Shadow Play

Ben laughed at that; a laugh of genuine amusement. Different lines appeared around his mouth, and for the first time she thought that maybe this unwanted collaboration might just work after all.

Maybe Ben thought so too, because he took her synopsis and the book from his briefcase and put them on the table, drew up a chair. ‘I like the book. I tried to get hold of a copy, but there don’t seem to be any around.’

‘No. I found out that it was published privately; that’s why there isn’t a copy in the British Library.’

‘Vanity publishing,’ Ben commented. ‘Somebody must have really believed in the story to do that.’

‘Or else have felt the need to tell it,’ Nell said, coming to sit opposite him.

He raised his left eyebrow, the one that arched more than the other as if he was in the habit of questioning what he heard. ‘You think it’s a true story? That’s hard to believe.’

‘Stranger things have happened.’

‘Yes, but for the love-affair to have gone on for so long without the heroine realising who her secret lover was? It’s hardly credible.’

‘Maybe in her heart she did know but didn’t want to believe it. She didn’t want to spoil what was perfect.’

‘Perhaps you’re right. It’s certainly very sensitively written.’

‘And that sensitivity is what I want to come over in the adaptation,’ Nell said earnestly. ‘I don’t want this to be just another serial with explicit sex scenes—bare limbs all over the place and moans and groans in the appropriate places. This is a romance in the true sense of the word. That’s the way it’s got to be treated if it’s going to be successful.’

‘Are you implying that I can’t handle that?’

She drew back, realising that her vehemence could have sounded like an accusation. ‘Not at all. I’ve watched the Eastern Trilogy again; you handled that really well.’

‘Again?’

‘I got the tapes out of the television film library to watch last weekend,’ she admitted.

‘Checking up on me?’

‘Doing my homework.’

Ben nodded. ‘Fair enough. But this book differs a great deal from the trilogy. There’s deep passion here as well as romantic love. Earthy, physical passion. That’s what makes the book, and will make it interesting to the viewers. You can’t cut it out.’ He paused, waiting for her to speak, but when she didn’t Ben went on, ‘It needs to be delicately handled to combine the two, but I think we should be able to do it.’

Nell didn’t comment on that, instead reaching out for the book. ‘Shall we make a start?’

‘OK. The first thing to decide is how many episodes.’

‘Max said he couldn’t get money for more than three of one hour.’

‘That should be enough. It will give us an opportunity to express the length of time covered in the book. It’s about twelve years, isn’t it?’

‘Twelve winters.’

‘Yes.’ Ben gave her an appraising look. ‘You’re very obsessed with this story, aren’t you?’

‘I told you; I’ve been working on it for a year.’

‘And you’ve started to identify with the heroine,’ he said shrewdly.

‘You’re supposed to identify with the characters when you read a book.’

‘But not when you’re adapting it for television. You have to have a clear mind; to be able to cut where necessary, not to be so involved with it that you can’t bear to lose a line of dialogue because you’re in love with the characters.’

It was said bluntly, almost rudely, and made Nell angry. ‘I have adapted books before,’ she pointed out coldly.

‘I know; I did my homework, too. But never a full-blooded love story, have you?’

Her mouth tightened. ‘I am not in love with the characters,’ she answered shortly. ‘The whole idea is ridiculous.’

‘Good,’ Ben said smoothly. ‘Then you won’t mind making any necessary cuts.’

She gave him a glare, knowing that she’d been outmanoeuvred. ‘Shall we get on with it?’

His lips twisted slightly. ‘All right. The next thing is to decide where the episodes will end. Now, the basic storyline is of a young girl, Anna, who is married off, in the mid-nineteenth century, to an older man she doesn’t love, a man she finds cold both physically and emotionally. Not a rotter, not unkind, just unable to rouse any feelings in her. They don’t have any children. Then one winter she goes alone to visit her parents but on the way back the carriage gets caught in a snow storm and she has to take shelter in the nearest house, which is inhabited only by a couple of servants who say that their master seldom comes there any more.’

