-They buried the Paramount Chief of Chiswick last week.
That’s what the man in my room said when I asked him why he was here. I’ll refer to him as James, which is not his real name.
-I knew him, James said. -He was my friend, or years ago he was anyway, when we were young.
-Tell me about the Paramount Chief of Chiswick, I said. -Start from wherever you want.
James had been referred to me with what his previous adviser, an orthodox practitioner with a reputation for prescribing chemical interventions first and asking questions later if at all, had described as a borderline delusional obsession with the properties of sound.
James started telling me about the Paramount Chief of Chiswick by telling me about the properties of sound.
-First of all, we have to understand this: whatever’s written can be destroyed. It can be burned, it can be shredded. Ink dissolves. Carve it in stone and it’ll erode. Anything that’s written is first misunderstood then forgotten. It gets corrupted, damaged, warped, you get false memories of words that you never read, you start to believe they meant things that they never meant. Anything written, it fades, its meaning vanishes. It’s like looking at finger marks in condensation and we’re trying to reconstruct the whole of the person who put them just by using the smear on the window. That’s writing, that’s the written word. You can’t trust it.
I looked at James: it was clear to me that he had delivered this message, or variations on it, many times. Equally clear was his sincerity, and the intensity of feeling that the subject generated. His whole body was tense, rigid. My specialism isn’t in neuro-physical cues, but in quasi-lay terms, I could feel the pressure running through him from across the room. I allowed myself to question whether I had been too quick to discredit the idea of a pharmaceutical response.
-Sound, though, James went on. -Sound's a wave. Sound's eternal. It's infinite. Did you know that every sound that's ever been made is still travelling through space? Us talking right now. The Rolling Stones at Altamont. Hiroshima. Krakatoa. Jesus Christ’s last prayer on the Cross, if you’ll believe in that. If it happened, something somewhere can hear it. We measure distances in light years, but it's sound that'll still be crossing them long after the last sun has collapsed in on itself. That's the science of sound. Its main property isn’t that it’s audible. It’s that it's eternal. Energy can't be destroyed, you've heard that? Sound energy, once it’s in wave form, it exists forever. It doesn't matter if there's nobody to listen, the sound doesn’t know that, it can’t know it, it doesn’t care. It just keeps on travelling, keeps on being sound. It can get quieter as it travels, but this is the way it works. You know the old maths problem, it’s a paradox or a trick question: if an object has to travel a fixed distance, but the way it moves is by halving the distance it travels with every step it takes, when will it reach its destination? The answer’s never, even if it travels for eternity. It’ll never get there. It’ll have an infinitesimal distance left to go, but the step it takes to get there is always half the distance it needs to go, forever. That’s how quiet a sound will get over its infinite journey as well. It might be too quiet for anything to hear it, but it never disappears, it’s never not there. When you make a sound, you're making something that'll last for eternity.
James went on to explain that he was working on a project to record a series of audio files that would create and preserve a record of conversations that referred to, and in some cases, involved, the Paramount Chief of Chiswick. He intended to deliberately create an immortal form of them, in sound.
I could see that his previous adviser, given his diagnostic and remedial tendencies* would here have disengaged with the subject and turned instead to prescription, but I sensed that somewhere within what James wished to record, would be something important. The following section of dialogue is drawn directly from my case-notes; the first voice is mine.
-So let me ask you a question. You’re talking about conversations that have already happened
-Yes. They’ve already happened
-Years ago. Decades, some of them
-That’s right
-Now, we know that sound waves can’t be destroyed. They go on forever
-Right
-So
-I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say, they’re already there. Floating through space, going on forever, the waves of that conversation have been spreading out through the universe since the conversation happened. What me and Wes or me and Tom and Rich said thirty, forty years ago, the waves from them started in the Welly or the Rose and Crown and by now they’re passing Alpha Centauri, the originals, so why do I need to make new ones?
