HA HA BONK
XX.
Ah! my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears
TO-DAY of past Regrets and future Fears—
Tomorrow?--Why, Tomorrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday’s Sev’n Thousand Years.
– Edward Fitzgerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, 1st Edition
The Sheraton Mayfair was a tall building. A hideously ugly relic of the nineteen seventies ruining the skyline of the otherwise extremely elegant area of town. The fabulously rich and chic residents in its shadow had long ago learnt to pretend it was not there. That there was not some thirty-odd story concrete monstrosity spoiling the Georgian charm of their privileged postcode. Equally rich and chic visitors to London would also like to stay in the heart of marvellous Mayfair but having just arrived on an over-night flight from New York, Los Angeles or Dubai, they had not had time to develop the necessary selective attention. The simple solution for them was to stay in the one place in Mayfair where your view was not ruined by this monstrosity, namely at the Sheraton Mayfair.
John’s room wasn’t just on the thirty-third floor. It was the thirty-third floor. For some reason, Eric had installed him in the presidential suite. Parnell had turned up at his last hotel mid-morning to evict and upgrade him. As they drove across a couple of very expensive postcodes, Parnell explained that Eric was concerned for John’s safety and privacy and didn’t want him staying anywhere that the press or anyone else could find him. He was checked into the Sheraton just before noon under an assumed name.
Parnell had accompanied Mr Clive Smith to his room, all 100 acres of it. He had told John that Eric did not want him to leave and then disappeared, taking a tour of the place to see it was safe. Eric, it seemed, was finally taking the death threats seriously. Eventually Parnell was satisfied that there were no assassins and left for good. Leaving John a prisoner until morning. Albeit in an open prison with room service, no guards and as many extra pillows as he desired but a prisoner nonetheless. Not that he wanted to escape. He had no home to go to and there did appear to be someone trying to kill him.
He tried and failed to relax. None of the very many sofas and chairs seemed quite right and he didn’t want to mess up any of the beds. Several times he got out his phone to call Natalie to come over and join him but he was too nervous about tomorrow. The show would be on at ten AM and it would be live.
John hated mornings and he hated Sunday mornings even more. But the Sunday Show was always on a Sunday and it was always live. They weren’t going to make any special exceptions for him.
No more than they had already made. Eric appeared to have called in quite a few favours to make this happen. The Sunday Show was the country’s most respected and highest rated current affairs show. It was broadcast on the BoCorp satellite network but such was the stature of its presenter, Patrick Rodero, that it pulled in a wide audience and regularly set the political agenda for the week to come.
Any politician with big news to break or a reputation to recover tried to get a spot on Rodero’s sofa. He did not give you an easy ride but if you survived that, you generally survived whatever crisis had brought you there in the first place. The opposite was equally true.
Tomorrow, however, Patrick Rodero would not be on his own show. God knows how or why Eric had done it but tomorrow’s edition would be hosted by Shona. And it would not be a one-on-one interview but a live three-way debate between John, Hazel and the Right Reverend Donaldson Cake.
John had never been on live TV before and had never had to defend his own ideas to an audience more challenging than the clientele in White’s nightclub. He hadn’t been in a debate since junior school when he had unsuccessfully tried to stop Stevie Wonder being thrown from a metaphorical balloon.
He spent all afternoon pacing about talking to himself. Trying to work out what exactly it was that he was defending. At about 6pm he had given up trying to do it sober and made himself large rum and coke. There was no ice.
He thought of calling room service but thought better of it. He could not face another obsequious servant scampering around after him. He had called down a couple of times for room service to bring him up a club sandwich or fruit basket or whatever. They never merely did what you asked but would scurry round the place smoothing beds, emptying ashtrays and scooping up as much detritus as they could carry. It was positively tiring to watch, especially when there was absolutely nothing for them to tidy up. Wanting only a couple of ice-cubes for his rum and coke, he did not want to re-roll that whole rigmarole. Instead he decided to take his life in his hands and pop out into the corridor to forage for it himself.
So John left his room on the thirty-third floor, which in the Presidential suite was harder than it sounds. The suite took up almost the entire top floor, and as best as he could tell consisted of five or six interconnecting bedrooms, hallways, living areas and one (or possibly more) kitchenettes. Many movable partitions (some of them electric) increased your disorientation and behind every second or third door was yet another en-suite bathroom or walk-in wardrobe. After a few futile minutes hunting the hallway that lead to the lift, he gave up and made for the fire escape. With his glass in hand, he pushed open the door to the fire escape stairwell and went down to the floor below in search of an ice machine.
