Playground. The comment was even more biting for Victor, since he had been one of the first voices, one of the very first, on Playground. He had been the voice of Gerry the Gerbil, that hideous green felt monstrosity, for seven years. Thousands upon thousands of ankle-biters had glued themselves to their tellies three times a week to watch and listen to the rib-tickling Gerry the Gerbil. Seven years of that, he’d done. In the end, he’d turned it in. No, be honest, they’d given Gerry the deep six, why, he didn’t know. All right, he did know. But a couple of times late for the voice-laying sessions didn’t merit junking an entire character, did it? A couple of times, all right, most of the time in the last year of Gerry’s life.
Hang on, Beattie was saying something. “I know Victor’s had problems, Harry, but he really is doing a good job on this. I truly think you’re exaggerating a bit.”
Oh, nice one, Beattie, thanks for your support.
Harry said, “Exaggerating. Am I, am I just? Well, truly have a good listen to what you’ve laid so far, darling. All right, once upon a time, maybe, he was the dog’s bollocks, but look, kid, this series, or what will be a series if you can get this right, is called Through a Killer’s Eyes not John and Jane at the Seaside. I could find better than Victor in any third-rate repertory company in Widnes. Tony, go to the top, would you, heart, and let’s hear it wild.”
Tony punched a couple of buttons on his computer because that’s all you had to do these days with digital technology, none of this winding back, none of those brown shoelaces they used in the old days, and then the takes Victor had already recorded began to roll through the headphones.
Victor began marking the script in front of him with meaningless hieroglyphics, very carefully because he didn’t want the slightest sound to go back through the talk-back and let Beattie and Harry know he was listening. He had to hear this. He took out his large silk pocket handkerchief and wiped his forehead. The handkerchief gave him something to do, but it had actually become suddenly a little stuffy in here. Normally the voice-over booth was cool, air-conditioned, but today, for some reason, the air conditioning had developed a vibration inaudible to human ears, but which Tony the engineer had insisted was going to turn up in the background of the voice track. He’d tried to prove it to Victor and to Beattie, the director of this epic. Neither of them could hear it, but Tony said it was there, and in here, Tony was the boss. He had ears like a bat.
Victor’s mind was wandering off again. That was another problem that had afflicted him recently. Remarked on by more than one producer. Not unkindly, but even so. He thought: I knew a man who could hear the cry of bats./How do you know he could?/Because he told me so. Or something. The Cocktail Party. Three weeks of repertory with the Eliot play, and what was the other? Chekhov. Ivanov, that was it. How long ago was that? Twenty years? Time flies, dear, when you’re having fun, that was what they had always said to each other, sitting in the dingy dining rooms of grim, grimy, theatrical digs in Warrington, and Worksop, and yes, Harry, thank you, Widnes. Of course, they could be brave and gay because this was something they were only doing pro tem, until the call came, until the night the Big Agent happened to be out front or a teleseries came along or the West End Part or the Film Part or Something. Something was going to come along, wasn’t it? Well, no, sadly it wasn’t, actually, for most of them, and most of them knew it. And so, to quell the desperation, it had to be made to be Fun.
But if you did it long enough, it became not quite so much Fun, and finally it stopped being Fun at all.
Victor had often shivered at the thought of the future that could have been his if he had not been in the right place at the right time. He had been thirty-two, a dangerous age for an actor, just on the cusp, when you know it’s going to be all right, or it’s not. In Salford it was Death of a Salesman, playing one of the Loman sons, he couldn’t now remember which one. A good, meaty part, but you can mess it up. But he hadn’t messed it up, and out front there was, not the legendary Big Agent, but just as good, a television producer who had seen in Victor exactly what he needed for the new character he was introducing into his twice-weekly soap. He’d told Victor quite frankly, he wasn’t engaging him for his looks, because let’s be honest, Victor, you’ve got character, but you’re no matinée idol. But Victor had a good Voice.
And there you were, the legendary Big Leap, from three-weekly rep to the Big Time, network television, and instant fame. Hardly instant, be honest; it takes a bit of time for a character to encrust itself on the half-empty minds of the hopeless drabs who watch Pluckett’s Alley, a heartwarming, twice-weekly (daytime), slice-of-life chronicle of life up there in black-pudding and whippet country.
But it had happened eventually, a measure of fame had started to come along; there were winsome little articles in Woman’s Own and TV Times, there was a modest amount of fan mail, and, most important, there was an agent. Frank Porteous was that dreamed-of thing, a West End agent. All right, be honest, he was on the eastern marches of the West End, West Kensington if not, indeed, Hammersmith, but he did the business, did Frank. The first thing he had done was to persuade Victor to come and live in London, and to commute to Manchester. All right, be honest, that wasn’t too difficult, though it did piss Victor off a bit having to get up at five twice a week to get the first train up to the studios.
He had to drag his mind back quickly from Manchester, because they had finished playing the takes over there in the fish tank.
“See what I mean?” Harry’s voice was high. He was pulling fretfully at that silly little non-beard. “Where’s your drama? Where’s your edge-of-the-seat? What you’ve got there, Beattie, is your cosy. We don’t want cosy.”
Beattie said, “You’re not being fair, Harry. Victor’s one of the best voices in the business. All right, was one of the best voices. But he’s still got it. He’s still a voice. He’s known, and he’s respected and liked.”
“Not by me, Beattie, he isn’t. What he’s got is a whisky and Benson and Hedges voice. Has he, by any chance, had a drink tonight? Because there was a fluff in there, wasn’t there — on the word slaughter? Perhaps I’m losing my touch, or is it you? And, I mean, Beattie, just look at him, will you. Has he slept in that suit or what?”
Victor avoided looking down at his suit. Yes, it did perhaps need a bit of a press, a thorough cleaning, in fact, but it was Gieves and Hawkes just the same, bought back then, when his star was bright. But never mind that, the horror was continuing in there, piped to him red-hot through the cans.
“Beattie, this is docudrama, this is a high-quality, minutely-researched, factually-dramatised examination (And just how, Victor thought irrelevantly, can you have a factually-dramatised anything, pray?) of the psyche of a particularly brutal maniacal murderer. I don’t want the voice that launched a thousand potato chips to be saying, what’s the line you’ve got there (rustling of paper), ‘For three endless seconds, Gladys Morgan looks eternity in the face.’ Crap line, by the way, but we can get away with it if the voice is right. And the voice isn’t right. All I hear is (he did a horribly accurate imitation of Victor), ‘And when your serial killer comes home, Mum, what does he want to find on the table for his tea? That’s right, Crispy Codburgers.’ ”