'It's Valentine's Day,' said Sharon. 'Who do you think we can line up and massacre?'
'I'm guessing you already have people in mind.’
‘Boris Johnson, the whole of SAGE, Chris Whitty, Patrick Vallance, Matt Hancock, the entire CDC in the States and every pharmacological crook and vaccine manufacturer in the world.’
‘You’ll need a bloody big garage in Chicago to gun down that lot.’
‘Not beyond the bounds of possibility.’
‘Talking of vaccines, or should I say non-vaccines, how are you getting into the States without the jab?’
‘Oh come on Ant, I have the certification.’
She gave me that pitying look usually reserved for the village idiot as she stuffed her laptop into its case. A suitable reminder that, after Pattie Regan, Sharon Kozinsky was the most connected agent in the UK.
Bags already packed, Sharon was prepared for the off. We were in her offices at 7pm, everyone else long gone. She’d phoned me from the train station having returned from the Lake District and demanded a meet up. She wanted the lowdown on Dick. I had disappointed her. Now she narrowed her eyes and looked at me as if I was some curious refugee from a B-movie horror flick.
'So you're telling me nothing happened?'
'Precisely, I'm telling you it was a wasted journey,' I lied.
'You know what I want to do with people like that who waste your time? Award them the Edward II termination experience.'
'That would be disembowelment then would it?'
'The word doesn't quite convey the agony I wish to induce.'
'If a red hot poker up your jacksie qualifies as disembowelment,'
'So what did you do?'
'Had a beer and came home.'
She shook her head as if speaking to a moron was the last thing she needed. I feel guilty lying to Sharon but Dick had cautioned me and until I process all that transpired I'm playing safe. Sharon, in any case, was getting ready to fly to New York and then LA, having just got back from caring for her sister up north. It wasn't the time to be briefing her on stuff that might just be a little close to home. I'd already cracked a couple of jokes which went down like a wet fart in a crowded lift. You might just as well have told a disgruntled Richard III that he'd got the hump and expected him to laugh. Sharon obviously wasn't in the mood for levity. Which was bad luck for me because, since my encounter with Dick, all I wanted was levity and a bit of Chardonnay- induced oblivion.
'You could have phoned me, you know. You didn't have to wait three weeks.'
'Phoned you about what? There was nothing to tell. And I'm sure you were preoccupied with your sister. Glad to hear she's doing alright by the way.'
'You're trying to ingratiate yourself with me aren't you? To distract from the fact that you're lying through your teeth.'
'I'm not!' I said, protesting too much and plonking myself on the sofa outside Sharon's personal office, otherwise known as the casting couch. A couch that had hosted the arses of some of the most illustrious names in show business. A couch that has also seen better days having been in place since Sharon opened her agency. Some might say libidinous couch. Since rumour has it that Sharon, in far off times, hadn't been averse to a little rumpy pumpy with potential star material when they came looking for representation. By way of auditioning, you understand. One such, apparently, was Phil Dawson fresh out of drama school. Yes, he of the Sebastian Coleman franchise, the biggest spy series this side of James Bond (yes, including Bourne.) And, after all that breathless exertion, she didn't take him on. Apparently. Then. Ironic, because since he became a major Hollywood player she now looks after his UK interests. 'Oh Sebastian,' I said by way of a tease, embracing myself with my own arms. (I'm pathetic when it comes to distractions.)
'I never shagged Phil Dawson!' she shrieked. 'And don't try to change the subject!'
'What would Maurice think?'
'My husband Maurice knows nothing about the rumours surrounding that sofa. And since he's a six foot ten ex-international rugby player it might be prudent to keep it that way. I shouldn't like to have to point the finger at the source of those rumours. They call those things in rugby 'mauls' and 'rucks' for a reason. A place where skulls go to be fractured.'
'Is that a threat?' I said, idly picking up an A4 mug shot from the small table beside me. I stared at a toothy grin surrounded by a mass of dark curls,. 'Brandy Vinegar?' I queried looking at the name on the back of the photo. 'You're not really going to represent someone calling themselves Brandy Vinegar surely?'
'Might do,' said Sharon somewhat defensively. 'Saw her at drama school just before Christmas. She was terrific.'
'What as?'
'Mother Courage.'
'Mother Courage? She's barely twenty!'
'So? She aged up.'
'I don't buy it.'
'Don't get ideas, she's too young for you matey.' Sharon snatched the photo from me.
'Everyone's too young for me Sharon. I'm of an age when a revolutionary act was not polishing your shoes. And an app was short for apple. And I mean the fruit. '
'Yes, well - ' Sharon stuffed the photo in a concertina folder. She's nothing if not old fashioned in her filing methods.
