“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.
Hooper 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.
The 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
“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’
