The Right Man (4 page)

‘Guy, I’m
really sorry to call you like this.’

‘Pas de
problemo, Susan. I like to speak to a real person at least once a month. How’re
Dave and Polly?’

‘They’re
fine. He loves the tennis racquet.’ I’m godfather to Dave, the Planters’
eldest. There are some agents who prefer to keep all their client relationships
on a purely business level, knowing nothing about their clients’ personal lives
or inner thoughts. They don’t really take any interest in what makes an artist
tick, so long as he or she is still ticking. I am not that kind. I couldn’t
operate like that. I like to know everything that is going on. It’s more
satisfying this way, more fun, and also, I believe, better business in the long
run. Artists trade off their emotional life — they’re a one-product line — and
it’s as well to know what’s going on in it so that you can get a feel not only
for what they say they want but for what other possibilities there might be.
What they may want in, say, a year’s time, so that you can use the old intuition.

‘Have
you spoken much to Jeremy recently?’

‘Well,
we haven’t had one of our curries for a while, but I was at the recording
Friday before last, so … Why?’

‘The halfwit
has gone off with one of the bimbos, Chrissie or Bella or Samantha or
something, something tacky like that, some piece of furniture. Do you know her?
He says he’s in love with her. Well, he sort of nodded sheepishly when I
challenged him about it. He means it, Guy, he hasn’t been back here for eight
days, except once when I was at work, to pick up his camera equipment, the
little bastard.’

‘Oh, Lordy
Lord.’

‘He
didn’t mention any of this to you?’

A ‘definitely
not’ noise from me.

‘No,
well he wouldn’t, would he? Cowardly little shitbag. I’m sorry to do this to
you, Guy, but I’m really distraught back here. The kids are going bonkers. Did
you know anything about all of this? Anything at all?’

‘Christ,
no. Oh, this is awful.’ After years on the phone I can have a very convincing
tone when required.

I knew
that Jeremy had done a fair amount of shagging in the past. He was easily
flattered by the attentions of women — well, by any attention, come to think of
it — and I suppose in the last couple of years he had been increasingly exposed
to temptation.

‘I
think there’s a photograph of them together, of him coming out of her house or
something yukky like that, Guy.’

A
tabloid headline using the famous Planter delivery shuttled across my mind and
flickered there awhile. ‘J-Jack the L-Lad J-Jeremy W-Wants to P-Plant One On ‘Er.’
I must admit that, for the teensiest moment, I did consider whether this affair
would be a good thing or a bad thing for Jeremy, career-wise.

‘Oh,
no. That’s the last thing we need,’ I said, and then, ‘How is it your end
sewer-rat—wise?’

‘Oh,
you know, pretty hopeless really. We had the
Sunday Mirror
going through
the dustbins last night — I thought it was an urban fox. Luckily they didn’t
wake the kids. And last week I had this woman with a bicycle pump and a CND
sticker on her duffle-bag, claiming she came from some women’s group and would
I like to talk to her, she knew how I felt, et cetera. Turned out she was from
the
Sun.
I saw her off the premises. I mean, he’s only a game-show host,
for Christ’s sake. A cheap, shitty little scummy fucking arsehole of a
game-show host.’

I
murmured an affirmation. I reminded her to ring round any relatives and friends
and warn them not to be taken in by phone calls from anyone who was ‘an old
friend of Jeremy’s’ but who’d ‘lost his number’.

‘They’re
not really doorstepping us or anything. Yet. But me and the kids had one of
those guys with the snoopy lenses bugging us in the supermarket.’

I
crushed the bit of me that was disappointed that my client wasn’t considered
worth twenty-four-hour surveillance by the gutter press and tried to deal with
what was actually happening to my friend.

‘Listen,
Susan, I didn’t know about this, I promise you. I knew about that stupid …
What was her name?’

‘Selina
Barkworth.’ One of Jeremy’s flings. The one I knew that Susan knew about.

‘Yeah.
I knew about that but that was ages ago. But this… He’s kept it very quiet,
which isn’t like him, is it?’

‘No,
that’s why I’m worried, Guy. I’m …’

Oh,
lawks. I really can’t stand hearing someone cry down the phone. Especially
Susan, who isn’t the crying type — I mean, who doesn’t, I mean, she’s usually
so strong. Being a man, even one who spends all day in an office full of women,
I can’t just let emotional or sad things happen. I have to try and make them
better, I can’t help it. I can’t just sit there and empathize.

