All to Play For (29 page)

Nik lacked a good enough sense of overview to put his daydreams onto a substantial footing. He was good at dealing with people he could see, at working on his feet, but not so good with paperwork and long-term planning. Politics bored him, as did fine art, opera, and anything else that required a dinner jacket but wasn’t a casino. On the whole, he felt that whatever his approach to life had been so far it must have been the right one, because it had proved phenomenally successful, so he carried on in the same way without attempting to analyse anything. ‘Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth’ was another valuable maxim he’d picked up from Rex.

When Nik’s father Les was finally acquitted of corruption by the appeal court, no-one was more surprised than Nik. He even felt a twinge of guilt. Maybe he should have stood by the old man like his mother did? It made his nine-year absence from the family home all the harder to explain, and he reluctantly went to Ilford to visit Les and Doreen for Sunday lunch, taking a magnum of champagne and an exotic bouquet for his mother.

“How wonderful!” she blushed. “Oh Nicky, you shouldn’t have. You really didn’t ought to spend your money on us, did he Les?”

“He can afford it woman, look at him!” Les admonished, thoroughly uncomfortable in the company of this young man of the world who looked like a male model and carried himself like a senior businessman. He had never imagined that Nicky would turn out like this. Thankfully, he still sounded more or less the same.

“Actually I’m known as Nik, now. Without a ‘c’.”

“Ooh!” squealed his flustered mum, as if he’d been renamed by royal command. “However will we remember to call you that?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Oh, thank you,” said Doreen, embarrassing him still further.

By the time lunch was over, the atmosphere had relaxed, and the three were beginning to get used to each other. For Doreen it was as if they had lost their son as a teenager and had been sent an angel in compensation. For Les it was an excruciating ordeal of suppressed emotion. For Nik it was painful and tedious. He still had feelings for his parents but he didn’t know how to express them. He wanted them to be proud of him, but he didn’t want to commit to visiting Ilford on a regular basis. He didn’t know how to sit and chat with them. He felt terribly restless.

Later he was glad to escape with Les, even if it was only down the road for a pint in the Dog and Duck. He had to submit to being greeted and admired by various old codgers before they could go and sit in a corner by themselves, but soon the beer began to work its magic.

“Listen Nicky – Nik,” began Les, “I want you to know that I’m terribly, terribly sorry for letting you down all those years ago. I’ve never forgiven myself, and I don’t expect you to forgive me neither. I know I can’t make it up to you, but if I could, I would. There. Nine years I’ve been rehearsing that speech!” He tried to laugh.

Nik shook his head. “No dad, really, no. It was me that let you down. I’m sorry. You see, to be absolutely honest, I thought you was guilty. What sort of son does that make me?” He smiled ruefully. Les understood that he was forgiven, that Nik was proud of his dad again. Nik respected the triumph in the appeal court and was now complicit in the pretence that Les was innocent. He gripped Nik’s wrist tightly for a full ten seconds, as they both stared into their beers.

“New beginnings?” Nik raised his beer mug, and Les chinked his against it. They caught each other’s relieved gaze as they drained their glasses.

Nik came home with a new point of view. In the end, it didn’t really matter whether his father had been guilty or innocent. The only vital thing was the result. The final verdict decided your character in the eyes of the world, and that was far more important than something that might or might not have taken place years before. It seemed to Nik that you could be one person at home, and another in public, but the public persona was the only one that counted. It dictated everything about your life. It was the real you, because it was the one other people related to. The inner you could be safely ignored, kept private; trouble only came from journalists prying into peoples’ lives, pointing out the anomalies.

Whatever his dad had done and been through, and it must have been pretty damn tough, he had survived and conquered. He was still the same nice geezer, still had his health, his reputation, his house, and his wife. He couldn’t have his job back as he was now too old for it, but he’d been awarded a five figure sum in compensation and a full pension. He was well set up for a top quality retirement. He was a winner. Nik realised that he was, after all, his father’s son.

