Storyboard (18 page)

“I know it.”

“Cold water’s no good for transfers.”

“Any water will do, Stephen.”

“It says
warm
water. You don’t use
cold
water, when it says
warm
water.”

“For Christ’s sake, shut up!” He was amazed. In a moment, he would begin to howl. Oh God, he was only eight, after all. She couldn’t cope this morning. If this sort of sulkiness and non-co-operation went on, she would lose her temper, and hit him. He didn’t seem to realize she had a cold coming on. But children were not expected to think of such things. She brought her voice under control again. “Look! You read your book, Stevie,” she said. “Mummy’s going to lie down for a moment. She’s very tired.”

“It’s only breakfast time. It’s not sleepy time.”

“It doesn’t make any difference. Mummy isn’t very well, Stephen.” The appeal to pity. He was too young for that. “I won’t be long,” she said. “I’ll just do the beds, and lie down for a second. Then we’ll have our Ovaltine, and do your transfers together. All right?”

Silence. Well, if he wanted to sulk, let him. She wouldn’t be around to put up with it. She left the kitchen, and went upstairs, dragging herself from one step to another. People didn’t realize how tiring children could be. Consumer Research! How could she do
Consumer
Research or anything else, when she felt so drained of energy the whole time? When Stephen was eleven, and going to Grammar School, she would feel better; no doubt of it. Then she would go back to teaching, and deal with somebody else’s children for a change.

Back in the kitchen, Stephen sat for a while in sullen thought. If his mother ever bothered to listen when he talked to her, she would know that he had finished
reading
his book. You needed
warm
water for transfers; it said so on the back. He swung his legs round the side of the chair, and let himself slide off; it was his new way of getting off chairs. He didn’t need help with his transfers, or want it.
Warm
water. The heavy, cast-iron saucepan was on the gas stove, simmering and bubbling, with the gas turned low. He wasn’t little now; he could reach it quite easily. He could see steam rising from the pan, and there would certainly be warm water inside. He had been told never to play with the Ascot, and anyway the Ascot made a
whoom
when you turned it on, and she might hear. But nobody would notice if he just took a little warm water from the hankies. He stretched up, and began to lift the pan from the stove. He hadn’t realized it would be so heavy.

“Well, I think that covers the Marketing background and the Media recommendations,” Keith said. “You’ve seen the wrappers, but you’ll probably agree that in any case they’re subsidiary to our main advertising
recommendations
.” Dave, he noticed, had already filled two pages of his memo pad with notes, and was ready to begin on a third. “I don’t know whether there are any comments you’d like to make at this stage,” he said
uncertainly
. At the foot of the table, P.A. frowned. Let them begin to comment now, and the advertising would be compromised from the start. P.A. had known one campaign which was never presented at all because Hoppness had been asked to comment at this stage.

But luck was with the Agency. “Not at this stage,” Arnold Brady said, from his place opposite P.A., “Let’s see the whole thing clear, and come in then,” and Dave, who had flicked over to page one of his pad, and opened his mouth to comment, closed it again, and flipped back to page three.

“Well, I think I should warn you we’ve got something pretty bold and imaginative here,” Keith said, and gave a little laugh. “You won’t like it; I can tell you that. It’s not what you could call the usual Hoppness approach, not by a long chalk. There’s a tough job to do here, and we felt you needed something really different this time. We wanted to get the real cosmetic feel into this. A really strong, tough, mood sell. We can’t sell this product as if it were just an ordinary toilet soap; I’m sure we all appreciate that. Maybe we shouldn’t treat it as a soap at all. Because we’ve got to make people believe they’re getting something pretty special.” He repeated the last two words, lingering over them for emphasis. “Prett—tty spesh—ul. And they are, of course.”