Disconcertingly, in the fire escape he could smell smoke. It was only cigarette smoke. Probably one of the valets had ducked in here for a crafty fag. He walked down the linocovered back stairs, about the only part of the hotel not bedecked with either thick cream carpet or (like the lobby and his many bathrooms) dangerously slippery marble. Clearly guests were not meant to be here, unless the time came that they had to stop being the rich and pampered, who travelled everywhere in private jets, limousines and express elevators and became just another couple of people fleeing a fire. Turning the corner to the second half of the flight down, he saw someone sitting on the final step, a cigarette in one hand, and a small tin ashtray in the other. At the same moment, the grey haired woman turned round to acknowledge him.
“They won’t let me smoke in my room. Do you want one?” Doctor Cole said by way of explanation of her presence.
“Thanks, I don’t smoke.”
“Good for you.”
“I am looking for ice.” John gestured to his drink. Hazel shrugged and went back to her cigarette. John stepped past the seated figure and back into the hotel proper on the 32nd floor. He got lucky. Right next to the fire escape was a small utility area with two parked valet’s trolleys and a humming ice machine. It was the first thing he’d seen since he’d arrived that looked like it had been there since the 1970’s. John reached a hand into the frosting interior and retrieved a handful of cubes.
He took a refreshing swig and, for a moment, he stopped worrying about his problems. Not much more than a moment. His second swig nearly choked him when halfway through it he realised whom it was he had passed on the stairs.
A couple of minutes later he had recovered and stepping bravely into the fire escape saw that she was still there.
“Hazel Cole.” She said putting her tin down and rising from the step to offer her hand.
Smith shook her extended hand, somewhat bewildered. “Yes, I know. I’m John Smith. Hello.”
“I know. Bit preoccupied?”
“Yes.”
“Me too. Hence these,” she said indicating her cigarettes.
There was a silence. John tried to think of something to say, Anything… Anything… Nothing.
“I like your approach to the Hard Problem.” Hazel said.
“The Hard Problem?”
“It’s what the philosophers and neuroscientists call the problem of consciousness. They do not know the answer and yet they know that they are extremely clever so therefore it must be a very hard problem.”
“I’ve no idea what you are saying but I feel ridiculous having this conversation in a hotel stairwell. Would you like to come up to my floor? You can smoke as much as you like up there.”
Hazel followed John back up the stairs and soon they were seated in highly luxurious but slightly awkward silence.
“Tell me a joke.” Hazel asked
“Okay. Er... Why do the Scot’s get cancer?”
Hazel waited.
“Because they deserve it.” John delivered the punchline and realised, not for the first time, that he should not have told the joke. Hazel wasn’t laughing but, after a moment’s pause, a small smile flickered across her face.
“It is a bit sick,” she said “But I guess that’s the point? Is that what makes it funny?”
“I’m probably not the best person to ask.”
“What with being a heavy smoker and, well.. other stuff.. I could have completely failed to see the funny side. But it was obvious that you don’t mean it.”
“Yes,” said John. “You did ask me to tell you a joke. That’s my favourite. Not many other people like it though.”
“Do you tell that on stage?”
“No, it’s not mine. My own are not as good. It is not the done thing as a comedian to tell other people’s jokes. Not that I’m a comedian anymore.. or ever was, I guess.”
“No.”
“Now I’m doing this. Whatever this is.”
“I can relate to that,” said Hazel. There was another awkward silence
“Would you like a drink?” John asked. “I’ve got most things. Can you believe that instead of a minibar, there is an actual bar? Madness. It still has the giant minibar prices though.”
“Red wine, thank you.”
John selected the dustiest looking bottle he could find, something French from 1971. This would probably cost Eric several hundred pounds but John had got used to spending other peoples money, and feeling like his life could end at any moment he no longer bothered to worry about what would happen when Eric discovered. He filled a glass for Hazel. He had a quick sniff to check that this ancient liquid was still drinkable. It smelled extremely drinkable so John discarded his over-strong Rum and coke and poured another glass for himself. He handed approximately one hundred and fifty pounds of fermented grape juice to the visiting clinical psychologist.
They decided to cost Eric another six hundred quid.
“I am worried about tomorrow. It is television, they set things up for conflict,” John said.
“No one can make you say anything you do not want to. And the same goes double for me. I have even wondered if they want me to do what they do not want me to. Shona’s producer keeps going on about how different and refreshing I am.”
“I know what you mean I spent nearly three years trying to give people what they wanted. Provide a full comedy package. As soon as I start being myself and saying my own thing I am unwarrantedly famous. That, and being Eric’s marionette.”
“I do not like Eric Hayle,” said Hazel.
“Nowhere near as much as he dislikes you. He really, really hates you, though I have no idea why. I can understand why do not like him after what he writes about you.”
“It is nothing to do with that. Sticks and stones and so forth. There is just something about him that reminds me of the worst kind of psychopath. I have seen a lot of men like him locked up in Broadmoor, Ashworth and Rampton.”
