Staying Alive

Staying Alive

Matt Beaumont

HarperCollinsPublishers

For Sam, spaceman of the future

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

nov.

one: like on the telly?

two: nobody died

three: fifteen weeks, four days and an indeterminate number of hours

four: fancy that. outposts of the nhs that examine nothing but balls

five: you’ve been wanking, haven’t you?

six: it’s kind of personal

seven: i have done this before, you know. that’s why i keep my nails short

eight: absolutely dandy

nine: i said run!

ten: trance is the bollocks

eleven: three words

dec.

one: thoffy, thakki

two: you work in advertising. you earn more in a week than the average filipino takes home in a year. what do you know about crisis?

three: they asked me to feed their fish

four: i promise

five: the pharmaceutical industry is mired in the shite with the arms dealers and big tobacco, murray. they’re little better than a mob of sallow-faced pushers outside a wee kiddies’ playground and it depresses the hell out of me

six: two jacuzzis (!!)

seven: back in the land of the living

eight: you risked a criminal record for a garlic crusher?

nine: yoo berra gerrootta thuh fookin ruhrd

ten: do smack, rob banks, screw everyone

eleven: out of the silo

twelve: ze vacky guys behint our vunderful adwertisements

thirteen: i still want us to be

fourteen: who’s mona?

fifteen: the best way forward for humankind: mutant antlers or giant lobster claws?

sixteen: as if

seventeen: things

eighteen: he ain’t worth it

nineteen: i know where i can get one

twenty: whoops-a-fucking-daisy

twenty-one: it’s gonna be chocker with dusky totty

twenty-two: i won’t sink

twenty-three: why couldn’t he have met a nice spanish girl?

twenty-four: i won’t say it

jan.

one: mike said why didn’t they put a sainsbury’s there? something to benefit the whole community

two: poor megan

three: i’m fine

four: call me completely crazy but i think a byzantine theme might work in here

five: please don’t jump

six: exquisite

seven: you’re a dead bloody cert, chief

eight: like lena zavaroni

neuf

ten: it’s the fucking pig bin

eleven: bermuda? barbados? somewhere hot beginning with b

twelve: you should get some west and welaxation. spend time wecupewating

thirteen: this isn’t a suntan. it’s teflon

fourteen: i love you

fifteen: in this world there’s two kinds of people, my friend. those with loaded guns and those who dig

sixteen: he likes his peace and quiet

mar.

do you know what today is?

Acknowledgments

About The Author

Other Books By

Copyright

About the Publisher

nov.

one: like on the telly?

monday 3 november / 10.05 a.m.

I point the camera at…

Sophie Dahl’s prone and virtually naked body.

The dawn-lit terraces of Machu Picchu, high in the Andes.

Elvis/Lennon/Tupac as he emerges from a cave deep in the Hindu Kush.

None of the above, actually. They’re there to make me seem big and clever.

The truth now.

I point the camera at a multi-pack of Schenker Alpenchok bars. I angle it carefully—experience has taught me to do this to avoid catching the glare from the fluorescent tubes that line the rim of the Safeway freezer display. Hell, am I good at this? The box shows Heidi patting a cow on the foothills of the Matterhorn. She beams at me through the viewfinder—a big happy-dairy-girl smile.

Exude sexy ice-creaminess, baby…Mmm, yeah, that’s working for me big ti—

Something crashes into my thigh. A shopping trolley, the type that hitches up to an electric wheelchair to make the HGV menace of supermarket aisles. I should know; I’ve been dead-legged by enough of them. An old lady is at the controls. A lime-green hat sits on her head. It’s shaped like a turban and makes her look like the Mekon—as if Dan Dare’s archenemy just popped into Safeway for baked beans, loin chops and loo roll. ‘What’ve you done with the frozen veg?’ she snaps.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t work here,’ I reply, rubbing the fresh bruise.

‘You lot keep messing with the freezers and I can’t find anything.’ She scrutinises my lapel for a badge proclaiming name and rank.

