The Right Man (9 page)

‘What
do you want me to do with his cricket things?’ I asked. ‘Shall I give them
away?’

‘Oh, you
keep all that, Guy, you’re a boy.’

‘I don’t
play cricket, Mum.’

‘Oh,
don’t you? Was that Tony? Give it to Tony then.’

‘I’ll
hang on to them for him. If I make a list of everything I find, then you can
tell me if there’s anything you want.’

‘Oh,
you’re just like your father, making lists. I don’t even want to come in here.’

‘That’s
what I’m saying. You can just tell me, and I’ll deal with it.’ I was trying to
make things easier for her.

‘Just
leave me a pair of his socks.’

She
left the room. I was thankful my father hadn’t left a video message or anything
embarrassing like that. Definitely not his style. A pair of socks would be easy
and couldn’t give one any Californian-type messages of advice from the grave.
After putting various insurance policies and bank letters into my bag to be
photocopied, I closed up and went to the kitchen to pour away my cup of tea and
go. I opened and closed the fridge door. I always do this in my parents’ kitchen,
it’s a sort of reflex action. I was unaware of even looking at the contents. Some
vestige of childhood insecurity.

‘All
these years I’ve been having penetrative sex, or rather not having it because
of your father, and now they tell me that I’ve been wrong all along and I
should have been having clitoral stimulation,’ said my mother. She was sitting
at the kitchen table looking through out-of-date colour supplements. My mum
comes from that generation of women who never expected to find the right man,
but rather to spend a life comfortably complaining about being stuck with a
barely adequate one. As if her successes and shortcomings were his
responsibility alone.

‘Who
told you, Mum?’ I asked.

‘That
nice man with the silvery hair and the creases down his trousers.’

‘You’ve
been watching too much daytime TV, Mum.’

The
Saturday papers were on the sideboard, unread.

‘Anyway,
your father wouldn’t have been able to find my clitoris if it’d been the size
of a tennis ball, you know what his sight was like.’ She sighed and poured
herself more tea. ‘There’s something about one of yours in the papers today if
you’re interested.’ She indicated the sideboard.

‘Mrs
Planter’s Revenge!’ A fairly obvious shout line, which can’t have exercised the
wit of the copywriters over—much. A picture of Jeremy in an open-neck shirt
with a frocked-up tartlet under his arm on the front page, half a paragraph,
and then: ‘Full story on pages 4 and 5.’ I resisted the temptation to feel
intoxicated by the quantity of coverage. A double-page spread. Inside, a
picture of Jeremy and Susan in happier days taken at some première do, two or
three pictures of pretty girls who might once have been fondled by Jeremy, and
a picture of Susan in dark glasses earlier in the week, leaving her front door
with Dave and Polly in tow. Across page 5 was a recently posed reclining photo
of an ageing bimbette in corsetry, and an interview with her. They’d dragged up
Selina Barkworth —Jeremy’s four-year-old affair — and bunged her a few quid to
say how Jeremy had been in bed. I scanned the piece. Evidently he’d been a
five-times-a-night animal who was also tender, kind, gentle and, inaccurately,
for those who know him, generous. They’d also done a backsearch on the computer
for embarrassing Planter quotes and found a couple of corkers: ‘My family means
more to me than anything’ being one from 1993, and ‘Susan is not only my wife,
she’s also my best friend’ the other, more recent, from a
TV Quick Guide
interview.

From a
glance through the main copy, it was clear that Susan must have talked to them.
Most out of character, and possibly foolish. There are no winners when it comes
to the press, or lawyers. She of all people should know that, being a solicitor
herself Poor woman, she was losing it.

It was
turning into one of those weekends where everything seems to be conspiring
against one, and try as I might, I couldn’t do what Barbara Stenner, my
dearest, oldest client would have advised, and see it all as a spiritual
manifestation, a karmic gift on my path to enlightenment. I felt bad about
Jeremy and Susan’s son Dave. I know being a godfather doesn’t mean all that
much these days, but what was the point of having one if he couldn’t keep the
rats and repo-men away from the door?

