A Polaroid of Peggy Read online

I froze. Surely it couldn’t be … And, even if it had been, how the fuck did he know? I had reached the point where I was actually having to check the date of my own birthday, but relief was at hand.

  “Yeah, saw – the er ‘big one’ – was coming up next week. And I just thought I’d do the friendly thing,” he said.

  Yes, very friendly. Thank you. But I think you’ll find I’ve another fifty years to go before the big ONE! No, I didn’t say any of that apart from the thank you – not out loud anyway.

  “Yes, and the reason I noticed the date is that your membership dues – well, they’re a bit overdue, ha ha.”

  Ha ha. So not just being friendly then. A gentle reminder. I thanked him again. More cloth cutting to be done.

  *

  A couple of hours later, and I was getting seriously stuck into series nine. The smell of death was obviously in the air – I refer to the death of my career – as nobody seemed to be coming near me. The action was all around Lucille’s office these days. On my way in I’d overheard someone say that Mick Hudnutt would be in first thing tomorrow morning – presumably to see what new miracles had been wrought on his troubled account – and all the young guns were rushing in to show her their brilliant ideas.

  Still, looking on the bright side, I was on to episode fifteen, ‘The Wizard’, which was particularly interesting to me because Elaine’s boyfriend refers to them as an inter-racial couple, thinking that she is Hispanic. This rather reminded me of the slightly Puerto Rican like features that I have sometimes ascribed to Peggy, so I froze the frame as this point and spent a few minutes checking Julia Louis-Dreyfus for cheekbone height and eye-almondiness, and then referring back to the Polaroid of Peggy to see how they compared in regard to these criteria. (Are these any criteria of Hispanicness? I really don’t know, but for some reason I thought they might be.)

  At exactly this moment, Julia finally did stick her head around my door, to tell me it was nearly six, she was going in ten minutes, and had I forgotten something or other, but I was so wrapped up in my review of Elaine and Peggy that I missed whatever it was that I might have forgotten. A minute later, she was back again. Some chap called Keith Lyons was on the line.

  Another moviemory. And another freeze frame. And this time it’s me in it, eyes wide open, terrified.

  That’s how I see it. That’s what I remember. Feeling as though time had stopped and knowing that when it restarted, I would discover that my last even semi-realistic hope of finding Peggy had gone. Or possibly, just possibly, that this insane pursuit might, against all the odds, finally be leading somewhere. As with job applications or exam results or football scores, I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to know the answer, because for as long as I didn’t know, the little guttering flame of hope still burned. Then I unfroze and picked up the phone.

  Almost forty-eight hours to the minute after we had last spoken – but not quite – Keith Lyons had called back to say that his American colleagues had located a Dr Myron Davis – they call dentists doctor over there he told me – living with a Mrs Vivien Davis in somewhere called – wait a minute, he had it there – Tinton Falls, New Jersey.

  Tinton Falls? Where the hell was that? Never mind – there were maps. (And yes, he charged me for the full two days.)

  Perhaps I should have waited, but I couldn’t. I peered at the address and telephone number he’d given me, and I picked up the phone and dialed. The usual wait, then that particular American ringing tone, once, twice, three times – come on, be in – four ti— “Hello?”

  It was her. I was sure it was her.

  “Er, hello, is that Peggy – er Peggy Davis?”

  “Ye – es. This is Peggy Davis. Who’s speaking?”

  “Andrew – I mean, Andy Williams.”

  A pause. I could almost hear her memory rewinding.

  “Andy? Really? Andy Williams? How – how’d you get my num—”

  And then, just then, just as we were getting going, Julia burst in again.

  “Andrew, I just told you. You’ve got to get to the school for India’s show. Seriously, if you don’t leave right now, you’ll be late.”

  “What! Why didn’t you – oh shit. Peggy, look I’m sorry, something’s come up. I have to go. Can I call you back later?”

  “Sure, I’ll be here. Is everything okay Andy? You sound pretty hassled.”

  “No, no. Well, yes, but I’m fine. I’ll call you later. Bye. Bye Peggy.”

  I picked up my car keys and ran.

  *

  Of course, I was the last person to arrive. I tore into the school hall turned theatre for the night and all the heads turned towards me. Little sibling heads, doting grandma heads, the less than impressed head’s head, and the familiar shaking reddy-auburn head – ‘absolutely typical’ was the message it unmistakably conveyed – of my very, very soon to be ex-wife Alison. With a stream of excuse-me’s, and I’m awfully sorry’s, and oh gosh, I’m afraid I didn’t see your foot there’s, I made my way to my appointed place, and yes, being the last one in the party to arrive, I was indeed stuck next to sodding Doug.

  He greeted me with the condescending smile of the victor.

  “India’s really excited about this,” he confided.

  “Doug, I know you’re new to this sort of thing, but she’s got a walk on part in a Nativity Play. I think I know my own daughter and I wouldn’t have said that it had her in a lather of excitement.”

  “A Nativity Play?” he said, and burst out laughing. “Hardly.”

