanket category with a lot of self-indulgent experimenters, who –’

  ‘Yes, well I’m sorry to have got you wrong there, but if I could just move on, we’re delighted to have with us Dave Sheridan, who, I’m sure, will excuse me for describing him as at the more popular end of the artistic spectrum . . .’ The disc jockey inclined his head graciously. ‘. . . But I do think it’s important that we don’t lose touch with popular culture. We also have Ian Scobie, whose work as a presenter and interviewer in the news field I am sure you all know, and the famous actor, playwright and great specialist in the poetry feature world . . .’ He glanced at his notes. ‘. . . Charles Paris.’

  Charles looked at the floor to avoid seeing them all mouthing, ‘Who?’

  ‘So I think it might be very instructive if we were to hear from some of them as to how, as artists who might be employed by the BBC, they would best like to see feature projects set up.’

  Charles continued his scrutiny of the carpet tiles. The only thing he had to say was that he thought he probably shouldn’t be there and was there any chance of one of the wine bottles being passed in his direction as his glass was empty.

  But, fortunately, Dave Sheridan willingly took up the challenge. ‘I think, speaking as a kind of outsider, who has worked in a great variety of different styles of radio all over the world, there is an excellence in BBC programming which is unrivalled, and this –’

  ‘Oh, but there’s a lot of shit too,’ observed Seth Hurt, who, despite his unwillingness to be categorised, Charles had already pigeon-holed as a repellent little tick.

  Dave Sheridan rode the interruption with dignity. ‘If I may finish. Sorry, I have to go off in a moment to pre-record the opening of tonight’s show, so I must be brief. The point I was coming to was that features are a wonderful way of bridging traditional gaps between popular and more esoteric forms of culture and I would hope . . .’

  He continued to develop his theme with skill and coherence. There was a lot more to him than the public stereotype of a disc jockey. Beside him, Nita Lawson’s head nodded to reinforce his points, occasionally murmuring, ‘Right on, Dave’. But Charles found his mind wandering. He shouldn’t have come. He knew that all he had wanted for that evening was to get drunk, and yet somehow here he was stuck in the spiralling tedium of a committee meeting in whose subject he had no interest at all. To compound his gloom, he saw the feminist up the table trickle the last of the wine into her glass. Good God, how long would this thing go on? Already an hour and a half had passed and they still seemed to be waffling round preliminary remarks. Surely they’d stop before the pubs shut.

  He contemplated just getting up and leaving. After all, he didn’t know any of them and he wasn’t going to be of any use to them if he stayed. Maybe he could leave as if to go to the Gents and forget to come back . . .

  ‘. . . and maybe you have something to add, Charles?’

  He looked up to see John Christie and the rest of the meeting focused on him. Dave Sheridan had finished his peroration and gone off to pre-record the opening of that night’s show. Charles had been chosen as the next creative contributor.

  ‘Um, er, well,’ he said, like an art dealer valuing a Rembrandt. Then, reaching the appropriate price, ‘No, I don’t think I do have anything to add’. In case that didn’t carry conviction, he added darkly, ‘Not at this moment,’ implying, he hoped, esoteric suspicions as to the authenticity of the Rembrandt in question.

  ‘There are a couple of things I’d like to add to what Dave said, if I may.’ The speaker was Nita Lawson. ‘You see, Dave’s talking about music, because that’s the scene he’s into, but I think, whatever your bag, features could still be where it’s at, creative-wise, because it’s a matter of vibes . . .’

  The meeting continued relentlessly, but not forwards; its course was a tedious sequence of meanders and eddies, with every advance of common sense choked in tangles of inter-departmental jealousies. Moment by moment, Charles wanted to leave more, and then didn’t have the nerve just to get up and walk out, and then suffered self-recrimination for his gutlessness.

  A possible relief came when Mark finally suggested going over to the club to buy more wine. Charles welcomed the prospect of accompanying him. Once there, he could down a couple of large Bell’s while deciding whether to return to the meeting or not. But when he made the offer, Mark said, ‘Oh no, I can manage,’ and left before there was time to argue.