He turned over the two press lay-outs, the one in
black and white and the one in colour, and read out the headline, which was the same for both. “Like a child’s caress comes the dawn of a new kind of beauty,” Keith said. “Like a child’s caress. Comes the dawn. Of a new kind of beauty. I’d just like you to look at those a
moment
, if you don’t mind. Tony, would you please pin them up?” Tony pinned the two lay-outs to the
asbestos-covered
board which was on one wall of the Meeting Room. The pins had little coloured heads like beads; brass drawing-pins were not used at a Client Meeting. Dave Amber took his spectacles from a soft leather case in the top pocket of his jacket, cleaned them, and put them on. They caught the light, and glinted, so that Dave’s eyes disappeared, and Dave became for a
moment
the man of the future, some robot technician of the the year 2250.

“I’m going to give you some copy to go with that,” Keith said. “But I’d like to play you a tape first. I want you to get the feeling of the thing before we get down to the details. Once we’re agreed on the feeling, there’s no end to the adjustments we can make. After all, that’s why we’re here isn’t it—to work this out between us? But we ought to agree about the feeling first.” (Each adjustment would be a separate wound to Sophia, but one had to say these things, and do them too.) “If we weren’t agreed on the feeling,” Keith said, “no amount of adjustments would do us any good. We’d be working against each other”—which was, broadly speaking, what happened at every meeting with Hoppness, but the fiction of a Working Party had to be kept up.

So Keith played the tape—the music and the gentle persuasive voice, now speaking Sophia’s words. And they listened in silence.

Then Keith played the tape again, and said, “Now
let’s look at some pictures.” He handed round the
photo-statted
copies of the storyboard, and the typed copies of the script. The master copy of the storyboard was pinned beside the lay-outs, and Keith went over to it to explain it, picture by picture.

*

This was the script:

Keith took them through the storyboard frame by frame, indicating what was happening in each shot, and acting out the words. Then he played the tape for the third time. “Oh, I know it’s bold,” he said. “It’s bold. Pack shot not even at the end, but I think you’ll agree we spend a lot of time on it.” Then he asked Tony to give out the sheets of press copy. Then he said, “Well, gentlemen, I think that covers it. I’m not going to pretend
that every one of the copy points in our strategy is written out, syllable by syllable, on those pieces of paper you have in front of you. But I think we all know that there are more ways of making copy points than just by saying them in words, and sometimes those are the strongest ways.”

He sat down. There was a silence. The procedure at a Hoppness meeting was invariable; the most junior of them spoke first. So, after the silence had been prolonged for long enough to let the Agency people know that things weren’t going to be easy, Arnold said, “Peter?” and Peter Pope briskly ripped the notes off his memo pad, laid them out in series on the table before him, and began.

“Well,” he said cheerfully, “I’d like to take this
opportunity
of saying that I think the Agency has shown us some very interesting and imaginative work here. That’s how it struck
me,
anyway. And I think that probably all of us on this side of the table would agree with that.”

“Surely.”

“Surely, surely.”

“Very good of you to say that.”

“No, I mean that. I really do.”

“Surely.”

But,
Keith thought:
Wait for it. “But …”

“But there are one or two points I’d like a little more elucidation about. I mean, there are just one or two places here, where I didn’t feel that the advertising as shown to us was as viable as the Agency would like us to believe.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Well, for instance, Keith—it’s just a little thing—I agree with you that everything in the strategy doesn’t have to be spelled out, but I don’t see how you can
reasonably
 
say that the absence of any ring round the bowl after use is even implicitly conveyed in this television commercial.”

And they all laughed.

*

Boiling water spilled down Stephen’s throat and side. The cast-iron pan hit his shoulder, and bruised it. Nine wet handkerchiefs and a tea-cloth plopped to the floor, and three handkerchiefs remained, still steaming, like wet white slugs on Stephen’s shoulder. Stephen stood there by the gas-stove, unable to understand what had happened to him. Then he began to scream.

Sylvia had taken off her shoes, and had lain for a moment on the freshly made bed. She heard a clatter from downstairs in the kitchen, as the pan hit the floor. Then she heard Stephen scream, and go on screaming. The screams sounded like temper.
Oh
God,
what’s
he
done
now?
Simply to ask oneself the question did instead of an answer.
Not
even
a
chance
to
lie
down,
and
rest!
She pulled herself slowly from the bed, gathering her
tiredness
round her like a cloak. It was going to be a difficult morning.