The Right Man

by Nigel Planer

  ‘You ought to write all this down, pal,’ said Tony, offering me the joint. I declined. We were in the street.

  ‘Oh, I do,’ said Malcolm. ‘I’ve got it all on my Toshiba. So, for instance, it’s actually irrelevant whether Guy here petitions Liz or she petitions him. It will make not a jot of difference in the end. He will pay for her and for the court, and she will get custody, although nowadays it’s called residency, of course. Fat lot of difference changing the words made.’

  Tony gave me a sad and quizzical look.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Malcolm continued, fishing the lemon out of his tomato juice and sucking on it hard, ‘you can’t win with that lot. Solicitors. You just can’t win. No way.

  ‘Then why fight them at all?’ asked Tony.

  Malcolm stopped to reflect for a millisecond.

  ‘I can’t think like that,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve got this woman I see every now and then at the moment, I mean, I’m not sleeping with her or anything. Yet.’ Tony chuckled. ‘And she keeps trying to get me to do stuff for her, you know, fix her car, little bit of carpentry, and I think: hang on, what’s this all about? She’s in love with some big feller in the city and he takes her out to restaurants and that, and I think: why don’t you get him to fix your frigging fridge, eh? OK, if a guy’s screwing some woman I think he should do stuff for her, fair enough, otherwise forget it.’

  ‘She obviously knows what she’s doing,’ said Malcolm. ‘She’s got your number, mate.’ We laughed. It was the beer. ‘Oh, yes, Darwin was right, it’s very much survival of the fittest, I’m afraid, these days.’

  ‘That was Herbert Spencer who said that, not Darwin,’ said Tony, with no hint of point-scoring. ‘Poor old Charlie Darwin’s a very misunderstood geezer.

  Tony started to hold forth about a possible connection between the genetic make-up and the pair-bonded social behaviour of the kittiwake gull, but I was too frazzled to take it in. I didn’t know my brother knew about that sort of thing. I didn’t think he knew about anything, actually. Middle-class snob I am. Get me.

  ‘So, my thespian compadre,’ he said, ‘we going up the West End to some sprauntzy club to get rat-arsed and ogle some females, or what?’

  ‘Count me out,’ said Malcolm. ‘I’ve got Nerily tomorrow, I think.’

  When the Groucho Club first opened up, it was, give or take the Zanzibar and Two Brydges Place, the only club of its kind in the West End. Before that there had been Legends, the Embassy, Maunkberrys, the Pink Palm Tree, but these all owed more to the seventies than the eighties in terms of style. All had dance floors, very loud music and very expensive cocktails. Clothes were shiny, hair was sparkly, conversation was kept to a minimum by virtue of the noise, and lighting was very low, apart from on the dance floor, where it shazammed around in time to music by the Bee Gees and Chic.

  In the late eighties, along with mobile phones, the deconstructed suit and the independent production company, a new style of club was needed. The lounge club. Somewhere television execs could have breakfast meetings with freshly squeezed orange juice and cafetière coffee. Where women company directors could lunch on polenta and monkfish and rocket salad. Where theatre designers could meet for afternoon herbal tea and macaroons and where at six o’clock, the entire advertising industry could blow all its new-found pots of eighties loot on bottles of Moët, Chardonnay, Chablis, Sauvignon, Sancerre, more Moët, more Chardonnay, still more Chardonnay, and smoke cigars and meet impressionable young women.

  The new thinking on décor was to be strangely paradoxical. In the same way that the seventies clubs had imported most of their ideas from America — the style of John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever in particular — the new lounge club was to emulate the cool style of a Los Angeles residential poolside hotel (the Sunset Marquee, say) where old-world comfort and grace is the intention, pastel shades abound, with pale cream and soft turquoise panelling on the walls, above which hang old prints. Upholstered leather sofas and easy chairs are strewn casually over the lush and warm carpets and the occasional painting by someone fashionable will fill any large wall spaces left. The lighting is subliminal and comes from behind peach-coloured wall lamps. The air-conditioning is relentless, and a real live musician tinkles away on a piano unobtrusively. So, it’s a style copied from the Americans, copying what they, in their turn, had imagined to be English.

