Between the Bridge and the River (5 page)

“Oh, come on, play the game.”

But Fraser was right and Margaret knew it. She also knew that, if she played it smart, there would be cash and prizes for her before he finally sank beneath the surface.

She’d have him on talk shows, an exclusive with as many tabloids as will pay, maybe even a book.

When the time came, Margaret could even sell her story to the tabloids, getting yet another bite at Fraser’s big cash cherry. This might go national, yes, why not? If it was a light news day on Monday, as it usually is, then the English tabloids might pick it up.

Shit, of course they would pick it up, it has everything—naughty sex, religion, TV, and laughing at foreigners, the stuff English newspapers are made of.

Margaret felt the back of her neck tingle.

This could be her ticket to London.

Oh my God.

Much later, when he lost his sight, Fraser thought how odd it was that Margaret never at any point asked if the allegations against him were true or not.

Tracy Flood had never slept with Fraser but she wanked him off one Christmas. It was back at the
Evening Times
when he was on the sports desk and she was Big Bruce Patterson’s assistant. She’d been drunk, of course, everyone at the
Evening Times
was drunk all year. The Christmas party just meant they were slightly more drunk with paper hats on. Fraser had put his arm around her in the Press Bar, had called her doll and said that Big Bruce couldn’t find his fucking jacket without her doing it for him.

He had talked her up in front of the nasty wee damp men of Scottish journalism as they stood in their coven in front of the bar clutching their lagers and whiskies (always two drinks—one for each face). He even stood up for her when Jack Trampas, a ridiculous old buffoon who wore a trilby and wrote a restaurant column in the style of Raymond Chandler, suggested that she was shagging Big Bruce and that’s why she’d become the editor’s assistant.

She’d been grateful, not grateful enough to blow him or fuck him, but she’d performed a perfectly adequate hand shandy in the back of a mini-cab and the deal seemed fine with Fraser, who had then stumbled off into the night, leaving her to pay her own fare home.

She held no grudge, this wasn’t personal. It was nothing to do with back then. The only thing she had against Fraser was his success. He was ripe for cutting. That was her job. She filed her copy. She knew it would get page one.

* * *

They hadn’t used any of his publicity shots. Instead there was an old picture of Fraser that had been taken by an amateur paparazzo as he was leaving his local supermarket. He looked fat.

George missed the whole scandal; by Sunday he was in London. He could have got the Scottish Sunday papers there, of course, but he would have to have gone to a big railway station or the airport or a Scottish pub, none of which he fancied. He thought he felt the first stab of the cancer but it was just the intestinal complications of having eaten a three-week-old meat pie at Watford Gap services. Old offal and nerves will play havoc with your system, although he couldn’t imagine why he was so jumpy. Jumpy, ha-ha.

He had already established that there was no afterlife, at least he thought he had. He had already convinced himself that there was no hell to look forward to, and even if there was, they’d have to have a pretty fucking lax door policy to let him in.

He tried to figure out what was scaring him about his impending death. Was it pain? No, not really, he was fairly convinced that he’d pass out during the fall. He figured that maybe what really scared him about dying is that maybe he’d be missing something.

He’d already missed a healthy dose of Schadenfreude that would have warmed him to the core of his being. Reading about Fraser’s humiliation and disgrace would have reached him like Karen Carpenter to a coma victim. But he didn’t know that he had missed it, because he had missed it.

He parked the car on a double yellow in Soho and took a taxi to Tower Bridge.

Fraser got drunk on Saturday night. He bought the early edition of the newspaper and drank almost two liters of Russian vodka alone, sitting on his couch weeping in self-pity and shame.

He was asleep in a pool of his own urine when the postman slipped the golden embossed invitation envelope through his front door.

They don’t normally deliver on a Sunday.

FRASER HAD NEVER LIKED FLYING
but since September 11 it had gotten much worse. Obviously.

What the hell was wrong with these people anyway? Fucking Arabs, flying planes into buildings and strapping dynamite to their shoes. Fuck!

One night in the Press Bar, Jack Trampas put forward the theory that the reason the Arabs were so angry was because they were so ugly. Howls of derision from the left-wing politically correct alcoholics he drank with, including Fraser, but Trampas persisted.

“Look at that shoe bomber guy, he’s a freak. The mug shots of these hijackers, they’re like the fucking Addams family. They’re mad because they see pictures of the beautiful people in Hollywood and they’re jealous.”

“Nobody looks good in a mug shot.”

“What about Zsa Zsa Gabor? When she smacked that cop?”

“She was cheatin; she’s almost 90 percent Teflon.”

“Winona Ryder?”

“Och, she’s just a ratty wee junkie. Anyway, she never hurt anyone, she just stole a cardigan or somethin.”

“Jack, you are a hideous specimen of humanity and I don’t see you blowing things up,” squeaked Robbie, the camp barman, as he poured himself an Advocaat.

Fraser laughed. “That’s because he attacks the West with his god-awful literary style. Restaurant critique as jihad.”

“Say what you like, but if these guys had a decent dental plan and took a bath every now and then, they’d be less likely to commit mass murder.”

“Wouldn’t we all,” Robbie agreed.

Ewan Grayston, the taciturn sports writer from the
Herald,
who was annoyed that the conversation had turned away from the intricacies of Scottish league division football, decided to end the conversation with the coup de grâce to Jack’s theory.

