Dead famous (8 page)

DAY THIRTY-THREE. 10.15 a.m.

T
he picture of Woggle on the map on the incident room wall was almost completely obscured by the numerous tapes that terminated on it. Trisha had just completed the pattern by running a ribbon to him from Dervla, with the words ‘pubic hair row’ written on it. Dervla had seemed so determined to be quiet and serene, so like the muse in an advert for Irish beer. But you couldn’t maintain that if you followed Woggle into the bathroom.

DAY EIGHT. 9.30 a.m.

I
t’s day eight in the house,’ said Andy the narrator, ‘and Dervla has fust had a shower.’ ‘Woggle!’ She shouted, emerging from the shower room, clutching a bar of soap.

‘Yes, sweet lady.’

‘Can you please remove your pubic hairs from the soap after you have finished showering?’ It was their own fault, of course. Woggle would have been quite happy not to shower at all, but the group had made a personal appeal to him to wash thoroughly at least once a day.

‘That way in a month or two you might be clean,’Jazz had observed. Now they were paying the price for their finickiness. Woggle’s matted pubic mullet had never seen such regular action, and the unaccustomed pressure was causing it to moult liberally. Dervla waved the hairy bar of soap in his face. She had thought hard before confronting Woggle. Quite apart from the fact that she did not like scenes, she also knew from her secret informant that Woggle was a very popular person outside the house. Would having a row with him alienate her from the public? She wondered. On the other hand, perhaps it would do the public good to get some idea of what she and the other housemates were having to deal with. In the end, Dervla could not help herself: she just had to say something. Woggle tended to do his cursory ablutions in the middle of the night, and, being first up, it was always Dervla who encountered his residue.

‘Each morning I have to gouge a small toupee off the soap, and the next morning there it is again, looking like a member of the Grateful Dead!’

‘Confront your fear of the natural world, 0 she-woman. My knob hair can do you no harm. Unlike cars of which you have admitted you own one.’ In one single bound Woggle had got from his lack of social grace to her responsibility for the destruction of the entire planet. He was always doing that.

‘It’s got nothing to do with fucking cars!’ Dervla was shocked to hear herself shout. She had not raised her voice in years. Hers was a calm, reflective spirit, that was her thing, and yet here she was shouting.

‘Yes, it has, 0 Celtic lady, for your priorities are weirding me out, man, messing with my head zone. Cars are evil dragons that are eating our world! Whereas my hair is entirely benign, nonvolatile dead-cell matter.’

‘It is benign non-volatile dead-cell matter that grew out of your scrotum’ Dervla shouted.

‘And it makes me want to puke! Sweet Virgin Mary Mother of Jesus Christ, where does it all come from! We could have stuffed a mattress by now! Are you using some kind of snake oil ointment down there?’ Unbeknown to Dervla, Woggle was actually a little hurt by her attack. Nobody ever credited Woggle with having feelings because he seemed so entirely oblivious to everybody else’s. But Woggle actually liked Dervla, and he fancied her, too. He had even been to the confession box to confess his admiration.

‘There is definitely a connection between us,’ he said.

‘I’m fairly certain that at some point in another life she was a great Princess of the Sacred Runes and that I was her Wizard.’ Confronted now by this attack from one he clearly rated so highly, Woggle attempted to assume an air of dignified distance.

‘I remain unrepentant of my bollock hair,’he muttered.

‘It has as much right to a place in this house as does every other item of human effluvia, such as, for instance, the pus from Moon’s septic nipple ring, which I respect.’ It was a clever ploy. Moon had insisted that the whole group look at her septic nipple the night before and had won herself no friends in the process.

‘Hey! Leave my fookin’ nipple out of it, Woggle!’ Moon shouted now from where she sprawled on the purple couch.

‘I’ve told you. How was I to know that dirty bastard in Brighton was using shite metal ‘stead of gold, which he said it was. He said it were fookin’ gold, didn’t he? The bastard. Besides, I’m using Savlon on my nipple and I don’t leave what comes out of it all over the fookin’ soap.’

‘Yes, don’t try and change the subject,’ Dervla insisted.

‘Moon’s doing what she can about her nipple infection and you should clean the soap after you use it. And not just the soap: clean out the plughole too. It looks like a St Bernard dog died there and rotted.’

‘I shall clean up my hair,’ Woggle said with what he assumed was an air of ancient and mighty dignity.

‘Good,’ said Dervla.

‘Z/,’ Woggle continued, ‘you promise to renounce your car.’

DAY THIRTY-THREE. 2.30 p.m.

E
very time the ‘not yet watched’ pile of tapes began to look a little smaller and less intimidating, somebody brought up more from the cells. They seemed to go on for ever.

