by Nick Hornby
Hair ended tumultuously, with members of the audience joining the cast to dance onstage. Sophie was dragged up there by the young man with the tongue. She reached behind her for Dennis’s hand and he pretended he hadn’t noticed, but as she ran down the aisle he realized that he might never have another evening with her, and she might be whisked straight from the stage to somewhere else, a party or a discotheque or a young man’s flat, and it would be entirely due to his cowardice and awkwardness and embarrassment. So he followed her, caught up with her, and they climbed the steps to the stage together.
He wasn’t the worst dancer up there, and he made sure that he positioned himself just behind the person who was, a portly man in a pinstriped suit for whom the Age of Aquarius had clearly dawned: he was throwing himself around with the air of someone who was never going back to his merchant bank ever again. He was throwing his arms and legs around as if they were not his, and he was singing along at the top of his voice to a song whose words he didn’t know. Dennis took the view that he couldn’t compete even if he’d wanted to, and that understatement was the key.
Sophie had been pulled to the front of the stage, where the audience could see her, but she managed to edge back towards him, and she took his hand and shouted into his ear.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘What a thing.’
‘Thank you for asking me. I’ll try and think of somewhere as exciting to take you.’
‘I’d like that.’
He kept moving to the music, just in case she thought he didn’t want to be up there. To his surprise, he did – but then, he wanted to be anywhere Sophie was, no matter how much embarrassment might ensue. And anyway, proximity to Sophie meant that embarrassment was no longer the terrifying ogre he had always believed it to be. Perhaps he would wake up the next morning realizing that he’d made an utter ass of himself, but there were worse animals than the ass. And in London you saw asses wandering around everywhere. Nobody seemed to mind, much. Dennis had spent an awful lot of time not making an ass of himself, and he didn’t have anything to show for it.
The third significant advance came immediately on top of the other two: they spent the night together. That is to say, Dennis went to sleep in Sophie’s bed, alongside Sophie, and woke up with her the next morning. This was obviously of greater significance than the other advances; if anything had happened between the sleeping and the waking, he’d have described the third advance as being of greater significance than all the other advances in human history combined. Nothing did happen, however, and it didn’t happen for the reasons that most great advances don’t happen: failure of nerve, incompetence, muddled thinking, idiocy.
They had left the theatre on a high and went to a party that Sophie had been invited to while she was up on the stage dancing. She was unable to say who it was who’d invited her, or who was throwing the party, but whoever it was had taken over Sybilla’s in Piccadilly Circus, just around the corner from the theatre. There was a queue to get in, and a terrifying scrum at the bar, and there were strip lights around the dance floor that pointed artfully upwards, so that everyone wearing a miniskirt ended up providing a free show to those lucky enough to have obtained a drink and a table. Dennis would have left immediately, but he didn’t want to be the tortoise, so he stuck it out until she made a face and gestured towards the exit with her thumb.
‘Take me home and come in for scrambled eggs and a drink,’ said Sophie, so they found a taxi and went to Kensington Church Street.
Dennis wasn’t, of course, expecting to sleep in Sophie’s bed. Even when she kissed him, in the hallway of the flat, as soon as he’d closed the front door behind him, he didn’t dare to presume that it indicated anything in particular. The last girl he’d kissed in earnest had been Edith, some years before. (Kissing was not always an earnest activity, but nothing he did with Edith had ever been much fun.) An awful lot seemed to have changed in the world since then: there was, it seemed to him, simply more sex around. Only that very evening they had been to see what his mother might describe, might already have described, as a nude musical, and there had been no such thing as a nude musical, not in a respectable theatre anyway, before or during his marriage. What did he know about sex or women these days? Not very much, he suspected, and perhaps all evenings out ended like this these days, with the woman pinning the man back against a door. He hesitated for a moment before kissing her back, not because he was suddenly, after all the years of pining, confused about how he felt, but because he wanted to make sure that he wasn’t misinterpreting or overreacting in some way. Maybe she would suddenly break off the embrace and then ask him politely whether she could take his coat, and they would never mention it again. Maybe that’s what happened after you’d been to see a nude musical.
