All to Play For (7 page)

“I suppose he just loves the theatre,” said Maggie. The others regarded her with amusement.

“Probably got film deals all over the place” said Jonathan, in a tone that settled the discussion.

Back in her office after lunch Maggie felt twice as lonely. Accustomed to the camaraderie of a theatre company, she longed to feel part of a team pulling in the same direction, and the after-effects of her lunch with Sally and Jonathan were a sense of bewilderment and social ineptitude. Although they had both been perfectly pleasant, there was a great gulf between them and Maggie, which she had no idea how to cross. There was no real point of contact. She felt she had nothing in common with them whatsoever. They treated her as a peer, but as a stranger: well, fair enough, she was the new girl.

She wondered how she could get to Basil. Or Stewart. Making friends with Jonathan clearly wasn’t a way forward, they were chalk and cheese. Maybe Basil wouldn’t like her anyway, if he liked Jonathan.

She looked at her pile of scripts and books, which had hardly been dented so far, and decided to get through them as fast as possible so that she could go back to Fenella soon and talk her through each project with a well-thought-out assessment of their potential for production, thereby earning Fenella’s respect and her right to a place on the team.

Two and a half weeks after her first day, Maggie called Fenella to say she’d read everything and could she come and talk about them.

“Goodness, you
are
quick, aren’t you?” said Fenella. “Anything good among them?”

“Yes, one or two are very promising.”

“Okay. Well I’m really busy this week, can you do me a short report on each one, say a page each, and drop them off? I’ll leave your next pile with Anthea.”

“I was rather hoping to have a chat. There’s a few questions I’d like to ask.”

“Really?” Fenella didn’t sound keen to squander her precious time on answering silly questions from newcomers.

“Maybe I could ask Anthea instead.”

“Yes, do that. She knows the ropes.”

Maggie felt disappointed but not downhearted. She spent a day re-writing her reports to shorten them from three pages to one, and double-checked her own notes on each writer so that she could refer back to them if she needed to in the future. Then she called Anthea to announce that she was coming round to see her. Anthea Onojaife was as black as Brucie’s twirl-girl Anthea Redfern was white. She was secretary to Fenella and to another development executive. Tall and straight-backed, her large features seemed even larger in contrast with her very short hair, and her age was hard to guess. She looked bored and pissed off when Maggie entered her tiny office. The connecting door into Fenella’s office was open, and Maggie could hear her on the phone, cajoling somebody.

“Hi Anthea. I’m Maggie. These are for Fenella.” She plonked the pile down on a chair. “She said she’d leave some more stuff for me to pick up, and that you could answer a few questions for me.”

“Did she? Okay, take a seat. She’ll be off the phone in a minute.”

Yet again, Maggie sat and waited. Evidently Fenella hadn’t told Anthea about any of this, and Anthea wasn’t going to act on Maggie’s word alone. “Shall I get us some coffees?” she offered, but Anthea shook her head. As an afterthought she smiled and added, “Thanks.” Maggie picked up a circular advertising the new Drama Discussion Group, which looked like an opportunity to meet other members of the department. Maybe she could join. Maybe Stewart and Basil would be there.

Anthea disappeared into Fenella’s office and a muttered conversation took place. She emerged with three large novels.

“Fenella would like you to read these and do synopses. They’re all advance copies.”

Maggie accepted them happily, “To see if they’d work on television?”

“That’s the general idea.”

“Great.”

Anthea’s mouth twitched. “Everything all right?”

“Oh yes.”

“Good.” Anthea went back to her typing. Maggie felt uncomfortable about pursuing a conversation, but Fenella had told her to ask Anthea, so she did.

“Can you tell me what an ‘offers meeting’ is?

“That’s when the heads of department offer the controllers the new projects they want to make. They happen twice a year.”

“Oh, I see. And the controllers say yes or no.”

“Sometimes. Mostly they say they’ll have a look at it.”

“So there’s like, two deadlines a year for new shows?”

“Yeah, but they can take projects in any time.”

“So – sorry if I sound stupid, but what’s the point of having offers meetings?

