Funny Girl

by Nick Hornby

  ‘Nobody else I know is doing this stuff,’ he said to Tony. ‘They’re all trying to upset their parents, not entertain them.’

  ‘By doing what?’

  ‘They’re having sex onstage at the Royal Court. Or they’re making underground films about decadent Romantic poets.’

  ‘Nobody’s stopping you,’ said Tony. ‘You can go off and earn three bob in your spare time whenever you want. And during the day you can write the most popular comedy series in Britain.’

  ‘It isn’t the most popular comedy series in Britain with everyone.’

  ‘No. Half the country isn’t watching us. I can live with that.’

  ‘Except the other half contains all the smart people. They’ve given up on us.’

  ‘Who are the smart people?’

  ‘The people having sex onstage at the Royal Court.’

  ‘They’re out on Thursday nights,’ said Tony. ‘We don’t have to worry about them.’

  The only time Bill felt anything like the old spark was when Barbara and Jim argued, which, presumably as a consequence, they seemed to be doing with more frequency. Otherwise, he had to turn to his hobby for absorption, and the feeling that what he wrote was who he was.

  He’d started on Soho Boy in the mornings, early, before he met Tony at the office. He’d never written prose before, and at first it didn’t come easily: he began with the belief that if he wanted reviews, then every sentence had to contain a minimum of five subclauses. And he was dishing out the adverbs as if there was no tomorrow, possibly because neither Barbara nor Jim had any use for them. They never said anything witheringly or walked gingerly or smiled icily. They just walked and smiled and said things. But after ‘The New Bathroom’, when he knew that he needed something else to keep him sane, he started thinking about the book more seriously, analysing what it was he didn’t like. And as a result, he started to allow his character – a young homosexual who’d walked out on his life in the West Midlands and come to London – to speak conversationally. Soho Boy became Diary of a Soho Boy, and suddenly he felt like someone who might at least finish a book. He set himself a target of twenty single-spaced pages a week, and some weeks he managed more than that. Before they’d finished writing the third series, he had a sheaf of papers by his typewriter which could, if looked at from the right angle, be described as a manuscript.

  16

  Sophie met Lucille Ball and Harold Wilson within a ten-day period, and the near-collision, which would have seemed like something from a rather desperate school English essay just a few years before, wasn’t even a wild coincidence. She met famous people almost routinely. She didn’t know them well, but she was frequently in the same room, and she was frequently asked to say hello – to George Best, who was gorgeous and wanted her phone number, to Tommy Cooper, to Marianne Faithfull, even to Reggie Kray. Famous people were two a penny. And in any case Lucy wasn’t as famous as she had been. She no longer meant very much to Sophie’s generation. But when Diane called to say that Lucy was in London making a television special, Sophie knew that she had to at least make an effort to thank her for everything.

  ‘Will she speak to me, though?’ she said to Diane.

  ‘She’d be silly not to. You’re Sophie Straw, now. She’s Lucille Ball, then. It will do her more good than it’ll do you.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘What would I say to her?’

  Sophie could already feel the panic in her stomach. She would let herself down, probably in a Lucy-like way – by falling over, or getting her name wrong, or taking Lucy’s handbag by mistake and getting arrested by the police, although she would manage to do it in a way that wasn’t the slightest bit funny.

  ‘Just say how much you love her show, and how she was an inspiration, and all that.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Well, she’ll probably ask you a question, and you’ll be away.’

  ‘What sort of thing will she ask me?’

  ‘It won’t be anything you don’t know the answer to. She won’t ask you what the square of the hypotenuse is.’

  ‘Give me a for instance.’

  ‘Sophie, how long have you been acting for?’

  ‘Oh, God. Then I’ll have to tell her this is my first show and she’ll ask me how come I started as the lead in a series and – will you go with me?’

  ‘I’d like to write about it for the magazine. “Sophie meets Lucy”.’

  ‘ “Lucy meets Sophie”, more like.’

  ‘Oh, she’s got all cocky all of a sudden.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mean that. I thought you had it the cocky way round.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s why I changed it, do you see?’

