‘Course I’ve eard. You’re in the Standard, mate.’
‘Really, which page?’
‘Wot, you aven’t got one?’
‘Not yet. I’ll get one, I’ll get one. Which page? Which page?’
‘Um, five.’
‘Above the fold or below?’
‘The what?’
‘The middle of the page. It doesn’t matter so much on a tabloid, but-’
‘You’ve got the whole page, mate. Well, part from a advert for cheap flights.’
‘The whole page? Wow.’
‘Says they reckon you did it cos you was under such stress from avin a def fret made against you an bein kidnapped an stuff.’
‘What?’
Well, yuh.
I shook my head. ‘Ridley Scott has a lot to answer for.’
‘What?’ asked Craig. ‘Making Black Hawk Down?’
‘Hell’s teeth, yeah, but no; I was thinking more of introducing the concept of Gratuitous Steam.’
Craig glanced over at me. We were a bit drunk and a bit stoned, watching Alien on DVD after an early meal of a home-delivered pizza. We’d eaten it while watching the London local news programmes on the TV, in case I was mentioned, but I wasn’t. I wondered who the camera team had been this morning outside the office in that case, then decided that probably they had been from one of the TV stations but they hadn’t got enough good footage (maybe I should have got out, said something), or the story just hadn’t been judged important enough by the TV news editors.
Craig was significantly less drunk and stoned than I was, plus he’d only eaten one slice of the pizza; he had a mystery date he wouldn’t tell me about, at nine. In the meantime: Alien. Craig was exactly the sort of guy who would gradually replace all his treasured videos with DVDs. He was also exactly the sort of guy who’d ration himself, buying one old film on DVD whenever he bought a new one being released for the first time. Alien was the latest oldie.
Craig looked at me. ‘Gratuitous Steam?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, gesturing at the screen. ‘Look how fucking steamy it is in the old Nostromo there. Who the hell decreed space-ships dozens of generations after the shuttle – the Model-T of spacefaring craft as it will doubtless prove to be and not itself notoriously water-vapour-prone – would be so full of steam? I mean, why? And it’s been grotesquely over-used in practically every SF film and no-brain thriller ever since.’
Craig sat and watched the film for a while. ‘Designer.’
‘What?’
‘Set designer,’ he said authoritatively. ‘Because it looks good. Makes the place look lived in and industrial. And hides stuff, menacingly. Which is what you want in a horror movie, or a thriller. Plus it gives people like you something to complain about, which is patently an added bonus.’
‘Do I complain a lot?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘Yeah, but, come on; that’s the implication. Do I?’
‘You have all these problems with films, Ken.’
‘I do?’
‘Take Science Fiction. What, according to you, is the only technically credible SF film?’
‘2001.’
Craig sighed. ‘Why?’
‘Because Kubrick doesn’t allow noises in space. And because he was a genius, he knew how to use the no-sound thing, so you get the brilliant bit where what’s-his-name blows himself out of the wee excursion pod thing and into the airlock and bounces around inside the open airlock until he hits the door-close and air-in controls and it’s only then you get the sound feeding in; magnificent.’
‘And every other space movie-’
‘Is that bit less credible because you see an explosion in space and next thing you know there’s a fucking teeth-rattling sound effect.’
‘So-’
‘Though it has to be said, virtually every movie with an explosion in it gets the time-delay thing wrong, anyway. Not only do film directors seem not to understand that sound doesn’t travel in a vacuum, they also seem not to understand how it does travel in an atmosphere. You see an explosion half a fucking klick away, but the sound always happens at exactly the same time, not a second and a bit later, when you should hear it.’
‘But-’
‘Though there are signs of improvement. Band of Brothers had proper explosions. I mean, that was the least of its brilliance, but it was a sign they were taking the whole thing seriously, that the special effects people were making the explosions look like real high-explosive explosions look, with just maybe a single flash and stuff flying everywhere, rather than all this vaporised petrol or whatever it is; these great big rolling fiery clouds of burning gas, that’s so bullshit.’
‘Why?’
‘Why?’
‘Yeah. Why does all this matter? It’s only the goddamn movies, Ken.’
‘Because it isn’t fucking true, that’s why,’ I said, waving my arms for emphasis.
‘So,’ Craig said, ‘what happened in that TV studio?’
‘I’ve told you.’
‘Yeah, you have told me, and you’ve told me that what you told me is the truth. But it isn’t what you’ve told other people, it isn’t what you’re putting in your sworn statement, is it?’
I turned on the couch to face him, ignoring Sigourney and her doomed chums. ‘What the hell has that got to do with anything?’
‘Ken, you’re always banging on about truth and just sticking to the facts, but here you are telling lies in public.’
‘But there’s a point to all this! Haven’t you understood anything?’
‘I understand exactly what you’re doing, Ken,’ Craig said reasonably. ‘I even applaud it. I think.’ He stretched back in the couch, hands behind his neck. ‘I mean, it’s resorting to violence, which is more your bad person’s stock-in-trade reaction, but I see what you’re doing. All I’m saying is that in trying to make this point you’re having to compromise this thing about telling the truth even when it hurts.’
‘Craig, shit, come on; I’m no better than anybody else; I tell lies all the time. Mostly in the context of relationships. God, I’d love to be a dear, sweet, faithful, one-woman man, but I’m not. I’ve lied to… most of the women I’ve known. I’ve lied to my employers, to the press, to-’
‘And me?’
That drew me up short. I sat back, thinking. ‘Well, there are… well, they used to be called white lies, didn’t they? Relatively unimportant untruths necessary to… spare people’s feelings, or to prevent people becoming complicit in… well, either complicit or-’
‘I do kind of know what a white lie is, thanks, Ken.’
‘Yeah; stuff that you need to tell people, even friends, if you’re being untruthful to somebody else.’ The on-board, on-line, on-message censor that was usually employed looking a few words or phrases ahead to make sure I didn’t swear on air was here doing something similar so that I didn’t actively lie to Craig, even as I was carefully not telling him the whole truth, which would have involved admitting I’d lied to him a lot about the night I’d spent with his wife. ‘I wouldn’t tell you the truth when I was off fucking somebody else if I thought that Jo might ask you if you knew where I was. Come on, man. You do it too; you’re doing it now. Where are you going later? Who are you meeting?’
‘That’s not the same. I’m just not telling you. You can’t compare refusing to tell at all with deliberately telling a lie.’
‘Yeah, but it’s still not being open, is it?’
‘So fucking what? You don’t have a right to know everything about my private life.’
‘But I’m your best friend!’ I looked at him. ‘Amn’t I?’
‘Best male friend, definitely.’
‘Who’s your best female friend?’
‘Well, what about Nikki?’
‘Nikki?’
‘Yeah; hey, I’ve known her all her life, for one thing.’
‘Yeah, but-’
‘We’ve had too many great times together to count, been through tough things too, plus she’s great fun to be with, she’s caring, funny, a great listener, understanding… What?’