All to Play For (16 page)

Another hand flapped, and Selina was glad to see that the handsome man was going to speak. He had a poise she admired; confidence in his good looks, articulate cleverness, and impeccable manners.

“Jonathan Proulx, script editor. You didn’t mention single drama: am I right in assuming Screen Two will remain unchanged?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to overlook single drama. I’m still considering how best to schedule it. This is something I would like to discuss with you, Peter.” Peter looked up in surprise, and consented willingly.

“Sonia Longbow, producer. What about new writing?”

“Again, I shall give that special consideration.”

“Morag Fishman, Department Manager. Are you intending to set fixed prices, and how soon will we know?”

“Yes, and soon.” Chris pursed his lips inscrutably. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be mysterious, but it’s very early days, I’m sure you appreciate that.”

Morag did appreciate that, and a lot more besides. Quietness descended as everyone pondered the implications. Chris was about to close the meeting when another hand shot up.

“Sally Farquar-Binns, script editor on
The Old Curiosity Shop
. Do you mean you want another Dickens, or something different for the classic serial?”

Chris shrugged. “What have you got?” he smiled a happy smile: this was the kind of response he could work with. If only they were all like Sally. This gave him an opportunity to quit while he was ahead, so he drew the meeting to a close, promising they’d hear from him very soon. He caught Peter’s eye and mimed that he would call him, then left the room followed by Selina, who was followed by Jonathan’s eyes. As the door swung to behind her Chris heard a voice announce as if through a tannoy, “Ladies and Gentlemen: Chris Briggs has left the building”. He was annoyed but ignored it, and they returned to his office in silence.

*

That night Chris met Catherine at Covent Garden to see
Cosi Fan Tutte
as guests of her senior partner and his wife. The stalls were hot and stuffy, as usual, but he quite liked the music which was mercifully cheerful – a vast improvement on the Wagner they had seen last time. One great advantage of opera was that you could close your eyes, wear an expression of concentrated pleasure, and think about something entirely different without fear of giving offence or being disturbed. He had been too busy since the Drama Department conference to give it proper thought, and this was a good opportunity.

Clearly it had raised unforeseen problems, which he would have to deal with. The drama crowd as a whole were a race apart from the rest. Any television producer was serious and committed to their work, willing to walk through fire for it if necessary, guarded and sceptical of any proposed change to their work procedures. The drama lot had the reputation of acting like prima donnas but Chris had always thought this a superficial judgement; certainly they would name-drop with the best, but he had known news producers who threw outrageous tantrums, and documentary makers who would lie through their teeth in order to get their idea off the ground. The drama peoples’ egos were no bigger than anyone else’s, they just expressed themselves more vividly. What made them different?

The music trilled and charmed him as he studied the singers giving their all. They seemed to be discovering the music for the very first time: what a superb skill, he realised, to repeat the same notes, the same expression, the same actions over and over, probably a hundred times before the first night, and then perhaps a hundred more times in performance, and
still
make it fresh. He could never do that. He had a low boredom threshold which required him to find a new challenge every time he mastered a skill. Is that what it means to be an artist? Rejoicing in the music, the thing itself, for its own sake; living in the moment?

Drama producers want to make great art. In fact, they think they do. They see themselves following the same process as the live arts: they pick a script and spend a couple of years making it with the best actors and technicians they can find, refining it and perfecting it in the edit. Factual programme makers had an opposite approach: they would pick a subject and chase off in pursuit with a minimal crew, shooting whatever footage they could. The programme would only develop a structure and a clear message in the editing room, when the material was sorted, most of it being rejected, and the narration would be written last. The drama method was essentially about creating a vision and then realising it as closely as possible. The factual method was about discovering as you created on the hoof. There was very little imagination involved, and that explained why factual producers were easy to work with; they were up-front, pragmatic, sharp and responsive, ready to drop something instantly in favour of something better. Drama producers, in contrast, were tenacious and stubborn, refusing to allow any dilution of the purity of their work, which must flow and surprise and engage as cleverly as any novel, play or film. Most of them had started in theatre, and many no doubt aspired to make feature films. A handful of BBC films had been released to cinemas, but without notable success. There was a very strong lobby to extend into features on a commercial level, but the British film industry was in a terrible state and there was little hope of improvement under the current government, so it really couldn’t be justified on any level, as Chris saw it: they were a public broadcasting body, and as such they should make drama for broadcast to the masses, not arty films for trendy little cinemas.

