by Nick Hornby
‘Yes, but you’ll read it out in a way that destroys it.’
‘Is that what I normally do, then? Thanks a lot.’
He read one of his lines out anyway.
‘ “I haven’t even noticed whether she’s a man or a woman.” ’
There was a silence round the table.
‘Shall I try it again? “I haven’t even noticed whether she’s a man or a woman.” Give me a little help here,’ said Clive. ‘Tell me how to wring maximum mirth out of that particular gag.’
‘Don’t be daft, Clive. You know that’s not how it works.’
‘It’s just a boring situation,’ said Clive. ‘The new secretary has been done to death.’
‘You haven’t read it. How do you know we haven’t found something new in it?’
Tony groaned.
‘What did you say that for?’ he said to Bill. ‘You know we haven’t.’
‘I hadn’t seen this script until just now,’ said Clive. ‘But let me tell you what’s in it.’
He was given no encouragement, but he went ahead anyway.
‘Jim hires a new secretary. Barbara gets it into her head that this secretary has the looks of Marilyn Monroe and the morals of Fanny Hill. She makes an excuse to visit Jim at the office. It turns out that the new secretary is a fat Sunday School teacher with a harelip and three-inch-thick specs.’
This time there was a long, long silence.
‘You won’t be happy until we’ve hung ourselves, will you?’ said Tony.
‘It’s a lot of cock,’ said Clive. ‘You’ve gone back to the Gambols. George Gambol seems to get a new secretary every third week.’
The Gambols were becoming a disease, like the measles or the mumps. The moment Barbara started feeling jealous, or Jim started spending too long tinkering with his car, Tony and Bill knew that their script wasn’t feeling very well.
‘All right,’ said Bill. ‘Let’s not do what Clive expects. Let’s say Barbara’s got something to worry about.’
‘That’s more like it,’ said Clive. ‘Dennis can get some gorgeous dolly bird in to play the secretary, and –’
‘Who?’ said Dennis.
‘I don’t know,’ said Clive. ‘There are a million of them out there.’
‘Name one,’ said Dennis.
‘Anne Richards is very pretty.’
Anne Richards was the old LAMDA friend Clive had lunched recently. She’d be grateful for the work.
‘We don’t want pretty,’ said Dennis. ‘We want someone who’s a complete knockout.’
‘Why? Pretty would do the trick.’
‘Barbara isn’t going to be scared of pretty,’ said Dennis. ‘We have a twenty-one-year-old blonde bombshell as our leading character …’
Tony and Bill winced. Sophie winced once she’d worked out what Dennis had done wrong.
‘Leading character?’ said Clive.
‘Leading female character, I should have said …’
‘Except you didn’t,’ said Clive. ‘I should never have agreed to those bloody brackets. They were a terrible mistake.’
‘Here we go again,’ said Tony.
‘You know what’s going to be on my gravestone?’ said Clive. Nobody showed any interest in the question. ‘ “Here Lies the Unknown Actor. He Should Never Have Agreed to the Brackets”.’
‘Oh, you won’t live for another year,’ said Tony. ‘I’ll murder you before then.’
‘We have a twenty-one-year-old blonde bombshell as our leading female character,’ said Dennis. ‘Jim’s already out of his league. And he works in Whitehall, which, let’s face it … Well, it’s not known for, for …’
‘The quality of its skirt,’ said Clive helpfully.
‘Barbara is young, gorgeous, childless, fashionable … Even if Jim were to fall hook, line and sinker for the new secretary, the audience would find it hard to believe that she represented any kind of a threat.’
‘Especially if Clive’s trying to find employment for one of his raddled ex-girlfriends from LAMDA,’ said Bill.
‘I resent that,’ said Clive.
‘Which part?’
Clive thought for a moment too long, provoking cruel laughter from the writers.
‘I suspect,’ said Dennis, ‘that the old new secretary storyline is for a more established marriage and a more … careworn woman.’
‘Young women can get jealous,’ said Sophie.
‘But nobody would understand why, is the thing,’ said Dennis.
One of the things he loved about rehearsals was that he could sometimes sneak in a compliment and nobody noticed.
