Death of a Scriptwriter hm-14

by M C Beaton

  Then she found there was a letter with the legend ‘Strath-clyde Television’ on the envelope. She slowly opened it.

  “Dear Ms. Martyn-Broyd,” she read. “We have had the delight of reading some of your detective stories and are interested in making some of them into a series, possibly starting with The Case of the Rising Tides. We would be happy to deal with you through your agent if you could supply us with a name, address and telephone number. In any case, please telephone so that I can arrange to meet you to discuss this project. Yours sincerely, Harry Frame, Executive Producer, Strathclyde Television.”

  Patricia read the letter several times and then slowly put it down with a shaking hand. After all these long years, recognition at last!

  ♦

  She passed a night of broken sleep and was awake by dawn, waiting and waiting until such time as offices opened and she could begin to make telephone calls.

  She had to wait until ten o’clock before she was finally able to talk to Harry Frame.

  “This is a pleasure,” he boomed. “May I call you Patricia?”

  “Please do…Harry.” Patricia felt she had just made an exciting leap into an exciting, modern world.

  “Would you have any objection to us dramatising your books?”

  “I am very flattered,” fluted Patricia. “Who will play Lady Harriet?”

  “Early days, early days. Perhaps you could visit us in Glasgow so we may discuss the terms of the contract? Or perhaps you would like me to contact your agent?”

  Patricia felt a sudden burst of hatred for her ex-agent, who had done nothing to stop her precious books going out of print.

  “No,” she said firmly, “I will handle the negotiations myself.”

  And so the arrangements were made. The day was Wednesday. On Friday Patricia would take the early train from Inverness to Perth and then train from Perth to Glasgow, where a taxi would be waiting to bear her to Strathclyde Television.

  By the time she put down the phone, her face was flushed and her heart beating hard.

  Then, after another restorative cup of coffee, she dialled her old publishers and asked to speak to her former editor, Brian Jones, only to find that Mr. Jones was dead. She explained the reason for her call and was put through to a woman editor, Jessica Durnham. Patricia explained about the television series. To her disappointment, her news was not met with an offer of thousands for the reissue of all her books. The editor said cautiously that she would discuss it at conference and get back to her, or perhaps phone her agent? “No, you will deal with me,” said Patricia firmly.

  She spent the rest of the day in rosy dreams, and it was only as evening approached that she remembered her date with the village constable.

  She frowned. She should not have gone slumming with a policeman. Good heavens! What if that water bailiff had caught her and she had ended up in court? A celebrity such as Patricia Martyn-Broyd must be very careful of her reputation. She telephoned the police station and left a curt message on the answering machine.

  ♦

  Hamish had been visiting his parents in Rogart and had then gone straight to the restaurant on his return and so did not receive the message until after he had eaten a solitary meal.

  The voice on his answering machine was almost offensively curt. He shrugged. He probably wouldn’t see her again, and that was no great loss.

  ♦

  Half an hour before Patricia was due to arrive at Strathclyde Television, Harry Frame was chairing a conference. Several people sat around the table, each clutching a copy of The Case of the Rising Tides. They had been able to get only one of the books and had run off copies.

  “You want me to produce this?” demanded Fiona King, a rawboned, chain-smoking woman dressed in the height of lesbian chic: bone-short haircut, short jersey exposing an area of yellow skin at the midriff, jeans and large combat boots. “It will be an interesting challenge.” Privately she thought it the most boring load of crap she had ever been forced to read, but surely something could be done with it.

  “The thing about it is this,” said Harry wearily. “She’s been out of print for ages, so she won’t cost much. We set it in the sixties, flares and white boots and miniskirts.”

  “Is this going to be Sunday night family viewing?” demanded Fiona, lighting another cigarette despite the NO SMOKING sign above her head. “You know, the sort of pap the cocoa-slurping morons of middle Britain enjoy?”

  “Yes,” said Harry. “But we’re still going in for shock here. Lots of bonking.”

  “But this bitch, Lady Harriet, definitely keeps her Harris tweed knickers on right through the book.”

