‘I’ve still got an agent,’ said Tony. ‘You can speak to her.’
‘Do you just do this sort of thing at random?’ said Clive. ‘Are you a regular ambusher of old duffers?’
‘No,’ said Max. ‘It was you I wanted.’
‘I’ll bet you say that to all the girls,’ said Sophie.
‘I’m actually a bit obsessive about Barbara (and Jim).’
‘I’ll bet you say that to all the sitcom couples,’ said Clive.
‘It’s true,’ said Max. ‘I can prove it.’
‘In a way that doesn’t involve you providing a synopsis of every single episode?’ said Bill. ‘Because we had a lot of that tonight.’
‘There were sixty-four made, right?’ said Max.
‘And twelve have survived,’ said June.
‘Well, I’ve got twenty-two,’ said Max.
He had their full attention.
‘How?’
‘Oh, you don’t want to know. But they’ve cost me a few quid.’
Bill hit him with his stick, hard. He’d clearly intended to crack him over the head, but Max thrust his arm up just in time and took the blow on his elbow.
‘What the FUCK?’ said Max.
June, it turned out, had done a first-aid course in preparation for a holiday with the grandchildren, and for a moment she was concerned that a bone had been broken. But after Max had walked around the room for a couple of minutes, stretching his arm and swearing, June decided that a hospital visit would not be required.
‘What did you do that for?’ said Max.
‘That’s our money,’ said Bill. ‘Ten episodes are two whole DVDs.’
‘Nobody’s buying DVDs any more.’
‘Repeat fees,’ said Bill. ‘Downloads. All that malarkey. You owe us thousands of pounds.’
‘We’ll do all that when we put the stage show on,’ said Max. ‘If I decide I do want to work with a fucking lunatic.’
‘Excuse my friend,’ said Tony. ‘He’s been down on his luck.’
‘Thousands of pounds,’ said Bill again.
‘You’d only have pissed it up the wall,’ said Clive.
‘My prerogative,’ said Bill.
Something had just happened, Sophie thought. It didn’t really matter what it was, or that at its root was a pitiable desperation; tomorrow morning she would be able to call Georgia and tell her that Bill had walloped a young man with his walking stick, and Georgia would laugh, and express disbelief. Usually she had to listen to stories – about Georgia’s work, or her useless ex-husband, or the children. If she ever had anything to offer in return, it was something from the library, an illustrative anecdote about Christian in Majorca in 1975, or Chatterton Avenue in 1987, and Georgia had usually heard it many times before. (Georgia would never pretend that the story was fresh. She wasn’t that sort of daughter.) Sophie never had anything new. Already, Max’s play was worth more than the money she could earn from it. She wanted to do it more than she had wanted anything for years, apart from all the obvious, impossible things.
25
Tony and Bill met in a Polish café around the corner from Bill’s little house in Kentish Town. Bill couldn’t travel very far, and he clearly didn’t want Tony coming to his home. The cleaning lady was sick and hadn’t been for a couple of weeks, Bill told him. If it had been any other friend, Tony would have told him that he was being daft and that they could put up with a bit of mess, but it had been many, many years since Bill was in a position to pay a cleaning lady. Tony imagined cobwebs, booze bottles, mounds of old newspapers, takeaway cartons.
They ordered coffees, and in an awkward moment’s silence, Tony got his laptop out of his briefcase and put it on the table.
‘Really?’ said Bill.
‘I haven’t used a typewriter for years.’
‘I wasn’t asking you to bring a fucking great Corona with you. Pen! Paper! The coffee bar is longhand, isn’t it?’
‘It was. All those years ago. Does that mean it still is?’ said Tony.
‘Nothing still is,’ said Bill. ‘It’s all gone.’
‘Bloody hell, Bill.’
‘It’s true, though, isn’t it?’
‘We’ve got to stop thinking like that, if we want to come up with anything anyone wants to go and see. Max is right.’
‘How can he be right about anything?’
‘He wanted to employ us.’
‘And you take that as a good sign?’