‘What do you do?’ A woman
was crammed up against me with a paper plate piled with bits of raw cauliflower
and guacamole.

‘Well,
actually, I’m an agent, sorry. Muffin and Ketts.’

‘Oh,
God. I hate my agent. I joined her six months ago and she hasn’t done anything
for me. Nothing. I mean, six months! I haven’t been up for anything! I think
they have such an easy life they don’t bother with you unless you’re known or
in a soap or something.’ Actresses are not renowned for their sensitivity and
tact.

‘Well,
the whole business is slow at the moment, it’s very hard …’ I was standing in
the kitchen near the only decent bottle of wine.

‘That’s
exactly what my last agent used to say. He was completely useless too…’ Maybe
she thought that this badinage would endear me to her enough to offer her
something.

God, I
hate going to parties in Islington. I always seem to be the only male not
wearing an Afghan hat. In the pubs and on the streets everyone looks at you in
that judgemental way peculiar to N1. One wrong item of clothing, one chance
remark, and you are branded on the politically correct blacklist. And of course
if you drive as opposed to cycle, you must be very careful not to incur the
Islington sneer. Your car should not be, as mine is, a Vauxhall Cavalier, or a
Sierra or suchlike, which is low on petrol and runs OK, but looks, well, salesmanny,
Milton Keynesy, eighties-ish. Classic Saabs which belch black fumes on to the
run-down Georgian house fronts are OK, of course. Everything must look
run-down, in fact, while costing more to maintain than it does in, say, Wandsworth
or Tooting. I say our car was OK, but to compound the awfulness of the weekend,
it was at the mender’s with an ironic wiring fault. Yes, I should have fixed it
myself like a proper hubby, but it had gone wonky in the week when in Liz’s
care, so I hadn’t interfered.

‘Have
you tried writing off for work yourself?’ I tried to continue a
non-inflammatory dialogue with the cauliflower scoffing actress.

‘That’s
what a bloody agent is for, isn’t it?’ she said.

At
Mullin and Ketts we get, I’d say, thirty to forty letters a week from actors
who want to change their agents, who don’t think their current one is ‘right
for them’. I prefer clients who talk to me if they’re unhappy, rather than
whinge behind my back at parties and then secretly write to someone else
imagining glorious new scenarios. If you don’t know something’s wrong, how can
you go about fixing it? Actually, Liz left her previous boyfriend, Andrew, to
be with me. Another sign I failed to read. It’s worth remembering that if they
can do it
for
you, then they can do it
to
you, whoever said that.
Actually, I think it was my father who said that. In which case, I take it
back.

I asked
why this actress had left her previous agent, more out of personal vacuity than
out of any genuine interest.

‘I
mean, when I was at the British Shakespeare Company I found out that I was on
less than what the younger men actors were on, I couldn’t believe it. I mean,
it was so totally sexist. And my fucking agent didn’t seem to give a fuck. He
just told me they were all playing much bigger parts than me. I mean, as if the
number of lines was what it was all about. Soooo fucking petty.’

Being
in the British Shakespeare Company, as a woman, and probably one of the only
two or three in the minor touring company, and not a leading woman at that, not
even the second leading woman, she probably didn’t have very much to say, or
do, in the actual plays. It was Shakespeare on a shoestring after all. No doubt
she made herself Equity dep.

‘I
mean, there I was getting less than some boy just out of drama school, and I
came out of drama school ten years ago.

And it
shows, I thought. Liz’s friends. Best to keep quiet.

‘Yes,
it’s just luck not talent,’ said Liz, joining us.

Well, it’s
luck
and
talent, I thought, and an ambitious killer instinct, and above
all an ability to get on with people one way or another, something this woman
with the cauliflower obviously needed extra tuition in.

‘Anyway,
it got sorted out in the end, but it’s disgusting, women get treated so badly
in the theatre.’

