18

The Ambitions

The next day, in the canteen, I told the others my concerns about the group being exploited for cheap sensationalist TV. I recommended that we abort the whole thing but they were having none of it. To a man, they felt I was over-dramatising, Dougie slapped me playfully around the back of the head and told me to stop being such a queen. Even Albie, normally so quiet, said that it would be a shame to stop now. So I was stymied. I would just have to get on with it.

The general attitude towards Mohammad was that if he wanted to throw a strop, let him. Good riddance. Word had gone around that he had made a formal complaint about racial abuse, so now pretty much the whole canteen was subjecting him to racial abuse. Some of the Muslim inmates started shouting in his defence and soon bits of food were flying through the air, until the prison officers stepped in. Luckily for Malcolm, no cameras were there to witness it.

The heatwave was strengthening its hold now. The air seemed to smother you like a blanket and I found myself recalling Dougie’s dark predictions. What would I do if there was a riot? What was the etiquette? Was hiding frowned upon? Riot-etiquette struck me as a funny idea, so I gave it to Gerald and he developed it in his stand-up.

Louise had clearly sensed my suspicion because she definitely backed off for a couple of days. Rehearsals carried on in a reasonable atmosphere, despite the pervading smell of stale sweat.

The TV crew stayed as uninvasive as possible, but in my gloomy state of mind, it felt like the still, quiet dawn before a great battle.

Then, halfway through a tea-break, Louise takes the floor.

“If it’s OK with everyone, I had a little idea for a section of the programme. Um…it’s basically each of you talking about when you were a kid. What you wanted to be when you grew up, y’know, childhood ambitions. Is everyone happy to do that?”

A ripple of shrugs goes around the room, so they set up the camera, point it at a chair and first on to the chair is Pulse.

Louise sits down behind the cameraman’s shoulder.

“So, Pulse, tell us your childhood ambition.”

“Well, Louise, I—”

“Can you answer without saying ‘Louise’?”

“Oh…right…sure…well, my childhood ambition was simple. I wanted to be Viv Richards.”

Louise looks blank.

“He’s a cricketer,” I tell her.

“Just Pulse on his own, if you don’t mind. Sorry, Pulse, could you start that again.”

He clears his throat. “My childhood ambition was to be like Viv Richards…the cricketer.” He laughs to himself. “And when I say the cricketer, I mean the cricketer, ’cos there ain’t ever been anyone like him, and there never will be.”

Louise asks him what made Richards so special.

“Everything!” exclaims Pulse, clapping his hands in delight at the memory. “Ev-er-y-thing. Everything about him was so cool. I wanted to be him, I wanted to look like him, I wanted to bat like him, but most of all, I wanted to walk like him. Man, he could strut. When he came out to bat he’d walk out of that pavilion like a King – King Viv – he’d walk out with his sleeves rolled up like he was on a day out, his chest sticking out, whirling that bat of his through the air like it was a sword and, man, you could see the blood draining from the faces of the other opponent fellas when they saw him coming. They knew he was destruction in human form, and so did he. That’s why he swaggered, he knew he was destruction. When he walked out that stadium would shrink, it belonged to him and once he start batting – boom! Boom! That ball’s a-flying to all four corners, boom! Out of the ground! He was it. He was proof that a black man could be king. And loved. A loved king. And that’s who I wanted to be.”

Pulse leans back in his chair and breaks into laughter. “Sadly, I was crap at cricket.”

Laughter all round. Next on the chair is Simo who, to no one’s great surprise, wanted to be the next Jackie Chan. Louise soon gets bored with him and invites Gerald to take the chair.

“As a child,” he begins a little wearily, “I wanted to be Viceroy of India.”

We all laugh, who wouldn’t?

“I mean it,” he continues. “Viceroy of India, that’s what I wanted to be. I’d read about Viceroys in a book.”

Louise leans forward.

“But when you were young, there was no Viceroy of India. Hadn’t been one for decades.”

“No, I know. But nonetheless that is what I wanted to be. Viceroy of India. Or failing that, emperor of somewhere.”

Everyone laughs again, because they think Gerald is laughing at the child-version of himself, but I’m not sure. There is a half-smile there, but it’s inscrutable.

“So, Viceroy, or Emperor…anything a little more…mundane perhaps…more achievable?”

