To understand Milton one needs a Bible, an encyclopedia and at least a working knowledge of Latin and Greek. To understand Shakespeare one may occasionally need a dictionary. To understand Nostradamus one is just as well off with a box of frogs.
– ANON
•
The man had had to leave the house early. The walls were starting to sound funny and he did not like the way the fridge kept inching towards him every time he turned his back. It was Thursday and it was sunny so he wore his blue sweater, his green socks and his orange jacket. In case it started raining he put a spare pair of yellow socks in his left hand jacket pocket.
He was going to the library. For the last two nights he had dreamt about a beautiful flying pink horse called Ailsa with no bottom. It had been a most wonderful dream, so good that it had woken him up. The first time he simply lay there hoping to get back to the dream but too excited to go back to sleep.
He never managed to go back to sleep these days, not now he was off the medication. From the moment he awoke, his mind was racing. No matter how exhausted he felt, it was always impossible to get back to sleep. He knew he needed several ‘snoozes’ but it was never possible because his mind was already heading out on its morning run.
Yesterday’s dream had been different. His mind had been racing but sated. As if it was basking in the afterglow of vigorous sex. Although sex itself was a distant memory made indistinct by his many years on medication.
When the dream had returned a second night, it had woken him up just as quickly but this time around he recognised it for what it was and desperately tried to recall the details. But there still wasn’t much more than that, a beautiful flying pink horse called Ailsa with no bottom. This was surely a sign. But it did not fit with any of his usual symbology. It did not even connect to any details or events of the last few days. This was not something from his own mind. This was something other, something new, a message sent from a higher power. His heart was racing. He sang to himself as he hurried to get ready, trying to block out the cacophony coming from the wallpaper.
Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.
It took him a while to find where the sofa had hidden his keys this time but eventually he was ready. He left for the library, as alive as he’d ever felt. He’d been given a message. He just needed to find out what it meant. He would discover this in the usual way, by consulting the clues that had been hidden for him in the headlines of that day’s newspapers.
* ¢
For the second morning running Smith started his day seeing the lovely faces of Sam and Jayne staring up at him. Although this time it was more of a shock to see them, barely dressed and in bed together, smiling up at him from the front page of 125
The Scum. The valet had thoughtfully brought him a copy with his breakfast. Reading the headline it took several seconds to realise that the story was about him.
He read the whole thing (continued on pages 21,23-24). He re-read it several times. He looked at the pictures. He sat shell-shocked for a long time. He had a fleeting moment of pride that he was famous, that finally people would know who he was, then he thought about what those people would think of him and he felt a little queasy. He realised that one of those people would be his mother and he had to rush to the bathroom and throw up.
Clearing his stomach cleared his head somewhat and he began to feel aggrieved that he had been misrepresented. They had got his age wrong, he only tried about half the ‘cocktail’ of drugs they had claimed and he was sure they had all got a little sleep around seven in the morning. “Randy Smith kept us up all night, purred curvy Samantha.” Well, maybe he did not mind that but the whole tone of the article made him out to be a ravenous drug-fuelled sex maniac.
Under those circumstances there was only one person to call.
“Eric, have you seen the front page of the Scum?”
“Yes, good isn’t it?”
“Good!? What is good about ‘GURU GIVES IT GOOD’?” Smith spluttered, “‘Our night of sex and drugs with sleazy lifestyle guru John Smith’, £2,000 per night vice girls tell all’“
“Yes, fantastic isn’t it? I couldn’t believe it, the front page, three pages inside, some good photos of you and they even used my headline.”
“Your headline!?”
“Yes ‘GURU GIVES IT GOOD’ – I am quite pleased with that, it paints you in a very positive light. The rest of the article is good too, you must like that picture?”
“It is good, but where did they get it?” Smith conceded before remembering he was still angry. “What is so good about being labelled a ravenous drug-fuelled sex maniac? And you still haven’t explained what you meant by ‘your headline’.”