Ben picked up the synopsis, glanced at it, then went on, ‘They give her the master bedroom and the first night nothing happens, but one of the horses has slipped and hurt its leg, so she has to stay on. The second night she feels very tired, and while she’s in bed she has a dream in which a man makes love to her. The most perfect, wonderful experience she could ever have imagined. The next day her husband turns up to look for her and everything is back to normal. But she treasures the memory of the dream, especially when she finds she is pregnant at last—but her husband hasn’t recently made love to her.’

‘She wouldn’t have thought of it as making love, not with her husband,’ Nell interrupted with certainty.

‘No. The act of procreation, then. So she thinks maybe it wasn’t a dream, maybe it was true. Anyhow she lets the husband into her bed, just in case, but finds his attentions even more abhorrent now— Is that the kind of language that suits you?’ Ben broke off to ask Nell.

Missing the slightly dry note in his tone, she nodded. ‘Yes, that’s how she would think.’

‘OK.’ He put his elbows on the table and pyramided his hands. ‘The child is born, a girl, but the husband still needs an heir, which isn’t forthcoming. So, two years later, in the depth of winter, she goes to visit her parents again, and ends up at the same house. Again the man comes to her and they make love, but on both nights this time. Again she seems to be in some strange kind of dreamlike state while it’s going on, but she knows it’s true because she sees the marks of his hands on her body the next day.’

‘Anna gets pregnant again, and this time she has a son.’ Nell took over. ‘She becomes desperate to find her lover and when her husband goes away on business she goes to the house to find him. But the house is closed up and empty, and no one can tell her whom it belongs to. She thinks that she’s lost him and is terribly sad, but when she passes that way the next winter she calls there out of sentimentality, and to her joy finds everything the way she first remembered: the same servants, the place warm and inviting, the same bed...’

‘And the same lover,’ Ben finished for her. ‘She begins to suspect that perhaps her food or drink was drugged before, so has nothing. She leaves the lights burning in the room, wanting to see her lover’s face, but it’s a big old-fashioned four-poster bed with heavy curtains all round, he blows out the candles and she doesn’t see him. She tries to talk to him, though, but he silences her with kisses, exhausts her with love, and when she wakes he’s gone. Afraid that by trying to see him she might have lost him, that night she drinks and eats, and again it’s like a dream when he comes to her.

‘So every winter she goes back. She has two more children but one of them dies. She is distraught and her husband can give her no comfort. It’s summer, but she goes to the house anyway, finds it empty as before. She sleeps on the bed and this time feels the warmth of his arms, his strength and love and is comforted for her loss. She leaves a locket behind with a picture of her dead child in it.’

Nell, unable just to sit and listen, took up the story again. ‘Anna has a child to take the place of the one she lost, again by her lover. Twelve years have passed. Then her husband is killed in an accident, and although she’s sad for him she’s filled with happiness at her freedom, because now she’ll be able to go and find her lover, be with him always.’ She paused, her face becoming sad. ‘Then her husband’s possessions that he was carrying when he was killed are sent to her—and she finds the locket. And she knows the truth, and knows that she has lost not only her lover, but all the years of happiness together if she had only know the truth before.’

‘I don’t agree there,’ Ben said matter-of-factly, breaking in on her sad sentimentality. ‘If she’d realised the first time who he was, it would have been a coupling just like all the others before, and she’d never have thought that she had a phantom lover. It was the secretiveness of the affair that aroused and fed her sensuality. She’d have gone on being lonely and unfulfilled—unless she’d been driven to have an affair with the stable-boy or some other available man.’ He grinned at Nell’s indignant look. ‘Lots of women were driven to that in those days, you know; either that or turning to religion and doing good works whether the poor liked it or not.’

‘That’s hypothetical,’ Nell pointed out. ‘The story finishes with her finding out it was her husband all along and being sad; we don’t have to worry about what might have been.’

‘How logical.’ Ben looked round. ‘Did Max say there were the tools for making coffee somewhere?’

‘Yes, he did,’ Nell answered, but didn’t get up to look.

Ben glanced at her and grinned. He went over to the cupboard, found a kettle and cups, packets of coffee, sugar and powdered milk. ‘All we appear to be short of is water,’ he remarked. ‘Where do we get that, I wonder?’

Satisfied she’d made her point, Nell stood up. ‘I noticed a cloakroom just along the corridor; I’ll get some from there.’

‘Thanks.’