Gerald ponders her question for a few moments. “Forensics expert, possibly. I liked Sherlock Holmes. Or an explorer perhaps, discovering lost tribes, that kind of thing. Cricketer as well. Scientist. To be honest, there was nothing that I felt I couldn’t do.”

After a few more questions which reveal Gerald as a terrifyingly certain little boy, Louise turns to me.

“I suppose there’s no point asking you to take the chair.”

The others jeer at me like schoolkids, so reluctantly I plonk myself in the chair.

“So, Kevin, did you always want to be an actor?”

“No, originally I wanted to be a footballer. When I was six I wrote to Arsenal asking for a trial.”

“Did they reply?”

“They wrote saying I was too young. So I switched to supporting Chelsea.”

“And you’re still Chelsea?”

“Nah, I don’t support anyone now. Pointless. Been ruined by the money.”

“And how old were you when you realised you wanted to be an actor?”

“I dunno, fifteen, sixteen.”

I’m waiting for the next question, but it doesn’t come, so I fill the silence.

“I was at home, watching the Great Escape and…well, it was Steve McQueen. He got me hooked. My reaction to Steve McQueen was…similar to Pulse’s about Viv Richards. Steve McQueen was cool.”

“And when you became a professional actor, what did you most enjoy about it?”

She’s using the past tense. Is she winding me up?

“Was it the chance to lose yourself inside the character, to become someone else? To stop being you?”

Right, that’s it, that’s her lot.

“I thought this was supposed to be about our childhood ambitions.”

“Yes, it—”

“Well, I’ve told you mine.” And I rise out of the chair.

She pushes her tongue into her cheek as she tries to control her reaction. I’ve annoyed her. Excellent.

“Well, thank you for sharing, Kevin. Who’s next?”

Dougie virtually throws himself into the chair and starts talking about his early dreams. The stuff pours out of him, how he wanted to be a Grand Prix driver and then a boxer like Barry McGuigan and then a popstar and, before that, a human cannonball.

“A human cannonball?” she echoes.

“Yeh. Someone who gets fired out of a cannon.”

“Why were you so keen on that?”

Dougie looks at her in bewilderment.

“What young boy doesn’t dream of being fired out of a cannon?”

He thinks about what he’s just said. “Actually, I’d still quite like to be fired out of a cannon.”

Pulse laughs in his deepest bass. “He’d do it as well, he’s one mad human being.”

Louise is a little thrown, so she changes direction.

“You said popstar. Was music a big thing for you as a kid? You have a very good voice.”

“I was in the church choir.”

I get a fleeting image of a tiny Dougie wearing a ruff and a cassock and covered in tattoos.

“A church choir?”

“Yeh, I didn’t listen to the religious shit. I just liked the hymns. I love a good song, me. My dad was a good singer. When he was pissed he’d sing. Well, in the early phase of being pissed, y’know…then he’d sing, but later…when he hit the nasty phase, he’d get that look about him – then the singing would stop.”

Dougie tails off and stares at the floor with a bleak expression. Nobody quite knows what to do. I can hear the whining of the camera. Is she hoping he’ll spill his guts for her?

“Let’s take a break, shall we, Louise?” She shoots me a look. “It’s very hot in here.”

“Damn right,” says Pulse.

“Of course.” She smiles. “Kevin’s right.”

Around the drinks table, Dougie soon regains his composure, but he tells Louise he doesn’t want to spend any more time in the chair.

“Sometimes looking back’s not so helpful for me, y’see, I can get a bit unmanageable.”

Louise would clearly love to find out more, but she knows better than to force it now.

“That just leaves you, Paul,” she says.

Albie looks hesitant, to put it mildly.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” I tell him.

“It’s OK,” he mumbles.

“You’re happy to do it?”

He nods and puts down his drink. The operator shoulders the camera while Albie approaches the chair as if it is electrified.

“You can stop whenever you want,” Louise reassures him. “Like Kevin did.”

Another little nod from Albie, then he settles slowly into the chair. The camera starts to turn. Louise softens her voice.

“So, when you were little…what did you want to be?”

He looks as small and as hunted as I can remember.

“I…erm…well…it’s odd.”

“Odd?”

“Yeh…I’ve been thinking and, um…” He shifts his weight in the chair. “…I, er…I can’t remember wanting to be anything.”

His next sentence fades off to a mumbled whisper.

“Sorry, Paul, what was the last bit? Didn’t catch that.” she asks.

He raises the volume to barely audible.

“Erm…I don’t think there was anything.”

