‘Please do.’
He heads to the door, then stops and turns. ‘I’m sorry, have I broken some sort of professional code? Can I say that to a member of my staff? That they look nice?’
‘Course you can,’ she says, but both know that ‘nice’ was not the word he had used. The word was ‘beautiful.’
‘Excuse me, but I’m looking for the most odious man on television?’ says Toby Moray from the doorway, in that whiny, pinched little voice of his. He’s wearing a tartan suit and his on-screen make-up, his hair slick and oiled into a jokey quiff and Dexter wants to throw a bottle at him.
‘I think you’ll find that that’s you who you’re looking for, not me,’ says Dexter, concise speech suddenly beyond him.
‘Nice come-back, superstar,’ says his co-presenter. ‘So you saw the previews then?’
‘Nope.’
‘Because I can run off some photocopies for you—’
‘Just one bad write-up, Toby.’
‘You didn’t read the Mirrorthen. Or the Express, The Times. .’
Dexter pretends to be studying his running order. ‘No-one ever built a statue of a critic.’
‘True, but no-one built a statue of a TV presenter either.’
‘Fuck off, Toby.’
‘Ah, le mot juste!’
‘Why are you here anyway?’
‘To wish you luck.’ He crosses, places his hands on Dexter’s shoulders and squeezes. Round and waspish, Toby’s role on the show is a kind of irreverent, say-anything jester figure and Dexter despises him, this jumped-up little warm-up man, and envies him too. In the pilot and in rehearsals he has run rings around Dexter, slyly mocking and deriding him, making him feel fat-tongued, slow-witted, doltish, the pretty boy who can’t think on his feet. He shrugs Toby’s hands away. This antagonism is meant to be the stuff of great TV they say, but Dexter feels paranoid, persecuted. He needs another vodka to recover some of his good spirits, but he can’t, not while Toby’s smirking at him in the mirror with his little owlish face. ‘If you don’t mind I’d like to gather my thoughts.’
‘I understand. Focus that mind of yours.’
‘See you out there, yeah?’
‘See you, handsome. Good luck.’ He pulls the door closed then opens it again. ‘No, really. I mean it. Good luck.’
When Dexter’s sure he’s alone he pours himself that drink and checks himself in the mirror. Bright red t-shirt worn under black dinner jacket over washed out jeans over pointed black shoes, his hair cut short and sharp, he is meant to be the picture of metropolitan male youth but suddenly he feels old and tired and impossibly sad. He presses two fingers against each eye and attempts to account for this crippling melancholy, but is having trouble with rational thought. It feels as if someone has taken his head and shaken it. Words are turning to mush and he can see no plausible way of getting through this. Don’t fall apart, he tells himself, not here, not now. Hold it together.
But an hour is an impossibly long time on live TV, and he decides that he might need a little help. There’s a small water bottle on his dressing table, and he empties it into the sink then, glancing at the door, takes the bottle of vodka from the drawer once again and pours three, no, four inches of the viscous liquid into the bottle and replaces the lid. He holds it up to the light. No-one would ever tell the difference and of course he’s not going to drink it all, but it’s there, in his hand, to help him out and get him through. The deceit makes him feel excited and confident again, ready to show the viewing public, and Emma, and his father at home just what he can do. He is not just some presenter. He is a broadcaster.
The door opens. ‘WAHEY!’ says Suki Meadows, his co-presenter. Suki is the nation’s ideal girlfriend, a woman for whom bubbliness is a way of life, verging on a disorder. Suki would probably start a letter of condolence with the word ‘Wahey!’ and Dexter might find this relentless perkiness a bit wearing if she weren’t so attractive and popular and crazy about him.
‘HOW ARE YOU, SWEETHEART? SHITTING BRICKS, I EXPECT!’ and this is Suki’s other great talent as a TV presenter, to hold every conversation as if she’s addressing the Bank Holiday crowd on the sea-front at Weston-super-Mare.
‘I am a little nervous, yes.’