Tony and Bill looked glum.
‘Looks like we’ve got the rest of the day off,’ said Clive. ‘Hurrah for the hackneyed imaginations of our writers.’
He stood up and stretched.
‘You haven’t forgotten about tonight?’ said Dennis.
He and Edith were throwing a drinks party. None of them wanted to go: they were all afraid of Edith and her friends, and they hated the way she talked to her husband.
‘We haven’t even got a script,’ said Tony.
‘You have to come,’ said Dennis.
He knew he sounded panicky, but if none of his BBC friends came, then it was only Them, the Vernon Whitfields of the world, the critics and editors and Third Programme horrors.
‘It’s not going to be all that lot, is it?’ said Clive.
‘What lot?’
‘All those critics and poets and editors?’
‘No,’ said Dennis. ‘I’ve insisted that only jolly people come.’
Nobody believed him, he could tell.
‘We’ll be there,’ said Sophie. ‘I’m not scared.’
She looked threateningly at the others, and they all caved in. Dennis was grateful to them. It wasn’t every night that his wife’s lover came to his home – not with his knowledge anyway.
Clive and Sophie went to the party together.
‘There are a lot of rumours about Edith and Vernon Whitfield,’ he said to her on the way there. ‘Just so you know.’
‘That sounds spicy. What happens in Vernon Whitfield?’
Clive snorted.
‘It’s not a place. It’s a man. He’s a critic, and a broadcaster, and a novelist, and so on and on.’
‘How do you know that?’ she asked him.
‘I don’t. Not for sure. It’s a rumour. But it makes perfect sense.’
‘No, I mean … How do you know that Vernon Whitfield is a critic and a broadcaster and a so-on?’
‘Ah. That’s not a rumour. That’s more what you might call a fact.’
‘But why do you know this fact and I don’t?’
‘You’re not very interested in critics and broadcasters, are you?’
‘Is he on the Third?’
‘The Third and the Home.’
‘I listen to the Home sometimes, but only the comedy.’
‘He’s very much not a comedian. He’s the opposite of a comedian. He’s the least funny person who ever lived.’
‘So what do I do?’
‘To find out who Vernon Whitfield is? Well, I suppose you start listening to the Third and the unfunny bits of the Home. And reading the weeklies. I really wouldn’t bother.’
‘But when I’m talking to clever people like you, I might start talking about picnics in Vernon Whitfield.’
‘Oh, he’s no picnic, I can tell you.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Have you seen the TV series Barbara (and Jim)?’ He drew the brackets in the air. He always did that. ‘You’d enjoy it. The girl in that is very intellectually insecure.’
‘Why didn’t you go to university?’
‘I went to drama school instead. Why didn’t you?’
‘You know I couldn’t have gone. I was working behind a cosmetics counter when I was fifteen.’
‘And look at you now.’
‘Anyway,’ said Sophie, ‘poor Dennis.’
‘I don’t kno
w. He may get shot of her.’
‘I’d never be able to have an affair with Vernon Whitfield,’ said Sophie wistfully.
This made Clive laugh a lot.
‘What have I said now?’
‘I think you’ll find that if you were to offer Vernon Whitfield a roll in the hay, he’d be a very, very happy essayist and broadcaster.’
‘I don’t want that sort of affair.’
‘I’m not sure how many varieties of affair there are.’
‘I’ll bet the kind Vernon Whitfield is having with Edith isn’t the kind he’d have with me.’
‘You’d be surprised.’
‘I might try,’ she said artfully. ‘Just to see.’
‘Be my guest,’ he said, and laughed.
She didn’t understand the laughter until they got to Dennis’s flat: Vernon Whitfield was not a traditionally handsome man. He was short, bespectacled and nervous-looking. Sophie had never met anyone who broadcast on the Third Programme before, but she could see why he’d been given the job. The strange thing was that Edith was actually quite attractive. She wasn’t sexy in the least (too thin, too cold), but she was tall, much taller than Vernon, and she was elegant, and she had a very long neck that Sophie rather envied.
