‘All right,’ said Bill. ‘Let’s not do what Clive expects. Let’s say Barbara’s got something to worry about.’
‘That’s more like it,’ said Clive. ‘Dennis can get some gorgeous dolly bird in to play the secretary, and –’
‘Who?’ said Dennis.
‘I don’t know,’ said Clive. ‘There are a million of them out there.’
‘Name one,’ said Dennis.
‘Anne Richards is very pretty.’
Anne Richards was the old LAMDA friend Clive had lunched recently. She’d be grateful for the work.
‘We don’t want pretty,’ said Dennis. ‘We want someone who’s a complete knockout.’
‘Why? Pretty would do the trick.’
‘Barbara isn’t going to be scared of pretty,’ said Dennis. ‘We have a twenty-one-year-old blonde bombshell as our leading character …’
Tony and Bill winced. Sophie winced once she’d worked out what Dennis had done wrong.
‘Leading character?’ said Clive.
‘Leading female character, I should have said …’
‘Except you didn’t,’ said Clive. ‘I should never have agreed to those bloody brackets. They were a terrible mistake.’
‘Here we go again,’ said Tony.
‘You know what’s going to be on my gravestone?’ said Clive. Nobody showed any interest in the question. ‘ “Here Lies the Unknown Actor. He Should Never Have Agreed to the Brackets”.’
‘Oh, you won’t live for another year,’ said Tony. ‘I’ll murder you before then.’
‘We have a twenty-one-year-old blonde bombshell as our leading female character,’ said Dennis. ‘Jim’s already out of his league. And he works in Whitehall, which, let’s face it … Well, it’s not known for, for …’
‘The quality of its skirt,’ said Clive helpfully.
‘Barbara is young, gorgeous, childless, fashionable … Even if Jim were to fall hook, line and sinker for the new secretary, the audience would find it hard to believe that she represented any kind of a threat.’
‘Especially if Clive’s trying to find employment for one of his raddled ex-girlfriends from LAMDA,’ said Bill.
‘I resent that,’ said Clive.
‘Which part?’
Clive thought for a moment too long, provoking cruel laughter from the writers.
‘I suspect,’ said Dennis, ‘that the old new secretary storyline is for a more established marriage and a more … careworn woman.’
‘Young women can get jealous,’ said Sophie.
‘But nobody would understand why, is the thing,’ said Dennis.
One of the things he loved about rehearsals was that he could sometimes sneak in a compliment and nobody noticed.
Tony and Bill looked glum.
‘Looks like we’ve got the rest of the day off,’ said Clive. ‘Hurrah for the hackneyed imaginations of our writers.’
He stood up and stretched.
‘You haven’t forgotten about tonight?’ said Dennis.
He and Edith were throwing a drinks party. None of them wanted to go: they were all afraid of Edith and her friends, and they hated the way she talked to her husband.
‘We haven’t even got a script,’ said Tony.
‘You have to come,’ said Dennis.
He knew he sounded panicky, but if none of his BBC friends came, then it was only Them, the Vernon Whitfields of the world, the critics and editors and Third Programme horrors.
‘It’s not going to be all that lot, is it?’ said Clive.
‘What lot?’
‘All those critics and poets and editors?’
‘No,’ said Dennis. ‘I’ve insisted that only jolly people come.’
Nobody believed him, he could tell.
‘We’ll be there,’ said Sophie. ‘I’m not scared.’
She looked threateningly at the others, and they all caved in. Dennis was grateful to them. It wasn’t every night that his wife’s lover came to his home – not with his knowledge anyway.
Clive and Sophie went to the party together.
‘There are a lot of rumours about Edith and Vernon Whitfield,’ he said to her on the way there. ‘Just so you know.’
‘That sounds spicy. What happens in Vernon Whitfield?’
Clive snorted.
‘It’s not a place. It’s a man. He’s a critic, and a broadcaster, and a novelist, and so on and on.’
‘How do you know that?’ she asked him.
‘I don’t. Not for sure. It’s a rumour. But it makes perfect sense.’
‘No, I mean … How do you know that Vernon Whitfield is a critic and a broadcaster and a so-on?’
‘Ah. That’s not a rumour. That’s more what you might call a fact.’
‘But why do you know this fact and I don’t?’
‘You’re not very interested in critics and broadcasters, are you?’
‘Is he on the Third?’
‘The Third and the Home.’
‘I listen to the Home sometimes, but only the comedy.’
‘He’s very much not a comedian. He’s the opposite of a comedian. He’s the least funny person who ever lived.’
‘So what do I do?’
‘To find out who Vernon Whitfield is? Well, I suppose you start listening to the Third and the unfunny bits of the Home. And reading the weeklies. I really wouldn’t bother.’