Big Beacon, page 17
In my heart? The words I plan to say to her father. Simple words. Words he’ll understand. That I was once a shining light in the TV industry – a big beacon that illuminates and shines. Since then, I’ve started to renovate a lighthouse – a big beacon that guides and protects. And now, with his permission, I would like to be a big beacon to his daughter. To illuminate, shine, guide and protect – as long we both shall live. I did say it was a little bit crazy!
‘What are you mouthing?’ she says.
I smile. ‘Just a little something that I think might make your father’s hair stand on end. Heck, it’ll make his beard stand on end!’
‘He doesn’t have a beard,’ she says.
‘Really? I assumed he’d have a beard.’
‘Nope.’
It’s only now that I notice the satnav has led us away from the seafront to an industrial park. Red directs me to a large unit with a shuttered entrance.
‘Where are we?’ I say.
‘I thought you wanted to go see my dad?’
‘Yeah … So why are we here? Is this where he keeps his stall?’
‘What stall?’
‘The fucking whelk stall, what do you think?’ I say with just the merest hint of exasperation.
And that’s when it all came out. It turns out her father doesn’t sell his whelks from a stall. And far from being a humble trader, he is the largest wholesaler of whelks and associated shellfish in the south of England, and sells directly into supermarkets and large food outlets. He drives a Bentley, just as his father had before him. The ‘sailor man’ she’d loved who’d gone away all those years ago was actually a salesman for ICI – he’d moved to Abu Dhabi to head up the EMEA region.
I nod, trying to recalibrate what I now thought of Red. Has the grandeur of her father’s work put me off her? Yeah, it has a bit. I also learn that far from simply volunteering to clean and lock up the church hall every night, she is doing it purely because her father owns the hall; the church it’s connected to has long been desanctified and snapped up by her father, who hopes to convert it into one- and two-bedroom apartments, with the proceeds diverting to her.
Ordinarily, of course, if I’d fallen for a girl from a poor background only to find out her father was wealthy, I’d be absolutely delighted. But right here, right now, I’m not. Because I have changed. No longer a needy broadcaster hungry for status, fine things and a girlfriend who’s successful but slightly less successful than me, now I am a man of the sea (shore), my tastes and wants simple, uncomplicated.80
So no, I am not elated. I am saddened. My straightforward coastal girl, uncorrupted by the ways of the city, red in tooth and claw (and name and hair), a girl who could have stepped straight from the pages of Lorna Doone, The French Lieutenant’s Woman or a really good Mills & Boon, is just a basic middle-class woman.
My mouth goes dry. I solemnly take the ring from my pocket and make a show of placing it not on her finger, but on my own. It nips the skin painfully. Owwwwwwwwww, I think.
‘What does that mean?’ she asks.
‘It means I don’t think you’ve been honest with me.’
‘You’re a fine one to talk.’
I raise my eyebrows, challengingly.
She folds her arms. ‘How come your builders have downed tools?’
I shrug. ‘Not sure, really.’
‘You don’t know why they’re on strike?’
‘Not sure, really.’
‘You must do.’
‘No, not sure, really.’
For obvious reasons, I don’t want to get into the nitty gritty of who said what to whom, in case it makes me look like a fibber.
‘It’s not to do with that whole cancer thing, is it?’
I swallow hard. ‘You know about that?’
‘Well, yeah. I saw Jack at the fishmongers and he was saying how sad it was you had five months to live, and I laughed and said, “I dunno where you got that from.” And he said you said you only had five months to live, and I said no, you only had five months until James Martin finished his lighthouse before you finished yours.’
Oh, Red. Yes, I’d once whispered the details of James Martin’s refurb to her in the throes of lovemaking, hoping that the sheer mundanity of what I was saying would distract me enough to delay climax. Unfortunately, my excitement at potentially getting one over on the large-headed chef had the opposite effect, stoking my ardour enough to accelerate things beyond my control – such that I no longer governed the timetable for when and how I would complete and matters were concluded shortly after.
It sure hurts to know she brought about my downfall. I feel like I’m Samsung and she’s my Delilah, betraying me in almost exactly the same way. She hadn’t cut my hair like Delilah had, although once, after a bath together, she gave me a quick tidy up downstairs with a pair of nail scissors.