‘He’s a
fucking stupid shitty bastard,’ I said, and then in slightly less than perfect
Planter, ‘He’s a f-fart, he’s a w—wanker, he’s p-p-pathetic, what does he think
he’s doing? He’s an arsehole,’ I added, and then, rather inappropriately, ‘Re’s
a c-c-cunt.’

Luckily,
I don’t think she was listening to me at all, anyway. My direct line was
bleeping and I pushed it on to hold. Only eight people have the number of my
direct line, so I knew it must be one of my heavy seven, or Liz.

She
snorted a half-laugh. The direct line stopped bleeping. Whoever it was had
given up, or Joan had taken it.

For a
moment, I was aware of a twingette of jealousy. I’m sure guys like Jeremy
actually have a nicer time than Mugs Mullin here on the end of the phone. Sara
Henderson’s husky voice came snapping up to me from the depths: ‘He’s done this
before.’ For .guys like Jeremy, and Bob Henderson, whoever he was, there would
always be new bimbos at the end of the rainbow.

‘You
feeling a bit better now?’ I said, and added, ‘And listen, call me any time,
OK? I mean it, any time.’

‘Thanks,
Guy. I’m sorry. I feel terrible. I didn’t even ask how you were.

‘Oh, I’m
fine, fine,’ I said. ‘Well, reasonable really. My father died last week, so …
but apart from that I’m fine.’

‘Your
dad died? Oh, Guy, I’m sorry, I didn’t know. And here’s me blubbing down your
phone.’

‘No, it’s
OK. We knew he was going to. I’ve got to sort out all the gubbins, though, that’s
the only pain.’

‘I’m
sorry, Guy. Rave you had the funeral?’

‘Last
Wednesday, no, tell a lie, Thursday.’

‘And
how’s your mum?’

‘Unchanged.’

I don’t
know why, but Susan was the only person with whom I could talk about the
inconveniences and realities of life without fear of intrusion. None of the
women in the office knew I even had a father, for instance. And with Liz, it
was always best to keep problems down to a minimum. I didn’t want to load her
down. Liz was stressed enough as it was, stuck indoors all day with our
progeny. I don’t think she or I had realized what an enormous task having a
child would be, and how career-compromising. But Susan, on the other hand,
seemed to have an extraordinary ability to soak things up without throwing any
of them back at you. Confidences and disclosures were safe with her and I hope
she felt safe with me. We got off the phone and I immediately got Joan to put
in an inconsequential and routine call to Harry, the producer of
Planter’s
Revenge,
which was the name of Jeremy’s latest vehicle. Harry was in a
meeting and would call me back. I accepted that nonchalantly. No point in
sounding any alarm bells yet. I kicked the door back open and waved across at
Naomi that I needed a chat when she was off the phone. I called Joan in for the
rest of the afternoon’s bumf.

‘Simon
Eggleston called, something about his tour dates not fitting in with
The
Bill.
I’ve told him they’ll have changed again by September anyway but he’s
fretting. It’s John Egan’s birthday on Tuesday. I’ve got you a card, here, and
Jeremy Planter called you but said it’s OK because he was biking something
round to you and you would know what it was all about.’

I pride
myself on being able to have my face register absolutely nothing of what I am
thinking if it’s a question of avoiding unnecessary upsets. Even Joan, who’s
known me three years after all, would have no idea that the package from
Planter would have any significance other than routine. I OKed John Egan’s card
— we never sign things in this business, we ‘OK’ them — sixty-five, bloody
hell, he was getting on, and left Joan to sort out Simon Eggleston and his
National Theatre/television dates clash.

I went
into the main office where Tania, our accountant, was putting on her jacket.

‘I’m
just taking Cleopatra for a walk, OK?’ she said in her squeaky little girl’s
voice.

