by Nick Hornby
She couldn’t help herself. All her life, or the part of it in which men were interested, she’d been trying to fend them off. Now, suddenly, she had to be different and suppress the reflex she’d needed for years.
‘And you’d be right to bet. You’d win money. I wouldn’t be talking to you if there were no proposal, would I?’
She appreciated the brutal clarification and smiled.
‘I’m meeting a friend for dinner. A client. He’s bringing a lady friend, and suggested I should too.’
In her past life, she would have mentioned his wedding ring, but she had learned something.
‘That sounds nice.’
She was still a long way from a television set, but it was a start.
Marjorie advised her to borrow something to wear from work. That’s what all the other girls did, apparently. She went upstairs in her lunch hour with a bag, had a word with one of the girls, took away a smart knee-length red dress with a plunging neckline. When she was getting ready to go out, she remembered what she could look like, when she made an effort, put on some lipstick, showed a bit of leg. It had been a while.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Marjorie, and Barbara smiled.
Valentine Laws had booked a table at the Talk of the Town to see Matt Monro, Auntie Marie’s favourite singer. On the posters at the entrance, Barbara saw that on other nights it might have been the Supremes, or Helen Shapiro, or Cliff and the Shadows, people that the girls at work would have wanted to hear all about. Matt Monro was from another time, the time that she’d left Blackpool to escape. As she was shown to the table, she noticed that she was easily the youngest person in the room.
He was waiting for her at a table for four at the side of the stage. His other guests hadn’t arrived. He ordered her a Dubonnet and lemonade without asking her, and they talked about work, and London, and nightclubs, and then he looked up and smiled.
‘Sidney!’
But Sidney, a small, bald man with a moustache, didn’t seem pleased to see Valentine, and then Valentine’s face became too complicated for Barbara to read. There was the smile, then the smile vanished, and then there was a quick, shocked widening of the eyes. And then a smile returned, but it contained no warmth or pleasure.
‘Audrey!’ said Valentine.
Audrey was a large woman in an extremely purple and inappropriately long dress. She was, Barbara guessed, Sidney’s wife. And as Barbara watched, she began to see that there had been some kind of misunderstanding. Sidney had thought that it was a night out with one kind of lady (‘the ladies’, ‘our good lady wives’, that sort of thing), but Valentine had invited Barbara on the assumption that it was another sort of night out altogether, one involving ladies but not the ladies. Presumably they had enjoyed both kinds of evening in the past, hence the confusion. The lives of married men with money were so complicated and so deceitful, the codes they spoke in so ambiguous, that Barbara wondered why this sort of thing didn’t happen all the time. Perhaps it did. Perhaps the Talk of the Town was full of tables at which women of wildly different ages were sitting, all glowering at each other.
‘Valentine and I have a tiny bit of business to discuss at the bar,’ said Sidney. ‘Please excuse us for five minutes.’
Valentine stood up, nodded at the women and followed Sidney, who was stomping away angrily. It was a misunderstanding with consequences, obviously. Sidney’s good lady wife would realize who Barbara was and what she represented; she would presumably work out that there had been other, similar evenings to which she hadn’t been invited. If Valentine had been quicker on the uptake he could have introduced Barbara as his cousin, or his secretary, or his parole officer, but he’d allowed himself to be dragged away by Sidney for an ear-bashing, and left the two women to come to their own conclusions.
Audrey sat down heavily opposite Barbara and looked at her.
‘He’s married, you know,’ she said eventually.
Barbara very much doubted that she’d still be around to hear Matt Monro sing, so she thought she may as well have as much fun as she could. She looked at Audrey and laughed, immediately and scornfully.
‘To who?’ she said. ‘I’ll kill her.’ And she laughed again, just to show how unconcerned she was by Audrey’s news.
‘He’s married,’ said Audrey insistently. ‘To Joan. I’ve met her. He’s been married a long time. Kids and everything. They’re not even kids any more. The lad is sixteen and his daughter’s at nursing college.’