‘Really, I don’t work here,’ I protest. ‘If you ask—’

‘What are you doing, then?’ she says, spotting the camera. ‘You shouldn’t be taking pictures. You’re a spy, aren’t you? You’re from Tesco.’

‘No, I’ve got permission…I work for an advertising agency.’

My trump card, though I don’t produce it as if it’s the ace of spades—more like the three.

‘Adverts? Like on the telly?’ She sounds impressed.

I nod. And smile—it’s rare that I impress anyone with my career choice.

‘I’ve been wanting to have a word with you,’ she says, her eyes narrowing. ‘I saw your one for the funeral plan. I signed up, but I’m still waiting for my free carriage clock. It’s been weeks now.’

‘I—We don’t do that one,’ I explain.

‘Oh, you’re ever so charming when you want to sell us something, but the minute you’ve got us you don’t want to know,’ she spits.

My mobile vibrates against my hip and I pull it gratefully from my pocket. The Mekon looks on with distaste. ‘They cause cancer, you know,’ she says. Then she hits the throttle, running over my foot with her wheelchair’s solid rubber tyre and trundling off into the fluorescent Safeway sunset—taking no prisoners in the quest for world domination/frozen peas. I look at the phone display. Maybe it’s Sophie Dahl’s people calling to tell me her body is prone, very nearly naked and waiting aquiver for my camera’s attentions.

Funnily enough, no. It’s work.

‘Hi, Jakki,’ I say.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Getting grief about a funeral plan.’

‘You what?’

‘Never mind. What’s up?’

‘You’d better get back here. Niall’s having a shitfit. You’ve fucked up, apparently,’ Jakki tells me. ‘Something to do with invoices. Don’t ask me to explain. He wants to see you.’

‘Well, he wants me to do store checks in five different supermarkets before tomorrow’s meeting as well. Which is it to be?’

‘It’s serious. You’d better come back…’

‘OK.’

‘But don’t come without the ice-cream shots.’

Silence, but only because I’m stifling a sneeze.

‘You all right, Murray?’

‘I’m coming down with something, you know.’

‘Got the sniffles? You’re such a wuss,’ she laughs.

‘Am not.’

Sitting behind her desk manning the phones and diaries she has no concept of what it’s like out here in the field. Every time I head for the supermarket freezers I risk death from hypothermia. I’m the Captain bloody Oates of advertising.

I end the call and as I re-aim the camera at the ice-cream display, the sneeze finally explodes. Definitely coming down with something. I look through the viewfinder and wonder if the Schenker Foods brand group will spot the shiny glob of snot on Heidi’s embroidered bodice.

two: nobody died

tuesday 4 november / 11.15 a.m.

I’m sitting in a conference room on the seventh floor of the Canary Wharf Tower, wondering how I’d like to die…

1. Peacefully, boringly in my sleep…

God, that is so me.

2. Surrounded by loved ones as I utter some carefully chosen, though seemingly spontaneous last words: Megan…Forgive her for she knew not what she…uuugggghhhhhh…

3. Alternatively (and, let’s be honest, more likely): Nurse…is it time for my enem…uuuugggggghhhhhhhh…

That’s the trouble with final words. Timing. Surely the hard part is catching that moment when there’s just enough breath left to squeeze out the ultimate sentence. With all the distractions of being terminal—pain, drugs, tubes, iron lungs and whatnot—the chances are you’d miss your cue. But that’s not the worst that could happen. No, imagine coming out with your killer epilogue and then…you don’t die. You linger. Maybe for hours. Or days. Picture the awkwardness. Lying there knowing what they’re thinking: ‘Well, he’s delivered his punchline. He should at least have the manners to get off the stage.’ No, best keep it zipped.

Where was I?…Meeting. Seventh floor. Canary Wharf Tower. Wondering how I’d like to…

4. Beneath several tons of sub-standard Stalin-era concrete, seconds after having pulled newborn triplets and their mother from the rubble of a collapsed apartment building, making me:

1 a Hero of the People in post-quake Uzbekistan.

2 a Millstone of Guilt around the neck of Megan Dyer as she watches the news coverage. Tough—the burden is something she’ll have to learn to live with.