The Soap Ashes
had gone like a dream, as far as Nik was concerned. It had catapulted him into the top band of up-and-coming producers; he laughed when he compared himself to the ‘old school’ staff in the BBC’s own Light Entertainment Department, whose power decreased in proportion to the rise of ‘Johnny come lately’ independents like himself. Young BBC producers were even denied royalties on their own work nowadays. They developed shows for a pittance and argued for them until they were hoarse, whilst a guy like him strolled in behind their backs, secured the gig, and strolled out again dripping gold. He loved it. All those public school accents silenced, those receding chins hanging open. He never showed it of course – that would be vulgar – but alone in his loft apartment he smirked into the mirror.

At this point in his life he had more or less forgotten the Edinburgh incident, and he certainly had no idea at all how close those individuals were to him whenever he visited the BBC. The humiliation had been swiftly overshadowed by events immediately after it. All that remained was a vague memory of having got into a fight for reasons he never quite understood, and being arrested with a group of strangers who then patronised him outrageously. One was an Oxbridge student of the worst kind, and another a boffin from the BBC, and there were some women too. He’d been a child of fifteen, they had no right to put him down so cruelly. This thought spiked his mind one evening as he relaxed on his leather sofa and zapped through the television channels, catching a report from the current Edinburgh Festival. A flicker of anger hurt his chest, and he realised that an ember still glowed deep inside him. He poured another Jack Daniels and pondered this discovery, wryly observing to himself that he must be getting old, if he’d started reliving the past. Dynamic young men only looked forward. It was irrelevant now, and he decided to put it behind him.

As the television presenter rattled briskly through a round-up of new comedians Nik’s thoughts turned once more to his own career, and what his next step would be. How could he improve on
The Soap Ashes
? How could he make bigger profits, and put Magenta at the top of the ratings chart? Could he keep on making hit shows, or was he a one-hit wonder? He wanted very much to become a notable figure, but on his own terms. He would not bow to the powers that be, nor change himself to suit them. He’d happened on exactly the right way to handle Chris Briggs by sheer intuition, so he would stick to that strategy, and trust his own talent.

The Soap Ashes
would take care of itself now. It was a fixture in the schedules of BBC1, gaining up to ten million viewers per week, and it no longer challenged him. Time for a new departure. Not from Magenta. He was happy there and was making a small fortune so there was no reason to move, but he needed a new project, something big. Preferably at the BBC. Despite his feeling towards it, he’d always believed the BBC was the best broadcaster. He had to admit it represented the Best of British Culture, despite the arseholes who ran it. Now if he were in charge… a smile began inside him. What a shake-up he’d give it. All those frightfully charming toffs out of the seventh floor window, one by one. Not literally, but nice idea. He liked a good horror film.

He picked up an A4 pad and began making notes:
New hit drama/entertainment show: GIVE EM WHAT THEY WANT
. (Another of Rex’s handy hints for budding businessmen.) What do they want? What do they like? What they already have, apparently. So give them more of it. He wrote a list of his own favourite shows, wondering whether he could somehow copy them:
STAR TREK, COLUMBO, THE PRISONER,
and – he hesitated, but wrote
SUMMER HOLIDAY
, feeling slightly foolish for admitting how much he’d loved the film since he’d first seen it on telly, aged ten. Cliff, his mates, and a bunch of girls having a whale of a time together, driving a bus across Europe: his fantasy throughout adolescence, never realised. He stared at the four iconic titles and was instantly overwhelmed. Better try another approach. What would make this series a commercial winner? The current buzzwords were:
LOW COST, HIGH VOLUME, DIGITAL, INTERACTIVE.
He drew circles round the eight words and phrases, and a big question mark. How to fuse them all together into a show? He needed a writer, but he also wanted to own this project entirely (Rule Two). If he were the sole creator of the show he could claim copyright in perpetuity, and if it ran for years he’d become as rich as Croesus, whoever he was. He needed to bash something out before he let a writer near it.
SERIES PROPOSAL BY NIK MASON
looked good. He only needed a couple of paragraphs.

Next day Nik arrived late at the office, having stayed up till two a.m drafting and re-drafting his proposal, screwing up discarded pages and hurling them, Hollywood-style, at the waste paper bin. Finally he’d had a brilliant idea: that woman who’d written
The Soap Ashes
concept which he’d bought for peanuts. He’d forgotten her name, but she would be the ideal writer to knock this proposal into shape, and she wouldn’t expect much money. His secretary was soon able to find her contact details and put in a call.