  More recently, increasing numbers of these kinds of club have opened up around Soho. Expensive membership clubs with yearbooks, cricket teams, impenetrable menus and waiters with exotic facial hair. There’s Black’s and the Soho House and Green’s and Moscow’s and Sally’s and on and on. Some have log fires, some have backgammon boards, all have a sign saying, ‘No mobile phones’, for these are places where the networking is compulsive.

  At night, on the whole, they turn into meat markets. Women who dress to enter the Most Provocative Outfit contest mingle with sexy upper-class publishing girls in baggy pullovers and jeans. Guys sprawl around in shirts buttoned to the top with no ties, seeing who can be the most nonchalant, unshaven and secretly, discreetly rolling in dosh.

  Models, even supermodels here, dine on scrambled egg with smoked-salmon bits and chain-smoke their way between courses. Table-hoppers hop tables, and at eleven the casts of West End shows, hyped up on their own self-perpetuating adrenalin, arrive with their celebrity guests. Outside, of course, the homeless congregate in sleeping bags with their dogs. The entrances to these clubs must be prime spots for those with blankets and a smack habit.

  My favourite in recent years has been the Soho House on Frith Street, but tonight, seeing as Tony was wearing oily denim shorts and his Despair-Proof Vest, I thought we’d try Sally’s on Greek. In any case, I didn’t fancy bumping into Jeremy Planter or any of my other scummy turncoat ex-clients, and for this Sally’s was a safer bet. It’s the newest and is possibly, if I can say this without offending Sally herself, a smidgeon more downmarket than the others. Food’s good, though, and Sally herself is a constant and amusing presence. She’s a large Thai woman who won’t think twice about throwing certain people out personally with much loud cursing and insults. This is done, I suspect, mostly for the entertainment of the other clientele and to make them feel that little bit more exclusive. Her choice of expellee is very astute. Usually the arrogant young aristo-type in a yellow waistcoat, who she play-acts taking a dislike to for his attitude. Yes, she knows her business, Sally, and also I felt she wouldn’t bat an eyelid at Tony, who might show me up a touch elsewhere. As it happened, she batted both lids and lashes at him.

  Sally sat us down at a table near the open front window of her upstairs room, so we could look down into Greek Street below at the queue outside the Blue Ice basement disco.

  ‘I was a bouncer once, for a month or two. You didn’t know that, did you, Guy? Didn’t last very long, though, on account of my being such a nutcase,’ said Tony, picking up the folded beige card menu and squinting at it. Then, out of the pocket of his shorts, he produced an old aluminium spectacle case and took out a pair of half-moon spectacles and put them on.

  He was priceless really, sitting there in this foreign place being totally himself with little-old-man specs on. I wished I was like him, or at least had some of his containment. We ordered more beers and agreed to have some red wine with our food. Grain and grape, I know, but I was on the big dipper now, I might as well get up to the top before coming down whooosh for another go.

  There was a woman sitting at the table opposite with her back elegantly revealed by a very low-diving black number. Her beautifully kept hair was shiny and clean and swept up to show off her graceful neck. I couldn’t see her face and she was sitting up straight with great poise, but a sudden stiffening of her spine and lifting of her ribcage told me that someone significant had just entered the room.

  I glanced across to the open arched doorway to where three or four rich-looking folk had entered, and among them was Doug Handom. Sex on legs. The woman with the back was looking down
at her food now, trying to conceal her interest from whoever it was she was with, husband, boyfriend, manager, pimp, but he seemed to be jawing on oblivious, through mouthfuls of bang-bang chicken.

  After sitting Doug and his crew down, Sally came over to take our order. Doug Handom too had his back to me. I would hop up and say hello later. He had with him two females of the effervescent variety; an older, curly-grey-haired guy in Ivy League clothes with an outrageous tan — producer, I’d wager big dosh — and that Yank actor, damn what’s-his-name? Been in loads of stuff — movies — always the bent copper sidekick, never the lead but major supporting, couple of Burt Reynolds’s ages ago, oh, Peter something, Ramp? Ryecart? Rumpash? Balding, rugged, butch — damn.

  Tony was asking Sally about the ingredients of just about everything on the menu, not critically, and she was enjoying his interest. His questions were informed and she seemed flattered about his knowledge of Thai cuisine.

