Hadley, page 15
Joe spent a long time lighting the cigar, puffing noisily. I was drumming my fingers against my thigh and feeling, for the first time, a little sorry for Torment, a lamb being led to the slaughter. So he was ambitious. So he was a bit of a prima donna and a prick. And a bully. And an arrogant waste of space. And he may or may not have bonked Maria. And my sister. Well, there were pricks all over the world – surgeons, teachers, wire journalists even. They would all get their come-uppance, one way or another. It didn’t mean they should be subjected to a sadistic game of cat and mouse. I opened my mouth to say something, but Joe put a hand up to silence me.
“Like I said, Chris, there is no way we can let you be the next James Bond… without toughening you up a bit.”
“Yet again, I fail to understand.”
“Just look at me as a freelance casting agent.”
Torment took a while to register this information. He got up and started to walk around the room again. His shirt was untucked at the back and his casual blue trousers were caked in dust.
“Let me get this straight,” he said. “Are you one of those people…?”
Joe put his cigar in his mouth and grinned. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” His voice was muffled by the huge sizzling wad of tobacco.
Torment sat down and promptly stood up again. He was pointing at Joe and mouthing words. But they weren’t coming out. Then he pointed at me and mouthed some more words. “Oh my god. Hadley, you know what this means?”
“It’s unbelievable,” I said. “Completely unbelievable. I can’t believe my ears.”
“Thanks, man. You’re right, Joe. I must get in shape. I’ll start with a gentle jog along the beach in the morning. But when do I start? Which movie?”
“Hold your horses,” Joe said. “I haven’t finished my story.”
“You want to toughen me up a bit. I understand. I’m no spring chicken. It’s my abs, I know.”
“It’s got nothing to do with your abs. In fact, I don’t like that word. It’s lazy American English and I don’t want you using it again.”
“Well, excuse…”
“Do you understand?”
“Well…”
“Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Torment said after a pause.
“I want to toughen you up and I want to do it right here on this island. The visit to the monsoon damage can wait. I want you to leave this island looking and feeling a new man. Lean, mean and hard.”
“That’s my abs.”
“If you use that word again, I will take you down.”
“But you said before I was too soft and lily white!”
“And I was right. But I was talking about you as a person. I was talking metaphorically. Do you know what that means?”
“I think so.”
“I am talking about the whole damn package.”
“Well, if you’re talking about the ‘whole package’, why didn’t you say so?” Torment hazarded a laugh.
Joe turned towards me and the look in his eye said it all: this man is hopeless, my mission to fuck him over is virtuous and the chances of a violent ending are high and rising.
“Chris,” Joe said, putting an arm around his shoulders. “Chris, Chris, Chris.”
“Joe, Joe, Joe.”
“Try to get it into your head that we need to get the whole world on your side as the next 007.”
“You don’t think the whole world is on my side?”
“Not yet. Not the whole world. But I have, how can I put it, great expectations.”
“Well, bring it on. Let’s do it. Actually, what do I have to do?”
“Firstly, I want you to try to think before you speak.”
“Think?”
“Yes, if you could. I want you to become a person who doesn’t say things like ‘ooh, where’s the crumpet’ and ‘look at my package’ and ‘bring it on’. Do you think you could try that?”
“You mean now?”
“If you could start now, that would be terrific.”
“Then what?”
“Well, we have done some pre-planning here, my colleagues and I. And the plan, now that your Hong Kong movie is almost in post-production, is to lock you up and keep you out of sight for a while.”
“Here?”
“We were thinking an outhouse, if that’s okay.”
“An outhouse?”
“Yes. It’ll be like a dark cell. Don’t forget I will be filming everything.”
“Wow. You must think me awfully ungrateful.”
“Not at all. Think about what I said and come back with any questions any time. Or ideas. I like ideas.”
“Okay. I’m an ideas man myself.”
“Ah.”
“Let’s do it. Bring it on.”
