‘Once upon a time they used to be,’ he said. ‘These days my sort of play doesn’t appear to be required in that part of town. Seems I’m a little too 1950s for a contemporary theatrical audience. Funny, really. 1950s was exactly what they wanted five years ago.’
Delia laughed. Not that it was especially funny, but she recognised the cadence of a joke. Bill looked pleased.
‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘I mainly write for the telly now. Had a play on the BBC about six months back. Maybe you saw it? Girl on the Run. It got some good reviews. Caused a bit of a stir for a few days. Was even mentioned in parliament.’
‘Haven’t got a television,’ Delia said, reining in the cockney.
‘Teenager leaves her parents and hitches to London to find her fortune. It all ends up badly for her.’
‘Sounds cheery.’
‘I’ve done what they call light entertainment too. Couple of episodes of Dixon of Dock Green. One about a librarian who accidentally kills her mum, and one about a retired soldier who tries to rob a bookie’s.’
‘Oh yeah?’ The last time she’d watched anything on the TV had been in Stella’s back room – Spurs winning the 1962 Cup final 3-1 against some northern side. Teddy and that lot alternating between abuse and yells of encouragement. Tiny men on the black and white screen. Not very interesting.
‘Telly’s the future,’ Shearsby said. ‘In ten years there probably won’t be any big theatres in London. They’ll all be converted into bingo halls or cinemas. Good thing too. Put the plays back where they belong, among the ordinary people – rooms in pubs, town halls – not in the bloody Shaftsbury, with the Lord Chamberlain telling you what what’s right and wrong, what you can and can’t say. A man can do serious work on television and reach the whole country. Have you seen that thing on ITV? Just a street in Manchester. Ordinary people, ordinary lives. It’s wonderful stuff. Bleak, funny, truthful—’
All you needed to do, once you’d started him off, was make noises every now and again, so he’d think you were still listening. Delia didn’t mind. Shearsby was angry all right, but anger came in different varieties. Teddy Bilborough’s, for example, was selfish – entirely directed at the past: all the promises he thought life had made him and not kept. Shearsby, on the other hand, was full of hope; he lived in the belief that things could be better, would one day be better, and he was annoyed at them for not changing anything like fast enough.
They spotted Marius Shearsby waiting on the other side of Leicester Square. He was standing near the doors of the Odeon cinema, huddling himself in his overcoat, and sheltering from a mercifully light snowfall. Even from this distance his disappointment at the sight of the three of them was obvious.
‘Oh God,’ Jimmy said. ‘He was expecting you to be on your own, Penny. That idiot thought this was a bloody date, didn’t he?’
‘You can’t back out now,’ Penny muttered. ‘You two are my bodyguards.’
‘You knew?’ Tess had always envied her housemate’s capacity to say and do whatever she felt like saying or doing, without embarrassment or fear of being judged. But perhaps it wasn’t exactly that Penny didn’t mind what anyone else thought, more that she didn’t care how anyone else felt – and that seemed much less admirable.
‘I brought these two along,’ Penny said to Marius as soon as they arrived. ‘Your pa won’t mind, will he?’
‘I don’t know.’ Then, evidently deciding to make the best of things, he said, ‘It’ll probably be all right. That is – the other chaps who were meant to be here had to drop out, so—’
Jimmy regarded his efforts with obvious amusement. ‘Last minute problem, was it, Marius? Something come up?’
‘Shall we go?’ Marius said, offering an elbow to Penny. She didn’t take it.
They passed through the chaotic beauty of Chinatown, drenched everywhere in red, yellow and black, and on to the grubbiness of Soho, where suddenly there were far more men on the streets than women. Oily little characters outside shop fronts marked Peep Show, Gentleman’s Club or Private Cinema accosted passers-by and tried to encourage them in.
‘Want to see some titties, fellers?’ one of them called to Jimmy and Marius. ‘You can bring the ladies in too, if you like. Free of charge.’
‘How much to let you see ours?’ Penny replied, giving the man a wink.
Recognising Marius’s discomfort at the way the situation had let him down, Tess felt unexpectedly sorry for him. ‘I gather your father’s a well-known writer,’ she said. ‘One of the Angry Young Men?’
