Staying Alive. Matt Beaumont

wouldn’t be pissing it away,’ Vince says. ‘You’re forgetting the secret.’

      I must have missed this when I was buying the round.

      ‘You gonna tell us what this secret is, then?’ Kenny asks.

      ‘The secret is I couldn’t fucking lose.’

      ‘Yeah, but what is it?’

      ‘If I told you it wouldn’t be a secret, would it?’ Vince says.

      ‘More like there ain’t no secret,’ Kenny mutters, draining his glass. ‘Here, stick another one in there, Murray.’

       Hey, wow, you noticed I’m here.

      Brett says, ‘Give him a break, Kenny…’

       What, you’re buying this round?

      ‘…He hasn’t said how he’d spend his win yet. Tell us, Murray. Then you can get the beers in.’

      ‘Er…I don’t really know,’ I say, because…Well, I really don’t know. I don’t have a dream, unless you count getting Megan back (not sure a lottery win would do it) or being promoted to Account Director (Detergent Brands). Endless lists on the backs of envelopes have more or less proved that I’m devoid of credible ambition.

      ‘There must be something,’ Brett prods. ‘Just make it up.’

      He’s right, there must be something. Even Vince, who usually never projects beyond the next ten minutes, has an ambition.

      I’m not talking about putting it all on red, which as far as I could tell, came out of nowhere. I’m referring to the Official Vince Douglas Dream. Vince is like every creative. None of them wants to be doing ads forever. Nearly every copywriter I know is working on his Novel (though they’re so conditioned to thinking in thirty-second chunks that they rarely make it past page two). Similarly, every art director wants to Direct—prefer-ably Cate Blanchett and Halle Berry in a twenty-first century Thelma and Louise, but, frankly, they’d take Police Academy 12 if it came down to it.

      Vince is the exception. He longs to break out of ads, but he has no wish to become the next Ridley Scott. His dream involves cunning, bravado and a miniature submarine. Ironically, it was inspired by a film—an action flick about a sunken nuclear sub. The crew spent a couple of hours running out of oxygen while outside Kurt Russell or Chuck Norris or whoever attempted rescue in a little yellow submersible. I can’t give you much more detail than that because I didn’t see it. I’d sooner have typhus-dipped slivers of bamboo shoved under my fingernails than sit through one minute of a film about my personal idea of hell. Vince saw it seven times though, munching his popcorn and thinking, What if you put the docking mechanism on the top of the rescue sub instead of the bottom and went up instead of down? In short, this is the plan: buy sub, sail up and down Med on lookout for millionaires’ yachts, dive beneath them, dock, make hole, climb in, clear the loaded sods out of boat and home, cruise off into deep blue yonder.

      Sounds slightly more insane than putting it all on red, but…

      I cannot stress enough how deadly serious he is about this. He has spoken to submarine makers and even drawn up a business plan—which he only just stopped short of taking to the small-business advisor at NatWest. He even nags Brett to begin every one of their TV scripts with Open on miniature submarine in the hope that he’ll get to shoot it and do some real live research. Bizarrely, their Cats Undersea script for Pura Kitty Litter came within a whisker’s breadth of making it onto the telly. As far as I can tell—though I have to say I’m no expert in the field—his plan is more or less flawless. Every time someone proposes a but, Vince has an immediate and convincing answer.

      There is one problem, actually. Everyone that Vince has ever shared a beer with knows about it. If Trevor McDonald ever announces, ‘And now let’s go to our reporter in Monaco for more on that daring underwater robbery…’ a couple of thousand people will scratch their heads and try to remember the name of the drunk who was sounding off in the pub about magnetised docking tubes.

      ‘I’m sorry, Brett. I pass,’ I say finally. ‘Don’t know how I’d spend it.’

      ‘What’re you asking him for?’ Vince sneers. ‘You know what he’d do. Buy a Volvo, a cottage in the Cotswolds and invest the rest in the fucking Nationwide.’

       Well, I’d have said the Woolwich, but it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

      ‘Leave him be. There must be something you wanna do, Murray,’ Brett says.

      ‘I’ve always fancied the idea of pony trekking in the Andes,’ I say nervously.

      ‘That is fucking cool,’ Vince splutters—to my amazement because to the best of my recollection I have never had an idea that I would consider cool, let alone Vince.

      ‘Is it?’ I ask, wincing as I wait for the rug to be whipped from beneath me.

      “Course it is. Buy your conk candy at source. Cut out the middleman—’

       That isn’t what I had in mind, as it happens.

      ‘—Here, you fancy joining me in the gents for a toot?’

      I’m stunned. Is he offering me a line? Of cocaine? Because I don’t believe he’s suggesting we repair to the toilets for an impromptu trumpet recital. Either would be unprecedented, actually. Vince only has me around to pick up the tab. I’m not here to join in—with drug-taking or lavatory jam sessions.

      ‘Er…no thanks,’ I reply. ‘I’m…um…detoxing.’

      He looks at me as if I’m mad.

      Well, I’m hardly going to tell him that few things are more terrifying to me than the prospect of snorting white powder of indeterminate origin up my nostril. A very, very, very occasional joint is the furthest I’ve ever dared travel down the road to junkie hell. And my answer wasn’t a lie. I am detoxing. Since my visit to Saint Matthew’s my body has been, while not exactly a temple, a lot more spick and span than usual. I haven’t had a single burger and right now I’m drinking Sprite—though there is no reason for Brett, Vince and Kenny to suspect that it isn’t a Vamp;T. The new regime isn’t because I think I’m actually ill, as in ill ill, really it isn’t. But these things—lumps and what have you—serve as a warning, don’t they? Shape up or ship out, so to speak.

      And, well, I’m shaping up.

      Vince arches a brow and says, ‘You don’t even burn the candle at one end, do you, matey?’ Then he turns to his partner. ‘What about you, B Boy?’

      ‘I’ll pass,’ Brett replies. ‘I’m sick of waking up with the three a.m. nosebleeds.’

      ‘Kenny?’

      ‘Drugs is for mugs,’ Kenny replies, draining his eighth pint of mind-altering lager. ‘Reckon I’ll be off.’

      ‘Whatever,’ Vince says as he staggers off in the general direction of the gents. I watch him go, envying his complete inability to live beyond the moment. As Kenny hauls himself to his feet and takes his leave, Brett asks, ‘You OK?’

       Well, I’ve got a lump in my trousers that may or may not be cancer and I’m on the eve of visiting the hospital to get the verdict, but, that apart, I’m absolutely dandy.

      ‘I’m absolutely dandy. Why do you ask?’

      ‘You’ve seemed a bit spooked lately. And you asked for that last lot of script changes like you couldn’t give a toss. I kind of missed your usual cheery Hey, guys, the client’s made a tiny suggestion that’ll improve the core idea immensely bollocks.’

      ‘That was because I couldn’t give a toss…I’d just had my assessment.’

      ‘Not good?’

      ‘Haye