A friend once told me that worrying is an effective prophylactic since 95% of what she worried about never happened including - sadly for her, as it turns out - getting pregnant. So as I waited for Martin Spangler in The Espanola in Covent Garden I did some worrying for Britain, praying wordlessly that he wouldn't turn up drunk. Martin's way of dealing with unwelcome news is to not deal with it at all. Even before I phoned him and asked him to lunch he pretty well knew that I was going to tell him Notso wanted to let him go. He has a psychic bent, all the more when he's pissed and his self-censor has taken itself off on an intellectual sabbatical.
I'm well known in The Espanola because I've taken my top-tier writers here for years and I saw no sense in breaking the habit just because I've joined a bunch of miscreants and bottom-feeders at Notso. Since Martin refuses to set foot in Notso's offices anyway on the grounds of being contaminated by 'inferior intellects of sub-reptilian predisposition', and I had no intention of imitating a bad spy film by arranging a clandestine meeting in the garden of St. Paul's Church (aka 'The Actor's Church') a street away, then The Espanola seemed like the best choice. And I don't mind using my (severely limited) expense account on Martin since I'm about to give him some bad news. More to the point, it might make him more amenable to my (underhand) questioning.
I'd be happy to represent him privately but logistics don't really lend itself to such a daft idea. When I phoned him to tell him I was joining Notso one might have been forgiven for thinking the apocalypse had arrived early. His reaction was so momentous and so full of contempt that my subsequent suggestion he came with me caused the kind of disbelief one might expect to witness if one had told Mozart that Don Giovanni was secretly gay. Getting him to turn around may be a tribute to my persuasive skills, but I am currently doubly nervous that he might turn up pixilated as I now have to confide the Notso he holds in such disdain doesn't even want him.
One of the merits of The Espanola is that it serves Napa Valley Chardonnays (at an eye-watering and testicle-clinching price) and as I sipped my first glass I reviewed how I might approach Martin re the Pattie stuff.
Sharon had already warned me not to mention what Pamela had told Tessa because Martin might think they (he and Pamela) were still an item and go ballistic if he got wind that she had gone back to Tessa's the night she had unexpectedly called on him and said he was on edge. Trouble was, if I couldn't mention that, how did I broach the so-called 'secret assignment' for Pattie. How had I heard about it? I couldn't think of a lie that was convincing. Then there was the matter of ethics. If I tell him he's been sacked before I ask him about Pattie he'll clam up, if I tell him after I've tried to interrogate him then I'm being devious.
Thank the Lord for Napa Valley Chardonnays. Not least because towards the end of the first glass, and pondering the quandary Sharon has set me regarding Jerome Tickler, I came up with a little scheme that might feed two mouths with one morsel.
Memo to aforementioned female friend who had an interesting line in prophylactics: worrying about an event does not always prevent the event from happening. And thus I'm about to be part of the esteemed five per cent who have immunity against this. Do I win an award?
The first clue that Martin was far from being as sober as a judge was when he appeared at the door of La Espanola as dishevelled as an old English sheepdog after a hurricane and grinning like an idiot. Martin's big and ungainly at the best of times but when he's pissed his coordination tends to go on safari. (Unfortunately, his maladroitness and his blonde hair also lend themselves to comparisons with Boris Johnson, whom he loathes with a vengeance.)
As he stood just inside the doorway surveying the clientele through squinty eyes my train of thought went on walkabout. Why the simile 'sober as a judge'? Are judges notoriously sober? Not the ones I've known. The judiciary is hardly an exemplar of sobriety any more than it is of justice, as we have begun to see in the last eighteen months. And why the synonym 'grinning like an idiot?' Do idiots grin especially? Wondering where idiots gathered collectively so I might examine this figure of speech, my mind fell on the House of Commons at PMQs (Prime Minister's Questions) on a Wednesday when you have 650 idiots (give or take) lumped together like reluctant inmates in a psychiatric hospital. Morons a-plenty, but none of them especially grinning. Braying like inebriated donkeys at partisan remarks but not particularly grinning. Must strike that synonym from my lexicon.