‘Well,’ said Barbara, ‘he can’t be doing a very good job of bringing them up. He hasn’t spent a night away from home for two years.’
‘Home?’ said Audrey. ‘You live together?’
‘Oh, it’s not as bad as it looks,’ said Barbara. ‘We’re supposed to be getting married next June. Although obviously if what you’re saying is true, he’s got some sorting out to do first.’ And she laughed for a third time, and shook her head at the preposterousness of it all. Valentine! Married! With kiddies!
‘Have you met these “children”?’
‘Well,’ said Audrey, ‘no.’ A tiny worm of doubt had crept in, Barbara noted with satisfaction. ‘But I’ve talked to Joan about them. Sidney and I have two teenagers of our own.’
‘Ah,’ said Barbara. ‘Talking. We can all talk. I could pop fifteen children out, talking to you now. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop …’
Fifteen children meant way too many pops, she now realized. She’d seem insane if she kept going, so she stopped.
‘Five anyway,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Talking’s not the same as seeing, is it?’
‘Are you saying that Joan made them up?’
‘To be honest, I think this Joan might be made up.’
‘How can she be made up? I met her!’
‘Yes, but you know what they’re like. Sometimes they want an evening out without us, if you know what I mean. It’s harmless enough. Well, I think so.’
‘You’re saying that Joan was some sort of …’
‘No, no. He just wanted some company. I was probably at the pictures or somewhere.’
‘She wasn’t a young woman,’ said Audrey.
‘Well, that’s quite sweet, that he wanted to spend an evening with someone of his own age.’
Audrey contemplated the elaborate fraud that had been perpetrated on her and shook her head.
‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘What an odd thing to do.’
Sidney and Valentine came back to the table, friends again.
‘I should introduce you two properly,’ said Valentine. ‘Audrey, this is Barbara. She works in my office and she’s nuts about Matt Monro. So when Joan fell ill this afternoon …’
Sidney’s wife looked at her, confused and then outraged.
‘Nice to meet you, Audrey,’ said Barbara, and she went to get her coat.
There had been a strange enjoyment in the few minutes she’d spent talking to Audrey because they’d allowed her to appear in a comedy sketch that she’d written herself, on the spot. It had been a half-decent performance too, she thought, considering the thinness of the material. But then the adrenalin left her body, and as she queued for the cloakroom, she felt as blue as she’d ever been in London. Since her conversation with Marjorie, she had been telling herself that her choice was clear, if dismal: she could work behind cosmetics counters, or she could pick up men like Valentine Laws, in the hope that they would take her somewhere a few inches closer to where she wanted to be. But she had picked up a man like Valentine Laws, and she’d ended up feeling cheap and foolish, and she would be back behind the cosmetics counter the following day anyway. She wanted to cry. She certainly wanted to go home. She’d had enough. She would go home and marry a man who owned carpet shops, and she would bear his children, and he would take other women to nightclubs, and she would get old and die and hope for better luck next time around.
And on the way out of the Talk of the Town, she met Brian.
She nearly bumped into him as sh
e was walking up the stairs to the entrance. He said hello, and she told him to bugger off, and he looked startled.
‘You don’t remember me, do you?’
‘No,’ she said, and she was glad that she didn’t. He clearly hadn’t been worth remembering. He was handsome enough, and he was wearing what looked like a very expensive suit, but he was even older than Valentine Laws. Everything about him was untrustworthy.
‘We met at the first night of that Arthur Askey film you were in.’
‘I’ve never been in any film.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Sorry. You’re not Sabrina, are you?’
‘No, I’m bloody not bloody Sabrina. Bloody Sabrina is bloody years older than me. And yes, she comes from the same place, and yes, she’s got a big bust. But if any of you ever looked above a woman’s neck, you might learn to tell us apart.’