‘It’s day eight, and Jazz and Kelly are chatting in the garden.’

DAY EIGHT. 3.00 p.m.

W
hat’s the worst job you’ve ever had?’ Said Jazz. He and Kelly were sitting by the pool revelling in the sunshine and the fact that they must look absolutely terrific on camera in their tiny swimming costumes.

‘No doubt about that,’ Kelly replied.

‘Being a film extra. I hated it.’

‘Why’s that, then?’ Asked Jazz.

‘It don’t sound too bad to me.’

‘Well, I think it’s all right if you’re not interested in being an actor. Then you just take the money and eat the lunch and try and spot a star, but it’s really rough if you actually want to get into the profession properly like I do. Then being an extra makes you feel like you’re just never going to get anywhere.’

‘So you want to be an actress, then?’

‘Oh God, I’d love it. That would be sooooo cool! Except you don’t say actress any more, you know. They’re all just actors nowadays, even the women, because of feminism. Like Emma Thompson or Judi Dench or Pamela Anderson or whatever. They’re not actresses, they’re actors.’

‘Is that right? Sounds a bit weird to me.’

‘Well, I think so too, actually. I mean, they’re women, aren’t they? But we’ve all got to get used to it, otherwise it’s offensive, apparently. I’m not sure, but I think it goes back to a time when apparently all actresses were prostitutes, and I suppose Judi Dench doesn’t want anyone thinking that she’s a prostitute. Well, you wouldn’t, would you?’

‘No, not if you’re a classy bird like her, certainly not,’ Jazz conceded.

‘So that’s what you want to be then — a lady actor?’

‘Absolutely, that’s why I’m in here. I’m hoping I’ll get noticed. I went in the confession box the other day and did a speech I’d learnt off The Bill about a girl doing cold turkey in the cells.’

‘Fahkin’ hell, girl, well pushy.’

‘Yeah, I rolled around on the floor and cried and everything. Don’t know if they’ll show it, though. I’d do anything to get to be an actress. That’s why I did the extra work. I thought I might learn something and even make a few contacts, but I hated it.’ David was swimming in the pool. Elegantly completing a series of gentle, desperately mannered laps in a perfectly unhurried breaststroke. A breaststroke which announced to the world that not only did David swim absolutely beautifully but that he had absolutely beautiful thoughts while he was doing it. He had been listening to what Kelly was saying.

‘I don’t believe that anyone who would take extra work can truly want to be an actor, Kelly. I advise you to find a more realistic dream.’

‘You what?’ Said Kelly.

‘Fuck off, David,’ said Jazz.

‘Kelly can dream what she likes.’

‘And I can offer her advice if I wish. Kelly’s a big girl. She doesn’t need you to protect her, Jason.’

‘Jazz.’

‘I keep forgetting.’

‘Come on, then, David,’ said Kelly.

‘What do you mean, a more realistic dream?’ David hoisted himself up out of the water, quite clearly conscious as he did so of the splendid, glistening, dripping curves and tone of his muscular arms. He paused halfway out of the pool, arms stretched taut, taking his weight, shoulders rippling and strong, firm, shadowy clefts at his collar bone. His legs dangled in the pool and the hard, wavy plane of his stomach pressed against the terracotta edge.

‘I meant exactly what I said.’ David emerged from the pool completely, in one single, graceful, uncluttered movement.

‘Acting is the most demanding vocation imaginable. Harder, I think, perhaps, than any other.’

‘Bomb-disposal expert?’ Said Jazz, but David ignored him.

‘You have to believe in yourself utterly, and consider your dream to be not a dream but a duty. If you’re prepared at the very beginning to accept second best, then I suggest it is inevitable that you will never achieve your end. I personally would wash dishes, clean cars, wait on tables, rather than accept any job in the profession other than one I considered worthy of my dream. John Hurt resolved at the outset of his career to accept only leading roles, you know. I’m told he suffered thirteen years of unemployment as a result. But, ah, what triumph was to follow.’

‘Well, what about all the actors who aren’t John Hurt?’ Jazz asked.

‘The ones who suffered thirteen years of unemployment and then suffered another thirteen years of unemployment and then died of alcohol poisoning. What if that’s what happened to you?’

‘If that were my fate,’ said David, ‘then at least I would know that I had never compromised and that although my talent was not recognized I had never betrayed it. I would far rather be Van Gogh, tormented in life and dying unrecognized, than some comfortable portrait painter who prostitutes his talent for lack of faith in it. Winning is all. Consolation prizes are not worth having. I truly, truly believe that, Jason. I know you think me a pompous arrogant bastard…’

‘Yes,’ said Jazz.

