Funny Girl(66)

‘You’re the missus! In that programme! That’s why I know you. My dad’s in love with you! I went round there for my dinner and I wasn’t allowed to speak! They had to watch. They never miss it. What’s it called? I don’t believe this. Mr Magic and the bird my dad loves off the telly! I’m Keith from the Yardbirds. Pleased to meet you.’

He offered his hand to Maurice, who had to put the drinks down on the table to take it. Sophie gave him a little wave.

‘Well,’ said Keith. ‘I don’t watch either of you myself, but God bless the pair of you for keeping the oldsters happy. Anyway.’

‘Anyway’, it turned out, meant ‘goodbye’. Keith walked away.

‘Who are the Yardbirds?’ said Maurice when Keith had gone.

‘They’re a pop group,’ said Sophie, but she had never heard of them. She just wanted to feel that she knew more than Maurice about that sort of thing. Neither of them confessed to discomfort, but they finished their drinks quickly, and went on to a restaurant where it was quiet and they could talk and eat and sit down and not be afraid. It wasn’t as if Sophie felt old – she didn’t. She felt young and alive and successful, full of hope and ambition. But she was an entertainer, and even though she suspected that Maurice Beck was not the right man and this was not the right life for her, she was on his side.

Sophie went out for dinner three more times with Maurice over the next few weeks. After the second dinner date she invited him in for coffee and kissed him, just to see if a kiss made any difference, but long before their lips touched, she was alerted to old-fashioned bad breath, the sort of thing she associated with schooldays and in particular a girl called Janice Stringer, who, legend had it, didn’t own a toothbrush. Sophie didn’t want to be thinking about Janice Stringer when she was kissing someone. The kiss was followed by some unfortunate and undignified wrestling, of the sort that Marjorie had warned her about but that Maurice seemed to think was all part of the fun. She knew then that she’d have to tell him that their relationship had run its course, but she couldn’t do it ten seconds after he’d kissed her, so there would have to be another dinner, another evening spent listening to stories about the Magic Circle and the Bournemouth Winter Gardens, and a difficult conversation afterwards.

Unfortunately, her willingness to see him again after the bad-breath kiss was misinterpreted and he asked her to marry him. He took her to Sheekey’s, because it was the closest place they had to a Site of Romantic and Historical Significance; he made the ring appear in a glass of champagne while the staff applauded. When she didn’t say anything immediately they found jobs to do in one of the other rooms. It was the wrestling, she realized, that had persuaded him to buy a ring. He must have thought that she was fending him off because she was an old-fashioned girl, but it wasn’t that at all. It was simply because she didn’t want to go to bed with him.

‘This has all gone wrong, hasn’t it?’ said Maurice when their table was no longer surrounded by onlookers.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It was a very good trick. And it was romantic, with all the waiters watching.’

‘I can hear a “but” coming …’

‘We don’t really know each other,’ she said.

‘I think you know me,’ he said. ‘But then, I have been on TV longer than you. And also, you’re an actress.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘When you’re on TV, you’re not you. You’re playing a part. But when I’m on TV, I’m me. I’m Maurice.’

This part was true, unfortunately. The private Maurice was very similar to the Maurice that the public knew. He never seemed to go anywhere without make-up, for a start, and that toothy, insincere smile flashed on and off, randomly, like a faulty car headlight.

‘I’m sure there’s a lot more to you than that,’ said Sophie.

‘No,’ he said. ‘There really isn’t. What you see is what you get with me. And I’m not ashamed of that. You could be married to me for a thousand years, and I’d still be the person you see on Sunday Night at the London Palladium.’

Sophie was tempted to thank him for the evenings out by advising him that he should never say that again, to any woman, unless he wanted his date to kill herself for some reason.

‘I’m sure,’ said Sophie.

‘So what you’re saying,’ said Maurice, ‘is … I should just give it time. And we should keep going out. And we must kiss and cuddle a lot.’