“First of all, calm down. Secondly it is a label that has never done me any harm. Thirdly, you know the old cliché ‘all publicity is good publicity’ well, it is a cliché because it is true. Fourthly, this story is great for you and fifthly, that is why I planted it,” Eric concluded triumphantly.
“You?”
“Yes, we couldn’t buy publicity like this.”
“Would we want to?”
“Of course! Everyone’s a winner! You get onto the front page of a national tabloid. Well, those two lovely girls got the cover but you can’t begrudge them that. Incidentally, they also got ten grand each and some really great exposure, they wanted to say thanks.”
“Yes, I can see the ‘exposure’ they are getting ‘continued on pages 19, 22, 23 and on an’ on an’ on,” John said testily, feeling somewhat betrayed and that he had been wrong to think they were just nice girls with nasty jobs.
“The girls told me that you saw a good deal more than that on Tuesday night.” Eric said, laughing at his own joke.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” John wailed.
“Yes, that’s what they said about you.” John did not even dignify this with as an reply so Eric continued. “Look, they are just a couple of nice girls in a nasty world. Now, thanks to you and I, they can get out of being fucked flat for cash by rich, fat, stupid Arabs. They have a chance at celebrity status, an honest living and the chance to start sleeping with rich, fit, stupid footballers. And incidentally, they haven’t told me anything about what went on in that room, but I do know you made quite an impression. They genuinely like you...” Eric paused “.. Tiger!”
John let the boost to his ego win out over the blows to his dignity. He looked about the hotel room where the night before last he had been man enough to please two beautiful (and extremely self-confident) young women. He felt a little calmer.
“Okay I take your point. But I cannot help feeling you are exploiting us for your own entertainment.” John said. “I guess I should have expected that.”
“This was the best way to get you noticed and I did not force you to do it, did I? Just like I don’t force anyone to appear in my magazines. They do it for money. Sex sells, Johnny boy!” Eric was warming to his favourite theme. “Especially if there’s a human interest angle. Look at those celebrity sex video. I make fifty movies a year that are fifty times more filthy than the Paris Hilton video and yet it has probably outsold them all put together. It sold millions and was downloaded millions of times more. That’s the good stuff, because it is real, because it gives the public access to someone people think they know. That was great publicity for her and this will be great publicity for you.”
“You didn’t film..” John interrupted, in panic, unsure exactly how far Eric would go. This amused Eric no end.
“Don’t worry, Johnny boy! Your video is for my private collection.”
Now John was extremely worried. How far had Eric already gone? He was fairly certain there was no video. But he hadn’t exactly been paying attention. How, after all, had they got that photo on page 22? And with Eric Hayle you never quite knew what he had on you. The only way you would ever find out for sure would be an unpleasant experience. In all likelihood a very unpleasant and very public experience. John attempted to replay the night. He didn’t think there had been a video camera at any point. Could there have been a hidden one?
“This is why I became a newspaper man to sell stories. True stories. Pornoland deals too much in fantasy. And I don’t care much for the pointlessness of Celebrityville either. I prefer reality. I prefer your version of reality. But those idiots out there aren’t going to listen to anything we try to tell them, unless they hear it from someone famous. And now thanks to the fucking Scum, you will be feted like a rock star.”
Thinking back, John realised that it had been in this room. Holding Eric against one ear, he started hunting around the room to see where a camera might have been concealed. Eric kept on talking.
“Like I said before, trust me, everyone is a winner on this. Heck, I even got five grand for putting the story their way. Not that they know it was me. Not yet anyway, I can’t wait to give that bastard Wallace a call and let him know.” There was a burst of laughter and John heard Eric shouting across the office at some lackey, presumably to look up the number of the editor of the Scum.
“Look I’m rambling. I told you I wasn’t going to tell you everything, didn’t I? So you can’t say you weren’t warned. And right now I am telling you it’s okay. The message is this; ‘Don’t worry John, Uncle Eric knows what he is doing.’ Tomorrow, the Clarion will print your side of the story. You better come into the office.”
The line went dead.
