Writing for Nothing Read online

  — Important? I hated it. The writer needs to grow up.

  — You would say that.

  — What’s that supposed to mean?

  — So what were the two of you talking about?

  — The two of who?

  — You and Rachel. I suppose you were taking her cigarettes and telling her how much you hated her play.

  — Well as a matter of fact, that’s exactly what I was doing.

  — You really think she values your judgement?

  — I don’t think she values anyone’s judgement. I think she’s an arrogant little bitch.

  — Oh really? And what else?

  — What else what?

  — Don’t get your hopes up.

  — What hopes?

  I’d like to throw this hot coffee right in her face, but of course I simply sit at the end of the table smiling. Madeleine must be humoured. The enormity of her failure must never be forgotten. It never really worked out for her, did it, acting. Not once Daddy’s influence began to decline. Not once the connection with ‘Daddy’ began to shut more doors than it had opened. All Madeleine ever had, let’s face it, was her beauty – clear white skin, the curtain of hair, lamp-like eyes – and her presence, which she still has, naturally, even now – when she puts the glasses back on the end of her nose, and looks at me over the top of the frame, like a degenerate schoolmistress, wearing that silk nightdress or whatever it is, that used to make her body so subtle and desirable but now clings to it with the cruel precision of supermarket meat-wrapping and brings to mind that most horrible of words: slut.

  — Don’t hate me.

  — I don’t hate you, Madeleine.

  — I can see it in your eyes.

  And now this terrible play. Terrible because she’ll set her heart on it, and be disappointed. She’s always used for readings. She’s always here. Waiting. She’s always available. But when it comes to the performance, that’s when they look for someone more fashionable, harder to get, more ‘interesting’ – someone better, to put it bluntly. The theatre doesn’t want her any more, that’s the truth. If you ever see Madeleine now, she’s that psychiatric patient cutting herself in one episode of a TV drama – or if she’s lucky she’s sitting in an eighteenth-century drawing room, embroidering bitterly, while her niece, or her ward, or something like that, lies under the trees with a sexually voracious aristocrat. The theatre simply doesn’t want her – her tired flesh, her brittle voice. But she’s always here. Waiting. Too grand to wash up. Too much of an artist to take the knife out of the marmalade and put the lid back on. Too charismatic to wipe those smears off the windows or pull her own hair – great long greasy clots of it – out of the plughole in the bath – I have to hook it out with a piece of wire and flush it down the toilet. And meanwhile the niece or the ward is lying under the trees, and the head of the young aristocrat has disappeared under her skirts.

  — Admit this play gets under your skin.

  — I never said it doesn’t have its powerful moments.

  — Admit it’s extraordinary, can’t you. Admit that that’s why we’re both sitting here at half past five in the morning talking about it.

  — I’m not talking about it.

  — I’ve noticed.

  — What’s that supposed to mean?

  — You’re not talking about it because you’re a man.

  Oh I see. Of course. Because I’m a man.

  — You’re not talking about it because you feel threatened by it.

  — I feel threatened? Excuse me?

  That’s right, Madeleine: if all else fails, let’s reduce everything to some kind of unanswerable gender-based bullshit.

  — Yes. Of course you do. In all sorts of ways.

  — Name one.

  She can’t of course. Instead she takes off her glasses and stares out of the window as if she didn’t hear. The sun’s really quite intense now. We’ve been meaning to put up blinds for years. I hate the way the milk warms up in the milk bottle. And once it’s warmed up even once, you can put it back in the fridge, you can use it again, but it always has that smell.

  My mum and dad are standing in the hall. The parquet floor. The stairs with their mahogany stair-rail winding elegantly upwards. They look humble and a little suspicious. If my dad had a cap he’d ’ve doffed it and be feeding the circumference from one hand to the other like the servant with bad news in a silent movie. My mum’s holding some terrifying home-grown gift. We don’t touch. We don’t kiss. We don’t greet. It’s not part of our vocabulary. Of course they would like love, but what right have they to expect love when they never taught me how to express it?

