Dennis told Sophie, Tony and Diane that he wanted to do things differently this time. Comedy Playhouse was still on the BBC, still showing half-hour comedies that were all desperate to become grown-up series, but he explained that, in his view, they could afford to be more ambitious. Sophie was a known quantity, a much-loved TV star, and he didn’t want her grubbing around for a commission like the rest of them. He paid for twelve scripts, and when everyone was happy with them, he was going to dump them on Tom Sloan’s desk, the whole lot of them. And if Sloan didn’t want them, he’d have to go through them page by page and explain what was wrong with them. He was aware that there was a different version of the future, one in which Tom turned them all down without really reading them and Dennis apologized for wasting his time, but at least Dennis’s fantasy indicated the strength of his determination and enthusiasm.
He was aware that the path he had chosen was the longest and least direct available to him, but there was method in his procrastination. He had chosen that path because he could meander along it with Sophie. There would be endless excuses for coffee, lunch, maybe even dinner. The Comedy Playhouse route offered intensive contact time over the course of a week, and was therefore not without its attractions; but if there was no further interest, he would run the risk of Sophie embarking on a professional life that didn’t involve him, and he wasn’t sure he could bear that. Slow and steady, he told Tony and Diane, wins the race. He didn’t convey the same message to Sophie. He felt that he had enough self-promotional problems as it was, without introducing the notion of tortoises.
The weeks of waiting for Tony and Diane passed slowly. Dennis was producing two other comedy programmes for the BBC, neither of which was making him happy. Heirs and Graces was about an impoverished aristocratic couple who had lost their stately home and were now attempting to run a seaside boarding house. Dennis Price and Phyllis Calvert had already turned the script down, with great firmness and speed, and now Dennis was avoiding telephone calls from the writer, who thought that Laurence Olivier would be ideal for the role of Lord Alfred. He could hardly bear to think about Slings and Marrows, a Comedy Playhouse episode about the ruthless behind-the-scenes politics of a village fete. There were people at the BBC who thought that Slings and Marrows had enormous potential, but Dennis had already decided that if it went to series he would retire to Norfolk and grow prize-winning vegetables. Work was going nowhere, and he was worried that Sophie was beginning to look at other scripts, other producers, other potential husbands. And then, just as he was beginning to wonder whether he should plod off towards one of his mother’s stout bluestockings, there were three significant advances.
The first was an invitation to the theatre: Sophie had been given tickets to the first night of the musical Hair at the Shaftesbury and she needed someone to go with.
‘When is it?’ said Dennis.
It didn’t matter when it was, because even if he was busy, which he wasn’t, he would have cancelled. But as Sophie had telephoned him, she couldn’t see that he hadn’t even bothered looking for his empty diary.
‘Tonight,’ said Sophie.
‘Ah,’ said Dennis. ‘You’ve been let down.’
If tortoises could speak, they’d have sounded like him, he thought, mournful and elderly.
‘No,’ said Sophie. ‘I knew you’d say that.’
Dennis winced. His tortoise tendencies had been noted already.
‘I’ve just been offered them,’ said Sophie. ‘This second. You were the first person I called. They didn’t even know the show was opening until that business yesterday.’
‘What business?’
‘I thought if I said “that business”, you’d know, and I wouldn’t have to say any more. I don’t really know what business.’
Luckily Dennis remembered what the business was: the Theatres Act, passed the previous day. The people of Britain were now allowed to see nipples and pubic hair in a West End theatre, if that was what they wanted to do.
‘I knew you’d know,’ said Sophie. ‘That’s why I love you.’
This was the second significant advance, coming so swiftly after the first that there was nearly a collision. It was some time before Dennis could bring himself to speak again. He knew that it had not been intended as a serious declaration, and she had only said it because he had ploddingly retrieved a fragment of knowledge about government legislation from the dusty recesses of his fusty Cambridge brain. But if he had recorded the telephone call and edited the tape carefully, he could listen to Sophie Straw telling him that she loved him all day.
‘Ha ha!’ he said eventually, but the laughter seemed merely to confuse her, so he moved on. ‘In for a penny, in for a pound,’ he said. The expression was as inappropriate as the laugh, seeing as there was nothing in the conversation to date that could be given either of those metaphorical values.
‘There’s nudity,’ said Sophie.
‘Yes,’ said Dennis.
‘Are we happy with nudity?’ said Sophie.
Had one of his scriptwriters tried to fob him off with something containing that line, he would have had the culprit escorted from the premises and shot. Now he could see that it wasn’t just a cheap gag. On the contrary, it was priceless, and contained considerable subtlety, charm and truth. A beautiful woman combining the prospect of happiness and nakedness in the same spoken sentence could achieve the power of the greatest lyric poetry.