  ‘No, the sea bass is baked, just with lemon grass and a little bit of ginger,’ she said coyly. He flashed a grin at her and made his choice. He was chatting her up, the old devil.

  ‘I’ll just have the pasta,’ I said, and handed the designer card back to her.

  ‘Used to be a chef in Lai-sin,’ said Tony to me when she’d gone. I wondered whether all the stories Tony told might actually be true after all. ‘That’s when I did me legs in, falling off the Darai temple at Phuket.’

  He put his specs away and took a large gulp of red wine from the bulb glass. ‘Pity I run out of blow tonight. Ah well, we’ll just have to get slaughtered on the old alco-mo-hol. How’re you bearing up?’

  ‘Oh, I’m fine.’ I had the fleeting thought that he might have come out tonight to keep me company, to make sure I didn’t dive into a maudlin thingy. That he might, dare I say it, think I needed looking after. Tony looking after Guy! That’s a new one! I dismissed this thought as a projection of my own. I didn’t want the evening to turn into some soppy bonding scenario.

  The two girls at Doug Handom’s table got up, leaving their jackets over the chairs, to go to the Ladies’, followed by the actor man, Peter Saravan. That’s it! Peter Saravan, of course! Thank Gawd for that! I’d be able to introduce myself soon. Doug looked around and noticed me at last.

  ‘Guy! Bro! How’re you doing?’ Although still unmistakably north London in accent, Doug had picked up Stateside phraseology. The woman with the back glanced across to see who I was. She was quite pretty, not Emmanuelle Beart but trying to go in that direction.

  Excusing myself to Tony, I went across to Doug’s table. I shook hands with the old tanned bloke, Irving Tellman — I was right, producer, a couple of cop shows in the eighties and something to do with an early Tom Hanks movie, I think.

  ‘Hi, Guy. Pleased to meet you, Guy. Won’t you join us, Guy,’ he said with that ludicrously deep resonance only Americans are allowed by God to have. I looked around at Tony as Sally arrived with our food. Seeing my table-hop, she immediately offered to draw us up a table next to the Americans and change the place settings. Tony came over and sat on the end of the table to eat his fish, without the least trace of discomfort or embarrassment. He was evidently oblivious to who Doug was, or at least didn’t register anything when introduced, and this made Doug comfortable enough to ignore him.

  The woman with the back was now contorting herself inside with jealousy. Whoever the man was with her, she would not be doing it with her eyes open tonight.

  Doug was still holding my shoulder with transatlantic sincerity. ‘Guy! Bro! Good to see ya! Did you get my messages?’

  ‘I certainly did. How long are you in town for?’ I asked, even though I knew that Doug was here only for a few days. He had to get back to LA to see if there was anything interesting for him in pilot season. Once a year, the American TV stations make hundreds of pilot episodes for their new shows. In this country it’s done slightly differently: once, long ago, we used to make the odd pilot.

  Irving Tellman answered, ‘Oh, just ‘til Tuesday, Guy. We’re on Park Lane? It’s OK there.’

  ‘We’ve been to some crap charity do tonight. How about you, Guy? Hey, it’s good to see you, bro.’ Doug pumped my arm now. At the end of the table, Tony ate his dinner slowly, chewing properly and putting down his knife and fork in between each mouthful.

  The two girls returned with Peter Saravan and took their places. It was fairly obvious, by the Catherine wheels in their eyes, that they had been taking cocaine in the downstairs toilets. Doug started the introductions: ‘This is Peter …’

  I interrupted him swiftly, shaking the American actor’s hand as hard as I could. ‘Peter Saravan, yes, I know. I love your work. Guy Mullin, how’re ya doin?’

  ‘And this is Vicky and this is … oh, I don’t fucking know, what’s your name, love?’ As sex on legs, Doug could do what he liked and it was OK. The two girls, Vicky and whoever she was, simpered and giggled.

  ‘For the sake of argument, let’s call her Tracey. Right,’ said Doug, ‘I’m just off to the toilet.’ Irving Tellman also seemed, by some extraordinary synchronicity, to need a wee at that very moment. He stood too. Doug turned to me.