5. At the controls of a 747, having wrested them from the grasp of a bug-eyed Arab before banking the jet inches clear of the Canary Wharf Tower as its paralysed occupants look on with unutterable gratitude.

6. No, no, no. At the controls of a 747 as I plunge it into the Canary Wharf Tower whose paralysed occupants look on with this final thought flashing through their brains: Is that Murray Colin in the cockpit?

Silly. I don’t like flying. I’m not exactly phobic, but every time I climb aboard I have to work hard to banish visions of the jet plummeting into, say, a tall building. Therefore:

7. Nothing that involves heights.

8. Or depths. Diving, submarines, stuff like that. I may be poor at altitude, but I am flat-out terrified of slowly running out of breathable air while being trapped at the bottom of—

I can’t think about that one without breaking into an icy sweat. Change the subject, Murray, change the bloody subject.

9. From a spectacularly massive coronary—‘My God,nurse, his heart literally burst!’—while my body is entwined with:

1 Megan Dyer’s

2 Megan Dyer’s

3 Betina Tofting’s, whose thigh—as she allows her skirt to ride up it—looks alarmingly similar to Megan Dyer’s.

Betina catches me gazing at her legs and yanks at her hem. Feeling shabby, I look away at Niall Haye circling his telescopic pointer around the phrase ‘ Consumer expectation/Taste delivery synchronicity’.

‘I’d like now to discuss the crucial point at which the consumer and the brand interface,’ my boss says, turning from the screen to me. ‘Murray, perhaps you’d like to take us through the results of your store checks.’

Perhaps I bloody wouldn’t. Why does he say that as if I’ve got a choice? Perhaps what I’d really like to do is shove that irritating telescopic pointer up your—

‘Thanks, Niall, I’d love to,’ I reply as I reach for the A0 sheet of Polyboard that has spent the last ninety minutes leaning against my chair. This is its Moment. I prop it up on the table and take the Schenker Foods brand group on a tour of five different supermarket freezer cabinets. In a bravura display of top-notch store checking I somehow managed to complete my mission before returning to the office for my bollocking—something to do with invoices, indeed.

I’m beginning to suspect that advertising isn’t all it was cracked up to be. When I was a goggle-eyed undergrad the recruiters tempted me with talk of drugs, models and shoots on sun-kissed beaches. No one mentioned the store check. Eight years in, the number of lines of coke that I’ve snorted off models’ sun-kissed bottoms runs to not even single figures. Yesterday, by contrast, I completed my ninetieth store check. No, as a career choice advertising does not do exactly what it says on the tin.

And if ad people can’t even be straight with one another…Well, it begs questions, doesn’t it?

11.32 a.m.

‘Thank you, Murray, that was fascinating,’ Haye says as I sit down. Hard to believe that anyone could, but Niall Haye finds pictures of supermarket freezers fascinating; almost—but not quite—enough to make him forget that I really did mess up on the invoice front.

Betina Tofting smiles at me for the first time in nearly two hours. This has nothing to do with her forgiving me for staring at her legs. It’s because she too was riveted by my presentation. She’s probably no more than twenty-five, a good two-thirds of her life still before her, yet that life revolves around Schenker Foods’ new line of adult choc-ices; nothing else exists for her. I smile back as if I feel the same way.

She says, ‘They are excellent photographs, Murray,’ in a Danish accent that’s incapable of irony. Her sincerity puts a glossy red cherry on top of my whipped cream of a depression…Is this as good as it’s going to get? Murray Colin, the world’s finest store checker. You want an oil fire extinguished, call Red Adair. You need a guaranteed thirty goals a season, stump up several million for Van Nistelrooy. You’re after flare-free snaps of icecream packaging, Murray’s your man.

Haye segues to the final item on the agenda: the media plan for the European launch of ChocoChillout. As he explains in excruciating detail how he proposes to blow an advertising budget big enough to buy every child in Africa three square meals a day, inoculations and a PlayStation 2, I mentally compose a letter to the Chief of Internal Security in North Korea.