She pulled away and looked at him.
‘Gosh,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Please don’t be sorry.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Would you mind if I made you scrambled eggs in the morning?’
‘No. Not at all. Of course not. Shall I … Shall I go home and come back?’
He was almost sure he understood what she was suggesting, but almost wasn’t good enough, not for him. He would always be someone who assumed the worst. He would always be the person who made the safest, dullest and most literal interpretation of an ambiguous situation. He would very likely stay single for the rest of his life.
‘Oh. You have to go?’
‘No. Not at all.’
‘That was the first time I’ve ever tried a sexy line, and you ruined it.’
‘I don’t know that any line that mentions scrambled eggs can be as sexy as all that.’
She laughed, and kissed him again. He had survived, just about. A couple of hours later, he wished that he’d insisted on leaving and coming back again.
How could Sophie not have fallen in love with Dennis, eventually? He was kind, he was single, he was vulnerable, he made her laugh (not always intentionally, true, but often enough). Every time she saw him, he seemed to have become a little more handsome. He was clever in the sense that he knew a lot about a lot, but he was clever in a way she valued more: he understood people and recognized what they might have to offer. It had taken a while, but she ached to have access to that kind of wisdom at all times, not just in script meetings. And he made no attempt to hide his adoration and admiration of her. She’d been aware of it for a long time, and it wasn’t as though she’d been worn down by it, exactly; that would suggest that she’d been exhausted by his persistence, when the opposite was true: she was energized by it. It gave her confidence, made her feel as though she was both talented and beautiful, and she craved the affirmation. Her self-doubt was like water. It found the tiniest gaps and flooded in. The girl who had decided that she was too good to be a beauty queen was long gone; so too was the girl who had never done a day’s acting in her life and turned up for auditions hoping for a job.
The last four years had brought her fame and money, but confusion too. Was she any good at anything? Had she just been lucky? If she had walked into any other rehearsal room in the world, one of the many rooms where there was no Bill and Tony, no Clive, no Dennis, would anything have happened, or would she still be selling perfumes to married men with wandering eyes? Or would the eyes have stopped wandering by now? Everywhere she went she saw younger, prettier and shapelier girls (girls who were, unlike Sophie, still girls), girls who probably couldn’t understand why brainy, witty people were trying to write a show named after her. Dennis’s devotion was a fixed point, like the North Star, something that helped her find her way back whenever she became lost in her deep, dark forest of anxiety.
She’d been watching him carefully, half-expecting his beautiful solidity to melt away with Barbara (and Jim), but the end of the show hadn’t changed him; if anything, it had enabled him to prove to her that she was all that really mattered. Maybe there were women who’d have been able to resist t
his month after month, but if so they were a lot tougher than Sophie. She’d found the right person at the right time, the man who made her feel good, the man who had banished her loneliness, and if that wasn’t love, then she didn’t know what was.
She had decided, though, that if she wanted anything to happen, she would have to make the first move. He was too nice, too respectful and much too damaged by his marriage to that awful woman ever to do anything, and she was sure he’d have offered a pair of ears and a shoulder for ever, through any number of divorces and professional disasters. Ears and shoulders, she decided, were all very well, but she’d need more than that if they were going to move along. She manoeuvred him into the bedroom and they kissed some more on the bed. She was almost sure that he was beginning to see the big picture, so she didn’t think that a description of it would alarm him much. And in any case, she wanted to tell him an awful truth.
‘I’ve just realized,’ she said. ‘You’ll be the first person I’ve ever slept with properly who wasn’t an actor. Isn’t that terrible?’
‘Yes,’ he said, with greater conviction than she’d been expecting.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I was only joking.’
‘So you’ve slept with people who weren’t actors?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I was joking about it being terrible.’
‘So it wasn’t terrible?’
‘I didn’t mean that either.’
‘I don’t really understand the joke,’ said Dennis.