'Even so, I'd get her to change her name if I was you, otherwise it might leave a bad taste in your mouth.' I laughed uproariously and theatrically slapped my thigh. 'Brandy Vinegar! Bad taste in your mouth!'
Sharon was unmoved. 'Distraction comes as natural to you as origami does to a Box Jellyfish. What are you avoiding Ant? It's been three bloody weeks since you visited Mary Barton, surely there must have been some pay off for going.'
'Dick.'
'What?'
'She likes to be known as Dick.'
'You are so annoying! Dick then. What are you avoiding?'
'Nothing. It was a complete waste of time.'
'Yeah, and I won the Mr. Universe contest last year. She must have said something about Pattie. She taught her.'
'I'll go into the boring details when you come back, but you have a plane to catch.'
'I know when you're lying to me. I come over in menopausal hot flushes.'
'I thought you were just warm blooded.'
'If I had time to warm up a poker I'd do an Edward II on you.'
'I've resigned by the way.'
'What?'
'From Notso. I've resigned.'
'You can't - '
'Well I haven't quite resigned. I've written the letter to Kieran though.'
'Why?'
'Oh come on! How much do you care anymore? After the nonsense of the last two years? There was a time when I really believed that art nurtured the soul. But when the whole ethos has been hi-jacked by talentless, cliche-ridden agents and artists with woke oozing out of their back orifices, where every other bad TV drama manages to invoke climate change into the risible dialogue, where everything that is not deemed progressive is labelled 'extreme right wing', then why do I care anymore? I used to live and breathe writers and writing. Now I care more about a good tomato crop in the summer.'
'It'll come back. You can't keep good art from flourishing.'
'Not necessarily in my lifetime. The last two years have seen lie after lie sold as truth and truth labelled as misinformation.'
'Darling, you are immersed your whole life in a lie. It's called fiction.'
'You know what the greatest dangers of being a writer used to be? Penury and failure. Now it's being arrested for hate speech. For inadvertently offending someone. Why should I care if someone's offended? Did Shakespeare? Some pratt in that den of thieves called Parliament is proposing that even to possess - not even publish, but just possess - material likely to offend should be an offence. Can you imagine? Huckleberry Finn, racist in its portrayal of slavery. Offensive! Another - '
'Did you know owning - or even reading - Uncle Tom's Cabin in the Southern United States in the nineteenth century was considered seditious, even dangerous - '
'Don't interrupt!'
'Just saying. It's nothing new. It's not as if literature ever had a free reign. Ask Lady Chatterley.'
'They didn't legislate against it as a rule. Owning the Complete Works of Shakespeare would have you nicked under this proposal. Racism, Othello; sexism, The Shrew; transphobia, As You Like It ; anti-semitism, Merchant. You own Shakespeare? Five years hard labour!'
'They'd never get the legislation through.'
'Really? When you can get nicked for drinking a coffee on a park bench?'
'Well, if it's Starbucks it should be a crime.'
'Imagine Plod in the front row of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre ready to pounce when Iago says to Brabantio: "Even now, now, very now, an old black ram Is tupping your white ewe."' That's, of course, if they understood it, which I guess is a bit of a stretch.'
'That's probably a hate crime in itself. Calling the police thick.'
'I'm done with art, real life is too important. This is not fiction Sharon, it's the horrible truth.'
'Then we must fight it dear heart.'
'I'm tired.'
' "Don't yet rejoice in his defeat my men. For although the world stood up to stop the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again." '
'You're quoting Brecht? To me?'
'We have to fight it. Again. And again.'
' "If only we could act instead of talking, we wouldn't always end up on our arse." ' I wasn't to be outdone by Sharon in the matter of quoting Brecht.
'My dad played him for the RSC in 1980s,'
By him she means Arturo Ui, the gangster Brecht created to represent Hitler. Given what transpired in Cambridge this is all getting a little near the knuckle. I knew Michael Ronson in the early eighties but I really didn't want to be talking about him now. Fortunately nor did Sharon it seemed:
'You can't resign. The whole point of joining Notso was to get closer to Kieran. To find out why he and Pattie - '
'I've been there nearly a year Sharon. The opportunity hasn't arisen!'
My cry of frustration was really because I didn't know what to do next. And I was rapidly beginning to think I wish I had never begun to ponder the truth about Pattie's demise. The original idea for these diaries was to amuse myself - and maybe a few others in the know - by taking the piss out of inflated egos and incredible and unjustified vanities many of Notso's talentless clients seem to display when plucked out of obscurity by a meaningless and idiotic Reality TV show. (Perish the thought that I would ever take the piss out of real talent.) Sadly world events rapidly overshadowed that ribald ambition. And then, after my visit to Dick Barton, my whole ethos had been thrown into disarray. One of the reasons I haven't come to these pages for three weeks.
