by Nigel Planer
But what to do with Neil, that was the poser. He could have done with some of Barbara’s old-fashioned thespian resilience, or maybe he should be going to one of her chigang yoga classes for mind-spirit balance. Something. A visit to West Hampstead, where he lived, was probably on the cards at some point to see what he was up against. His partner was a lot older than him, a therapist, but what kind I don’t know. Maybe this was where the trouble lay.
I see this business as rather like a massive kindergarten full of all kinds of children whose feckless parents have abandoned them to go for an extended skiing holiday in Gstaad. There are sporty kids, team players, loners, bullies, sensitive, creative ones, but they all need individual care and attention, and they all have to learn to play with each other. On the whole they get bored easily, and it’s my job to know when to get out the finger paints and when it’s time for a nap. When to hug and when to be strict. But no one hugs their agent, no. One gets accustomed to being ignored and treated like a toilet roll even by one’s own, it goes with the territory. Doug Handom, for instance, was very unhappy on that first film, and was ringing me hourly from LA saying, ‘Get me out of this, I’ve made a mistake, get me out, Guy.’ I said, ‘Look, you signed a contract, why don’t you see how you feel in a couple of days, if you still hate it then I’ll see what we can do. Wait until Friday, I’ll speak to you then.’ He never rang back on Friday. I had to ring him. When I got through, he’d completely forgotten our earlier talk. ‘Oh, I’m fine now, it’s fine,’ he said as if I was mad, which was great, of course, that it was fine, but he hadn’t bothered to let me know of his change of heart and I’d been worrying like a fruit bat. Mind you, I could worry for England. Not that anyone would know. Despite the banter, and despite my current nickname, which is Muffin the Mule for some reason best known to the women in the office, I am actually quite a fragile petal underneath it all. No, but seriously, I couldn’t look after all these people if I didn’t care.
Onwards and upwards. At least staying over at the office cut down on travelling time, enabling me to get an hour or so in before the women clattered in at half nine. Trouble was, I’d already had about seven cups of coffee by then and was a bit hyper.
He’s a good boy, Doug. Well, actually, he’s a very bad boy. He took that first feature role when Denise was pregnant with their first child and then stayed out there among the Candyfloss Cowboys. I was very careful not to influence his decision at the time, of course, just let him know that the offer was on the table and left him alone to talk with his conscience. Unfortunately for Denise and the baby, Doug’s conscience was obviously not very articulate that weekend because he was on the plane to La-La-Land by Sunday night. It all worked out all right in the end for Denise, though. She now lives in Crouch End with a much kinder and more reliable guy, Charlie Bennett, another one of my clients, as it happens. Not that I was instrumental in that. They just happened to both be working in the same production at the National, directed by Stephen Cranham, another of mine. The women in the office go wobbly in anticipation of Doug’s twice-yearly visits now.
I know I refer to those on the other side of the Atlantic too much and in too unfavourable a light. You will have to allow me that, it is pure envy. In the States, the entertainment industry is second only in revenue terms to the arms industry. It’s huge. One of the reasons we see so many American films over here, almost to the exclusion of everything else, is that the Yanks bought all our cinemas, so nowadays we have a home audience who understand the dialects, mores and myths of American culture better than they do their own.
I wish I was like Doug Handom. I wish I was like Jeremy Planter. I wish I was Bob Henderson. Ruthless. Not a ruth between them. That’s what impresses the girls, they’re not attracted to losers. Liz wouldn’t have given me a second look if I hadn’t had some air of potential success about me. And powerful women seek out more powerful men, not pushovers. I know, I get an earful of it every day. The women in the office are fascinated by men who win, in the same way that boys ogle boobs. Today, though, would be a day away from the quadraphonic sound of women talking into telephones; I had to go to Birmingham.
Working out the railway pricing system these days requires advanced qualifications in statistics and the laws of probability.
