Sunday 13 March 2011

WIP (1)


Something I’ve been working on. Initially it was a scene from a spec script, now it’s that and a book based on the same material. The two feed each other. All I have to do now is overcome the habit of a lifetime and finish the thing.


When she was a young girl, Susan knew what she wanted to be. Whenever grown-ups asked her, she’d say ‘a nurse’ or  ‘a teacher’ or ‘like my mummy’. She said this because that was what she knew the grown-ups wanted to be told. She never told them, or her mummy or her daddy, or anybody else, that what she really wanted to be was a pilot of an aeroplane. Maybe a scientist. Maybe an explorer. Maybe a pirate.

Susan grew up, as the less fortunate do. When she was ten, the other pupils in her class noticed that she paid little attention to her lessons, and that she tended to sit at the front of the class, on the extreme left or the extreme right, where she barely fell into the periphery of the teacher’s vision. Soon after this, they noticed that Susan was rarely in class at all. Somebody mentioned this  - whether through concern or through jealousy remains unknown  - to somebody else who held a position of authority, A truant officer visited Susan’s home one afternoon, on a day when the sun and the rain were dogfighting for supremacy, and was met with Susan’s mother’s insistence that the girl left for school every morning and, what was more, on her return every afternoon was quite talkative about her day’s education.

Not wishing her mother to be seen a peddler of falsehoods, Susan returned home at the correct time that afternoon and found the conversation still progressing. A few minutes later the truant officer left, not only satisfied that Susan had been attending as was required, but quietly impressed with the young lady’s politeness, a trait obviously instilled by her delightful mother.

Every school day for two or possibly three years after this, Susan travelled, as far as she could while still returning home at a time that would cause neither suspicion nor concern. On each of these days she followed a slightly different bearing, and now knew every road, alley, park, shop and traffic light within a ten-mile radius of her home. At weekends and during holidays she would go further. Her mother insisted on accompanying her, on the grounds that girls her age should not go off on their own because you never know what might happen. Therefore Susan did not enjoy the greater range as much as she wished to.

Having explored as much as she could in her limited daily allowance of time, Susan decided to return to school. This she did more out of curiosity than duty. She was surprised to find that where she had previously found the entire process dull and rather trying, some lessons were now interesting and some actively enjoyable. She was surprised again, while surreptitiously eavesdropping on the conversation of some of her fellow pupils, to find that they had grown to become equally interesting and enjoyable. Thus Susan resolved to become a part of their social group. Within two weeks she was not quite the most popular girl in her year, but that was just as she wished it.

The question was phrased differently this time, but once again Susan was asked what she wanted to be when she grew up. This time her answer, a permutation of paths and subjects and examinations, would roughly determine the shape of her life from then on. She understood that she had the intelligence and the drive to become a nurse or a teacher or a scientist or the pilot of an aeroplane and more importantly, that she could express this without fear of ridicule. Any girl could become these things. Susan, more than anything else, still wanted to become an explorer, or a pirate. But there is nowhere left today to explore, and piracy is frowned upon still.

Susan was offered a place at a prestigious university, a place based on her examination results and on an interview at which she dazzled a number of dons who had previously considered themselves unimpressable. It was a surprise to everybody except herself when she turned down the offer and chose instead to take a job at an independently-owned high street pharmacy.

She had been working in the shop for not quite three years. She was now wearing her fourth white coat. She knew many of her customers by name and they knew her, but at no time did she consider herself to have any connection to them or to her co-workers, with whom she got on just fine. A man entered the shop, looked at some bottles of shampoo on one shelf and some pain relieving pills on another, rocked a boxed tube of toothpaste from side to side in its place on a display, then sat down on the plain wicker-seat chair that was provided for the elderly to rest on while they waited for prescriptions to be filled. The man sat, one leg folded over the other, resting an elbow on his leg just above the lower part of his left thigh, thumb on cheekbone, fingers over mouth, looking at Susan. Every so often he raised his head a little then lowered it again. None of the other assistants seemed to mind him.

Susan looked back at the man. He was smart but not dandyish. His suit was the understated work of a fine tailor. His face spoke of refinement but not necessarily of breeding. She seemed drawn to him, but not attracted.

The man moved his hand from his face, sat up, raised one index finger, and began to speak. Susan understood this was not a conversation; she was to listen and not contribute.