‘I just meant … I should have slept with people from other professions by now.’
‘Which other professions?’
He was visibly alarmed by this time, and she could see that they had set off down the wrong path.
‘I didn’t have any professions in mind,’ she said. ‘Producers. I haven’t slept with enough producers.’
This didn’t help either.
Suddenly, Dennis knew what he had to say. He wasn’t happy that logic had led him to this point. He would much rather have been able to find another way of looking at things, but there wasn’t one. He didn’t know an awful lot about existentialism, but his decision felt as though it had come to him as a product of the existentialist process: a long train of gloomy thoughts, all of which led to the same bleak conclusion. And if he ignored it, who would he be? Nobody. Nothing.
‘I’m not going to sleep with you,’ he said.
‘Why on earth not?’
‘I have my reasons.’
‘Could you tell me some of them?’
‘It wouldn’t help.’
‘I think you owe me that much. I took you to the theatre, I’ve offered scrambled eggs … The very least a girl can expect is sex.’
Dennis sighed heavily.
‘I don’t know how many actors you’ve slept with …’
It was four – Johnny Foreigner, Clive, and two very disappointing flings, and she wasn’t even sure about one of those. He’d said he was an actor, but she didn’t recognize him and he was very vague about what work he’d done. She decided to leave him out altogether.
‘Three.’
‘All right, three. But I’m not an actor.’
‘Thank God.’
‘Well, I don’t want to be compared to one.’
‘Why on earth would I compare you to an actor?’
‘Because actors are all you have to go by.’
‘Don’t you want to sleep with me?’
‘That’s not the issue. It’s not about wanting.’
‘Sex isn’t? Gosh. What is it about, then?’
Dennis didn’t say anything, and then she got it.
‘Oh, Dennis.’
‘What?’
‘Listen. First of all, I think you’re a very good-looking man. And all right, you’re not handsome in a boring actory way, but I’m sick of that. You have beautiful, sexy eyes, and I get quite wobbly when you look at me. Did you know that?’
Dennis shook his head, astounded, and Sophie laughed. Of course he didn’t know that.
‘And anyway. Just because a man is good-looking in a boring actory way, it doesn’t mean he’s good at anything else.’
‘You’re very kind,’ he said. ‘But I would prefer my function in your life to be, I don’t know … something else.’
‘It didn’t feel like that was what you would prefer. Just now.’
‘I cannot be held responsible for the conduct of an independent organ.’
He was, as far as she could tell, serious, so she had to laugh.
‘I didn’t mean to sound pompous,’ he said. ‘But I’m not usually called to account in that way.’
‘Has there been anybody since Edith?’
‘No,’ he said. And then, ‘Not really.’
‘What does that mean? If you don’t mind my asking?’
‘I said “not really” because I thought it might make me sound more interesting.’
‘So … Maybe all this is because it’s been a while?’
‘No. It’s because everybody finds you attractive.’
‘Even if that were true, you’re the only one here.’
‘Can we just go to sleep?’
‘If that’s what you want.’
They arranged themselves on the bed and she nestled herself into him. She could do it, she thought, despite the frustration. It was late and she’d been drinking champagne. And the next thing she knew, it was five o’clock in the morning, and she desperately needed a pee. It was clear to her that Dennis hadn’t even closed his eyes.
‘This is no good,’ she said when she came back from the bathroom.
‘It probably won’t happen again,’ said Dennis. ‘Friends don’t often spend the night in the same bed.’
‘What if I wanted to marry you?’
‘Separate bedrooms.’
He was beginning to wonder whether he had strayed from the existentialist path.
‘So there’s nothing I could do that might convince you?’
Was it only yesterday that Sophie had asked him whether he was happy with nudity and his heart had nearly burst with joy? And yet that question had referred only to a night in the theatre. He wouldn’t even have been able to imagine the circumstances in which she might have posed the most recent question, and he certainly wouldn’t have been able to explain his answer.
‘I don’t think so.’
Oh, this was ridiculous. Whatever else existentialists might be, they never struck him as particularly cheerful coves, and he was beginning to see why.