Martin caught my eye while I was ruminating, waved and staggered over. The next clue to his sobriety was when a masked waiter pulled out a chair for Martin to sit. As Martin offered a 'well met by moonlight' sort of greeting he missed the seat of the chair and ended up on the floor in what looked like a convoluted yoga position. Not so much downward facing dog as half-arsed backwards camel. Having garnered the entire restaurant's attention Martin apologised loudly as the waiter helped him up. His spatial awareness, he announced with a flourish, was on vacation. He then proceeded to blow his nose very loudly on a linen napkin he'd taken from the table before stuffing it into the waiter's breast pocket, simultaneously tapping him on the upper arm and saying 'Thanks Manoel.' (Martin calls anyone in a Spanish context Manoel. Although, despite its name and some dishes on the menu, The Espanola is not typically Spanish.) Manoel patiently replied (probably through gritted teeth but how would one know when most staff are masked to the hilt) that his name was actually Cyril, and then camply pirouetted away as if Wayne Sleep had been his dance master at Pineapple Studios round the corner.
'Like that dirty dishrag on his face is going to protect him from anything,' Martin said, pouring a glass of wine before I could offer him some.
'They're nearly all masked Martin, live with it.'
He narrowed his eyes and looked at me with a pained look as if someone had stuffed the arm of a cactus up his sphincter. I stared right back at him. I wasn't having someone implying that I was a turncoat and a traitor.
'Okay, sorry,' he muttered as he leafed through the menu. 'Who decided what order to put the alphabet in?'
'What?'
'Who decided what order to put the alphabet in? Seriously, it's been bothering me all morning. I mean, forget the mysteries surrounding the origins of the universe, who decided what order to put the alphabet in? Was it a committee, or some bloody dictator issuing a proclamation?'
I was so thrown by the idiotic question coming out of nowhere that all I could think of saying was:
'Don't you think you'd better try stopping?' When he looked at me as though he didn't have a clue what I was talking about I pointed to the bottle of wine. 'This.'
'Ant, I know I'm an alcoholic but I'm not a quitter, I never give up on anything once I've started.' All nonchalant, like a cat pretending he hasn't pissed on your carpet.
'Ever heard of "Just say no" '?
'I've tried saying no but the alcohol is like a hormonally hyped up teenage boy, it just won't listen.'
'How was Wales?'
'Welsh.'
I could tell this wasn't going to go well. Being subtle with a drunk is about as useless as telling the gullible that the whole Covid19 bulshit is a scam. I decided to throw caution to the wind and be direct:
'Martin, I wanted to ask you something delicate. About Pattie.' Martin, who was still scrutinising the menu, raised his head and looked at me with what I could swear was guilt in his eyes. I continued tentatively. 'Were you…'
'No I never bloody slept with Pattie,' he hissed as though he was tired of pronouncing the disclaimer. 'It's all lies put about by the girlfriend of my former girlfriend who wants to discredit me.'
I don't know whether I was more disconcerted by an answer to a question that hadn't even occurred to me or relieved that Martin actually acknowledged his relationship with Pamela was over. If the latter then me mentioning the piece of gossip which originated with his ex and had come to me via Tessa and then Sharon about a 'special assignment' and Martin being on edge wouldn't be so delicate. Either way I was most discomfited by the unlikely image of Pattie and Martin being in flagrante - she had been twenty four years his senior.
'Me and Pattie? It's ridiculous.'
That's what I would have thought, though I recall Kieran mentioning a possible liaison a week or two ago. I was somewhat taken aback even then. I mean, I was Pattie's closest confidante, wouldn't I have known?
'I'm more likely to have shagged my microwaved macaroni cheese from the other night,' he said, turning the pages of the menu as if congress with Pattie wasn't worth another moment's thought.
