by David Nobbs
His pride will not let him leave or show that he is hurt. He would rather be anywhere, even at home, asking his dad if he’s ready for his cocoa yet, being kind and considerate to his blind dad, that would be a gas compared to this. Or he could be on the top of the cliffs at Beachy Head, contemplating…no, don’t even think of that.
Sometimes one can drive for miles while thinking of something else, and suddenly realise to one’s horror that one has driven through four roundabouts in perfect safety. Much of that evening in the BBC club is like that. Forty-five minutes pass by – he’s always in touch with the time, it’s one of his greatest virtues, or is it a vice? – between his learning of Naomi’s engagement and the moment when they find themselves standing together on the edge of the slowly diminishing group of revellers, and she says, ‘Let’s sit down.’ Afterwards, he can’t remember a single word of the conversations he’s had in the hectic group by the bar, can’t remember who he’s met, what he’s drunk. Nothing remains.
They sit on the lower level of the bar, on a huge settee, hidden from the other members of the cast and production team.
‘How long is it since the Amazon?’ she asks.
‘Thirteen years.’ He doesn’t tell her how many months, weeks, days, hours and minutes, although he knows.
‘So, how are you?’
‘Fine. I’m absolutely fine.’
‘It’s fun seeing you.’
Fun?
‘Absolutely.’
‘How’s Maggie?’
Then he has to tell her his story. She’s truly horrified, and he knows, and this is the worst part of it for him, that she is still the same old Naomi, she has not become spoilt by – well, not fame, but – whatever it is she has achieved. If she had become spoilt, then the whole world would have lost the real Naomi, and maybe he could cope. But only he has lost the real Naomi. This Colin, this second-rate writer, has won not some spoilt simulacrum of the old Naomi, but the real, wonderful, loving, caring, beautiful thing.
‘Do you see much of Liam?’
‘Yes. He lives with his mum in Cornwall, and it’s all very amicable, she…isn’t a sexy person, Naomi. And…’
‘…You are. I know.’
He wishes she hadn’t said this.
‘He comes up to Yorkshire in the holidays and at half terms. Dad loves him. Dad’s virtually completely blind now.’
‘Oh, no!’
‘He manages. He goes into a very nice home for three weeks every summer, and I go down to Cornwall, and Liam and I surf and water ski and have a hell of a time. I see quite a bit of Maggie then. We’ve got on well from the moment we stopped sleeping together.’
‘Does he…I mean…how has…’ She finds it hard to articulate it. ‘…Sam’s death…affected him?’
‘Well, this is the awful thing. I don’t know. We’ve stopped talking about it. As if that’ll make it go away. Every time I see him I intend to talk to him about it. I just don’t know how to. And the longer I don’t, the harder it is.’
‘It’s not easy. Maybe it’s best not to.’
‘I don’t think that, and nor do you.’
‘No.’
‘But on the whole he seems fine. Amazingly well-adjusted really.’
‘And you?’ she asks. ‘How have you coped?’
‘Not very well, except…I have coped. When I come home from Cornwall I get off the train, and I just don’t want to go home. My father is there, needing me, waiting eagerly to see…sorry, to hear me. I walk, lugging my heavy case. I could get a taxi, but I walk. I want the weariness in my legs. I want the pain of the heavy case in first one hand and then the other. I just don’t want to walk up the hill towards number ninety-six. But I do. I keep putting one foot in front of the other, one foot in front of the other, one foot in front of the other, and I get there. That’s my life.’
‘And you’re getting there?’
‘I think so, yes. I have to. Luckily Dad needs me.’
She nods, then pauses briefly, wanting to give breathing space before moving on from this sensitive area. ‘So…?’
She doesn’t need to say any more. Her hesitation and her tone say it all.
‘No. Not at the moment. I mean, I’ve been out with one or two, but you know…not like…’
‘…Maggie.’
No! I wasn’t going to say that. Not like the real thing. Not like you.
‘I read about your daughter in the paper.’
‘Oh, God. Not the Argus.’
‘Yes.’
‘Shit.’
