* * * * *
They were sitting in the pub drinking pints of Guinness while they waited for their pies and chips, discussing all the offers of TV work that had come Lenny’s way since the comedy contest, when suddenly he broke off.
“Oh, by the way,” he said, his face breaking into a grin. “I was saving this. I’ve got something to show you.”
“God, Len,” she giggled, “I’m not sure I can cope with any more surprises today.”
“Ooh, I think you’ll cope with this one.” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a folded newspaper. He handed it to Rachel. “It’s the
Sydney Morning Herald
. Brilliant front page, eh?”
She read the headline. “ ‘Comic Gets Vegemited and Feathered.’ ”
Underneath was a large color picture of Pitsy being attacked by a furious, hysterical woman armed with a jar of Vegemite. She gazed at it for a few seconds in disbelief. Then she let out a loud, high-pitched squeal of delight.
“Kakking kangaroos, it’s Noeleen getting her revenge.”
She laughed so hard, people turned and stared. Lenny explained: “Seems like as soon as Pitsy got back to Sydney, she got up at some comedy club open mike night and did her Noeleen Piccolo material. And guess who just happened to be in the audience?”
“Ms. Piccolo, having read your warning e-mail . . . Lenny, what can I say? This is just amazing. Just amazing.” She threw her arms round him and planted a huge smacker on his forehead. “You know,” she said thoughtfully, sitting back in her chair, “there’s one thing I still don’t understand. The only way Pitsy was able to use my material on the night of the comedy contest was because she came before me in the running order. How on earth did she arrange it?”
“Yeah, the same thought occurred to me, so I phoned this mate of mine who’s a floor manager at Channel 6 and got him to do some asking around. Turns out after she went for her original audition one of the assistant producers asked her out. It’s over now, but apparently they were seeing each other for several weeks.”
Rachel shook her head slowly, taking in what he’d told her. “And during that time Pitsy got to him.”
Lenny nodded.
They’d just finished eating when Rachel’s mobile started ringing. It was Shelley calling from the film studio.
“I’ve only got a second because I’m due on set,” she said, breathless with excitement, “but you must get down here. Now. There’s something you have to see.”
“What? What is it?”
“Your mum and dad. They’re here.”
“Mum and Dad? Don’t be daft. What would they be doing at a film studio?”
“Rachel, they’re here. I promise.”
“But why? I don’t understand.”
“You soon will. I haven’t got time to explain. Just get in your car and come.”
She gave Rachel the address in Archway.
Looking extremely puzzled, Rachel made her excuses to Lenny, promising to take him out for a posh dinner very soon, to say thank you properly for everything he’d done. Then she quickly gathered up her coat and bag and headed for the door.
CHAPTER 26
“At seventy-two,” Jack said with a wicked smile, “I still feel like a twenty-year-old. The thing is, there’s never one around.”
Faye laughed too loud and bashed him playfully on the shoulder. “Oh, take no notice,” she said. “He doesn’t mean that. I think what my husband is trying to say is that just because there’s snow on the roof, it doesn’t mean there’s no fire in the house. We may be getting on a bit, but Jack and I are still just as much in love and attracted to one another as we were on our wedding day. I adore him.”
Rachel and Shelley were standing at the back of the soundstage, watching Faye and Jack sitting on a chintz sofa being interviewed on camera.
“Look,” Rachel hissed to Shelley, “do you mind telling me what the hell’s going on. Why are my parents being filmed?”
Shelley said nothing. She simply gave a knowing smile.
“There’s still no man who can give me goose pimples the way Jack can,” Faye continued.
Faye turned to look at him. They gazed into each other’s eyes, then Jack took her in his arms and kissed her passionately on the lips.
“And cut.” It was the director’s voice. Although Rachel could hear him, she couldn’t see him because he had his back to her.
“Faye, Jack,” he continued, “that was fabulous. Simply fabulous. That OK for you, Tom?”
The cameraman nodded.
Faye and Jack got up from the sofa.
“You really think we were all right, Simon?” Faye said, blushing. “I mean, you can cut the bit about him fancying twenty-year-olds, can’t you?”
Rachel looked at Shelley and blinked. “What? That’s Simon.
The
Simon. Simon the pervy TV upholsterer?”
“Well, his name is certainly Simon,” Shelley said, laughing.
At that moment Faye noticed Rachel.
“Oh good Gawd,” she exclaimed. “Jack, it’s Rachel.”
She came running across, nearly tripping over a cable as she went. Shelley beat a tactful retreat to the back of the soundstage where Satchmo was asleep in his car seat, being guarded by one of the floor managers.