  ‘You fancy a line, Guy, or …’

  I declined the pleasure of a furtive snort of white powder in the cramped toilets of Sally’s. I’m the back-up service, not the main act. It doesn’t do for an agent to join in. You have to stand by, go along with things. Tony suddenly spoke up for himself:

  ‘I’ll have his if it’s going,’ he said, breaking decorum somewhat.

  ‘Oh, alright.’ Doug was a little fazed. He looked at me for reassurance that my companion was OK, cool, one of us. I gave it. The three men left the dining room and went downstairs. I was left with a middleweight American movie actor and two pretty but completely out-of-their-depth girls, all as high as kites.

  Peter Saravan leaned over to me and spoke in my ear.

  ‘So, tell me, Guy, you’re a Londoner, right? You’re Doug’s agent over here, right?’ I nodded. ‘Do you have any idea where we can see some serious action tonight?’ I spluttered a typically British sort of Ealing Comedy giggle, indicating Vicky and the other girl, whatever she was called.

  ‘Oh, them,’ he said with disgust. ‘Haven’t the faintest fucking idea who they are. They just kinda latched on to Doug at this fucking charity do.’

  We talked a bit, or rather, I smiled and listened and laughed where necessary. Actors are easy. They only need one, maybe two questions every fifteen minutes or so. In the same way that it would be a truism to say that nurses tend to care for other people, actors do like the sound of their own voices and like them enough not to be overly worried about the content of what they’re saying.

  I have a reciprocal arrangement with Doug Handom’s representation in Los Angeles but it is not exclusive. I can enter into agreements with other US managements over other clients if I so wish. By letting him talk, I had found out from Saravan in under five minutes which company he was with over there, the name of the particular person who looked after him, the names of two producers who might be shooting in England next year, which directors were considered hot at the moment and which British actors, currently living over there, were doing OK.

  Unfortunately, Saravan’s agents were IGA, well established over here already. Big building in Holborn, so nothing there for me but talent leads to talent. Next time I was out there I could look him up and return the favour. It’s all about doing favours. After Doug and Irving returned with Tony, I nipped downstairs solo to do a little favour of my own.

  I didn’t need an address book, I had Kemble’s number there among the thousands of others in the instant-access part of my brain.

  ‘Hi, gorgeous.

  ‘Hello, m’dear. What are you up to?’

  ‘Washing my hair, watching a vid. Nothing.’

  ‘How long would it take you to get up to the West End?’

  ‘Depends.’

  ‘Doug Handom, Peter Saravan, Irving Tellman. Sally’s, Greek St
reet,’ I said.

  ‘Under half an hour. Can you hold them?’

  ‘Please, my dearie darling, if we are to get along, don’t ever question my professionalism and I’ll never question yours.’ I was pissed by now.

  On the stairs, I passed the woman with the back and her consort. She smiled at me, even though she hadn’t a clue who I was. This was living.

  ‘So tell me. What’s Los Angeles like then? Worth a visit?’ Tony asked Peter Saravan with a simple directness that was several centuries of time travel away from normal biz-chat. Saravan’s answer was formulaic.

  ‘Well, I have a large house in the hills, four cars, a pool. You can have a very nice life there.’

  ‘Well, originally I’m from New York,’ said Tellman, joining in. ‘But all the major deals are in LA and the weather’s OK.’ Neither of them bothered to address him by his name, since he was quite obviously a layman, non-useful, not in. I intervened.

  ‘Well, if you work in films, then really it’s the only place,’ I explained. ‘It’s the Mecca of movie madness, so why not be there?’ The usual guff.

  ‘So you’re saying it’s a crap place in reality, but you’ve got to go where the work is?’ said Tony innocently.

  ‘You have to follow your dream,’ said Doug Handom profoundly. I thought of my first trip there, to set Doug up, looking out at 4.00 a.m. from the window of the forbidding Chateau Marmont Hotel where the Brits used to stay and seeing Sunset Strip, a motorway with neon and hookers and fast food and guns in the middle of a desert.

  ‘Sounds like a risky code of practice to me,’ said Tony, ‘following a dream. I think I’ll stick to listening to my dreams and working out what they’re trying to tell me.’ But Doug’s attention was by now elsewhere. Personally I’d rather not know what my new dream was trying to tell me.