A novel both serious and serial
Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?Edward Fitzgerald (1809-83) The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
1.
“So say something then.”
Another day in someone else’s life and I’m squirming. It’s not a very good life at that, of pretending to be someone you don’t have a hope in hell of living up to. In this case it’s Errol “Madman” Winter and he’s trying to be a football hero but a punch in the jaw has seen him hit the turf like a string bag of oranges. He has rolled over to one side; his hand creeps up to his jaw and moves it from side to side. “It’s not broken,” yells the trainer. “I’ll tell you when it’s broken. Now get up and tell me.”
Errol Winter is a worm on the vast landscape of life, but I’m thinking- don’t get up.
He gets up. Slowly and with his thin shoulders sagging.
“Tell me.” The trainer is snarling, his lips curled in a face otherwise carved out of granite. “What are you?” The trainer is leaning down, into Errol’s face.
His voice comes out like a thin trail of toothpaste, “A footballer.”
The urge to feel sorry for myself comes like the thief in the night. Before I can clap my hands I’ve thought of ten things that are unfortunate in my life: thirty-five years old, living at home with Dad, single, average height, brown hair, unspectacular looks, largish hips, serious stare, no ambition, no money and a strange name. Like a horrible bird tapping at its own reflection in the glass, my over-active imagination caws out my shortcomings. The only way around it that I’ve found is to think of those people who’ve had less than me and done a whole lot better.
Patricia Kitchener was the first friend I ever made. She lived around the corner from us at number 27 Jellicoe Street in a house with cottage cheese render falling off its walls. Her Dad had left and her mum was a drunk. But none of that mattered at the time because Patricia had a rocking horse in her front room that looked like it had come straight from a fairground carousel. Her horse glistened scarlet under the glassy lacquer, its mane was blonde and thick and its eyes were heavy lidded and feline. Because of that horse I thought Patricia was the luckiest kid in the world.
Patricia also had eczema. Not just behind her ears, but her whole body suffered from cracks and fissures. Most of the time her mother did nothing about her skin, but every now and then someone would take her aside, sober her up and tell her some truths about how she was neglecting her child. Then, in a frenzy of remorse-driven attention she would bypass the doctor and cortisone: the miracle cure of the seventies, to find the most obscure way of attempting to rid Patricia of her untrustworthy skin.
Of all the cures, the worst was when Patricia’s Mum found a homeless homeopath. Even I could tell at the age of twelve that the woman with the wild curls and the eyes that never seemed to focus on any one thing in particular was not going to be a symbol of hope. But yet Patricia, ready to give her Mum the opportunity to prove herself good, submitted to the many poultices which were bound to her using bandages ripped from old flour bags. They started small- milkweed and olive oil. After that didn’t work the homeopath then moved Patricia onto ground beef and egg white, beef lard and pulped newspaper, crushed rockmelon seeds and yoghurt. Sometimes the poultices needed to stay on all night; not once did I hear Patricia complain about being coated in a liver pate and being kept awake by the panting of every neighbourhood mutt outside her window. She endured and her skin remained in its fissured state. Within a week and a half the healer had run off in the night, with the few things of value that were left in the house, Mrs. Kitchener had fallen back on old habits and Patricia was left with her skin still aching.
The Story of the Childhood of Patricia Kitchener was in my mind that Thursday morning, 11 am, as, straight after rushing in late from observing Errol Winter’s torture and training session, I pretended to read my best friend Ollie Mallard’s open topic essay of application for a job at the super-giant publishing company R&E. In typical Ollie fashion he had custom-made a title page with the words: “For my dear friend Ludo Vardy’s eyes only” and had decoupaged a hundred or so sets of magazine celebrity eyes around the words. His writing was a hopeful and optimistic summary of the joys of living within our society, a society that promoted individual and creative thought and actively promoted “thinking outside the square.” I bit my lip as I read his whole-hearted praise of our decentralized method of government by committee and how if it hadn’t been for humble leaders of the past who willingly gave up the claim to know the way of reason and success, so many artists and musicians, architects and designers, writers and editors, teachers and professors and magicians and fortune tellers would have never had the opportunity to make their mark.