‘I suppose there might be something,’ he said.
Sophie hadn’t pulled the curtains in the bedroom, and their faces were occasionally lit by the headlights of the passing traffic. He could see that there was an expression of mild alarm on her face.
‘It’s nothing … out of the ordinary,’ he said. ‘I want to know that if it happens, it will happen again. And not just once, but a few times. I don’t want to be judged on a … an isolated incident.’
Sophie laughed, and Dennis looked hurt.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It just sounded funny.’
‘Why?’
‘Because … Well, how many goes were you thinking of?’
‘I don’t know. Three? Fifty? It’s difficult, isn’t it?’
‘Do you think you’d need fifty goes?’
‘Are you saying you wouldn’t want to guarantee fifty goes?’
‘I’d rather not … put a limit on it,’ said Sophie.
That was all the reassurance Dennis needed. And – somewhat to her surprise, given the tentative start to their sexual relationship – Sophie discovered that he was in no need of a second attempt at anything, let alone a fiftieth.
‘I’d never noticed before,’ Sophie said later, ‘but you’re much more like Jim than Clive ever was.’
‘Is that a good thing?’
‘Perhaps we can learn from their mistakes.’
‘Their biggest mistake was that they made themselves characters in a TV series,’ said Denn
is. ‘Nobody ever told them that they were going to get fifty goes. They always had to make a big song and dance about everything, in case people stopped watching them.’
‘You don’t have to be a fictional character to do that,’ said Sophie.
She was thinking about Clive. He always wanted to make a big song and dance about everything. He was terrified of not being watched, and she always had to worry about whether there was a prettier, younger thing in the room.
‘I suppose not,’ said Dennis.
He was thinking about Edith. She was constantly on the verge of cancelling their marriage. She would only commission a few shows at a time, reluctantly, and if he had listened properly, she’d always been telling him that it would all end one day.
‘I’ll make as many series as you want,’ Sophie said, and when she saw how happy she could make him, she felt a little thrill of pleasure.
She suddenly remembered something.
‘Was it … Did I …’ She didn’t even know how to phrase the question. ‘Was anything missing?’
‘What sort of anything?’ said Dennis, alarmed. ‘Should I have noticed?’
Sophie laughed.
‘No, no, not an actual physical piece. I just meant … I don’t know.’
She shouldn’t have started down this road, but she’d never forgotten her conversation with Clive about Nancy’s appeal.
‘Was there … anything else you wanted?’
‘Good grief. Like what? Is there anything else I should have wanted?’
‘No, no, it’s just …’
And they went back and forth for some time, increasingly agonized, before each could convince the other that everything had been present and correct, and served in ample proportions.
They dozed off for a little while, and then Sophie made them scrambled eggs. They were both perfectly happy, and perfectly calm, and they wanted to stay that way for as long as they possibly could.
23
Sophie Simmonds (known as Simmonds to everyone involved with the programme, in order to avoid confusion with Real Sophie) worked at Peach, a girls’ magazine; the staff of Crush, the girls’ magazine where Diane had worked until she became convinced that she could write comedy, would probably note certain similarities between their office and the one portrayed in the series. Simmonds interviewed pop stars, tried the new shades of lipstick before everyone else, spent all her money on the latest gear and got into all kinds of messes with boyfriends. Or rather, she got into a certain kind of mess with boyfriends, the kind of mess that might amuse a BBC audience of all ages and classes. She didn’t worry about getting pregnant, she didn’t sleep with anyone’s husband, there was no sexual dysfunction or perversion, she wasn’t ever unfaithful. In the first episode she had inadvertently arranged two dates for the same evening, and in the time-honoured way of situation comedy, she tried to oblige both parties, even though they were waiting a bus-ride away from each other. In the second, she had agreed, over the telephone, to go on a date with a speccy, spotty brainbox called Nigel because she was under the erroneous impression that Nigel was the dishy lead singer for the smash-hit pop group the Young Idea.