by David Nobbs
‘Do you think we ought to increase my age range on my Spotlight page, Melvyn? Leave the lower end at twenty-eight, up the top end to forty-five? I’ve been thinking about it.’
‘When does a woman not think about her age?’
What sort of an answer is that?
‘So, Naomi, all that business last summer.’
A waiter approaches slowly, smoothly, silently. Melvyn waves him away politely.
‘Thank you. I’ll pour my own. We’re having a rather intimate discussion.’
Are we?
‘So Naomi, all that business…’
‘…last summer.’
‘Just so. Are you…?’
‘It’s in the past, Melvyn. I mean, I still feel the same about religion, but I’m going to keep it to myself until I find some other way, some better way, of dealing with it. I have no intention of damaging my career.’
‘What career, Naomi?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You have no career.’
The blood drains from Naomi’s face. She continues to remove flesh from bone, dip flesh into sauce, and eat, but she tastes nothing.
‘I’d have liked to wait till after we’d finished eating, but the conversation keeps tipping me towards the showdown. I can play you on my line no longer. I like you too much for that, Naomi. Always have liked you. Always felt we were a bit more than agent and client. We were friends.’
‘I’ve felt that.’
She hardly has the energy to bring out those three words of one syllable.
‘I’m afraid I can represent you no longer.’
At other tables people’s conversations are carrying on quite normally. Naomi thinks how strange it is, to be surrounded by people whose worlds are not imploding.
‘I see. But surely there might be some work?’
She isn’t going to beg, but she doesn’t intend to just give up.
‘Yes, there might. I’m not saying you should give up hope. But…the fact is, Naomi, I have four other actresses on my books whom I am more likely to suggest for the parts I might suggest for you. That’s why I think it unfair to keep you on.’
He pours her some more of the St Emilion. She thanks him.
‘Why would you suggest the other four first?’
‘Because, Naomi, nobody is going to say, “Isn’t she the one who pesters us all to become atheists?”’
‘There’s a black list.’
‘Not exactly. Not like that. But it’s a gossipy industry, Naomi.’
‘You can say that again.’
‘I never need to say anything again. Everything I say is known by everyone in the Groucho within hours. It isn’t just that. If it was just that I might be able to swing it. It’s your sitcoms.’
‘You put me up for them.’
‘I know. I know. Well, it’s only Get Stuffed, really. You…you weren’t good.’
‘I didn’t have a chance to be good.’
‘You know that. I know that. Others don’t. They are unable to discriminate between causes. Have a pud. Have something more on me.’
‘I couldn’t eat a thing. How do you think I could eat after a blow like this? Well, perhaps the pear and frangipane tart. I think I should go on a different tack. Drama. The classics. Theatre.’
‘I agree. And for that you need a fresh start, and for that you need a new agent.’
‘Will I find a new agent?’
‘Not easily.’
‘So, this is it?’
‘Not necessarily.’
Melvyn leans across the table towards her. Her heart starts to race. She hasn’t expected this. She ticks herself off for her naivety.
‘There is a way, now that you aren’t married.’
Melvyn looks round the restaurant nervously, revealing to anyone who might be watching, though nobody is, that he is about to make a dubious proposition. Naomi is amazed that he doesn’t do it more smoothly, and thinks, I don’t think he’s quite as sophisticated as he thinks he is. I know nothing about his background, he was probably born in a back-to-back in Hunslet.
‘You could be my mistress.’
‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing, Melvyn. I thought better of you. The casting couch. Well, not exactly. What should it be called with an agent? The representing couch?’
‘No. Listen. I know it sounds that way.’
‘So how else can it sound?’
‘The pear and frangipane tart?’
‘That’s for me. Thank you. That was good timing, wasn’t it, just when you’re making me sound like a tart.’
‘That’s ridiculous. Listen, Naomi. All that I said to you, about why I can’t find you work, is true. It’s not a madeup story so that the only way you can work is to sleep with me. Even if you sleep with me, I won’t be able to put you up for too much, for the reasons I’ve given. But I will keep you on my books, and I will try, because…I love you, Naomi. No, not the casting couch. Not the representation couch. Not a cynical move. The last ploy of a lonely and disappointed man.’