‘Never had you down as a snitch,’ I nod. And with my point proven, I try to remove the wedding ring, which has pinched my skin up into an angry white tent. Even with the bit cut out, I can’t get the damn thing off. She watches me yank at it for a minute or two, then shakes her head and says, ‘I’ll go and get you some soap.’
Red presses the buzzer and goes inside. I hang back. When she returns I’ve gone. On the step, a torn napkin bears a hastily scribbled poem.
Oh Red.
With your red, red head.
What we had is dead.
Cos of what you said.
It’s shorter than I would have liked, but I racked my brain(s) trying to think of other words that rhyme with red. There must be loads of them but I couldn’t think of a single one, so in the remaining space I’ve drawn a heart with a zig-zag split down the middle instead. Instead! That would have been a good one.81
And then I was gone, repairing to the phallic bosom of my lighthouse.82
* * *
80 Plus, it’s not like any of her old man’s money would be coming my way anyway. The day of the dowry has passed, although I’m not sure why because it was a fantastic system.
81 I later removed the ring using some beef dripping.
82 Before remembering I had a contractual obligation to do a second series of my podcast From the Oasthouse. So I popped home for three weeks and did the following: attempted to reconcile with North Norfolk Digital; joined a creative writing class; tried to catch some local fly tippers; attempted potholing; visited Tyneham; went wild swimming; temporarily got a new dog; started going out with my next-door neighbour Katrina; ended a brand ambassadorship; and built a model of the solar system for the grandkids – all while pledging, for a reason I can’t remember, to never once mention on air the lighthouse to which I had dedicated the last year of my life. With that done, I headed back to Kent.
RESURRECTING
11.15 a.m., 21 February 2019
Separated by 150 miles – not to mention around 18 points on the body mass index – two very different broadcasters are having two very different Thursdays.
The first sits in a small digital radio studio in Norwich. His palms are clammy, his pulse racing – and with good reason. A live competition segment is about to make for thrilling radio.
‘Gail, are you still on the line?’
‘I am.’
‘This is monumental. You’re about to play your fifth consecutive QuizQuake – no one’s ever made it this far before. One chap did four but he was a disgruntled ex-employee who still had access to the questions. For five weeks now you’ve been competing to win a £3,000 set of teak patio furniture. You’re so close I bet you can picture it right there in your garden!’
‘I don’t have a garden, I live in a flat.’
‘You don’t have any outdoor space?’
‘No.’
‘So … What have you been doing for five weeks? The patio furniture’s the whole point.’
‘Not sure.’
‘Never mind. Today, the subject is units of measurement. And if you’re ready to play, let’s play!’
Meanwhile, in Chobham, Surrey, another broadcaster has clammy palms and a racing pulse – but the only game he’s playing is the game of ‘will I survive this heart attack?’ – because he’s having a heart attack.
Thirty seconds earlier, against the express wishes of his wife, he’d been smoking a fag in the kitchen as he waited for his lasagne to ping in the microwave. In contorting his torso painfully over the hob so he could blow the smoke up the extractor fan, he had simply asked too much of his body, and the exertion had caused his heart to attack.
Suddenly, his chest is constricting like it’s being sat on by a man of approximately his own size, ironically. Pain fizzes down his left arm like it’s late for a dental appointment somewhere around the hand and they charge you if you don’t attend.
He lurches to the kitchen door, his fag now dunked headfirst into a chocolate mousse he’d been snacking on as he waited for the Italian meal to be ready.
‘Grrhhhhr,’ he hollers, a desperately poor attempt to enunciate his wife’s name, Fran. ‘Grrhhhhr,’ he says again. But he’s so short of breath, speaking is beyond him. He steadies himself against the door, his glassy eyes unthinkingly looking back at the microwave … Ping!
‘Ping!’ The sound effect for a correct answer bounces off the studio walls.
‘Correct. Ampere?’
‘Current.’
‘Correct. Celsius?’
‘Temperature.’
‘Correct. Joule?’
‘Energy.’
‘Correct. Candela?’
‘Luminosity?’