Given that Martin is a little the worse for wear I'm wondering if he knows he's just made a veiled reference to Philip Roth's 'Portnoy's Complaint' in which Alex Portnoy - The Raskolnikov of jerking off - confesses to copulating with his own family's liver dinner.
I read that book in my late twenties when it had brought back memories of my own embarrassing ventures as a thirteen year old teenager. Although my imagination wouldn't have stretched to offal (or any other foodstuff, even macaroni cheese) I did fashion what I thought might be a good representation of the female sexual organ out of the tube of a toilet roll and some damp cotton wool. It wasn't wildly successful and bore no resemblance (how would I know in 1964?) to the real thing, as I discovered some three years later with Jane Finn in her parents' garage-parked two berth touring caravan when we fumbled and stumbled to the strains of Lovely Rita from Sgt Pepper. Oh happy days
Martin was still waiting for a response to his suggestion that he was more likely to have fornicated with his fusilli y formaggio than with his erstwhile agent. But I now wanted to get to the point
'That wasn't what I was going to ask about Pattie, Martin.'
'Look I know why you brought me here.' It seemed Martin didn't care what I was going to ask. 'It's to soften the blow because Notso don't want to represent me - '
'You didn't want me to go with them anyway.'
'So what? If the ugliest girl in the class doesn't fancy you and you'd rather shag an antelope, it still hurts to know. '
'I've been talking to Sharon - '
'I can't go with Sharon!'
'You said that now Pattie has gone SKA is the only agency left with an iota of integrity.'
'Sharon Kozinsky is an actors' agent - '
'And building a small literary wing on the side!'
'With Tessa Jenkins as the sole director.'
I knew what Martin's beef with Tessa was but he was going to tell me anyway - for the fiftieth time.
'She got off with my girlfriend at the Audio Academy Awards.'
'You were drunk at the time and slagging Pamela off.'
'And Tessa's been bad-mouthing me ever since.'
'Perhaps Pamela told her about your sexual yearnings for macaroni cheese.'
'Very funny.'
Or, more to the point I thought but didn't say, she's told Tessa that you could just be bloody difficult if not impossible
'You're well-versed in psychology Martin. Ever wondered why a psychiatric nurse should be attracted to you?'
'Ha bloody ha. Look, I cannot join the agency of someone who is more than happy to poke her proboscis into Pamela's provocative pudenda.'
If Martin's writing has a fault it is that he's alliterative happy. Easily addressed in editing though. I decided on the direct approach again.
'Last time Pamela visited you she said you were on edge. Quote: very, very edgy.'
'You're speaking to Pamela now are you?'
'It came from Sharon via Tessa.'
'Tessa's got a vicious tongue. I suppose we should be grateful she's got something else to do with it apart from sticking it up Pamela's vagina.' Martin's last remark was loud enough to turn the heads of our neighbouring diners and I wanted to dive under the table. Never given to decorum at the best of times, he gave them the finger and then continued with his assassination of Tessa. 'Look I've got nothing against dykes - ' (Matin you can't say that word!) ' - and one day I might self-identify as one and the woke brigade can go screw themselves - ' (I think there might have been some reverse irony hidden in there somewhere) ' - but Tessa's turned pushing her sexuality on everyone into an art form. Why would she want to represent me? She'd rather order my crucifixion.'
I might have conceded he had a point, there were better choices of agent for Martin really but before I could explain my reasoning Cyril had pranced up to the table.
'Can I take your orders?' he said rather too brightly, as if he'd already forgotten Martin's first attempt at ruining his day.
'If you like,' responded Martin, draining his glass. 'Attention!'
This was uttered so loudly the whole restaurant fell silent, much to my embarrassment. Even Cyril looked around thinking Martin must have been addressing someone else.
'You wanted our orders,' Martin continued. 'The first one is to stand to attention. And while you're at it, bring us another bottle of this muck.' Holding it by the neck Martin waved the empty bottle at Cyril. 'Come on, on the double, left right, left right!' Martin smirking, confident the whole restaurant finds him hilarious. Only drunks can do that.
