Funny Girl(115)

‘Will he marry you?’

‘Yes, he’ll marry me, but will you forget about that side of things?’

‘What do you want me to say, then?’

‘I don’t know. I thought you’d understand.’

‘Understand what?’

‘Did you want to have me? Or did you panic when you found out?’

‘Panic? Why would I panic? We’d been trying for two years.’

‘Because you couldn’t stick it.’

‘I couldn’t stick him. He was killing me. And then I fell in love with someone. I didn’t have what you’ve got.’

‘What have I got?’

And her mother laughed – not bitterly, but with genuine disbelief.

She hadn’t seen Brian for ages. She hadn’t needed an agent, because her career had been taking care of itself. He was at his desk, leafing through a huge pile of eight by tens, all of them featuring young, pretty, hopeful girls.

‘She’s nice,’ said Sophie, pointing at the photo he had just discarded.

‘I’m a happily married man,’ he said defensively.

‘I know,’ said Sophie. ‘I was just saying. She could make you some money.’

He picked it up again, examined it and wrinkled up his nose.

‘What’s wrong with her?’

‘She looks clever.’

Sophie laughed. It was impossible to be offended by an agent who made no attempt to disguise his self-interest, she found. He didn’t like clever girls because they didn’t want gold paint sprayed all over them. They wanted to act, and acting was a risky business.

‘Talking of clever,’ he said.

‘Meaning what?’

‘How’s your series? Have they finished writing it yet?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’m pregnant.’

‘Ah,’ said Brian. ‘Well, you’ve come to the right place.’

‘Have I?’

‘Can you imagine how many girls have come in here saying that? Nothing to do with me, by the way. Any of them.’

‘You don’t have to tell me,’ said Sophie. ‘You’re a happily married man.’

‘Ask Patsy, if you don’t believe me.’

‘I believe you. Anyway, what do you say to them, when they come in here and tell you they’re up the spout?’

‘I recommend a very nice doctor in Harley Street. He’s not cheap, but he’s safe and he’s very discreet.’

‘Oh,’ said Sophie. ‘No. I’m not going to do that.’

‘Well,’ he said. ‘I’m not a medical man, but I don’t think there’s any other alternative.’

‘Apart from the obvious.’

Brian looked puzzled.

‘It’s not obvious to me,’ he said.

‘Some people, when they’re pregnant, they have a baby,’ she said.

‘Who?’

‘People. Everybody.’

‘Oh, I see what you mean. But I’m presuming we’re not in that category.’

‘I think we might be.’

He put the pictures he was holding down and gave her his full attention.

‘Start again,’ he said. ‘I’m lost.’

‘I’m going to have a baby.’

Telling Brian she was going to have a baby was different, she could now see, from telling him that she was pregnant. The latter was a kind of temporary affliction; the former went some way towards helping him imagine a future in which Sophie was the mother of a small human being.

‘What about the series?’

He wasn’t interested in the father or her marital state, she noted. Together, Brian and her mother would form a whole, rounded person.

‘They’ll wait,’ she said.

‘Do you think?’ said Brian, apparently amused.

‘It’s called Everyone Loves Sophie. I’m Sophie.’

He picked a photograph out of the middle of the pile.

‘What about if they called it Everyone Loves Freda? She’s Freda.’

‘Freda’s a terrible name.’

‘We’ll change it. Everyone Loves Suzy. How does that sound?’

It sounded both frightening and plausible, and for a moment she found herself thinking, Well, he’s won the argument. But then she realized the argument wasn’t real. She wasn’t going to go and see a discreet doctor in Harley Street. She understood that she could: the option was real, even if the argument wasn’t. The doctor could take the baby away, make it vanish, just as Barbara’s baby had vanished. And Tony and Diane need know nothing about it, and she could appear as childless, carefree, girl-about-town Sophie in a series called Everyone Loves Sophie. But how much fun would it be to play the part of a childless, carefree girl-about-town immediately after an abortion? How would she feel, having an abortion so that she could become a carefree, childless fictional character? How much delight would Dennis, the father of the aborted child, take in producing the show? How funny would he find carefree Sophie’s predicaments and pickles?