The man in the ticket booth at King’s Cross patiently explained to me that if I bought a ticket for the 3.50 train as opposed to the 3.32, it would cost me £60 more. If I returned within three days, a return would be cheaper than a single, provided I stayed over a Thursday night, and I could travel first class for an extra £5 as long as I was going north-east and not westwards. He kindly advised me to get a Weekend Saver as opposed to a Supersaver Weekend.
On the platform I asked another man, this one in a uniform, whether the train was going to Birmingham and whether I could travel on it with a Supersaver ticket. He told me he had no idea because he worked for a different rail company. Still, at least the shareholders have holiday homes.
The journey itself was pleasant enough, except for a man three seats away who called his wife on his mobile to report the train’s progress every twenty minutes: ‘Yes, we’re leaving Watford now and it’s 15.58, so I might be five or ten minutes late, darling.’ Then, ‘Hello, it’s me. Look, we’re already at Milton Keynes, so I may be three or four minutes early after all.’
Jeremy Planter was shooting a summer special sketch in a hospital on the outskirts of Birmingham and it was time I saw him face to face, preferably with Harry, his producer, there and, probably unavoidably, with this Bella Santorini woman. I had ascertained her name by now from a shooting schedule. The sketch was not a hospital sketch, one would use a studio for that. It was a sketch set in a police station which required some offices and a long corridor.
Defunct or half-defunct hospitals are used all the time nowadays as film locations. They are the cheapest big buildings available since health authorities are so starved of resources. Sometimes they still have a few patients knocking around in them, sometimes just old fluttering noticeboards and medical debris. Semi-derelict institutions are perfect for film crews and the art department can easily bung up a few false walls to turn them into schools, police stations, government buildings or even, in one BBC drama serial last year, airport departure lounges. The location in Birmingham — St Mary’s Infirmary for Mental Care — must have been still in use as some kind of home for patients, because as I walked down the vast Victorian corridors following the ‘Film Unit’ signs, folk in cardigans with mad eye-contact greeted me with that over familiarity of the institutionalized. Unless they were crew members breaking for lunch.
A brief whispered conversation with Harry to the side of the set in which he told me — as producers always do — that the rushes were looking especially good, that this series really was looking to be the best yet, established my right to be there, so I hung about for half an hour or so watching Jeremy go through a routine which involved a plumber’s-mate plunger getting stuck on his forehead. In a tea break we made contact whilst Jeremy was being fussed over by the make-up artists and I arranged that we would meet at the hotel and have supper together. I checked in at the hotel and got on the phone in the last office hour available.
At half six, when I was showering, the hotel phone rang and I padded across the floor, dripping, to answer it. A beautiful and steady female voice came out of the earpiece.
‘Hello, Guy. It’s Bella. Bella Santorini? I’m just calling to let you know they’re running late. Jeremy won’t be able to get back for another hour or so but I thought it would be nice if you and I met up for a drink? It would be great to get a chance to talk to you. You must feel a bit out at sea and I know Jer won’t have explained anything about what’s been going on. You know what he’s like.’
‘Erm, yes, I do.’ I laughed gormlessly.
I was a little thrown, not just by the directness of what she was saying and the consideration she was showing but subliminally and more powerfully by the calming tone in her voice, like
a slow-bowed cello.
It was hard to imagine that I was speaking to the hostess of a TV game show. I’m very affected by the timbre of someone’s voice, very vocally aware, especially of women, and it always surprises me that the voice is never listed in those monthly magazines’ ‘What Turns You On?’ round-ups, in which men and women both lie by putting ‘sense of humour’ top of the list. I dressed and went down to the lobby.
‘I know it must look awful what we’ve done, Guy, but please believe me, we have agonized over it a lot, thought about it, talked it through, and honestly, it’s not what it seems. I don’t want you to think I’ve taken this lightly. I’m not the sort of person who goes around breaking up homes and families for a pastime.
She was drinking a camomile tea. I had a vodka and orange to calm my nerves. Her skin was naturally iridescent, her teeth perfectly placed, her hair was clean and simply brushed. No make-up on, and a plain cotton frock covered her small, healthy body. Her posture was good but not overly self-conscious. Nevertheless, definitely an ex-dancer. She could not have looked more different from the picture of her draped over Jeremy’s arm on the front of last week’s papers. She quietly exuded confidence, I was stumped. There was nothing about her which might cause the word ‘bimbo’ to come to mind.