  ‘Yes. I know you’re not cocky.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think I’d better go. You’re making me nervous enough, and you’re just the one telling me about it.’

  ‘They’re filming outside Buckingham Palace on Monday, apparently.’

  ‘Oh, hell. I’m not working on Monday.’

  ‘I know. I remember. That’s why I found out where they’d be then.’

  ‘She won’t have heard of me.’

  ‘No. But I’m sure she’ll be very polite. Someone will tell her what a big star you are here.’

  ‘Do they have to?’

  ‘If they don’t, she’ll probably wonder why she’s having her picture taken with you.’

  ‘She’s so beautiful, though.’

  ‘Sophie, she’s in her mid-fifties. She’s got a lot more to be afraid of than you have.’

  Lucy was older than her father? How had that happened? This made her feel even queasier. She was afraid that she would see the Ghost of Sophie Future.

  Lucy didn’t look older than her father. She was wearing what appeared to be a Foale and Tuffin dress, a moddy white thing with a big orange 3D letter on the side, and she had the figure and the legs for it, still. She looked old, though, in the way that a ghost looks old. Her make-up was so thick that her face was white and blank, those big eyes lost in the middle of it, the only features capable of expression. That’s where Sophie could see Lucy, in the eyes, but they looked trapped, the eyes of a frightened animal buried in snow. And she was too old to be prancing around outside a sentry box with a bunch of young dancers wearing busbies, while a pop group that Diane said was the Dave Clark Five mimed on a makeshift stage to the side of them. (They cut the scene, in the end. Lucy in London turned out to be terrible, but even a terrible show had no room for the dancing guardsmen in the busbies.)

  ‘Do you think this was written?’ said Diane.

  ‘Everything’s written,’ said Sophie.

  ‘Gosh,’ said Diane. ‘I really do have a chance, don’t I?’

  Sophie was staring intently at Lucy.

  ‘She looks different,’ she whispered.

  ‘She’s had something done to her face,’ said Diane. She wasn’t whispering, and Sophie shooshed her.

  ‘What do you mean? Why would anyone do anything to their face?’

  ‘They have operations,’ said Diane. ‘To make them look younger. Facelifts and so on. I think she’s had her eyes tucked.’

  ‘Tucked?’

  ‘They stretch the skin, to get rid of the wrinkles. Can you see? That’s where the make-up is heaviest, around the eyes. She can’t make her faces. Look. It’s so sad. Promise me you’ll never do that.’

  Sophie didn’t answer. She understood that one day she’d have to choose, as Lucy had had to choose. You could have all sorts of operations that left you unable to act; or you could let your eyes and your bust and your chin go where they wanted to go. And if you did that, then nobody would give you a show called Lucy in London, or Sophie in Hollywood. She wished Lucy wasn’t making a spectacle of herself outside Buckingham Palace. It was undignified. But was it any more dignified to sit at home waiting for the phone to ring, like Dulcie, who’d appeared in the first-anniversary episode of Barbara (and Jim)? O
r to give up entirely, and get fat, and spend the last twenty-five years of your life thinking about the time when you were young and pretty and famous? She wished she didn’t spend so much time worrying about the end of it all, but she couldn’t help it. Being at the top of your career was like being at the top of a Ferris wheel: you knew that you had to keep moving, and you knew which way you were going. You had no choice.

  Lucy in London

  Lucy and the dancing guardsmen got to the end of their routine, and they took a break, and a young man came over to usher Sophie towards Lucy. Sophie suddenly realized that Lucy was going to look at her, that those eyes would meet hers, and she thought her knees might buckle.

  ‘Hello, dear,’ said Lucy.

  ‘Hello,’ said Sophie. ‘I like your dress.’

  ‘Isn’t it darling? Congratulations on your show.’

  ‘Have you seen it? Did you like it?’ said Sophie.

  She couldn’t stop herself. It was a mistake, of course. She knew it was a mistake because she saw a door close in Lucy’s head, the door that led from her brain to those eyes. Those eyes were still looking at her, but they may as well have been behind a television screen. Lucy had gone.

