resulted in a kind of collective perturbation, like an agitated, atomised Mexican wave. Richard absorbed this wriggle of regard, felt it wash over him. He too began to scan, check out who was there, who he knew, who was interesting, who had something to offer.
Richard didn't have to suffer this motor pattern for long, though, because over in his usual corner was Bell, and with him was the divine, the untouchable, the universally desirable Ursula Bentley. Richard's pulse quickened – the semi-bald John was forgotten in that instant. Todd Reiser was with them as well, as were a number of other clique members. Bell's limpid black eyes met Richard's from some thirty feet away, Bell's Martini glass forming a tiny, vitreous horizon. Bell raised one finger and tapped it against the dead centre of his forehead. This was a kind of trademarked gesture of Bell's – one of them, at any rate. It meant ‘You may ring my bell . . .’, or, more to the point, ‘I will deign to speak to you’. Richard hurried over.
There is, of course, one significant group of club members that has been omitted from the list above. A group that Richard, insignificantly, belonged to. These were the hacks, for, if the Sealink Club hadone prime raison d'être, it was the provision of a dark, humid environment in which fungal tittle-tattle could swell overnight. This was the damp cellar of the city.
There was a ratio of hacks to non-hacks in the bar at this time of about one to one. And these weren't principled journalists, or hardened reporters, oh no. No one eased his leaning position at the bar in order to relieve the pressure on the shrapnel wound he'd caught covering the Balkan crisis. Nor did anyone huddle in a corner earnestly discussing her view of the Neo-Keynesian implications of the Treasury's management of the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement. Not a bit of it.
The hacks who frequented the Sealink, yakking in the bar, gobbling in the restaurant, goggling in the television room, wobbling in the table-football room, and snorting in the toilets, occupied a quite different position in the cultural food chain. They were transmitters of trivia, broadcasters of banality, and disseminators of drek. They wrote articles about articles, made television programmes about television programmes, and commented on what others had said. They trafficked in the glibbest, slightest, most ephemeral cultural reflexivity, enacting a dialogue between societyand its conscience that had all the resonance of a foil individual pie dish smitten with a paperclip.
Along with so many others around the bar, gathered in their crap colloquia, Richard laboured by day in this open-cast word mine, hauling out great truckles of frothy verbiage. Nominally responsible for a front-of-house, arts/cultural, gossip-cum-preview section in a mass-circulation listings magazine, Richard also filed featureless features for some of the men's glossy style magazines, extolling the virtues of trouser presses, aromatherapy and ski-boarding.
He was uncertain about this role in life – it was so new to him. A year previously he had been on the news desk of a homely, old newspaper, in a homely, old, northern city. He had had a girlfriend tending towards parturition, and a small flat that would have required partition.
Then a couple of features he had written on spec for London magazines found a home, and the praise had gone to his feet, which strode to the managing editor's desk, to his mouth, which mouthed his resignation, and to his cock, which shrank from the homely, muslin confines of his girlfriend's vagina. Richard headed south – geographically.
In London he landed the job, and rented a flatlet in Hornsey. A grim little box, made all the grimmer by its pretension to being a real dwelling place. Everything about it was diminutive – the bed, the chairs, the cooker. Even the lintels of the doors were at least six inches lower than they really ought to be, which meant that whenever
Richard didn't have to suffer this motor pattern for long, though, because over in his usual corner was Bell, and with him was the divine, the untouchable, the universally desirable Ursula Bentley. Richard's pulse quickened – the semi-bald John was forgotten in that instant. Todd Reiser was with them as well, as were a number of other clique members. Bell's limpid black eyes met Richard's from some thirty feet away, Bell's Martini glass forming a tiny, vitreous horizon. Bell raised one finger and tapped it against the dead centre of his forehead. This was a kind of trademarked gesture of Bell's – one of them, at any rate. It meant ‘You may ring my bell . . .’, or, more to the point, ‘I will deign to speak to you’. Richard hurried over.
There is, of course, one significant group of club members that has been omitted from the list above. A group that Richard, insignificantly, belonged to. These were the hacks, for, if the Sealink Club hadone prime raison d'être, it was the provision of a dark, humid environment in which fungal tittle-tattle could swell overnight. This was the damp cellar of the city.
There was a ratio of hacks to non-hacks in the bar at this time of about one to one. And these weren't principled journalists, or hardened reporters, oh no. No one eased his leaning position at the bar in order to relieve the pressure on the shrapnel wound he'd caught covering the Balkan crisis. Nor did anyone huddle in a corner earnestly discussing her view of the Neo-Keynesian implications of the Treasury's management of the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement. Not a bit of it.
The hacks who frequented the Sealink, yakking in the bar, gobbling in the restaurant, goggling in the television room, wobbling in the table-football room, and snorting in the toilets, occupied a quite different position in the cultural food chain. They were transmitters of trivia, broadcasters of banality, and disseminators of drek. They wrote articles about articles, made television programmes about television programmes, and commented on what others had said. They trafficked in the glibbest, slightest, most ephemeral cultural reflexivity, enacting a dialogue between societyand its conscience that had all the resonance of a foil individual pie dish smitten with a paperclip.
Along with so many others around the bar, gathered in their crap colloquia, Richard laboured by day in this open-cast word mine, hauling out great truckles of frothy verbiage. Nominally responsible for a front-of-house, arts/cultural, gossip-cum-preview section in a mass-circulation listings magazine, Richard also filed featureless features for some of the men's glossy style magazines, extolling the virtues of trouser presses, aromatherapy and ski-boarding.
He was uncertain about this role in life – it was so new to him. A year previously he had been on the news desk of a homely, old newspaper, in a homely, old, northern city. He had had a girlfriend tending towards parturition, and a small flat that would have required partition.
Then a couple of features he had written on spec for London magazines found a home, and the praise had gone to his feet, which strode to the managing editor's desk, to his mouth, which mouthed his resignation, and to his cock, which shrank from the homely, muslin confines of his girlfriend's vagina. Richard headed south – geographically.
In London he landed the job, and rented a flatlet in Hornsey. A grim little box, made all the grimmer by its pretension to being a real dwelling place. Everything about it was diminutive – the bed, the chairs, the cooker. Even the lintels of the doors were at least six inches lower than they really ought to be, which meant that whenever
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