-That is what I was going to say
-And you’re not even wrong. They are already out there. But this is my way of saying thankyou. It’s my tribute to him. I want to do it deliberately. Like building a statue, or naming an airport after him, or a city, or an ocean. Except this’ll last forever.
As our sessions went on, James asked me to be the one who would record him. While the Roth-Dunleavy code of ethics would have permitted not just this but also encouraged more active participation, my own professional guidelines did, after some introspection, allow me to electronically record Jame’s voice while he read aloud from handwritten notes.
What I am able to present here are, in accordance with Jame’s wishes and permissions, are transcripts of the audio files as they began their journey to infinity. Those permissions expressly excluded any annotation, editing, identification of participants, date or location information, or other contextual data beyond what was contained in the recorded speech. James voiced every participant in each audio file, each of which is titled according to James’s wishes.
I found the experience initially strange, then unsettling, profoundly sad, touching, absurd, and at times hysterically funny. It left me with total fascination for the life of this person who had meant so much to James.
It left me also with the realisation that what I had been listening to was a record of the life lived by someone who was naturally inoculated.
-What’s happened to your mate? I thought he was alright, but he’s been like a dog with two dicks
-Who? Which one?
-You know which one. Blond lad from New Mill.
-Pete Millar.
-That’s him.
-I know exactly what’s happened. Last Friday he fingered Kerry Stott at bus stop near King’s Head, since then he’s been striding through town like fucking Sean Connery through Sixties
-He wants to watch himself, or someone’s going to deck him
-I know. I know. I’ve been trying to tell him.
-Fucking hell, Jen told me she saw him with his hand on Cath Crowther’s arse in Butcher’s last night. If Jamie Sykes hears about that, he’ll snap his neck, he needs to fucking chill out. He’s been hanging out with the weirdos in Cricketers as well hasn’t he. Buying eighths and going on like he’s fucking Tony Montana. Dickhead. I’ll hit him myself.
-She’s called Isabella or Florentine or something, some name you don’t get round here, she’s from Surrey or Hampshire or Hampstead, and for whatever fucking reason, maybe her folks spent all their money on her name and now they can’t afford to get her in somewhere better, she’s at uni here, and Millar fucking pulls her in Visage. Or she pulls him, more like, and they go back to hers. She’s in a student house in Lockwood so they’ve not got far to walk, they get back to hers, she sits down on her bed and says to him, talk dirty to me while I suck your cock.
-And you know, he’s had his oats and all, but this Arabella or Fontenella or whatever, she’s a different thing, she’s an actual woman, and he’s got no fucking idea what to do has he. Nobody’s ever said to him talk dirty to me while I suck your cock, slags round here couldn’t string fucking sentence together, so he goes, go on then, you idiot.
-And she’s like, what, but she gives him a second chance. She says no, not like that, don’t be mean, be nice to me but dirty, you know. Sex talk. Tell me how much you want me, tell me how much I turn you on, how hard I make you, how hot I am and what you’re going to do to me, what you’re going to give me, how much I want it, how much I’m going to love it, how hard you’re going to make me come – so she’s more or less given him a script, but you know what he’s like, he just cannot do anything anyone tells him to even if it’s this, he just cannot fucking do what he’s told, and by now his head’s going, he’s got no idea what to say, all he knows is that he’s not going to say what she’s told him to, so what he says is, -I knew as soon as I saw that you were an idiot-
-So by now she’s had enough, she’s fucking done with him, like pull your trousers up and get out, but he’s got his cock in his hand now and he’s starting to see how he can enjoy this, he’s tossing off in front of her and he’s gone from being totally lost to being well into it now, so he says -you must be thick as shit to go to uni here, your room smells of cats, and your name sounds like a pizza
-And he comes. She’s nowhere near him, she’s run to the kitchen to get a knife or something while he’s standing there jizzing off all over her bed, pissing himself with laughter while he’s slagging her off-
-Fucking hell
-Madman. Absolute madman
-Fucking bushman. Millar
-And this is him telling it. So this is the best it could have been
-Jesus
-Jesus fucking Christ
-Think what she’s saying to her friends
-Number one, don’t go out in fucking Huddersfield
-Your name sounds like a pizza. Fucking hell, I can’t get over it
-Fucking hell
-Brilliant. Millar
-Same again?
