‘He’ll read this and ask you out.’
Sophie blushed.
‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’
‘He won’t,’ said Diane. ‘I was pulling your leg.’
‘Can we do another interview one day?’ said Sophie. ‘When … when something has happened to me?’
‘We’ll see how the show goes,’ said Diane.
She wasn’t being unkind. She was just refusing to make promises. It hadn’t occurred to Sophie that her first interview might also be her last. She wished she’d enjoyed it more, and she wished she’d found something to say.
Tony and Bill weren’t writing in the coffee bar any more. They had rented an office, a room above a shoe shop on Great Portland Street, around the corner from the Underground station. On the day they moved in, they had gone out shopping on Oxford Street together, and bought two desks, two armchairs, a lamp, a record player and some records, a kettle and some tea bags. In John Lewis, they had argued about buying an expensive sofa. Bill wanted to lie down during the day and stare at the ceiling. Tony thought that a sofa would lead to inactivity and sleep, and told Bill he wouldn’t pay half for something that would produce only a reduced income. Bill said he would buy it himself, in which case Tony wasn’t even allowed to sit on it. And Tony told Bill to be his guest, that his rear end would never touch the sofa. And then it turned out that there was a twelve-week delivery time, so Bill decided not to bother, but there was a residual irritation that took them a couple of days to shake off. They had never argued before, but everything had seemed more casual before. Now they had a sixteen-episode commission, an increase in fees, an office, a kettle … They were in deep.
And they weren’t quite sure how they were going to fill eight hours of television time either. They weren’t even sure how to fill the first thirty minutes. They sat in their new office, on their new armchairs, facing each other, with notepads on their knees, and they chewed their pencils.
‘So,’ said Tony eventually, ‘Barbara and Jim are a couple.’
That much they knew. Barbara and Jim became man and wife at some time between the Comedy Playhouse episode and the first episode of the brand-new series. Jim was going to carry Barbara over the threshold and drop her in the opening ten seconds.
‘Shall I write that down?’ said Bill.
‘I just meant … We need some couply stuff. As well as all the brave, brilliant, witty important stuff about class and England.’
‘Shall we go back to the Gambols? Hairdos and burnt dinners?’
‘No!’
‘So what do couples do that’s brave, brilliant, witty and important? What do you and June do?’
‘Why are you so interested in me and June?’
‘Because you’re a married couple, half of which is sitting opposite me.’
‘We’re not the same as Barbara and Jim.’
‘Understood,’ said Bill, and laughed.
‘It’s not that,’ said Tony.
‘Isn’t it?’ said Bill. ‘How interesting.’
‘I just meant, you know, we’re not opposites. June works for the BBC, we like the same things, we … Anyway.’
‘But the other business is going all right?’
‘It’s none of your beeswax.’
‘Can’t blame me for being nosy.’
‘I can and I do.’
The other business, predictably, had been a disaster – two disasters, if one were keeping count, a few months apart. He had no idea what had happened, or how much. He had no idea whether he was still a virgin, or whether June was still a virgin, or whether she had been when she married him. They didn’t talk about any of it, even though June had wept after the second attempt.
‘I wish Jim were queer,’ said Bill.
‘I’m glad he isn’t,’ said Tony. ‘Because if he was, we’d be out of a job.’
‘But it’s such a great set-up, the married homosexual.’
‘Bill,’ said Tony, ‘let’s not waste time thinking up ideas that will get us banned from ever working again.’
‘People are interested in anything to do with, you know. Slightly off-kilter sex.’
‘You don’t think people are interested in any kind of sex? They can’t watch it, they can’t listen to people talk about it …’
Bill’s eyes lit up.
‘Right then!’
‘Oh, Gawd,’ said Tony. ‘First episode?’
‘That’s the place to try,’ said Bill. ‘Before they’ve done anything.’
‘You don’t think they’ve done anything?’
‘Maybe not … All of it. They got married very quickly.’
‘Did they? How do we know that?’
Bill shrugged.
‘Comedy Playhouse didn’t go out long ago.’
Tony laughed.
‘All right, then. They got married quickly. So what?’
‘What if nothing happens?’
‘Ever?’
‘For a couple of weeks. Or a month, or something. Someone’s got troubles.’
Tony wrinkled up his nose.
‘What sort of troubles?’
‘Nothing, you know, medical. Psychological.’
‘It should be Jim,’ said Tony.
‘Why?’