I was a bit offended. At £38 a throw I'd hardly call that particular Chardonnay 'muck' but I kept my own counsel as Cyril took the bottle, muttering something about effing alcoholics and addicts as he did so.
'I'm addicted to brake fluid mate, I can stop any time I like!' Martin shouted at Cyril's back and then guffawed as if he'd uttered the funniest joke of the week. In the ensuing silence I wanted my shoulders to swallow my head and only conceded to lift my embarrassed eyes from the table once the background noise had resumed.
'Tessa Jenkins is a bloody troublemaker Ant - '
'All her other writers speak very highly of her.'
'Of which five out of seven are women and the two men are gay. I'm straight, white and middle class. The lowest of the low.' Martin spread his hands out to his side as if to say 'That's all of me folks. Am I telling the truth or am I telling the truth?'
'Is she lying then? About Pamela saying you were on edge?'
'Not exactly. I put on a little show for Pam. You know indignant righteousness about losing my girlfriend to a - '
'Please Martin, no.'
' - muff-diving, beaver eating, scissor sister. A rug munching, crack snacking, todger dodger.'
'Put that on Twitter and you'll get arrested.'
'Precisely my point. How can you write anything if you can't offend anyone? This useless tyrannical government and their puppet masters want to stifle freedom of expression because they can't tolerate being ridiculed, particularly by artists and ne-er do wells who hold them in such contempt.'
I nodded in agreement, I didn't need to add anything to that.
'Ant, I put on a show for Pam, I wanted her to feel sorry for me so I put on a big drama and hinted that my life was in peril and at the same time make her think I was doing something important - '
'Like a secret assignment for Pattie?'
'What?'
'You told her you were doing a secret assignment for Pattie.'
'I told her no such thing.'
'Curious.'
'Why's it curious? How's the mendacity of a freshly minted vagitarian curious?'
'No, not that. It's just that…well the night before Pattie died she told me she had someone looking into something for her.'
'Looking into what?'
'A theory she was working on. She didn't specify. Didn't want me to know the gory details. That someone looking into it could have been you. On an assignment for her.'
'Not me squire. Pamela's been lying. I just told her I was researching something big. Which was a lie in itself.'
'But Pattie said to me more or less what Pamela said you told her. That's corroboration. Got an explanation?'
'Not beyond coincidence.'
'Pattie said she was following up something which might have huge implications. She said someone was helping her look into it. Why wouldn't it be you?'
‘Why would it be me? Pattie knows hundreds of people. And people much closer to the powers that be - if that's what it's about - than me.'
I ignored him. 'Which might explain why you were very, very edgy.'
'Do I look edgy to you Ant?' In truth, he didn't. He flicked the back of his hand as if swatting away such a stupid idea. 'Me on edge, you'll believe any bloody thing.'
'You told me not long ago you wouldn't set foot in Notso's offices because you thought Kieran was supping with the devil.'
'So what?"
'What did you mean?'
'Metaphor Ant. Look at the clients he's got. Money, money, money. The love of money is the mother of all abomination, to paraphrase a neglected piece of literature. You know he's not interested in art.'
'And now I hear you want to interview Kieran's dad.'
'So what? That's for my archives, my library. I was after a personal introduction to a diplomat who must have met the world's most famous heads of state. You're trying to join up dots which have no business being joined.'
'Well, you're not going to get a personal introduction.'
'I know that. Ant. Even so, you're looking for conspiracies where there aren't any. Ten years ago when you met me you thought I was a bonkers conspiracy theorist - '
'I did.'
'Well putting aside the fact that a lot of those conspiracies have turned out to be true, you're looking at an expert researcher here. The thing about investigating stuff that most people think is conspiracy theory - even when it's true, like Covid being a scam for example - is that you have to be very, very discerning. People will never believe you until you can demonstrate absolute indisputable fact. And sometimes not even then. Ironically a lot of conspiracies are theories fuelled by the paranoid and me being on a secret assignment for Pattie would fall into that category. It's ridiculous.'