-Yeah go on then
-That’s it, go on, talk dirty to me
-What’s he done now?
-It’s just him. He’ s got this superpower to be saying exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time in exactly the wrong fucking place. He doesn’t even mean to. It just happens to him. Like you’ll be walking with him along some road that’s totally deserted and he’ll be saying something fucking rude about a person or a type of person and then it’s like they’ve been teleported there, that person will just appear at the absolute instant he’s being fucking rudest
-I’ve seen this
-Fucking hell, seen it, I’ve lived it. He nearly got us both bottled in the Lakes one time, the fucking Lake District
-Right, so this one was the other week. I was with him, we’re somewhere near Stokey on the Sunday afternoon, it’s cold, it’s started raining, he doesn’t even have to be talking and I’m not really listening, we’re just walking hungover, looking for somewhere showing the football, but he’s going on about someone he works with except he can’t say anything can he, he has to shout fucking everything, and the instant he’s shouting ‘fat Scouse cunt’ a door opens. I swear it, this fucking door opens and there’s an overweight guy in a Liverpool football top, all this poor bastard’s done is open his door and there’s Millar yelling FAT SCOUSE CUNT at him
-Fucking hell
-He’s cursed man. Millar
-He is the curse
-Fucking Millar, I love it, he’s lethal. He’s like a fucking permanently exploding bomb isn’t he
-Anyway so Millar sees the Liverpool top, sees the guy’s face, and he goes, I mean to be fair he doesn’t even think about it, he just says, -not you
-Not you?
-The guy goes, -Not me? Not me what? Looks at me and goes, -What’s your mate saying? And at this point, fair play to the fat Scouse cunt him because I’m thinking Millar’s going to get lamped here and so am I, the guy goes, -tell you what, if you see the other fat Scouse cunt, tell him I said hello
-You know Matt Murray don’t you?
-I know who he is but I don’t really know him, you know?
-Yeah, I suppose I used to hang out with him a bit but now I think to be honest I don’t especially like him that much-
-That's right. Like me and mother
-What?
-Never mind
-Anyway, so I’m at Dan’s party, you remember him right?
-Yeah. Wanker
-Anyway so I’m talking to Matt Murray and I can tell we’re two, maybe three things away from running out of things to say to each other, when something just comes to me, and it’s suddenly there in my mouth, I’m like a diver looking down at the pool, toes all curled up around the edge, and there’s part of me saying say it, part of me saying don’t say it, say it, don’t say it, so I say it
-What do you say?
-I say, so listen Matt, I got told something weird. Something mad. It’s so crazy I shouldn’t even say it. He says, what? So I tell him, it was something about you. He’s annoyed now, like nobody’s allowed to mention his name without asking permission, so he says, -what about me? You can’t not tell me now. So I say, I got told you were in prison
-Prison, he says. -I’ve been in Saudi
-And I very fucking definitely don’t make any kind of joke here, I don ‘t even move my mouth. He says he’s been out in Riyadh working for CFD. It could have been CFD, could have been BFG or FFS or whatever, any three letters. Except maybe not KLF or IRA, I'd have remember that. Anyway he’s going on, saying he’s worked across UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, all this, and he’s just got back a few months ago, he even fucking bothers to tell me what department in FFS he was working in, that’s how much of a boring cunt he is, before he goes, well who told you that? And I think shit, I’ve got to invent someone, so I say, you know, blond guy, year above us, did law, big tennis player, said he was going to be an actor, and he goes what, Adam Curran? Adam fucking Curran, and now I’m thinking Christ I’ve fucking invented someone real, what am I doing to myself here? Matt Murray’s looking at me weirdly now and he says, -Adam Curran told you I was in prison?
-So you said yes?