  Then Madeleine appears. Kisses my father (he blushes), hugs my mother, takes the gift (‘How wonderful! Thank you so much!’), removes their coats, shows them the coat closet (‘Oh,’ says my mum, ‘someone’s been scribbling on the walls.’ ‘Yes, isn’t it sweet?’ says Madeleine ‘Apparently there were some children living here’), makes tea (this doesn’t come naturally to Madeleine, as my mother immediately detects, looking sideways at my dad with compressed lips – how she longs to be warming that pot, counting out that tea, doing it all as it should be done), and finally unwraps the present, which turns out to be not the thick sweet marmalade I’d imagined from the weight of it, but an ugly ‘crystal’ vase, a fat block of glass which ten years from now I will duck, screaming, to avoid, as she hurls it at me and makes it shatter into aquamarine flakes against the bedroom wall. For the moment though, unaware of the future, she places it graciously on the table (‘How lovely’) and catches my eye in a way that makes me feel like the happiest human being alive.

  She’s pretending to be the girl-next-door. She’s dressed almost like a child, with a black velvet band in her hair. I wonder what my dad makes of this? Does he ever think about sex? Does he ever wonder what it would be like to sleep with Madeleine? Lock himself in the bathroom on a Saturday afternoon? Jerk himself off in a hot bath while my mum’s baking? He opens a pack of cigarettes – the more expensive brand he smokes at weekends – and lights one with his enormous hands. He doesn’t have many more years to live. He’ll retire and die. I’ll never know what he thinks. I’ll never share one thought with him, nor he a single thought with me, his only son. He looks ‘approvingly’ around the room through lenses as thick as the crystal vase.

  — You should ask Madeleine if you can smoke, says my mum, managing to make this into a criticism not just of my father but of Madeleine as well.

  — Of course he can smoke. He knows he doesn’t have to ask. In fact I’ll take one too, if I may.

  She grabs the pack – again like a child – and my dad reaches towards her with his cheap transparent lighter – chivalrous – enchanted.

  Then comes the tour. We climb floor after floor. We pass through room after room. At first my parents are amazed. Then the repetition begins to bore them, although they’re careful not to show it. But by the time we reach the top landing, from the way they smile, I can tell they disapprove. After all, they’re the ones who’ve saved, who’ve watched the price of potatoes, who’ve cut worn sheets up the middle and joined them at the edges, who’ve made you eat everything on your plate, then served you tinned cream and tinned pineapple as a treat, who’ve economised, been faithful, and died. While we’re the ones who’ll leave the lights burning all night, fuck who we like, put our old clothes out for the bin-men and pay for expensive meals we’re too drunk to finish.

  — It won’t be easy to keep clean, Madeleine, says my mum.

  — What’s up there then? says my dad, looking at a steeper flight of plain stairs that twist into the dark.

  — That’s where your son goes when he wants to pretend he’s a starving artist, says Madeleine.

  The doorbell terrified my parents. No one ever came to our house when I was a child. No one ever ‘turned up’. There were no parties. They had no friends, only one or two relatives, whose brief visits were carefully planned. That’s why they froze when the bell wen
t and tightened their lips while Madeleine ran down all those stairs to open the huge front door.

  But her father (who still had a key? oh?) had already let himself in – you could hear the laughter.

  — This is Hayley, he said, from Leeds.

  — I’m not from Leeds, I’m from Pontefract. I keep telling him.

  — But Leeds is where I discovered you.

  — Now he thinks he’s Christopher-fuck-me-Columbus.

  — What were you doing in Leeds, Hayley?

  — Hayley was acting.

  — Excuse me: not just acting. I’m a real good dancer, and I can sing as well.

  — Hayley does a bit of everything.

  — He should be so lucky.

  Everybody laughs – except my mum who’s watching Hayley knock the ash from her cigarette straight into the sea-green vase. Suddenly she says:

  — How old are you, Hayley? Do your parents know you’re here?

  — I could ask you the same question, says Hayley.

  Which makes us all laugh again, all except Madeleine’s father, who turns to my mother and explains that Hayley is nineteen years old, and that her parents, please don’t worry, are actually family friends.

