Death of a Scriptwriter

Patricia entered, looking flustered. There had been no taxi to meet her at the station. Every television company was notorious for failing to meet people at airports and stations, but Patricia did not know this and took the absence of a waiting taxi to be a sort of snub.

Furthermore, she had expected something glossier, not this concrete slab of a building situated under a motorway, which seemed to be furnished with stained carpet and plastic plants.

She had been handed a plastic nametag at the reception desk to pin on her tweed suit, but she had angrily stuffed it into her handbag on her way up. It had reminded her of a dreadful American party she had gone to years before, where she had been given a nametag to pin on her dress with the legend ‘Hi! My name is Patricia,’ and she still shuddered at the memory.

Sheila Burford, a research assistant, looked up curiously at Patricia. That’s a medieval face, she thought, looking at the hooded pale eyes in the white face and the curved nose.

Harry Frame greeted Patricia by kissing her on the cheek, an embrace from which Patricia visibly winced.

Patricia was as disappointed in Harry Frame as she was in the building. He was a big man with a mane of brown hair and a puffy face. He was wearing a checked workman’s shirt open nearly to the waist, and he had a great that of chest hair.

“Sit yourself down, Patricia,” he boomed. “Tea? Coffee? Drink?”

“No, I thank you,” said Patricia. “I would like to get down to business.”

“I like a businesswoman,” said Harry expansively. He introduced her all round, ending up with, “And this is Fiona King, who will be our producer.”

Patricia concealed her dismay. “I am not familiar with your television company, Mr. Frame. What successes have you had?”

“I have them written down for you,” said Harry, handing her a list.

Patricia looked down at the list in bewilderment. They seemed to be mostly documentaries with titles like Whither Scotland?, Are the English Bastards?, The Arguments for Home Rule, The Highland Clearances, Folk Songs from the Gorbals. She had not seen or heard of any of them.

“I do not see any detective stories here,” said Patricia.

Harry ignored that. “Because of this your books will be back in print,” he said. “We suggest a publicity tie-up with Pheasant Books. We plan to start serialising The Case of the Rising Tides.”

Patricia stared at him unnervingly. Then she suddenly smiled. From being a rather tatty building inhabited with people who were definitely not ladies and gentlemen, Strathclyde Television and all in it became suffused with a golden glow. She barely heard anything of the further discussion. She did, however, agree to signing an option contract for a thousand pounds and accepting an agreement that if the series were sold to BBC or ITV or anyone else, she would receive two thousand pounds per episode. Money was not important to Patricia, who was comfortably off, but the thought of getting her precious books back into print made her pretty much deaf to other concerns.

Business being done, Fiona and Harry said they would take Patricia out for lunch. As they ushered her towards the door, Harry glanced down the table to where Sheila Burford was making notes. Sheila had cropped blond hair, large blue eyes and a splendid figure which her outfit of bomber jacket and jeans could not quite hide. “You’d best come along as well, Sheila,” said Harry.

They took her to a restaurant across from the television centre. It was called Tatty Tommy’s Tartan Howf and was scented with the aroma of old cooking fat. They were served by Tatty Tommy himself, a large bruiser with a shaved head, an earring and blue eye shadow.

Patricia was disappointed. She had thought that a television company would have taken her to some Glaswegian equivalent of the Ritz. She bleakly ordered Tatty Tommy’s Tumshies, Tatties and Haggis, thinking that an ethnic dish of haggis, turnips and potatoes might be safer than some of the more exotic offerings on the menu; but it transpired that the haggis was as dry as bone, the turnips watery and the potatoes had that chemical flavour of the reconstituted packet kind.

“In my book,” said Patricia, “the setting is a fictitious village called Duncraggie.”

“Oh, we’ll be setting it in the Highlands,” said Fiona brightly. “Pretty setting and lots of good Scottish actors.”

“But the characters are English!.” protested Patricia. “It is a house party in the Highlands. Lady Harriet is Scottish, yes, but educated in England.”

Harry waved an expansive arm. “English, Scottish, we’re all British.”

Sheila repressed a smile. Harry was a vehement campaigner for Scotland’s independence.

“I suppose,” began Patricia again, but Harry put a bearlike arm about her shoulders.

“Now, don’t you be worrying your head about the television side. Just think how grand it will be to see your books on the shelves again.”

He had shrewdly guessed that, at that moment in time, Patricia would agree to anything just so long as she got her books published.

“Who will play the lead?” asked Patricia. “I thought of Diana Rigg.”

“Bit old now,” said Fiona. “We thought of Penelope Gates.”

“I have never heard of her,” said Patricia, pushing her plate away with most of the food on it uneaten.

“Oh, she’s up and coming,” said Fiona.

And cheap, reflected Sheila cynically.

“Have I seen her in anything?”

Fiona and Harry exchanged quick glances. “Do you watch television much?” asked Fiona.

“Hardly at all.”

“Oh, if you had,” said Fiona, “you would have seen a lot of her.”

And most of it naked, thought Sheila. Scotland’s answer to Sharon Stone.

Sheila did not like Patricia much but was beginning to feel sorry for this old lady. She had asked Harry why on earth choose some old bat’s out-of-print books when they meant to pay scant attention to characters or plot, and Harry had replied that respectability spiced up with sex was a winner. Besides, the book they meant to serialise was set in the sixties, and he planned to have lots of flared trousers, wide lapels, Mary Quant dresses and espresso bars, despite the fact that the fashions of the sixties had passed Patricia by.

Patricia’s head was beginning to ache. She wanted to escape from this bad and smelly restaurant and these odd people. All would be well when she was back home and could savour in privacy all the delights of the prospect of being back in print.

They asked the usual polite questions that writers get asked: How do you think of your plots? Do you have a writing schedule? Patricia answered, all the time trying to remember what it had really been like to sit down each morning and get to work.

At last, when the lunch was over, Patricia consulted her timetable and said there was a train in half an hour. “Sheila here will get you a cab and take you to the station,” said Harry.

Patricia shook hands all round. Sheila had run out and hailed a cab while Patricia was making her farewells.

“It must all seem a bit bewildering,” said Sheila as they headed for the station.

“Yes, it is rather,” drawled Patricia, leaning back in the cab and feeling very important now that freedom was at hand. “When will I hear from you again?”

“It takes time,” said Sheila. “First we have to find the main scriptwriter, choose the location, the actors, and then we sell it to either the BBC or ITV.”

“The BBC would be wonderful,” said Patricia. “Don’t like the other channel. All those nasty advertisements. So vulgar.”

“In any case, it will take a few months,” said Sheila.

“Did you read The Case of the Rising Tides!” asked Patricia.

“Yes, it was part of my job as researcher. I enjoyed it very much,” said Sheila, who had found it boring in the extreme.

“I pay great attention to detail,” said Patricia importantly.

“I noticed that,” said Sheila, remembering long paragraphs of detailed descriptions of high and low tides. “Didn’t Dorothy Sayers use a bit about tides in Have His Carcase!”