“Yes. Let’s do it.”
Joe pressed a buzzer and two men wearing khaki uniforms appeared. They led Chris out, followed by the man in the Hawaiian shirt who closed the door quietly behind him, but not before winking at me.
“I am going to see you soon, right?” Torment said to us both.
“Of course. Don’t worry.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE DOOR CLOSED and Joe sighed loudly through pursed lips. He walked across the room, sat down on the sofa and put his head in his hands.
“‘Bring it on’,” he said. “Why can’t this guy get it? I hope you are starting to realise how important my job is, Hadley.”
“So now you want me to write stories about him being toughened up?”
“Just write what you see. Look at it this way, at least he won’t be screwing around with your girlfriend any more.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Joe turned to the man in the Hawaiian shirt who had resumed his position at the end of the room. “Reggie, have we got the latest?”
Reggie nodded, looking sadly at me. What was it with this guy?
“Good,” Joe said. “Put it on.”
“Right you are.”
“We’re going to see a movie?” I asked.
“Yeah, right,” said Joe. “‘Great Expectations’. First off, do you know Reggie? Introduce yourself, Reggie.”
Reggie stood up, wiping his palms down the back of his trousers.
“It is me, I am afraid, Mr Arnold. Reggie, your stringer. Reggie Waverly. I am afraid I lost my faith. I am sorry.”
“Your faith in what?”
“Let’s all sit down and talk about that some other time,” Joe said. “Reggie, put it on.”
Waverly looked along a line of DVDs, pulled one down and put it in the machine. I just had time to make out some hand-written title on the cover. Two words. Arnold, Hadley? I couldn’t see clearly.
“One more thing, Hadley,” Joe said. “Forget about Chen and his Chinese group.”
“You mean they aren’t involved?”
“Not any more. I don’t need them. Watch the movie.”
Joe turned to the screen which flickered for a few seconds through a home video of countryside and hills in the distance. It wasn’t until I saw a minibus pass that I realised it was Hong Kong. It was Kam Tin. The cameraman was outside the Honest Bar, in the car park, in daylight. He was doing a crude 360-degree sweep of the hills at the beginning of the Lam Tsuen valley, then the road leading away to my village, a string of duck farms and one or two Nepalese restaurants. There was the car-wrecking yard filled with Japanese taxis. Not just Japanese-made taxis, but bodyworks of taxis with Japanese inscriptions saying taxi and giving details of fares. I had never figured out what they were doing there but imagined there was a story in it (American cars in the Fens, Japanese taxis in the New Territories). A double-decker bus had broken down just in front. Its engine was open to the elements and the driver was standing with his hands on his hips looking pissed off.
Now the cameraman was walking up to the bar. The door was opened for him by a grinning ah-Fei looking proud and ridiculous. The bar was empty. The cameraman sat down in the corner and surveyed the scene. There were no customers. Not even the bloke at the bar with the long hair who looked like a famous cricketer. The focus and exposure were screwed up each time the cameraman panned past the door and the sunlight outside. Then someone was wiping down his table and a huge face came out of focus into the picture.
“What would you like to drink, sir?”
Suddenly in focus, it was Maria. Staring into the camera. She stepped back. She was wearing a tee-shirt and no bra and the shortest, lowest skirt I had never seen. She was trying not to giggle.
“Maria,” I said under my breath. Joe turned to look at me and nodded and half pointed at the screen.
The cameraman didn’t say anything and Maria turned and walked back to the bar. She was being deliberately provocative. The skirt barely covered her bum. She was being jaunty. The man put the camera, still running, down on the table. It was pointed, at an angle, at the seat next to him. All I could see of the cameraman was a dark sleeve, which flitted in and out of picture. Then there was a bit of commotion, the table moved, and someone sat down. It was Maria. The camera was looking directly at her skirt.
“There’s a game I like to play,” she said. Her hand was moving up and down her thigh. “I like to play it with married men only.”
