Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite! Read online

  The morning rush had slowed. There were a few customers in but none waiting.

  'I wrote a film script once,' I said.

  'Oh, wow, that is so cool. What's it about?'

  'A warrior-philosopher,' I said.

  Just then, even though I'd said it a hundred times before, I had a moment of realisation that the phrase warrior-philosopher sounded utterly preposterous. However, Ruby was eighteen and easily impressed.

  'Wow,' she said. 'A warrior-philosopher. You mean, like...' She hesitated, and just for a moment looked like the dumbest blonde on the dumbest TV quiz show you could imagine. Then she said, 'I don't know, I can't think of any warrior-philosophers...'

  I shrugged, and said, 'The Spartans,' very self-consciously.

  'Cool,' she said. 'Like the movie. So that's what it's about? Lots of men in skirts with swords?'

  'It's about a guy who sits doing jigsaws. Thinking. The jigsaws are a metaphor.'

  'Right. Cool.'

  'And while he's thinking of ways to piece together life, society, whatever, he dispenses wisdom to anyone who asks. But then society starts to fall apart, as no one listens to his advice, and he has to take to the streets to bring order.'

  'Wow. That sounds epic. It's one of these, what-d'you-call-them, costume drama things. Old, you know... kind of shit.'

  'Set in modern day Glasgow,' I said.

  'Oh.'

  It had been years since I'd explained to anyone what the film script was about. I used to describe it with passion. Standing there, in the cold light of morning, and talking about it for the first time in forever, I realised how stupid it sounded. And then I thought, well, just because it's stupid, doesn't mean that someone isn't going to want to make it into a film. In fact, these days it might even be a pre-requisite. And I started to wonder if Marion Hightower would want to film in Britain, or whether he was getting me over to California to ask me to rewrite the script, setting it in LA, New York, or in Anywhereville, Anystate, USA.

  'Can I have a skinny latté, please. And two blueberry muffins.'

  We turned to the lady at the counter. It was a surprise that we hadn't already noticed her, as she was blocking out the sun.

  3

  PAUL IS DEAD:

  WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER GUY?

  Paul is dead? Sure, you're thinking, I know. I saw him die at the Olympic opening ceremony.

  However, the man who made us all suffer through "Hey Jude" that warm London night in July, was not the man who exploded onto the music scene with the Beatles in the early 1960s. As many internet conspiracy sites will tell you, Paul McCartney died in a car accident in November 1966, and was replaced by a doppelgänger, according to the wishes of – depending on which site you read – the other Beatles, Brian Epstein, the Wilson government or MI5. To this day, this doppelgänger continues to live out the lie.

  I'm not here to talk about the evidence. We all know it. The changes to McCartney's facial features, the very obvious height difference between the two men, the clues liberally sprinkled among the album covers, particularly Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road, from the OPD armband to the funeral procession across the most famous pedestrian crossing in the world, featuring an out-of-step, barefoot McCartney.

  Instead, I want to start a discussion on the musical legacy of this second man. Whatever his name before he was inserted into the Beatles, we will call him Paul, because regardless of his previous identity, he has now been Paul for well over forty–five years; and whatever the original McCartney achieved before his death, this new version has written many, many more songs, and deserves to be considered an artist in his own right, rather than constantly compared to the man who preceded him.

  (cont...)

  *

  A week later I was getting ready to fly to LA. Mid-December. Even after speaking to Marion Hightower I hadn't been completely convinced that it had been going to happen. Nevertheless, he clearly knew the script inside out – I quickly read it again to refresh my memory of what I'd first written almost ten years previously – and had sounded very excited about the whole enterprise. In the course of our twenty-five minute conversation I think he mentioned every major Hollywood actor that had ever lived as being right for the lead part, while honing in on Emily Blunt as the love interest.

  Reading it again I realised two things. Firstly, it was terrible. Secondly, Jason Statham was the Jigsaw Man.