In his view it was absurd to consider television as an art form on the same level as opera, theatre or film. Television was a wonderful medium for bringing all those things into peoples’ homes, but even then, the viewing figures for such programmes were always low. High art was not what the masses wanted, as
The Late Show
was currently proving. Set up as a five-nights-a-week arts review it was already reducing its broad canvas and would shortly be on only three or four nights a week. London’s finest arts journalists presented the show, and if they couldn’t get the public interested, who could?

Chris felt he had found the key to understanding the Drama Department. The hands-off attitude of past controllers had allowed them to believe in themselves as creators of significant art. They had let the viewing figures persuade them that millions of people sat transfixed by their shows, whereas he knew perfectly well that most families kept the telly on the same channel all night and didn’t even pay it attention; homework, ironing, cooking, eating all taking place with the telly providing a pleasant moving wallpaper and a comforting murmur in the background. The drama folk had some hard lessons coming their way. Television in the nineties was no art form: it was a medium of communication, and like the Royal Opera, it was also a business. You couldn’t put on obscure new music all the time if you wanted bums on your seats, and the government would be wrong to subsidise that policy. You had to give people what they were prepared to pay to see: a regular diet of Mozart and Bizet, with the occasional experimental piece to satisfy the opera buffs. Culture was all well and good, but the bills had to be paid. The BBC could learn a lot from the Royal Opera House and the way it was run. Maybe there was even a documentary series in it?

After the performance they said goodbye to Sir David and Lady Julia who went straight home to Weybridge. Catherine looked very tired and Chris proposed forgetting their plan to have a Thai meal in Soho, but she insisted that she wanted to go, so they did.

They sat at a first floor window table which gave them privacy and a view of Shaftesbury Avenue, where the theatregoers were turning into night-clubbers. After ordering and tasting the wine, Chris took Catherine’s hand and squeezed it gently.

“Anything wrong?” he asked. She was never one to make a big fuss about anything; one of the most stoical women he had ever met.

She shrugged and sighed. “I’ve got my period.”

“Ah.” They looked into each other’s eyes sadly and sympathetically. There was nothing more to say.

“It’s not the end of the world,” he said gently.

“I’m thirty-nine. Natasha’s four already. We’ve blown it.”

“Do you want to go for tests? IVF?”

Catherine sighed and shrugged again. “Not really. Yes, I do. No.” She cupped her face in both hands, trying to rub her eyes without spoiling her make-up, and shook her head. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

Chris was concerned. If they weren’t in a restaurant he would have given her a hug, but as it was he put his hand on her knee under the table, and rubbed it. Their starters arrived, forcing him to sit up.

“Come on, have something to eat,” he encouraged, and she picked at her spicy prawns while he embarked on his chicken and coconut soup. He felt he should be making a kind and supportive speech, but didn’t know what to say. Women’s hormones had always mystified him. He sipped his soup and watched her.

“If only I’d got pregnant again two or three years ago it would all have worked out perfectly. The family would be complete, Natasha would have a sibling, and I’d be able to concentrate on my career. We should have tried harder when the time was right.” Catherine stabbed the last prawn and bit it in two. Her deep brown eyes met his light hazel eyes in unmasked resentment. Chris looked pained.

“Don’t try and pin the blame on me, Cathy. You know that’s not fair.”

“It wasn’t my idea to restrict sex to Sunday evenings.”

“That’s Sarah’s night off.”

“It might suit you and Sarah, but it doesn’t suit my ovaries. Anyway I’m sure most couples find a way to make love when there are other people in the house.”