•
In the library, the man was pleased to find his favourite seat unoccupied. He took just one newspaper like the librarians insisted that he should. He got out his four-colour Biro and his newest spiral bound notebook, already going dog-eared after just a week in use. He was starting with the Financial Times. He started scanning the pages, his red pen poised to mark the significant details.
The librarians had yet to catch him circling words and underlining sentences, but even if they had, it is doubtful if they would have stopped him. They only rationed him to one newspaper at a time to stop fights between the man, the rocking woman and Dr. Donkey Jacket. The librarians weren’t that interested in the library rules, mostly they just wanted a quiet life.
The capital’s public libraries, being indoors and centrally heated, had always attracted the weird and the feckless. Real research happens in libraries too but for every Karl Marx there are at least four Marx Brothers. And since the government’s Care in the Community innovations there had been a large increase in the number of certified card-carrying members of library that the community’s librarians had to care for. Introverted and socially awkward people themselves, librarians were ill equipped for this change to their job description and valiantly tried to ignore the libraries’ heaviest users. This unofficial policy worked well.
Mostly the two groups kept themselves to themselves. Rarely would the librarians bother the loonies; who could usually while away the day poring over their favourite periodicals or making complex textual analyses of Barbara Taylor Bradford*. Likewise, the loonies did not often trouble the librarians, whom they distrusted for their obsession with silence and their compulsive need to alphabetise everything.
Occasionally members of the two groups would interact, when a librarian might tick off a manic depressive for putting Enid Blyton back in the wrong place or a paranoid schizophrenic might request help posting his latest black helicopter sightings onto the internet.
Today was peaceful and the man was able to work undisturbed. The pinkness of the horse had dictated that he start with the Financial Times, and this in itself was a pleasing omen. He liked the Financial Times with its second section filled with columns and columns of numbers. Normally, he would flick slowly through the paper, his eyes jumping randomly across pages. He’d paused to mark the particular words that resonated with personal occult significance. When he had gone through the whole thing from cover to cover and more carefully from cover to cover of the markets and prices second section, he would transfer his findings into his notebook, colour-coding them as appropriate and attempting to make sense of them as he went.
Today had been a very good day.
__________
* Her popularity with this demographic was a total mystery to the librarians, who observed that the loonies could not stand Catherine Cookson.
He doubted that he needed to consult any other papers but as he was putting the red and pink paper back, he caught sight of the word GURU on the cover of the Scum. He read the whole story from beginning to end. That never happened.
Normally, the chess column was the only one he read all the way through or took at face value. Not that the Scum had a chess column.
*
John Smith came out of his room and bounced off a wall that had not been there the night before. The wall answered to the name of Parnell Brockgrove.
“Good morning, Mr Smith. I am here to help you pack your things.”
“But I’m not leaving.”
“The hotel management would prefer it if you did. They do not consider you the sort of guest they would like in their family-friendly hotel.” Parnell had walked into the room, leaving Smith no choice but to retreat inside or be flattened underfoot.
“Well, this is not a very friendly way to ask me.”
“Please do not shoot the messenger. Your friend Mr Hayle sent me to collect you. To make sure you get safely to Fleet Street.”
“Oh, I see. That’s it, is it? Very thoughtful of him. Kidnapping me? That is the second ‘favour’ he has done for me today. What a friend he is, I hate to think how he deals with his enemies. Probably sends you round to help them down a disused lift shaft.”
“I am peace-loving man, Mr Smith. I am here as your bodyguard.”
“What do I need with a bodyguard?”
“Have you ever appeared on the front page of a national tabloid before?”
“Of course not.”
“Mr Hayle is something of an expert when it comes to the gutter press. He thought it best if I look after you. There are quite a large number of reporters and photographers waiting downstairs to buttonhole you. I am Parnell.”
Smith shook the extended hand and resigned himself to the slim hope that this apparently reasonable monster was right and Hayle did know what he was doing. Within a few minutes he had packed up his bags and he and Parnell were descending in the lift.