‘Why do it that way?’
‘Because I don’t think you love me, and I thought that this was a way in which I might have a chance. I realise from your face that I have no chance.’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Have lunch with me again sometime. No strings attached. Please.’
His face begins to crumple. There are tears in his eyes. He pulls himself together, blows his nose on a very elegant, monogrammed handkerchief which was surely made for show and not to be a receptacle for mucus.
‘Sorry,’ he says.
She looks straight into his face and wonders if he is acting. He can read her mind.
‘I’m not acting,’ he says. ‘I can’t act. If I could, with my looks, I wouldn’t be an agent.’
Tommo picks him up as usual. It’s the last of the Pennine Piss-ups.
‘Tim,’ he says, grabbing him in a warm, affectionate, slightly crippling hug.
‘Good to see you, Tommo,’ says Timothy.
As usual, Tommo has brought a presentation pack of biscuits.
‘One or two new ones,’ he says. ‘You can’t let the grass grow under your feet if you intend to stay a market leader.’
Timothy puts the biscuits on the hall table, where the show fox shouts its absence. To his amazement he is missing the dead birds and animals, he feels a warm retrospective affection for them, the house seems empty without them. When he gets home he’ll put the presentation pack with all the other boxes of biscuits, in the second cupboard on the left in the kitchen. Timothy doesn’t eat biscuits. He thinks it odd of Tommo to continue to bring biscuits now that number ninety-six is wifeless, but it’s the tradition of the Pennine Piss-ups, and Tommo is a great one for tradition.
Tommo sits in the car, cracks his fingers in that way that Timothy hates, and says, as always, ‘Now then,’ meaning, ‘Here we go again. How many of these jaunts is it now, over the years? Twenty, thirty? Of course there’d be far more if Steven didn’t live down south. So, this is the last one, eh?’
‘Now then,’ echoes Timothy, meaning, ‘About the twenty-third one, I think. Remember that first one? Goodness, how I hated it. I didn’t drink much in those days, my heart was heavy with grief, you meant well but it was agony. I’m an old hand now, sink my pints with the best of them. Funny, really. You’re an established man of biscuits, Steven’s stinking rich, Dave has greengrocer’s shops all over the North of England and in Spain now as well, and here am I giving up my business to work at a bird reserve for the RSPB, and yet I am completely at my ease in the company of the three of you, I no longer feel like a slightly inferior and eccentric being who is only invited out of charity and pity. And of course over the years I have learned, bit by agonising bit, to live with Sam’s death, though of course I still find myself wondering what he would be like at the age he is now. I can’t pass a cricket ground without wondering if he’d have liked the game. But of course I don’t think about this on our piss-ups, so they a
re genuinely happy moments in my life now. And now they’re ending, and I feel sad – not as sad as I did at their outset, but I do have a gentle feeling of enveloping melancholia.’ There’s no need to say all that. ‘Now then’ suffices admirably.
Tommo sets off as if calling at number ninety-six had been a pit stop.
‘Got one for you,’ he says.
Oh, well. Get the joke over early, then we can relax.
‘A man walks along a pavement, and he sees a very old man sitting on the pavement looking very sad. “Why are you sitting there looking so sad?” he asks. “I’m ninety-two,” says the old man, “and I’ve married a girl aged twenty-one.”’
Here we go.
‘“She likes to make love twice before breakfast…”’
Almost always sex with old Tommo.
‘“…once before lunch, twice after tea, once before supper and twice at bedtime.” “So why are you so sad?” asks the man. The old man looks at him sadly and says, “I can’t remember where I live.”’
If only I’d known it was going to have a clean ending I could have enjoyed it, thinks Timothy. He wonders why he’s such a prude about jokes. He isn’t a prude in bed.
They pick Dave Kent up next. Timothy hears Tommo say, ‘Hope your brood aren’t so grown-up that they’ll scorn the chance to have a few biscuits, Mrs K. One or two new ones this time. If you don’t stay ahead of the field, the writing’s on the wall.’
