She didn’t care. She didn’t care that they weren’t going to film at Number Ten, she didn’t care that she wasn’t going to get an MBE, not this year anyway. She didn’t even care that Harold Wilson had never seen the programme. If he had, then wanting to meet them all would have been merely a personal quirk, something just for him and Mary. But Marcia’s invitation was official acknowledgement that they mattered. Dennis was right. Harold had wanted a bit of reflected glory. Well, that meant that they were the glory.
They didn’t film in Number Ten; they weren’t even allowed to put out a show in the week of the general election. The Director-General apparently thought that Barbara (and Jim) was too nakedly political, and would damage the BBC’s commitment to neutrality and impartiality.
‘What a lot of cock,’ said Bill. ‘We’re not taking that lying down, I hope.’
‘No,’ said Dennis. ‘I’m going to march into the DG’s office and tell him that we’re taking over the Crystal Palace transmitter.’
‘Seriously, though,’ said Bill, ‘what are we going to do about it?’
‘I think what Dennis is saying,’ said Tony, ‘is that we’re not doing anything about it.’
‘And that’s all right with you, is it?’
‘I don’t mind a week off. We’ve got plenty to do.’
They had begun work on a new series called Reds Under the Bed, about a cell of hapless Soviet spies becalmed in Cricklewood, and Anthony Newley had asked them to write a screenplay. Hazel turned down other offers most days of most weeks.
‘We’ve been recommissioned, though, if that’s any consolation,’ said Dennis.
‘If they won’t put out a show in general election week, you can tell them where to stick their new series,’ said Bill.
‘Oh, tommyrot,’ said Dennis.
‘I’m not having them cancel a show whenever they feel like it,’ said Bill.
‘It’s not whenever they feel like it,’ said Dennis. ‘It’s whenever there’s a general election. They may stop you from banging on about the iniquities of the class system during the next one too. Factor in a week off some time in the spring of 1971.’
‘So what’s the bloody point?’ said Bill. ‘Seriously? If they gag you the moment it counts?’
‘Just a gentle reminder that you’re supposed to be writing a situation comedy about a married couple,’ said Dennis. ‘Not the Labour Party Manifesto.’
‘Of course, it would be a gentle reminder,’ said Bill. ‘A gentle reminder about a gentle comedy. Everything’s so bloody gentle and polite. Especially you.’
‘Steady on, Bill,’ said Tony.
‘I’ve been called worse,’ said Dennis.
‘Why aren’t you more worked up about it anyway?’ Bill said to Tony. ‘Trust you to lie on the ground with your belly up and your paws in the air.’
Every story contains a moment you can point at and say, ‘Look, there, that’s where it all unravelled,’ and maybe this was such a moment. That was what Dennis would say, in years to come: ‘It was never the same after that election-week row.’ But Tony was a storyteller, and he knew that if you looked at any narrative closely enough you could trace the unravelling back and back and back – right to the very beginning, if the story was good enough.
The strange thing was that the argument seemed synthetic to Tony. Could anyone really care that much about being paid not to work? The anger was clearly real, though. It was in there, sloshing around, looking for the nearest hole to escape through.
‘Are you really going to tell them where to stick their new series?’ said Tony later. ‘Because I’m not.’
‘You’d do it without me?’
‘No,’ said Tony. ‘Of course not. But I’ve got to do something. I’ve got a wife and a kid on the way.’
‘Oh, have you, Tony? I didn’t know. You should have mentioned that before.’
‘That’s a bit unfair.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Bill, without meaning it.
Tony caught a glimpse of something. Was that what it was all about? Perhaps it was. The nuclear family always represented something to a man, especially a single man, especially a single man with an anarchic streak, especially a single man with an anarchic streak who found himself having to write about a nuclear family to earn his living. And Tony’s nuclear family meant a lot more to Bill than most nuclear families, for obvious reasons. Tony didn’t want June and his unborn child to be a sort of Vietnam, and he didn’t want to be on the wrong side. But he was starting to fear that it was too late and that the battle lines had been drawn up a long time ago.
THE FOURTH SERIES
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