At the
word ‘walk’, the large tail of a very ancient Alsatian dog started banging
against the metal underside of her desk. Cleopatra got up stiffly and tottered
to where her lead was kept on the door. I don’t know what Tania saw in her dog.
Five operations and arthritis in three knees. Anyone else would have surely
given up on her years ago but Tania had a morbid attachment and seemed to love
her more for her pitiabiity. I’m not being unfair here: Cleopatra had been six
years old and fairly smelly when Tania first got her out of Battersea Dogs’
Home, so there must have been something in Tania that preferred an ill dog to a
fit one. Tania is a completely kind-natured girl, or I should say woman because
she is over thirty after all, even if she does still have the high, scratchy
voice of a nine-year-old. She cares about things and seems to live her life in
a constant torment over animals. Articles about battery farming, vivisection,
the ivory trade, zoo conditions and veal transportation have, at various times,
been pinned by her on to the cork board. And on her computer, a wealth of
wildlife stickers. Anyone accidentally kicking the lampshade collar around
Cleopatra’s neck, when she had doggy eczema last year, would get the kind of
look from Tania that could make you feel guilty for weeks. She was the best
part-time book-keeper ever, though, and probably the only person in the office
who really knew the inner workings of Mullin and Ketts.

Naomi Ketts
was wearing the big pink jacket. I’ve often thought that a darker colour would
suit her complexion better, and something without the shoulder pads and wide
pockets might make her seem less daunting, but I would never suggest it,
despite a decade of proximity. We don’t have that kind of relationship. Anyway,
her sartorial aggression is probably deliberate; she likes to have people on
the defensive. Through the partition window in Naomi’s office where I was
slouching on a filing cabinet, I saw Joan signing for a Jiffy envelope.

‘Oh,
typical bloody man. Fucking typical male behaviour. It’s pathetic. You’re all
the same,’ said Naomi. ‘Little bit of cash in the pocket, little bit of
success, couple of TV shows and whoopsie doopsie I think I’ll trade in the bint
for a more nubile model.’

‘Yeah,
I agree. It is rather standard bloke stuff,’ I said, ‘but we’ve never been
under any illusions about our Mr Planter’s moral standing, now have we?’

I
raised my eyebrows at Joan and she came in and gave me the envelope, closing
Naomi’s door again. It was addressed to me and marked ‘Personal’.

Not
wishing to tell tales out of school, and Naomi Ketts does have some remarkable
qualities, but an awareness of the effect she has on people is not one of them.
Even at her age and stature, she seems determined still to see herself as a
hard-done-by little girl. Once I saw her petting in a corner with a cameraman,
saying with a child’s lisp, ‘Pleathe look after me, won’t you, becauth I get tho
lonely and lotht.’ A bizarre sight, particularly taking her height into
account. To justify her hopeless love life, she would say: ‘What other kind of
men could someone like me get?’ Yes, Naomi had had a lot of trouble finding the
right man. I had tried persuading her that ‘Hello, are you the man who’s going to
have visiting rights to my children?’ is not the most enticing of pick-up
lines, but then she did have a point that most men would find a woman her size,
with an aggressive sense of humour to match, somewhat threatening.

‘What
do you expect from the male of the species? Different bloody planet! Well, he’s
a dickhead, that’s all I can say,’ she said.

‘Yes,
we’ve known that for years, but a very talented and popular one — well, popular
anyway,’ I said, tearing open the package. ‘Don’t worry, though, I’m on the
case. I just wanted you to know in case we have a “life-change” situation on
our hands.’

‘Well,
he’s your client. You know how to handle him. I don’t want to have anything to
do with the little slit. God! Men!’ And she threw her little gravel-bag toad
against the picture of Steve McQueen on her wall.

‘Fair
enough,’ I replied. ‘I’ll let you know if it gets to RFA dimensions.’

RFA is
Mullin and Ketts jargon for Red Fucking Alert. In this interchange I was using
it to imply the danger of losing a valuable client. You see, when a man or
woman, but usually a man — as Naomi put it so succinctly — ditches one partner
suddenly for a younger model, it signifies a possible desire for ‘life-change’.
This might be perfectly harmless, but more often than not, the publisher,
editor or producer is the next to be dropped, and then, inevitably, the agent.
This Bella/Chrissie! Samantha could be working on our Jeremy even now,
suggesting new vistas to him. The new sex had obviously made him feel confident
enough to abandon his wife and kids. In the après-sex, she might be urging him
to new professional heights, inspiring him to bigger, better shows, tougher
deals, a new agent.