‘I’m a scriptwriter,’ said Bill.
‘How glamorous. Anything I would have heard of?’
‘Television, mostly. Have you seen Barbara (and Jim)?’
‘Good Lord, no,’ said Braun. ‘Why on earth would I have seen something called Barbara (and Jim)? And why do you ask?’
Bill was flustered. He thought that there was an obvious link between the two halves of his reply, but Braun hadn’t spotted it.
‘Well, that’s what I do.’
‘What?’
‘I write Barbara (and Jim).’
‘Presumably they only let you do the Jim bits,’ said Braun, and laughed at his own joke.
Bill managed a smile. He was, he realized, disconcerted by the recognition of his sexual preferences in a professional context. He’d spent so long hiding them in meetings about work that he wondered whether he preferred it that way.
‘And has it gone well for you?’
‘Yes,’ said Bill. ‘It’s very popular.’
‘People watch it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Lots of people?’
‘Yes.’
‘How many?’
‘It’s gone off a bit recently.’
They were getting lots of nice notices for this series, but they were losing viewers every week. The British public were apparently unsure about the comic potential of marital discord and the BBC Audience Research department had spoken to several people who were very concerned about the welfare of baby Timmy.
‘I just want to know what popular means,’ said Braun.
‘Well. The highest we got was eighteen million. We’re down to about thirteen at the moment.’
Braun looked at him and laughed.
‘You know there are only fifty million people in the country, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘So … You’re being serious?’
‘Yes.’
‘Dear God. Have you ever heard of Jean-Fran?ois Durand?’
‘Yes. The Python’s Moustache.’
‘Read it?’
‘Bought it.’
‘Lovely reviews – “The best book to have been published anywhere in Europe this year,” the TLS said, an interview with the author in the Listener – 7,229 copies sold. Unless someone’s bought one this morning.’
‘Right.’
Bill knew that publishing was different. He had no idea that it was a virtually uninhabited country, like Australia.
‘We’ll do better with yours,’ said Braun. ‘It will be a succès de scandale. Do you want your own name on it?’
‘Yes.’
It was his book. He wanted to see his name on the cover.
‘Are you prepared for that? With the BBC, and your family and so on?’
‘I need to have a little chat with a few people.’
‘I’m hoping by the time the book is published we won’t be breaking the law every time we pick somebody up.’
There had been a debate about the new Sexual Offences Bill in Parliament, finally; there would be a change in the law, and homosexuals would no longer need to fear imprisonment. Roy Jenkins had said that ‘those who suffer from this disability carry a great weight of shame all their lives’. Bill supposed he’d meant it kindly, but it hadn’t made anyone feel much better about themselves.
‘When will you publish?’
‘As soon as possible. Now is the time.’
Bill suddenly felt weak with relief. He had had enough of trying to guess the thoughts and feelings of eighteen million people he didn’t know. He wanted to talk to the few thousand that he did.
He had to have a little chat with one of his colleagues the very next morning: Sophie had come into rehearsals with a plan.
‘Are you doing anything tonight?’ she said to him during the first tea break.
‘Nothing in particular. What are you offering?’
‘Will you come out for dinner with me and Clive?’
‘Is he buying?’
‘I am.’
‘Lovely.’
‘I want you to meet a friend of mine.’
‘Excellent.’
‘Diane.’
Bill froze.
‘She’s a bit younger than you,’ said Sophie, and then, apparently off Bill’s look of panic, ‘but not that much younger. And she’s very pretty, and clever, and I can’t understand why she hasn’t got a boyfriend. Just like I can’t understand why you haven’t got a girlfriend.’
He had known Sophie for three years, and he had spent all of them hiding himself from her, while at the same time presuming that she had worked him out. He now saw that he’d been asking a lot of her.
‘Ah,’ he said.
‘Don’t tell me I’m too late,’ said Sophie.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘You are a bit, yes.’
He took her outside for a walk and a smoke. She was shocked, then apologetic and self-flagellatory, and Bill became aware of how much he loved her.
‘Has it been hard, writing about a man and a woman and a baby, then?’ she said. ‘Are you sick of us?’
He just smiled. He felt at peace with the world.
20