Dave explodes into the car, with a gesture that cries, ‘Get those foaming pints poured, landlord.’ The more prosperous he gets, the bigger the holes in his jeans. He’s taken to wearing a gold crucifix dangling above his hairy greengrocer’s cleavage.
‘Four whole hours away from her,’ he announces.
He has hated his wife for fifteen years. The marriage seems to work brilliantly.
‘Now then,’ says Tommo.
‘Now then,’ says Dave Kent. ‘End of an era, eh, Timothy?’
‘Yep,’ says Timothy.
‘Sad.’
‘Yep.’
‘Sold the house?’
‘Looks like it.’
‘New job sorted?’
‘Looks like it.’
‘Got one for you,’ says Tommo.
‘Tommo’s off,’ says Dave complacently.
‘Tim’s heard it, but it’s a corker,’ says Tommo. ‘A man walks along a pavement…’
Once the joke’s safely out of the way, Dave says, urgently, ‘Ran into Sniffy and Steven last night. I was terrified Steven would let on something about tonight, but he didn’t. But Sniffy did say, “Well, you’ve done a bit of all right for yourself, haven’t you?” and Steven got distinctly shirty.’
‘He’s very very sensitive about his pay-off,’ warns Dave.
‘Got it,’ says Tommo. ‘It’s sealed lips time.’
As Tommo weaves in and out of the traffic, lapping several sluggards on the ring road, they reflect on Steven’s life, on the fact that none of them like him very much, and on the contrasting fact that he is indispensable to the Pennine Piss-ups, which is why Timothy’s farewell is being held several weeks before Timothy actually takes his leave of Coningsfield. Steven is up for his mother’s funeral. Who knows when he’ll be up North again?
‘What did he actually do in the aerospace industry?’ asks Tommo.
‘Not really sure,’ says Dave, ‘but he was a high flyer.’
‘Wish I could be sacked for incompetence and get a million and a half,’ says Tommo. ‘Though actually I wouldn’t. I’d miss the biscuits terribly.’
Tommo doesn’t need to remember which number house is Steven’s mother’s. It’s the only one with a red Ferrari in the drive.
He pulls up with a screech of brakes, and begins to get out of the car.
‘You don’t need to get out,’ says Dave. ‘He’s not deaf.’
‘I want to give him some biscuits,’ says Tommo.
There’s a brief silence in the car after Tommo has left. Timothy can see that Dave is preparing one of his insightful character assessment nuggets. He looks forward to it. He relishes Dave’s nuggets.
‘I suppose we’ve known old Tommo for, what is it, very nearly thirty years,’ says Dave. ‘He’s…’ Dave pauses. Timothy isn’t sure whether this is for dramatic effect or because he is choosing his words carefully. ‘…a good sort.’
They hear the Good Sort saying, ‘Got some biccies for you, Stevey boy. Thought it might be tactless to stop. Sort of might point up the fact that your mum’s snuffed it. Also, shrewd businessman like you, you have a nose for money, rather like to hear how our new lines strike you.’
Steven Venables emerges from the house. He’s wearing a dark suit and a black tie.
‘Greetings, fellow slummers,’ he announces, on getting in the car.
‘Black tie!’ exclaims Dave. ‘I thought the funeral was on Tuesday.’
‘I’m having a suitable period of mourning,’ says Steven. ‘I’m quite interested in Eastern religions. They show more respect for the dead over there.’
‘We’re all sad about your mum, Steven,’ says Tommo, swinging right into Garsley Hill Road at about forty miles an hour.
‘Thanks.’
‘Got one for you. The boys have heard it, but it’s a corker. A man walks along a pavement…’
Up, up they roar, into the dark, windswept hills. It’s a shame that the last Pennine Piss-up should be in the dark, but the views over the stern slopes aren’t the point, and there’s a kind of glamour about growling between the bare winter hedges, the headlights picking out a startled owl, an oak tree starkly beautiful without its clothes, a cottage brightly lit against the gloom. As they climb, they sing the old rugby songs. Timothy knows the tricks now, the silent bits, and is no longer caught out, but somehow the singing doesn’t seem quite the same. It’s as if they feel that perhaps they are a year or two too old for rugby songs now.