Having Ollie as my best friend was equal parts elation and frustration. A part of our family since mid teens he had endured the many times that I had dropped the bundle and tried to retreat from society in a tangle of hair and bad hygiene and was usually instrumental encouraging me to take that first baby step of reintergration by bathing. So part of me was hoping that Ollie wouldn’t remember that I was a fast reader; I had kept my head down because I wasn’t sure what I could say to him. Strictly speaking, I wasn’t thinking negative. Divergent maybe, but not negative. I understood what he wrote and why, even the “pick me!!!!” subtext that jogged behind his words. The problem wasn’t what Ollie had written, but had more to do with a nagging sense of doom I felt whenever R&E was mentioned. I was pretty sure I was nuts- there was no other way to explain the voices that repeated the message that Ollie was naive, R&E was the epicenter of everything that was wrong in society and that I was a bloated jellyfish of a friend who did nothing while those I loved ruined their lives.
Ollie had been chewing his fingernails while I read his essay. A smart dresser who took two hours for every five minutes that I spent on my appearance, his sleekly combed dark hair and fashionable suit were at odds with the nervous tension of fingernail chewing. I looked up to see the red and bloody tips of his fingers whipped away from his mouth. “Well, what do you think?” I knew that he didn’t really want to know what I was thinking, so I shrugged. “I’d give you a job,” I said.
“I know you would, but would you give me a job based solely on what you had just read?”
I looked at him with serious eyes. “Ollie, if you turned up here right now, at this office with this essay and I didn’t know you I still wouldn’t hire you. I wouldn’t hire you because I would know straight away from reading this that you were too good for a place like Gaslight.”
“That’s what I needed to hear,” he said, his voice a babbling brook of flattered giggles. “Not that I think your job is crap,” he quickly said. His hazel eyes were widened as far as fake honesty would allow.
“But it is,” I said without a trace of humility. We both knew that Gaslight was a low rent vanity publisher that churned out quick books for people to read in train and bus stations. One look around the dim teak and brown, dust encrusted portable office in which we sat that afternoon would confirm that it was no place for someone who was trying to rise up through the ranks.
“Really,” I said, warming to my lie, “This is fantastic writing, it’s brief, succinct, I love the quotations. It’s probably just the kind of thing a big publisher like R&E is looking for.”
“Well,” said Ollie. A smile played across his lips. “I just wanted it to seem: ‘Real’.”
I frowned, not understanding whatever he was trying to say.
“The name,” said Ollie, his voice impatient, “The “R” of R&E is short for Reality.”
“No it’s not,” I said, perhaps a little too fast.
“Yes it is,” said Ollie.
“No it’s not,” I said, remembering how our arguments often finished in me beating him up when we were younger, “It’s short for ‘Rage and Enthusiasm’.”
“Rage and Enthusiasm,” he repeated, slowly, as if he were speaking another language. “Where do you get that from?”
I stopped and thought for a moment. I wasn’t really sure how I found it out, but like most things I knew it came from too much time and not enough social life. “I looked it up. Apparently it started as a kind of indie operation.”
We sat in silence. “Wow,” Ollie said. I knew what he meant. R&E was anything but indie. Its offices alone were a gleaming monument to mainstream.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with not being indie,” I said, although as soon as I said it I realized that according to Ollie everything wrong with indie; it was dirty, disorganized and unnecessary. “Some people are just more suited to it,” I added, and then wondered just whose skin I was trying to save. But Ollie wasn’t listening; he was reading his essay again, his mouth moving to the words. He looked up. “It’s a pity you’re not applying too,” he said. “You’d be a shoe-in and we’d have fun. I know, I know,” he added, “Despite the constant threat of contagious disease you like working where you are. You’re just not ambitious.”
His parroting back to me my own protests were getting a little too close to what I was thinking. But it was true. R&E was a big organization. It supported the upward mobility of its employees. No-one ever left before retirement. It was a lifetime commitment, and despite what anyone said about my talents, I just wasn’t ready for that kind of thing.
Ollie looked at his watch. His movement was theatrical, which meant that he was happy. “Gotta run,” he said. “Finish this off and get it in the mail.” I could almost imagine him clicking his heels and magically transporting himself out of Gaslight without touching any surfaces, but he contained himself. “I meant it, though,” he added. He stopped, leveled his eyes in front of mine, a sure sign he was trying to achieve seriousness. “Ludo, it would be fantastic if you came to R&E and we worked together. I’m sure you would find the greatness there that you deserve.” I appreciated the kindness, smiled and said so, but knew in my gut that this was Ollie’s moment and his alone.
The emptiness of the office after Ollie’s departure reminded me that it was close to lunch-time, my stomach was rumbling and that I was sitting in the scrappy offices of Gaslight, waiting for the day to be finished so that I could be rid of the beige walls of the transportable building behind Mo Perry’s Radiator Shop. But it wasn’t always such a dreary place.