‘Correct, Gail! Twenty seconds to go!’
The clock is ticking in Chobham too. The man is hurtling through his hallway knowing he only has a few seconds before he loses consciousness. Important seconds, precious seconds. He has to alert his wife. He staggers up the stairs, bursts into the master bedroom where his wife is applying Oil of Ulay (or Oil of Olay as it’s now called) to the dry bits of her neck.
‘Oh my God,’ she says. ‘Are you alright?’
‘Yesssss!’ (We’re back in Norwich now.) ‘Yes, Gail. You did it! You won!’
‘Oh, brilliant.’
‘The ones you passed on were newton-metre; the answer was torque. And becquerel, which is a unit of radioactive decay. Still! You managed to get ten right, which means you’ve won. And you definitely want the garden furniture?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Well, as long as you can accept delivery … because the guy will dump it at the kerb if not.’
Back in Surrey, there’s a delivery taking place of a very different nature. A stricken man is being delivered to A&E by trained paramedics. Essentially cabbies who’ve been on a first-aid course.
And because they’re the latter, not the former, the cargo can relax in the knowledge that he won’t be hurled over the side gate or sold for cash in a pub car park. He’ll be delivered right through the front door.
Pow! The trolley batters through the double doors, so that they swing open as if a gunslinger has walked into a saloon.
‘Patient suffered full cardiac arrest! Suggest corantular plasmic flow! Macagron 6 milligrams! Inserting sluice into blood pipe. Adrenalin rising, force 6 easterly, good.’ (I’m paraphrasing what would have been said with similar-sounding medical terms. This is just for a bit of colour. You can carry on reading or just skip to the next paragraph. It’s up to you.) ‘Cephalopod in flux. Paging doctors Patel, Singh, Chan and Mugubu. Erect a drip and drip it.’
Clearly, he was in safe hands. This man? None other than BBC presenting stalwart John Baskell. He was rushed into theatre, and as soon as they summoned another six or seven porters they could begin to roll him onto a bed.
In Norwich, the other man is enjoying a roll of another kind (sausage). It’s a treat and he damn well deserves it. ‘What a show! What a show!’ This man? Commercial radio firebrand Alan Partridge (i.e. me). He’s just completed a show every bit as good (very) as John’s heart attack was bad (very) and has just arrived home.
Finding his housekeeper Rosa in the master bedroom, he flops onto the bed. She’s only just made it, but she can easily remake it after he gets up and would probably quite enjoy it, being a cleaner.
‘Good show, Mister Partridge?’ she says in Philippine-inflected English.
‘A belter, Rosa,’ Partridge replies. ‘If there was any justice I’d get an award, because I smashed it today.’
‘Oh, I so sorry.’
‘Sorry for what?’
‘You try superglue?’
‘On what, Rosa?’
‘On the award you smash.’
‘I didn’t smash an award.’
‘So the award is OK?’
‘There is no award. ‘
‘So why you say you smash it …?’
The conversation continues like this for as many as ten minutes but fails to dent the good humour of the beaming broadcaster.
Two presenters then, two men in the eye of a life-changing moment. You might think they operate in very different orbits – one broadcasting to a substantial cross-section of the British viewing public, the other to a small hardcore of right-wing pensioners who enjoy ‘owning the libs’ almost as much as they enjoy owning their own homes – but in the space of a single phone call, their lives are about to interconnect in a quite fascinating way.
Partridge – and I’m about to switch to the first person because this does feel quite odd, but I’ll wait until the end of this sentence before doing so – hears his phone ringing and jumps to his feet, running down the stairs as fast as his legs can carry him, but will he make it? Yes, I will! I press ‘answer’ and speak into the device: ‘Alan Partridge.’
‘Hello. Can I speak to Alan Partridge?’
‘You’re speaking to Alan Partridge. That’s why I said “Alan Partridge”.’
‘Alan, It’s Dustin Horwich. I’m the exec producer of This Time for BBC Television. Do you have a minute?’
‘I’ve got six!’ I laugh. Not sure why I said six, though.