  “We’ll get ‘em off, give her a bit of rough stuff to roll in the heather with.”

  “What setting will you have?” asked a researcher.

  “Plenty of places in the Highlands.”

  “And who’ll play Lady Harriet?”

  “Penelope Gates.”

  “Jesus,” said Fiona. “That foul-mouthed little keelie.”

  “She’s got great tits, and she’s prepared to open her legs on television.”

  “And off television,” remarked Fiona sourly. “What on earth is this old frump Martyn-Broyd going to say?”

  “We just get her to sign. After that, she’ll just need to lump it. In fact, she’ll enjoy it. Everyone these days wants to have something to do with television. Have you seen those schlock TV shows from the States? They’ll divorce their hubby on screen if it gets them a few moments of fame. I don’t like your tone, Fiona. Don’t you want to do this?”

  “I consider it a privilege to be chosen by you, Harry,” said Fiona quickly.

  A secretary popped her head round the door and said primly, “Miss Martyn-Broyd is here.”

  Patricia entered, looking flustered. There had been no taxi to meet her at the station. Every television company was notorious for failing to meet people at airports and stations, but Patricia did not know this and took the absence of a waiting taxi to be a sort of snub.

  Furthermore, she had expected something glossier, not this concrete slab of a building situated under a motorway, which seemed to be furnished with stained carpet and plastic plants.

  She had been handed a plastic nametag at the reception desk to pin on her tweed suit, but she had angrily stuffed it into her handbag on her way up. It had reminded her of a dreadful American party she had gone to years before, where she had been given a nametag to pin on her dress with the legend ‘Hi! My name is Patricia,’ and she still shuddered at the memory.

  Sheila Burford, a research assistant, looked up curiously at Patricia. That’s a medieval face, she thought, looking at the hooded pale eyes in the white face and the curved nose.

  Harry Frame greeted Patricia by kissing her on the cheek, an embrace from which Patricia visibly winced.

  Patricia was as disappointed in Harry Frame as she was in the building. He was a big man with a mane of brown hair and a puffy face. He was wearing a checked workman’s shirt open nearly to the waist, and he had a great that of chest hair.

  “Sit yourself down, Patricia,” he boomed. “Tea? Coffee? Drink?”

  “No, I thank you,” said Patricia. “I would like to get down to business.”

  “I like a businesswoman,” said Harry expansively. He introduced her all round, ending up with, “And this is Fiona King, who will be our producer.”

  Patricia concealed her dismay. “I am not familiar with your television company, Mr. Frame. What successes have you had?”

  “I have them written down for you,” said Harry, handing her a list.

  Patricia looked down at the list in bewilderment. They seemed to be mostly documentaries with titles like Whither Scotland?, Are the English Bastards?, The Arguments for Home Rule, The Highland Clearances, Folk Songs from the Gorbals. She had not seen or heard of any of them.

  “I do not see any detective stories here,” said Patricia.

  Harry ignored that. “Because of this your books will be back in pri
nt,” he said. “We suggest a publicity tie-up with Pheasant Books. We plan to start serialising The Case of the Rising Tides.”

  Patricia stared at him unnervingly. Then she suddenly smiled. From being a rather tatty building inhabited with people who were definitely not ladies and gentlemen, Strathclyde Television and all in it became suffused with a golden glow. She barely heard anything of the further discussion. She did, however, agree to signing an option contract for a thousand pounds and accepting an agreement that if the series were sold to BBC or ITV or anyone else, she would receive two thousand pounds per episode. Money was not important to Patricia, who was comfortably off, but the thought of getting her precious books back into print made her pretty much deaf to other concerns.

  Business being done, Fiona and Harry said they would take Patricia out for lunch. As they ushered her towards the door, Harry glanced down the table to where Sheila Burford was making notes. Sheila had cropped blond hair, large blue eyes and a splendid figure which her outfit of bomber jacket and jeans could not quite hide. “You’d best come along as well, Sheila,” said Harry.