Agreed.
Agreed. We pride ourselves at Muffin and Ketts that we negotiate very hard for
parity between the sexes. It’s true, women are often still paid less than men,
even in this business, and we adopted a sort of ‘favoured nations’ policy early
on, which helped us gain a reputation as a new up-and-coming agency. But it’s
not just that. I actually believe in equality, although of course I wouldn’t
say that in so many words for fear of inviting a visit from Dorothy Derision.
In theory, if we had equal wages across the board, then I’d be allowed
presumably to have some time off to spend with Grace, or with Liz even, were she
interested. In practice, it doesn’t seem to work like that — I did try to bring
Grace into work a couple of times when she was smaller, but people start to
lose faith in your business, acumen with puke all down your lapel.

‘Yes,
but don’t you think that if you want to have equal pay, which I agree with you
is essential,’ a male voice here, ‘women should be accepting equal
responsibility? It’s fine to want to share some power or even have it all, but
with that power goes responsibility … I mean, men are still legally expected
to support families.

I let
Liz and the cauliflower woman continue their
Late Show-
type discussion
with whoever the poor misguided bloke was. Josh Baines I think, the fringe director.
A man with alimony and several children to support, no doubt.

Bringing
Grace to work really made it hard for Naomi Ketts. I mean, she’s forty-three
this year and after fifteen years in the biz and a string of crappy
relationships with unsuitable men, she must feel cheated. She desperately wants
a baby herself, I know —well, we all know, it’s pretty bloody obvious — and it’s
hard enough for her, seeing the picture of Grace on my desk. Knowing Naomi Ketts
as I do, though, I suspect she would have liked the baby, but not the life-long
commitment to the adult it would turn into. Mustn’t bitch, though, I think she
dealt with her envy of Liz very well, considering. She’s only ever once openly
expressed it.

It was
when Liz was going through the old post-natal depression. The dreaded and
denied PND. No one, especially me, was allowed to mention it, let alone suggest
she go for some kind of help. It was pretty self-evident however. She would
ring the office, sometimes three or four times a day, on my direct line. There
would be a couple of seconds’ silence and then a scratchy crocodile of a voice
would whisper, ‘I — can’t — cope —Guy. I — can’t — cope.’ Sometimes Grace would
be crying her head off in the background and Liz would scream at her, ‘Jeeeeeeeesus
Christ. Shut up. Shut uuuuuuup!’ Which of course made Grace redouble her
efforts. These were difficult calls to handle, finding a tone that was both
genuine and soothing for Liz and yet, at the same time, nonchalant and cheery
so that the women in the office would think I was neither some kind of
wife-beater nor a hen-pecked patsy.

It was
during one of these calls, when Grace must have been about six months old, that
Naomi Ketts lost it. A coffee cup hit the wall, some ten-by-eights were flung
across the floor and Naomi was heard to say something like ‘That fucking lazy
bitch. Why doesn’t she try working for a living!’ before storming out of the
office into Old Compton Street for a cool-down, cappuccino and maybe a Danish
or two. I sympathized with her sentiment but it’s not true to say that Liz
doesn’t work at all. Giving birth and bringing up a baby are hard work, and she
does do the occasional fringe show.

One
thing I knew tonight, however, was not to enter into this kind of conversation
under any circumstances, least of all when out as a couple. Any moment now
someone would say, ‘Have you read
Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus?’
and
then we’d be on to the whole subject of the differences between men and women.
Are there any? Are they fair? Does this mean we can all start shagging again?

‘Have
you read
Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus?’
said Josh Baines,
walking into it with hobnail boots.

It’s
difficult for an agent to be married to an actress. Particularly one who is not
so often in work. Out-of-work actors and actresses have on the whole, amongst
themselves, one main subject of conversation, and it is us, the agents, and how
awful, crap, money-grabbing and lazy we are. How we do not do enough for them.
They do talk a bit about plays and films, and how certain other actors are ‘not
right for the part’ or simply ‘can’t do it’, but this soon leads them back to
how on earth these lucky actors were given the part in the first place, and
from there to talking about agents, and how crap, money-grabbing and lazy we
are.