He chuckled.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you’re not her. It wasn’t a very good film and she was hopeless in it. Where are you going anyway?’
‘Home.’
‘You can’t go home yet. Matt Monro hasn’t even started, has he?’
‘Why can’t I go home?’
‘Because you should stay and have a drink. I want to know all about you.’
‘I’ll bet you do.’
She could wrestle with this man, because she wanted nothing from him and she was sick of all men anyway.
‘I’m not who you think I am,’ he said.
‘I don’t think you’re anybody.’
‘I’m very happily married,’ he said.
Suddenly there was a smiling, attractive woman by his side. She was a little bit younger than him, but nothing scandalous.
‘Here she is,’ said the man. ‘This is my wife.’
‘Hello,’ said the woman. She didn’t seem to be angry with Barbara. She just wanted to be introduced.
‘I’m Brian Debenham,’ he said. ‘And this is Patsy.’
‘Hello,’ said Patsy. ‘You’re so pretty.’
Barbara started to imagine what this could be about. A husband and wife trying to pick her up came from somewhere right on the fringes of her imagination. She didn’t even have a word for it.
‘I’m trying to persuade her to have a drink with us,’ said Brian.
‘I can see why,’ said Patsy, and she looked Barbara up and down. ‘She’s right up your street. She looks like Sabrina.’
‘I don’t think she likes it when people say that.’
‘I don’t,’ said Barbara. ‘And I don’t like it when a man tries to pick me up while his wife is watching.’
That seemed the safest interpretation. If she didn’t have a word for the other thing, she wouldn’t try to accuse them of it. She was definitely going to find out what a soubrette was. For all she knew, they were trying to turn her into one.
Brian and Patsy laughed.
‘Oh, I’m not trying to pick you up,’ he said. ‘It’s not sex. It’s something even dirtier. I want to make money out of you. I’m a theatrical agent.’
Barbara went back to the cloakroom with her coat, and that’s when it all started.
3
At Brian’s insistence, she didn’t go back to Derry and Toms.
‘I have to give two weeks’ notice.’
She had already phoned in sick so that she could visit Brian in his office. She couldn’t take any more time off.
‘Why?’
‘Why?’
‘Yes, why?’
‘Because …’ She couldn’t think of a reason, other than that those were the rules. ‘Anyway, how will I pay my rent?’
‘I’ll find you work.’
‘I need money now.’
‘I’ll sub you for a couple of weeks. A month, even. What are you earning, twenty quid a week? I’m not having you turning down work for the sake of eighty quid.’
She wasn’t earning anything like twenty pounds a week. She’d only been on twelve since she’d finished her probationary period.
‘But what work am I turning down? I’ve never acted in anything in my life.’
‘That’s the beauty of it, darling. No experience necessary. No acting necessary, even. I won’t mention Sabrina ever again after this. But you may have noticed that she’s not exactly Dorothy Tutin. Sweetheart, you only have to stand there and people will throw money at me. Some of which I’ll pass on to you. Honestly, it’s the easiest game in the world.’
‘Sounds like the oldest game in the world.’
‘Don’t be cynical, darling. That’s my job. Listen. Do you know what a soubrette is?’
She sighed and rolled her eyes. She was going to find a library the moment she’d left Brian’s office.
‘You are the very epitome of a soubrette. And everybody wants them. But really, you don’t even need to do that. People will pay you a lot of money just to be you. Just do what I tell you to do and we’ll all be happy.’
‘What are you going to tell me to do?’
‘I’m going to tell you to meet people, and these people will tell you to do things. Smile. Walk up and down. Stick your chest or your bottom out. That sort of thing. We’ll have you under contract to a studio in no time. And before you know it, every man under the age of seventy will have a picture of you wearing a bikini on the wall of his potting shed.’
‘As long as they let me act, I’ll wear anything they want.’
‘Are you telling me you actually want to act?’
‘I want to be a comedienne,’ said Barbara. ‘I want to be Lucille Ball.’