‘Used to be,’ Marius replied, seizing the opportunity to deliver his joke. ‘These days he’s more of an irritable old man, though. And he doesn’t write for the stage anymore, thank God.’
‘Why “thank God”?’ Jimmy asked. Tess had never heard of the man, but it was the chance of meeting William Shearsby that had persuaded Jimmy to join them this evening. Apparently one of Shearsby’s plays had affected him quite deeply.
‘Know who he is, do you?’ Marius said. ‘Not too many people remember him these days.’ Clearly his dislike for Jimmy was deepening by the moment.
‘William Shearsby? Of course I do, and I’d say he’s still very well known as a dramatist.’
‘Bloody hell, he’s not William Shakespeare!’ Marius replied. ‘And you wouldn’t ask why I’m glad he’s stopped writing plays if you’d had to sit through every one of the miserable damn things, like I did. Night after night, sometimes. Three hours of some washerwoman complaining about her life. Honestly, you’ve no idea.’
‘You’re talking about Consider This Your Notice?’
‘So you know it?’
Tess had seldom seen Jimmy so unguarded. ‘I went to a touring production when I was in sixth form. It was brilliant.’
‘Really?’ Marius drawled, killing off the sympathy she had felt for him a moment ago. ‘As I say, I didn’t get much out of it myself, other than his being on time with my school fees for once, I suppose. But I’m sure he’ll enjoy you telling him what a wonderful writer he is. He’s generally pretty keen on that.’
Marius led them into a back alley between a Greek restaurant and a dangerous-looking pub. A chef from the restaurant was busy emptying a vat of hot water down a drain. Fishy-smelling steam enveloped them as they passed. About halfway along the alley, they found a portable billboard set out on the pavement.
‘Here we are,’ Marius said. ‘Don’t forget, if anyone asks, you two are both twenty-one, all right?’
Next to the billboard, marked Gaudi Club – Licensed for Alcohol and Entertainment – Members Only, was an unpromising blue door, which Penny pushed open to reveal a staircase, barred at the bottom by a table. A heavily scarred man sat behind it. He looked up from the Western novelette he was reading.
‘Members only,’ he said, far more mildly than Tess had expected. ‘Didn’t you see the sign?’ The cover of his book bore the lurid image of a man in a sombrero firing revolvers from both hands. It was called Bandito Pedro.
‘We’re guests of a member,’ Marius said. ‘Well, I’m a guest of a member, and these are my guests.’
‘Which member would you be talking about, Sir?’
‘Mr William Shearsby. The playwright,’ interjected Jimmy, attracting a sour glance from Marius.
The scarred man put his book down on the table. ‘Wait here,’ he told them, and headed up the stairs.
‘Hello Lenny,’ Delia said.
Caught up in his own rhetoric, Shearsby hadn’t noticed the compact little man waiting for his attention.
‘Evening, Miss,’ Lenny said. ‘Excuse me, Mr Shearsby. Sorry to bother you. Young feller at the door, says he’s your son.’
Lenny Boden was crop-haired, his leathery face scarred from twenty years as a flyweight boxer who couldn’t dodge or dance. His particular skill was the taking of punishment. Thump after thump and he’d still come back fighting. That was how he’d won his matches – endured the barrage until his opponent wore himself out. Finally it wore
him out too. Now he worked the door at the Gaudi.
‘Oh, yes, that’s right,’ Shearsby said. ‘I spoke to Finlay about it earlier. The boy’s twenty-two. He’s here at my invitation. If that’s what you’re asking. Let him in by all means.’
‘And his friends, Sir?’
‘Friends?’
‘There’s another young gentleman with him, Sir. And two ladies. Can you vouch for all four of them?’
Shearsby was obviously annoyed at himself for having, in some moment of paternal indulgence, invited his son into this arcane segment of his world – an invitation the boy had apparently seen fit to extend to his friends too.
‘Sod it,’ he said. ‘Better go and check, I suppose, before I give the OK and let ’em all in here. Who knows what kind of troublemakers Marius could have fallen in with—’
He followed Lenny out to the lobby.