‘We have a bit of a personnel emergency. Between you and me, our presenter John Baskell has been taken ill. And we’re looking for emergency cover for the whole of next week. Couple of our usual stand-ins aren’t available. I know you’ve done TV before and we’re keen to avoid it being too many identikit presenters.’
‘Thirty-year-olds from public school or forty-year-olds from Bolton.’
‘Exactly. And your values map is a close match to John’s, so the demography checks out.’
‘That’s a terrific point,’ I say, a reflex response I often give when, like now, I have no idea what the person has just said.
‘So we were wondering if you’d be up for a bit of TV presenting next week? You’d obviously be remunerated in a way that’s commensurate with a primetime BBC One role.’
My breathing quickens. Is the word commensurate ever used in a negative sense? It always feels like it promises something wonderful. You never hear a phrase like ‘the tumour’s size is commensurate with an eighty-fags-a-day lifestyle’ or ‘your arrogance is commensurate with you being a Dimbleby brother’.
With that, my mind starts to pop and orgasm. Twenty years in the wilderness. Two decades on the outside looking in. The deathbed promise I’d made to Peter Flint, which, as I say, definitely happened, the supportive words of Richard Keys and Andy Gray, and the Yewtree investigations that had skittled almost every one of my rivals, had all coalesced.
‘Dustin?’
‘Yes, Alan?’
‘Ready my dressing room. I’m coming home.’
My assistant was back from the shops.
‘You’d better sit down in there,’ I said, nodding to the bathroom, and she went and sat on the toilet while I stood outside. This was a belt-and-braces approach for whenever I broke good news, since she could sometimes go ‘weak at the knees’, but in extreme cases would ‘leak at the wees’ – i.e. lose bladder control a little, her pelvic floor not being as robust as it once was.
‘Well?’ she asked, once in position. I told her the news and she squealed, vindicating my decision to position her over the lavatory.
Seconds later, she emerged, dressed and dry, and essayed a brief but aggressive dance, all fists and stomps like a Church of England version of the haka. I allowed her to do this.
Once she had completed the dance, we set to work.
So it fell to my assistant and me to compile several lists: a list of demands for the BBC concerning pay, image rights (whatever they are) and things like who gets the biggest dressing rooms; another list of things I’d need such as a new wash bag/vanity case; and a further list of people who were going to freak when they heard the news so needed telling ASAP. Call me conceited, but I wanted people to know that I was back in the big time so sent correspondence to that effect to a select group of no more than twenty-five of my closest friends. Some have subsequently griped that this seemed big-headed – and readers of my last book will know this is the second time I’ve done this – but it’s actually fine.
With me hovering over her, my assistant engaged with the BBC contracts team and an offer was soon forthcoming. Within hours a deal was struck that made sense for me and my family. I was to join the show the following Monday. They would provide transport and refreshments and I had the make-up girls briefed ahead of my arrival that it was ‘Mr Partridge’ rather than ‘Alan’.
But, of course, my first thought was for John’s health. I had a hamper and card sent to John’s home in Chobham. Due to an error, the card read, ‘Guess who’s back in the big time???’, which means Nick Ferrari got one saying, ‘Condolences on your massive heart attack.’ Still, I’m sure it’ll apply when the time comes.
That meant we had the weekend to prepare for my – I hate to say resurrection, but – resurrection as a TV personality. How would I look, what would I say, what would my vibe be? These preparations, codenamed Operation Kalashnikov,83 were rapid and urgent – they bloody had to be! And there’ll be those who say, ‘But given that you’d been specifically working towards a return to mainstream television for several years, shouldn’t you have had those arrangements in place well in advance?’ And they might have a point. Then again, it’s not as if we’d given no thought to these ingredients – it was simply that when we opened the Word document the ideas within felt inappropriate or dated, not least because I’d imagined my return would be in the form of a Saturday evening light entertainment format à la Noel’s House Party, rather than a serious current affairs show. The snazzy jumper I’d planned to have commissioned didn’t fit the dress code so would have to remain ten balls of wool in my garage. The opening monologue with comical digs at other BBC presenters wouldn’t fit into a tightly packaged 29-minute show. And the poem I’d written, ‘Second Chances (I Rise Again)’, would just have to go on my website or something.