  ‘Oh, it’s all right,’ Sophie said then, except she was squeaking now, not speaking. ‘You wouldn’t have. Sorry.’

  ‘Thank you so much for coming all this way to say hello, dear,’ said Lucy, and then she was led away. Nobody took a photograph.

  ‘Oh,’ said Diane. ‘Oh, well. What an old bag.’

  ‘No,’ said Sophie. ‘No. I did it all wrong.’

  ‘What did you do wrong?’

  ‘I shouldn’t have asked that.’

  ‘Why on earth not?’

  ‘I overstepped the mark.’

  ‘How are you supposed to know where the mark is?’

  But she had known. It was very faint, and nobody else would have known it was there, apart from the two of them, her and Lucy. (The two of them! Her and Lucy! Even that distinction, between them and the rest of the world, seemed presumptuous.) Sophie had seen it and she had ignored it, because she’d been greedy. She had asked Lucy for proof that she existed, and Lucy wasn’t able to provide it, because Sophie didn’t exist, not yet, and maybe not ever, not in the way that Lucy existed. She began to fear that she would always be greedy, all the time. Nothing ever seemed to fill her up. Nothing ever seemed to touch the sides.

  They took two taxis to Downing Street, even though the five of them could have fitted into one. Clive said that it would look undignified, bumping heads and extricating limbs while policemen and assistants watched. Sophie wanted to be with Clive, but he said he didn’t want the stars to be in one cab and the nobodies in another.

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought of that,’ said Sophie.

  ‘You know why not?’ said Bill. ‘Because you don’t think in terms of stars and nobodies.’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ said Clive. ‘You’re not a nobody to me. You’re just a nobody to the rest of the world.’

  They had to knock on the door, as if Number Ten was a house, and a secretary showed them into a reception area before leading them upstairs. On the wall over the staircase there was an ascending line of pictures, paintings and then photographs of every prime minister in the history of Britain, and Sophie silently chastised herself for recognizing so few of the names.

  Marcia Williams was waiting for them in a sitting room upstairs. She was excited to see them, or pretended to be, and when she shook Sophie’s hand she gave her arm a little squeeze at the same time. She seemed nice, Sophie thought, but it was hard to think of her as the Prime Minister’s mistress. It was hard to think of her as anyone’s mistress. She was obviously very brainy, and her teeth were too big for her mouth. She wondered whether it was a case of needs must. Harold probably didn’t meet thousands of glamorous women in an average year, what with all the TUC meetings and the visits to the Soviet Union. Marcia might have been the closest Harold could get to Raquel Welch. But Sophie suddenly felt self-conscious, and wished she’d worn a longer skirt. She didn’t want to make Harold unsatisfied with his lot, if it was true that Marcia was his lot, or some of his lot. And she didn’t want to have to rebuff the Prime Minister, if he liked what he saw. That would be embarrassing.

  Harold Wilson and Marcia Williams

  They sat down, and Marcia ordered coffee and biscuits, and offered them cigarettes from a lacquered case on the coffee table. They talked about Number Ten, the odd shape of it, its deceptive size, how there was another entrance in another street entirely. Marcia’s answers were so smooth that they’d been worn away to almost nothing, and Sophie suspected that none of them had asked a question she hadn’t heard a thousand times that week.

  ‘Harold’s just on his way,’ said Marcia. ‘But I thought it would be nice to have a little chat first.’

  ‘Lovely,’ said Sophie.

  ‘Ever since I started watching Barbara (and Jim),’ said Marcia, ‘I’ve been brewing up plans.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Dennis. ‘What sort of plans?’

  ‘Well, it seems silly that whenever you’ve shown Jim at work, his office is in a BBC studio. But he works here, at Number Ten. So what I was wondering was, would you like to film somewhere in here?’

  ‘Gosh,’ said Dennis.

  ‘I don’t mean every week,’ said Marcia. ‘Worse luck. I’d like it, but Harold would probably start grumbling.’