Dear Sir/Madam,

I appreciate that you must be busy and I apologise for tearing you away from your important work. However, should you be looking for new and imaginative ways of extracting essential information from the many detainees you have in your care, I believe I may have just the thing.

Forget sleep-deprivation and attaching electrodes to genitals. I humbly suggest that just thirty minutes in a locked conference room with Niall Haye, his telescopic pointer and a selection of overhead projections will have even the most recalcitrant counter-revolutionary screaming for mercy and telling you everything you wish to know—as well as, I hazard, some stuff you didn’t even think to ask about.

Should you be interested, Mr Haye could be in Pyongyang on the next flight—sanctions permitting, of course.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to pass on my very best wishes to everyone at your end of the Axis of Evil.

Yours et cetera…

Job done.

I close my eyes.

No, Niall, I’m not going to sleep. I’m concentrating deeply on your exciting proposal to spend 5.2 million giving the lucky citizens of Benelux no less than fifteen opportunities to hear a voice-over promise a sensously silky taste adventure (in Dutch, Flemish and French).

Never mind how I’d like to die. What will surely kill me is terminal cynicism.

12.36 p.m.

The meeting finally breaks up.

I grab a bottle of mineral water from the middle of the table and take a swig, washing down the three aspirin that I’ve placed on my tongue. My glands are up like feisty walnuts and I feel rough, much worse than yesterday. I shouldn’t be here.

Niall stands up and announces lunch. My cue to scurry ahead to reception and organise the taxis. Before I leave the room he grabs my arm. ‘You won’t be joining us at the trough today,’ he hisses. ‘I’d like you to spend your lunch hour going through every invoice you’ve issued over the last twelve months. The rest of the board and I would like to know just how many of our clients you’ve wrongly billed.’

It was a mistake, Niall. An accident. Slightly less than three thou-sand pounds demanded of the wrong client. Nobody died, for God’s sake.

‘Of course,’ I say. ‘That’s exactly what I was planning to do.’

12.41 p.m.

‘You look peaky, babe. Not up to the lunch?’ Jakki says with concern (at least thirty per cent of it sincere) as I arrive at my desk. She has me down as suffering from hypochondria, but it’s nothing so serious—just a touch of flu.

‘It’s not that. Niall’s put me on punishment duties.’

‘Jeez, it was only an invoice. Nobody died. He sends out the wrong ones all the time.’

‘Yes, but he does it deliberately. Did you know that Schenker was billed for the new boardroom table? Thirteen grand. He bunged it on the budget for their last commercial. He even put the agency mark-up on it.’

‘At least you weren’t ripping anyone off.’

‘More fool me, Jakki. If I’d been ripping someone off I’d have probably got a rise…Anyway, I need to go through a year’s worth of billing now.’

‘I’ll give you a hand.’

‘You don’t have to do that.’

And she doesn’t. As secretary to four other account supervisors besides me she has enough bum-numbing rubbish to deal with.

‘I don’t mind. You’ll be doing me a favour. If I go out I’ll only end up buying a double cheese and sardine melt and something with triple-choc in its name. No bloody willpower.’

I let her pull up a chair next to mine. She could do with losing a little weight.

2.09 p.m.

‘Well, I can’t find anything,’ I say.

‘Hmm,’ Jakki murmurs. She lost interest some time ago. She’s still sitting beside me, but now she’s looking at the pictures in Italian Vogue.

‘The independent Murray Colin Commission hereby concludes its investigation into the administrative record of Murray Colin, and hereby finds that Murray Colin has billed impeccably.’

‘Hmm,’ says Jakki.

‘That was one too many herebys, wasn’t it?’

‘Uh-huh…What do you think I’d look like in this?’ She holds up a picture of a model who’s thinner than the paper she’s printed on. She’s wearing two squares of chiffon, each the size of a pocket tissue.

‘Gorgeous,’ I say.

‘Who am I trying to kid? I’d look like Mrs Blobby. God, I can’t hold out any longer,’ she announces, standing up and pulling on her coat. ‘I’ve got to get food. Want anything?’

