The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life by William Nicholson Read Free Book Online Page B

term of approval. Pictures induce spiritual fornication.
    Henry has his eyes closed in the heart of the meeting.
    What am I doing here?
    The door springs open and in bounces a small man with a big head, supposedly off an overnight plane. He’s pulsating with nervous energy.
    ‘Late, late!’ cries the star of the show. ‘Mea culpa! BA culpa! On the ground twenty minutes late, no jetway, seven miles of glazed corridors. Coffee! Feed me coffee! Henry, my man! Greetings! The countdown has begun. We’re going to have fun.’
    ‘Glad you made it, Aidan,’ says Barry, ushering him to one of the black leather and chrome steel chairs. ‘Our last gathering before you go over the top.’
    Henry watches Aidan Massey gulping black coffee, jerking his upper body back and forth as he pours out the stream of unrelated observations that passes for brilliance. His shock of auburn hair flops over his outsize brow, the hair the authenticator of genius in this image-infantile culture.
    Entirely independently of all that is passing in the room, Henry has an idea for the new intro. He makes a note.
    Barry is telling Aidan there’ll have to be some minor cuts. Aidan takes this in his stride.
    ‘I’ll be winging it anyway,’ he declares. ‘What you have on paper there is no more than a sketch.’
    ‘A fucking good sketch, Aidan. It’s going to be knock-out.’
    ‘I’m in Henry’s hands.’ Oh, you sly shitbag. ‘I’m the clay on the spinning wheel. Henry will mould me. Won’t you, Henry?’
    ‘Do my best, Aidan.’
    Barry throws a copy of the Spectator across the table.
    ‘Did you see this? Television’s sexiest intellectuals. You’re number three.’
    Of course he’s seen it. The page is already framed and hanging in his downstairs lavatory. But he reads it like it’s an amusing surprise.
    ‘Michael Ignatieff at number one. Melvyn Bragg at number two. Who votes on this? Spectator readers? Of what sexual orientation? Stock up on Vaseline, Henry. For your lenses, of course.’
    And shoot you in close-up so the Spectator readers never see that your legs are too short for your body. The trademark Aidan Massey in-your-face presenting style, widely praised for ‘immediacy’ and ‘attack’, in fact devised to frame out the star’s dwarfish build.
    ‘Maybe you should give me your notes, Aidan. So we can run out a final version of the script.’
    ‘The final version is what comes out of my mouth as the camera rolls, Henry. I know that must drive you crazy. It’s not how the book says. But it’s what I do, and it has the minor merit of not sounding rehearsed. My kind of television isn’t a lecture. It’s a conversation with the viewer. I want him, or preferably her, to follow what I’m saying. To get drawn in, to be hungry for more. So I plead guilty.’ He taps the Spectator on the table. ‘I’m a seducer.’
    ‘Images are the tool of the devil,’ says Barry, quoting from the script.
    Aidan Massey’s eyes cloud over. He’s momentarily unsure which term is the source of the humour.
    ‘One of your lines,’ prompts Barry. ‘I love the irony. Today’s devil imagery has to be television.’
    Henry meets Christina’s eyes. They both know Aidan hasn’t read the script. He has no idea where the line comes from. Fuck it, enough. Tell it like it is.
    ‘Are you okay with what I’ve written for you, Aidan? After all, you’ve had no real input since our first meeting.’
    Aidan Massey turns his big handsome head towards Henry and gazes at him in silence: a silence made all the more potent by its contrast with his usual volubility.
    ‘Ever heard of the alien blow-job theory?’ he says at last.
    ‘Can’t say I have, Aidan.’
    ‘It goes like this. In every survey of sexual habits, around seventy per cent of adults say they’ve been on the receiving end of oral sex. But only forty per cent say they’ve given oral sex. That leaves thirty per cent of the adult population getting blow-jobs that no one’s giving.