“Each time you walk behind that counter you take a piece of plastic the size of a credit card, on which there is a magnetised strip. You insert the card into a reader which is attached to the cash register. This device records which of the staff is working at which register. Standard practise.”

(With this, he opened his hand and raised an eyebrow, not to invite comment but to demonstrate that what he said was nothing other than fact.)

“Given this, given the ubiquity of the Universal Product Code, and given access to the database in which these records are held, an interested observer can see which items have been sold by which member of staff.

“I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

(A small shift in weight. The interesting part was to begin here.)

“More cosmetics with a high retail price are sold in this shop than in any other in Britain. This distinction was achieved roughly thirty-one months ago and has been maintained ever since. If one could see the records of sales and compare it to a record of credit card usage in this shop - and I’m sure you can gather that when I say ‘if one could’ I’m letting you know that yes one could, and that yes one has - one would see that the majority of those sales have been to women, usually women of a certain age and a certain level of income. Women who can afford it.

“Now, if we perhaps use those credit card records to identify these women, and we perhaps phone them, possibly under the flimsy disguise of a market research company investigating why women might choose to buy one particular brand of highly-priced cosmetic rather than another… We discover that very few of them… very very few of them… in fact only three out of the several hundred who have bought highly-priced cosmetics in this shop… had any intention of doing so.

“The others – all of the others – bought their cosmetics on the spur of the moment.

“No intention.

“On a whim.

“And the little piece of plastic with the magnetised strip – remember that? – tells us that all of these unplanned impulse purchases of highly-priced cosmetics were made at cash registers manned by… Her.”

The man pointed at Susan’s co-worker.

“She makes an astonishing number of sales. And as a result she makes an astonishing amount of commission. Which is useful, because she’s a single mother and the extra money, well, it may not be essential, she’s doing okay, but we’ll say she finds it useful.

“Now, here’s the thing. I took, shall we say, a professional interest in her, and so I watched her. Not on my own, of course, not in person.  If I’d come into this shop before you would have recognised me today. You, especially, would have recognised me today. Other people have watched her. Quite a number of the old ladies who sit on this chair have been doing so at my request. My command, come to think of it.

“And of course there’s the CCTV footage. We‘ve been watching that, and do you know I believe we’ve cracked it. We know how she does it. We’ve found out her secret. Do you know what she does? You know what she does. She talks to you. Or, rather, you talk to her. A well-to-do looking woman walks in here and while she’s waiting to be served, or browsing, looking over the hair colourants or the sugar-free dental fixatives, you happen to mention to your friend about the really good write-up that such-and-such product got in such-and-such glossy magazine. And the well-off lady overhears this, and suddenly she gets this overwhelming urge to pick up a pot of crystal formula pearl gel crème or whatever, and she buys it, from her, who gets the commission and spends it on toys for her child.”

Susan looked at her co-worker, who seemed oblivious not just to the conversation, but to the man’s presence at all. When she looked back at the man, he was now standing at the counter, his face no more than a foot away from hers. He had a faint scent of something; citrussy, strawberryish.

“I know what you can do. I’m not here to tell you to stop. I don’t want you to stop. I want you to do it for a new reason. For a greater good. There are things out there, strange things, unusual things. Things to be investigated, explored, explained. Things, sometimes, that need not to be explained. And you, with this ability you have, you could help us do this. You could go to places nobody else has. You could see sights that nobody should see.

“And all the while you do this, you would be helping people. Helping them on a scale far greater than the unofficial redistribution of wealth you operate at present. Every day will be different; every moment will be a surprise. But. I have to tell you. You will be endangered. You may be injured. You may lose your life. And if you wish to do this, if you wish to see the things you have ached to see for as long as you have been able to think, you must do it now, this instant. Your family, your friends, your pets, everything, must be left behind. No goodbyes. Now. For ever.

“Well?”

Susan looked at the man and knew that everything he had said was true. And with the advent of this knowledge, everything she knew about herself changed: she seemed taller, more confident. More beautiful. She spoke, and was surprised by the difference in her voice, how she had suddenly become a match for this man who had in minutes made her what she wanted to be.

“Who shall I be working with?”

“My name is Bowman.”

“Mr. Bowman. I’m – “

“No. Not anymore. Your name is now Miss Novak.”

“Novak.”

Mr. Bowman gently nodded in recognition.

“Very well, Mr. Bowman. Yo ho ho.”

Mr. Bowman walked to the door. Miss Novak joined him; she left a white coat, and Susan, on the wicker-seated chair. 




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