Funny Girl(99)

‘Were you serious?’

‘I’d have gone through with it.’

‘Why?’

She almost laughed, and stopped herself. Why? It was a fair question. She had, in theory, agreed to spend the rest of her life with someone, and yet she couldn’t immediately remember what had made her think it was a good idea. She was hopeless at taking care of herself. She forgot to eat, for example, and suddenly found herself picking at stale bread or peeling a blackened banana. She wondered whether Clive fulfilled a similar function. He wasn’t stale or beginning to go mouldy. But there must have been something inside her, some dimly recognized need, making her reach for him. She was beginning to wonder whether she was lonely.

‘Can we carry on working together?’ said Clive.

‘I’m not going to let the chaps down,’ she said. ‘I can put up with you until the end of the series. So long as everybody agrees that we don’t need marriage guidance.’

‘That seems fair.’

‘Can I ask you something? What is the “exotic stuff”, and why is it so important?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Nancy said that you needed her for the exotic stuff.’

‘Oh, hell.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Nothing.’

Clive lit another cigarette, puffed on it furiously, played with the engagement ring.

‘All right, I know what it means. But why is it so important to you?’

‘It’s not. Now.’

‘Why was it?’

‘Because …’

She gave him as long as her patience allowed.

‘I thought we were all right,’ she said. ‘I mean, you know.’

‘Yes,’ said Clive quickly. ‘We were.’

‘More than all right. Good.’

‘Yes, good. Lovely.’

‘So I don’t understand.’

‘Do you remember what it used to be like?’

‘We haven’t been at it that long.’

‘No, I mean … here. In this country.’

‘Are we still talking about the same thing?’ said Sophie.

‘Yes.’

‘Well, no, I don’t remember. I didn’t do anything until I came down to London.’

‘I don’t mean you personally.’ Another cigarette, more furious puffing. ‘I mean … Well, here.’

‘In this country.’

‘Exactly!’ he said, relieved to be finally understood.

‘You just said that and I didn’t understand it then.’

‘Oh.’

‘Try again.’

‘Everything hidden away. Everybody scared. Nothing ever mentioned. A woman like Nancy …’

‘They existed, I believe,’ said Sophie darkly.

‘Exactly! But now … you just meet them! It’s amazing! And you can read about it, and you can go to the cinema and see it, and you can probably listen to recordings of it, I don’t know. And I didn’t want to miss out. When my children ask me what I was doing when everyone else was helping themselves to free love, I don’t want to say, you know …’

‘ “I was sleeping with a famous actress,” ’ Sophie offered helpfully.

‘I’ve always slept with actresses,’ he said helplessly.

‘And Nancy is another one.’

‘Yes, but she seemed … modern. The sort of thing all those French tourists come to Carnaby Street for.’

‘They come here to see tarty actresses who are pushing forty and make off-colour jokes? I thought they came because we’re all young and groovy and we’ve got the Beatles.’

‘I knew you wouldn’t understand,’ said Clive sulkily.

Her fear was that she was still Miss Blackpool – that, despite all the things that had happened to her since then, she was stuck back there, somehow, a big fish in a small pond, a beautiful girl surrounded by pudgy dignitaries and dark mackintoshes and elderly people with no teeth. She didn’t want to be like that in bed. She didn’t want to regard herself as a prize, to be given up only grudgingly to hardly anybody. But Clive wasn’t talking about that. He was talking about the times they all suddenly lived in, and how hard it was not to be a small boy in a sweet shop with no cash register. None of that was anything to do with her.