Funny Girl(34)

‘Oh, well, that’s all right, then,’ said Clive.

‘They told me not to tell you. But I thought I should.’

‘When was I supposed to find out?’

‘When you saw it in the Radio Times. You don’t mind, do you?’

‘Of course I bloody well mind.’

‘It’s sixteen episodes.’

‘That makes it worse, not better.’

Clive had never heard of a new series getting an order for sixteen episodes. It was usually six, sometimes twelve, but never sixteen. They loved Sophie, and they thought everyone in the country was going to love Sophie. And that’s why there were brackets around his character’s name.

‘Tell them to shove their bloody brackets.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘You know the brackets around Jim’s name? I don’t want them there.’

‘Oh, Gawd,’ said Monty. ‘I’m all right with money. I don’t mind arguing with them about that. But I’ve got no experience with punctuation.’

‘Sort it out, there’s a good chap.’

The following day, Monty told Clive that the money had gone up but the brackets were staying put.

‘Well, tell them thanks but no thanks, then.’

‘Are you serious, old chap? You’re a semi-employed actor who’s just been offered sixteen half-hours of television. It’ll turn you into a household name.’

‘It’ll turn her into a household name. Won’t do much for me. I’ll spend the rest of my life saying, I was “and Jim”. In Barbara (and Jim). Hold on … What’s the episode of Comedy Playhouse called?’

‘Barbara (and Jim).’

‘What happened to Wedded Bliss?’

‘You’re not married now. It made no sense.’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake. The bastards. They’re broadcasting it under that name without asking me?’

Monty chuckled.

‘They put one over on you, I’m afraid.’

‘Right. That’s it. I’m not doing it. Find me some work, Monty.’

The day after that, Monty left a message to say that they’d offered the part of Jim to Clive’s old nemesis Laurence Harris. Clive knew Laurence Harris wouldn’t take it, not with the brackets. Unless the brackets were magically vanished, for someone like Harris. Of course, that’s what would happen. ‘Oh, well, if Laurence Harris is interested …’

Damn and blast them all to hell.

As luck would have it, he had arranged to visit his parents in Eastleigh that weekend. It was never an enjoyable occasion, Sunday lunch with his parents, for two reasons. The first was his job. It wasn’t so much that they disapproved of his choice of profession. His father was a dentist, but his wasn’t the traditional middle-class strait-laced disapproval of bohemianism; Clive had tried that one and got nowhere. If Clive had been able to earn a decent living, his father wouldn’t have given two hoots about what he got up to, what he wore, what he drank or who he slept with. ‘You’re just no bloody good at it,’ he said, loudly and often.

The second thing that made his visits home so miserable was the permanent and inexplicable presence of Clive’s ex-fiancée, Cathy. They had got engaged when he was eighteen, after his first term at LAMDA, for reasons that Clive could no longer recall, but which almost certainly had something to do with sex. He had broken it off soon after, presumably once he had got what he wanted, but it didn’t seem to have made much difference to her position in the family. As far as Clive could make out, she went to the parental home every Sunday. Cathy had somehow become a daughter-in-law while remaining unmarried. She was a sweet, dull girl, and Clive feared that he would be eating Sunday lunch with his mother’s daughter-in-law once a month for the rest of his life.

He had made the mistake of telling his parents that he was to appear in an episode of Comedy Playhouse, and that this would almost certainly lead to a job in a series. His father asked him about it almost as soon as the fatty lamb and the wet cabbage appeared on the table.

‘How did that BBC thing turn out?’

‘Oh, that. Not as well as I’d hoped.’

Cathy and his mother made sympathetic faces. His father chortled.

‘I knew it,’ he said. ‘What happened?’

Clive briefly entertained the notion of telling his father the truth: that he’d turned down the chance to star in a television programme because he didn’t like the way the title was going to be punctuated.