‘It was rather, wasn’t it? But she sounds – Emily, was it? – great.’
‘Emily, yes. She is great.’
The beauty in Naomi’s eyes when she speaks of Emily…No. The lighting in the BBC club isn’t quite good enough for him to see the beauty in her eyes. But he can imagine it, and that’s just as bad.
‘So what happened to Simon? I have to say – maybe I shouldn’t – I didn’t like him very much.’
‘No, I don’t think I did either.’
She laughs.
He wants to say, ‘Why do you marry such unsuitable men?’
Something of the thought must have got through to her, because she says, ‘Colin’s great.’
‘Good.’
‘Simon is actually much improved. He’s married again. Francesca must have something I lack. Or he’s scared of her. He doesn’t play around any more. He’s very good with Emily and she’s very fond of him and of Francesca.’
‘Do you mind that at all?’
‘Well, I did a bit and maybe I still do a bit but I can’t really. It’s so convenient. It’s somewhere for Emily to go when I’m working.’
She lowers her voice just a touch, as if approaching sad or weighty matters.
‘Do you still believe in God?’
‘Oh, yes.’
She shakes her head.
‘How can you after…?’
‘I know. Maybe I need to. Maybe I can’t give up the hope that I’ll see Sam again one day. Although…’
‘What?’
‘I do have doubts.’
‘You do?’ She’s excited.
‘Yes. I…I remember once, getting very emotional and lost and feeling very homesick, it was in Seville.’
‘I’ve been to Seville. Remember Clive and Antoine? I went with them.’
‘How are they?’
‘Fine. Fairly poor, very happy. Like you. Or maybe you aren’t poor.’
‘Not very, no.’
‘Sorry. I interrupted. You were talking about your doubts.’
‘Oh, them.’
This conversation is so difficult, so painful. But I don’t want it to end. Ever.
‘Yes. I suddenly needed to pray. I went into this Catholic church. I prayed my heart out. I didn’t get the experience I wanted. I wasn’t moved as I had hoped. I had…I admit it…just for a while…I had…’
‘You see. You say, “I have to admit it.” As if it’s a disgrace of some sort to have doubts. That’s what’s so unfair. It’s intelligent to have doubts. How can it be something to be ashamed of? So say it. Come out with it. You had doubts. You don’t still?’
‘Not so much. I asked God to help me with my sorrow, to help me pull through. And he has.’
‘How do you know it’s him? How do you know it isn’t your strength?’
I don’t. I’m tired of this. Move on.
There is a gleam in her eye, though he can’t see it very well. It might disturb him if he could. Maybe it’s a pity that he can’t. It would at least tell him that she is not quite his old Naomi of the three nights, especially the second one.
‘Give me your address and I’ll send you some stuff,’ she says.
‘Stuff? What sort of stuff?’
‘Booklets. Books. Articles. Pamphlets. They’ll show you you’re not alone in having doubts. I just wish the world would stop thinking that doubts are bad.’
He doesn’t want the pamphlets or books. He wants her to have the address
so that she can write, ‘I’ve made a terrible mistake. Please can we meet.’ He wants to save her, not have her save him.
He writes it on the back of the outward half of his railway ticket.
‘Oh, still the same place,’ she says. ‘I remembered the number. I just needed the postcode.’
‘I’ve driven past L’Ancresse once or twice.’
‘Really?’
She tells him about her mother. It shocks and saddens him. He longs to comfort her, to have been around and comforted her at the time. Then Colin breaks in.
‘A few of us are going for an Indian. Are you coming, Timothy?’
I’d rather be captured by cannibals, basted with sunflower oil and roasted alive in a medium oven with three cloves of garlic shoved up my arse.
‘Yes. I’ll come.’
‘Good. I’m glad,’ says Naomi.
He has to go. It’ll give him an hour and a half before he has to part from her.
It’s all becoming a blur. He’s in somebody’s car, being driven somewhere. There is great difficulty in finding a parking place. They walk through the cold London night. It’s raining properly now, steady, merciless rain driven on a gusty wind. The carload tumbles into an Indian restaurant, and there, at three tables pushed together, is another carload from the show.