'If you say so.' Does Martin protest too much or is he just pissed? When he's had a few his bodily coordination might resemble a contraption Heath Robinson cooked up but he remains remarkably articulate.
'John Le Carré writes that sort of material. I don't. And me sleeping with Pattie, come on. That's about as likely as Francis Bacon writing Shakespeare's plays. Now there's a conspiracy if ever there was one. And talking of subterfuge, which a lot of conspiracies are, why did you really join Notso?'
'Huh?' I was rather thrown. Suddenly the interrogated is the interrogator.
'Ant, you're an artistic snob, that's why I love you. You adore art. You hold Notso in as much contempt as I do. What's the real reason?'
I didn't want to tell him about me seeing Pattie and Kieran together in her offices at midnight. Apart from Sharon I'm not sure who I can really trust. 'They're the only people who would have me at my age. And I want to keep working.' I added the, quite frankly pathetic, argument about keeping me in fine Chardonnays.
'Bulshit, you're asking too many questions. You're up to something and you're trying to make out it's me that's engaged in subterfuge.'
'No.' Bit of a stalemate here. Neither of us believes the other.
'Pattie killed herself Ant. She wasn't murdered.'
'Why would she do that?'
'Maybe you didn't know her as well as you thought you did.
'Why are you so certain?'
'It's the verdict the coroner returned.'
'Says the man who doesn't trust anything anyone says, particularly anyone in authority.'
'I think we should leave it.'
So do I, I thought. I'm getting mixed signals and there's no point in poking a bear that's pissed and about to get a sore head. No telling what is in Martin's imagination when he's been quaffing. I'm only grateful that when he's working he gives up drinking entirely. Sometimes for months on end.
I was wondering how to fill the hiatus induced by the stalemate when Cyril made his entrance again, timing it to perfection. Martin grabbed the Chardonnay before Cyril could place it on the table and filled his water tumbler with it. About half a pint.
'Have you made up your minds gentle sirs? asked Cyril with all the sincerity Brutus once afforded his pal Julius Caesar. He stood immobile, pencil poised over notepad as if imitating a cartoon of a waiter at a gentlemen's club.
'I'll just have a bacon butty, porky.' The misfired play on words (typical of a drunk) wouldn't have gone down well even if Cyril had been a tad overweight, but since he could have been an extra in a film about some European famine it was a double flop.
'I beg your pardon?' Cyril raised his pencil as if about to stab Martin in the eye.
'A bacon sandwich…Babe.' Martin's chortling pretty much confirmed that he was referencing the nineties film featuring an eponymous pig and so continuing his awful run of punning but Cyril, being almost certainly a member of the gay fraternity, may have taken it as a bit of flirting. His eyebrows screamed at how inappropriate this was coming from an overweight, heterosexual drunkard.
'We don't do bacon sandwiches.' Each word a bullet. 'However we do have Higado y Tocino.'
'What's that when it's out of its chrysalis?'
'Liver and bacon to you.'
'Bring me that then, my boy,' he said with a flourish usually reserved for bad Shakespearean actors. 'And while you're at it bring me my bow of burning gold and my arrows of desire.' Another inane grin from Martin signalling that he thought he was being witty. Drunks will never understand that sober people can't follow the rapid changes in their thought processes. Cyril's eyes wandered, as if was looking for hidden cameras filming an elaborate joke.
I ordered the vegetarian lasagne whilst trying to bat out the image of Martin doing an Alex Portnoy on me with his liver. Cyril snatched our menus and pigeon-toed away.
It was Martin's turn to be direct: 'So now you've told me I'm about to be sacked, what do you suggest I do for money?'
'I haven't told you you're about to be sacked yet.'
He gave me the withering look he employed so often to those he considered intellectually inferior. 'How hard did you fight for me Anthony?'
'I wanted to carry on representing you. My conscience is clear.'
'A clear conscience, Ant, is usually a sign of a bad memory.'
'I've had an idea.'
'Oh yes?'