‘AWWWW! COME HERE YOU!’ She wraps her arm around his head and holds it like a football. Suki Meadows is pretty and what used to be called petite, and fizzes and bubbles like a fan-heater dropped into a bath. There has been some flirtation between them recently, if you can call this flirtation, Suki pushing his face into her breast like this. Like a head-boy and head-girl, there has been some pressure for the two stars to get together, and it does sort of make sense from a professional, if not emotional point of view. She squeezes his head beneath her arm — ‘YOU’RE GOING TO BE GREAT’ — then suddenly holds onto his ears and jerks his face towards her. ‘LISTEN TO ME. YOU’RE GORGEOUS, YOU KNOW THAT, AND WE ARE GOING TO BE SUCH A GREAT TEAM, YOU AND ME. MY MUM’S HERE TONIGHT AND SHE WANTS TO MEET YOU AFTERWARDS. BETWEEN ME AND YOU I THINK SHE FANCIES YOU. I FANCY YOU, SO SHE MUST FANCY YOU TOO. SHE WANTS YOUR AUTOGRAPH BUT YOU HAVE TO PROMISE NOT TO GET OFF WITH HER!’
‘I’ll do my best, Suki.’
‘YOU GOT FAMILY IN?’
‘No—’
‘FRIENDS?
‘No—’
‘WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THIS OUTFIT?’ She’s wearing a clubby top and a tiny skirt, and carries the obligatory bottle of water. ‘CAN YOU SEE MY NIPPLES?’
Is she flirting? ‘Only if you look for them,’ he flirts back mechanically, smiling weakly, and Suki senses something. She holds out his hands to the side and intimately bellows, ‘WHAT’S UP WITH YOU, SWEETHEART?’
He shrugs. ‘Toby’s been in here, winding me up. .’ and before he can finish she has pulled him to his feet and her arms are round his waist, her hands twanging the waistband of his underpants in sympathy. ‘YOU IGNORE HIM, HE’S JUST JEALOUS ’CAUSE YOU’RE BETTER AT THIS THAN HE IS.’ She looks up at him, her chin poking his chest. ‘YOU’RE A NATURAL, YOU KNOW YOU ARE.’
The floor manager is at the door. ‘Ready for you now, guys.’
‘WE’RE GREAT TOGETHER, AREN’T WE, ME AND YOU. SUKI AND DEX, DEX AND SUKI? WE’RE GOING TO KNOCK EM DEAD.’ Suddenly she kisses him once, very hard, as if rubber-stamping a document. ‘MORE OF THAT LATER, GOLDEN BOY,’ she says in his ear, then picks up her bottle of water and bounds out onto the studio floor.
Dexter takes a moment to look at his reflection in the mirror. Golden Boy. He sighs and presses all ten fingers hard into his skull and tries not to think about his mother. Hold it together, don’t foul this up. Be good. Do something good. He smiles the smile that he keeps especially for use on television, picks up his spiked water bottle, and heads out onto the studio floor.
Suki waits for him at the edge of the immense set, taking his hand and squeezing it. The crew are running round, patting his shoulder and punching his arm matily as they pass, and high above their heads ironic go-go dancers in bikinis and cowboy boots stretch out their calves in their ironic cages. Toby Moray is doing the warm-up, and getting big laughs too, until suddenly he’s introducing them, a big hand please for your hosts tonight, Suki Meadows and Dexter Mayhew!
He doesn’t want to go. Music thumps from the speakers: ‘Start the Dance’ by The Prodigy, and he wants to stay here in the wings, but Suki is tugging on his hand, and suddenly she is bounding out into the bright studio lights, bawling: ‘ALLLLLLLLLLRIGGGGGGHHHHHT!’
Dexter follows on, the suave and urbane half of the presenting duo. As always the set involves a lot of scaffolding, and they climb the ramps until they’re looking down at the audience below them, Suki chattering all the way: ‘LOOK AT YOU, YOU’RE ALL GORGEOUS, ARE YOU READY TO HAVE A GREAT TIME? MAKE SOME NOISE!’ Dexter stands mute on the gantry next to her, the microphone dead in his hand as he realises that he is drunk. His big break on live national television and he is sodden with vodka, dizzy with it. The gantry seems impossibly high, far higher than in rehearsals, and he wants to lie down but if he does this there’s a chance that two million people will notice, so he assumes the manner and offers: ‘Elloyoulothowareyouallfeelingalright?’