‘And perhaps I am. But I mean what I say. You have to have everything or nothing, and so you will never be an actor, Kelly, and I say that as a friend who has your best interests at heart. Do yourself a favour. Find another dream.’

DAY THIRTY-THREE. 2.35 p.m.

H
ooper pressed stop.

‘David knows what he’s doing, he just doesn’t know it isn’t working.’

‘You what?’ Asked Trisha.

‘Well, he’s not stupid. He must know he’s coming across as arrogant and mean. I think it’s his strategy. It’s not always the nice people who stay the course in these shows. Sometimes it’s the bastards. I reckon David wants to get noticed, noticed as someone great-looking, arrogant and uncompromising. In other words, a leading man, a star. I don’t think that man cares what he does or what people think of him. He just wants to be a star.’

DAY EIGHT. 11.20 p.m.

T
he girls were lying on their beds drinking hot chocolate. The talk quickly turned to Woggle, as it had done on many previous evenings.

‘He’s a nutter,’ Moon said.

‘He should be in a loony bin. He’s mad, he is.’

‘He is strange,’ said Kelly.

‘I just worry that he might do himself some harm or something. We had a kid like him at our school, except he had a Mohican instead of dreadlocks. Always sitting on his own and swaying, he was, just like Woggle, and he ended up writing on his arms with a knife, there was blood everywhere, the school nurse fainted, it was gross.’ Then Sally spoke. After Woggle, Sally was the most isolated of the group, and had so far come to prominence only once, when she had insisted on raising her Rainbow Lesbian and Gay Alliance flag in the back garden. It had not been a major incident, however, because despite Sally’s very best efforts nobody had objected. Moon’s comments about loony bins had touched a nerve.

‘Woggle’s not mad!’ Sally snapped.

‘He’s just filthy and horrible and politically unfocused. That’s all. He’s not mad.’

‘Well, he is a bit mad. Sally,’ Kelly said.

‘Did you see him trying to save that ant from the water that splashed out of the pool? I mean, how mad is that?’ The venom of Sally’s reply took everybody aback.

‘Listen, Kelly, you know absolutely nothing about it, all right?’ She hissed.

‘Nothing! People like you are so prejudiced and ignorant about mental illness. It’s pathetic! Absolutely pathetic and also disableist!’

‘I only said he was a bit mad. Sally.’

‘I know what you said, and I find it totally offensive. Just because a person has mental health issues doesn’t make them a disgusting anti-social pariah.’

‘Yes, but he is disgusting. Sally,’ Kelly protested.

‘I mean, I feel sorry for him and everything, but…’

‘And that’s the point I’m making, you stupid ignorant cow! He’s disgusting, he’s not mad. The two are not the same thing. Everybody’s so fucking prejudiced. Fucking grow up, why don’t you?’ Kelly looked like she had been slapped in the face. Sally’s anger had risen up so quickly that her fists were clenched and it almost seemed that she would lash out. In the monitoring bunker they twiddled desperately at their controls to get the hot-head remotes to swivel and focus on the relevant faces. Geraldine ordered both operators in the camera runs to push their dollies round to the girls’ bedroom immediately. That rarest of all events in reality television seemed to be developing: a moment of genuine, spontaneous drama.

‘Hey, steady on. Sally,’ said Dervla.

‘Kelly’s entitled to her opinion.’

‘Not if it’s oppressive of minorities, she isn’t.’

‘I haven’t got an opinion,’ wailed Kelly, tears springing up in her eyes.

‘Honestly.’

‘You do, you just don’t recognize your own bigotry!’ Sally snapped.

‘Everybody hates and stigmatizes the mentally ill and blames them for society’s problems. They’re denied treatment, ignored by the system and then when once in a blue moon something happens, like some poor schizo who never should have been returned to the community gets stuck inside their own dark box and sticks a knife in someone’s head or whatever, suddenly every mild depressive in the country is a murderer and it’s just ignorant fucking bollocks!’ Sally was getting more and more upset. The other girls had not seen this side of her before. The knuckles on her clenched fists had turned white; there were angry tears in her eyes. Kelly appeared horrified to have been the cause of all this hurt, but also astonished at how emotional Sally had so quickly become.

‘I’m sorry, Sally, all right?’ Kelly said.

‘If I’ve said something stupid I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, but really there’s no need to cry about it.’

‘I’m not fucking crying!’ Sally shouted. Moon had been lying on her bed listening to the conversation with a look of tolerant bemusement on her face. Now she raised herself up and joined in.

‘Sally’s right, but she’s also wrong,’ she said with a patronizing air of authority.

