‘You should have thought of that before you married him,’ said Clive.
Dennis suddenly understood that Bill’s joke didn’t work any more: Barbara and Jim were not fictional characters. Their popularity, the public’s investment in them, made them real, and they needed care and guidance. He was prepared to do it, because he had nobody at home to worry about. He hoped the others felt the same way.
The majority of the episodes had been two-handers, and writers, cast and critics seemed to prefer them that way. ‘The Anniversary’ was mostly set in a smart restaurant, however, and Tony and Bill had written parts for another, elderly couple at a nearby table, who end up bellowing out their marital grievances and disappointments, much to the consternation of Barbara and Jim – Jim is eventually obliged to separate the pair when the wife starts raining blows upon the husband’s head.
When Dennis arrived for work on Wednesday morning, the two actors he’d booked were sitting outside the rehearsal room looking perplexed. The man was wearing a bow tie and the woman was wearing a hat that she might have borrowed from Mary Pickford. They both looked desperate, and they’d both lied about their age – Dennis had specifically asked casting for a couple in their sixties, the man just retired, the well-preserved woman active in the Women’s Institute, that sort of thing. These two, however, looked like they’d been let out of an old people’s home for the day. If the violence went ahead as scripted, there would be deaths.
‘Barbara (and Jim)?’ said the man hopefully.
He had a loud, posh voice. If bow ties could talk, Dennis thought, that was exactly what they’d sound like.
‘That’s us,’ said Dennis. ‘Me anyway. I don’t know where everyone else has got to.’
They walked into the rehearsal room and Dennis put the kettle on while Dulcie and Alfred fussed around with coats and hats and scripts. Their clothes and even their names smelled of mothballs and Edwardian defeat.
‘We loved it,’ said Dulcie.
‘We read our scenes aloud to each other in bed last night,’ said Alfred.
Dennis was momentarily startled.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You’re married?’
The question clearly disappointed them.
‘People forget,’ said Dulcie to Alfred sadly.
‘This young man might not even have known in the first place,’ said Alfred. ‘It’s been nearly fifty years.’
‘How old are you, dear?’ said Dulcie.
‘I’m twenty-nine.’
‘There you are, then,’ she said to Alfred.
‘Ask your mother,’ said Alfred.
‘I will,’ said Dennis. He could see that it wouldn’t be wise to ask for help with the exact form of the question.
‘Will the writers be in?’ said Dulcie. ‘Because we do have a few suggestions.’
‘Good,’ said Dennis. ‘I’m sure they’d love to hear them.’
It would serve them right for being late.
It was an hour before Bill and Tony arrived with a new version of the script, an hour that reminded Dennis of a wet summer that he’d once had to spend with his grandparents in Norfolk during the war.
‘Who have we got here, then?’ said Tony.
‘It’s Dulcie and Alfred,’ said Dulcie with a big smile.
‘You come as a pair, do you?’
Dulcie’s smile vanished.
‘Well, yes,’ said Alfred. He left it for as long as he could, but it became clear that elucidation was required. ‘We’re married.’
‘Good for you,’ said Bill.
Dulcie gave her husband’s hand a consoling squeeze.
‘Never mind.’
‘Television people,’ said Alfred darkly.
Tony gave Dennis a mystified look, but Dennis could think of no wordless way of explaining that Dulcie and Alfred may have been famous around the time of the Great War, and that their union had possibly been a cause for national celebration.
‘We’ve got a few notes for you,’ said Alfred to Tony and Bill. ‘Nothing major.’
‘Just think of them as observations,’ said Dulcie.
‘Do you mind if we don’t think of them at all?’ said Bill pleasantly.
Dulcie gasped and clapped her hand to her mouth.
Sophie and Clive were last in.
‘We’re not unprofessional,’ said Sophie to Dulcie and Alfred. ‘We knew the script was going to be late.’
‘We’re great admirers of yours,’ said Alfred.
He stared at Sophie hopefully and smiled. She thanked him and smiled back. She was clearly supposed to say something else, but she couldn’t think what, and this failure to reciprocate, to tell Alfred and Dulcie how much they had meant to her over the years, caused another collapse in morale, another bout of hand-squeezing.
‘We’re still working, that’s the thing,’ said Dulcie.
‘And we’re still together,’ said Alfred.
‘So we see,’ said Clive. ‘Lovely.’
Clive looked at the others, to work out whether they wanted to hang themselves too. The longevity of both the relationship and the career felt like a terrible lesson to them all.