The Right Man (6 page)

Not
shaving can look pretty good on actors, and execs can turn up to high-powered do’s
with a few days’ growth these days. Even heads of departments at major
broadcasting houses sport a just-got-out-of-bed look. It’s a way of showing
that you are one of those people who still care about content of programmes,
that you have definitely not turned into an accountant. But there’s not
shaving, and there’s Not Shaving, the latter having something to do with not
washing either. As he shambled into the downstairs dining room at the Soho
House, half an hour late, Neil might as well have had ‘I have let myself go to
pieces’ emblazoned on his T-shirt. Maybe he felt that now he was a bona fide
commissioned novelist it meant that he didn’t have to change his underpants or
say hello to people properly any more. As he lurched towards the beautifully linened
table where Marc and I were chatting about babies, a young waiter with a music
journalist’s haircut asked him if they were making any more of
Every Other
Weekend.
Neil brushed past him without even an acknowledgement. Not good to
do that to Josephine Public, not good at all. Bad for Betty Business. I clocked
Marc sneaking a side glance at his watch, so I cut the pre-chat chat and
suggested we order. Neil looked at the menu as if it were a breakdown of
ex-Tory MPs’ private earnings and sneered at me for ordering Gravadlax and a
rocket salad. While we waited for the wine, he finished all the breadsticks and
lit a Marlboro. And before I make it sound as if he was cutting an artistic or
even romantic figure, let me add that he had also ‘put on at least two stone.
Oh, Lord.

I
decided to accept a glass of wine although I had no intention of taking more
than the merest sip of it. Marc, being in publishing, was happy to drink at
lunchtime, and Neil joined him. After a few words of positive encouragement
about the original quality of Neil’s writing, his unique turn of phrase and Marc’s
continuing interest in the basic idea, Marc came gently on to the matters in
hand. He wanted to establish an understanding over certain aspects of the
so-called story, questioned Neil’s proposed title,
The Right Man,
and
then — as I was dreading — asked quite firmly about possible delivery dates.
This seemed to make Neil’s pulse rate increase. The Soho House had run out of their
own brand of mineral water so I was gulping down the fizzy, which I never like.

To tell
the truth, I had been surprised that Marc Linsey had accepted the initial, and
I thought rather flimsy outline, but I had, possibly wrongly, kept my
misgivings to myself The ‘right man’ of Neil’s story was a stalker, a prowler
who sneaks around the same woman’s house for years so that he knows every
creaking floorboard, what time of the month it is for her, what she is wearing
that day, which garments need mending. But he never makes himself known, this
man, and he never does anything nasty other than the snooping. So despite the
lack of gratuitous or even comical violence this thing was hardly going to be a
zappy comedy. Marc pointed out gently that this idea did not afford Neil the
opportunity of writing any dialogue, or indeed any action. Neil looked
exasperated and assured us that it was based on a real case he’d heard of,
although there’s no reason why that should have made it good fiction, let alone
funny. I’ve been in many script meetings where the producers complain that a
scene doesn’t work, to be told by the writers, ‘But it actually happened.’
Nobody cares whether it actually happened or not. Actually happening is not an
excuse for putting it on telly, or in a script or, in this case, a book. So
with Neil’s outline, rip-roaring and roller-coasting were not descriptions
which sprang immediately to mind. However, we’d got this far into the water,
so we had to swim or choke.

Neil
was talking rather a lot now roused, and Marc sat quietly listening, with that
little curly smile people have when they are the ones who can pull the plug on
you. Evidently, Neil’s ‘right man’ was also going to be like the elves in the
night — you know, the ones who help the shoemaker to meet his deadlines by
nocturnally doing all his mending. He was going to secretly fix this woman’s
fridge for her, or darn her clothes, or help get her children off drugs, I don’t
know. Neil’s point being, if I understood it correctly, which is unlikely, that
no matter how much a man may think he is trying to help a woman, in the end he
is only interested in power over her. Possibly a valid one, but it didn’t
inspire one to think of Neil’s name embossed in silver on paperbacks in airport
bookshops. Marc Linsey’s attention was evaporating.

Neil
was in need of some good-luck elves himself, but none had been forthcoming. His
first deadline had come and gone without really a murmur from this affable and
lunch-providing editor. People are always late, we said. Ben Elton is probably
late, we said. Probably even Martin Amis is late. When, last September, Neil
had delivered a few thousand words only, of unpublishable masturbatory
fantasies without a gag in sight, slight alarm bells began to sound. I
intercepted, and that draft, if you can call it that, had never appeared on
Marc Linsey’s desk. Thankfully, Neil had accepted my position.

