Dead Room Farce by Simon Brett Read Free Book Online Page B

mechanical; his plays were mere clockwork toys designed to entrap laughter. He would never attain intellectual respectability; his only comfort would have to remain the huge international royalties which his plays brought in.
    â€˜And you’re touring it, Charles, is that right?’
    â€˜Mm, three months. Fortnight in Bath, then single weeks. Bill Blunden always takes his shows on the road, works on them, does lots of rewrites, sharpens them up.’
    â€˜With a view to the West End?’
    â€˜Ultimately, yes. But some’ll have three or four tours before he’s happy.’
    â€˜So you haven’t got a West End option in your contract?’
    â€˜Nothing so grand, no. They did check my availability for three months hence, but that’s as far as it went.’
    â€˜Oh, right.’ Mark Lear chuckled with sudden recollection. ‘Checked with your agent, eh? I’ve just remembered, when we last worked together, you were with this incredibly inefficient agent . . . what was his name? Maurice Skellern, that’s right. He was a kind of a joke throughout the whole business, the worst agent since records began.’ Mark shook his head and chuckled again. ‘Who represents you now?’
    â€˜Maurice Skellern,’ Charles Paris replied.
    â€˜Oh.’
    â€˜I hope today was all right . . .?’ said Charles tentatively. ‘I mean, the recording.’
    â€˜It was fine.’
    â€˜I felt awful, arriving so hungover and –’
    â€˜Don’t worry, we’ve had many worse through the studio.’
    â€˜I didn’t think the studio had been open that long.’
    â€˜Well, no, not through that studio, but when I was at the Beeb . . .’ A hazy look came into Mark Lear’s eyes. ‘I remember once doing a play with Everard Austick, and he was virtually on an intravenous drip of gin.’ The retired producer let out a little melancholy laugh. ‘Good times we had, back in the old days . . .’
    Charles could see what had happened. In Mark Lear’s mind, the BBC, the institution he had spent all the time he worked there berating, had become a golden city in his recollection. Now he wasn’t there, it was perfect. For Mark, perfection would always be somewhere he wasn’t. Charles suspected that the same pattern obtained in his friend’s private life too. While he had been with Vinnie, all his young girls on the side had represented the greener grass of happiness. And now he was with Lisa . . . Charles wondered where Mark’s fantasies hovered now.
    â€˜No, but I hope the recording was all right. Lisa didn’t seem very happy with what I was doing . . .’ Charles ventured.
    â€˜Don’t worry about Lisa. She gets very po-faced about the whole business. What she doesn’t realise is that the creative process should be
fun
. She’s always clock-watching and budget-watching . . . and number-of-drinks-watching. Do you think, if I’d had that kind of attitude, I’d ever have produced any of the great programmes I did when I was at the Beeb?’
    Charles Paris was too polite to ask which ‘great programmes’, as Mark went on, ‘No, creativity is a wild spirit. It’s the untutored, the anarchic, the bohemian. That’s what creates art – danger, risks being taken in the white heat of rehearsal – not a bunch of accountants poring over spreadsheets in offices.’
    Charles searched for a safe, uncontroversial reaction, and came up with ‘Hm.’
    Mark Lear shook himself out of his ‘misunderstood artist’ mode. ‘Right, same again, is it?’
    â€˜Maybe I should move on to the wine . . .’
    â€˜Time enough for wine. A couple more large Scotches first.’
    Well, Charles comforted himself, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t worked hard. He’d earned some kind of reward. No, all things considered, his first day of reading an audio book hadn’t