'How was Vienna?'
Sarah's door was wide open and I poked my head in. She was sitting behind her desk trying to look busy by scribbling on some contracts, which is pointless since she has nothing to do with drawing them up. Notso has a dedicated department for that. Sarah knows about as much legalese as I do Cantonese.
'Not as closed and paranoid as the media over here would have you think,' she said finally after I had snorted like a horse to get her attention. I know how to push her buttons.
'Really? Hasn't made you think twice about wearing a nappy on your face though.'
'They're all wearing face coverings over there.' She emphasised 'coverings' in an attempt to deflect the disparagement inferred by my choice of vocabulary. 'You had to be masked on set, unless you were on camera.'
'Which just goes to show how stupid and arbitrary it all is - '
'And everyone had to be vaccinated, including visitors, which would have counted you out.'
'You wouldn't see me dead on the set of what amounts to a soft core porn movie.'
'Marco Moretti is something of an auteur Anthony.' Pretty damn sure Sarah's using that word without knowing what it means. I parried:
'He's only an auteur in that his signature is attempting to have naked flesh in every scene. Aside from the face and hands that is.
'Vienna State Opera had opened up, which was really good news.' Sarah changing the subject, presumably not wanting another row with me about what art was or wasn't. 'Not that I had time to go. Shame, I've always fancied it.'
Since Sarah thought I was a cultural snob I thought I'd play as cast: 'You? Sarah Soper? Go to Opera?'
'I would have liked a guided tour of the place, but you're right, I couldn't sit through all that wailing.'
'I should coco. You'd find "Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat" a bit of a stretch.'
'Careful, you're getting dangerously close to my territory.'
True, I was. 'So, crisis over with Joely Davidson?'
'They wanted her to shave.' I must have looked at her blankly though I was pretty sure I got the gist. Sarah averting her gaze, shovelling the contracts into a desk drawer: 'Her intimate bits. I didn't go out there to negotiate the four o'clock shadow on her chin.'
'I rest my case as far as Moretti is concerned.'
'I concede he can be a bit too graphic at times.'
'Even for an auteur?' Sarah glared at me. Sometimes I took the piss without even noticing. 'I thought it was de rigueur for women of Joely's age anyway.'
'What?'
I didn't beat about the bush (excuse the pun): 'Shaved pudenda. I wouldn't have thought there was any need to go out to negotiate. '
'De rigueur, eh Ant? You have personal experience with women of Joely's era?' Rather too much emphasis on the word era for my liking, bringing to attention my age and, by implication therefore, my ignorance of contemporary mores. Sarah's raised eyebrows indicated a shift in our status. Out of the blue - and uncustomarily - she is suddenly teasing me.
'No. But I'm not living on a desert island either.' I've gone all defensive. 'Look, all that passed me by. I'm of an age when pubic hair was part of the erotic mystery. The wrapping on the gift if you like.'
Sarah on a roll now. 'You know, I'm pretty sure these days that remark would be considered either sexist or a non-crime hate incident or both.'
I spluttered. Putting aside for one minute the absolute insanity of calling something 'a non-crime hate incident' (an idiotic classification used by the retards in the police and the judiciary to admonish anyone whose point of view they don't like) I asked Sarah why she considered my remark to be in that category.
'Because it's offensive.'
'How can talking about pubic hair be offensive? And even if it is, why the bloody hell should I care that someone's been offended?'
'Because it's a hate incident.'
'Oh eff off!'
'See what I mean?'
I cannot believe that my profession which I joined because it was once the scourge of the establishment doth hath such people in it. Agents should be encouraging artists to be offensive; it's part of the job description. Instead these days they genuflect to the god of woke.
'You're talking about a woman as an object. A gift.'
'Correction, I'm talking about part of her anatomy as a gift. A gift that heterosexual men over the course of thousands of years have worshipped. But in these days of the gender bender extravaganza where no-one wants to define what a woman is anymore let alone admit to having sexual desire for one, to worship such a thing of beauty would be considered a schoolboy obsession or the naive and unrelenting folly of Neanderthal man.'
