Bite The Wax Tadpole (8 page)

“Cut, cut, cut!”

“It’s garlic! She’s chewing bloody garlic tablets.”

He grabbed a water bottle from an Assistant as Rosanna smiled towards Cris who was sitting with the palms of his hands on the top of his bald pate wondering why he’d failed to take up that offer of teaching at the Film School and why oh why oh why he’d agreed to direct the live episode that loomed on his horizon in much the same way that the Allied Fleet loomed upon the Normandy beaches on D-Day.

“Sorry, Cris but I had to keep his tongue out of my mouth somehow.”

Karl swigged from the water bottle and spat on the ground. “My tongue in your... I’d rather stick my dick in an electric blender.”

Cris turned towards the Vision Mixer. “We got enough, didn’t we? You know, lips touching and... I mean, add a bit of girly music and it’ll be fine, great, terrific, won’t it? Say yes or you’re fired.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Terry, summoned by e-mail, made his way up to the Human Resources Suite, a place that when he’d last visited it, sometime in the 1980s to the best of his recollection, had been the Personnel Department. There had been no reason to visit since then. He did his job, went home at the end of the day, turned up the next morning. He had been, in his own estimation at least, an exemplary employee. Not that he cared to blow his own instrument, of course. And now he sat across the desk from Ms Penny Spender, the HR Manager, who was something of a contrast to the Personnel Manager as Terry recalled him. He’d been a grey-haired ex-naval officer with a moustache that bristled like an echidna who’d just heard bad news from home whereas Ms Spender looked like she’d stepped out of an organic shampoo ad.

She poured coffees and offered him chilli-flavoured Tim Tams before congratulating him on being the second longest serving member of the Channel 12 family, beaten only by the part-time hunchback, sorry, person with a disability, who helped round the gardens in the Melbourne studio. Terry assumed that the employment was part-time rather than the hunch.

“And have I got some good news for you”, she beamed.

‘Oh, yes?”

He sat there with his Tim Tam melting into his fingers and dripping onto his overalls as she outlined the Network’s plans to outsource all the maintenance. This was, apparently, a win-win situation for all concerned. Especially, it appeared, for Terry. She pushed a buff envelope across the desk towards him and he’d hurriedly shoved the Tim Tam in his mouth and licked his fingers before opening it.

“A pretty generous package, I think you’d agree, eh, Terry? Gosh, I’m quite envious.”

“Package?” Could she saying what he thought she was saying without actually saying it? “You mean you’re getting rid of me?”

“Not so much getting rid of as enhancing your retirement options. Although, to be strictly accurate, none of the other options involve you actually staying in your job. ”

The figures danced in and out of focus on the paper in front of him. “It’s all done and dusted then? I don’t have no choice?”

“The new people move in at the end of the month.”

“That’s only two weeks away!”

“Ah, but the really good news is that with leave accrued you can actually finish work this afternoon.”

“This afternoon!!? Bloody hell, Jesus... oh, sorry, luv.”

His eyes turned upwards towards the ceiling as his face took on a look of holy contrition for his little outburst. Puzzled, Penny followed his gaze.

“It’s my wife”, he explained. “She doesn’t like me cursing. She’s dead, not up on the roof.”

“Oh, good”, smiled Penny. “Well, good that she’s not up on the roof anyway.”

She slid a small pile of leaflets across the desk towards him. “Yes, I’ve assembled some literature about adjusting to retirement and so on. Oh, look, over 55’s Crazy Golf. How exciting.”

Leaflets in hand, Terry wandered dazedly back through the corridors looking like the Ghost of Christmas When The Presents Didn’t Arrive. He couldn’t face the boiler room and its memories and made his way outside to where the sun, oblivious to his fate, still sent down its life-giving rays. (On the other hand, or more likely, according to statistics, the head or neck, it also sent down the radiation that gave you melanomas but that was of little account to Terry.) People he passed looked askance at the downward slant of the normally grinning mouth and the gouty shuffle that had replaced the jaunty stroll. He couldn’t believe this was happening. He knew the years were creeping up on him - he’d only to look at the white hairs sprouting out of his ears and ponder the blubbery belly advancing south to remind him of it – but he’d hoped to somehow slip under the retirement radar and die in harness. He couldn’t handle half a day’s notice. It was too much. Well, too little, really. What was he going to do with himself? Not bloody crazy golf, that’s for sure, sorry, luv. He could manage evenings and weekends, they were what pottering was invented for. But seven days a week! It didn’t bear thinking about. The studio was his life. It was what kept him going. And who was going to look after it now? A bunch of cowboys, that’s who. Botch Casually and the Hole in the Head Gang.