She glided over to Sophie and asked her whether she wanted a top-up. Everyone else Sophie knew had temporarily deserted her for an Awkward Squad reunion.
‘Red wine,’ said Sophie, holding out the glass.
‘Was it the Beaujolais?’ said Edith.
That was all it took for Sophie to begin to feel that she shouldn’t have come to the party, shouldn’t know Dennis, shouldn’t be working for the BBC. It was so stupid. Maybe Beaujolais was a red wine and maybe it wasn’t: who cared? She could have just nodded and smiled and said thank you and drunk whatever Edith brought her. Instead, she just froze.
‘Beaujolais is a red wine, dear,’ said Edith. ‘We’re not trying to poison you.’
And she could have just walked over to the Awkward people and the others would have introduced her to the actors she didn’t know and they would have said things like, ‘Pleased to meet you,’ and ‘Congratulations!’ and ‘We love your programme!’ and ‘We love you!’ But Edith had gone to get her a drink, so she wasn’t allowed to move.
‘Salut,’ said Edith, and chinked Sophie’s glass.
Sophie smiled. Vernon Whitfield wandered over to join them.
‘Do you know Vernon Whitfield?’ said Edith.
‘I’ve heard of you, of course,’ said Sophie.
Vernon Whitfield nodded, as if this was inevitable and also a bit boring.
‘Sophie’s the star of Dennis’s TV programme,’ said Edith.
‘Ah,’ said Vernon Whitfield.
He was the star, in his head, in this room; he was the one who delivered lectures on the Third. Sophie’s variety of stardom – seventeen million viewers now, and on the cover of the Radio Times (with Jim) – didn’t really register.
‘Everyone has a television now,’ he went on, with obvious disapproval.’
‘I don’t,’ said Edith.
‘Good for you,’ said Vernon Whitfield.
‘Isn’t that a television?’ said Sophie, nodding towards the corner of the living room.
‘It’s not mine,’ said Edith.
She snorted at the very suggestion that it might have been, so Vernon Whitfield snorted too. Was it really possible that these two were having an affair? Sophie could imagine them having a good snort together, but that was about all. She had no idea what Dennis was like in bed, and she didn’t want to think about it too deeply, but she could imagine his enthusiasm and kindness. And also, he looked nothing like a frog.
‘It’s funny that you’ve got a television and I haven’t,’ said Sophie. It was true. The Radio Rentals people still hadn’t delivered hers.
‘First, it’s not my television,’ said Edith. ‘And secondly, why is it funny?’
‘What’s funny,’ said Vernon Whitfield, ‘is that because Suzy has no television, she has managed to find the time to read the latest Margaret Drabble and we haven’t.’
This, it turned out, was even funnier than the idea that the television in Edith’s house belonged to her. It was obvious that Margaret Drabble was an author; obvious too that she was an author Sophie was not expected to have read. She wasn’t dim. But these people made her dim. They made her afraid, and the fear resulted in mental paralysis.
‘I haven’t read Margaret Drabble,’ said Sophie.
This was the sentence she’d been instructing herself not to say a couple of minutes before. It popped out anyway. Vernon and Edith got a fit of the giggles then.
‘The New Colleague’, formerly ‘The New Secretary’, was ready by the following lunchtime. Everyone, including Dennis, had pitched in, during a long, boozy, loud session in a pub on Hammersmith Grove, round the corner from Dennis’s house. Dennis had left his own party, and later that night, when he got home, he left his own marriage. He told Edith he knew about the affair, he didn’t love her any more, and he wanted her to leave. She was shocked, and embarrassed, and upset, but she left. He had been drunk when he made the speech, but in Dennis’s opinion it didn’t diminish its magnificence or his pride in it.