I had
tried, but not over-hard, to distract him by finding him work elsewhere, but he
seemed to have become obsessed with the thing. He’d stopped ringing in for
work. Always a bad sign. I tried to move the conversation on to the hopefully
less contentious subject of the proposed title.

‘You
don’t understand,’ said Neil between gulps of Chardonnay. ‘It’s got nothing to
do with looking for Mr Right or singles bars or anything like that.’ Oh. Pity,
I thought. ‘It’s a psychological term and it’s sometimes used in the profiling
of serial killers. A right man is someone who has to be right whatever happens.
Like Peter Sutcliffe thinking he was a saint saving all those women he banged
over the head with a hammer.’ The wine was making him garrulous, or maybe he’d
had a couple of drinks already before coming into town. Either way, the lunch
was definitely not going the way I would have liked.

‘Maybe
you should just call it
Right Man?’
I offered, with my helpful
raised-eyebrow look. ‘Too many books have a “the” in the title. Too many first
books by TV comedians.
The Liar, The Gun Seller, The Gobbler, The Tosser
…’
I ran out.

‘So
this guy is a serial killer, right? I mean, he’s a serial killer, is he? That’s
right?’ said Marc, looking marginally more interested.

‘No, he’s
not,’ said Neil, becoming a tad aggressive now. ‘No, no, no, no, no. It’s like
a complex, you know? A right-man complex. It’s about a man who can’t see that
he is damaged, so he thinks the world must be. It’s sometimes called the Roman
Emperor Syndrome.’

‘That’s
quite a good title,’ said Marc.

‘Or
just
Roman Emperor Syndrome,’
I said, trying to make sense of my own
logic. ‘I mean, it’s not
The
Crime
and the Punishment,
is it? It’s
not
The Pride and the Prejudice.’

Neil
was not touching his pasta, but had poured himself another glass. The
conversation had veered a long way from where I wanted it to go.

‘So
where does fixing this woman’s fridge fit in?’ asked Marc with barbed
innocence.

‘I’m
trying to show that when a man thinks he’s caring for a woman, he is in fact
patronizing and manipulating her. That there’s not much difference between
chivalry and violent abuse,’ said Neil, whazooming straight over Marc Linsey’s
beautifully coiffed head, and mine too, if I’m an honest bunny.

Neil’s
cheeks were burning and his heart rate was creeping up past the safety zone. ‘Neil,’
I wanted to say, ‘you are not Oliver Sachs. You are, or were, a reasonably
successful television comedy actor. All this talk of violent abuse does not sit
well, and what’s more, you’re confusing the man with the chequebook.’ As my
brother Tony would say, if you’re in a hole, stop digging.

‘So
there’s no murders but he fixes the fridge of this woman he’s never met?’ said
Marc, who was more used to editing books about homoeopathy for pets or cellulite
in the Royal Family.

‘Fuck
you,’ said Neil, ‘fuck you.’ He was breathing heavily and was obviously nursing
some deep creative angst which he was incapable of sharing or even
communicating to us. And then — worst scenario — he was up and walking. He was
walking and finishing his glass of wine as he went. He was leaving the dining
room. Agent’s nightmare. People you want to bring together fall apart. A chasm
opens, money falls down it, but worse than that, feelings are hurt, pride is
bristled, niceness is deflowered, deals crumble, pillars tumble. A crashing,
creaking, awful sound.

‘Neil,’
I called, ‘it’s OK.’ But it wasn’t.

I had a
brief few words with Marc, who said he understood, although I doubted that,
bunged some cash on the table for the bill, and hurried out into Soho after
Neil, who had sloped into the Coach and Horses pub opposite. I bought him a
drink.

‘I’m
sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I fucked up your deal. But they want me to turn out some
sexist crap like Jeffrey Archer. I should’ve just done some Christmas joke book
off the telly like Harry Enfield.’

‘No, it’s
my fault,’ I said, trying to enjoy a half of lager. ‘Maybe you’re right, Marc
isn’t the right editor for you. He’s just into quick, easy bucks, I know. I
shouldn’t have got you into this in the first place. Look, go home, think about
it. I’m sure something will occur if you give yourself time.’ Trouble is, some
people — and I’m not necessarily saying Neil is one of them — are afraid of
success.

