The Confessions Collection. Timothy Lea
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Can’t be bad, can it? My name up there. Patron of the arts. It might be the first step toward a knighthood or a life peerage. Lord Noggett of Clapham. How does that grab you?’
That’s what I like about Sidney. For a medium-sized, pot-bellied geezer bearing a faint resemblance to Paul Newman in a bad light, he does think big.
‘Very nice,’ I tell him. ‘Rosie is going to like that, isn’t she?’
For a second Sid’s face clouds over and I see him looking warily at Glint Thrust who is padding off towards his caravan with an evil flicker in his eye and an eager extra in his grasp.
‘Yeah. We’ll have to watch her with old Lightning Tonk, won’t we? You know how she can be sometimes.’ I do indeed. As already mentioned, she has broadened her horizons a lot since she first snagged her tights in the back of Sid’s mini-van and her attitude to men of the opposite sex has veered between the friendly and the ‘come and pet it!’ Not, of course, that Sidney has the word ‘restraint’ tattooed across his scrotum but, as we all know, it is different for men.
Sidney’s fears are well founded as I see when the Lady Rosie visits the set. She takes one look at Glint and freezes like a gundog scenting a victim. He rolls his eyeballs over her and you could draw dotted lines between their two sets of peepers. If they were both dogs I would push off and start filling a bucket of water. Luckily Glint has to react in front of the cameras so an immediate confrontation is avoided.
‘Right, Glint. Listen,’ says Loser, whose sheepskin coat does not smell any better under the arc lights, ‘let me feel this one with you.’ Glint is still looking at Rosie and he nods as if he likes the idea. ‘Let’s re-establish your motivation. You are a committed socialist who has been crushed into poverty and insignificance by the jackboot of reactionary capitalism. You steal, murder and rape because this is your way of crying for help, of focusing public attention on your predicament and the wrongs that a grossly lop-sided, misguided society has perpetrated upon you.’
‘Dig.’ says Glint, nodding. ‘I bash her about a bit and then ram it up her.’
‘And we dissolve into the lyrical scene with you as a little boy playing with your dog on the hills above the Welsh mining village. Exactly. Are you ready, Dawn?’
Dawn Lovelost is fiddling with something in the area of her ample bristols.
‘This isn’t real blood, is it?’ she says distastefully.
‘Of course it’s real blood,’ snaps Loser. ‘Not real human blood –’ a slight note of disappointment creeps into his voice, ‘but real sheep’s blood. Try and turn towards the camera so that we can come right in on it spurting from your chest. OK, Mac?’
‘OK, K.L.’
Loser turns back to Dawn. ‘And get your mouth really wide open when you scream. I want the camera to disappear down your throat.’
‘Ooh! Sounds horrible!’ says Rosie. Unfortunately, she says it out loud.
‘Of course it’s horrible, you stupid bitch!’ howls Loser. ‘Life is horrible. What do you think I’m trying to say? What good is art if it doesn’t make you feel? To vomit is to feel. After one of my movies I want people to come out into the street puking! Physically and mentally different. Their minds expanded, reorientated. Any artistic endeavour that does not challenge basic conceptions about life is fart, not art!’
Many women might be distressed into silence by such an attack, but not our Rosie. Fortunately she has no idea what Loser is on about, but she does understand words like ‘fart’ and ‘bitch’.
‘Don’t you talk to me like that,’ she snorts. ‘Do you know who I am?’
‘I know what you are,’ yells Loser. ‘You’re a soft-brained, overdressed, underwitted pawn of creeping bourgeois mediocrity who has the snivelling impertinence to interrupt a genius in the execution of his duty to posterity. Otto! Set the dogs on her!’
Quick on the uptake readers will sense that things are on the verge of getting out of hand and it is as well that Justin calls a ten-minute break and walks Loser round the stage a couple of times to cool down.
I am about to perform a similar service for Rosie when Glint Thrust appears with the unwanted inevitability of a noisy fart at the vicar’s tea party.
‘I felt I just had to come and say how awful I felt about you being talked to like that,’ he gushes. ‘That man may be a genius but he can be a real pig most of the time.’
‘He had no call to go on like that,’ sniffs Rosie. ‘Look, he’s made me cry. My make-up will be all over the place.’
‘Fix yourself up in my dressing room,’ husks Glint, extending a hand. ‘We might even have a little drink to soothe your nerves.’
It is not half-past ten yet and I do not think it is in anyone’s interest to get Glint and Rosie curled up alongside a bottle of booze at this hour in the morning.
‘Mind your own business,’ she snaps when I make a few respectful observations on the subject. ‘I didn’t hear you standing up for me when that terrible man insulted me. Wait ’til Sidney hears about this.’
That thought is occurring to me, though in a slightly different context. Few ladies emerge from Glint’s caravan without their knickers making a quick trip down to ankle level and Rosie is not one of the least sociable birds in the world when you get a couple of vodkas and orange inside her. Should things get out of hand and Sidney stumble across a big feature starring his lady wife, then my career in pictures could be right up the spout. I must take steps to ensure that no opportunity for sexual congress arises.
All the curtains in Glint’s caravan are drawn so I wait a couple of minutes and then knock on the door. Glint has his jacket off and is not pleased to see me.
‘Are we rolling again?’ he asks.
‘No, Mr Thrust, but I wondered if I could have your autograph for my kid sister.’
‘Listen, boy. You know the rules. Don’t interrupt me when I’m recovering. I give a lot out there, you know.’ I peer over his shoulder to see if Rosie has started giving anything yet. Luckily she still appears to be fully clothed. She sticks her tongue out at me.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Thrust. It’s just that she’s such a big fan and I know that –’
‘OK, OK! Give me the book.’
It suddenly occurs to me that I don’t have a book.
‘If you write it backwards onto my hand I’ll press it on a piece of blotting paper,’ I bleat helplessly.
‘Get out!’
The door slams in my face and I am left to plan my next move. Five minutes later I have found a hammer and go round the caravan tapping the wheels and anything else that looks as if it joins on to something.
‘Now what?!’ Thrust is standing at the top of the steps and looking less inviting than an invitation to your mother-in-law’s for Christmas.
‘Just checking that everything is in shape for the road,’ I say cheerfully, noticing that Glint’s shirt is now unbuttoned to the waist and his face flushed.
‘It never goes on the road,’ snarls Thrust. ‘But you will in a minute unless you make yourself scarcer than horseshit on the M1.’ He slams the door shut and the whole caravan shudders.
Oh dear! Unless Loser comes back sharpish things could get very sticky. Fortunately, as always seems to happen at such moments, I have an idea. Loser’s hounds are lashed to a prop at the end of the studio and showing every sign of wanting to go for walkies. Otto is having a very earnest chat with Crispin.
‘Just love the feel of it against my skin,’ he is saying as I approach. ‘If I had my way I’d never wear anything else.’
‘Can I take the dogs for a walk?’ I ask.
‘Careful