“There has to be a system.” Anthea made it sound crashingly obvious. Maggie decided to quit while she was ahead, and stood up to go, not daring to ask Anthea if she would like to have lunch one day. She was certain Anthea wouldn’t want to, and not sure she wanted to herself. She just wanted to have a mate in this forbidding place.

“By the way,” she added, “do you know how I might join the Drama Discussion Group?”

“Just turn up. Didn’t you get the memo?”

“What memo?”

“That one.” Anthea pointed to the circular Maggie had already read.

“No, I haven’t had any post yet.”

“Aren’t you on the rooms list?”

“The what?”

Anthea sighed and produced a thick document stapled at one corner, which listed all the drama employees, their room numbers and so on. She looked at the back page. “I thought as much – you’re not on it. Here’s a spare one. You need to call Maxine and tell her to put you on it for the internal mail.”

“Oh, I get it. Thing. There’s this hand that visits my office bringing post for other people. I think of it being the Addams family running the post service.” Maggie’s nervous attempt at humour had failed.

“You have to look out for yourself here, keep the memo if you like.”

Maggie thanked her rather too warmly, felt embarrassed, and returned to her office wondering what Anthea had meant exactly. It certainly wasn’t an offer of friendship. She sat down and devoured the details of the memo. It listed four programmes, all drama department productions due for transmission before the discussion date in a fortnight’s time, which everyone was asked to watch. No problem, thought Maggie, noticing with delight that Stewart Walker had produced one of the films. He was sure to be there.

In the next week, Maggie read two of the novels and wrote a six-page synopsis of each. Determined to pin Fenella down to a meeting, she dropped them off with Anthea, with a note to Fenella asking whether she had time to talk about the first pile of scripts yet. Anthea glanced at it. “You’re too late, I’m afraid. I’ve already rejected them.”

“Sorry?”

“Fenella told me to send them all back,”

Maggie blinked. “
All
of them? Just like that? Even the good ones?”

Anthea smiled. “It’s a tough old world, isn’t it?” At that moment Fenella’s door opened and she came out, chatting to Sally. They walked straight out of the office without acknowledging Maggie or Anthea.

Maggie took a deep breath. She’d been working there nearly a month now, and still hadn’t had a proper conversation with her boss. A faint sense of panic began to lurk at the back of her mind.

“I mean, really, it’s just that I don’t know whether I’m doing what she wants. Do you think she’s happy with my reports?”

“I imagine she’d tell you if she wasn’t,” said Anthea stiffly, and the phone rang. She picked it up, and Maggie decided to leave. She didn’t bother saying goodbye; it wasn’t expected.

Evidently she hadn’t been employed because they valued her opinions; they merely wanted her to stand at the gates of the BBC with a metaphorical riot shield, turning away the thousands who mistakenly believed that the ‘Auntie’ affectionately referred to by the likes of Terry Wogan was a kind, friendly organisation with writers’ best interests at heart and a sympathetic interest in their work. Nevertheless, she must have courage in her abilities and believe in her own judgement. No doubt Fenella would call her in eventually – she would have to, as Maggie’s contract was already a third over, and there would inevitably be some kind of assessment. Or so she assumed. She would be patient. Better not to annoy people when they’re busy with important matters. It would be awful if they didn’t give her another contract, she’d barely dipped a toe in the water.

After another day or two of reading, during which she found another writer who she thought showed promise, she began to wonder what was the point of her efforts, if everything was to be rejected anyway. Did Sally really mean
everything
? Maybe she should start developing a project on her own, as Sally seemed to be doing. She knew lots of theatre writers, maybe she would call a couple if she didn’t hear from Fenella soon. On the other hand, she ought to ask permission first. Damn that bloody woman. She was neglecting her duties. If she was responsible for a trainee, she ought to be training her.

Later that evening, she left her office and walked to the lifts, frowning to herself and jiggling her keys. She pressed all the buttons and waited, gazing automatically at the Ceefax monitor until a lift arrived and the doors pinged open, when she stepped in and turned to face the closing doors. Two men were already inside, discussing the test match. As they travelled down a floor and stopped again to receive more people, Maggie noticed a familiar tone in one of the voices. Unable to turn and look, she swiftly scoured her mental files and remembered a man she’d encountered in Edinburgh several years earlier: a BBC wonk who’d proved unexpectedly capable at the police station, and afterwards, in fact. The unfaltering conversation behind her indicated that he hadn’t recognised her, so she dawdled out when they reached the ground floor, pausing in the foyer to pretend to check her bag so she could surreptitiously get a good look at him. Yes, that was Chris. He’d hardly changed at all, but wore a very smart suit – Armani? – and carried an even smarter briefcase. He and his companion walked with total ease and confidence out to a waiting limo, where a chauffeur opened the back door for them.

