Iain Sinclair - Downriver

The ‘Corporation’, as is well known, is a Christian version of the Vatican, with all the immemorial chains of command, schisms, heresies, court favourites, interrogations, excommunications, icons, martyrdoms, and public burnings: thickets of conspiracy in which the left hand denies all knowledge of the pocket the right hand is picking. The Vatican has its global responsibilities (getting the dirt out of banknotes, and promoting moon-tested golf-buggies); but the Corporation yields nothing as a fountainhead of dogma. White papers, touched by the hand of Reith, are eternal and infallible:

(1) There are two sides (and only two) to every argument.

(2) We shall offer them, without fear or favour, equal air-time.

(3) The only good book is a dead book. (And grant, O Lord, that it be set in Africa.)

(4) Yesterday’s dross, if repeated often enough, is today’s classic. (Memo to Contracts : Tighten up on those Repeat Fees.)

(5) It is always better to employ Irish Jokes, than to tell them. We are never vulgar. Especially about money.

(6) If the Irish are ‘men of violence’ they may speak only in subtitles.

(7) It is a short step from the Department of Religious Affairs to the throne of the Director-General.

(8) Only Accountancy is a Higher Calling. The ‘Accountant’ is the person who is accountable to no one (except, of course, She-Whose-Name-May-Not-Be-Taken-In-Vain).

The Corporation, in its perpetual and never satisfied search for ‘The New’, operates a nervous compromise between greed and caution: a sinister cloud of anti-matter, giving off odours of sanctity and expensive aftershave, trawls for virgin energies to subvert. Two of the sharpest headhunters, pulling their faces out of their coffee cups with an audible ‘Eureka!’, stumbled, at the same moment , on the name of Fredrik Hanbury: who was so prolific in his journalism, so much in demand, he seemed to be reviewing half-digested pastiches of his own work, flashing from magazine to newspaper in an exuberantly Socratic dialogue that only he was fast enough to follow. This banal coincidence in the recognition of a name it was harder to avoid than to notice was elevated — by a species of desperate occultism that lurks in all stagnant bureaucracies — into a significantly compelling synchronicity . And so, only a year after his seminal book of essays went out of print, the word from the Bush was — bring me the head of Fredrik Hanbury!

Fredrik had done a number in the London Review of Books on a novel I had recently published; which would otherwise, despite the gallantly double-glazed ‘doorstepping’ of my publisher, have sunk into necessary and well-deserved obscurity. Fredrik suggested that Spitalfields was, currently, a battleground of some interest; a zone of ‘disappearances’, mysteries, conflicts, and ‘baroque realism’. Nominated champions of good and evil were locking horns in a picaresque contest to nail the ultimate definition of ‘the deal’. We had to get it on. There were not going to be any winners. If we didn’t move fast, any halfway-sharp surrealist could blunder in and pick up the whole pot.

‘Spitalfields’: the consiglieri liked the sound of it, the authentic whiff of heritage, drifting like cordite from the razed ghetto. But, please, do not call it ‘Whitechapel’, or whisper the dreaded ‘Tower Hamlets’. Spitalfields meant Architecture, the Prince, Development Schemes: it meant gay vicars swishing incense, and charity-ward crusaders finding the peons to refill the poor benches, and submit to total-immersion baptism. It meant Property Sharks, and New Georgians promoting wallpaper catalogues. It meant video cams tracking remorselessly over interior detail , and out, over lampholders, finials, doorcases, motifs, cast-iron balconies; fruity post-synch, lashings of Purcell. And bulldozers, noise, dust; snarling angry machines. Ball-and-chain demolitions. Sold! There’s nothing the cutting-room boys like as much as a good ball-and-chain: especially with some hair-gelled noddy in a pin-stripe suit at the controls. Skin-deep Aztec fantasies of glass and steel lifting in a self-reflecting glitter of irony from the ruins. Spitalfields was this week’s buzz-word. And Spitalfields meant lunches.

But lunches also have their hierarchies. You start on your own doorstep. A sciolist, call him Sonny Jaques, with a gold stud earring, and a doctorate in Romance Languages (from, let us guess, Southampton University), sounds you out about the nearest ‘little Italian place’ that takes credit cards.

‘Jaques? I suppose you pronounce that “J’accuse”?’ said Fredrik, to get the ball rolling.

‘Jake-Ez, actually,’ the director replied, too self-absorbed to be so effortlessly insulted.

The trattoria we located, in a backwater off the Kingsland Road, had just opened in a lather of misplaced optimism. I gave it slightly less chance than the Titanic . It would be an off licence within the month. Then a fire-damaged shell. Then a sealed hazard; waiting for the insurance investigators to settle the claim.

Today it was empty: salmon-pink tablecloths, freshly laundered, and sharp enough to cut you off at the knees; wild flowers; silver service; napkins erupting out of fluted wine glasses. The gaffer — in his black, open-to-the-navel blouse — leapt on Sonny, as if he was a practice manikin for a mouth-to-mouthresuscitation class. The man had packed his bags, and most of the silver. He was ready to chuck in the lease when — as his finger closed on the trigger — the BBC arrived. It had to happen. Glorious visions cut in on each other: telephone reservations, cigars, signing sessions, assignations, bankable painters doodling on the menu cards, group photographs on the walls (lavishly inscribed), talent scouts begging to be called by their christian names. He wants to join in, to proffer advice. He wants to sit on Sonny’s lap, and ‘kick around’ a few casting concepts.

But Sonny is going up in smoke; he is live with morbid energy. As Fredrik soliloquizes, he angrily abuses the tiny pages of his notebook. The green pen-tip breaks the surface of the paper. He accumulates the evidence that will be held against us. ‘Right!’ he enthuses, at regular intervals, banging the table; so that our host has to slide from his bench, with an apologetic smile, to catch the flower holders. Sonny glances from Fredrik to me, then back again. ‘Right? That one’s a definite maybe. Excellent. It’s all coming together.’ But nothing is agreed, nothing is made clear: nobody has the bad manners to mention money. Lowlife anecdotes are really what turn Sonny on — but how do we translate them into the script? ‘8mm Diary footage? We can use that. Send it in for transfer. Work on textural variety. I like it.’

He is wringing our hands: the restaurateur froths with compliments and invitations, as he struggles to reinsert Sonny into a yellow pigskin jacket. Sonny assures us that we give ‘good lunch’; the project is ‘looking great’. We have to go home, stick at it, stay cool, and wait for the call. Unfortunately, by an oversight, Sonny’s pack of credit cards fails to produce a valid one. No problem; Fredrik and I empty our pockets and manage to cover the bill. ‘Just put it on the chitty, boys,’Sonny says, ‘and claim a couple of taxis while you’re at it.’

Now the caravan rolls on to downside Shepherd’s Bush. Our table rates at least two producers. We are not substantial enough to score anyone from ‘Religious Affairs’; but we get one apiece from ‘Architecture’ and ‘Literature’. Who knows what slot this thing might fit into? Why spike it for the price of a Grade IV (Writers and Talking Heads) binge? There’s a whole cluster of modest Nouvelle Cuisine joints sticking bravely together in the warren, north of Addison Gardens, entirely targeted at working lunches for the Corporation. Every time the budget is slashed on ‘The Late Show’, two of them go out of business. They serve minute, and beautifully arranged, portions — and charge no more than they would for a side of bloody Aberdeen Angus, with all the coronary trimmings. Everybody starves a little, and feels the glow of virtue.