-I said, that’s what I heard. And he gives me another weird look, like he’s staring at a computer screen waiting for a message that’s not coming, then he says, for what? Was it like a tax thing or something?
-Let me guess
-You can take the piss but I honestly had no idea what I was going to say, it was just, there, I’d said it
-What did you say?
-I said I’d heard that he’d tried to kill his wife. And look whatever he was expecting it wasn’t this, now he’s giving me this ultra weird look like the message has arrived but it’s not from the leveraged buyouts team, it’s from fucking space aliens, so I think I might as well just finish it, and I say that what I got told was that he got sent down for attempted murder of his wife. And he says, my wife’s dead
-Fucking hell
-Fucking hell, right. I’m thinking, this is either really bad or really good, for me I mean, not for her
-No
-She had leukaemia, he says
-Christ
-So I say I’m really sorry and all this but he’s not interested, he just gives me this look again like he’s reading alien script and he says, -Adam Curran told you that I’d been charged with attempting to murder my wife. And I said, no. Convicted
-If I think about it, that day we did ecstasy in the morning is probably the first time I heard him talk about it. I was living with him in what honestly was Acton but it’d been sold to us, rented to us, as Chiswick borders. We’d been out on the Thursday night, nothing insane, just up and down Chiswick High Road, George IV, Old Pack Horse, horrible Connolly’s for a cheap Harp, that weird place opposite Gunnersbury tube, last orders in the Bollo. Just drinking for drinking really, anyway next morning Millar comes out of his room with a smile on his face like he’s just remembered it’s Christmas, which it wasn’t, and this little bag between his fingers, sort of dangling it.
-Look what I’ve got. he says. And it’s half a dozen pills. -I forgot about these last night
So obviously, we take them. We do one, then half an hour a later we’re not sure it’s doing anything so we do another and obviously it hits us like a fucking hammer, we’re just immediately mashed, we put some music on and have a dance in the flat but we need to get out, and it’s only about half ten at this point, even Connolly’s isn’t open, there’s nothing, it’s just like the working day and there we are, fucked, in it. So we get out and we’re bouncing up the road and I guess we just sort of find our way to the big Sainsbury’s, which when you’re fucked like we were has become this sort of magical kingdom of lights and colours and things to pick up and examine and of course everything’s like wow look at this it’s amazing and it’s fucking toothpaste, so there I am, I’m just standing at the top of one of the aisles having my mind blown by the fact that there’s all these lemons and limes and bananas and fucking whatever, and at the same time I’m watching him bounce around picking up boxes of cereal, he’s turning them round in the light like they’re jewels he’s just unearthed, holding multipacks of crisps and crunching them together to listen to the sound, I get a bit lost looking at the fish, I don’t know, hours could have passed or it could have been thirty seconds, I look up and I’m not sure where he is so I go off for a wander, I’m listening to music in my head so I’m dancing to this, and then I spot him near a till, he’s holding a big bottle of washing up liquid, squeezing it and giggling, making little noises like he wants to communicate with the bubbles inside it, sort of jigging from tiptoe to tiptoe.
-The queue’s not moving and I think it’s Millar causing some sort problem but it’s not him though, it’s whoever’s in front of him in the queue, they’ve got to the checkout, had all their stuff scanned and they’ve packed it up but they’re not going anywhere. I’m watching this and while it’s happening I’ve gone to the next till over and I’ve bought about 20 packets of chocolate Digestives which I’ve done so I can go around giving strangers chocolate Digestives, I’ve got this idea that everyone wants chocolate Digestives and I have to give them out, and there’s Millar, still sort of dancing away with his washing up liquid, not really caring how long he has to wait, he’s happy either way, and then I see him sort of slowly piece together what’s happening, and I piece it together at the same time, it’s that the guy in front of him. His bank card’s not working and he’s got no cash, so he can’t pay for his shopping but he’s already put it in his bags, he’s not trying to nick it or anything there’s just something that’ s not working, and he’s all sorry sorry I don’t know what to do, and now I’m looking at Millar, who’s holding his fucking washing up liquid over his head like he’s got hold of fucking Excalibur, he takes it all in and says, you know what his voice is like, especially when he’s fucked, he can’t say anything he has to shout everything, ‘I wish to be known,’ he says, ‘as the Paramount Chief of Chiswick’ and he tells the woman on this till, fuck knows what she’s thinking but anyway he says the Paramount Chief of Chiswick will pay for the other guy’s shopping, gives her his card, kisses his washing up liquid and gets back to his little dance.
