This Other Eden (10 page)

They
wouldn’t look so tough if they took off all their guns and stuff, he thought.
Which was true but, since they were not likely to, rather irrelevant.

Cops
had not always looked like this. Once upon a time, when policemen were first
invented, they had looked rather stupid in a cosy sort of way. In Britain they
wore top hats and frock coats and often sported enormous side whiskers, in
which it was possible for small criminals to hide. On the continent of Europe
their brother officers strutted about the place in shiny breastplates, big hats
and any amount of plumes and feathers. Streets had to be widened in the Paris
of Napolean III, simply to make room for the epaulettes.

It was
a wonderful system whereby those in authority were brought face to face with
their own human frailty by being made to look very silly. It’s rather difficult
to act like an arrogant bully when you’re dressed like a complete twerp. Sadly,
things changed. First, a leather jacket appeared. Next, a peaked cap, then a
pair of shades. Slowly but surely, over the years it became commonplace to see
those in whom the community were expected to place their trust decked out like
a cross between a Hell’s Angel and Heinrich Himmler.

Nathan
resented it deeply. Before leaving Britain he had actually recorded a Whinge
about it for the Boring Channel.
Whinge
was an open access programme,
where members of the public (preferably university lecturers) were invited to
whinge for fifteen minutes on a subject of their choice. Nathan had chosen to
pontificate on police uniforms.

‘Those
entrusted with power and authority should not be encouraged to strut around the
place getting a great big stiffy about it,’ he had argued earnestly. ‘I mean
why do people become police officers?’ he asked. ‘There are basically only two
reasons. It is either because they want to serve the community or because they
like being paid to look tough and push people around. The latter should not be
encouraged with fascistic paraphernalia.’

Nathan
demanded that police uniforms should be changed. That all officers, male or
female, should be required to carry out their duties in stripy lycra tights,
pink dresses and enormous leprechaun hats with shiny silver buckles on them.
According to Nathan, the effect would be immediate. Cops would feel too
self-conscious to intimidate people, crooks would not be able to bring
themselves to shoot such jolly looking officers, victims of crimes would
suddenly feel relaxed about approaching the police, witnesses would come
forward. The whole community would rise up in support of such brave men and
women, who were prepared to uphold the law no matter how stupid they looked.

Nathan
extended his idea to include the military.

‘While
I accept the need for some form of collective security,’ he said, ‘I object
strongly to the constant glamorisation of something which is, when all’s said
and done, an unpleasant necessity. I mean, calling ships things like HMS
Indomitable
is just silly.’

Nathan
argued that there was something dangerously seductive about giving weapons
tough macho names. Nothing made a politician happier than being able to
announce, ‘HMS
Indomitable
was deployed today in the Gulf, carrying
officers and men of the Second Armoured Division’. Would it not be better to
rename these things? A politician pandering to jingoistic public opinion would
find it much less tempting to deploy ‘HMS
Dubious Use of the World’s
Resources,
carrying officers and men of the Very Small Penis Division’.

 The
programme format of
Whinge
allowed for a right of reply by anyone taking
issue with the speaker. Strangely, nobody from the police or armed forces took
up the offer. The entertainments industry, however, sent along a spokesperson
to object in the strongest possible terms to these pernicious efforts to
undermine their livelihood. Geared, as it is, to providing entertainment
exclusively for mentally challenged teenage boys, film and television programme
makers found the idea of policemen dressed as clowns and battleships called the
USS Stupid
entirely unacceptable. There was simply nothing exciting
about a Terminator in a dress.

Fool
in Paradise.

The guards checked their
list. The clipboard and ballpoint pen seemed curiously anachronistic in the
hands of these distinctly high-tech bobbies. The reason for such archaic
communications technology was, of course, that, unlike with computers, it was
very difficult to hack into a Biro. If you want to change a name that’s been
written on a piece of paper in ink, you have to scribble it out and write
another one over the top. A subterfuge that even the stupidest goon could
recognise.

Finding
that his name was indeed on their list, the guards waved Nathan through the
huge electric gates. As he let his window down and let in the clean, filtered
air of the Fortified Village, Nathan’s mood lightened.

Beverly
Hills! he thought. He was driving through Beverly Hills on his way to play
tennis and make a pitch to the most powerful communications mogul in the world.
It didn’t get any bigger than this. He was inside the oyster, inside the
pearl.
What would Flossie make of it?

Damn!
He’d done it. He’d let his mind wander and of course it had wandered straight
back to Flossie, as it always did. Nathan had to be constantly vigilant because
the moment he let his guard drop, the little devils that lived inside him would
put that big heavy piece of lead in his stomach again.

‘Screwed
it up, didn’t you?’ the little devils would whisper in his ear. ‘You had a
beautiful, perfect girl and you screwed it up… and why did you screw it up?’
they asked, although they already knew the answer. ‘Because you’re a complete
git, that’s why. What are you?’

‘I’m a
complete git,’ Nathan whispered to himself. Then louder, ‘I’m a complete git. A
complete and utter git!’ His voice rose to a shout and he banged his head on
the steering-wheel as he drove.

Suddenly
his car was surrounded by Beverly Hills private cops. They leapt in droves from
out of the lush plastic vegetation that enclosed the quiet road. Shouting at
yourself, and banging your head on a steering-wheel was crazy behaviour in
anybody’s books. The Beverly Hills Private Cops were certain that they’d caught
themselves a live one.

Some
say love is blind but in fact it doesn’t see half that well.

‘Why were you shouting to
yourself and banging your head against the steering-wheel?’ the first
leather-clad gunman demanded of Nathan.

Nathan
faced a positive sea of ballistics. One wrong move and he’d be vaporised. He
decided honesty was the best policy.

