Funny Girl(62)

‘I’m sparing you,’ she said.

‘I don’t want to be spared. I belong in a different category to Dennis and Brian and whoever else is knocking around.’

‘Why do you?’

‘Because I’m your on-screen husband, and your off-screen …’

‘What? You can’t finish that sentence in a way they’d understand.’

‘I’m going to buy you all dinner. Saturday night. I can’t just shake hands after the recording and then disappear.’

‘Well, don’t. Stay around for a drink.’

‘They feel like my in-laws.’

She knew he meant it. He would drive her mad. Sometimes they slept together and sometimes they didn’t, and she never knew where she stood, and she found herself getting jealous even though she knew that jealousy was utterly pointless, and in any case belonged to the kind of relationship she didn’t want with him.

‘They’ll get the wrong end of the stick.’

‘So let them. Where’s the harm? A stick is a stick. Doesn’t matter which end they pick up.’

‘I’d never hear the last of it.’

‘I can’t be a friend?’

‘They don’t understand friends. Not on a Saturday night. They understand husbands and wives and courting couples and that’s it.’

‘I’ll book at Sheekey’s. They’ll like it there.’

‘You know them so well.’

He was right. They loved Sheekey’s, not least because it closed at 8.30 and he had guessed, correctly, that they preferred to have their tea at six o’clock. If Sophie had been paying, they’d have walked out when they saw the prices on the menu, but they just kept asking Clive if he was sure, and telling him that he was very kind.

‘Are you courting, Clive?’ Marie asked him more or less as soon as they’d sat down.

‘Still window-shopping,’ said Clive.

‘You’re young yet,’ said Marie.

‘Our Barbara is still available,’ said George.

‘Sophie,’ said Sophie. ‘And I’m not “available”.’

‘Are you not?’ said George.

‘Tell us all,’ said Clive.

‘I mean, I want to get on in my career before I start thinking about all that.’

‘Clive can wait, can’t you, Clive?’ said George.

‘Of course I can,’ said Clive.

‘And it wouldn’t stop you courting anyway, would it?’

‘Of course it wouldn’t. Courting doesn’t get in the way of anything.’

‘There we are, then,’ said George.

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Sophie.

‘What have we said now?’ said George, and rolled his eyes at Clive to indicate that there was always something.

‘Can we change the subject?’ said Sophie. ‘How’s work, Dad?’

But they hadn’t come all the way to London to talk about Blackpool. They wanted to know about the programme, and other television and film stars Clive and Sophie had worked with, and whether they had ever met the Beatles. (Clive had just missed Paul at a party, he told them, an anecdote greeted with much head-shaking and marvelling.) And then the magician and comedian Maurice ‘Mr Magic’ Beck sat down on the next table, on his own, and Clive’s near-miss was forgotten.

‘Good grief,’ said George. ‘Is that who I think it is?’

If this remark was intended for anyone, it was for Mr Magic, who smiled, and then did a big stagy double take when he saw Sophie and Clive.

‘Good grief,’ he said. ‘Is that who I think it is?’

Sophie’s father roared with laughter and delight, and Sophie remembered how embarrassing he’d been when he realized that the local paper had sent their top photographer to take her picture.

A few moments later, the waiters were rearranging the tables so that the five of them could sit together, and a few moments after that, Mr Magic began the Mr Magic show. He was in the middle of last-minute rehearsals for a variety performance at the Palladium, so he gave them a preview of some of the smaller-scale, table-friendly bits of business while they ate. (Plaice and chips for George, smoked haddock with a poached egg for Marie.) He told jokes while making things disappear, watches and spoons and napkins, and Sophie was worried that her father was going to have another heart attack, such was the volume of his laughter and the intensity of his amazement.