“Your bill has already been settled and we have a car waiting outside. There are about thirty or forty gentlemen of the press between the front door and our vehicle. I suggest you do not say anything to any of them and stick close behind me.”
Flashes flashed and shutters fluttered. The reporters started to crowd in all shouting at once. For the first time it sunk in that his ‘sin’ was not just local gossip filling columns of a county quotidian, a little thrill next to the picture of little Jemima winning the gymkhana. He had assumed that the story might be whispered amongst relatives and passed laughingly around a few old school friends but this was clearly different. Three million people were reading this morning’s paper and they would talk to millions more. And Eric was intending to at least double that with his ‘counter-punch’ tomorrow.
People would point at him in the street, dogs bark at his shadow. John moved in closer behind Parnell and watched with interest as he cleared a path to their vehicle. It was a variety of magic. Since coming outside, Parnell had not broken stride. He had not stopped nor made any sudden movements, he was not touching anyone, he was not even overtly intimidating them but bodies were bouncing away from his presence. Like little magnets flipped into the air by the invisible field of some strong force of the same polarity. The crowd had been close around them but as Parnell passed through it sprung apart. He always inches away from actually touching anyone and yet they leaned awkwardly back or were uprooted in their effort to keep out of his strongly bounded personal space.
John kept as close as he could, filling the gap in Parnell’s wake. They made it to a large red SUV with darkened windows that prevented anyone from seeing inside. It had the Clarion logo printed along its side. Parnell shepherded Smith and his suitcase into the back seat and went round to the driver’s side. A few seconds later they were pulling into traffic. It had all happened so fast that John had barely registered the flashes and the shouts.
He had been aware of the press. But only as a collective, crowded around him. No one face had caught his eye. No individual word caught his ear. Here he was, experiencing life in the fast lane and it was all just a blur. A thought jumped into his mind and he scrabbled round to see if they were being chased. No, that would be crazy right? He relaxed into the comfy leather seat.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. It’s my job. You did okay for your first time.” Parnell glanced back in the mirror. “We’ll be at the Clarion in ten minutes. Your heart is still racing. Sit back and count your breaths.”
Parnell was right, John was full of adrenaline. He tried to do as Parnell suggested. It wasn’t easy but it seemed to help. A few minutes later they were passing through Trafalgar Square and along onto the Strand. John was relaxing and as they pulled onto Fleet Street he was almost enjoying himself. He half-wished the windows weren’t tinted so that people could see him.
They pulled up outside the Clarion and Parnell let him out. John glanced about himself but no one was paying them any attention whatsoever. Parnell handed the keys to a Clarion security guard, and taking Smith’s case in one enormous hand. He led him into the building. This time, they were waved straight though reception. Waiting for the lift Parnell spoke again.
“Did you know that in the seventeen hundreds the Fleet was still an open river? It was London’s gutter, the combined filth of human and animal population oozed down it into the Thames. Tanners and slaughter-men dumped the carcasses of dead animals into it. A goodly number of human bodies found their way there too. The stench was like nothing we can imagine. In the end, everyone got so sick of the foul and disgusting river of filth they buried it underground and paved it over.”
“Or at least they thought they did,” John said as the lift opened for him. Parnell gestured John inside but stayed in the corridor. He held onto John case and with the other hand held up four fingers. John pressed the corresponding button. “Do you ever get used to the stench?”
Parnell Brockgrove shrugged and turned on his heel, a complex set of movements involving the rearranging of a large number of very solid muscles. The grace and economy with which he did it hinted at the secret of his success as a bodyguard and bouncer. Such was his poise and skill that he could effortlessly deflect any blows that came towards him. The slow moving gentleness and deceptive economy of movement with which he did it left anyone watching with the impression that the attacker had bounced off some magical force field that surrounded this gentle giant. People, punches and all shapes of trouble would literally bounce off him.`
~
The secret of how Parnell did this was open to anyone to learn. All they would have to do would be to spend ten solid years paying mindful attention to their every movement and practising for a few hours each day a simple sequence of Chinese callisthenics. Anyone could learn it. People often made the mistake of assuming that the reason he could perform this magic was because Parnell was a six foot six, twenty stone natural athlete with a build that would give the World Heavyweight Champion cause for pause before coming to blows with Parnell.
