Read by Louisa Gummer
There’s always a sense of oppression that overwhelms me when I cross the frontier. It’s like putting on a stiff, uncomfortable coat, stepping across that line. When I fly in it’s quite different. There is no line in the sky. There is no border post on this side or that; the one filled with bored bemused young men who think you must be a fool, or wicked, for wanting to go there in the first place; the other populated by frightened soldiers who react to every verbal pleasantry as if it were a trap laid to catch them by some agent of the state.
On a plane you don’t even know precisely when it is that you cross the border. It becomes a process rather than an act. You slide almost unknowingly from one state into another, in both senses of the word. The sense of discomfort, a low pain that you cannot pin down to any particular part of the body, grows slowly throughout the flight; a second constricting skin has grown over you by the time you arrive, by the time you step out into the pitiless heat of the tarmac at His Excellency’s International Airport, from the stale, artificial chill of the aircraft.
His Excellency is an affable man. His picture smiles down upon you. He is the friend of many, and they smile too, for the camera, as they turn to face it, shaking his outstretched hand. In those photographs he does not stare into the lens as they do, but looks instead, unblinkingly into their faces, as if he, like us, is seeing them anew. He meets and greets all the Heads of State, leaders of Commissions, of Government bodies, celebrities and Trade Organisations. And after your first visit you are presented with a framed copy of your own handshake, his signature scrawled across it, the whiplash tail of his name scarring your face.
The first time I saw one of His Excellency’s home movies I was physically sick. Nobody had warned me, not specifically. It was from that time that I began to suffer from what they call psychological disorders. I learned to look only at the top edge of the screen, without blinking. His Excellency admired that. As to the sounds, I imagine that I’m listening to heavy metal music, to Quo, or Lynerd Skynerd, the Band; anything with an insistent rhythm.
It was when I took the Banks boy over, and he saw the home movies for the first time, that I began to understand. I didn’t think to warn him, specifically, which may be a measure of how far I had gone in, but as we got to that bit (His Excellency always started with the same one) something made me glance, not at the boy, but at His Excellency. He was not watching the film at all. He had no need to relive past pleasures. They could be repeated endlessly at any time of the day and night.
That was how he must have watched me, I realised, enjoying my surprise, my horror; enjoying my fear; but more than that, he was watching for signs of my enjoyment.
*
I spoke to someone about it once, at the embassy, a minor official. There’s shit in every job, he said. That shocked me too, his language, absurd considering what I had told him about. He said, we all have to get our hands dirty from time to time. He said, look on it as a form of public service, and I could see in his face that he was thinking, besides, you’re paid well enough. You’ll get a gong in the end, he said.
I spoke to somebody back at Head Office.
I should keep quiet about that, old thing, he told me. It won’t do any of us any good if it comes out.
We make a lot of money out of His Excellency, one way or another. There are a lot of pensions paid out of those profits. There are a lot of taxes paid on them. There are a lot of jobs in a lot of constituencies. You only have to do the maths to see how worthwhile it is, to the NHS, to the Education system.
He said, you’re doing a damned good job, you and your team. He said, don’t try to understand them. They’re not like us. It’s a cultural thing. Different strokes for different folks, don’t you forget that. In fact, and he spoke kindly then, as if to a child, it’s not helpful to think of them as people at all.
Oh, yes, and that was another thing. We were watching his home movies. It was that bit where she cries out for the first time. His Excellency said to me, with a sly grin, they work so much better, don’t you think, with the safety guards removed?
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Product Placement by Brindley Hallam Dennis was read by Louisa Gummer at the Liars’ League Shock & Awe event on Tuesday 13th September 2011, at the Phoenix, Cavendish Square, London.
Brindley Hallam Dennis has published the novella A Penny Spitfire (Pewter Rose Press, 2011), and That’s What Ya Get! Kowalski’s Assertions (Unbound Press, 2010), and around 100 short stories. As Mike Smith he has published poetry, plays and critical essays. He blogs at http://Bhdandme.wordpress.com/
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