“I can’t relax properly. You know that. It just wouldn’t work.” Chris was tense now; she was walking on thin ice. “It wouldn’t matter if her bedroom weren’t next to ours.”

“Let’s move house then.”

Chris adored the house, and so did Catherine. They would never find such a place anywhere else unless they had a million pounds to spare. The only other room they could put the nanny in was the little loft conversion currently used as a gym. Even if they did put her up there, which would be a lot less comfortable for her, it would mean that she wouldn’t hear Natasha in the night, which would mean that Catherine or Chris would have to get up whenever Natasha wet the bed, which was still about twice a week.

Chris sat back and gazed at his wife gazing out of the window at the lively street. A waiter cleared their plates and refilled their glasses with Sancerre.

“So what you’re really saying is that you’ve
got
to have another baby.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

Chris raised his eyes and immediately stopped himself, sensing an angry woman afflicted by hormones about to accuse him of treating her like an angry woman afflicted by hormones.

Catherine spoke slowly and clearly so that even the densest of men could understand, “Even if I got pregnant tonight, I would be forty when I had the baby, which means it would be very hard on my health, not to mention my career and I can’t afford to set myself back at this stage if I’m going to make it to QC. And it’s hard enough finding time to spend with Natasha. How can I make time for a baby and more time for Tasha and put in all the work I need to do and turn up at all the bloody social events we get invited to?”

“Look. Why don’t we quit while we’re ahead? We’ve got a gorgeous little girl and everything else is going really well.”

“I don’t think it’s good for her to be an only child.”

“In China they’re only
allowed
one child.”

“So all the kids have the same experience. British kids have siblings. Natasha needs one. Loneliness is the worst thing that can happen to a child.”

“She isn’t lonely, she’s got lots of friends. Anyway her sibling would be at least five years younger than her, that’s not much company for her is it?”

“Exactly!”

Chris was lost. “So what do you want?”

“I don’t know!”

The waiter’s reappearance was welcome, and the table was soon covered with fragrant dishes.

They ate in silence for five minutes.

Finally Chris tried a new suggestion. “You’re under a great deal of pressure at work, aren’t you darling?”

“I usually am.”

“Have you thought that you could give it up?”

“No. Out of the question. I’d go up the wall stuck at home all day.”

“You wouldn’t have to be stuck at home, you could work part-time maybe.”

Catherine put down her chopsticks. “Have you thought about giving
your
job up? Natasha would love to see her father more than once a week. You needn’t get bored, you could find a little job – work for a charity perhaps.” Catherine’s tone was light but her expression acidic.

“Okay, okay. Point taken. I’m only trying to help.”

“Well try harder.”

“I’m just looking at the situation objectively, that’s all.”

“When
don’t
you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You never talk about what you
feel
. Sometimes I wonder whether you’ve got any feelings left.”

“Now you’re being ridiculous.”

“Fine. Tell me what you, Chris, feel about our children, born and unborn.”

“Catherine.” Chris massaged his forehead with one hand. “What are you trying to do? I love Tasha to bits, you know that. If I had another kid I’d love it too. I’d put up with the noise and the smells and the mess and the expense and the inconvenience for the sake of its little tiny fingernails and its darling gummy smile – ” He stopped because Catherine was sobbing silently into her napkin. “I’m sorry.” He rubbed her knee under the table. “You did ask.” She nodded and hurried off to the Ladies.

Chris finished up a couple of dishes as he contemplated the strange complexity of the female. Catherine used to be one of the most sensible women he had ever met, with a crystal-clear legal mind, and now look at her: there could be no doubt that her hormones were to blame. That would pass eventually, he supposed, but it might take years. What a prospect. He would just have to ride the storm as best he could. He loved her, she was his mate for life. They had met at Oxford, recognised each other as soulmates, and set out together on the path to the top. They had been rock solid together all that time, unless you counted Chris’ one minor sexual adventure in Edinburgh, but that was before they married. There were bound to be problems along the way. No matter, he was equal to the challenge.