'Neanderthal! I couldn't have put it better myself you unreconstituted dinosaur Anthony. You sorry chauvinistic excuse for a contemporary male. You hippy throwback to the 1960s.'
'When boys were boys and girls were girls! Unlike Ruben the hairy arsed Dutch stagehand up in Liverpool right now who wants the right to use the women's toilet despite him packing meat and two veg because he identifies as a woman!'
'That dispute's been solved. Courtesy of Portaloos, so I've been told.'
'Ingenious. So how's the show going?'
'Okay. Last couple of days. It's come together apparently.'
I wondered if Sarah was being a wise arse or knew not what she speaketh of.
'Was that a joke?'
'What do you mean?'
'Come together.'
'So Kieran says.'
'It's the title of a Beatles' song.'
'Well, how would I know, I'm not ninety five like you are. Everything's probably the title of a Beatles' song. I suppose if someone says that she loves you it's the title of a Beatles' song.'
'Well since you mention it…'
Uninvited I took a seat opposite her and without any overture or invitation went off on a pretty impressive riff which, on reflection, might make one question my sanity.
Here it is: (annotated here for posterity's sake and with apologies to Gerald Manley Hopkins)
'(My name is) Eleanor Rigby (and I wanna be a) Paperback Writer (writing) Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds/When I'm 64 (when I'll have) A Ticket To Ride /Across The Universe/ With A Little Help From My Friends/ Because/ I Am The Walrus (and ) I Feel Fine (even though) Yesterday/ Michelle (and) Lovely Rita (were in a) Norwegian Wood (singing )We Can Work It Out/Because/All You Need Is Love (as) Money, That's What I Want /Can't Buy Me Love (so) She's Leaving Home/The End.'
Sarah looked at me as if I'd dropped ayahuasca.
'And that's all my own work, off the top of my head with no reference books, and certainly not a smart phone. A testament to a certain generation who still have a thing called memory.'
Sarah stared at me for a very long time and then, like a patient schoolteacher: ' Very good. You can go now. The door is in the same place as it was when you came in. But, before you do, in answer to your question which you posed what seems like five years ago, Vienna was fine. Spotless as usual. Unlike London which is a veritable toilet in comparison. '
'This means nothing to me: Oh Vienna.'
'What?'
'What do you mean "what'? '
'What are you talking about? What means nothing to you oh Vienna?'
'It's a musical reference Sarah. Unfortunately you were born in an age after the music had stopped.'
'Well thank you for telling someone who is an expert in musical theatre and contemporary pop music that she knows nothing about her field. Is there anything else?'
'Martin Spangler,' I said, dropping him seamlessly into the mix.
'Was this whole prelude starting with 'How Was Vienna' an attempt to get me to discuss Martin?' I didn't verbalise an answer, just replied with a wide-eyed stare. 'Ask Kieran when he's back.'
'I've tried. I don't understand what you've both got against Martin.'
'I've got nothing against him personally.'
'You begged me to come to Notso and then you want me to get rid of half my writers.'
'One. Have you only got two?'
"Figure of speech. Notso represents writers amongst its clientele. You must have heard of the expression.'
'His plays are obscure, I don't understand them. And he's not going to earn any money.'
'You think Shakespeare's obscure.'
'Shakespeare's a pervert. When the seniors were rehearsing "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at stage school I snuck into rehearsal to hear the director say he wanted to see Puck stick his snout in Titania's bottom. I refused to go and see the play.'
'Bottom and Snout are characters in the play.'
'Gosh, really? Oh silly me.' Sarah was making a large bulge in her cheek with her tongue. 'Gotcha.'
'Okay, I walked into that.'
'And then there's Hamlet talking about country matters lying between a maiden's legs. I wonder if those country matters had had a trim.'
I was so shocked that Sarah could reference anything Shakespearean that I could only respond by saying 'But you do think he's obscure, you've said so.'