-Guy’s looking at him like he’s fucking Jesus, he's just bought him what must be a hundred quid’s worth of shopping, he’s blathering on about paying him back, but Millar’s not interested in this, he’s on a higher level and he’s hearing none of it, he’s just gurning, eyes like fucking dinner plates, just going on about being this chief of Chiswick, and after a while the other guy must think well he’s a fucking nutter but he’s paid for my shopping and now he’s gone back into his own world, he’s gone thanks very much, see you later, picks up his bags and off he fucks. I’ve got my fucking shipment of chocolate Digestives, I try to give one to the woman on the till but she’s all no thanks I’m not allowed, alright then, so I go dancing up to Millar who’s by now paid for his fucking sacred washing up liquid, I’m looking at him and he’s looking at me and we’re both grinning like we’ve uncovered the secret to human happiness on earth, we put our arms around each other, we bounce out of big Sainsbury’s and for the next couple of hours we just go around Chiswick being nice to people
-You know Mark don’t you?
-Yeah yeah. Funny fucker actually, I’ve not seen him in ages. Is he alright, have you seen him?
-Yeah. I mean, yes I’ve seen him, is he alright, I don’t know
-What’s happened?
-You know he lost his job a while back?
-I didn’t know that
-Well, OK. First of all I don’t know what happened, I’m not saying it was his fault, he was working for some big American bank and there was like 2,000 of them got made redundant, he was just one of them so he’s probably just unlucky. But you know he’s always liked a drink-
-Likes a drink, fucking hell. He likes a drink like the deserts like the rain. He lives for it. Total pisshead. Lovely guy. Total pisshead
-Well, OK. So after he loses his job, he does get into it a bit. He starts starting the day with these ‘voffees’ which he thinks he’s invented and I don’t know, maybe he has, it’s-
-Vodka and coffee?
-It’s a vodka and coffee
-Vodka and coffee. Voffee. Yeah I like it. I might try that. What is it, half and half?
-Probably, yeah, something like that-
-A voffee. Start the day with a voffee, fucking hell, and you’re away aren’t you
-Well, yeah. So he’ll do the school run then he’ll come back and have a couple of his voffees, he’ll be nipping away at these while he’s looking on LinkedIn, looking for job postings, doing applications, all this, then at midday he goes down the pub, there’s always some sort of sport on isn’t there so he’s thinking right I’ve done my morning’s work, why not have a pub lunch, so he’ll have a burger or a pie or something and a couple of pints while some cricket or something’s on, then more often than not he’ll stay after lunch, let’s have a little chill out he says, a bit of me time, so he’ll have a couple more pints, maybe look at a book, then half past three he’s off on the school run again, he’s not driving thank Christ, it’s all walking distance, picks the children up, then once they’re all home he’ll get them a snack and he’ll have a sherry or something, then he’ll start making their tea, I mean he does do a fair bit of cooking through all this, he’s in the kitchen and at the stroke of five he’s into the gin, he makes himself a G&T but it’s a treble of course, that’s down in seconds, then another one which takes a bit longer but still fast, then his third which he drinks like a normal drink, by now it’s just turning six and he’s already had what, four double vodkas, four pints, a sherry, and about a third of a bottle of gin all in, and this is what he puts away every weekday before everyone else thinks it’s OK to start drinking, so his wife comes back from work and he’ll open a bottle of wine, she’ll have one or two glasses and he’ll have the rest, then when everyone else is in bed he’ll sit down with a rum or a whisky and that’s another treble, maybe a couple of those, and this is every day for months. Months. Imagine what it’s doing to him-
-And now I’m looking at Millar as Dan’s talking, Millar’s looking around and he’s looking at Kate because he obviously wants to make some remark like ‘that sounds brilliant’ or ‘can I do that’ or something but Kate’s giving him this look like don’t fucking say anything, it’s not a joke, so he doesn’t and Dan carries on