“Oh, he’s not that bad. He can be rude and aggressive but he is charming too. And I honestly do not believe that story about him pushing his editor off a tall building.”
“I do not know anything about that but most psychopaths are charming. They are manipulative. They are also completely without remorse or consideration for others. They have no empathy. They are impulsive and addicted to risk taking.”
“That does sound like Eric,” John admitted. “But let us not talk about tomorrow any more. We are still here and now. I am enjoying tonight.”
“Me too. Cheers,” Hazel said, realising that she was actually having fun.
“Cheers. Tell me about yourself. Are you married?”
This threw Hazel. For forty years almost as soon as anyone found out she was a psychologist, they would wish to lay out their problems for her to pass judgement on or else get defensive and strongly deny that they had any problems whatsoever (which often told her far more than people’s self serving confessions ever could). Almost never did they ask about her personal life. Unless they flirting and this charming, disarming young man could not be doing that, could he?
“My husband died in nineteen ninety five. Though his life ended about a year before that. He had a malignant cancer, he was fighting it but it caused him a massive stroke and his last year was spent in a semi-coma in intensive care.”
“I am sorry. How did you cope?” John asked leaning closer. He genuinely was interested in talking to her. Her hand went instinctively to her hair, brushing it away from her face.
“It was traumatic. When it had just been the cancer he was still himself, he was positive and enthusiastic and doing everything his doctors recommended. All I had to do was trail along behind him supporting him. After the first stroke he broke up, only fragments of his mind remained. His memory vanished, the world confused him.
“He could understand speech but he could not produce it. It was as if he knew what he wanted to say but could not find the words. He would point and look meaningfully at you but all he could say was “That one, that one.” When he was tired he would even forget ‘Yes’ and ‘No’.
“If I had not known him for thirty years I would have been as lost as the doctors and nurses usually were.
“After the second stroke, I do not think there was anything left of him at all. I did my grieving of his still breathing body. At the end when he died, it was just a huge relief.”
“So you have been alone since then?”
“I tried dating again but nothing ever felt right. Even the word sounds wrong to me. Colleagues set me up with a few blind dates. Not good. It makes you wonder how other people see you.”
“Did you worry?”
“I didn’t give myself time. My last few years of work were the busiest of my career. You reach a certain seniority in your field and enough people know your name that you automatically get invited to sit on all sorts of committees and attend tons of conferences. In the year after Andrew’s death I threw myself into everything that came my way. Saying yes whenever I was asked. A year or two after that I was involved in all manner of projects.”
It may have been a rich complex and exorbitant wine that deserved to be sipped, savoured and favourably compared to freshly cut grass, with praises sung for its camphor high notes and its long, long legs admired. But it had simply tasted so warm and delicious and was so easy to drink that they finished the bottle before it even occurred to them to commence penning odes to its nose.
Unused to the effects of uninhibited drinking Hazel became uninhibited and wanted to drink some more. John offered her the joint that he had inexpertly rolled. She politely declined.
After a lifetime working with people with drug problems and others for whom doctors decided that even more complex drugs were the solution, Hazel had an ambivalent attitude to recreational drug use. Her general feeling was that proscribed drugs were bad but prescribed ones were okay. If you got it from a bloke in a hoodie it was not good but if it was from a white-coated pharmacist then it must be okay. John was neither but she didn’t pop pills and she didn’t smoke dope. Though maybe it might be better than all these cigarettes.
She had another wine instead. John had one too. Still feeling self-conscious, she changed the subject and started asking him about his life. He was less screwed up than she had been expecting. If pressed for a professional diagnosis, she might have even said he was sane. Though at no point in the conversation did her inner therapist want to intervene. They were just chatting.
She was having to do more of the talking. The drugs were making John somewhat dopey, making it ever more difficult for him to find his words. In the end, he seemed to have given up looking for them altogether and just sat there staring at intently into her eyes. She hadn’t been this close to anyone in a long time. It was disconcerting, unfamiliar but not unpleasant.
She was only half surprised when tried to kiss her. She evaded him easily enough. He started laughing. She had to smile herself. And have another large mouthful of wine. She realised she was blushing. She reached instinctively for her handbag. She needed a distraction. She needed a cigarette.
She fished on out and brought it to her lips. John was still watching her. She knew she should probably go. In the back of her own mind, she could hear herself telling herself so. But she was drunk and she was tired of always doing what she told herself to do. She didn’t have to go just yet.
A week ago she had been having dinner with the wife of the Prime Minister and she had been bored out of her mind. She hadn’t been bored once yet this evening. With a weird detachment, she watched herself put down her cigarettes and pick up the half finished joint instead.
She could answer to herself in the morning. But now she having fun, thank you very much.
Eleven minutes later, they were naked.