“Rachel,” Faye said, smiling anxiously. “Whatever are you doing here?”
“Er, I could ask you the same thing. Mum, why are you and Dad giving interviews about your sex life?”
Faye and Jack exchanged a glance.
“Look, sweetie,” Jack began, “your mother and I were going to tell you, but we thought you’d try to stop us doing it.”
“Doing what?” Rachel said. “I don’t understand.”
“We replied to an advertisement in the
Guardian
. Simon over there makes TV documentaries. We’re taking part in a six-part series—advising older couples on sex. It’s called
Love in the Time of Rheumatism
. It’s all very respectable and aboveboard. We even managed to persuade Coral and Ivan Finkel to take part.”
Suddenly her father’s exercising, the diet, not to mention what she’d seen going on in her parents’ bedroom, made sense. Realizing her parents weren’t swingers, Rachel felt relief shoot through her.
“So it’s a kind of self-help thing?”
“Yes,” Faye said timidly. “You mean you don’t mind?”
“Mind? Why should I mind? ‘Mind’ is when you discover your parents are . . . I dunno, senile swingers or something. This is . . . wonderful. Gross, but wonderful.”
“The thing is,” Faye carried on, “there’s some film of us in bed together and we’re not wearing very much. Of course nothing happens—it’s all very tasteful. I get to wear some really sexy underwear. Simon took me to Selfridges to choose it.”
“Good for you, Mum. Good for you both. I am so relieved . . . no, I mean I am so, er, proud. Really, really proud.”
* * * * *
“What?” Rachel said to Sam, as she came into the kitchen to start his tea. “You told Robin Metcalf I was on the loo?”
He nodded.
She made a soft snorting sound.
“Well, you were. I didn’t tell him—you know—what you were doing or anything.”
She supposed she should be grateful for small mercies.
“I just said ‘she’s on the loo and she’ll phone you back.’ What’s wrong with that? I even remembered to get his number, just like you always tell me to.”
He handed her a scrap of paper.
“OK, well done,” she said, ruffling his hair. “You did fine. It’s just that Robin Metcalf’s a pretty big cheese and it might have been better to say I’d popped out, that’s all.”
Sam shrugged, took a packet of salt and vinegar crisps out of the kitchen cupboard and headed back to his bedroom.
Rachel took several deep breaths, went into the hall and dialed Robin Metcalf’s direct line.
He greeted her warmly, spent a minute or so telling her how sorry he was about what had happened at the comedy contest, and then revealed that since speaking to Xantia he had spent a couple of hours with his head of Light Entertainment and several producers discussing how the channel might make some kind of amends.
They had decided there was no question of Pitsy being given her own show or appearing at the Eurovision Comedy Contest in Helsinki. Instead they would tell the press she had come down with some chronic debilitating illness and award her prizes to the runner-up.
Rachel immediately saw the fairness in this. Even though it was her material that had won the contest, she hadn’t actually appeared on the night and had no right to usurp the runner-up.
“But meanwhile,” Robin Metcalf continued, “there is a new live comedy show featuring all our best stand-ups, beginning on Channel 6 this Saturday. But we have a problem. Our top of the bill has come down with the flu and has been forced to pull out, so we were wondering if you would be able to fill her place?”
What? Come up with new material in two days? She couldn’t. It was impossible, ridiculous, madness. Was this guy touched or something?
“OK, you’re on,” she said eagerly. “And thank you so much for this opportunity. I won’t let you down.”
* * * * *
An hour later her excitement was beginning to subside. How she was going to come up with a brand-new five-minute set in forty-eight hours, she hadn’t the foggiest idea. As she felt the panic rising inside her, she wanted Matt more than ever. She wanted him to wrap her in his arms and tell her not to be scared because he loved her and he knew she could do it. She wanted him to come round with curries to keep her going while she wrote. But more than anything, she wanted to tell him she’d ended it with Adam and that she loved him to the moon and back.
She picked up the receiver again and dialed his number. All she got was the answer machine.
CHAPTER 27
“So yeah, anyway—I’m thirty-four and my mother is desperate for me to get married. She thinks settling down is what you should be doing at thirty-four. How would she like it if I turned to her the day she hits eighty and said: ‘Hey, Mum—when are you going to break your hip? All your friends are breaking theirs’?”
Once again the audience roared, whooped and banged their beer bottles on the tables. Rachel stood in front of them, beaming. In her industrial Levi’s hipsters and psychedelic halter-neck top, tiny diamante clips in her hair, she was unrecognizable as the panic-stricken, grubby-pajamaed woman who had spent the last two days praying for inspiration as she sat at her computer, comfort-eating pumpernickel and marshmallow fluff and glugging bottles of Rescue Remedy like they were vodka miniatures.