  Shortly after this diversion, John Christie himself had to leave the room briefly. He had been summoned by a phone call from the duty office; some crisis had arisen over a play that was being broadcast that evening.

  His departure relaxed the mood, and people started talking in little groups. Charles grinned across at Steve Kennett and received the rich gift of a smile from her huge eyes. He supposed the mouth must have smiled too, but it was difficult to disengage the eyes and look. He hoped there would be time later to have another drink with Miss Kennett.

  He glanced at his watch. Nearly nine. Maybe the meeting would just disband naturally after this partial break-up. He had a horrible feeling it wouldn’t though. Of course there was nothing to stop him from walking out . . . But he felt vaguely that he should at least say goodbye to Mark. And then if there was any chance of seeing Steve afterwards . . .

  Sheridan returned and sat down beside Nita.

  ‘Opening safely in the can, Dave?’

  ‘Yes, sure thing.’

  ‘Is Kelly there?’

  ‘Just checking through the running order.’

  ‘Good. All all right?’

  ‘Just fine.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Dave. Won’t be able to drop into the studio tonight. Got to leave by ten to get the last train out to Watford.’

  ‘Don’t you worry, my love. You do quite enough looking after my interests in the office all day without fussing about me at night.’

  ‘I’ll switch on when I get home. Hear the last half-hour.’

  ‘Ah, what devotion.’

  At that moment conversation was interrupted by the arrival of a new figure. The door burst open with such a bang that everyone turned towards it and, once there, their attention was held by the eccentric appearance of the newcomer.

  The first impression was of Lewis Carroll’s White Knight. A middle-aged man with the same affronted mane of white hair and pale lugubrious face. Spotted cavalry twill trousers and a grubby linen jacket also seemed drained of pigment. And, as the White Knight’s horse had been cluttered with pots and pans and other impedimenta, so his facsimile seemed to be sprouting belongings in every direction. His arms were full of files and tape boxes, while from his pockets sheaves of paper and streamers of tape and coloured leader spilled in carnival disarray.

  To compound the surrealism of his appearance, when the man spoke, it was with the thick German accent of a mad professor from a comedy sketch. ‘Mein Gott, yen vill ye haf tape editorz in zis organization viz any sensitivity to ze English langvidge?’

  His words were greeted by a ripple of affectionate laughter, which did not seem to worry him, and he subsided into a chair in a shower of belongings, like a building being demolished.

  Charles raised inquisitive eyebrows to Nick Monckton, who, in Mark’s absence, was proving a sympathetic interpreter.

  ‘Helmut Winkler,’ came the whisper back. ‘Reputedly one of the greatest intellects in the BBC. And incidentally a complete loony.’

  The little man next to whom Winkler had sat, earlier identified by John Christie as ‘Ronnie Barron, a tower of strength from the Studio Managers Department, who’s here to advise us on matters technical and to keep the minutes o
f the meeting’, took issue with the newcomer. ‘Now, Helmut, you can’t just make allegations like that. Are you complaining of inefficiency on the part of one of the SMs?’

  ‘Inefficiency, no. I did not say inefficiency; I said insensitivity. Yes, ze girl iss as efficient as a voshing machine – and viz ze same amount off imagination.’

  ‘Well, listen, if you want to make a formal complaint, then you have to –’

  But that particular argument was curtailed by the return of John Christie’s bland smile. Soon after, Mark Lear came back loaded with bottles of Sans Fil. His flushed expression suggested that he had stoked up with a couple of drinks at the bar while making his purchase. Still, Charles’s jealousy soon passed when he had a full glass in front of him and he felt more able to endure the wash of irrelevance that eddied about him.

  He sank into a reverie. Not his customary depressed brooding, but mildly cheerful visions. There was still a glow from the Swinburne recording and a pleasing irony in his presence at the meeting. He mused, content.

