Diane was dressed in the latest gear, pretty, friendly, puppyishly keen to learn.
They met in the office, which Bill didn’t need any more, because he could write on his own at home. Through Diane’s eyes it must have looked as though Tony and Bill had constructed a thriving scriptwriting corporation: there was Hazel, and the sofas, and the desk, and the record player, and all the telephones … Bill had even bought an espresso machine, imported from Italy, exactly the same make as the one in Bar Italia in Soho. The office, Tony suddenly saw, was the product of highly successful adult labour.
Diane stared at it all, intimidated.
‘Do I have to pay for it?’ she said.
‘Not until you see your name on the credits every Thursday night,’ said Tony.
‘Is that what will happen?’ said Diane.
‘It better,’ said Tony. ‘Or I won’t be able to pay the rent on this place either.’
They spent the morning talking. Dennis wanted Just Barbara to get as far away from Barbara (and Jim) as it was possible to go; he wanted a cast of characters rather than a two-hander, he wanted Swinging London reflected in the locations and the stories, he wanted Barbara out of her flat and into the world, he wanted youth and fun and glamour. Tony knew nothing about any of that, whereas Diane knew everything about where girls shopped, ate, drank coffee, danced, met boys. If Tony had somehow persuaded Dennis to let him have a go on his own, he’d have been fired approximately halfway through the first page.
Tony knew more about other things, though. He knew a lot about budgets, structure and timing, so he was able to tell Diane that they couldn’t set a scene there, or there, or even there. He knew everything there was to know about Barbara, so he was able to tell Diane that she wouldn’t think this or say that. And he knew about babies, so he could point out that Barbara would be unable to do just about anything at all. In other words, he was perfectly equipped to prevent Just Barbara from being written. Bill, it turned out, was right. It was a hopeless idea.
‘Does she have to have a baby?’ said Diane.
‘She’s already had it, is the problem.’
‘No, I mean … can’t we just forget about it?’
‘The good people of Britain never forget anything. But …’
There was something here. He felt a familiar little prickle of excitement.
‘Go on. But …?’
‘But what if she’s not Barbara?’ said Tony.
‘If she’s not Barbara, we can’t call it Just Barbara, can we?’
‘No. We’d definitely have to change the name of the show. But what if she was Just somebody else? Just Sophie, say? No divorce, no Jim, no baby Timmy. Just a young girl making her way in the big city. And going out in the evenings.’
‘Can we do that?’
‘We’re writers,’ said Tony. ‘We can do anything we want.’
He had learned that much, at least.
22
The party for Bill’s book was in the upstairs bar of a Soho pub that, for various reasons, Tony had always been too afraid to enter. He went with June, and once they were there they huddled in a corner and watched everyone. The book, it seemed, was going to be a great success, or as much of a success as it was possible to be when half the bookshops in London wouldn’t stock it and most of the newspapers wouldn’t review it. The literary editor of the Daily Express, for example, had phoned Michael Braun to tell him that the Express would ignore not only this book, but all other books that Braun might publish in the future. But the New Statesman had called Bill ‘a towering, fiery, obscene talent’, and even the Spectator had said ‘the broad-minded reader would find much to admire’. Tony felt close to the novel and far away from it all at the same time; and he felt guilty too, for wasting Bill’s time with overflowing baths and the like. It was as if he’d made Arthur Miller write lines for pet-food advertisements.
‘How do you feel?’ said June.
‘I’m pleased for him,’ said Tony, as Bill received a kiss on the lips from a young man who appeared to be wearing eye make-up and who was definitely wearing a feather boa.
‘Are you?’
‘Yes. Of course.’
‘Lots of people hate their friends doing well.’
‘Not me.’
‘Good for you,’ said June. ‘But you don’t mind all this?’
‘All what?’
June gestured at the men in the room.
‘I don’t suppose any of these chaps have a mother-in-law in Pinner babysitting for them.’
‘I don’t mind that.’
‘Really?’
‘No. None of it. Not the Pinner bit, or the mother-in-law bit, or the babysitting bit. And I’m sorry if I’ve ever given the impression that I do.’
‘I think perhaps I feel guilty.’
‘For what?’
‘I’m worried that life is passing you by.’
‘I’m a writer. Life is supposed to pass me by, while I watch it.’
‘Doesn’t that mean you at least have to be sitting somewhere interesting?’