Their first stop is no longer the Mill House in Bugginsby Far Bottom. This is a private house now. The pub has been defeated by the breathalyser and cheap supermarket beer. It’s still called the Mill House, though.
‘Do you know,’ says Timothy, as they reflect on this, ‘I couldn’t buy a house that I knew had been a pub. It would be filled for me with the ghosts of drinkers past, their faces accusing me of spoiling their fun, the distant click of cue against ball on an invisible pool table waking me at midnight.’
‘You’re too sensitive,’ says Tommo. ‘Always were.’
Luckily, the Lord Nelson in Osfinklethwaite is still surviving. The landlord with the gammy leg and the hump has died, but his bold-busomed buxom widow soldiers on and has replaced him, for atmosphere, with a parrot. Some say, unkindly, that this is a distinct improvement. The beer is as good as ever, though Tommo confines himself, as always on these occasions, to bottled water.
‘Luckily, I’m one of those people who don’t need alcohol to relax,’ he says, as he often says.
Timothy, though, has learned to hold his beer like a man. He can drink almost pint for pint with Steven. Out come the dominoes. The clack clack of contentment. And yet, somehow, he’s aware that it isn’t quite the same. Maybe it’s just the knowledge that this is their last evening of fives and threes. Steven’s dark suit and black tie don’t help, nor does the knowledge that he’s going back to an empty house. He thinks back to Tommo’s joke. A man of ninety-two with a girl of twenty-one. Ninety-two doesn’t seem as old as once it did. They’re all over forty. Timothy is off to East Anglia. Dave will end up in Spain, for sure. Steven won’t go up North any more, making post-modern deconstructionist ironic jokes about slumming it, now that his mother’s gone. Tommo will miss them. Sadness clings to the hills this night. Tommo does his best. ‘This man rushes to the doctor’s, bursts in. He says, “Doctor, doctor, I’ve got a domino stuck up my arse.”’
‘Oh, not again, Tommo,’ says Timothy.
‘Oh, have I told it?’ says Tommo, but even this doesn’t stop him. ‘The doctor says, “Don’t you ever
knock?”’
The next port of call is a pub they’ve only found recently, the Dovecote at Burton Kirkby. It isn’t perfect, it’s a bit smart, and does quite a lot of meals, but they don’t actually frown on drinkers and there’s a wonderful warm table by the huge open fire. Supermarkets have cheap beer but they don’t have huge open fires, yet many landlords replace the fires because they’re too lazy. Luckily, not Cyril and Edna, mine hosts at the Dovecote.
The four of them sit and stare at the fire and drink rather more gently than usual. Is this the end of their youth, as well as an era? Somehow, nobody likes to suggest a game of dominoes. Partly, it’s that the clack clack of the shuffling between games seems too loud for the diners in this place; even these tough men are not immune to the gentrification of their countryside. Partly, somehow, this evening, the dominoes haven’t seemed to matter, the play at the Lord Nelson has been just slightly listless. Only slightly, but it’s a warning sign. And the fire is mesmerising. Occasionally, one of them reminds the others of some amusing incident in the past. They laugh, bathing in the safety of what cannot now be changed. Then there is silence again, companionable enough, until the next little spurt of recollection. They have no future. The present is only half real. Only the past remains.
Dave is drinking even faster than usual, spurring himself rather desperately towards enjoyment. Tonight, Timothy doesn’t really feel like keeping up. It’s all over, it has ended already, and they shouldn’t still be here. He does try to keep up, though, because he senses that Steven isn’t finding it easy either. He’s gone soft, down South, has Steven. All that money has softened him.
For various reasons they all feel that they’ve had enough, but it’s too early to admit defeat. They always go to four pubs. To admit defeat after two would be pathetic.
Their third port of call is the Black Swan at Cold Heptonwick.
‘I’d begun to wonder if I’d got it wrong,’ says Sniffy, rising from his corner seat like a ghost.
He shows no sign of resentment at his exclusion from their plans. He is affability itself.
Things don’t look promising. Timothy fears that this is the last pint he’ll be able to manage tonight. Steven admits utter and total defeat, and goes onto gin and tonics. The conversation has done no better than limp along at the Dovecote. Now, with Sniffy here, even that level may be unattainable.