While Shearsby was gone, Delia looked around the club. The group of actors at the table with Rita and Kathy included several barely famous faces – the sort you recognised from one-line roles in Carry On movies and suchlike but couldn’t put a name to. From the expressions Rita was pulling, Delia surmised she must be telling her story about the wide-mouthed frog. It was the only joke Rita knew, but it was a good one. Everything was in the performance.
There’s this wide-mouthed frog. He lives in a pond and spends all his days eating bugs and flies. Until one day he thinks, I wonder what there is in the world outside here? Perhaps there’s other animals to see. And maybe they eat things other than bugs and flies. So this wide-mouthed frog sets off wandering about the forest. And after a while, he comes across a long-eared, furry creature, so he says—
This was the moment for Rita to put a finger to each corner of her mouth, stretch her lips out sideways as far as she could, and put on the frog’s honking voice:
‘Good afternoon, friend. Who are you and what do you like to eat?’ says the wide-mouthed frog.
Then an impersonation of the frog’s interlocutor:
‘I’m a rabbit,’ answers the rabbit – ’cause that’s who it is, a rabbit. ‘I’m a rabbit,’ he says, ‘and I like to eat carrots and greens.’
‘How delicious that sounds,’ says the frog. ‘Carrots and greens, eh? Well, I’m the wide-mouthed frog, and I like to eat bugs and grubs.’
And off he hops through the woods to see if there’s other animals he can find out about. After a while, he meets a . . .
Rita could spin this out for twenty minutes or longer: each iteration of the wide-mouthed frog funnier than the last; every animal with a different voice.
‘Good afternoon, friend. Who are you and what do you like to eat?’
[high-pitched squeak] ‘I’m a mouse. I like to eat the cheese that’s left out in the night.’
[dopily] ’I’m a worm. I like to eat soil.’
[seedily] ’I’m a dung-beetle. You’ve probably guessed what I like to eat.’
[grunting] ’I’m a pig. I like to eat whatever the farmer gives me.’
So important was the wide-mouthed frog joke in Rita’s social repertoire that she had gone to the trouble of stealing a book from the public library, Wildlife of the World, so she could research a wider variety of animals and learn about their dietary habits.
‘Good afternoon, friend. Who are you and what do you like to eat?’
[slightly drunken slur] ‘I’m a pangolin. I like to eat ants and termites.’
‘How delicious that sounds,’ says the wide-mouthed frog. ‘Well, I’m the wide-mouthed frog. I like to eat bugs and grubs.’ And he hops off through the woods to see if there’s other animals he can find out about.
Delia saw Finlay at the bar. He must have arrived while she’d been talking to Shearsby. Most nights the club boss tried to get around all four of his establishments, to make sure everyone remembered who was in charge. Maggie Chisholm sat with him, sipping at a Martini. The little dress she had on, Delia herself had nicked from Selfridges a week ago. Anything black counted as mourning, she supposed. It seemed, anyway, that Albie Chisholm’s death had cleared the way for more than just hostessing work. In fact, Maggie hadn’t done any hostessing now for over two months.
Here’s to you, Maggie, thought Delia, and she raised her tonic water in a toast. On the far side of the club, the young widow acknowledged the gesture with a smile, and a four-finger wave over the rim of her glass.
[dreamy and vague, sing-song] ‘I’m a blue-throated mountaingem hummingbird. People think us hummingbirds don’t live on nothing but nectar. Well, it’s true I do like nectar best of all, but I’ll gobble up any insects and little spiders I can find too.’
Shearsby returned, with his bohemian son and his bohemian son’s bohemian friends. Two skinny boys in polo necks, two girls in checked shirts.
‘This is Marius,’ Shearsby said. ‘Marius, this is Delia.’
‘Pleased to meet you, Delia,’ Marius said. He was handsomer than his father, but had inherited none of Bill’s natural charm. He held out his hand like a businessman closing a deal. She took hold of it. It was dry and warm. After a single decisive shake, he let her go, and she realised with a bolt of nostalgia that this was the first time in over a year she had touched another person’s skin.
‘This is my friend, Penny,’ Marius said. ‘And this is her housemate, Tess, and Tess’s friend from art school—ah—’
‘Jimmy,’ the other boy said.
