The Right Man by Nigel Planer Read Free Book Online Page A

rime to stay on top of clients as much as
I should any more, since Grace. Not even my heavy seven. If I’d known what kind
of a state he was in I think I’d have somehow engineered to keep them apart.
    Not
shaving can look pretty good on actors, and execs can turn up to high-powered do’s
with a few days’ growth these days. Even heads of departments at major
broadcasting houses sport a just-got-out-of-bed look. It’s a way of showing
that you are one of those people who still care about content of programmes,
that you have definitely not turned into an accountant. But there’s not
shaving, and there’s Not Shaving, the latter having something to do with not
washing either. As he shambled into the downstairs dining room at the Soho
House, half an hour late, Neil might as well have had ‘I have let myself go to
pieces’ emblazoned on his T-shirt. Maybe he felt that now he was a bona fide
commissioned novelist it meant that he didn’t have to change his underpants or
say hello to people properly any more. As he lurched towards the beautifully linened
table where Marc and I were chatting about babies, a young waiter with a music
journalist’s haircut asked him if they were making any more of Every Other
Weekend. Neil brushed past him without even an acknowledgement. Not good to
do that to Josephine Public, not good at all. Bad for Betty Business. I clocked
Marc sneaking a side glance at his watch, so I cut the pre-chat chat and
suggested we order. Neil looked at the menu as if it were a breakdown of
ex-Tory MPs’ private earnings and sneered at me for ordering Gravadlax and a
rocket salad. While we waited for the wine, he finished all the breadsticks and
lit a Marlboro. And before I make it sound as if he was cutting an artistic or
even romantic figure, let me add that he had also ‘put on at least two stone.
Oh, Lord.
    I
decided to accept a glass of wine although I had no intention of taking more
than the merest sip of it. Marc, being in publishing, was happy to drink at
lunchtime, and Neil joined him. After a few words of positive encouragement
about the original quality of Neil’s writing, his unique turn of phrase and Marc’s
continuing interest in the basic idea, Marc came gently on to the matters in
hand. He wanted to establish an understanding over certain aspects of the
so-called story, questioned Neil’s proposed title, The Right Man, and
then — as I was dreading — asked quite firmly about possible delivery dates.
This seemed to make Neil’s pulse rate increase. The Soho House had run out of their
own brand of mineral water so I was gulping down the fizzy, which I never like.
    To tell
the truth, I had been surprised that Marc Linsey had accepted the initial, and
I thought rather flimsy outline, but I had, possibly wrongly, kept my
misgivings to myself The ‘right man’ of Neil’s story was a stalker, a prowler
who sneaks around the same woman’s house for years so that he knows every
creaking floorboard, what time of the month it is for her, what she is wearing
that day, which garments need mending. But he never makes himself known, this
man, and he never does anything nasty other than the snooping. So despite the
lack of gratuitous or even comical violence this thing was hardly going to be a
zappy comedy. Marc pointed out gently that this idea did not afford Neil the
opportunity of writing any dialogue, or indeed any action. Neil looked
exasperated and assured us that it was based on a real case he’d heard of,
although there’s no reason why that should have made it good fiction, let alone
funny. I’ve been in many script meetings where the producers complain that a
scene doesn’t work, to be told by the writers, ‘But it actually happened.’
Nobody cares whether it actually happened or not. Actually happening is not an
excuse for putting it on telly, or in a script or, in this case, a book. So
with Neil’s outline, rip-roaring and roller-coasting were not descriptions
which sprang