  They laughed politely.

  ‘But I’m sure we could manage something as a one-off.’

  ‘Golly,’ said Clive.

  ‘And we’d like to do it quite soon,’ said Marcia.

  ‘Oh,’ said Dennis.

  ‘The thing is, everyone says this election is really boring, and Harold’s going to win easily, and we’re desperately trying to think of ways to pep it up a bit,’ said Marcia. ‘Otherwise it’s all a terrible grind, and the turnout goes down, and if we do win, it’ll start off with a bit of a whimper, rather than a bang.’

  There was a lot of smiling and nodding, but still nobody said anything.

  ‘We wouldn’t ask you to take sides, of course,’ said Marcia. ‘The BBC wouldn’t have that. But an amusing debate about the issues between Barbara and Jim would do so much more than party political broadcasts. People love the programme so much.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you to say so,’ said Bill.

  Sophie wondered whether everyone else had gone mad except her. The Prime Minister’s secretary was asking them whether they wanted to film in Number Ten and all anyone said was ‘gosh’ and ‘golly’.

  ‘We’d love to,’ said Sophie.

  ‘Good,’ said Marcia, and she beamed at them all.

  Dennis, Tony and Bill looked at Sophie as if she had spoken out of turn.

  ‘But I’m not sure that …’ said Dennis.

  ‘Here’s Harold,’ said Marcia, and there he was, the Prime Minister, sucking on a pipe as if nobody would recognize him without it.

  They stood up and introduced themselves, except before Sophie could speak he stopped her.

  ‘And you must be Barbara,’ he said, and everyone laughed politely.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sophie. ‘Sophie.’

  He looked perplexed for a moment.

  ‘I’m Barbara in the programme,’ she said.

  ‘Of course you are,’ said Harold. ‘I’ve seen it. Very good.’

  They had been led to believe that at eight o’clock every Thursday night, Harold shucked off the awful responsibilities of his position, lit his pipe, sat down with his wife and chuckled away for thirty minutes. Now he was telling them that he was not unfamiliar with the show. Perhaps her perception was being warped by professional oversensitivity, but it seemed to her that there was a difference.

  ‘And where do you come from? I’m detecting a scent of red rose.’

  ‘That’s right. I’m from Blackpool, Mr Wilson.’

  ‘Oh-ho. I’ll bet you’re keeping that from the BBC, aren’t you? They never usually giv
e northerners much of a look-in over there. Still too many Home Counties public-school boys for my liking.’

  There were a lot of looks flying around under the Prime Minister’s radar now. Tony and Bill both caught Sophie’s eye, and Marcia caught Tony and Bill looking at Sophie. Dennis was still laughing politely, as Home Counties public-school boys were wont to do, but the laugh was now all form and no content.

  ‘You are daft, Harold,’ said Marcia, and the moment she said it, Sophie knew what was going on between them. Marcia’s not-quite-affectionate exasperation was that of a daughter talking to her father. There was no affair, she was sure of it. ‘You know very well that Barbara’s from Blackpool.’

  Harold looked confused again.

  ‘I thought she was Sophie?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Marcia, and shook her head. ‘Barbara in the show is from Blackpool,’ said Marcia. ‘As well.’

  ‘Of course she is,’ said Harold. He didn’t seem at all concerned that he’d inadvertently owned up to never having seen five minutes of the series. Perhaps he had other things to worry about. ‘What do you think of Marcia’s idea, anyway?’ the Prime Minister said. ‘Would you like to set an episode inside Number Ten?’

  ‘I told Dennis here how you wished you had someone as clever as Jim working for you in real life,’ said Marcia.

  ‘I’ve not got a bad lot,’ said Harold. ‘But there’s always room for a clever young man.’

  ‘I’ll tell Jim if I see him,’ said Clive.

  Marcia laughed.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Harold uncertainly.

  A photographer came in and took a few snaps of Clive and Sophie chatting to the Prime Minister, and then he said his goodbyes and disappeared.