But the water in the cloakroom wasn’t suitable for drinking and she was directed to another place on the next floor. It was almost ten minutes before she came back, and Ben was sitting on the settee, the phone in his hand, his feet up on the arm. The light from the window was behind him, outlining his profile, and for the first time Nell noticed its hardness, the leanness of his jawline and the good bone-structure. He could, she supposed, be considered good-looking, attractive to women, and wondered why she hadn’t noticed before. Because she’d been too tense, probably, too worried about having to work with him, and what he would want to do with her precious story. The latter was still undecided, perhaps still to be fought over, but she felt more relaxed with him now, more able to think of him as a man.

‘But surely you can manage,’ he was saying. ‘It’s only for a few days.’ He listened, then gave a resigned sigh. ‘OK, OK, I’ll get back as soon as I can and we’ll talk it over then. Yes, I do understand. Yes. Goodbye.’

Nell had been busying herself with the coffee, but looked round to say, ‘Milk and sugar?’

‘What?’ Ben had been gazing moodily out of the window. ‘Oh—one sugar, no milk.’

She handed him a cup. ‘I take milk and sugar,’ she told him. He frowned, not with it. ‘So you’ll know when it’s your turn to make the coffee,’ she supplied.

His mouth crooked a little but there was obviously something else on his mind. ‘I’ll try and remember.’

Sitting down at the table again, she stirred her coffee and said, ‘I think the first episode ought to end after her first night with her lover.’

‘Sounds right.’ But Ben was still frowning abstractedly. He took a swallow of the coffee but then put down the mug and stood up, his hands thrust into his pockets. He took a couple of paces round the room, head bent, then turned to frown out of the window again.

‘Hasn’t your crisis resolved itself?’ Nell asked sympathetically.

‘My what?’

‘You said you were late because of a domestic crisis,’ she reminded him.

‘Oh—yes. I mean, no, it hasn’t resolved itself.’ His face changed, grew bleak, the lines at the corners of his mouth deepening and becoming bitter. ‘Sometimes I don’t think it ever will.’ Before Nell could say anything, he glanced at his watch, picked up his briefcase, and said, ‘Look, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to leave. Why don’t you make a start and I’ll catch up with you tomorrow?’

‘But you can’t just...’ Nell’s voice tailed off as the door swung shut behind him.

CHAPTER TWO

NELL had wanted to do the book adaptation herself, but, perversely, when Ben abandoned her to it before they’d even got started she became indignant and angry. The word processor was pounded rather hard the rest of that day and quite a lot of work got done.

She expected him to be late again the next morning and was both surprised and irritated to find Ben there before her. Not only there but sitting at her desk and going through the work she’d done the previous day. ‘My, my, aren’t you the early bird,’ she greeted him sarcastically, dumping her bag on the desk.

Ben glanced at her. ‘Talking of birds; are you an owl or a lark?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Are you up with the lark in the morning or a night owl who never wants to go to bed? A morning person or a night person?’

Nell thought about it. ‘A night owl, I suppose.’

‘That would account for it, then.’

‘For what?’

‘For your bad temper,’ he said evenly.

She hung her jacket on a peg. ‘I think I’m entitled to be annoyed after the way you took off yesterday. You’d only been here a couple of hours and we hadn’t even got started on the book.’

‘For which I apologised and came in early today,’ he pointed out.

But Nell had met that male trick of trying to put you in the wrong and make you feel guilty before. ‘It was extremely unprofessional,’ she said shortly.

‘I’m a writer, not a clock-watching clerk,’ Ben told her, his voice hardening.

‘Yes, but you’re still a professional writer. You are getting paid, aren’t you?’

She had expected that to needle him, but to her surprise he grinned, and said in a schoolboy voice, ‘I’m very sorry, miss. I’ll try to do better in future, miss.’

The grin, and the mimicry, were captivating. Despite herself, Nell smiled in return.

‘That’s better. I was beginning to think I’d got to work with a dragon.’ That took her aback a little, but before she had a chance to say anything Ben tapped the screen with his finger. ‘What you did yesterday was good, but you’ve written it for the ear and not enough for the eye.’

‘I tried to write it visually,’ Nell said defensively. ‘I’ve read books on writing for television and studied other scripts.’