‘Woggle ain’t genuinely mad, he’s just a twat with body odour, but on the other hand I wouldn’t be too certain about how nice and cosy the average loony is. Sally…’ Sally tried to interrupt angrily but Moon continued.

‘Or ‘people with mental health issues’ as you choose to put it. I’ve seen nutters, real nutters, dangerous fookin’ bastard nutters, and let me tell you, darling, society’s right to be scared of them, I know I fookin’ was.’

‘That is just ignorant shit,’ said Sally.

‘What would you know about it? How would you know anything about the mentally ill?’

‘Well, what would you know about it yourself. Sally?’ Said Dervla thoughtfully. Her face had a slightly troubled look about it. But before Sally could answer Dervla’s question. Moon pressed on.

‘I know plenty about it. Sally!’ She barked, seeming suddenly to be as upset as the other girl, ‘and I’ll tell you why: because I spent two years, did you hear me, love? Two fookin’ years in a mental hospital. Have you got that? A hospital for the insane, a loony bin and that is why. Sally, I fookin’ hate nutters.’ For a moment the room fell silent. The other girls were simply astonished at this sudden and unexpected bombshell.

‘You never did,’ said Kelly.

‘You’re having a laugh.’ But it appeared that Moon was not having a laugh.

‘So don’t tell me about people with mental health issues. Sally! I lived with them, I slept in their rooms, ate at their tables, walked the same corridors, stared at the same shitty walls for two years. So don’t give me any of that One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest crap! Like they’re the bloody sane ones — the fookin’ heroes.’ Sally clearly wanted to reply, but could find no words in the face of Moon’s onslaught, which continued unabated: ‘Oh yeah, I’m sure there’s plenty of nice ones about the place, plenty of nice sweet little manicdepressives who don’t hurt anybody but their mums and dads and themselves…But I’m talking about nutters. The ones that scream and tear at themselves in the night. All night! The ones that lash out when you pass them on the ward, trick you with their cunning, grab you, touch you, fookin’ try and eat you.’ The other four young women sat on their, beds and stared at Moon. Sally’s passion had come as a surprise, but this was something more, much, much more. This was shocking. Moon had been so cheerful, so funny right from the first day, and now this.

‘But why? Why were you there, Moon?’ Dervla’s voice was calm. Sweet and reassuring, like a doctor’s or a priest’s, but those who knew her would have heard the anxiety in it. They would have known that she was scared.

‘Were you ill?’

‘No, I wasn’t ill,’ said Moon bitterly.

‘But my fookin’ uncle was ill. My uncle is a sad sick ill bastard.’ She stopped, and seemed to be considering whether to go on. Layla asked if she wanted a hand to hold. Moon ignored her.

‘He abused me, right? Not the full business, never rape, but plenty enough. A year it went on until one day I told my ma, that cow. I can say it now because she’s dead. I never thought she’d believe her brother and not me, but he was a powerful man in the local community, I suppose, a doctor. And he had friends, counsellors, other doctors and the like, and between them they managed to make it all look my fault. I was a nasty lying little slut and a dangerous fantasist to boot. Maybe it woulda’ been different if me dad had been around, but God knows where he is. God knows who he is.’

‘They managed to get you committed?’ Dervla asked, astonished.

‘Yeah, you wouldn’t have thought it could happen, would you? To a young teenage girl, in our day and age, but it did, and I got put away for trying to tell the world that I’d been touched up by my uncle.’ There was silence in the room. For the first time since they had all entered the house, nobody had anything to say. The silence was echoed in the monitoring bunker, where Bob Fogarty, Pru, his assistant editor, various production managers and all their Pas were stunned.

‘That is incredible,’ said Fogarty.

‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’ Said the voice of Geraldine Hennessy.

‘An incredible load of bollocks.’ They turned round in surprise. Nobody had noticed Geraldine enter the bunker, but in fact she had been watching for some time. She had come on from dinner with her current boyfriend in tow, a beautiful nineteen-year-old dancer whom she had met backstage at the Virgin summer pop festival.

‘I never thought Moon would be the one to go for the lying trick, I really didn’t. I must say I’m impressed.’

‘She’s lying?’ The various editors and Pas asked in astonishment.

‘Of course she’s lying, you stupid bunch of cunts. Do you really thing I’d put an abused kid out of a loony hospital into my happy little game show? Bollocks! Woggle’s as mad as I go. That bald bitch’s mum and dad are alive and well and living in Rusholme. He’s a tobacconist, she works in a dry cleaner’s.’ There was great relief in the bunker at this and also excitement. It seemed that perhaps the game inside the house might turn out to be more interesting than they had feared.