'Ask me anything.' Sarah suddenly all blasé.
'Who are the lead characters in Two Gentlemen of Verona?'
'Oh come on, no-one knows that.'
'All's Well that Ends Well?'
'I can tell you the two leads in Anthony and Cleopatra are Cleo and Tony. And the lead in Macbeth is a bloke with a funny Scottish name.'
'You're a theatrical agent Sarah, you should know - '
Sarah interrupted forcibly. 'Name me one member of Nasty Cherry?'
'Who?'
'Or Girls Aloud. Come on, I'll make it easy for you. Your era. What was The Spice Girls line-up?' I didn't know and conceded with a barely perceptible shrug. 'See, we all have gaps in our cultural lexicon and, in the main, I don't deal with actors who want to bed down with the Bard.'
I've always been inclined to paint Sarah as stupid not least because of what she once said about Pattie and me but she's not as dumb as she makes out. She came into show business via stage school. Set to be a child star until a sudden burst of early onset puberty saddled her with a rather ample chest and overdeveloped front teeth earning her the unkind sobriquet Seabiscuit and put paid to her ambitions to be the Shirley Temple of the 21st Century. Some chorus girl work in her late teens got her representation by a crappy agency which she then joined as staff before she was twenty. Her world was exclusively musical theatre and teeny pop but contacts from when she was a precocious brat helped turn said crappy agency around which she then bought out and subsequently sold. Joining Kieran at Notso she made director a couple of years back. To be fair, you do learn fast in this job and when she's playing to her strengths she's a canny business person and very good at it. (Caveat: what I consider to be artistic is not one of her strengths.)
'Well, we're not bedding down with the Bard,' I proffered, 'We're bedding down with Martin Spangler.'
'You may be, I'm not.' she said by way of rejection. 'His latest: "Pythagoras" - '
'Is a work of creative genius!'
'Why does he have to use the term meta…meta…whatsit - '
'Metempsychosis'.
'Quite!' she squealed, as if I'd agreed with her. 'Why can't he say reincarnation if he means reincarnation? If you have to spend more time with your head in a dictionary than watching the damn play you've lost your audience.'
'Because Pythagoras is talking to what he believes is God at the time and is assuming God knows the difference between metempsychosis and reincarnation.'
'What is the difference?'
'Read the play. ' I was hardly going to own up to the fact that I had no idea.
'I did read it, otherwise I wouldn't be asking a question about metem-bollocks would I? I didn't even understand every third word, let alone every other.'
'Pythagoras is grandiose. It's like, I dunno, like The Royal Hunt of the Sun. Not that you'd know what that is.'
'I do know what that is. I saw a college production when I was about ten. It's one of those overblown relics from the 1960s.'
'I'll have you know the 1960s was a period of unique creativity unparalleled - '
'Only people who lived through the 1960s say that.'
'Only people who don't remember a thing about the 1960s say that. To make the most of that time you had to not be there.'
Sarah looks at me innocently. She doesn't get the fact that the paradox is a reference to being permanently stoned. Which, if I'm honest, I wasn't. I didn't leave school until 1969 and trying to study philosophy and esoteric questions such as 'why is the word brassiere single while knickers is plural?' zonked out on Afghan Red was probably never going to be a good idea.
No-one wants grandiosity these days - '
'Unless it's a pointless Andrew Lloyd Webber musical - '
'Cheap shot. Nothing wrong with Andrew.'
'For which you'll pay two hundred and fifty nicker a seat.'
'And which will be a sight more entertaining than Martin Spangler, whose work is about as stimulating as a leader column in The Guardian.'
'Blimey, Sarah's muttered wit and acerbicity in the same sentence.'
'And there's a whole page in "Pythagoras" where they speak Latin. Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought he was Greek.'
'He's having a conversation with Julius Caesar.'
'Yeah, on Zoom!'
'It's a theatrical conceit!'
'They weren't even alive at the same time.'
'How would you know that?'