The desire to act was the bane of Brian’s life. All these beautiful, shapely girls, and half of them didn’t want to appear in calendars, or turn up for openings. They wanted three lines in a BBC play about unwed mothers down coal mines. He didn’t understand the impulse, but he cultivated contacts with producers and casting agents, and sent the girls out for auditions anyway. They were much more malleable once they’d been repeatedly turned down.
‘The way I remember it, Lucille Ball wasn’t left with much choice. She was knocking on a bit, and nobody was giving her romantic leads any more, so she had to start making funny faces. You’ve got years before we have to start thinking about that. Decades, probably. Look at you.’
‘I want to go to auditions.’
‘What I’m trying to tell you is that you won’t need to go to auditions. You could be a model, and then you can be in any film you want.’
How many times had he given the same little speech? They never listened.
‘Any film I want as long as I don’t open my mouth.’
‘I’m not going to bankroll you for ever.’
‘You think if I open my mouth you’re going to have to bankroll me for ever?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘Send me to auditions.’
Brian shrugged. They would have to go the long way round.
The next morning, she had to explain to Marjorie that she wouldn’t be going into work with her because a man she’d met in a nightclub was paying her not to.
‘What kind of man?’ said Marjorie. ‘And are there any more where he came from? I know I’m only in Shoes, but you can tell him I really would do anything.’
‘He’s an agent.’
‘Did you see his licence or whatever it is you need to be an agent?’
‘No. But I believe him.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I went to his office today. He had a secretary, and a desk …’
‘People do that all the time.’
‘Do what?’
‘Get secretaries and desks. To con people. I wonder if the desk will still be there if you go back today.’
‘He had filing cabinets.’
‘You can be very naive, Barbara.’
‘But what’s he conning me out of?’
‘I’m not going to spell it out.’
‘You think people get secretaries and desks and filing cabinets so that they can seduce girls? It seems like an awful
lot of trouble.’
Marjorie wouldn’t be drawn on that, but Barbara was clearly being invited to reach her own conclusions.
‘Has he given you any money?’
‘Not yet. But he’s promised to.’
‘Have you done anything to earn the money?’
‘No!’
‘Oh dear.’
‘But that’s good, isn’t it?’
‘I wouldn’t have thought so. If he’s giving you money already, God knows what he’s expecting.’
Barbara would have started to feel foolish if Brian hadn’t sent her out to auditions immediately. She didn’t have a phone, so she would begin the day with a pile of threepenny bits and a trip to the phone box on the corner; if he had nothing for her, he’d instruct his secretary to say so straight away so she didn’t put a second coin in the slot.
The first audition was for a farce called In My Lady’s Chamber. It was about … Oh, it didn’t matter what it was about. It was full of young women in their underwear and lustful husbands caught with their trousers down, and their awful, joyless wives. What it was really about was people not having sex when they wanted it. A lot of British comedy was about that, Barbara had noticed. People always got stopped before they’d done it, rather than found out afterwards. It depressed her.
The play was being staged in a theatre club off Charing Cross Road. The producer told Brian that the Lord Chamberlain’s Office might have banned it from a proper theatre.
‘Utter nonsense, of course. The Lord Chamberlain wouldn’t give two hoots. But that’s what they want you to think,’ said Brian.
‘Why do they want you to think that?’
‘You’ve read it,’ he said. ‘It’s desperate stuff. It wouldn’t last two nights in the West End. But this way they can sell a few tickets to mugs who think they’re getting something too saucy for legit.’
‘It’s not at all funny.’
‘It’s not the remotest bit funny,’ said Brian. ‘But it is a comedy. This is what you told me you want to do.’
She was being punished, she could see that. He’d put her up for a handful of terrible jobs, and then she’d be in a swimsuit on a quiz show and he’d be happy.
She read it again the night before the audition. It was even worse than she’d thought, and she wanted to be in it so much she thought she might faint from the hunger.