I started at Gaslight when I had just turned twenty-one and was unsure as to if I wanted to do too much at all with my life other than sleep in, read thick novels and walk aimlessly around the city. Ed Gurr, the owner of Gaslight, was a turnip-nosed man whose cratered face seemed to threaten to explode from the pressure of his skin’s redness. He mumbled, low and thunderous, which only seemed to highlight the intent and meaning of his words. Like the many others who seemed to find their way into the large house I shared with my ever patient and enduring Dad, he was a stray, a friend of a friend who somehow found his way to us and then stayed put. God knows there were enough rooms to share, with Dad adding “Just one more room- a lean-to really,” every six months or so, so it was no imposition to add someone else to the list of permanent houseguests.
“As long as the kids aren’t too noisy,” Ed foghorned when asked about his length of stay; by then the teenager Ollie had moved in and Patricia spent most of her afternoons with us. As luck would have it, we lacked the squealing horseplay of so many others, and any noise we made was sucked into the honeycomb chambers of the house. In the end it was Ed who caused the most trouble, either through unpaid bills or mysterious and threatening strangers who slunk off when approached. Ollie, who was beginning his precious phase, didn’t like Ed: he thought he was too shabby. Patricia, who by this time was just into her spiritual phase, didn’t dismiss him (as that would go against her beliefs), but his lack of commitment to any belief structure other than self-interest made it very hard for the two of them to maintain a conversation. It was natural then, given my love of a good story that I would eventually become his apprentice at Gaslight, an imprimatur that specialized in low volume biographies, DIY manuals and the kind of books that you find at the newsagent: 3 for 12 dollars. “Other people’s stories, that’s where the money is,” Ed would say, and I kind of agreed with him. There was too much happening to have to create fictions, particularly amongst the clientele that Gaslight seemed to attract.
“You’re made for other people’s stories,” was all that Ed had said at my job interview. I didn’t know if I agreed with him or not, but having just completed my teaching degree and with a three month wait until the next teaching year started, I was after money. With nothing else on my mind I went along with it all, right up to the point where I found myself sitting behind a third-hand ex-government supply office desk in the building Ed had dumped behind the Radiator shop. “Just think about it,” said Ed. “I’m not offering you a fortune to begin with, but there’s certainly potential to grow.”
That evening Ollie, who had also finished his University degree and was hoping for some freelance journalism, was onto me. “You are not to work for that dirty old man. He’s just setting up a front for a porn operation, I can tell.”
“But I didn’t tell you I was thinking of working for him,” I said. We were in my bedroom, the place where we usually picked apart the day, just like the bits of thread we were slowly pulling out of my blue chenille bedspread.
”You didn’t need to,” said Ollie, and then, just when it seemed that he was about to go into full flight life management, started moaning. It became clear that he had fallen in love with a writer at the newspaper where he had just completed voluntary work experience and was sure the feeling was unrequited.
“Just tell him,” I said, glad that the attention had moved.
“But what if he doesn’t like me,” Ollie said, lolling about on the bedspread. We then focused our energies on improving Ollie’s love life- we had given up on mine ever showing vital signs.
Apparently the staff writer did like Ollie, and so, as he always did when he fell deeply in love, he disappeared for six weeks of unobstructed debauchery and came back with a job offer. With Ollie gone I fell into my usual pattern of decision-making, I did nothing. And ended up working for Ed.
Ed’s explanation of why we wrote other people’s stories, even when we weren’t personally interested, was the reason why now, fifteen years later, I was writing an inspirational book about the sporting heroes of the future. “It’s a story and it’s money,” Ed had said, the redness in his cheeks and the way he rocked back in his chair and put his hands on the top of his stomach made him seem greedy. But we both needed the work and the money. When things got too bad I was always able to go back and do some teaching, but the thought of Ed having to tough it out without an income made me feel guilty. So we widened our horizons and included writing books about people and lifestyles we knew nothing of. And, after we talked it through, decided that the only drawback to our latest plan was working with fit people. Otherwise, sporty people tended to be self-motivated, didn’t hang around too long without needing to go off for a run, and worked well with deadlines.
Then we met Errol “Madman” Winter, supposed teenage savant of the football world.