[buzzes] ‘I’m a honey bee. In the summer I fly about and eat nectar, like the hummingbirds do. In the winter I huddle together with the other bees, and we live on the honey we made when the days were long and warm.’
They all sat. After a few moments of awkward settling, the girl called Penny said, ‘So, Delia, how do you know Marius’s pa?’
‘From here,’ Delia said. ‘From the Gaudi.’
‘We chat from time to time,’ Shearsby added.
Delia knew Shearsby was divorced from Marius’s mother, that he had a girlfriend, quite a lot younger than himself, who had been in one of his plays once. Having messed up his family enough already, he’d be keen to make sure Marius knew his relationship with Delia was, what was the word? Platonic.
‘Are you a writer too, Delia?’ Jimmy asked. If she had to bet on it, she’d say the boy was most likely queer. Not that he was making it at all obvious. Sometimes you could just tell. Conversely, Penny seemed to be trying hard to look like a dyke, but it was all pose. Delia knew a few lesbians. They were authentic. Penny just wanted to make people think she was something interesting.
‘I work in a shop,’ Delia said. ‘Are you all going to be artists, once you finish studying?’
‘The three of us are,’ the one called Jimmy said. ‘But Marius isn’t an art student. He’s doing Exploitation of the Working Classes at Moneygrab College.’
‘Learning to make a living, you mean,’ Marius snapped. ‘I’m studying Business and Accounts. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.’
People only said that when they were ashamed, Delia thought. She wondered what these young men were fighting over.
‘Anyway, one doesn’t become an artist,’ Penny asserted. ‘One either is an artist, or isn’t. We don’t go to art school to learn how to be artists, but to find out whether or not that’s what we are.’
Her pronouncement had the ring of something that had been said more successfully on some previous occasion. This time, however, it hung in the air for a few seconds, with nobody really knowing what to do with it. Then Bill, not bothering to keep the irony out of his voice, said, ‘And have you found out yet, Penny? Whether you’re an artist or not?’
Penny smiled benignly. ‘Certainly I have.’
‘And—?’
‘I’m not.’
‘Oh, come on, Pen,’ Marius said. ‘Don’t be so modest. Your stuff’s brilliant.’ Whatever he thought about Penny’s sexual leanings, it was obvious her good opinion was important to him.
His, however, seemed of no interest whatsoever to her. She sighed. ‘It’s r
eally not, Marius.’ Having dismissed him, she directed her explanation to Delia. ‘I’m good enough to pass. After that, I shall most likely get a job in some second-rate private school, teaching young ladies to draw and paint. They’ll all have terrible crushes on me, of course, and that’ll be fun. But I’ll never be a real artist. Who would want to, anyway? It’s an awful life.’
From what Delia could see, Penny looked as if she would make a perfect schoolmistress, with her bossiness, her trick of seeming to like people she couldn’t really care less about. As to the little queer and his so-far-silent girlfriend – maybe they were real artists, whatever that meant. Now Delia could see Bill Shearsby getting twitchy. If she wasn’t quick, he’d be off first.
Over on Rita’s table, the joke was reaching its climax.
‘How delicious that sounds,’ says the wide-mouthed frog. ‘Well, I’m the wide-mouthed frog. I eat bugs and grubs.’ And he hops off through the woods to see if there’s other animals he can find out about.
After a while, he comes across a long, low creature with skin like one of Stel— like one of my boss’s handbags, and a great big mouth full of the sharpest teeth he’s ever seen. And what do you think Mr wide-mouthed frog says to this funny-looking animal?
By now, her whole audience was joining in. All the third-rate actors around her table pulled their lips as wide as they could and honked out the chorus, ‘Good afternoon, friend. Who are you and what do you like to eat?’
Rita raised her left eyebrow. [voice of a public-school bully] ‘I’m a crocodile,’ this new animal says, ’cause that’s what he is, he’s a big old crocodile. ‘I’m a crocodile,’ he says – pause – and I like to eat – pause again – wide-mouthed frogs!’
The key was not to rush the final moments of the joke. Rita took it slowly, pantomimed all the frog’s reactions – terror, confusion, decision – building laughter around the table. Finally, she puckered her lips into the tiniest possible o, and squeaked the payoff:
Finer Things Page 10