“I can prove you wrong in three words, Jack.”

“Go on, then.”

“Andrew Lloyd Webber.”

“Sorry?”

“Ugliest bastard that ever lived, never hurt a fly.”

“Aye, but he’s rich. Anyway, I would disagree that he never hurt anybody. I went to that fucking
Phantom of the Fucking Opera
when I was in London, and I felt a distinct pain in my wallet. Plus I was bored to death with that prick with the Halloween mask swinging on a light and singing the same song for three fucking hours, and my fucking ears were bleeding by the time I left. When I think about it now, I should report the cunt to Amnesty International.”

And so they continued.

There was always someone who was being raked over the coals in the Press Bar. They would be laughing at him now, thought Fraser as he sat in the back of the rattly, cold taxi on the way to Glasgow Airport.

Bastards.

The taxi slowed to a halt in the damp, wet traffic jam that consistently clogged the Kingston Bridge. Fraser, hung over and achy, fell into a light sleep. A white-haired old man in a red Indian costume appeared as if by magic. He sat next to Fraser, unnoticed by the taxi driver, who
had turned into a dog-headed minor ancient Egyptian deity. Fraser turned and saw the old man in the outfit of a Comanche shaman.

“Bloody hell, Carl, Halloween already?”

The dog-headed taxi driver turned around.

“What’s that, pal?”

The old man disappeared. The taxi driver lost his beautiful canine head and returned to being a thick-necked Glaswegian. Fraser was awake.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just thinking out loud.”

Fraser had been undergoing psychoanalysis for nearly two years. He hadn’t sought out his therapist, rather it was the other way around.

Frasier had climbed the journalistic ladder with some ease. From working on the sports desk at the
Times
he had gotten a job as an on-camera reporter for
Scottish Sports Roundup
on Saturday afternoons, covering such Earth-shattering events as a goalless draw between Partick Thistle and Albion Rovers in the second round of the Scottish Cup. The producers of the local sports show, who also covered the news, were impressed with his easy charm and cheeky way with the camera. Soon he was promoted to weatherman on the nightly news, and like all weathermen, he pretended he was responsible for the weather, apologizing when it was raining and taking credit for the occasional sunny spell. It was a strange conceit but an industry standard. All weather-men do it.

Usually the banter is helped along by the anchorman or -woman or both, who pretend to be angry if they’re not getting nice weather from the weatherman. This, of course, is insanity but it’s also the media, so it doesn’t matter. It’s all lunacy. Mob rule. Bread and circuses.

One night before Christmas, Fraser was in the Press Bar enjoying much drink and ferocious calumny when he got a call. All cell phones had to be turned off in the bar and it was a strict rule that no one received a call on the bar phone unless it was an emergency. This Christmas Eve Fraser got a call from Gus himself. He was panicked.

“Fraser, are you drunk?”

“Not yet. Why?”

“Get back to the studios. Morris has just had a heart attack, he’s been carried off in an ambulance.”

“Jesus, okay. I’ll be right over.”

“Fraser, not a word of this to those fucking hyenas in there.”

“Of course, Gus, of course.”

Fraser hung up and announced to the entire bar that he had to go because Old Morris had had a heart attack and had been carried off in an ambulance.

The hyenas who were sober enough rushed to file copy. Morris Cuskerton had been an institution in Scotland for decades. He presented a variety show called
The Three O’Clock Gang
on Scottish TV in the fifties, then news, then a talk show where he interviewed local celebs and the occasional movie star who was passing through on the way to St Andrews for the golf. He was Scotland’s Ed Sullivan, Johnny Carson, and Dick Clark rolled into one. Real old-timey television. For the past ten years he had been farmed out to the late-night religious spot, which was meant to be a bridge to retirement, but it became popular because it was live (Morris insisted on working live—it was the only way to do TV, he said, like the old days) and he occasionally would make fantastic blunders or be tipsy as he delivered his “Thoughts for the Day.” On one memorable occasion he made a reference to the Virgin Mabel. People loved this shit, and the Christmas Eve broadcast was the most popular because he would almost certainly be hammered and make a complete tit of himself. All of the country would be watching except the Diogenes club in the Press Bar, who had no festive spirit.

Fraser was being called to fill in for Morris. This was the call to glory. Sink or swim, live or die. Live TV, no script, no net.

Fraser, the charmed, the lucky boy, was in the right place at the right time with just the right amount of alcohol in his system. He was relaxed, sexy, and confident, so when the word came through, only seconds before Fraser went on air, that Old Morris had died on arrival at the hospital, he took command and broke the tragic news to a shocked nation.

He was magnificent, he spoke with reverence and just the right amount of sadness. He recalled Morris’s glittering career on Scottish
Television, remembering shows that even Gus had forgotten, like
Cartoon Company,
which Morris had hosted in the sixties, a cheap throw-together using Hollywood animated shorts like Tom and Jerry or Woody Woodpecker, where Morris pretended he knew the cartoon characters and “talked” to them on the phone even though they were in America.

He would put his hand over the receiver and say, “Daffy Duck wants to wish Stewart MacDougal of Falkirk a happy eighth birthday and a big hello to his Grandpa Sneddon.”