Her nights had been spent lying awake, willing Matt to come back to her.
But somehow she’d managed to come up with a brand-new five-minute set in forty-eight hours. And here she was, topping the bill, live on national TV. What was more, the audience—which included her parents, Shelley and Tractor—was loving every minute of her set. More important still, Robin Metcalf was loving it. For the last four minutes he’d been standing at the back laughing and cheering with the rest of the paying customers. As she waited for the applause to die down, Rachel felt about as high as it was possible to get without the aid of an illegal substance.
“Thing is, I don’t have much luck with boyfriends.”
“Aah,” the audience came back.
She giggled. “Yeah. I’ve had so many failed blind dates, my mates joined to buy me a guide dog.”
More laughter.
“Then when I do manage to start a relationship, it’s usually with a guy who can’t get in touch with his emotions. There was this bloke I went out with a few years back. I used to snuggle up beside him on the sofa and tell him I loved him. And all he’d say was ‘shut up, I can’t hear the game.’ After him there was the one who turned out to be a bank robber. God knows how I missed the signs. I thought his crowbar was something he was saving up for the third date. Apparently he’d spent his childhood in and out of detention centers. The only picture his parents had of him was a police mugshot in a gold frame.
“Then there was this last bloke I was seeing. He was . . . He was . . .”
The shock made her heart nearly skip a beat. How she had missed him for the best part of five minutes, she had no idea. But he was right there at the front, looking straight at her. He wasn’t laughing or clapping like the rest of them. He was just sitting there, taking the occasional sip from a bottle of Budvar. And watching. She carried on looking directly into the audience. If she turned toward him, made eye contact, it would throw her completely.
“Anyway . . . this bloke . . . he . . . er . . .”
She stood there swallowing hard and clearing her throat.
Why had he come? She could only assume it was to tell her it was over.
The audience was chuckling. They clearly thought her sudden uneasiness was part of the act. She looked at Robin Metcalf, who was smiling expectantly. Then, unable to stop herself, she turned toward Matt. In a second her eyes were locked onto his and all she could think was how much she loved him and ached for him and how the thought of losing him was unbearable. By now she was aware that the audience chuckles had turned to uncomfortable coughing. Somebody shouted, “Get on with it.” She strongly suspected that if she looked to the back of the audience she would see Robin Metcalf with his head in his hands.
She’d promised not to let him down, but she was doing precisely that. As the seconds went by and still she said nothing, she realized she could probably kiss good-bye to her career once and for all. In that case, she thought she had nothing to lose. She might as well come out and say what was on her mind.
“You see,” she said quietly, “this last bloke I was seeing, I loved him. I still do. But I did something stupid. I wasn’t straight with him—there were some important things about myself I held back—and now he doesn’t trust me.”
There were a few more awkward giggles from the audience.
“He went away last week and I’ve spent the whole time waiting for him to call me, but he hasn’t. I’ve tried phoning him, to tell him how much I love him and miss him, but he hasn’t been answering his mobile. Now I don’t know if he ever wants to see me again. I’m pretty sure I’ve blown it.”
She turned back to the audience.
“Pretty stupid, eh?” she said.
Once again she looked at Robin Metcalf. There was this pained, pleading expression on his face as if to say, “Please, please let this be going somewhere.”
She didn’t notice Matt slowly get up.
“Rachel,” he said, “you haven’t blown it. I love you.”
She stood stock-still, hardly able to believe what she was hearing. Then she turned to face him.
“You do?”
He nodded.
“I do.”
She swung round to face the audience.
“He does,” she squealed.
The next moment she’d dropped her mike and, oblivious to the TV cameras following her, she went charging into his arms.
The applause was deafening. By now people were standing up and cheering. Others were whistling and stamping their feet. A few of the women had tears in their eyes.
“Oh my God,” she said, laughing and crying at the same time, as he wrapped her in his arms, “you’ve just announced you love me on live television.”
“Well,” he grinned, “now I’m going to snog you on live television too.”
* * * * *
For the next few minutes as the credits rolled on the nation’s television screens, the couple stood there in front of the stage hugging and kissing, unaware of all the people coming up to them, slapping them both on the back and wishing them good luck.
It was only Robin Metcalf laying his hand heavily on Rachel’s shoulder that brought her back to earth with a jolt.
“Oh God, Robin. I’m so terribly sorry. I saw Matt sitting there and I just lost it.”