  They took her to a restaurant across from the television centre. It was called Tatty Tommy’s Tartan Howf and was scented with the aroma of old cooking fat. They were served by Tatty Tommy himself, a large bruiser with a shaved head, an earring and blue eye shadow.

  Patricia was disappointed. She had thought that a television company would have taken her to some Glaswegian equivalent of the Ritz. She bleakly ordered Tatty Tommy’s Tumshies, Tatties and Haggis, thinking that an ethnic dish of haggis, turnips and potatoes might be safer than some of the more exotic offerings on the menu; but it transpired that the haggis was as dry as bone, the turnips watery and the potatoes had that chemical flavour of the reconstituted packet kind.

  “In my book,” said Patricia, “the setting is a fictitious village called Duncraggie.”

  “Oh, we’ll be setting it in the Highlands,” said Fiona brightly. “Pretty setting and lots of good Scottish actors.”

  “But the characters are English!.” protested Patricia. “It is a house party in the Highlands. Lady Harriet is Scottish, yes, but educated in England.”

  Harry waved an expansive arm. “English, Scottish, we’re all British.”

  Sheila repressed a smile. Harry was a vehement campaigner for Scotland’s independence.

  “I suppose,” began Patricia again, but Harry put a bearlike arm about her shoulders.

  “Now, don’t you be worrying your head about the television side. Just think how grand it will be to see your books on the shelves again.”

  He had shrewdly guessed that, at that moment in time, Patricia would agree to anything just so long as she got her books published.

  “Who will play the lead?” asked Patricia. “I thought of Diana Rigg.”

  “Bit old now,” said Fiona. “We thought of Penelope Gates.”

  “I have never heard of her,” said Patricia, pushing her plate away with most of the food on it uneaten.

  “Oh, she’s up and coming,” said Fiona.

  And cheap, reflected Sheila cynically.

  “Have I seen her in anything?”

  Fiona and Harry exchanged quick glances. “Do you watch television much?” asked Fiona.

  “Hardly at all.”

  “Oh, if you had,” said Fiona, “you would have seen a lot of her.”

  And most of it naked, thought Sheila. Scotland’s answer to Sharon Stone.

  Sheila did not like Patricia much but was beginning to feel sorry for this old lady. She had asked Harry why on earth choose some old bat’s out-of-print books when they meant to pay scant attention to characters or plot, and Harry had replied that respectability spiced up with sex was a winner. Besides, the book they meant to serialise was set in the sixties, and he planned to have lots of flared trousers, wide lapels, Mary Quant dresses and espresso bars, despite the fact that the fashions of the sixties had passed Patricia by.

  Patricia’s head was beginning to ache. She wanted to escape from this bad and smelly restaurant and these odd people. All would be well when she was back home and could savour in privacy all the delights of the prospect of being back in print.

  They asked the usual polite questions that writers get asked: How do you think of your plots? Do you have a writing schedule? Patricia answered, all the time trying to remember what it had really been like to sit down each morning and get to work.

  At last, when the lunch was over, Patricia consulted her timetable and said there was a train in half an hour. “Sheila here will get you a cab and take you to the station,” said Harry.

  Patricia shook hands all round. Sheila had run out and hailed a cab while Patricia was making her farewells.

  “It must all seem a bit bewildering,” said Sheila as they headed for the station.

  “Yes, it is rather,” drawled Patricia, leaning back in the cab and feeling very important now that freedom was at hand. “When will I hear from you again?”

  “It takes time,” said Sheila. “First we have to find the main scriptwriter, choose the location, the actors, and then we sell it to either the BBC or ITV.”

  “The BBC would be wonderful,” said Patricia. “Don’t like the other channel. All those nasty advertisements. So vulgar.”

  “In any case, it will take a few months,” said Sheila.

  “Did you read The Case of the Rising Tides!” asked Patricia.

  “Yes, it was part of my job as researcher. I enjoyed it very much,” said Sheila, who had found it boring in the extreme.

  “I pay great attention to detail,” said Patricia importantly.