The camera didn’t move, the cameraman didn’t say anything.
“I say to them: ‘What’s the quickest way you can think of to find out if I’m wearing panties.’ Then I wait. Not very long usually. The most loyal husband maybe fifteen seconds…”
The table shook and a big hand grabbed Maria’s leg. The camera went clank and there was Torment’s grinning face.
The film stopped. Neither Joe nor Reggie said a word.
“They make a nice couple,” I said after a while.
“Don’t blame her,” said Joe. “He’s a handsome movie star and she’s a…”
“She’s a what?”
“I’m sorry, Hadley. Seems to me they were made for each other. You know what this handsome movie star does back in your country? He calls the picture editor of the Sun each time he sees a page three girl he likes. He gets the agent’s number and wham bam, she’s in his bed within two hours. That’s the kind of life he leads, and he’s not the only one. That’s the kind of power famous people have. This should help to set the mood for your colour pieces about our mutual friend.”
“How am I going to file my stories?”
“There’s a satellite phone in your room. The internet is still down and we don’t have any cell phones, but we’re working on it.”
“I’m going to make some calls.”
I went to my room and shut the door. I stared out the window and thought about Torment in a dank cell thinking his career was on the up and up. I thought about Torment making love to Maria. Maybe in Joe’s apartment. “I’m not in love,” I said aloud, imagining a life composed entirely of song titles and lines from movies. Joe could engineer it somehow.
I took the satellite phone outside and waited for it to lock on to a signal. I called my parents’ home in Sotobech where it was about seven in the evening and got my sister’s Edinburgh number, fending off questions from my mother about my new-found fame.
“Pamela?”
“Yes?”
“Pamela, this is Hadley. I’m calling from Macho.”
“Hadley! Where are you?”
“Macho.”
“How exciting! We’ve been reading about you.”
“Really? What have you been reading? Who’s we?”
“About you at that party in Hong Kong where you saved Chris’s life. You’re famous over here. What are you doing in Bermuda?”
“I’m not in Bermuda.” Why was she calling him Chris? Torment was the name even my mother used when she referred to the only boy from Halfords to “make good” in the world. “I’m on business. Covering the war in Macho. Pamela, I’m using a very expensive satellite phone link and I can’t stay on. But there is something important I have to ask.”
“Is it about the beet farm?”
“The beet farm? No, not the beet farm. It’s about Torment.”
There was a significant pause, the sound of the receiver changing hands. My heart was beating fast. “Pamela, did you hear me?”
“Yes. What about him?”
“Well he’s been saying some pretty crazy things recently, some of them involving you.”
“Go on.”
I cleared my throat. “He said you and he had a thing together, years ago. When you were about seventeen. He said he came to Sotobech, and you were there alone, and, basically, one thing led to another…”
“Why did he tell you that?”
“Because he’s a malevolent arsehole, that’s why. He’s a vicious, self-important…”
“He said he would never tell anyone.”
“What? Are you saying he wasn’t lying?”
“Well he lied to me, obviously, the shit.”
“So it happened?”
“Yes, Hadley, it happened. Really, you can be so precious. I don’t want to know what he said, but it happened. It was a magic moment.”
“You bonked Torment? After all he did to me? And you call it a magic moment? This is what mum means by ‘making good’ in the world?”
I was suddenly aware of the distance these words were travelling, bouncing off some orbiting space station and being picked up on Mars where everyone was having a really good laugh out of their bottoms. The line went fuzzy and then I was only picking up odd words. “Torment… Halfords… really enormous.”
“Pamela, you’re breaking up. I don’t know if you can hear me but I’m hanging up. Thanks for nothing.”
I hung up and the phone rang. A distant constellation asking for more.
“Hello, is that Arnold Harley?”
“Power to bonk. No it’s not.”
There was a pause. “I’m sorry, this is Eric from Camden Radio in London. We are trying to trace Arnold Harley.”