-So he’s at home, just basically drinking and sort of kicking around, he’s applying for jobs but not getting any of them, I don’t know whether he’s doing interviews pissed or writing his letters pissed or he’s just unlucky, but it’s not happening for him, so after about six months of this he thinks he’ll have to do something to make himself useful, so he starts volunteering at his kids’ school. And actually it does keep him off the voffees to be fair, he goes in two mornings a week to read to Year 3 which is what his daughter’s in, so he sticks to straight coffee those days, he’ll do his reading then he thinks alright, pub lunch, this is now his version of the working day, an hour and a half of reading fucking Big Cat Phonics and he’s done, and he does actually enjoy it, he’s thinking you know there might be something for me here, I could get into this, I mean the kids like him you know, he’s a fucking infant himself half the time anyway, plus it’s a ninety minute working day isn’t it so I’m not surprised he’s seeing an upside, but anyway he starts doing bits and pieces more, and he volunteers to help out on a class trip to some National Trust castle, Year 3’s doing a project on Medieval England so they’re away to watch knights and jousting and jesters and all this, and they always need parents to come along to make sure nobody gets lost or whatever, so he’s on the trip, and he’s got a drinks bottle with him, it’s one of those aluminium ones that keep hot drinks hot for hours, and his is from Costa or something so everyone’ll just think it’s coffee of course but actually it’s his voffee, and remember at the time he was a real voffee man, he’d be like this is the answer, you just smell of coffee, vodka doesn’t smell of anything, so you’re wide awake but you’re in a fucking good mood as well because you’ve had all this fucking vodka, so he’s nipping away at this all the way there.
-This is all from him by the way, he’s going around doing these kind of confessions now he’s in AA and going to meetings, so I’m not making any of this up, so he remembers on this trip he almost trips over his own feet as he’s getting down the steps of the coach and he ends up scraping his shin on the edge of the door and it’s fucking painful and he’s just avoided landing on his arse in front of all these schoolkids so that's fucked him off, and it’s been raining and he’s not really wearing the right shoes, he’s got these deck shoes on but it’s muddy and he’s having to concentrate on not falling over, anyway they go around the castle and it’s all going OK until they get to the bit all the kids want to see which is the knights doing sword fighting.
-These knights are all in costume, armour and all this, shields, and they’re shouting this medieval bollocks, swear fealty to my liege, and he’ll tell you now he knows how nuts it was, but this is all through being just constantly pissed or half-pissed, but this is what he told me, he’s looking at the knights flashing their wooden swords around and it’s all touche! and en garde! and all that, it’s a pantomime swordfight for the school groups, except Mark gets in his head that the green knight’s looking at him. Like the knight’s looking at Mark’s shoes and thinking ‘knobhead’ and he’s laughing at him, taking the piss out of him somehow, I mean of course he’s not at all, to the knight Mark’s just another adult with a school group, he’s barely noticed him, and I mean who’s to judge who anyway, the knight’s a grown man in fucking pretend armour but of course it’s all just the damage Mark’s done to himself the past few months, his fucking voffees and constantly topping up, he’s wrecked himself and it’s all just through boozing, anyway whatever it is about the knight it sets him off and he just snaps, something in him’s gone bang, and he yells CRY GOD FOR HARRY, ENGLAND, AND SAINT GEORGE, he charges up to where the knights are having their swordfight, vaults the fence, and he flies at the green knight like Jonah Lomu, spear tackles him just below the ribcage, wham, smacks into him, and the knight must be a real trouper because he says, he actually fucking says gadzooks! and throws his sword down like he’s been defeated by the better swordsman, meanwhile he’s actually a judo expert as Mark later finds out through fucking truth and reconciliation or whatever it is he has to go through, and the green knight’s taken the impact, stayed on his feet, and he’s put Mark down, kind of rolled him over so he’s on his back with his head at the knight’s feet.