  “I noticed that,” said Sheila, remembering long paragraphs of detailed descriptions of high and low tides. “Didn’t Dorothy Sayers use a bit about tides in Have His Carcase!”

  Patricia gave a patronising little laugh. “I often found Miss Sayers’s plots a trifle loose.” And Dorothy Sayers is long dead and I am alive and my books are going to be on television, she thought with a sudden rush of elation.

  She said goodbye to Sheila at the station, thinking that it was a pity such a pretty girl should wear such odd and dreary clothes.

  Sheila walked thoughtfully away down the platform after having seen her charge ensconced in a corner seat. She scratched her short blond crop. Did Harry realise just how vain Patricia Martyn-Broyd was? But then he had endured fights with writers before. Writers were considered the scum of the earth.

  ♦

  At a conference a week later, Harry announced, “I’m waiting for Jamie Gallagher. He’ll be main scriptwriter. I gave him the book. He’ll be coming along to let us know what he can do with it.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought he was at all suitable,” suggested Sheila. “Not for a detective series.”

  “BBC Scotland likes his work, and if we want them to put up any money for this, we’d better give ‘em what they want,” said Harry.

  The door opened and Jamie Gallagher came in. He was a tall man wearing a donkey jacket and a Greek fisherman’s hat. He had a few days of stubble on his chin. He had greasy brown hair which he wore combed forward to hide his receding hairline. He was a heavy drinker, and his face was crisscrossed with broken veins. It looked like an ordnance survey map.

  He threw a tattered copy of Patricia’s book down on the table and demanded truculently, “What is this shite?”

  “Well, shite, actually,” said Harry cheerfully, “but we need you to bring all that genius of yours to it.”

  Jamie sat down and scowled all around. He was battling between the joys of exercising his monumental ego on the one hand and remembering that he was currently unemployed on the other.

  “What you need to do is take the framework of the plot, all those tides and things,” said Fiona, “and then add some spice.”

  After a long harangue about the English in general and Patricia’s writing in particular, Jamie said, “But I could do it this way. You say we’ll get Penelope Gates? Right. You want the sixties feel
. Lots of sixties songs. In the books, Lady Harriet is middle-aged. I say, let’s make her young and hip. I know, runs a commune in that castle of hers. Bit of pot. Love interest.”

  “In the book,” said Sheila, “it’s Major Derwent.”

  “Let’s see,” said Jamie, ignoring her, “we’ll have a Highland police inspector, real chauvinist pig. And our Harriet seduces him and gets information about the case out of him. Lots of shagging in the heather.”

  “We won’t get the family slot on Sunday night,” said Fiona cautiously.

  Jamie snorted. “We’ll get it, all right. Who the hell is going to object to pot smoking these days? No full frontal, either, just a flash of thigh and a bit of boob.”

  Sheila let her mind drift off. Poor Patricia up in the Highlands, dreaming of glory. What on earth would she think when she saw the result? The air about Sheila was blue with four-letter words, but she had become accustomed to bleeping them out. Someone had once said that you could always tell what people were afraid of by the swear words they used.

  ♦

  After six months Patricia began to become anxious. What if nothing happened? Pheasant Books had not phoned her, and she was too proud and at the same time too afraid of rejection to phone them. She had not heard from her old publisher, either.

  The Highlands were in the grip of deep midwinter. There was hardly any daylight, and she seemed to be living in a long tunnel of perpetual night.

  She began to regret that she had not furthered her friendship with that policeman over in Lochdubh. It would have been someone to talk to. She had diligently tried to write again, but somehow the words would not come.

  At last she phoned the police station in Lochdubh. When Hamish answered, she said, “This is Patricia Martyn-Broyd. Do you remember me?”

  “Oh, yes, you stood me up,” said Hamish cheerfully.

  “I am sorry, but you see…” She told Hamish all about the television deal, ending with a cautious, “Perhaps you might be free for dinner tomorrow night?”

  “Aye, that would be grand,” said Hamish. “That Italian restaurant?”

  “I will see you there at eight,” said Patricia.