“He’s not here.”
“Oh.”
“I am Hadley Arnold. Can I help?”
“I do apologise. They told us you were still up.”
“I’m still up, yes. Who told you? How did you get this number?”
“I’m not quite sure actually.”
“Well, what do you want?”
“We were wondering if you could spare us a couple of minutes on our Asia Focus programme. We could take you there live in a few minutes. Sorry for such short notice, but you know how it is.”
“How is it?”
“We heard about some trouble near where you are.”
“Nearby. But I haven’t heard any news for hours. You’ll have to make the questions general.”
“Okay. No problem. Thanks for helping us out. Let me get the pronunciation right. Hadley Arnold.”
“That’s right.”
“And you’re in the middle of the war zone, near Tarragona.”
“Tarragona?”
“Please hold on.”
I heard a scuffle of voices and a hand put across the phone and then Eric was back on the line.
“Sorry, you’re not the Hadley Arnold?”
“I am Hadley Arnold. I’m not sure what you mean. I’m not in Spain.”
“You’re the guy that saved Chris Torment’s life, right?”
“Not exactly.”
I heard Eric put his hand over the phone again and say: “What a shit.” He came back on the line but was not as friendly as before.
“Okay, tell me if you can hear me clearly,” he said.
“I can hear you. I’m not in Tarragona.”
“I don’t care where you are. Don’t mess around, okay? I’m going to leave you with the show. You will hear Susan sign off a guest, there will be a time check and a bit of the jingle. He’ll introduce you, and then you’ll be on live. Is that clear?”
“Susan’s a he? I’m not in Spain.”
“I’m leaving you with the show.”
I listened and waited. Familiar night-time British commercial radio sounds. I imagined deserted motorways and people smoking cigarettes and stamping their feet in the cold outside service stations. I saw the West End streets after all the bars had closed and dodgy people standing in shop doorways, near casinos, waiting for fun. When fun didn’t arrive, they stood in shop doorways waiting for mini-cabs. They didn’t arrive either. I thought about Torment’s power to bonk and wondered what line the bastard had used on my sister. My sister! And he wasn’t even famous then. I wanted a gin and tonic. I heard Susan.
“And now we are going over live to the South Pacific Macho Island where the ethnic war has been raging for donkeys with all sorts of mayhem. On the line from the frontline in Tamaranda is Shrubs’s man in deep doo-doo, Harley Armwood. Harley, are you there?”
I allowed a long pause. “Hello, mum?”
“Hello, is that Harley Armwood?”
“Hello, mum?”
“Hello Harley. Good to have you Cool on Camden. Harley, tell us, we’ve been hearing dreadful stories about bombs in Colombia, tourists pulling out in droves, the economy in tatters. But I hear there’s a lighter side to all this. What’s it all about?”
I thought a while. A lighter side to all this? In Colombia? I took a deep breath.
“Hello, mum?”
“Oh dear, we seem to have a crossed line…”
“Hello. This is Hadley Arnold.”
“Hadley. Welcome. We have you Cool on Camden. I don’t know whether you caught the question.”
“Not a word.”
“It’s just that we here in London have been hearing awful things about the fighting in Sri Lanka in recent years, but thankfully we hear there is a lighter side.”
“I’m sorry, Susan, but can’t think of one actually. There has been some sporadic violence here in Macho, but that is nothing out of the ordinary for this sun-baked archipelago where violence is pretty much, though not so much, endemic and entrenched after years of ethnic and civil unrest. As it is on the mainland.”
“Wow. Well, we hear that while some people may have been having a tough time of it, it’s onion soup on the house in all the top hotels.”
I frowned and looked into the receiver. I banged it against a palm tree.
“Hello, Hadley. Are you there?”
“Yes, I’m sorry. Could you repeat the question?”
“Yes. The papers here have picked up on the story that while some people may have been having a tough time of it in, um, near you, it’s onion soup on the house in all the top hotels.”