‘You could get me a Mars.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Yeah. Hang on, I’ll give you some money.’ I stand up and reach into my trouser pocket. I freeze as my hand touches something—it isn’t loose change.

‘What’s up?’ Jakki asks.

‘Nothing…Nothing at all. You go. Forget the Mars.’

Well, I’m not going to tell her I’ve just found a lump, am I?

three: fifteen weeks, four days and an indeterminate number of hours

tuesday 4 november / 7.44 p.m.

At least, I think it’s a lump.

I stand in front of the long mirror in my bedroom and lower my trousers and underpants. I unbutton my shirt and lift the tails out to my sides to reveal myself in seminaked glory. Nothing glorious about it, actually. My body is thoroughly average. No flab to speak of, but no corrugated sheet of abdominal muscles either. Just a gently bowed curve of stomach descending to an untidy clump of mid-brown hair. Every once in a while I consider shaving it off. Nothing to do with vanity. No, the thought appeals to my sense of neatness. But…shaved pubes. There’s something pervy about that. A bit porn star. And I can’t stomach the idea of being knocked down by a car, getting rushed to Aamp;E and the medics discovering that I groom down there.

Doctor: Take a look at this, nurse.

Nurse: My God, a depilator. Is he a porn star?

Doctor: What’s it say on his admission form?

Nurse: Advertising executive.

Doctor: He’s most likely just your run-of-the-mill pervert.

Nurse: Shall I call social services?

Doctor: We’d best be sure first. I mean, he could be a pro cyclist. I understand they shave. Something to do with aero dynamics, apparently.

Nurse: No, he hasn’t got the six-pack to be a cyclist.

As a rule my sense of neatness is pervasive, all-consuming, but in the ongoing face-off between shaggy and trim, shaggy wins every time.

My eyes travel down a little further to my…You know something? I don’t know what to call it. I’ve never felt comfortable with any of the standard terms. Penis sounds too formal—a bit sort of Presenting His Excellency Lord Penis, Duke of Genitalia. Willy, of course, is too cute. Cock? Too blunt, macho, in-your-face. There are dozens of other words for the thing—well, thing for one. Then there’s knob, todger, schlong, pecker, love trun-cheon. Love truncheon. Not even in my dreams. None of them feels right. And before anyone suggests it, I am not going down the road of personalising it, giving it a pet name. So I’m not left with much. But I’m looking at it now. Like the rest of me, it’s nothing special. Thoroughly average, I suppose, though I’ve never taken a ruler to it. But that isn’t why I’m staring at myself in the mirror, my trousers round my ankles. I reach down to my…Balls? Bollocks? Knackers? Testicles? Same problem. I’m stuck whenever I have to refer to anything in the…er…meat ’n’ two veg region ( meat ’n’ two veg—truly horrible). My solution to date has been to avoid any reference if at all possible. It has worked well enough for thirty-one years, but now…Well, I’ve got a lump. Or something.

I think I read somewhere that men should check themselves once a month, like women are meant to examine their breasts. I also read that you should check the batteries in your smoke alarm on a regular basis. I’ve never done that either. Frankly, I’ve never felt happy about the idea of self-examination, and only partly because I’m not especially fond of molesting myself. My principle objection is that the doctors—men and women who, let’s not forget, undergo only slightly less training than architects and London cab drivers—are advising the rest of us—a bunch of barely informed amateurs—to do the checking. Where is the logic, please? Why the billions blown on teaching hospitals the size of Devon if they end up making us do the work?

But I’m checking now. Feeling with my hand. Very tentatively. My left one…Just say the word, Murray. My left testicle is lower. Though I’ve never paid it the kind of attention I’m giving it now, I think it has always been lower. It’s also bigger. Definitely bigger. I don’t think it has ever been that. I take it between my fingertips and roll it gently as if it’s a bingo ball and I’m looking for the number. There it is. My fingers weren’t deceiving me in the scrabble for change at lunchtime. I quickly let go. Drop it like a red-hot pebble. As if I’ve turned the bingo ball and seen the number.