Snuff movie
‘So…Mademoiselle Gabby. Tell me your most intimate secret.’
‘Can you not film me in bed, please, Marcus?’
The DVD playing on the television in Gabriel’s Shaftesbury Hotel room was shaky, hazy and green – handheld night vision video shot in a small dark room amid a mess of newspapers, clothes, coffee cups, ash trays and an empty spirit bottle, all strewn about squatter-like next to a double mattress on the floor, upon which sat a naked, cross-legged Gabriel in a younger incantation. She was slouched forward and flicking ash at an ash tray.
‘Mademoiselle has the sheets if she wishes to be au contraire.’ The voice behind the camera was deeply resonant; mature, no, old; refined, yet smoky, no, make that toffee coated phloem – a posher Simon Cowell force-fed whisky and Camel cigarettes like a French goose. I winced at this first proper reference point of the man who had deflowered my beautiful girl, cringed at the pompously melodious tones, burned inwardly at how positively ancient he sounded compared to the sweet faced girl in his bed, burned everywhere at the way she just sat there so...comfortably exposed.
‘Stop doing that stupid French accent!’ said the girl on the screen
‘Mademoiselle does not like ze French accent?’
‘No. She fucking hates it. Stop it!’
‘Awright love. Keep ya fuckin hair on!’
‘Don’t do the cockney one either! Don’t do any accents! Just be yourself for a change!’
‘As you wish, my dear. One is not seeking to offend.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Now. Tell me your deepest, darkest secrets.’
The girl on the video smiled darkly. ‘What? The one about me hating your flea-ridden apartment?’
‘If you wish.’
‘I hate your flea-ridden apartment. Hurry up and write a decent song so we can live in luxury.’
‘With such patient support, I can hardly fail.’
‘Good. Off you go then.’ A small hand filled the screen as the camera moved in. ‘Stop filming me!’ the young Gabriel said tetchily.
There were several more minutes of idle girl-boy (child-dirty old man) chit chat, then the man behind the camera said: ‘Now, sweet pea, declare to the world your most deadly sin – superbia, avaritia, luxuria, invidia, gula, ira or acedia?’
‘Ya what?’
‘It’s Latin, my dear. Pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath or sloth? Although I should point out, luxuria was extravagance in the original sins, now updated to lust. So what’s it to be?’
‘Can I choose two?’
‘Then I assume one of them is greed?’
She laughed. ‘No. Sloth brought on by wrath.’
‘Anger has sapped your will to live?’
‘And this grimy flat. But yes, anger mostly.’
‘Anger towards what or whom?’ said the deep voice in slow, measured tones as the picture zoomed in for a clumsy close-up, the images darting giddily around walls and ceiling and fleeting flashes of bits of nude, green girl amid audible camera grappling before locking unsteadily onto a knee, a shoulder, a chin, a wall, half a face, then all of a face. If Marcus Friend's music career failed to take hold, he had a readymade future in Blair Witch Project sequels.
‘Anger towards my family,' said the now full frame grim, grainy green face. 'Except for Simon, of course. I hate everyone else. I hate my parents. I hate my parents.’
‘And why do you hate your parents, my love?’
‘Because they drink all the time and when they drink, they abuse me. Not in a sexual way, but it’s just as bad.' Her eyes burned a hole in the hazy pictures, looked away, and then down. 'My mum was always pissed and screaming and calling me a useless whoring midget and all I’d ever done was get home late from school. And Dad just sat there or wasn’t there at all because he was at the pub or out with his poor chickens. And it only got worse after I went to bed. Dad would have a go at Mum and they’d shout at each other and throw things until midnight. Then there’d be nothing but bumps on the walls and I’d know Dad had gone to bed and Mum was trying to find her way to the attic in the dark, and then I’d be able to get some sleep. I could still hear her clomping around up there. I could hear the bottle clomp on the floor every time she topped up her glass.’
Her eyes met the camera and sort of rolled before fixing it with teenage contempt and it was now clear she, herself, had been drinking. ‘Mum? Dad?' she said. 'I hope you die slow, painful deaths. I hope you pay for what you’ve done to us, me, Simon and my stupid, fat half-sister, Melissa.’ Much jittery handheld grinning into camera followed before she said, ‘Marcus, when is your group going to take an interest in my family?’
‘My group? I’m a solo artist, my sweet.’
‘Your activist group.’
‘Oh yes. My activist group. What about my activist group?’
‘I want them to target my family.’
‘For the record, Gabby has imbibed rather generously this evening,’ said the man behind the camera.
‘I’m fine, thank you!’ came the petulant response.
‘Yes, dear. You’re fine.’
She paused, and then her eyes set on something just off camera, presumably his eyes. ‘So, will you do it?’
‘Do what?’ he said.
Her eyes darkened. ‘I want you to threaten my family. I want you to threaten them, bomb them and burn down their house. I want you to drive them out of business.’
‘Strong words, my dear.’
She cocked her drunken head and grinned. ‘I’m a strong girl.’
‘One is aware of certain drawbacks to this suggestion of yours.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as the distinct possibility we could both go to prison.’
Her eyes narrowed and she cocked her head. ‘Have you ever been to prison, Marcus?’
There was a pause behind the camera. ‘Perhaps. Then again, I am always in prison. I never escape from the atrocities, my sweet. They’re with me wherever I go, when I write, when I play, when I sleep. My only outlet is to act.’
The girl smiled. ‘Will you act for me?’
Another pause. ‘No.’