-And you’d think that’d be his rock bottom but it’s not, because now the knight moves around a bit and starts sort of shovelling mud onto him, grinding it into his trousers with his fucking moccasin or whatever he’s wearing, rubbing all this mud around his bollocks, and Mark’s about to kick off at him what the fuck you’re doing when he realises that actually he’s pissing himself and the green knight’s doing him a favour, he’s covering up the piss stain with mud so the kids don’t see it. That’s when he hits bottom, and he begs the knight to kill him, just take my fucking head off, please he says but then one of the teachers appears, and she and the knight pick him up, she walks him out to the exit, they’ve got to go past the kids are there and some of them are like, was that part of the show? and some of them know it’s not and that something weird’s happened, his daughter’s there, he’s done this in front of his own daughter and she can’t look at him, she’s there wishing she’d never been born as her teacher leads him away, teacher gets him an Uber or whatever but fucks him off then she’s on the phone to school straight away, there’s been an incident, Mark’s banned from ever going near school again basically, so when he gets home first thing he’s got to do is phone his wife at work and say can you do pick up today I’m not going to able to, fucking hell, imagine that call, why what’s happened, is everything alright at home, well there was this knight looking at me funny, fuck me, I mean no wonder he wants his head chopped off, anything but that, and he tells her and of course she’s not seeing the funny side at all, she’s like there is no funny side to this, and suddenly it’s all got really serious, you do what you want to yourself Mark she says, but you’re in no fit state to be around our children.
-He says he’s stopped drinking forever right there and then, never again, and to be fair he’s not had one since that morning by this point but she’s not having it, you make me sick to look at you, I can’t trust you, basically just fuck off and I'll tell you at some point or maybe never if you can come home again and of course he’s not got a leg to stand on has he, all he’s done for the past half a year is get himself pissed, nobody’s going to be on his side, so off he fucks, and he’s back with his parents. Still there now.
-So Dan who’s been telling all of this finishes his story and there’s no punchline or anything, it’s just this sad story about an awful thing that happened and everyone around the table’s looking at each other and going Christ and fucking hell and of course all the women are like God his poor wife, good for her, arsehole, those children and all this, then Millar, who’s been listening to this like he wants to remember every single detail, picks up the bottle of wine that’s in front of him, empties it into this big wineglass, this stupid outsize thing that can basically hold a bottle’s worth, and the bottle’s almost full, he tips it all into his wineglass, lifts it up and he goes -well, that’s a sobering thought, and he downs it, drinks the whole fucking lot in one go like he’s Henry VIII, a sobering thought he’s said and that sets Adrian off and that sets Alex off and they’re all fucking howling with laughter while their wives are all looking at them like they’re fucking animals
-We’re in this place for Sunday lunch, nice place, pub on the river down Chertsey way. It’s me and Dan and Jack, we’ve actually done a little walk to get there, we’ve deliberately walked it so we can sit down and have a good long lunch afterwards. It’s a nice place but it’s still a pub, it’s not the private room at the Savoy, so you’re never sure who else is going to be in there
-You mean, other people can’t be sure that you and Dan and Jack won’t be there
