Funny Girl(80)

‘I’d like to write about it for the magazine. “Sophie meets Lucy”.’

‘ “Lucy meets Sophie”, more like.’

‘Oh, she’s got all cocky all of a sudden.’

‘Oh, I didn’t mean that. I thought you had it the cocky way round.’

‘No.’

‘That’s why I changed it, do you see?’

‘Yes. I know you’re not cocky.’

‘Oh, I don’t think I’d better go. You’re making me nervous enough, and you’re just the one telling me about it.’

‘They’re filming outside Buckingham Palace on Monday, apparently.’

‘Oh, hell. I’m not working on Monday.’

‘I know. I remember. That’s why I found out where they’d be then.’

‘She won’t have heard of me.’

‘No. But I’m sure she’ll be very polite. Someone will tell her what a big star you are here.’

‘Do they have to?’

‘If they don’t, she’ll probably wonder why she’s having her picture taken with you.’

‘She’s so beautiful, though.’

‘Sophie, she’s in her mid-fifties. She’s got a lot more to be afraid of than you have.’

Lucy was older than her father? How had that happened? This made her feel even queasier. She was afraid that she would see the Ghost of Sophie Future.

Lucy didn’t look older than her father. She was wearing what appeared to be a Foale and Tuffin dress, a moddy white thing with a big orange 3D letter on the side, and she had the figure and the legs for it, still. She looked old, though, in the way that a ghost looks old. Her make-up was so thick that her face was white and blank, those big eyes lost in the middle of it, the only features capable of expression. That’s where Sophie could see Lucy, in the eyes, but they looked trapped, the eyes of a frightened animal buried in snow. And she was too old to be prancing around outside a sentry box with a bunch of young dancers wearing busbies, while a pop group that Diane said was the Dave Clark Five mimed on a makeshift stage to the side of them. (They cut the scene, in the end. Lucy in London turned out to be terrible, but even a terrible show had no room for the dancing guardsmen in the busbies.)

‘Do you think this was written?’ said Diane.

‘Everything’s written,’ said Sophie.

‘Gosh,’ said Diane. ‘I really do have a chance, don’t I?’

Sophie was staring intently at Lucy.

‘She looks different,’ she whispered.

‘She’s had something done to her face,’ said Diane. She wasn’t whispering, and Sophie shooshed her.

‘What do you mean? Why would anyone do anything to their face?’

‘They have operations,’ said Diane. ‘To make them look younger. Facelifts and so on. I think she’s had her eyes tucked.’

‘Tucked?’

‘They stretch the skin, to get rid of the wrinkles. Can you see? That’s where the make-up is heaviest, around the eyes. She can’t make her faces. Look. It’s so sad. Promise me you’ll never do that.’

Sophie didn’t answer. She understood that one day she’d have to choose, as Lucy had had to choose. You could have all sorts of operations that left you unable to act; or you could let your eyes and your bust and your chin go where they wanted to go. And if you did that, then nobody would give you a show called Lucy in London, or Sophie in Hollywood. She wished Lucy wasn’t making a spectacle of herself outside Buckingham Palace. It was undignified. But was it any more dignified to sit at home waiting for the phone to ring, like Dulcie, who’d appeared in the first-anniversary episode of Barbara (and Jim)? Or to give up entirely, and get fat, and spend the last twenty-five years of your life thinking about the time when you were young and pretty and famous? She wished she didn’t spend so much time worrying about the end of it all, but she couldn’t help it. Being at the top of your career was like being at the top of a Ferris wheel: you knew that you had to keep moving, and you knew which way you were going. You had no choice.





Lucy in London





Lucy and the dancing guardsmen got to the end of their routine, and they took a break, and a young man came over to usher Sophie towards Lucy. Sophie suddenly realized that Lucy was going to look at her, that those eyes would meet hers, and she thought her knees might buckle.