'I'm just wondering if the whole Pattie thing was just one big distraction,' I added, as if justifying my announcement. (My visit to Dick suggests otherwise but that means spilling unpalatable truths to Sharon.)
'I won't see you as much if you're not working the other side of Oxford Street.'
Sharon hardly ever does forlorn so I should count myself privileged.
'Really Sharon. You old sentimentalist.'
'But if you think it's a waste of your time…'
'It's not so much that, it's just…' And so I find myself trying to justify the unjustifiable. 'Tanya's lost interest.' Scraping the barrel here.
'She's gone to South Africa! You can't blame her! If there's a chance they can help her to heal - '
'Amazing what a plaintive article on Substack will do for you. Offers of healing from all around the world. Even if some of the methods sound a bit bizarre.’
'She'd never have got that if she'd published in the legacy media.'
'She wouldn't have been allowed to write an article about being vaccine injured in the legacy media!'
'It doesn't mean she's given up as regards Pattie.'
Our legendary gamekeeper turned poacher is now the darling of the resistance with ten thousand subscribers on Substack and revelling in biting the hand that used to feed her and relishing giving The Guardian regular kicks in the goolies. (For the uninitiated, that's slang for bollocks.) Now she's getting death threats for being transphobic. And it doesn't bother her in the slightest since, as she says, if you''ve been as near to death as many times as she has in the last nine months, why would you care? I've warmed a lot to Tanya Parker. Still, she's in South Africa so no use to me. Sorry, us.
And then there's Martin. Sorry, should I say, there isn't Martin. As in Spangler. Several lifetimes ago he was, allegedly, researching something for Pattie. Something supposedly confidential. And he was pretty damned keen to get an interview with Kieran's father. Six months in Denmark and it seems he's lost interest. He's got himself a girlfriend who's a bigger piss artist than he is, and has decamped back to Copenhagen, possibly with the sole ambition of drowning himself in the Carlsberg brewery over there. He's in no hurry though, the girlfriend's an heiress and he can live for free and in luxury for the rest of his life.
'Bit of a coincidence. Brecht wrote the first draft of Arturo Ui in Denmark when he was in exile there,' said Sharon when I told her Martin also seemed to have flown the nest.
'You're teaching grandma to suck eggs. There's nothing you can tell me about Brecht,' I said a tad too touchily.
'Alright, alright!'
‘Which is why I know Brandy Vinegar would have been a sour Mother Courage.’
‘Was that a bad joke that flashed before me?’
I threw up my arms in frustration, returning to the matter in hand.. 'So what exactly do people expect me to do on my own?'
'You're not on your own. You've got me.'
'You're off to the States for four weeks!'
'Look me in the eye and swear Mary Barton had absolutely nothing to offer.'
'Dick.'
'Alright! Dick!'
'No nothing. She's just a showbiz groupie who wanted to inveigle herself with the profession . Goose chases don't come more wild and epic than that one.' I think I overdid the staring her in the eye though.
'You sound like you're talking yourself out of the noble calling you once adopted. You're always banging on about the search for truth and now you want to stop. Perhaps I overestimated your outrage.' Ouch. Forlorn had given way to frustration and impatience, with a little hint of anger thrown in.
I needed to stick up for myself. 'If I do it's because - '
Time out. The timely whistle of a steam train interrupted our dialogue before it could descend into bickering. It was a text notification on Sharon's phone. She looked at its screen. 'Bugger me, the cab's here.' Picking up her bags and slinging her laptop over her shoulder, she delivered her exit lines. 'I know you're lying about Mary. And, no I won't bloody call her Dick. I'll get the truth out of you. Anthony Eastwood. I bloody well will. Lock up behind you.' And she trundled down the stairs and into St. Martin's Lane.
And I hoped beyond hope that she wouldn't.
In a below average screenplay (which I would reject or at least demand rewrites) this is the moment when the script might direct the camera to close in on the eyes of the narrative figure (me) as the screen fades to black with the caption 'a few weeks earlier'.
Twenty four days ago, to be precise. When Dick Barton, aka Mary, somewhat of an authority on Satanic Ritual Abuse, had told me about the allegations of some victims regarding the participation of one Sir Michael Ronson, Knight of the Realm and Sharon Kozinsky's father. Known, in his final years, as Lord Ronson of Richmond.
Oh. Dear. God. What a cliffhanger!!!! I was wondering if i had missed what Mary/Dick had said from last post but no, you sly devil, you! Well, goodness. Scratching the surface of all the rotted puss-filled boils, aren't we? Might as well, really. No way to address only the plandemic shenanigans without butting up against all the underbelly of the occult psychopathy that has taken root within our universe. Ant better be careful. If he hasn't disappeared himself, he has surely been disappeared by others.