‘Because
I spent two years trying to leave my wife, under the impression that I didn’t
love her and also because I wanted to screw other women. Then one day
she
left me
and I realised that I did love her madly, and ever since then my
life has been a pointless joke.’

The
cops considered this for a moment. Weighing their response. Eventually their
leader spoke.

‘You
have to fly to her,’ said the tough, hard-bitten cop. ‘You have to fly to your
beautiful lady and smother her with wild, burning kisses. You have to put a
cartload of flowers on her bed and say, “Hey, sexy pants, I made you a meadow,
get in it so I can bang you till your ears rattle”. That’s what you have to do.
Otherwise, you ain’t even a man.’

Nathan
thanked the officer for his advice, adding that this course of action had not
occurred to him before, but now that it had been pointed out, it was certainly
what he would do. Secretly, however, he suspected that these were not tactics
which would work on his beautiful Flossie.

His
beautiful Flossie! Ha! Nathan had not called her that twelve short months
before. No, then Flossie’s charms had been lost to him. They had been together
for eight years, and for the final two Nathan had wanted out. He had wanted to
sleep with other women. He had wanted to sleep with just about every woman he
passed in the street. What’s more, he had wanted to sleep with women who put
the top back on the toothpaste after they had used it. He had wanted to sleep
with a woman who always left her keys and money in the same place, and hence
was able to find them again when they were next needed. Flossie never knew
where her keys were and Nathan had hated it. Most of all, he had hated it when
she stole his and lost those too. Nathan always
always
put his own keys
back in the same place, so he always knew where they were. Unfortunately, so
did Flossie, and it was a source of constant irritation. She never put the milk
or the butter back in the fridge after using them either.

Nathan
often reflected that the God of Love was at best a fickle, indecisive type and
at worst a total raving schizo and bastard. When Nathan had first known Flossie
he had been obsessed with her sexuality. Later he grew indifferent to her
charms and now here he was again, desperate to take her to bed. How could such
conflicting passions exist within the same person? Every aspect of his attitude
to Flossie had swung like a pendulum. It was absurd that a woman’s personal
habits could appear cute one day, utterly irritating the next and back to cute
again the day after. Nathan, who only a year before had thought Flossie’s
lifestyle bordered on the disgusting, now longed to see her knickers flung anyhow
on the bathroom floor and to discover his special bedroom nail clippers in the
larder. Flossie never finished a cup of coffee; she always left it half-full to
be knocked over at a later date. There was a time when this habit had wrenched
Nathan’s guts with frustration. Now he looked back upon it as the most
endearing of characteristics.

Yes,
the God of Love was fickle, and he had turned Nathan upside-down. A year ago
Nathan had almost hated Flossie. He was sick of her and their relationship. He
had moped through his life, cold and distant, wondering how he could get away
from this woman whom he no longer loved.

‘Do you
love me?’ Flossie would ask.

‘Of
course I love you,’ Nathan would reply.

‘It
doesn’t seem like you love me,’ Flossie would insist and, although Nathan
denied it, he knew she was right. A combination of sexual frustration and
domestic irritation had convinced him that he wanted out.

Every
day he had tried to think of a way to leave. He didn’t want to hurt her and he
didn’t want to have a row about who owned the house, but he had to get out. The
months went by, while he continued to assure her that he loved her … and
continued to try to figure out a way of escape. He was a coward and he could
not face the unpleasantness, but he knew that he would do it soon.

Then,
one day, Flossie had announced that she was leaving him for another man and
from that second onwards he had loved no one but her.

Terror
hit.

As Max drove into the
DigiMac Studios for lunch with his agent, having left his beautiful, nearly
ex-wife Krystal (who will play no further part in this story) slumbering on
their satin bed, he too was reflecting on affairs of the heart. Although he did
not feel quite as desperate as Nathan, he could certainly take no satisfaction
from his position.

Being
asked for a divorce by a wife whom he did not even recognise had really brought
it home to Max just how aimless his life had become. It was all very well being
a great big star, but if you were also a sad drunk whose idea of a long relationship
was making it to the second screw, then surely something was wrong. There was a
hollow feeling inside him which he could not place. Was he hungry? Starting a
cold, perhaps? No, it did not feel like either of those things. It was sort of
empty and melancholic. Max arrived at the studio gates and drove through on to
the main boulevard. There he saw two young lovers strolling arm in arm inside
the sidewalk BioTube. The scene touched a nerve. That was it! He had it now.
Max recognised the hollow sensation. He was feeling lonely.

Inside
the commissary, Max’s agent, Geraldine Koch, was waiting to have lunch. She had
great news; news that instantly returned Max to his customary good humour.

‘You
have a meeting with Plastic Tolstoy at three forty-five today.’

Max’s
eyes widened with excitement and Geraldine could not restrain a grin of triumph
from spreading across her face. A face which was usually so sour, people’s jaw
muscles prickled just looking at it.

‘He
wants to put you together with a British writer called Nathan Hoddy. I believe
he has a feature in mind.’

‘You
mean a full-length commercial?’ Max asked, trying not to get over-excited.

‘No, I
mean a feature, Max. He’s planning a huge advertainment around the theme of the
battles between Claustrosphere and the Green Movement. I’ve convinced his
people that you’re mature enough now for major adult leads.’

This
was just the kind of break Max needed. He and Geraldine had been discussing for
months how he was going to make the difficult transition from idol to icon.
There were some stars who were merely of the moment and some, a few, who became
stars for life. Despite his huge celebrity, in many ways Max was still the
Levi’s guy. That all-important leap from being a fashion to being an
institution had so far eluded him and the sands were running out. Working for
Tolstoy would change all that. It would confirm Max as a proper, grown-up
mega-star and place him on an exalted level from which he could never be
knocked.