‘Look at her smirking to herself ‘cos it’s dark and the others can’t see,’ Geraldine said, pointing at one of the remote camera feeds.

‘She knows we can see, though, oh yes! She’s having a laugh, isn’t she? She knows the public loves a stirrer. You get much more famous being naughty than nice. Get me a coffee, will you, Darren? Use the machine in my office, not the shite this lot drink.’ The impossibly beautiful nineteen-year-old boy grumpily stirred his perfect body and went off to do as he was bidden.

‘Lucky you did your research, Geraldine,’ Fogarty remarked.

‘If you didn’t know Moon was lying I imagine we’d all be pretty nervous now.’

‘I’d have known anyway,’ Geraldine replied pompously.

‘Those idiot proles in there might manage to manipulate each other, possibly even the public, but not me, mate.’

‘You think you would have guessed she was lying even if you didn’t know?’

‘Of course I would. That woman’s never been near a mental hospital in her life. She’s watched too many films, that’s all. People don’t scream and shriek in those places. If they do they get sedated pretty fucking sharpish, let me tell you, and the only grabbing and touching that goes on is by the nurses. Mental hospitals are quiet at night. All you can hear is weeping, shuffling and wanking.’ For a moment Geraldine had a faraway look in her eye. To her assembled staff she seemed almost human. The next moment she was herself again.

‘Right, package all that stuff up. I’m not using it now, I’m concentrating on Woggle. Besides, I’m not having some bald cunt like Moon influencing the public this early on. I influence the public, not the bloody inmates. Keep it, though. Could be useful later.’

‘What, you mean put it in out of sequence?’ Fogarty was taken aback.

‘Maybe,’ replied Geraldine.

‘Who’d notice the difference?’

‘But…But the time codes on the video…They’d be out of sequence. We couldn’t adjust them.’

‘Of course you can, you silly arse. They’re just numbers on a screen, you can change them. Just go into the Apple menu and dig out the control panel.’

‘I know how to do it, Geraldine,’ Bob Fogarty replied coldly.

‘I meant we couldn’t do it morally, professionally.’

‘Our moral and professional duty is to provide good telly to the public, who pay our wages. We are not fucking anthropologists, we are entertainers, mate. Turns. We work on the end of the pier along with the illusionists, the mystics, the magicians, the hypnotists and all the other cheating shysters who make up this great business we call show. Now stick the whole thing in a separate file and hide it somewhere.’ The team said no more, working on in silence, hoping that if Geraldine did want to do something as outrageous as broadcasting house events out of sequence it would not be them whom she instructed to do it. Back on the screens the attention of the editing team was drawn by a flurry of bras and knickers. The girls were getting ready for bed.

‘Nipple-watch!’ Shouted Geraldine.

They all had their styles. Sally got into bed in her T-shirt and knickers. Kelly allowed the occasional flash as she whipped off her shirt and dived into bed. Moon was happy to wander about in front of the infra-red cameras entirely naked. Layla and Dervla were the most coy: both put on long nighties before removing their underwear. When Geraldine saw this on the first night she had made a mental note to catch both of these prudes out at some point, in the showers, probably, or perhaps the pool, and put their nipples out in the Sunday night special compilation. She wasn’t having hoitytoity little scrubbers like them holding back on the flesh. What did they think they were on telly for? The atmosphere in the bedroom was sombre. On previous nights the girls had laughed and giggled as they got into their beds, but on this occasion there was silence. Moon’s revelations had rocked them all. Not just because it had been such a sad and shocking tale, but also because her distress would so obviously appeal to the public’s sympathy and give her the edge when eviction time came. It was very strange to have to remember all the time that every conversation was a conversation between rivals who were competing against each other for the affection of the public. Then Moon spoke.

‘Oh, by the way, girls,’she said.

‘All that stuff I just told you. That were rubbish, by the way. Sorry.’ There was another moment’s silence.

‘What!’ Layla,who rarely shouted, was furious.

‘Don’t worry about it, love,’ Moon said in a calm, matter-of- fact voice.

‘I were ‘having a laugh. Take me mind off me septic nipple.’

‘You said you’d been abused’

‘Well, everybody says they’ve been abused these days, don’t they?’ Moon replied.

‘Blimey, if you look at the posters them charities put out, apparently every fookin’ kid in the country’s getting touched up on a more or less continual basis.’

‘What’s your game, Moon?’ Said Dervla with barely controlled fury.

‘Told you. Just thought I’d have a laugh,’ Moon said.

‘Plus, I thought our Sally was getting a bit too serious, hopping into Kelly a bit strong about fookin’ loonies, that’s all.’