“Gerald,” said his friend, “how long have we known each other?”
Gerald’s friend thought for a moment. “Good question that,” he said. He put down his fork and began to count on his fingers. “Let me think. Seventy-three, was it? Seventeen years. My God, how time flies!”
“I’ve known you for seventeen years?”
“Looks like it.”
“Why?”
Gerald frowned. “What do you mean?” he said.
“Why?” said his friend angrily. “I mean, what has been the point? Seventeen years we’ve been meeting regularly, sending each other postcards from Santorini, inviting each other to parties, having lunch; you’d think it would count for something. You’d think it would go some way towards creating some sort of mutual understanding. And now you sit there, drinking a glass of wine which I paid for, and tell me that getting transferred from Current Affairs to Sport is a sideways move.”
“Well it is,” said Gerald. He had grown so used to this sort of thing that he took no notice whatsoever. “More people watch sport than current affairs, it’s a known fact. Call it promotion.”
“Will you be able to get me seats for Wimbledon, do you think?”
“What’s Wimbledon?” asked his friend.
Gerald frowned. He didn’t mind Danny trying to be amusing, but blasphemy was another matter. “Doesn’t matter if it’s behind a pillar or anything like that,” he said. “It’s the being there that really counts.”
Danny Bennet ignored him. “Anything but Sport,” he said, “I could have taken in my stride. “Songs of Praise.” “Bob’s Full House.” “Antiques Roadshow.” Take any shape but this and my firm nerves shall never tremble. Sport, no. At Sport I draw the line.”
“You never did like games much,” Gerald reflected, as he cornered a radish in the folds of his lettuce-leaf. “Remember the lengths you used to go to just to get off games at school? You just never had any moral fibre, I guess. It’s been a problem with you all through life. If only they’d made you play rugger at school, we’d be having less of these theatricals now, I bet.”
“Have you ever tried killing yourself, Gerald? You’d enjoy it.”
“If I were in your shoes,” Gerald continued, “I’d be over the moon. Plenty of open air. Good clean fun. What the viewer really wants, too; I mean, quite frankly, who gives a toss about politics anyway? Come to think of it, maybe you could do something about the way they always put the cricket highlights on at about half past three in the morning. I’m not as young as I was, I need my eight hours. And it’s all very well saying tape it, but I can never set the timer right. I always seem to end up with half an hour of some cult movie in German, which is no use at all when I come in from a hard day at the office. My mother can do it, of course, but then she understands machines. She tapes the Australian soaps, which I call a perverse use of advanced technology.”
“Isn’t it time,” Danny said, “that you were getting back?”
Gerald glanced at his watch and swore. “You’re right,” he said, “doesn’t time fly? Look, I hate to rush off when you’re having a life crisis like this, but the dollar’s been very iffy all week and God knows what it’ll get up to if I’m not there to hold its hand. You must come to dinner. Amanda’s finally worked out a way of doing creme brulee in the microwave, you’ll love it. Thanks for the drink.” He scooped up the remaining contents of his plate in his fingers, jammed the mixture into his mouth, and departed.
With Gerald mercifully out of the way, Danny was able to enjoy his misery properly. He savoured it. He rolled it round his palate. He experienced its unique bouquet. It is not every day that a living legend gets put out with the empty bottles and the discarded packaging; in fact, it would make a marvellous fly-on-the-wall documentary. For someone else.
Perhaps, Danny said to himself, I am taking it rather too hard. Perhaps they were right, and I was getting a bit set in my ways in current affairs. Perhaps it will be an exciting challenge producing televised snooker in Warrington. Perhaps the world is just a flat plate spinning on a stick balanced on the nose of the Great Conjuror, and my fortunes are so insignificant as to be unworthy of consideration. Perhaps I should pack it all in and go work for the satellite people.
In the three years since his story (the details of which are not relevant hereto) Danny had often considered leaving the BBC and signing on under the Jolly Roger, but only when he was in no fit state to make important decisions. He had come as close as typing his letter of resignation on that day which shall live in infamy when they told him that they had no use for his searing revelations of corruption in the sewage disposal department of a major West Midlands borough, provisionally entitled “Orduregate”. That same letter had been typed and stamped when “Countdown to Doomsday”, his mordant expose of the threat posed by a popular brand of furniture polish to the ozone layer, had ended up on the cutting room floor; while a third edition brushed the lip of the post-box after the top floor suspended filming of the script which would have unmasked a hitherto-respected chiropodist in Lutterworth as the Butcher of Clermont-Ferrand. But he had never done it. The final Columbus-like step off the edge of the world and through the doors of the South Bank Studios was not for him, and he knew it.
The fourth edition of his resignation letter, therefore, remained unwritten, and when he left Quincy’s he returned to the studios and went to see the man who was going to tell him everything he needed to know about sports broadcasting in twenty-five minutes.
“The main thing,” said the expert, “is to turn up on the right day at the right place and keep the sound recordists out of the bar. Leave everything else to the cameramen, and you’ll do all right. That’s it.”
Is it like this, Danny asked himself, in death’s other kingdom? “That’s it, is it?” he said.
“Yes,” said the expert. “Apart from the commentators, of course. They’re a real pain in the backside, but there’s absolutely nothing you can do about them, so don’t let it worry you. It’s basically a question of hanging on and not letting it get to you.”
“Even if they say “Well, Terry, it’s a funny old game?””
“That, my son,” said the expert, “will be the least of your worries.” He paused and looked at Danny curiously. “Aren’t you that bloke who did the thing about the buried treasure?”
“That’s right,” Danny said. The expert grinned.
“I saw that,” he said. “Load of old cobblers. You’re lucky you’ve still got a job after a stunt like that.”
“Oh yes?” Danny said.
“Listen,” said the expert. “I’ve been in this game a long time. The average viewer doesn’t want all that. No goals. No big girls. No car-chases. We’re living in the age of the video now, just you remember that and you won’t go far wrong.”
“Thank you,” Danny said, “for all your help.”
Now that he knew everything there was to know about producing sports programmes, he felt that he was ready to take on his first assignment. He was wrong.
“For God’s sake,” he exclaimed. “You can’t be serious.”
“Someone’s got to do it,” he was told.
“They said that about Monte Cassino.”
“What,” came the reply, “is Monte Cassino?”
“Be reasonable,” Danny urged. “Quite apart from the fact that it’s a fate worse than death, it must be a highly difficult technical assignment. Stands to reason. I’ve got no experience whatsoever. I’ll have no end of problems.”
“That’s right, you will. But you’ll cope.”
“I don’t want to cope,” Danny blathered, “I’m a perfectionist.”
“And look where it’s got you.”
Danny paused, but only because he had spoken all the breath out of his lungs. As he breathed in, a terrible thought struck him.
“This is deliberate,” he said. “Of course, why didn’t I realise it before? You’ve given this to me just so as I can cock it up and you can fire me.”
“You and your conspiracy theories.”
“Stuff conspiracy theories,” Danny snapped, “this is my career at stake. You can’t do this to me. I have friends.”
“Name one.”
Put like that, it wasn’t easy. The life pattern of a television producer is not conducive to the forming of friendships. The only one he could come up with was Gerald, and he probably wouldn’t count for much.