He tossed the scrunched up leaflets into a bin and looked up at the transmitter that towered over the studio in the way that towers tend to tower over smaller, squatter buildings. Maybe that’s what he should do. Climb up to the top and jump. That’d show ‘em. That’d show ‘em they couldn’t just toss him aside like a low-rating game show. On the other hand, given his vertigo, all it would show ‘em would be a gibbering wreck clinging to the railings ten foot off the ground. Still, he’d think of something, think of some way to show ‘em. Bastards, bunch of ... er, sorry, luv.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Rob read through the latest batch of scripts with the solemnity of a bishop leafing through a collection of biblical exegesis although it’s doubtful whether the bish would have scribbled “what a load of bollocks” in red pen in the margins before re-writing a passage. He tapped the end of his biro on the desk and pondered. Why did he never write “stunning dialogue” or “brilliant scene” in the margin of a script? Or even “perfectly adequate”? To be fair, he did tell the writers when they did good stuff but being writers, of course, it meant nothing to them apart from the fact that they’d survived another round of editing and would in all likelihood get further employment. Tell a writer that his last ten scripts had been knockouts but that the thirty second scene in the pub in his last one hadn’t quite got over the point that was in the scene breakdown and they’d reach for the scotch or the valium, possibly both, and bemoan their fading career.

A gust of wind sent several sheets of paper flying through the air as the door was thrust open and Leo stormed in. Leo was a man given to wearing denim and sported the sort of moustache that had been popularly worn over stiff upper lips in wartime British movies. “Have you seen these?”, he blustered, skimming a sheet of paper over the table in Rob’s general direction. “Have you seen these figures?” He paced the room as Rob reached for the paper.

“And good morning to you, too, Leo. No, if these are last night’s viewing figures, then not being psychic, I have not seen them.”

“They’re shit, absolute shit. Didn’t win in one city, not one. Again. We’re in the shit, mate, right in the shit. Up shit creek with a fresh turd for a paddle.”

Rob scanned the sheet which gave the number of viewers per quarter of an hour per channel in all the major cities. He hated the idea of everything being driven by the viewing figures, that a work couldn’t be judged on its intrinsic merits. On the other hand he was wary of making the same mistake as Captain Bligh. He hadn’t cared about the ratings and look what they did to him.

“Come on, we were up against Davis Cup tennis. We could put Christ coming back to Earth on a shaft of sunlight up against Davis Cup tennis and still lose. Except in Adelaide, of course.”

Leo continued his march up and down the cheap, cack coloured linoleum. “You know who’s going to get the blame, don’t you? Me. Fucking producer always gets the blame. Always the producer’s fault. ”

“Of course it’s your fault. The scripts are absolutely perfect when they leave this department. Always.”

“He’ll start on you when he’s finished with me, don’t you worry, mate. If I end up producing regional round-up in Gosford you’ll be back teaching English as a second language to traumatised reffos.”

“Oh, those happy days at TAFE.”

Leo unwrapped a piece of gum, shoved it in his mouth and started chewing rapidly and noisily. “Have you ever thought”, asked Rob, “of taking up smoking? It might help you kick that filthy chewing gum habit.”

The phone rang and Rob answered it, prepared for another verbal volley from the distaff side or to deal with publicity’s request to find a story line for a recently released serial killer’s guest appearance. But the peremptory voice on the other end merely said: “You and Leo, my office, ten minutes.”

Rob put the phone down. “Good old Nev, as succinct as ever.”

“The Ice Man calleth, eh?”, said Leo.

“Ice Man?”

As they made their way through the swooshing magic doors that separated the lino and concrete of the production and studio areas from the highly polished executive area known as Mahogany Row, Leo, still chewing furiously, explained the sobriquet.

“He’s been on crystal meth for months, mate.”

“That would explain a few things.”