-Well that too. So we’ve had a nice lunch, roast beef and all that, few pints, couple of bottles of wine, and it’s about three o’clockish so we’re pivoting to spirits and there’s a party at a long table just around a corner from us. It’s family party for someone’s 85th, fucking eighty-five, so there’s old folks, adults, adults our age, kids, everyone, and they’ve all had a nice time, nice meal, few bottles of wine but you know not like us, it’s a glass or two for everyone, they’ve not sat there and got hammered, so it must be coming to the end because one of them stands up and makes this nice little speech about the lady whose birthday it is. It’s all childhood memories wasn’t it all lovely and aren’t they lucky that their children and their children’s children have to chance to get to know her and spend time with her, obviously what he’s not saying is ‘before she dies’ but everyone’s fucking thinking it, anyway so this guy who must be her son finishes his little speech and then he raises his glass, I see him do it, and he says, “grandmother” and everyone stands up and they raise their glasses too, then there’s this tiny moment of silence where nobody knows if they should clap, or say cheers, or do another speech, or sit down and talk among themselves, or if she’s going to say something, so there’s like one or two seconds of complete silence, and into it floats this voice. It’s like an actor’s voice, it actually sounds like Brian Blessed, and it says, -a sexual awakening
-And everyone just crumbles, like nobody’s even fucking trying to not find it funny or pretend they didn’t hear it, everyone’s just pissing with laughter, grandmother herself must be as well, so I look around to see where this voice has come from-
-No
-And it’s him. It’s fucking Millar, I see him there, next table along from the party table
-No
-It fucking is. So I’m getting up to go towards him, say hello or I don ‘t know what, just look at him, I mean I used to live with the guy, by now I’ve not seen him in more than twenty years, so I’m getting up to go over and then the waitress comes over to us, I get distracted, and by the time I actually do get to the table, he’s gone
-If it was him
-It fucking was. He was there, just being fucking Millar. It was him
-He’s like a corporate cockroach. You know, the entire department’s been completely wiped out, everyone clear your desk, it’s over, it’s finished, then Monday morning there’s a noise by the fridge. And it’s him, it’s the man they can’t kill, my boss, with his voice and his phrases. He sees me and he pipes up, ah Rob, like he’s surprised to see me out in the wild, -Ah Rob, what’s new on your end? And I’m thinking, what’s new, what’s new is that the whole business line you were not just in but supposedly in charge of has just been levelled, total destruction, there are people with actual skills got canned yet here you are, the man who’s presided over this fucking calamity, giving me what’s new? Like why are you still here? How are you still here, but obviously I can’t say that and before I’ve said anything at all he’s talking again, I’ve said what his voice is like haven’t I, you know what his voice is like, it’s like he’s been inhaling helium and it’s just starting to wear off as he’s talking to you, -Well Rob, he’s gone, wobbling his fucking head at me while he’s talking, -as it happens, MD’s asked me to stay on. I’m putting together a small team -he says small team like it’s something no man’s put together before, or at least not without clearing a blast radius in case it fucking goes off, -I’m putting together a small team for some scenario modelling, bit of risk sensing, all that good stuff, -he says ‘good stuff’ as if it’s one word, ‘goodstuff’
-Your mum
-What?
-Your mum. When he said, what’s new on your end, you should have said, your mum
-Hey Rob, what’s new on your end? Your mum
-Pint of the goodstuff?
-Yes make it the goodstuff Rob
-Anyway. Point is. So I’m there Monday morning. I get through with Rob talking about his small team, start getting myself together. Here’s my desk, get a chair, here’s a key to your new locker, you put your shit in this one now not the old one, and there’s one unlocked next to the one I get, number whatever, so I just open it, I’m thinking I don’t know maybe someone’s left a pack of fags or something, so I have a look, and it’s this
-Is it Rob’s mum’s fanny. In a can?
-No. It’s this.
-And it’s a stack of A4, all stapled together, and on the front cover it says
THE PARAMOUNT CHIEF OF CHISWICK
AN INSTRUCTION MANUAL
-What is it?
-First, whatever is written can be destroyed. It can be burned, it can be shredded. Ink dissolves. Carve it in stone and it will erode. Anything written is first misunderstood then forgotten. Words will be corrupted, damaged, warped. This is what it says. -Sound, however, is a wave. Sound is eternal. Sound is infinite
*Whose identity must be withheld for legal reasons, but who is not John Roth-Dunleavy