  Anyway, the proceedings were drawing to a close. One or two people had had to leave. Dave Sheridan had gone off again at about half-past nine, because he was on the air at ten. A couple of others had snuck away, mumbling about trains to catch. Charles himself could have left easily, but he felt now he might as well stick it out. So long as they broke up by ten or soon after, there would still be time for a couple of drinks in the club.

  The committee had already reached the conclusion that certain aspects of the features problem should be discussed in smaller units or sub-committees and possible dates for the next full meeting were mooted. Everyone got out diaries, which they scanned importantly, searching for elusive gaps in their work schedules. Charles didn’t have a diary; the dynamism of his career rarely gave rise to the need for one.

  ‘. . . and then, Charles, you and your sub-committee should be able to get together before that date and report back to us all. Okay?’

  He looked up blankly into John Christie’s inquiring eyes. ‘Um, yes, possibly,’ he said, pricing a second Rembrandt. And then, remembering his views on committees and their baleful offspring, sub-committees, he added, ‘What I didn’t quite get clear was who else was going to be on the sub-committee.’

  John Christie didn’t rate him for not paying attention, but urbanely supplied the list of names: ‘Nick Monckton, Harry Bassett, Ronnie Barron and Steve Kennett.’

  ‘Ah, yes, of course.’ There were quite a few things he would like to be on with Steve Kennett and, until such time as they became possible, a subcommittee was a good start.

  ‘Okay then? Next Wednesday all right for you?’

  ‘Um, er, yes.’

  ‘If you sort out the venue between yourselves.’

  ‘Sure.’ Charles feared it would stretch his credibility as a Rembrandt assessor if he asked what the sub-committee was meant to be discussing.

  The meeting broke up. Mark Lear said, ‘See you over the road. I’ll sign you in. Large Bell’s, is it?’ and vanished before Charles could reply.

  The other contributors moved off in slow groups, some still talking animatedly. John Christie beamed in the doorway, a vicar congratulating himself on the holiness of his congregation.

  To Charles’s relief, Steve Kennett approached him. ‘I can ring the others at work, but I haven’t got your number.’

  ‘Ah, it’s –’

  ‘Or, on the other hand, we can fix where the meeting is now.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘We’ll have it round at my flat. Be a relief to get off BBC premises. She gave him an address near Paddington. ‘About eight, I should think.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Not that I think we’re likely to get far with the topic.’

  ‘No.’ Charles smiled. ‘Well, it’s that kind of topic,’ he observed, masking his ignorance. ‘Are you going over to the club for a drink?’

  ‘Why not? I’ll just pop in on Andrea in the channel and see if her wretched football match is over.’

  ‘I’ll tag along. I haven’t worked out the geography of this building.’

  The editing channel on the floor below was a small greenish room with sound-proofing fabric panels on the walls. But the thick door was open when Steve Kennett screamed and the sound rang along the corridor.

  Charles rushed to the doorway and peered over her shoulder at the scene inside.

  Andrea Gower was sitting on a tall chair in front of a green tape recorder as big as a fridge. But her head lolled backwards and her arms hung limp at her sides. Her skin was as white as the polystyrene coffee cup on top of the machine.

  Next to the cup two razor blades were upended in a slot by the editing block. From them dried rivulets of blood like spilled cooking ran down the front of the tape machine.

  And from gashes in her wrists as neat as cuts in fabric, darkening blood had flowed down her limp hands to the floor. The carpet tiles, designedly dull in colour so as not to show coffee stains, could not subdue the red deposit that had seeped into them. But the blood had ceased to drip; she had been dead for some while.

  The football match was still on. The ten-inch metal spools on the tape deck turned inexorably, while the commentator and crowd in Munich screamed and sighed at the thwarted climaxes of the game.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ said Steve Kennett. ‘Do you remember what she said? “I’m on an incredible high. Just try not to be around when the low comes.”’