'About money. Courtesy of Sharon Kozinsky.
'Hit me. I'm all underpants.' (I think he meant ears.)
'You know who Jerome Tickler is?'
Martin looked at me as if I'd left my brain at home. 'THE Jerome Tickler?'
Yes, I'd said. That Jerome Tickler. I'd had the idea whilst nervously sitting waiting for Martin to pitch up. Given that I'd been more reluctant to meet with Tickler than to give a blow job to a sexually diseased odd-toed ungulate I could understand the suspicious cloud that slowly but surely descended over Martin's face. When I suggested he could be a candidate for ghosting Tickler's memoirs he thrust two fingers in his mouth and mimed throwing up on the table. If his liver wasn't about to suffer the indignity of being shagged maybe it could be puked on instead.
I'd calculated that if I met Tickler (yes, yes, forget about the BJ) I could maybe sell Martin as an independent writer not attached to an agency but represented by me alone and therefore not likely to be corrupted by any agency's identity, brand or agenda. (This is all bulshit but who cares. Tickler might bite because as far as politicians are concerned everyone who interviews them has an agenda.)
And since Martin's first play back in 2011, which made a big splash, was set in the world of politics Tickler might even have heard of him. Most politicians haven't a clue about theatre but Jerome has show-biz in his blood.
I know Sharon's idea had been for me to get in there since he was looking for an agent and in that world I probably know him better than anyone but Romey - as he was to his friends - might still be somewhat wary of me. I was hardly a moral prig back in the seventies when we had both been in 'Jericho' but he might remember that I had made it abundantly clear that his uninvited fondling of the genitals of fellow cast members (of either sex) was not really on. Jerome took offence at that, particularly as my sentiments met with the approval of most of the chorus.
My, how times have changed! Eat your heart out 'Me Too'. In an age when touching a woman's upper arm might provoke a visit from the police he might not like to be reminded of that. And I'm sure he wouldn't want the public to know. Particularly when he's made some rather robust statements about sexual harassment recently, specifically referencing trans issues. Which gave me some sort of leverage when I approached him. I'd thought about what Sharon had said about the world changing forever in the next twelve to twenty four months. I'd have to be stupid not to admit that Romey could be a wonderful resource. I may not have wanted Jerome Tickler back in my life but we all have to make sacrifices.
(It's an irony not lost on me that in these days when a man - or woman come to that - could be severely censured for inadvertently resting his - or her - hand on another's thigh over lunch that hard core pornography is readily available to all and sundry. Whereas back in the day when it was accepted that people played with each others' bits without so much as a bat of the eye we'd only just stopped airbrushing the genitals out of photos of naked models.)
I watched as Martin guzzled the last remnants of the second bottle (I'd had half a glass). He'd drunk it so quickly there hadn't been much time for him to speak or make more bad jokes whilst I had been considering my strategy. Despite Martin's initial reaction to Tickler's name would it really be that much of a hard sell? If he'd wanted to interview Kieran's dad surely he wouldn't baulk at Jerome Tickler? You might despise many a character and their deeds but would a writer really give up the chance of interviewing someone like Stalin? Martin's a hell of a skilled researcher/interviewer who could get the most intimate details from reluctant interviewees. Think Frost/Nixon. Surely he's going to jump at the chance of interviewing someone who had been in the corridors of power since the early days of the first Blair government?
Hopefully I can persuade him before our lunch arrives and he does whatever he's planning to do with his liver and bacon (eat it I hope).
I thought I'd better order a third bottle.
Scheming or what?
16th June 2021
Whoa! Now that’s a scene to be played out on TV. I love these characters. How fun they are to play. Although, I must admit, in the real world’s extra wokeness season, they’ll condemn the jokes as they try to stifle their laughter. Can we please bring this kind of comedy back? Why do people got to get their panties in a bunch over some words. No one told me I had to be responsible for everybody else’s feeling all the time. Sheesh.
Thanks for the refreshing and hilarious update. These characters are so fun.