Funny Girl(12)

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘Send me to auditions.’

Brian shrugged. They would have to go the long way round.

The next morning, she had to explain to Marjorie that she wouldn’t be going into work with her because a man she’d met in a nightclub was paying her not to.

‘What kind of man?’ said Marjorie. ‘And are there any more where he came from? I know I’m only in Shoes, but you can tell him I really would do anything.’

‘He’s an agent.’

‘Did you see his licence or whatever it is you need to be an agent?’

‘No. But I believe him.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I went to his office today. He had a secretary, and a desk …’

‘People do that all the time.’

‘Do what?’

‘Get secretaries and desks. To con people. I wonder if the desk will still be there if you go back today.’

‘He had filing cabinets.’

‘You can be very naive, Barbara.’

‘But what’s he conning me out of?’

‘I’m not going to spell it out.’

‘You think people get secretaries and desks and filing cabinets so that they can seduce girls? It seems like an awful lot of trouble.’

Marjorie wouldn’t be drawn on that, but Barbara was clearly being invited to reach her own conclusions.

‘Has he given you any money?’

‘Not yet. But he’s promised to.’

‘Have you done anything to earn the money?’

‘No!’

‘Oh dear.’

‘But that’s good, isn’t it?’

‘I wouldn’t have thought so. If he’s giving you money already, God knows what he’s expecting.’

Barbara would have started to feel foolish if Brian hadn’t sent her out to auditions immediately. She didn’t have a phone, so she would begin the day with a pile of threepenny bits and a trip to the phone box on the corner; if he had nothing for her, he’d instruct his secretary to say so straight away so she didn’t put a second coin in the slot.

The first audition was for a farce called In My Lady’s Chamber. It was about … Oh, it didn’t matter what it was about. It was full of young women in their underwear and lustful husbands caught with their trousers down, and their awful, joyless wives. What it was really about was people not having sex when they wanted it. A lot of British comedy was about that, Barbara had noticed. People always got stopped before they’d done it, rather than found out afterwards. It depressed her.

The play was being staged in a theatre club off Charing Cross Road. The producer told Brian that the Lord Chamberlain’s Office might have banned it from a proper theatre.

‘Utter nonsense, of course. The Lord Chamberlain wouldn’t give two hoots. But that’s what they want you to think,’ said Brian.

‘Why do they want you to think that?’

‘You’ve read it,’ he said. ‘It’s desperate stuff. It wouldn’t last two nights in the West End. But this way they can sell a few tickets to mugs who think they’re getting something too saucy for legit.’

‘It’s not at all funny.’

‘It’s not the remotest bit funny,’ said Brian. ‘But it is a comedy. This is what you told me you want to do.’

She was being punished, she could see that. He’d put her up for a handful of terrible jobs, and then she’d be in a swimsuit on a quiz show and he’d be happy.

She read it again the night before the audition. It was even worse than she’d thought, and she wanted to be in it so much she thought she might faint from the hunger.

Her character was called Polly, and she was the one that the central character, the husband with the prim, grim wife, was prevented from making love to, over and over again. She sat down at one of the tables in the dingy little club, and the director, a tired man in his sixties with nicotine-stained silver hair, read in for Barbara’s scenes. She started to deliver her lines – with some confidence, she thought, and a bit of snap.

‘ “We can’t do it here. Not with your wife upstairs.” ’

But he started shaking his head immediately, the moment she’d opened her mouth.

‘Is that actually you, or are you trying something?’

She’d never been in a room with someone as posh as him. Her father would take this meeting alone as evidence that Barbara’s life in London was an astonishing social triumph.