  CHAPTER THREE

  AS THE TAXI approached Mark Lear’s house, Charles remembered another detail about the producer which had slipped his mind – he had married money. Vinnie’s father had been a wine shipper, sold out his interest just before his death, and left his beloved daughter extremely well-heeled. The house off Haverstock Hill was considerably more splendid than the average BBC producer’s salary could buy. Anyone less embarrassed than Mark about his unearned wealth would have given his postal address as Hampstead, rather than Chalk Farm.

  There were just the three of them – Mark, Charles and Nick Monckton, the young Light Entertainment producer. He lived nearby in Belsize Park and had said he would drop in for a quick drink. Charles also felt in need of one. He hadn’t made it to the club. By the time the Duty Officer had been summoned and called the BBC Head of Security, who had reluctantly called the police, it had been long past closing time. Mark had come back into Broadcasting House to look for him and there heard the news of Andrea’s death. He took it badly.

  So it was about half past twelve when they got back. Mark’s sitting room was smartly furnished, with a couple of tables and a desk of real value. What must have been Vinnie’s family silver was arrayed in a glass-fronted dresser. The carpet was plush and the wood highly polished. Mark’s contribution to the decor, an irregular shelf of records, a row of paperbacks loitering on top of the piano and a defiant poster of Lenin, seemed self-conscious and impermanent. Vinnie dictated what the room should look like, and her cleaning lady ensured that it kept its high polish, both literal and metaphorical.

  Mark didn’t speak as he went across to the well stocked silver drinks tray. He looked too large for the room, very bull-in-a-china-shop in his jeans and the dark blue donkey jacket he had not yet taken off. There was a calculated incongruity: the gritty student thrust into the stately home, Jimmy Porter visiting the in-laws.

  And yet even as the impression came, Charles knew it was illusory. The donkey jacket wasn’t a real donkey jacket, but a well-cut coat in donkey-jacket style from a Hampstead boutique. And the jeans weren’t worker’s jeans, but expensively aged denim trousers, finished with curlicues of yellow stitching.

  The image of social gaucherie was no more than an image, a reflection of Mark’s anti-BBC pose. He might rail against the. values of the class in which he found himself, but he was no more likely to leave the comfort of his home than he was the job he affected to despise. A studied nonconformity of dress, Labour stickers in the window at election time, a shrugging shift of blame to Vinnie whenever his chi
ldren’s private education came up, and Mark could live with himself.

  Besides, Charles recalled, the whole act of the deprived orphan fingering the velvet curtains of the big house was a nonsense. Mark’s parents, though not as wealthy as Vinnie’s, had been comfortable middle class and, though it was rarely mentioned, he had been through public school and Cambridge.

  He poured them all large measures of whisky in cut-glass tumblers, threw his donkey jacket with unnecessary untidiness on to the green velvet sofa, and slumped into a matching armchair. ‘What’s the toast?’ he asked brutally. ‘Absent friends?’

  Nick Monckton took a drink and shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Jesus, though . . . Poor kid.’ The last comment was a bit patronising, since he must have been three or four years younger than the dead girl.

  ‘Did you know her well?’ asked Mark.

  ‘Saw her a bit. Occasional parties. She did a few shows for me, and editing, of course. She was in the Radio Two group, so I only saw her when Light Ent. were short. Didn’t know her very well really. How about you?’

  ‘Much the same. The odd editing session . . . you know.’ Charles, having witnessed his encounter with Andrea in the club, felt that Mark was telling less than he might have done.

  ‘How is it,’ he asked, ‘– explain it to me simply, because I don’t understand the workings of the BBC – that if she specialised in Radio Two music, she was recording a football match tonight?’

  ‘The other group just got stuck,’ said Mark. ‘Needed someone to help out, and she got lumbered.’ He saw Charles looking at him and added defensively, ‘She told me in the club earlier this evening.’

  ‘It’s happening more and more,’ complained Nick Monckton. ‘It’s impossible to get the same SMs for a series. And as for booking studios . . .’