As the Light Brigade found when charging the Russian guns at Balaclava, there were functionaries to the right of them, functionaries to the left of them, functionaries in front of them, volleying and thundering away at whatever it is they do that is so vital to the running of a modern TV network. In a glass-fronted office, a cabal of shirt-sleeved executives sat hunched over their agendas. To Rob they looked like the sort of blokes who would do a powerpoint presentation at their daughter’s wedding and get buried offshore for tax reasons. The corridor was lined with photos of the stars of the Network’s fondly remembered shows of the last fifty years. How amusing, not to mention educational, it would be to add a line or two to the legend underneath the smiling faces. Alcoholic... wife-beater... died in a loony bin... stacking shelves in Coles...

“Bloke’s a mess, mate, close to cracking. Two ex-wives to pay off, property investments gone down the gurgler.”

“Now I come to think about it, his car was full of smoke this morning. I thought he was just having his usual spliffing start to the day.”

“I don’t think he smokes it, mate. Nah, he does it the executive way.”

Rob hesitated to ask but he did so anyway.

Nev Beale checked that all the toilet stalls were empty before entering one and locking the door. He dropped his trousers, as is the usual drill in such situations, before reaching into his shirt pocket and pulling out a small plastic bag. From out of the bag he produced a small crystalline rock. He then squatted, reached behind himself with the rock and inserted it where, as the saying goes, the sun don’t shine.

Rob and Leo sat and waited in Leo’s outer office under the baleful gaze of his PA who was known studio-wide, with no trace of affection or irony, as the Rottweiller. She was totally unaware of this, of course, and could never understand why packets of Smackos would often be left on her desk.

Leo leaned in confidentially towards Rob. “Bloke’s had more ice up his arse than a one-legged figure skater.”

Rob winced. “Doesn’t it hurt?”

“Buggered if I know”, replied Leo as Nev returned from the washrooms. “In you go”, he commanded Rob and Leo who jumped dutifully to their feet. “Coffee, cakes and no calls for the next half hour”, he continued for the Rottweiler’s benefit.

Nev’s office was all that Rob’s was not. It positively gleamed with the finest timber and steel and glass and the walls were hung with top quality art works bought as investments by the Network Board who, to give them their due, may not know much about art, may not even know what they like but do know how much per square centimetre a Brett Whiteley is worth. The room even had windows. Rob and Leo sat in the tubular steel chairs on the subordinates’ side of the huge, gleaming paper free desk while Nev trekked to the far side where his leather and rose-wood executive throne awaited. He winced as he sat down and Leo and Rob exchanged knowing looks.

“You do realise we were up against Davis Cup tennis last night, don’t you, mate?”, said Leo getting in an early defensive shot.

“Who gives a stuff about Davis Cup tennis? This is what you guys ought to be crapping your nappies about.” He picked up a remote control and pointed it at the giant plasma screen that dominated one wall in much the same way that Leonardo’s Last Supper dominates the refectory wall of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Black and white countdown figures appeared on the screen before it burst into life with a shot of an ambulance racing along the streets of a busy city and in through the gates of a large hospital. A voice over said: “ Het onthaal aan Wie Gaat Volgend” just before a smartly dressed man with a stethoscope round his neck stepped into shot and said: “Het spel van het leven en dodo”

“It’s in Dutch”, explained Nev.

“Thank god for that”, said Rob. “I thought I’d had a brain haemorrhage.”

CHAPTER NINE

The studio canteen, imaginatively called The Studio Canteen, afforded diners a splendid view of parklands and bush. This helped to take their mind off the food which was prepared by a chef with a diploma in reheating . Malcolm and Phyllida sat in a booth next to the window watching a magpie peck at a dead rat next to the barbecue area.

“Remind me not to have the kebab at lunchtime, will you”, said Malcolm as he popped a couple of paracetamol into his mouth and swigged them down with a gulp of tepid coffee.

“Are you all right?”, asked Phyllida. She’d noticed over the last few weeks how tired he’d been looking, how grey he’d become, how he fluffed his lines more often.

“Yes, yes. Bit too much vino collapso last night, that’s all”, he replied, shaking his head in an attempt to exorcise the taste of the tablets. She decided not to pursue the matter and stirred her tea. God forbid that she’d end up like Malcolm or Norman Tubby but, given the nature of her chosen profession, it was a definite statistical possibility. And what if the parts stopped coming in? What if she couldn’t act, couldn’t pretend to be someone else? She couldn’t go back to being herself, not full-time.