A
second-grade-venue tour of an Alan Ayckbourn play had come into the office that
morning and I wanted to get back on the phone to see if there might be
something in it for Neil. Get him away from all this, back on the boards,
clearing his head, earning some dosh. Maybe things weren’t going so well for
him at home in West Hampstead where he lived with his therapist partner, an
older woman, American. He looked as if he needed some sex. I didn’t want to see
one of my favourite clients suffering from spiritual anxiety, or doing a Dennis
Potter on me. Oh dear. ‘Twas ever thus.

‘Look at that,’ said the
taxi driver, momentarily drawing my attention away from Jeremy Planter’s
photocopied contracts. ‘I don’t know why they bother. We’re all gonna die
anyway.’ I glanced at the traffic but had missed whatever piece of road
manoeuvring had prompted his doomy remark. I decided to agree with him
nevertheless, since he was undoubtedly right, philosophically speaking.

The
earlier contracts were mostly buy-outs. Royalties and repeat fees are sadly,
more often than not, things of the early seventies. Since deregulation and the
mushrooming of the Independent sector, even things like video sales and
spin-offs are usually covered by an upfront fee. Gone are the days of artists
and writers retaining rights over their work in perpetuity. The market has been
so swamped by poor-quality cable and satellite product that broadcasters just
cannot afford any more to encumber the sell-on potential of their properties
with obligations to the originators of the material. However, the later three
contracts were full of juicier stuff. As an artist grows in stature and pulling
power, one can negotiate better terms, committing the hirer to increasing cash
releases, shortening decision times on second and third series options,
lessening the number of showings available, that sort of thing. Though I say so
myself, Planter’s last three contracts were minor masterpieces, studded with
sparkling caveats and buyback clauses. I had even managed to achieve a
twenty-eight-day option renewal on
Planter’s Revenge,
which meant that
the powers-that-struggle-to-be would have only a month from’ next Saturday,
when the first episode of the new series went out, to make up their minds about
whether to recommission. I wondered how fast a worker this Bella/Samantha/Chrissie
woman would turn out to be.

The
taxi driver slammed on his brakes suddenly, sending the sixteen pages of the
Planter’s
Revenge
contract spluttering to the floor.

‘Wanker!’
shouted the cabbie out of the window, and then, over his shoulder to me, ‘Why
not just drive straight to the crematorium, eh?’

‘Quite,’
I said, picking up the contract and putting it in order. I should have taken
the time to staple it.

‘Look
at them all, hurry hurry hurry. Wankers,’ he said, and I wondered if he was in
the right job. Grave-digging perhaps might have suited him better, or
lighthouse keeping. Grumpy old tart.

Bloody Jeremy Planter,
such a ladies’ man, such a chap’s chap. There was a time when I would have
found it amusing to be out with Jerry. To chat up the hopefuls in the VIP
lounge of some joint like the Limelight or Browns while he was snorting coke in
the toilets or getting off with some young floozie. Vicariously, I could
experience the dubious joys of the debauched life, and yet return home
suffering nothing worse than an alcohol and Silk Cut hangover, conscience
clear. This was in the days when Liz still asked me where I had been. Always
the straight guy of the double act, the Ernie Wise. Never the one who got laid,
but somehow maybe the one for whom it was all being performed. Maybe Jeremy was
latently homosexual, maybe he fancied me underneath the braggadocio. Maybe his
appetite was purely a show with an audience of one: me. If that was the case
then I had played into it. I had laughed at his antics, who wouldn’t? They were
funny after all. No, not just funny, absolutely hilarious. He was the best,
after all. He was the king fish. Of a small and insignificant pond, it has to
be said, in the wider picture of things, but the king nevertheless. More
outrageous than Barrymore. Slicker than Jonathan Ross, sexier when on form
than, oh, I don’t know, Billy Connolly, Albert Finney, Chris Evans, whoever you
find sexy. More modest than … well, no, actually, that was a joke, not modest
at all. Jerry had always been exciting to be with. The line between work and
pleasure was non-existent with him. Needless to say, normal hard-working women
hated him. They knew what he was up to. But he seemed to hold an endless
fascination for that certain celebrity-notching type of woman, and, strangely
enough, for us blokes. It was as if he could live out our most fearsome
fantasies for us. Could epitomize our biggest dreams and worst nightmares. He
was exhausting. And I might have to let him go.