The real essence of his methods came from what he had been taught by a sprightly Chinese dentist and a weedy ex-librarian from Slough. For the last ten years Parnell had been learning T’ai Chi Chuan at the school of Master Chou and Master Phillips. T’ai Chi seen by the uninitiated as the ancient Chinese art of directing invisible traffic slowly, to its initiates it was the Chinese art of directing invisible traffic. Having only been invented in the mid seventeen hundreds it could hardly be called ancient by Chinese standards and the ‘traffic’ was more commonly referred to as ‘chi’, a metaphorical measure of internal energy to be directed into fluid and effective movement. It need not necessarily be done slowly, but when practising a student has so many subtle adjustments to be aware of that the slower they go the more they can learn and improve. Parnell was one of the school’s slowest pupils.
In the ten years he had been going to Chou and Phillips, Parnell had learnt that this size and strength would count for nothing unless they were properly channelled. He had learnt this the slow and gradual way of all valuable knowledge. And if he were to forget to use his mind alongside this body his teachers would always catch it, demonstrating the power of a well-placed twitch of the muscle that sent him flying across the room. Considering that both Master Chou and Master Phillips were into their sixties and about five foot five apiece it was a clear lesson.
Master Chou was a direct line pupil of the Yang family. Master Yang Lu-chan (1799-1872) known as Yang the Unsurpassed, had learnt T’ai Chi Chuan, literally translated as ‘Supreme Ultimate Fist’, by peering through a fence at the the secret practice of a famous martial arts teacher Chen Chang-hsing. At night he would practice what he had seen, rediscovering for himself the secrets Chen taught. One day Chen saw this young man and recognised his own style being so expertly performed. Ignoring the culture of secrecy surrounding martial arts at the time, he took Yang on as a pupil but was very quickly surpassed by his student. Yang left and founded his own school which flourished and such was his reputation that he even taught at the imperial court. His sons learnt from their father but did not always maintain his tradition with the diligence he would have liked.
His grandson, Yang Cheng-fu (1883-1936) known as Yang the Invincible, was responsible for popularising the family style and gathering a group of very talented and dedicated students.
Following the Chinese revolution, several of these including Lee Shu-pak and Cheng Manching found themselves in Hong Kong where Chou, then a young dentistry student, started learning their art.
Simon Phillips was born and lived the first 20 years of his life in Slough. He had been a quiet, introspective child. He had first read about the history and mystery of China as a boy in a dusty old encyclopedia from the era of the British Empire. As he grew so did his fascination and obsession, and he devoured anything in print about China. He studied oriental languages at university and had got a job in the university library to have access to otherwise hard-to-come-by Chinese literature. He was too scared to visit the country he loved.
Eventually, in the early nineteen seventies as the Kung fu craze was sweeping the west following the death of Bruce Lee, a friend had persuaded Simon that the two of them should go to Hong Kong. His friend had quickly become bored and after a month had returned to Britain. Simon stayed for 15 years. He had only been planning to stay a little while. He only had money for two months but about six weeks into his visit he met Chou and fell in love. Simon stayed and Chou introduced him to T’ai Chi. He fell in love again.
Such was the intensity of their relationship and their pleasure at expressing their love through the gentle ballet of T’ai Chi that they almost spent every moment of their time together sparring and improving the art. Chou wanted to open his own school but while everyone acknowledged the excellence of both Masters Chou and Phillips; there was local resistance to having a white instructor so they continued as they were. Chou continued to practice dentistry. Simon was unable to find any purposeful or meaningful work, in they end they decided that they would open their school back in England. And so with the unofficial blessing of the official Yang school they came to London and opened their academy.