She continued in her assessment of the situation whilst I nodded or shook my head where appropriate, like a back-seat puppy. Also, she was not that young, only a bit younger than Susan I would say, mid-thirties. Her dancing career must be reaching its close. She was looking for something more stable. I guessed and she told me that the Bella was short for Arabella, the Santorini merely an invention; her real surname was something double-barrelled. A home-counties girl with an education and ponies and a doting father who was a surgeon in Surrey, no doubt. Classically trained but too wise to stay in the ballet beyond the age of twenty-five..
‘We have tried to explain it to Susan, believe me, but in the end it just seemed the best thing to make a decisive break. I know she’s very upset at the moment and I hope things calm down in time. It’s too early for me to meet the children yet but it’s important that they stay in touch with their father. Maybe you can help there, Guy. Susan can’t keep them away from him forever.’
According to Arabella, the situation had been going on for a lot longer than I had been led to believe by Susan. Jeremy and she had told Susan about their affair over a year ago. So, uncharacteristically for Jeremy, the whole thing had been discreet, considered.
Susan Planter was also behaving uncharacteristically. As well as savaging his clothes as I had seen, she was evidently threatening to deny him all access to Dave and Polly, she was talking to the papers and now she had been committing various acts of petty revenge, like ordering alarm calls through the night on his new phone number. Worst of all, she had evidently put an ad in the massage section of a local paper with Arabella’s phone number in it, the wording of which went something like ‘Domination and golden shower my speciality. Call Bella if you dare.’
In fact, the more I heard, the more I developed a sort of sneaking admiration for Susan Planter’s inventiveness. She was certainly not taking this like a humble politician’s wifey, and, I must admit, I laughed inside at all these revelations while expressing only deepest concern. Maybe I should have been an actor after all.
A waiter arrived and Arabella signed for our drinks, making steely eye contact with him. She smiled and he smiled back gratefully. I cannot put my finger on the quality she had, possibly a sort of queenliness, which brought out the chivalrous in men. She was not a flirt and I can imagine that guys would be more likely to offer to do her favours, carry her bags, take her across the road, make her something useful, than to get leery. I could sense that any attempt at a pick—up line would be met with dignified incomprehension, against which most men would shrivel. Her attention was flattery enough and in the hour or so while we waited for Jeremy, her confiding in me and her frankness made me feel special. She had the opposite of an actor’s charisma, which is all surface and is why great actors are so often disappointing when you meet them in real life. She was the genuine article, she didn’t have to perform to pull focus, the focus seemed naturally to be on her. I tried to imagine what it would be like having sex with her but somehow drew a blank. She seemed too self-contained to come across, or maybe she just wasn’t my type. I wouldn’t have thought she was Jeremy’s either, but then.
When he eventually arrived, it was 10.30 and Jeremy was bushed. The dining room had stopped meals, so we stayed in the lobby, where we sat in the giant sofas, upholstered in those overly traditional materials typical of hotels which were converted in the mid-eighties, too many patterns, too many fabrics, too much matt silk finish on the walls.
Arabella managed, with some determination, to secure a salad and soup for Jeremy which weren’t from the room-service menu. I had a bar-snack sandwich, she had nothing but more herbal tea. From the first minutes, it was obvious that Jeremy was different; he didn’t order a drink for a start. He seemed to be happy to let her dictate his eating habits, organize his weekly timetable and remind him of his early call, telling him when he should go to bed.
However, none of this infantilized him. He seemed to accept her suggestions with trust and enthusiasm. In the past, when drunk, if reminded by his wife Susan that he had had enough, he would have ordered another bottle, made a joke at her expense, talked too loudly and made sure that his role as one of the boys was re-established. His showy loudness ensuring that punters in bars and restaurants would be in no doubt that they had been in the presence of a celeb.