Timothy finds himself sitting opposite Colin, and between a grizzled man in his fifties and Melanie Cass-Wardrobe. He finds that he can’t think of her except as double-barrelled.
None of the leading actors from the show are there.
‘Eleven people,’ says the grizzled man, who introduces himself as Nick Sampson-Lighting. ‘Eleven sodding people. Where’s all the fun gone? Where’s the sociability gone? I remember studio nights, in the old days, there’d be thirty of us or more. Take over the restaurant we would. Now they go home, watch their figures, worry that if they come they’ll get drunk and insult somebody important. In the good old days it’s what you looked forward to, somebody important that you couldn’t stand being insulted by somebody else you couldn’t stand. What do you do?’
‘I’m a taxidermist.’
‘I didn’t realise we had one. That’s good. Very thorough.’
‘Oh, I’m not on the show.’
‘Oh, I see. I thought you meant you were an advisor. Taxidermy consultant – whatever your name is.’
‘Timothy Pickering.’
‘Good. Good name. Look good in the credits. Pity you aren’t an advisor. They need one.’ He lowers his voice. ‘Fucking awful script. Don’t think mine looks too bad on the credits, actually. Lighting – Nick Sampson. Of course, lighting lets the side down. Director – Nick Sampson, that would trip off the tongue. And I should have been made a director. Everybody says so. Or, better still, producer. Producer – Nick Sampson, because they do fuck all and the camera stays on the credit for ages. But no. They aren’t looking to promote you any more. Unless you’re useless. Can’t promote old Nick – too good at his job. Bastards. This industry is now run by bastards. In the good old…’
Luckily the waiter comes at this moment and Timothy is able to break away and study the menu, although he knows what he’s going to have. There are lots of specials here, things he’s never heard of, but visits to Indian restaurants are moments of routine. He always has prawn puri and lamb dhansak on his monthly visit to the Taj Mahal in Coningsfield, between the off-licence and the betting shop, and he will have prawn puri and lamb dhansak here, for all their fancy London specials.
He turns towards Melanie, because talking is much more stimulating than listening to Nick.
‘Do you like Indian food?’ he asks.
‘No. I loathe it. That’s why I go to Indian restaurants. I’m a member of the Battersea Masochists’ Society. In fact, I’m the secretary. Horrible job. Everyone wanted it – but I got it.’
‘I’m sorry. It was a stupid thing to say.’
There is a pause between the two of them. Large amounts of bottled Indian beer and red wine appear, plus white wine for Colin.
Nick nudges Timothy hard with his elbow. Timothy, only moderately winded, turns towards him. Nick indicates Colin with a dismissive thumb.
‘White wine. No wonder his scripts are so colourless. I knew a writer who in one day, on the same day, was sick in Yorkshire Television, Leeds City station, Manchester Piccadilly station and Granada Television. Writers were writers in those days.’
‘It’s absolutely fascinating hearing your tales of the olden days,’ says Timothy, ‘but you’ll have to excuse me. I have an overwhelming desire for a woman. I’m going to talk to Melanie.’
He turns towards Melanie, who is now talking to the person on her other side. He touches her on the arm. He likes the feel of her arm. It’s nice and fleshy. She’s not unattractive.
She turns towards him, enquiringly.
‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I wanted to say something to you.’
‘Well, fire away.’
He tries to think of something to say. ‘How long have you been in wardrobe?’ vies with ‘Do you actually live in Battersea, then?’ Neither remark strikes him as a winner. He remembers someone advising him that, if you didn’t know what to say, there was often no harm in the truth.
‘I didn’t actually have anything to say,’ he says. ‘I’d just much rather talk to you than to Nick.’
‘Listen to Nick, you mean.’
‘Now I can’t think of anything to say.’
‘Do you really think I’m sitting next to you for your conversation?’
She leans towards him and runs her tongue round the inside of his ear so quickly that a moment afterwards he can’t believe she’s done it.
‘How did you know Naomi?’ she asks.
He tells her.
‘That is so sweet,’ she says.