‘The New Colleague’ was conceived as an act of revenge – on Edith, for her crimes against Dennis and Sophie, and on the British middle classes, for their crimes (unspecified) against Tony and Bill. Jim invites Edwina, the eponymous addition to the staff at Number Ten, to dinner at the house; Edwina turns out to be a bluestocking socialist who is both amused and appalled by Barbara, tries to patronize her, and clearly regards her marriage to Jim as temporary. (There is a suggestion that she sees herself as filling the vacancy.) Over the course of the thirty minutes, Barbara runs rings around Edwina – to Jim’s initial discomfort and, later, great delight. Just about any position Edwina tries to adopt – on politics, or the arts, or religion – Barbara rips apart with her teeth. She doesn’t know as much as Edwina, of course, but Edwina is revealed to have a plodding intelligence and her blue stockings are full of unexamined assumptions, as well as long, bony legs. (Dennis cast the tallest, poshest girl he could find.) Edwina hands in her resignation the next day and goes off to work for the Conservatives – much to Tory-voting Barbara’s confusion and dismay. It was a show that polarized critics, but the critics who didn’t like it didn’t believe in Barbara’s speed of thought, which rather proved the point.
After Sophie had scraped the last of the make-up off her face, she was aware of the first sharp pangs of something that felt like homesickness. They’d already been told that the BBC wanted another series, but that was months away; and anyway, the last episode of the first series made her realize that one day there would be a last episode, and she didn’t know whether she’d be able to bear it. And it didn’t help, telling herself that when it was time for the last episode, she’d have had enough, because she couldn’t bear that either. She wanted to stay like this for ever. She changed her wish quickly: not like this, not exactly … she wanted it to be the Monday just gone, with a whole week of rehearsals to look forward to, and then a recording. That’s where she would like to stop. She was already afraid that she’d never be happier than now – then – and it was already over. She went to look for Clive, and she took him home and made him something to eat and he made love to her. But it wasn’t work.
THE SECOND SERIES
10
If Sophie had asked Brian to custom-design a miserable few months intended to make her grateful for Barbara (and Jim) and all who sailed in her, he couldn’t have done a better job. People from Hollywood wanted her to be in movies, he said, and when she didn’t believe him, he sent her a script called Chemin de Fer. She read it, and didn’t really understand it, and called him on her phone. She never got tired of picking up her phone and dialling a number and not putting a coin in a slot.
‘First of all,’ she said, ‘what does Chemin de Fer mean?’
‘It’s the
same thing as baccarat.’
‘You’re going to have to say something else it’s the same thing as.’
‘Shimmy.’
‘No. Try again.’
‘It’s a card game they play in casinos.’
‘Nobody knows about casinos.’
‘Of course they do, sweetheart. They’re even legal now. You’re being naive.’
‘I’ve never been in a casino.’
‘Of course you haven’t.’
‘I’ll bet Tony and Bill have never been in casinos.’
‘Why do we care what Tony and Bill have never done? They’re BBC writers. They’ve never done anything.’
Tony and Bill would never have written Chemin de Fer. They cared too much about things being real, and about how one scene led to the next. This script was like a dish made from things you’d found in your larder and had to use up before they went off: a Welsh mountain, a casino, a blonde with a big bust.
‘They could have gone to a casino. They’re on good money,’ said Sophie.
‘They’re not on commercial television money.’
‘I mean, compared to everyone else in Britain. People who work in shops and live in the North.’
‘Oh, well,’ said Brian, ‘I don’t know how much we can worry about them.’
‘You don’t want them to see the film? If it’s only for people who play chemin de fer, it isn’t going to do very well.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Brian. ‘Crockford’s was packed on Friday.’
She gave up.
‘Anyway, what did you think of it?’ Brian asked.
‘It’s terrible.’
‘They know it’s terrible. They’re getting John Osborne to rewrite it. And he’s putting in a lot of jokes for your character.’
‘Is he going to explain why they end up shooting people in Wales?’
‘They’re up a mountain, Sophie. There are no mountains in Paris or London or wherever you want them to be shooting people. Honestly. What are you looking for?’
Sophie could see that it wasn’t a script one could spend any time arguing about. You either did it or you turned it down. She had nothing else to do, and the money was extraordinary, and Brian was very excited. If she insisted on being an actress, then this was exactly the sort of thing she should be acting in, he thought. She was only one or two moves away from the gold spray paint and the bikinis, and then the world was hers. Clive, on the other hand, didn’t seem to care one way or the other whether she disappeared off to Wales.