But this new subdued Jeremy was a surprise. In the two minutes when Arabella went to the phone, he looked at me with the grateful eyes of a labrador and said, ‘Isn’t she … w … wonderful?’
I agreed outwardly, because that’s my job, but I couldn’t think of a reason not to agree for real as well.
‘She’s certainly not what I was expecting,’ I said.
‘You mean you thought old Jeremy’s been thinking with his … d … dick again and got it caught in the m … mangle this time.’ His face puckered up comically at certain consonants.
‘Well …’
He didn’t touch the bread roll and left his soup half finished, pushing aside the tray. He sat back, his whole body visibly sinking into a contented relaxation, difficult on these designer sofas. It was as if his Tinkerbell had waved her wand from the other side of the lobby and he had instantly gone floppy.
‘I j … just want to see the children, Guy. I know it was s…stupid of me to p… p… put it about like that, but Susan and I h … h … haven’t had s … sex for four y… years. She went off me after P… Polly was born. What was I s … supposed to do?’ All of this sentiment was very unusual coming from Mr Happy Telly. I didn’t know what to say.
‘Will you talk to … S … Susan, Guy? I mean, she’s upset at the moment I know, but soon it will be time for us all to move on, you know. Draw a line in the sand and walk over it.’
A most un-Jeremy-like phrase, which I assumed he had picked up from Arabella. It was all a bit fairy-tale like. When she returned, they touched lovingly but not sickeningly so, not for show. I had never seen Jeremy actually warm and relaxed in the company of a woman before; come to think of it, I had never seen him warm and relaxed before at all, only energetic and attention-seeking. I wondered how it would affect his work, but as if by telepathy, Arabella pre-empted my concerns.
‘Don’t look so worried, Guy, it’s time he moved into a different market area anyway. The Revenge show won’t last forever. He’s got to stay one step ahead of the audience expectation. Did he tell you Harry’s leaving? He’s been offered Head of Comedy at Granada.’
A goodly piece of goss, which of itself made my trip to Birmingham worthwhile. Thank you, Bella.
I talked with her of Jeremy’s career plans as if he weren’t there, and he seemed happy for us to do so. Evidently he was tired of having plumber’s-mate plungers stuck to his forehead.
He was tired of his famous suits. He was tired of game shows altogether. He wanted to develop his range; his talent. He wanted to grow artistically and he and Arabella were aware that this might mean a drop in income for a year or two. They had worked this one out. In order to see Susan and the kids alright, he would do a couple of large-venue farewell tours to large audiences for large money. Simultaneously, the agency was to seek out classier work for him, some acting, some Chekhov, a detective series, maybe, with the long-term intention of writing and directing himself in his own movies.
So, she was a businesswoman as well, this double-barrelled dancer woman. She seemed to have achieved what many women dream of, I am told: first get your man, then change him, and Jeremy was certainly changed.
‘It’s time you went for your zizz, Planter,’ she said, and he got up, apologized to me for having to get an early night, said his goodbyes and followed her to the lift. Beauty with her captive Beast on a thin silvery lead.
On the train home in the morning, I went for the full cardiac breakfast, along with all the other fat cats in suits.
If you eat slowly enough, you can sit in the first-class dining car for the whole journey on a second—class ticket. As the shadows from passing trees flickered across the tablecloth, I ruminated on the night before. It’ll never last and love is blind and he’s hooked and other cynical envious snippets percolated through my otherwise positive mood as I half read the Independent. The two of them seemed genuinely, nauseatingly happy. They had been seeing each other for at least two years. Apart from awful feelings about Susan and the kids, where was the catch? Maybe there wasn’t one. Maybe I could afford to relax a bit.
I confess I was excited at the prospect of testing out the reactions to Jeremy in the world of serious drama. It’s much easier to sell a personality, or even a newscaster — providing he or she is famous enough — as anything than it is to get a proper actor work. The money-making tour shouldn’t be too difficult to set up. Naomi knew two or three promoters who would jump at it. Yes, I was excited. I ordered more coffee. My little expenses trip had definitely borne fruit.