  We were at the dinner table. Brin, Baggins and me. I'd made macaroni cheese. Mac and cheese as the young ones call it these days. Today's generation have an aversion to syllables. Brin and I were drinking a slightly more expensive than usual sauvignon blanc from Marlborough Sound in anticipation of my film deal. Baggins was drinking apple juice.

  I was already feeling nervous about the flight. It had been four years since I'd been on a plane. I wasn't out and out terrified of flying, I just didn't like the turbulence. I wasn't scared that I was going to die. It wasn't that. I would compare it to being on a rollercoaster. When you get on a rollercoaster you don't necessarily think you're going to die, that's not why it's terrifying. It's because you're moving at great speed and are not in control. Same for me on a plane that's bouncing around at thirty thousand feet. I'm not worried that we're about to hit the ground, but the sensation of moving around while travelling very fast and having nothing to do but sit there trying not to spill your gin and tonic into your lap, gets right down into my soul. Base fear. Nothing else scares me like that. Nothing.

  Well, I guess a rollercoaster would, but then I never have to go on a rollercoaster. Life, on the other hand, occasionally throws up situations where you're required to get on a plane and there really isn't an alternative.

  I had found myself saying to Marion Hightower, 'Is there a boat I can get?' He'd laughed.

  'You'll be all right, Daddy,' said Baggins.

  'I know,' I said, even though I didn't mean it.

  'You said you were travelling in first class, didn't you?'

  I nodded.

  'Do you get turbulence in first class?'

  Brin laughed. I wanted to laugh, but it wasn't as if that was something I'd never thought of.

  'You'd think,' I said. 'Paying that much, the least they could do is guarantee there'd be no turbulence. But no, it affects you up there just the same. Well, they say you feel the turbulence less at the front, but if it's bouncing around, it's bouncing around.'

  'God, it's not going to bounce around,' said Brin.

  She'd persuaded me to go to Australia once, before Baggins had started school. I fretted for weeks about the flight. Imagined this gigantic storm encircling the world, and us having to fly through turbulence and continually falling through pockets of clear air for twenty non-stop hours. As it turned out, there was barely a bump, in either direction.

  'If I could know that in advance,' I said.

  'Why don't you ask the pilot?' said Baggins.

  I smiled, but really I was thinking that I'd rather move the conversation on. Talking about it was only making it worse.

  'What kind of car do you think I'll get picked up by in the morning?' I said.

  'If things get bad you can always go to your happy place,' said Baggins.

  For a moment I was reminded of a time that for some reason – just because it was a few years earlier – seemed happier and less stressful, even though in reality it hadn't been.

  When Baggins was younger and was worried about something, anything, I'd say to her to close her eyes and imagine she was in a happy place. A special place, somewhere she felt safe, somewhere there was no stress and nothing to be worried about.

  'Yes, I'll do that,' I said.

  'Where's your happy place?' she asked.

  I took a sip of wine, staring at the table. Where was my happy place? Did I even have a happy place?

  'Have you got a happy place, Mummy?' said Baggins, when I didn't answer within the allotted three seconds of attention span.

  It hadn't been so long ago, yet the thought of Brin being happy seeme
d such a distant memory that I presumed it would draw one of her usual snorts, but I guess she mostly reserved those for me.

  'Nairn,' she said. 'Sitting on East Beach, looking out at the sea on a warm summer's day, and at the hills on the Black Isle. And taking a picnic. A still day, barely any breeze. The water calm, that wonderful smell of summer in the air. Then walking through the sea out to the sand bars that stretch forever out into the firth when the tide goes out.'

  She smiled at Baggins, a look that excluded me. Baggins nodded her approval. We'd been to Nairn and sat on East Beach every summer for the previous five years. It would have been difficult, in fact, to think of any other happy place.

  'Can I get a doughnut from the shop?' asked Baggins.

  'At the beach?'

  'Yes.'

  'Sure,' said Brin.

  Baggins nodded, then turned back to me. She had polished off a huge plate of mac and cheese as she'd talked.