He doesn’t tell her of the three nights, especially the second one, but when she says, ‘Did you…you know?’ he says, ‘What do you think?’
His prawn puri arrives, and just as he’s taking his first mouthful she says, ‘I’ve never done it with a taxidermist.’
He chokes.
‘Too hot for you?’
‘Yes, I think you may be.’
‘I’m serious, Timothy. It is Timothy, isn’t it?’
She starts to tell him about her relationship that has just ended, and how she’s decided all she wants from now on is a bit of fun. Men dream of hearing such sentiments, and he has to hear them while the woman he loves is sitting across the table, deep in conversation with the man on her right. Timothy hears the dreaded word ‘pamphlets’ and begins to wonder if she’s getting a bit obsessed, but nothing can take away his love for her. He can’t tell her that she is the only person in the world for him, but it’s inconceivable that she can stay with Colin for ever and one day he will want to say to her, ‘You remember that Indian restaurant that night after I came to your show. God, it was agony, I was so in love with you,’ and he doesn’t want her to say, ‘No, you weren’t. You were all over Melanie Cass-Wardrobe and you went to bed with her. I know, because on the next show she said to me, “I can tick off ‘taxidermist’ now on my list of occupations I’ve cracked.”’
He’s listening just enough to avoid making a serious mistake in his replies, and of course he’s sipping away at his Indian beer. The lamb dhansak arrives just as she finishes her sad tale of the ending of her affair, and she says, ‘So, Timothy, am I going to be stuffed by a taxidermist tonight?’ and he hears himself say, ‘We don’t stuff. We model.’
She looks at him in astonishment, then narrows her eyes and turns away.
Nick Sampson-Lighting has been waiting, and he pounces.
‘I remember an after-show supper at which three marriages broke up,’ he says. ‘Three. Television was television in those days.’
‘I come from a different world,’ says Timothy. ‘We don’t have after-tiger piss-ups in taxidermy. We don’t all go to the bar and tell each other how wonderful we are every time we mount a salmon.’
�
��You talk of tigers. That reminds me—’
‘I’m sure it does.’
Even Nick in full flow can recognise this as a put-down, and he too turns away. Timothy is now entirely on his own. Naomi is still talking with passionate earnestness. Colin is sipping his white wine and smirking. Timothy is getting very full. He can hardly eat his lamb dhansak, hardly force the stuff down. Even the beer is unwelcome. He feels as if he’s going to explode.
He explodes.
‘Don’t stare at me, you smug little bastard,’ he says. ‘You haven’t a clue about taxidermy, have you? You’ve never even met a taxidermist before. You think we stuff things. We don’t.’ He is getting louder and louder, intoxicated by his own aggression. He doesn’t care. ‘We make forms, we cast clay to make mannequins, we use fibreglass, papier mâché, rigid polyurethane foam. We know how to sculpt, cast, mould, skin, tan and paint. It’s a huge, complicated, deeply skilful process.’
He can see Naomi looking across at him with her mouth open. He wants to stop, but he can’t. He doesn’t want to alienate her, but he must.
‘My dad was a great all-round craftsman. He was an artist. He had an international reputation. People sent him their dead puffins from Iceland, their dead reindeer from Lapland, their dead tigers from India, because they knew of him, they knew he would do a good job, they knew their birds and animals and fish would live on through his vision. Widowed old ladies brought him their poodles so that they could be given everlasting life. Children brought him blue tits and he helped them not to be afraid of death. He was well-known in the highly respected Guild of Taxidermists. In fact, I was told that he was known as the taxidermists’ taxidermist.
‘For some reason we’re a laughing stock, but recently we’ve made a bit of progress in being taken seriously. Your show will set us back fifty years. I wouldn’t mind if it was really funny. It isn’t. It’s not funny enough.
‘And this is what I really can’t forgive you for. You haven’t even written a funny part for Naomi.’ He shouldn’t be saying this. There’s no point in it. Yet he cannot stop. Not now. It’s too late. ‘She could do anything. That wonderful woman. That wonderful actress. Anything. You’ve given her nothing. I…’