Though he weighed more than the two of them put together, Parnell had never once succeeded in pushing over either of his two masters. T’ai Chi sparring consisting of two practitioners squaring up to each other a pace apart and attempting push or pull your opponent off his feet. The force of few ounces can deflect a thousand pounds and a thousandth of an inch is the difference between upright and off-balance. With a slight flick of his wrist at exactly the right time a skilled artist could uproot the opposition and send him flying backwards across the room. At first it seems like some magic or trickery but it had happened to Parnell enough times that he realised it was actually the culmination and consequence of the years of intense learning and practice that Master Chou and Master Phillips had applied.
Always of a philosophical disposition, the challenge of discovering these secrets appealed to him and over the next ten years he became their star pupil. He spent at least several hours every day going through the slow ballet of the Form; the long interconnecting choreographed sequence of the moves and postures of the art. He learnt about breathing, about how all the necessary muscles must be in alignment to function at utmost efficiency, that a light floating touch and posture adapts and reacts to any intrusion into ones personal space. He learned to think in thousands of an inch. (But still was unable to catch up with the continual improvements of Phillips and Chou who spent their mornings and afternoons practising and their evenings teaching.)
* ¢
John found Eric in a conference room off the main newsfloor. The table was spread with papers and newsprint. There were two other people in the room, a scruffy unshaven man not much older than himself and a severe and smartly dressed young woman. The man was seated, flicking through the folder that Eric had been waving around at Blacks. The woman stood, waiting to be given a purpose.
“Mr Smith! The man of the moment.” Eric was still just as cheerful. “Welcome to the Clarion. Let me show you how newspapers work. We will set the record straight. Let’s hit back at those bastards at the Scum. Let’s hit them hard.
“This is Jack Harris, one of my finest.” Jack and John exchanged nods. “This is Eva, she reads my mind and organises some of my many lives. She’s something of a prude so she won’t like you.” John and Eva swapped smaller nods. “But she will bring you a tea or a coffee if you ask her nicely.”
“Yes, tea please.” Eva evaporated.
“Right, let’s not dilly dally. We’ve got to strike while the story is hot. You tell us your version and we will print the truth.”
“What!?”
“Just the plain and simple truth. You had no idea those lovely girls were escorts. Those unscrupulous newspaperman must have set you up. I wonder if you could sue? I’ll get one of our lawyers to join us. I wonder what other lies they printed? I see you’ve got the offending filth right there, may I?” Eric was gesturing at something in John’s left hand.
John looked down. He was clutching a tight furled copy of the Scum. He’d been holding it since he’d left his room in the hotel. Slowly uncramping his hand, he dropped it to the table. All you could read was the single word ‘GURU’. The world went dark.
The next thing he knew he was sitting down, and Eva was trying to get him to take a sip of tea. It was sweet. He didn’t normally take sugar but then he didn’t normally faint.
“Too many late nights?” Eric was still there and more amused than ever. “You should slow down.”
Perhaps John looked like he was about to cry. Eric suddenly changed tack.
“Look, this is all completely under control. Under my control. You don’t have to do anything. Jack and I will take care of this. The mouthpieces of the moral majority, self-appointed spokespeople for what is True and Right would say with the absolute conviction of the self-righteous that I am the worst of the pack. But my papers only print what is true. Or else what would be funny if it were true.”
“We’ll threatened them with lawyers. It costs them money and scares them away from anything genuinely controversial. But it won’t come anywhere near court. Not in my lifetime and I’m batting for my century.”
Eric was looking forward to his hundredth birthday because he wanted to see if he would receive a telegram from the Queen after his extremely anti-monarchist papers had spent most of her reign being extremely rude about members of the Royal Family. It would piss him off if he got it from her. He was dearly hoping to outlive the sceptre’d Hag. He took great satisfaction each time one of his enemies died before him. In his long life he had buried a lot of them. But, for some reason, he was always making new ones at a faster rate.
“Watch this. Some kid made a YouTube video combining your performance at the club and sound-bites from the drive-time show, to make it seem like Kevv did interview you. It’s quite clever.”