She looked decidedly put out ‘Why not?’
‘Simple. There are those with a passion for chickens. I am not one of them. And I am not about to waste the considerable time and energy of many and varied people exacting a teenager’s revenge.’
‘Will you think about it?’
‘No.’
She tilted her head. ‘Please? For me?’
‘All right. For you, I’ll think about it…Thought about. The answer’s still no. Now, more important things. There are other more creative uses for this camera.’
The picture suddenly jolted violently around the room, the teenage Gabriel flashing through shot several times, then, abruptly, the screen went solid blue as if whatever had been recorded had been erased.
Gabriel flicked the remote at the screen and the room went quiet. Deathly quiet. Just her looking at me and me looking at the blue screen. For about a minute.
To be honest, in my cloud of cumuli-numbness, I had no idea what I was more shocked by – her damning words or the sight of my beautiful girl naked with another man, probably sleeping with that other man shortly after the picture went blank so abruptly. Somehow the emphatic erasure of whatever had gone on in that bedroom was harder to bear than seeing it in graphic detail. I felt hot and tingly and incapable of eye contact, let alone speech. It took every ounce of will just to haul myself off the bed and silently leave the room.
***
Gabriel found me in the Shaftesbury Hotel Premier Bar thirty minutes later, gazing absently out at the hustle of Shaftesbury Avenue. Initially, when I’d left the room I’d strutted off down Shaftesbury Avenue and settled in with a beer at a crowded corner bar towards Piccadilly Circus. I’d taken three large sips and scurried back to the hotel – I’d wanted to be broodingly effusive, not feudally elusive.
‘Funny thing, human nature,’ I said after a long stony silence filled by the quiet reflection, sipping and smoking of a once ecstatically happy couple at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. ‘There you were selling yourself down the river and sending us all to jail and all I’ve been thinking about is what happened after the picture went blank.’
She huffed and rolled her eyes. ‘It was a long time ago. I was seventeen.’
‘That makes it better?’
‘This is just stupid jealousy, monkey. It’s nothing to do with anything.’
‘How would you like it? Would you like to see me having sex with someone else?’
‘We weren’t having sex! For God’s sake! Get with the program!’
‘You erased the program!’
Her eyes went to the heavens so fast it was a wonder her head didn't spin right off her neck. ‘Can you stop behaving like a spoilt brat and talk about what really matters?’
‘Sorry, ' I said. 'Not yet.’
Half an hour later I did. Had we still been in her room, I seriously wonder if we’d still have been talking at all. Such is the beauty of arguing in public – being forced to maintain a semblance of decorum. In any case, I didn’t want to lose her.
‘Why?’ I said.
‘Why?' She looked to the heavens for the words, took a deep breath and talked to my knees. 'I was young. I was young and I was angry and it was just a stupid video. Bailey,' she now said to my face, 'I’d forgotten about it. I’d forgotten we’d even done it. I’d forgotten I’d even said that stuff. It was just two bored people having a few drinks and doing boring things. Taping boring conversations. It was six years ago.’
I sighed. ‘Okay. I’m assuming that isn’t the only copy?’
She shook her head sadly. And for a moment I felt sorry for her and her silly teenage indiscretion. For a moment.
‘You didn’t learn about activism from reading, did you?’ Another sad shake of the head. ‘And you’ve known Marcus was an activist the whole time.’
‘I trusted him.’
‘Gabriel, how naïve are you? He’s an active animal activist! You dumped him…Which of these clues didn’t jump out and hit you in the face?’
‘Both of them did! That’s why I was emailing him. I asked him if he had anything to do with it ages ago.’
‘And?’
‘He said no.’
‘No? That’s all?’
‘No! He seemed really happy! He was telling me about his new band and his new flat in Belgravia and how he’d met this amazing girl and fallen in love. He just seemed…fine. More than fine! He was happy and successful and content and I believed him. He had no reason to do it! He even offered to check around and see if he could find out who was involved!’
I scoffed. ‘My God. What sort of monster is this guy?’
‘A sad one.’
‘I take it you’ve seen him?’
‘I have. He hasn’t got a girlfriend. He hasn’t fallen in love. He hasn’t got a flat in Belgravia. He’s still in the same old flea pit in Brixton. He hates his band. He’s um…a bit bitter and twisted and he kind of said he still loves me. He also said he’s going to kill himself if I don’t go back.’
‘Well, nice easy solution! Don’t go back!’
‘He’s got the DVD, monkey.’
‘So what? They were the gibberings of a child.’
‘Uh uh. Seventeen, monkey. A seventeen year old child. Legally I knew what I was saying. Legally Marcus could produce that DVD as evidence of incitement.' She sighed and gave me a sad, apologetic grimace. 'Sorry, but we’re fucked.’
‘Surprise, surprise. Story of our lives really’ I let out a sigh of my own, drifted off momentarily into a shower unit in a prison that looked a bit too much like Chicken Colditz as a guard who looked a bit too much like Austin Hogg dropped a bar of soap at my feet and asked me to pick it up...I slapped my thighs. ‘Right! Okay, let’s keep calm and see if we can sort this out. Where is Marcus now? I think we should pay him a visit.’
She looked at her watch. I looked at mine. It was 9:45pm. Neither of us had eaten. ‘He’ll be playing by now,’ she said.
‘Playing?’
‘His band. They’re playing at Fiddlers in Paddington tonight. It’s a Doors revival band.’
‘Oh God. It just gets worse.’