“It’s OK, love. You were brilliant tonight and the audience loved you. And I think you’re going to find the publicity launches you into the stratosphere within a few hours. I just want to tell you your future is absolutely assured with us. But I would be grateful—and so would my nerves—if any subsequent reconciliations between the pair of you took place in private.”
With that he kissed her on both cheeks and told her she would be topping the bill for the whole ten-week series. Then he headed off to the bar.
“Omigod,” Rachel said quietly, utterly stunned. “I’ve got it. The whole ten-week series—I’ve got it.”
Matt pulled her to him. “I am so proud of you,” he said softly, looking into her eyes. Then he kissed her again.
* * * * *
In the end the only place they could find to talk without being mobbed by well-wishers was the tiny, two-cubicle ladies’ room.
Matt stood with his back to the door and every few seconds, as women tried to get in, Rachel would call out that it was occupied.
“You see, when you went off to Nottingham without leaving your number,” Rachel said, leaning against a wash basin, “I assumed you were really angry and never wanted to see me again.”
“The irony is, I did leave a number. I left it on Tractor’s mobile.”
“I never got it.”
“I know that now. Tractor only just told me he doesn’t know how to access his messages. And he’s never read the instruction book because it’s propping up the broken leg of his bed. I know I should have phoned you with my number, instead of relying on Tractor, but I was scared.”
“Scared? Of what?”
He paused. “That I’d find out you were planning to go back to Adam.” He explained that it wasn’t until he’d got home a few hours earlier to meet the Burkina Faso trade delegation that Tractor told him she’d finished with Adam. “I love you,” he said again, stroking her cheek. “And I’m sorry if I overreacted to the whole Adam thing. It was just that I could see history repeating itself, that’s all.”
“I know. Tractor told me all about this married woman you went out with. I’m really, really sorry I wasn’t up-front with you right from the beginning. So tell me. What did they say, the Burkina Faso people?”
“Oh,” he said casually, “only that they loved the Donkulator. And with the help of a grant from the World Health Organization, they’re planning to buy a thousand of them at $500 apiece. And apparently other Third World countries have seen the design and are showing an interest too. Tractor reckons we could be making them full time before very long. We’ll need staff and a factory and everything.”
“Matt,” she gasped, throwing her arms round him again, “you’re going to be famous. You really will get the Nobel Prize for Laundry.”
By now there was a queue of desperate, full-bladdered women outside the loo, bashing on the door demanding to be let in. But rising above the irate female voices was one male voice.
“Er, excuse me, we’re press, come to interview Ms. Katz. Mind your backs.
Daily Mail
coming through.”
“It’s Tractor pretending to be the press,” Rachel giggled.
Matt opened the door a few inches and Tractor and Shelley squeezed in. More hugs, back slapping and whoops of congratulation followed.
“Far be it for me to rain on your parade, my friends, but I too have news,” Tractor said eventually.
Tractor was wearing what appeared to be a brand-new, secondhand seventies velvet suit. He and Shelley exchanged knowing glances.
“I thought you might be interested to know I’ve just had an e-mail from the Kellogg’s people. They love the Imperial Cereal idea. In fact they adore it. They said it was just what they were looking for—described my designs as pure genius. They’re going to start test marketing it in a few months. We’re talking hundreds of thousands here.”
Rachel and Matt looked at each other, not sure if this was a joke.
“O ye of little faith,” he said, seeing their expressions. He reached into his pocket, produced a printout of the e-mail and handed it to Matt. “Look,” he said, leaning over Matt’s shoulder and pointing to the last paragraph. “They’re offering me a two-cereal deal.”
Outside, the full-bladdered women were getting crosser and more mutinous. In between their thumping and threats to bash down the door, they seemed to be having an argument with a woman who was trying to push to the front.
“No, no, you don’t understand,” the woman was saying indignantly. “I can’t wait my turn and nor can my husband. This is urgent. You see, that’s my daughter in there. She’s locked in with some strange man.” She started banging on the door. “Darling, it’s me. Come out, please. You have to tell us what’s going on. What’s happened to Adam? I mean, should I be telling Hylda Klompus to forget the heart-shaped salmon mousses?”
Rachel turned to Matt and smiled a strained smile. “Matt,” she said, “this isn’t quite the setting I had in mind, but I think maybe the time has come for you to meet my mum and dad.”
As she opened the door, the queue of women burst in like
Titanic
escapees heading for the lifeboats, leaving a terror-stricken Faye and Jack outside, pinned to the wall.
* * * * *
“You know, Rachel,” Matt said as they drove back to her flat in Van Morrison, “I really like your parents—particularly your mum.”
“What, even when she said that bit about when the light catches you at a certain angle you could be Jewish?”
“Even then,” he grinned.