'I looked it up. I'm not just a pretty face.'
Wild horses nearly didn't hold me back from commenting. 'Them not being alive at the same time is the point!'
'What's the play even about?'
Omnia in numeris sita sunt.'
'Don't you swear at me.'
'Sunt Sarah. Sunt. With an ess. You have a one track mind. Must explain why you're obsessed with country matters. Omnia in numeris sita sunt. Everything lies veiled in numbers.'
'My bra size maybe, and the times of the trains to get here in the morning but my lunch order at The Ivy doesn't.'
'The wine list is numbered. And the bill doesn't come in sentences does it, it comes in numbers.'
'You're splitting hairs to make a point.'
'Pythagoras is making the point.' Sarah puffs her cheeks. They may not want quality at Notso but I'm never going to concede that Martin isn't a brilliant writer. 'The play is a metaphor for the hidden world, nothing is what it seems. Pythagoras is the rebel telling his followers that what they believe is not what is, in fact, true.'
'You mean like that maniac David Icke?'
'Why David Icke?'
'I hear Martin thinks the Royal Family are leopards too.
Eh?
'They're not human, they're leopards. Like what Icke thinks.'
'Lizards.'
'What?'
'Lizards, not leopards.'
'Lizards then.'
She waves me away as if the words are interchangeable. I sometimes think the word bozo was invented for Sarah.
'Granted, Martin's a bit of a conspiracy theorist - '
'A bit of!? That's one of the things Kieran really doesn't like.'
'How do you mean?'
'Look, Kieran says he's no good for our brand, he gives us a bad name. Kieran says many people in the business think Martin is mad. But between you and me, Kieran got fed up with Martin trying to get access to his dad. What's more Martin would never speak to Kieran. So Pattie had to ask for him. When she was alive. '
'What? Access to his dad?'
'Yes.'
'Hang on, you told me Kieran and Pattie hadn't spoken to each other since the Baftas in 2019.'
'Face to face maybe. But Pattie tried several times to get hold of him here. Kieran had her blocked on his phone but Pattie left a number of messages with Hilary.'
'Which Kieran didn't answer?'
'Presumably not.'
'When was this?'
'Just before last Christnas was the most recent time she left messages I think. Which is why I'm sure they haven't met face to face for a long time.'
Except that I know what Sarah doesn't: that they met in Pattie's offices - supposedly clandestinely - in January. 'Why did Martin want access to Kieran's dad?'
'He was a diplomat. Ambassador to the UK until ten years ago. Maybe Martin wanted Kieran's dad to confirm the Royal Family really were leopards.'
'Lizards.'
'Them as well.'
'No, really. Why was Martin interested in Kieran's dad?'
'I've no bloody idea, give me a break! I do know that Kieran wasn't happy. I also know that Martin wouldn't want to run into Kieran or set foot in these offices so I'm beyond confused why he opted to stay with you. Beyond that, like John Snow, I know nothing.'
Before I could remark that Socrates said much the same thing before Ygritte in 'Game of Thrones' her office phone rang. 'Saved by the bell' she said as she scrabbled for the receiver. Sighing deeply, she signalled with her eyes: 'Now bugger off.'
I didn't, I just stared at her puzzled. There was a lot to unpick here. Is there any connection between a so-called secret assignment for Pattie, Kieran's dad and Martin freaking out when Pamela went round to see him? One thing's for sure: I have to speak to Martin.
Sarah told whoever was on the phone that she'd hold. She put her hand over the receiver. 'Funnily enough. His last post was ambassador to Austria. Vienna. Before he retired. Kieran's dad.'
And the gods play tricks on us for their sport.
This means nothing to me. Oh Vienna!
Metem-bollocks! 😂 I might have a new favourite curse word.
Another brilliant entry. I feel like I know Sarah. I’ve met the likes of her.
I love Royal Hunt of the Sun. Pretty much anything by Peter Schaefer is stellar. Ever read The Gift of the Gorgon?