‘Yes, and you’ve had a good shot at it, but you haven’t gone into enough detail. You have to see and describe every emotion, almost every gesture. And you have to allow the time it will take the actors to show the emotions, make the gestures.’

Nell pulled up a chair and sat down beside him. ‘Show me.’

His mouth crooked a little at the command in her voice, but he went back to the beginning of her script and began to go through it with her. By the end of an hour Nell was realising there was far more to television script-writing than she’d ever imagined.

‘I think it would probably be best if we wrote the script as you did it yesterday and then went through each scene together putting in the camera and actors’ instructions,’ Ben suggested. He sat back and ran a weary hand over his eyes. ‘How about a coffee?’

She didn’t argue this time but got up to make it, taking some packages from her holdall-type bag. ‘I brought some biscuits. Would you like one?’ She opened a tin and offered it to him.

Ben raised his eyebrows. ‘They look home-made,’ he remarked, taking one.

‘Yes, they are.’

‘By you?’

She nodded.

‘It’s good. The coffee tastes different, too.’

‘I bought some decaffeinated. And a carton of real milk. I don’t like that powdered stuff.’

‘You sound like a girl who likes her creature comforts,’ Ben remarked.

‘Of course. Don’t you?’

‘Oh, sure—when I can get them.’ For a moment the bleak look was back in his face, but then was gone as he said, ‘Are you married, Nell?’

‘No. Career-girl.’

‘Does that mean you live alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you actually bother to cook for yourself?’

‘Yes, why not?’

‘Most people who live alone seem to exist on frozen ready-made meals. From the supermarket to the freezer to the microwave. There doesn’t seem to be much point in doing the shopping, spending so much time in preparation, and creating so much washing-up just for oneself.’

‘You seemed to stress the washing-up,’ Nell smiled.

‘I don’t like it, I admit,’ Ben grimaced. ‘But you must enjoy cooking. How did you learn?’

‘My mother taught me,’ Nell replied, her face and voice calm, betraying none of the inner swirl of emotions that memories of her mother always aroused. Yes, she taught me to cook, she thought bitterly. Just as she taught me to be clean and tidy, and punctual, and polite, and deferential, and come straight home, and not to make friends or talk to boys, and to be obedient, always obedient. And—

‘You’re lucky, my mother didn’t teach me a thing,’ Ben said, breaking into her thoughts, for which she was grateful. ‘I never even had to boil an egg before I went to university. And the first one I tried was so rock-hard I gave up and ate out the whole time.’

‘And now you exist on ready-made meals?’

‘Most of the time.’

‘So you’re not married, either?’ It was safe and acceptable to ask that because he’d asked her first.

‘No.’ His face hardened. ‘No, I’m not.’ He swung his chair round towards her. ‘Do you think I could possibly have another of those biscuits? They’re delicious.’

Nell grinned. ‘It isn’t necessary to flatter. I’ll leave the tin here so just help yourself.’

They got to work again but broke off for lunch at one. Nell went out to get some fresh air and investigate the local shops, but Ben picked up the phone to call his agent, to talk over more work he’d been offered, she supposed, feeling envious of his success. When she came back he was lying on the settee, his feet up on the arm again, but this time he was asleep.

He didn’t waken when she came in. Nell quietly put down the bag of shopping she’d bought, and stepped silently over towards him. She was about to reach out and waken him, but hesitated and withdrew her arm. He looked to be deeply asleep, and must have been very tired. Another night on the tiles? Nell wondered. She wouldn’t be at all surprised. Most of the bachelors she knew seemed to go out somewhere every night, living it up, dating girls, making the most of their youth and vitality, many of them often sweating away in gyms to be fit enough to go out drinking, or make love to the latest girlfriend through the night, or both.

Ben didn’t look particularly dissipated, she thought, gazing down at him. His skin was still tight around his jawline and there was no flabbiness about his tall frame. Muscle, yes. And a broadness of shoulder that suggested strength, but his stomach was flat, his waist lean. Maybe he worked out regularly. Maybe he went out with just one woman. Nell didn’t think he could be living with a woman, though, or else he wouldn’t be so tired, and he would have been looked after better; there was a button missing from his shirt, she noticed.