  My mum’s mouth is already developing the radiating lines of judgement that will one day make it look like the mouth of a drawstring bag. What’s any of this got to do with her? Why can’t she just shut up? Even on the way out she’s still saying in a loud ‘whisper’ to my dad ‘… Doesn’t look more than fourteen …’ and my dad’s nodding, grinning, yes, yes, anything, whatever you say, let’s just go, let’s just go.

  The meeting’s at half past ten. I’ve already been awake for more than five hours which is why I need a caffè corretto at the Italian place before I go in. The room’s very small and hot. There’s a big desk with the usual towers of scripts in dull manila folders. Sometimes I can’t believe we come here week after week to pick our way through these piles of mediocrity – and all the hours of work they represent – all the illusions they represent – all those writers sitting at night under their lamps in their quiet circles of light, at their faint flat screens, writing page after page of flaccid, forgettable dialogue – printing it, binding it, re-reading it – utterly indifferent to their own lack of talent. And what is that sickening smell? Stale coffee. Someone’s left the machine on, but there’s no water in it. It wouldn’t occur to anyone here to switch it off, would it, to open a window. A few commonsense domestic reflexes wouldn’t be out of place here amongst this group of script-advisors, of young assistants, literary helpers, would-be directors. Just like Madeleine in fact – not a clue – can’t be bothered – let’s just all sit here and suffocate, shall we? But when the window is finally opened, there’s drilling in the street, right outside the building, some kind of trench, some kind of pit they’re making out there, a number of men in Day-Glo jackets threatening our intellectual activity. There’s nothing for it but to shut the window again and sweat.

  So why when the Director arrives does he look so cool and bright? He beams round at us with his air-conditioned smile – six months ago it would’ve seemed sincere, but already it’s tainted by power – that’s why it looks strangely suspended, like a smile in a photograph. He takes his seat and now there’s a little pause in which – thank God for that – the drills stop and the air can be heard bleeding out of the compressor. A girl pokes her head round the door and hands him a sheet of paper – whisper whisper whisper – he glances at it – yes yes yes – tell them we need to discuss this with New York – whisper whisper whisper – hands back the paper, the girl’s gone.

  — Well, he says, this has been a marvellous few days for me, and I hope no one will mind if I divert slightly from the agenda in front of you just to say one or two things about the week’s developments – if that’s alright with everyone here – and I assume it is.

  Divert? He means deviate. I realise too late I’m sitting with my back to the sun.

  — Quite a few of you came to the reading of Rachel’s play yesterday, and I think all of you who were there will have felt – as I did – privileged to have witnessed an event which I truly believe is going to be a landmark in the life of this theatre. Aside from its sheer brutal energy – its daring – its power to shock and disturb – I think what the reading revealed was the underlying wit and subtlety of the writing – which I think many of us – and I’m including myself in this – had maybe underestimated. I know there had been a broad consensus that the reading would be followed by a period of further development of the text, which John here had kindly offered to lead. But my overwhelming feeling is that the play is what it is, and that we should now move to protect the writer from any input which could distort her own unique voice. What looked like faults on the page were things that the actors and myself discovered to be absolutely accurate discontinuities of feeling – thrilling moments in a play that doesn’t just move the theatrical goal-posts – it rewrites the entire rules of the game.

  Despite the tired metaphor, everyone’s nodding, glowing with a kind of corporate satisfaction. The drills begin again.

  — Which is why – as some of you already know – I’m taking the unusual step of moving this piece straight into production.

  I beg your pardon? Who already knows? Just what the fuck is happening here?

  — We need to be brave. And we need to be bold. Is there anything we can do about that noise? Yes? No?

  An assistant slips out.

  — And I’m particularly thrilled to be able to say that we’ve managed to secure a commitment from all the actors who took part in the reading. Does anyone have any questions?

  — Yes, I have a number of questions.

  — John?

  What does he mean: from all the actors? Is he talking about Madeleine? Surely he means: from all the actors except Madeleine. What kind of slimy political manoeuvring is going on here? Some fucking bullshit arm-stroking trust-me-I’m-a-cunt deal struck in a corridor.

  — John? Are you with us?

  Candid black eyes. The smirk of power. Take your time, John, take your time.