Jill was very surprised to hear from Magenta. She’d seen the success of
The Soap Ashes
with a sinking heart, kicking herself mercilessly. The one decent commercial idea she’d ever had, sold for a mess of pottage. She was so depressed about it that she’d never even mentioned to anyone else that it was her idea. She’d toyed with asking Magenta for more money occasionally – mostly when bills arrived – but knew she’d be wasting her breath, so she was intrigued when Nik Mason wanted to meet her urgently, and went straight out into the summer heat and caught a bus to Camden Town. The High Street was thronged with catatonic young tourists, and it took a while to weave her way up to the sixties office block where Magenta occupied the top two floors.

Nik was pleasant enough: a smart, attractive young man with the face of a twenty year-old and the confidence of a forty year-old, he was polite, professional and disarmingly modest.

“Ain’t it funny how we’ve never met before?” he exclaimed, as if he’d been longing for it. She shrugged and sipped the coffee she’d been given, which was very nice.

“I normally work in drama.”

“That’s right, I remember. Well. I have a very small job I need doing – a day’s work, no more – and I thought of you right away. I just need a new series proposal tarting up a bit.”

“Okay… ” Jill frowned, wondering whether to say something about how much money he’d already made out of her.

“I’ll pay generously,” he continued swiftly, “I’m not looking to exploit you. How does five hundred sound?”

She nodded, relieved. It sounded a lot for a day’s work.

“Good!” Nik gave her his most appreciative smile. “Here it is.” He pushed a sheet of writing towards her, and she studied it carefully. “Any questions?”

“‘A London bus, full of sexy kids, travels through time’” she read thoughtfully.

“It needs to be unique. And very cheap. It needs enough legs to run for decades, and it’ll lead the field in interactive digital technology.”

“Oh!” Jill had no idea what he was talking about.

“You needn’t worry about that. Just write me a page about the basic storyline, make it sound irresistible. And make sure there’s a slot for a different guest star every week, like
Columbo
. But we won’t do murder – just now and then, maybe – keep it wide open. Just fill this piece of crap out a bit, can you? Keep the bus central – a big red one. It’s important for overseas sales.”

Jill said she’d do her best.

“Can you do it today?”

“Today?!”

“I’m in a bit of a rush.” The rush was to prevent Jill from discussing the deal with her agent, who was liable to query it this time. Best to get it all sewn up as fast as possible. “You can work here.”

Jill agreed, surprised by Nik’s brisk enthusiasm, but she was keen to impress him. It was a new way of working, and rather refreshing. What a contrast to the tortoise-like BBC. Nik showed her to a well-furnished but baking hot office, and she sat down at the desk.

Nik returned to his own office to find an unexpected visitor had arrived. Since Nik had appointed line producers to look after Geordie Boy’s show their relationship had cooled off to some extent. He hadn’t seen Geordie for a few weeks, and wasn’t entirely pleased to discover him helping himself to the silver box of cocaine he kept in his filing cabinet. He stopped in the doorway to watch Geordie surreptitiously, noting that his hair was limper than it used to be, his face more lined, and his tan less natural. Instead of looking slim and lively, he was thin and agitated.

“You ain’t hooked on that stuff, are you?” he asked.

Geordie smiled humourlessly without turning round. “No man. Don’t you worry. I’m not on it every day, just when I’m tired. Have you seen the schedule I’m on? I haven’t had a holiday in two years.” He sighed with satisfaction as the drug uplifted him. “That’s better. I’ve brought you a new series idea. What d’you think?” He passed a folded bunch of pages to Nik, who sat behind his desk to read them. After a couple of minutes he looked up, waggled his head from side to side, and grimaced.

“I like it Geordie… ”

“But. There’s always a but.” He couldn’t resist adding a murmured: “But never the one you want.”

“It’s a bit bloody camp, ain’t it?”

“So?”

“It’s not really Magenta.” He checked his watch. “I’ve got a meeting soon.” Geordie stuck out his lower lip and pondered. Then he got up and walked out.