Even in the fresh faced air of the morning Madman looked to be somewhere in his mid-twenties, with a puff of bad growth above his top lip and the anemic whiteness of an all night clubber. His hair was neat, pushed back in a banker’s haircut that seemed to turn its nose up at his baggy tracksuit. “Ask me about my performance,” he said with a smirk the first time I walked into the office while he was there. I ignored him and barely smiled before slamming on my ancient computer, shielded from his attention by its hefty plastic and lengthy grunts. I felt safe hidden by my own indifference and the physical barriers that our client unfriendly office presented-until Ed told me that I would be taking on Madman’s story. “I’m going back to teaching,” I threatened.
“Don’t think it’s going to get any easier,” said Ed.
I stuck to calling him Errol and tried to forget about the “Madman” part. “I’m a footballer,” he said, holding out his hand to shake on our first meeting. “I play with balls.” I heard Ed cough in the background.
“Really,” I said, “Well I hope you put them back when you’re finished.”
From what I could tell Errol was anything but the future face of football and the only on-field action I saw was him sneaking off to have a smoke. The worse part was when he seemed to remember that I was sitting in the middle of his own personal delusion and would smile, something that was a cross between a snake and a rat. “But you know I’m destined for greatness, don’t you. And when you write about me everyone else will know that too. I’m really talented, aren’t I?”
Shamefully stuck for words I repeated: “You’re really talented.” That seemed to make him happy, because he smirked, and by the look on his face he was thinking of playing with balls again.
Thinking about both Ollie and Errol made me feel like I was missing out on opportunities of my own, and that while Ollie had always been the more ambitious, I was compromising my own ability and integrity by continuing to write the stories of people like Errol. Caught up in my thoughts, it took me a moment to hear the commotion out the front of the office.
French Terry, the welder from the Radiator Shop stuck his head through the door. He was a nuggety man with a five o’clock shadow and an accent that everyone just assumed was French. Hence the nickname.
“Eh Leuwdo. You haf, what you say, camoorah’s oot se froont.” It took me a moment and I paused, as I usually did straight after French Terry spoke.
“Why would there be cameras?” I said. French Terry stayed long enough to shrug and then disappeared back out of the doorway. I walked over to look through the dirt smudged window, not only were there television cameras but Truck was out the front, jumping up and down. There was also a woman in a fuchsia suit standing underneath a boom microphone. “Ms Vardy,” she called out. “Perhaps you’d like to tell us your side of the story.”
I was about to yell out “What story,” when a small voice, this time possibly Ed’s, sounded in my head. “Never say anything on camera. You’ll always sound stupid.” It was followed by a report on the seven o’clock current affairs show of a woman, standing behind dirty glass mouthing something unintelligible. It was not a good look.
I did the next best thing, ducked out of eyeshot, grabbed the telephone and rang Ed. But he wasn’t answering. I was about to try ringing again, but I was stopped by an efficient and authoritative knock on the door. I waited for a moment; it was followed by an even shorter and sharper knock.
“Yes,” I said with just enough hesitancy in my voice to suggest that I was a half wit who pretended that she hadn’t seen what was right outside the window.
“Ms Vardy, I wonder if we could have a word with you.” The voice was calm, but was also cut short by the shrill accusations of Errol’s that came stabbing through. “Don’t let her speak, she’ll convince you that she’s right and I’m wrong. She’s like that. She ripped me off. Her and her weird old man boyfriend. And I bet it’s not her boyfriend. I bet it’s something even worse.”
I shuddered, distracted for the moment by the thought of what might be worse than having Ed as a boyfriend.
“Well,” was all I managed to get out before Errol started again.
“They came recommended, I was promised good work. I was supposed to have a good life. Not look like a lousy suckhole.”
I stuck my head up. “I saw you this morning. Everything was fine. What are you talking about?”
Errol jumped up and down like a small rodent. “Did you hear that. Did you hear what she said?” He pointed at the window while looking at a woman in a pink suit who was holding a microphone. “She’s going to admit it. Go on, say that you weren’t going to write anything down. That you were going to make me seem stupid.”
I paused and felt guilty. Then I remembered that Errol pretty much made himself look stupid. “Look that’s not entirely true,” I began to say before clamping my mouth shut at the thought of Ed saying: “Don’t be an idiot; they’re not interested in the truth.”
“Ms Vardy, I’m interested in what you have to say,” the calm voice of the woman outside contrasted with the fevered ravings of Errol. I remembered a conversation Ed and I had about him maybe a week earlier.