  — Certainly I’m with you if you mean with you in the sense of lucid. Because I have to say I feel unusually lucid this morning, despite, or perhaps because of, a particularly early start, a particularly … what is the word? … a particularly early and invigorating start to the day … (Laughter: he’s not the only one who can make speeches.) … but if, Nicky, you mean with you in the sense of in agreement with a decision which with the greatest respect seems to be not just hasty but misconceived, then I have to say that no, I’m not with you at all.

  — That’s not a question.

  — I’m sorry?

  — You said you had a number of questions.

  — Absolutely. And the first is: could someone spare me a cigarette?

  This goes down very well – I can feel even the faint tremor as I take it working to my dramatic advantage.

  — And the second is: I don’t understand how this decision has been made without consulting me.

  — Again, that’s hardly a question, but the fact is is we talked if you remember after the reading.

  — I do indeed remember. And we did indeed talk. Which is human. People talk – of course they do – we call this dialogue. And dialogue is something we all know about. Page after page. Week after week. Meaningless. All of us know – well don’t we? – we all know that serious theatre, literature, cinema, is dissolving in front of us. That even the most radical gesture is sterilised by money, commodified, and like this cigarette, sold back to us as a kind of death. But we still come here and pretend we’re presiding over a golden age. We pick over the latest sordid slice of life or sick fantasy as if it were an undiscovered masterpiece by Ibsen or Aeschylus. We talk about opening up the theatre, but we know that not one of those men digging up the road out there will ever come through these doors to see the bold brave work that Nicholas is talking about – and nor in all probability will their
children.

  — I don’t quite see what this has to do with Rachel’s play.

  Of course you don’t. Because you never think. Because you’re full of shit. Because you surround yourself with people who are afraid to criticise you – just look at them all with their heads down, doodling. Because you touch people inappropriately. Stroke women’s arms inappropriately. Seduce every young girl who turns up in a short skirt looking for a job. Because you’re a child who’s been given power. Because for reasons I have yet to fully understand you intend to cast my wife in a role of sickening degradation.

  — What?

  — I don’t quite see, John – forgive me – what this has to do with Rachel’s play.

  — Uh-huh.

  — Yes.

  — You don’t see.

  — Yes. No. I don’t.

  — D’you think we could open a window. Because I came in here this morning and no one had opened a window.

  — You’re right. It’s terribly hot in here. Can someone get him a glass of water.

  — I don’t want a glass of water.

  — Okay.

  — I don’t need a glass of water.

  — Okay. Fine. Are you alright?

  Oh yes, I’m in clover. I’m lying on a soft mountain meadow with my hand dipped in a stream of melted snow.

  — Excuse me.

  — John?

  It’s coming up into my throat. There’s nothing I can do about it.

  — Excuse me. I’ll be straight back.

  — Don’t worry. Take your time.

  — It’s the heat.

  — We understand.

  — I’m coming straight back.

  — That’s fine. We’ll wait. Someone open the door for him.

  — I can manage, thank you.

  The door is not the problem. Don’t give me that compassionate bollocks. You are the problem. And the body. This human body – this flesh – which contains both heaven and hell.

  Why am I afraid to go down the little wooden stairs? I tidy my papers. I switch off the lamp. I stand behind my door like a child at night who wants to see his parents but wonders if they’ll be angry. What am I frightened of? It’s ‘my’ house. It’s ‘my’ wife. Some time after eleven they come swarming in from the Strindberg. You can hear them shrieking in the hall. Then the music begins to beat up through the floors. (The way the paper cones of the speakers pulse in and out – who’d’ve believed the physical displacement could be so visible, so immense?) They drink and dance. They smoke and cook – eggs, toast, spaghetti – everything sticks, everything burns. Who cares how much she drinks. Who cares who she dances with. I’m the one she’ll turn to when they’re finally out – lurching into the street – when the music stops. I’m the one she’ll turn to. And that’s the thing that can’t be acted – that giving of yourself – that giving of your body. There’s no reason to be afraid, then: no reason to wait in the dark behind the door. Let her act what she likes – schoolgirl in white blouse flirting with my dad – or suicidal aristocrat fascinated by sex and death who watches the greenfinch split open on the butcher’s block, and smears her face with the bird’s blood.