Funny Girl(88)

And she brought the house down at the recording. She had the advantage of surprise, of course – nobody had come along expecting to see a three-hander. But the interplay between the characters seemed to give the show and the cast a whole new energy, and the theme attracted a lot of attention in the press. ‘No comedy show has ever attempted to deal with the subject of marital crisis, as far as this critic can recall,’ said The Times. ‘And with the shocking increase in the number of divorces since the turn of the decade, Barbara (and Jim) has become both timely and brave, while retaining its characteristic wit and charm. This is no mean feat.’

Tony found himself hoping that Marguerite was good at her job: the future welfare of his family was depending on her. Unfortunately, Marguerite could have been the best counsellor in the world, but she still wouldn’t have known what to do with Nancy.

Clive was rapidly coming to the conclusion that being engaged to somebody meant that he spent an awful lot of time not doing things he wanted to do. That, as far as he could tell, was the difference between having a fiancée and not having a fiancée. Curiously, he didn’t seem to spend very much time doing things he didn’t want to do. Sophie didn’t want to prepare for their wedding or introduce him to her friends and family. She didn’t have any friends that he didn’t already know and she tried to avoid all members of her family whenever possible. It was the not-doing that he felt restricted by. The silly thing was that if he’d sat down and tried to explain it to Sophie, she would have been sympathetic and practical: she was neither naive nor censorious. She would, however, have pointed out that this indicated a certain unpreparedness for married life, and she may well have suggested that they call off the engagement. Looked at from one angle, he could see this made sense. He enjoyed being engaged to Sophie, though. People seemed to like him more. As a consequence, he was keeping extracurricular activity down to the very bare minimum. To all intents and purposes, he had been entirely monogamous.

Nancy, however, his new colleague, was an entirely different, unambiguous and frequent proposition. He knew he had only himself to blame, but it was more or less entirely her fault: why was she trying so hard to seduce him? Why did she keep making those off-colour jokes in front of him? (Yes, she made them in front of the others too, but he couldn’t help feeling that they were aimed at him.) Why did she constantly make references to deviant sex and her familiarity therewith?

The first time he slept with the woman who was supposed to rescue his fictional marriage to the character played by his actual fiancée, it was to settle a bet with himself: he was convinced that Nancy was all talk, probably frigid, possibly even a virgin. Unfortunately, none of this proved to be the case. There was no talk, Nancy was molten rather than frigid, and if she was a virgin, then there was no sign of the nervousness or modesty that frequently accompanied first nights, in his experience. He had yet to meet a virgin who had asked, loudly and repeatedly, to … Anyway. The long and the short of it was that the sort of temptation Nancy had placed in his way could only be resisted with the sort of fortitude and heroism that he knew he did not possess. Her relentless lewdness, her dependency on alcohol and pills, and her repellent name-dropping were all bad news, of course, and she was possibly mad – once or twice, Clive had found himself wondering whether he could count on her to be as discreet as he needed her to be. But, like all bad news, you could put your hands over your eyes and ignore it easily enough if there was good news on the very next page.





18


Dennis’s heart sank when he saw the middle-aged woman looking imploringly at Sophie outside the stage door, on her own, away from the people waving autograph books. If he was lucky, he was going to get fifteen or twenty minutes alone with Sophie: the cab ride to Ming’s in Bayswater, the only restaurant they’d found in west London that was open on a Sunday night, and then however long it took Bill, Nancy and Clive to finish their drinks in the bar and join them. Sophie didn’t like hanging around after recordings much. She liked it even less now that Nancy was part of the team, with her low-cut dresses and her loud voice and her off-colour jokes that made Clive roar with laughter. For the previous two or three weeks, Dennis had been the one to lead her away.

It wasn’t as if he even knew what to do with the time he got with her. If Barbara (and Jim) lasted for another twenty or thirty series, then perhaps the accumulated professional chit-chat during cab rides and the silent perusals of Chinese restaurant menus might add up to something. Sophie would eventually realize that he’d been constant and patient and sensitive to her quiet post-recording introspection and tell him that she loved him. And by that time the engagement with Clive would surely be over. If he were a betting man, he’d put ten bob on it being ended by Sophie hurling the ring at him before they got as far as the church; a marriage and a divorce would be the safe each-way punt.