“Ed,” I had said, throwing down the notepad that I had used last time I had talked to him, “He’s just an ungrateful little snot. I would say that he’s here to rob us except that we have nothing here worth stealing.” Ed huffed up a little at the suggestion, but then looked around and sagged back into the chair. Apart from two sturdy desks with prehistoric computers, there wasn’t much of interest at all. “I really don’t think he’s here to get us to write a truthful story at all. There’s something else to it.”
I had noticed that Ed had shifted in his chair, almost guiltily, but put the thought aside that he knew more than he was telling. Ed always knew more than he was telling. That was a given in the relationship between the two of us. And seeing as that was the playing field, I was always better off to just accept that it was best not to question things.
“Ms Vardy, this is your opportunity to set the record straight.”
“Lying Bitch.” Errol’s insult cut through the air, severing my good sense from the rest of my brain. In two steps I was at the office door, pulling it open to face a startled reporter with Errol cowering behind. “You want to talk about lies,” I said, pointing over the reporter’s shoulder to jab the air just in front of Errol’s face. “Let’s start with the lie that you play football. I haven’t even seen you set foot on the field once for a game. The closest you’ve been to ball handling is…”
I stopped, suddenly aware that there was a camera only centimeters away.
“I’ll release a statement through my publicist,” I spoke fast and then quickly slammed the door, locking it knowing that it was so cheap that even a small tap from a grasshopper would break.
“MS VARDY, PLEASE.”
But by the time the reporter spoke again I was under the table, out of view and breathing as softly as I could. As Ed would have said: “No good can come of this.”
The next knock was maybe hours later and was less of a knock than an impatient banging. I was dozing under the table, which probably ended up making it a more productive afternoon than I had originally expected.
“Ludo, open the door right now and stop pretending that you’re not there.” It was Ollie; I crab-walked out from under the desk and unlocked the door. He burst in like a swarm of pissed off wasps, buzzed around the room, turned and shot venom with his voice. “I made the short list. The actual short list. I just handed in my CV; they took one look and told me I was on the short list. That they had heard of me already.”
Ollie was in a state, he was talking in gasps and hardly aware that I might have been looking disheveled. “The short list Ludo, do you know what this means?”
I coughed to give myself time to think. Sometimes it paid to stay silent and not answer Ollie’s questions. “You have to go back for another interview?”
Ollie rolled his eyes and sighed. “I didn’t even have a first interview. They had already heard of me. An interview I could do.” He shook his head and then flopped down in a chair. “They don’t do interviews. They do wilderness camps. High ropes. Shitting in a bag.” He looked up, his eyes full of terror. “The flying fox.”
I understood immediately. R&E used corporate wilderness camps as a way of hiring people. Ollie was a man used to his comforts. Plus, he was pathologically afraid of the flying fox ever since the time on a school camp he had flipped over and slid down upside down. He had been terrified enough at the idea of his head hitting the ground, but what was even worse was that he was wearing floppy scoop-sided shorts so that even while he was wearing a safety harness, everyone could see his man-package, or what there was visible of it, while hurtling down a steel cable, upside-down and terrified. It really didn’t help his adolescence or his reputation when most kids ended up saying that there wasn’t all that much to see.
“I can’t do it.” His eyes were wide and terrified.
I stepped over, forgetting, for a moment, my trial by camera. “You can do it,” I said, taking his hand. “And there will be no flying-foxes. They’re a legal minefield. No-one has them any more.”
“Really?” said Ollie, looking hopeful.
“Really,” I said. I had no idea, but I was willing to play with facts just a little in order to get Ollie to the camp.
He sighed and his shoulders lost some of their tension. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s strange, but for someone who’s such a looser, you’re almost always right.”
“And for someone who has such a small penis, well, you have a small penis.”
“I was scared. And I was upside down. Nobody has a penis in those conditions.” He was smiling now. It was an argument we’d had many times.
“I was scared. And I was upside down. Nobody has a penis in those conditions.” He was smiling now. It was an argument we’d had many times.
“I’ve seen heaps of upside down scared penises and I’d have to say that I could see them.”
“If it weren’t for me you wouldn’t have seen a penis at all.”
I grabbed my bag and keys and pushed Ollie out the door. “You owe me a coffee for all my help,” I said.
“What else would you do with your day,” said Ollie. I realized that I wanted to tell him what had happened with Errol and the news reporter, but, as usual, would have to wait until he had finished telling me about what had happened to him. It was a good enough deal, if anything; it kept me from wallowing too much in self pity. I threw a resentful thought back at Gaslight as we walked away, and in my mind, cursed Ed for dropping me into the shit yet again.