  'Daddy?' she said. 'What about you? We've got mum's happy place, but she doesn't really need one...'

  'Because I'm never stressed.'

  'Daddy?'

  'Can I just have mum's?' I said.

  'Mum?' she said, as if needing official endorsement from the original happy place provider.

  'Why not?' said Brin. 'Why don't we all have the same happy place?'

  *

  I was sitting in BA's first class lounge at Heathrow. I'd never been in a first class lounge before. We'd toyed with it when flying to Australia, but hadn't been able to afford it in the end.

  I was feeling relaxed, which is one of the points of a first class lounge I suppose. It wasn't the free alcohol and food, nor the peace and quiet, nor the many people on hand to attend to my every need, that was relaxing me. I was relaxed because I'd checked the weather forecast for London and LA, and both of them seemed set fair. Not too hot, not too cold, little or no cloud cover, light winds.

  Take off and landing were going to be fine. I'd just have to worry about the bit in the middle when I got there, but for the moment my nerves had been eased.

  I'd printed off the film script so that I could make notes during the flight. Reading it again in the past few days, several lines made me wince, and I was wondering what on earth Marion Hightower saw in it.

  Brin said that when I had moments of such insecurity I ought to remember every Adam Sandler film I'd ever seen, and that should convince me of Hollywood's desperation, and how they'd make any old shit if the right person took a notion to it. Any old shit was how I'd come to view my work, yet she was right. It just took one person to get interested and we'd be off.

  I'd brought along the latest edition of Hunter Davies's biography of the Beatles, which I was reading for the third time. Nevertheless I liked to think that I'd be distracted by the many enticements of travelling on BA first class, and probably wouldn't need it. And, of course, I had my iPod full of the Beatles. Comfort music. I know them all, every song, back to front and inside out, even though in some cases I haven't actually listened to them in ten years.

  I wonder if I'd have liked the Beatles if I'd been around in the '60s. Probably not, because so many others did. It felt different, however, getting in to them years after they'd split up, when everyone else had moved on and all my friends were listening to the Police and Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran.

  I thought the Anthology thing devalued the brand somewhat. There was too much. Too much of the Beatles. The six-part documentary might have been needed to tell the story the way they wanted to, but it far outlived the interest of non-Beatles fans. The viewing figures for the last episode were around a couple of hundred. And those three albums felt bloated, the whole enterprise seeming to drag on.

  If anyone had asked me, I would have said a single CD of all the best unreleased stuff, including those two new ones the boys knocked up in the studio over a spliff and a bottle of Chardonnay; a single four-hour documentary, of the type Scorsese's done for Dylan and Harrison; and a bumper 200 CD package for the diehard fans – like me – who wanted to hear every minute and every single note the lads had recorded in the studio. All bases covered. A one-time publicity shot.

  No one asked me.

  Since then we've had the Cirque du Soleil CD and the iTunes launch and more BBC archive material and Paul McCartney breaking into "Hey Jude" every time someone so much as opens a local supermarket, and it all feels a bit old. It's impossible to be surprised by the Beatles anymore.

  I try, by going long periods without listening. But there I was, sitting in BA's first class lounge, listening to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band – an album I hadn't heard all the way through in years – and it all sounded so familiar.

  Comforting nevertheless. I didn't turn it off.

  We were called to board forty-five minutes before take-off.

  Twenty-four hours later I was sitting in an interrogation room.

  4

  I think I was in America, but maybe I only thought that because my inquisitors had American accents.

  It was a plain room, much as one would see in any US TV crime drama. One door, one large mirror along the wall. I guess there were people on the other side of the glass, but I was barely thinking even that. I was barely thinking at all.

  I was sitting at a desk. All my clothes had been removed and I was wearing a plain, dark blue jumpsuit. I hadn't been given any underwear. Between undressing me and allowing me to put on the jump suit, they had X-rayed me, shaved off my beard, and given me a full body cavity search. That was possibly the most unpleasant thing that had ever happened to me, except I couldn't think straight and so wasn't in a position to compare it to other unpleasant things that had happened.