Maggie shrugged to herself, and headed off to the tube station.

Chapter Four

That’s right, I slipped Jonathan in there without warning you. His Cambridge University production of Henry V had led directly to a job at the National Theatre and then the BBC, thanks to a couple of contacts he had – did I mention he was an old Etonian? By the time Maggie and I had squeezed ourselves under the thick glass doors of the BBC, he was comfortably established on a staff contract (that means permanent employment in normal language).

Please don’t think I resent the ease with which he strolled through his career. On second thoughts, you can think that if you like. Seeing how it’s true.

What about the other bloke, you’re probably thinking. What’s he up to? Chris was a General Trainee, which is BBC-speak for potential senior manager. (George Orwell worked at the BBC, you know. Do you think that’s where he got the idea for Newspeak?) Up to now Chris had neither distinguished himself nor blotted his copybook. He was on the lookout for something that would put him ahead of his peers in the dog-eat-dog race to the top. Appropriately enough, he’d just been given an office in the brand new building on the site of the old White City Greyhound Stadium. Perhaps the frantic rivalry of the dogs lingered on, trapped and circulating round the state-of-the-art air conditioning system.

BBC: the Best of British Culture!
Chris wrote on his A4 pad, smiling with satisfaction. He underlined it and made a row of dots below,
bullet points
as they were called. Americans had such a clear, assertive way of doing things, and Chris loved to be on the ball with the latest management methods.

•
Newsnight
.

• David Attenborough.

• Dennis Potter’s
Singing Detective
. (Not the other stuff.)

•
Fawlty Towers
.

He paused: these were their best shows, he believed, but bizarrely, he couldn’t call any other great shows to mind. He tutted, annoyed with himself. He’d have to do some research. How silly, after working there over ten years – the thing was, he didn’t often switch his own telly on.

He tapped his pen on his pad, and stared out of the tinted window as a pigeon flapped down onto a branch of a huge plane tree. He couldn’t ask his new secretary for this sort of information, it wouldn’t look good. Best to wait for her to collate a list of every series broadcast since the last license renewal, nine years ago, which would refresh his memory. He leaned back in his creaking office chair, wishing he had one of the new leather jobs with upholstered armrests, and castors that rolled. The Orwellian charm of the new White City building did not extend to its interior – which was more Kafkaesque. A massive cube of glass and steel, the new building was a hundred yards up the road from Television Centre. Inside it felt like a cross between an airport shopping centre and the set for Fritz Lang’s silent film,
Metropolis
. The building was far from finished, and only one half of one floor was occupied, so it was a bleak and lonely work environment for the moment. He didn’t plan to stay there once his current job was finished.

He missed his office in Television Centre where he’d felt part of the department, a cog in the real production machine, developing ideas and features for Current Affairs. Well,
a
feature. As a General Trainee he rarely spent more than a year in any job, since the aim was to pick up as broad a range of experience as he could, on the fast track to senior management. He had joined the BBC straight after achieving a First at Oxford, and intended to rise as high as he could in the corporation. He regretted the speed of his rise, in a way – he’d have liked to become a successful programme maker first – nothing like a couple of BAFTAs to earn you the respect of the staff. But you couldn’t get a proper overview from the shop floor, he reminded himself, and overview was what really counted in management.

So he’d accepted a role on the License Renewal Committee without question, it was only for a year or so, and it was a vital task: persuading the government to grant the BBC another ten years of the license fee, at the rate they needed, without too many compromises. He had to review their whole output over the last nine years, and report his conclusions to the committee next week. While his secretary collated the list of programmes he was jotting down some thoughts, and mentally trying them out: you couldn’t be too prepared for a boardroom presentation. He wanted to come up with some radical ideas that would make the top brass sit up and notice him – but right now, he hadn’t any.