“As a child,” she presses, “there was nothing you wanted to be?”

“…No.”

“Why do you suppose that was?”

Albie shrugs.

“You have a beautiful voice, did it not occur to you that you could be, say, a singer?”

Now Albie is staring at the floor, like Dougie was, as if it is screening his past.

“I didn’t sing if people were around.”

Again, his voice thins to nothing. Louise edges closer to him.

“That’s quite unusual, Paul…for a boy to have no ideas about what he might like to be when he grows up.”

Albie looks up, paler than ever, the light seems to be shining through him.

“I know,” he mutters. And then the muttering starts to fade again.

“Sorry, Paul, louder.”

“I suppose I…I just never thought that I could be anything.”

Albie’s words are still hanging in the air when, from the corner of the room, we hear a sharp-edged drawl.

“Oh p-lease! Are we going to have to listen to much more of this shit?”

Louise gestures to Gerald to be quiet, but he is walking forward now.

“Oh, come on, this whole little-me routine of his is sick-making! I don’t believe a word of it. Ooh, I’m so pale, I’m so sad…” Now he is mimicking Albie’s expression. “I’m a startled fawn, give me a fucking break.”

What’s he up to? Is he jealous of the attention Albie is getting? I decide to take control.

“Gerald, this is Albie’s turn, just sit back down and-—”

“He’s an act, all mysterious and enigmatic like some pathetic bloody sphinx, how come he’s the only one who we don’t know what he’s in for, eh? How come? He won’t tell us, no one will tell us. What’s all that about? Why’s he getting special treatment?”

So, it is jealousy.

“What did you do, Albie, eh, why are you here?”

Albie is sitting, frozen with terror in the chair, his knuckles white as he grips the plastic, grips it hard.

“Come on, Albie!” Gerald is shouting now, his shirt darkened with sweat. “Spill the beans!”

Dougie steps forward, with great purpose.

“Shut it, Gerald.”

“Yeh, mind your own bis-ness,” calls Pulse.

“Ignore him, Albie,” adds Simo.

I feel sure Gerald is playing up for the cameras, because somehow he manages to skip around Dougie to taunt his prey.

“How old are you, Albie? How much time you done?”

Dougie grips Gerald firmly by the shoulder.

“What’s it all about, eh?”

Suddenly, Gerald is singing, loud and grating.

“What’s it all a-bout, Al-bie?”

The last note is cut short, when Dougie’s hand clutches Gerald by the throat and tosses him dismissively across the room. I am poised to hit the alarm button, but then I realise that there is not going to be a fight, Gerald is bent double, coughing and choking.

“Is he OK?” asks the camera operator.

“He’ll be fine,” says Dougie, like a man who knows about throat injuries. Then he turns to Louise with a warm smile. “I’d rather you didn’t include that last bit, Louise, only it could lose me some privileges.”

She nods vigorously. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her looking truly scared. In a few minutes she’s witnessed both sides of Dougie, the innocence and the capacity for sudden violence. She knows she’s stepped into someone else’s world, somewhere beyond controls. The cameraman is already packing his kit away and the rehearsal breaks up in virtual silence, apart from Gerald’s strangled splutters as he curls up against the base of the wall.

There was a bit of an atmosphere after that. Gerald knew better than to make a complaint of assault against Dougie – nobody likes a snitch – but every now and then he would give him a venomous glance. Dougie, on the other hand, seemed totally unaffected, as if the whole episode had never happened. Albie, I noticed, started giving Gerald a very wide berth, but seemed to relax a little whenever we were rehearsing music.

Our rehearsals made steady progress. We had found ourselves a new accompanist, Mrs Braddock from the Administration Office. She wasn’t as good a pianist as the previous one, but she was less likely to end up in solitary. She thumped the keys gleefully through the numbers and looked transported whenever Albie started to sing. More pieces to camera were recorded but, though I watched her like a hawk, Louise did not put a foot wrong. Nothing she did was cheap or exploitative. There was still time, I told myself.

Gerald’s stand-up routine got slicker each day, although I managed to persuade him to take out his impersonation of Dougie – which I thought might be a risk too far. Malcolm sat in on one rehearsal and laughed all the way through Gerald’s portrait of a prison governor. Was he really that happy to laugh at himself? Or did he want to look like a good sport?

Everything seems to be going moderately smoothly, until, with a few days to go to the performance, Albie doesn’t appear at rehearsals.