  The top of the desk was clear. There were two people sitting across from me. So far they didn't seem to be good cop/bad cop. They were just hard and humourless. I think it was their utter humourlessness that was the most striking thing about them. One gets too used to TV cops having a nice turn in glib remarks. Maybe they were saving the glib remarks until they had an audience on the other side of the mirror.

  The woman was in her forties. Hair swept back off her forehead, tied tightly. No make-up. This combination had no effect on whether or not she was attractive – I was in no fit state to make that judgement – it served to make her look hard, business-like and formidable. Her partner, a small African-American man with thick dark hair and a small moustache, had a friendlier look about him, yet there had been nothing friendly about his words or tone. The woman was the lead interrogator.

  'Tell us about your family,' she said. The words sounded innocuous, but every question was delivered as if she was asking why I'd flown the plane into the World Trade Centre.

  'I've got a wife, Brin. Bryony. I call her Brin. And there's Baggins, our daughter. She's eleven.'

  'What kind of name is Baggins?'

  I was finding it hard to concentrate, even though this particular line of questioning was fairly straightforward. I had a pain in my anus as a result of the body search. Sometime I was bound to get angry about that, but at the moment I just craved Nurofen, a telephone and somewhere to lie down.

  'It's a nickname,' I said, when I'd thought of the words. 'Her name's Amanda.'

  'What kind of nickname is Baggins?'

  What kind of nickname is Baggins? Was that even a question? I tried to think of something to say, but nothing other than the obvious occurred to me.

  'It's from The Lord of the Rings... The Hobbit... The name of the Hobbit is Bilbo Baggins.'

  'Why did you name your daughter after a character in a film?'

  I made a slightly dismissive movement with my right hand.

  'Don't move your hands,' said the guy with the moustache. 'You want us to 'cuff you?'

  I shook my head.

  'Well, don't move your hands. Or we'll 'cuff you.'

  'Why did you name your daughter after a character in a film?'

  I straightened my thoughts, tried to get words to come out in the right order.

&nbs
p; 'She was short. One of her friends said she wasn't growing and must be a hobbit... That's all.'

  'When was this?'

  'When?... I don't know, about four years ago, maybe.'

  'What age would your daughter have been then?'

  '... seven...'

  'Aren't all seven-year-old girls short?'

  I didn't answer that. She waited another couple of seconds.

  'You thought it was all right to give your child a name that mocked her size?'

  'It was a joke. She liked it. It wa—'

  'Why weren't you on the plane?'

  It was the guy with the moustache, cutting in. The rest of it was just small talk. Background. They really wanted to know why I hadn't been on the plane. Except I had been on the plane. I know I was on the plane. I'd eaten chicken fricassee and drunk a Californian white and wiped my face with a hot towel and had strawberry cheesecake and a cup of coffee, and I'd watched The Hobbit and thought of Brin and Baggins, and I'd looked over the script, and I'd folded the bed out and tried to get to sleep but I hadn't really been tired, I'd just been folding the bed out because I could and I'd wanted to see what it was like, and I'd tried reading Hunter Davies but hadn't been able to concentrate and I'd listened to the Beatles and I'd finally found a song – Baby You're A Rich Man – that I'd almost, but not quite, forgotten and which took me a little by surprise, and eventually I'd slept with the seat upright. I'd done all of those things, on the plane. I knew I had.

  I'd given a lot of thought to how I came to be on the plane before it crashed but not on it afterwards, but I was no nearer an explanation. And I wasn't even going to start trying. It was so absurd, so far-fetched, so utterly out of the ordinary, that the very idea of it subverted all kinds of notion of time.

  'I was on the plane,' I said. My voice sounded weak, despite all my efforts to be strong. Would I even believe myself? Did I really believe that I was on the plane?

  'What's your name?' asked the woman.