It felt odd to look down at a man asleep like this. It wasn’t something she could ever remember doing before. A man was, she supposed, vulnerable in his sleep, momentarily within one’s power. But Ben didn’t look very vulnerable; his features were still hard, the lines around his mouth still deep, even though his lashes brushed his cheeks in a soft curve and a lock of dark hair fell forward on to his forehead. An ambulance went by in the street below, its siren wailing, the noise penetrating his sleep, making him stir. Nell moved quickly away and appeared to be just hanging up her jacket when he yawned and sat up.

‘Must have dropped off,’ he murmured. ‘Excuse me.’

He went out and she noticed an empty sandwich pack and a beer can beside the settee. Fastidiously, unable to help herself, Nell picked them up and dropped them in the waste basket. Whoever had the misfortune to end up with Ben, she thought, would have to be willing to spend her life clearing up after him, because he certainly hadn’t been brought up to do it himself. For a moment she felt a fierce stab of envy, not for this imaginary woman, but for Ben’s joyous disregard of the rule of neatness, his ability to go through life in blissful untidiness, either not caring or with some wretched female to do it for him. The fault of a doting mother, she supposed, and devoutly wished she’d had one who’d cared half as much.

When Ben came back his hair was damp, as if he’d thrown water over his face to wake himself up.

‘You never said what you were,’ she reminded him. ‘A lark or an owl?’

He laughed. ‘Originally a lark, but lately I’ve had to be an owl.’

They worked well that afternoon, except for two longish phone calls for Ben. Nell tried not to listen but couldn’t avoid it. They were evidently from his agent, about the new project he was negotiating, and Ben seemed to be pushing for special working conditions. ‘You know my problem,’ she heard him say. ‘I either work at home or in London. If they can’t agree to that then tell them to get someone else.’ The agent must have become exasperated, because Ben went on, ‘Yes, I know it’s a great opportunity, but there’s no way I’m going to America... OK, see what they say and get back to me.’

Putting down the phone, he came back to where they’d been talking through a scene at the table, pads and pencils before them. ‘Sorry about that,’ Ben said shortly.

‘That’s OK.’ Nell glanced at him, wondering how far she could question him. She tried an oblique approach. ‘How long do you think it will take us to write the serial?’

‘Depends how much re-writing Max wants done. If he’s happy, then about six or seven weeks, I should think.’

‘That’s what I thought. I hope you’ll be free for that length of time.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Ben said drily, looking at her, knowing she’d listened. ‘I promised to do this book—and I always keep my promises.’

‘Oh, good.’ She was strangely over-pleased. For the book’s sake, she thought, but knew it wasn’t. Because I’m learning a lot from him, then, and he doesn’t seem to mind teaching me. Yes, that must be it, she told herself.

Ben left at three-thirty, which she thought was rather early, but then he had come in early this morning, she remembered. Maybe he’d decided those were the hours that suited him best. There didn’t seem to be any point in staying on herself, so after she’d printed off the work they’d done that day she went to have a chat with Max, to reassure him that they were getting on marvellously, and to pick up any gossip that was going. Most gossip was, of course, gathered in the ladies’ room, but no one that Nell knew came in, so eventually she gave up and went home.

As she cooked her solitary meal she remembered what Ben had said about frozen dinners and felt sorry for him. Maybe, she thought, the ladle in her hand forgotten as she gazed into space, I’ll give a dinner party.

Ben rang in to say that he had to go to a meeting the next morning and it was almost lunchtime before he arrived. Nell had been getting on with the script, but doing it the way he’d suggested, so that they could go through the cast and camera instructions together. As she wrote she found herself becoming ever more bound up in the storyline, and closely involved with Anna as she became disillusioned with the man she’d been made to marry against her wishes. The man had seemed so aloof, so strange, what he did to her in bed so humiliating. Nell was troubled about having to write that scene. But although it was in the book, she thought it would be better just to show Anna’s fear before the wedding night and then her reaction of loathing towards her husband the next morning.

She wrote the scene on those lines, but when Ben came in and read through the print-out he disagreed with her. ‘You’ll have to show more than that,’ he told her.

‘I don’t see why. Explicit sex scenes are old hat nowadays. People have got bored to death with writhing bodies all over the place.’ She spoke forcefully, a frown between her level brows.