  “Not a Na—”

  “And she’s got a lot more than a walk-on. She’s got a lot of lines.”

  Lines? But when I asked her –

  “She’s Golde.”

  One of those shadows from the past flitted by again.

  “Golde?”

  “Tevye’s wife. ‘Fiddler on the Roof’. Do you know it?”

  The house lights dimmed as he spoke, thank goodness, or he would have seen the various expressions of confusion, embarrassment and deflation that must have been competing for space on my face. I racked my brains: had India told me about this? Had I not been paying attention? Both entirely possible, though I couldn’t recall anything specific. But however this oversight had occurred, it mattered not. I had missed a unique and an almost certainly never to be repeated opportunity to bond with my daughter. The hours we could have happily spent, me playing Tevye while she honed her Golde. I could have wept for the lost dibbys, yubbys and biddy, dum, bums. And worse than that, Doug, this impostor, this cuckoo in my nest had obviously been allowed into India’s confidence and now even her heart. Had she not specifically asked for him to be allowed to attend?

  I tried to cheer myself up by concentrating on the show. You have to be pretty bitter and twisted not to be charmed by a bunch of nine-year-old girls wrestling with their Christmas show. The missed entrances, the faltering notes, the whispered prompts just add to the oohing and aahing gaiety of it all. India, as it happened, made a very respectable job of Golde. And the little girl who played Tevye, who, beneath her stuck-on beard, I recognised from India’s endless party-going as being an American girl called Cameron, made a decent fist of him too. (I think Herb shaded it, but it was close.) Halfway through the first act, during a scenery change that went slightly awry, precipitating general audience titter and a break in my concentration, I suddenly remembered my truncated call to Peggy. It had completely slipped my misfiring mind.

  I decided I would go outside in the interval – this would have the added bonus of relieving me of the pain of having to sip a beaker of warm Pinot Grigio standing next to Doug – and phone Peggy from there. But when I checked in the many pockets of my Schott jacket, not one contained my phone. In the rush to get here, of course, I had left it on top of my desk. I could see it sitting there now – oh shit! don’t tell me – I frantically checked my pockets again. Oh bugger. Bugger, bugger, bugger
! Yes, it was sitting on my desk alright – on top of the piece of paper on which I had written Peggy’s number in Tintin wotsit. And that meant I wouldn’t be able to call her when I got home either. Or call her from anywhere until I could get back in the office tomorrow morning. And by that time it would be the middle of the night in Tonto, which meant I couldn’t try until lunchtime – and who knew, she could be setting off on a lone round the world yachting trip tomorrow, and I might not be able to speak to her for a year.

  The end of the first act came with tumultuous applause from the audience. Even by the normal standards of over the top parental encouragement the bloke on the other side of me seemed to be giving it a lot of wellie and threw in a couple of whistles too. I turned to see who it was, and I recognised him as Cameron/Tevye’s dad, Hank or Hal someone, who was, if memory served, something in the city. Spotting another opportunity to avoid having to engage with Doug, I gave Florence a big kiss, a wave to Anneke, a nervous smile to Glenda and Vic – Jesus, was everyone here? I half expected Spot to pop up from somewhere – and made some sort of neutral facial expression in the direction of Alison who returned same. Then I attached myself to Hal or Hank and took my beaker of Pinot Grigio with me.

  “Cameron is really very good,” I said.

  “Why thank you,” he replied, “Imogen was real special too.”

  “India,” I corrected him. And then for no better reason than to fill in the awkward silence that followed, I suggested, not really meaning it, that Cameron was certainly talented enough to get work in commercials. And that, of course, reminded him I was in advertising and that led to the inevitable discussion, now joined by his wife Margot – long accent on the ‘oh’ – about what ads I was doing that they might have seen. So I mentioned one, and Margot said yes, she’d seen it, but in such a way that told me she clearly hadn’t understood a thing – possibly, I privately concluded, too esoterically British for her. So then I tried to think of something I was doing that an American might be able to relate to, and that is how, little by little, the conversation led on to the non-chocolate chocolatey breakfast cereal and the Jerry Seinfeld connection.

  “Oh,” said Margot, “my brother is a friend of his agent. He says he’s a really nice guy.”

  That was all she said. She didn’t make it clear whether her brother had said the agent was the nice guy or whether it was the agent saying it was Jerry, and I didn’t ask because I wasn’t taking much notice at the time, or I thought I wasn’t, but I remind you again of my fevered state of mind. As you will shortly see, this little throwaway remark lodged in my unconscious and in that unstable environment grew into something else entirely. But we shall come to that. In the meantime, the curtain rose on the second act, India and her nine-year-old chums iddle-diddle-daidle-daidled their way through the rest of ‘Fiddler on the Roof’, the curtain came down, the audience stood and cheered, and Doug and I quickly found ourselves locked in a fierce competition to see who could clap more loudly. (Hal/Hank’s half time efforts were paltry by comparison.) Determined not to be outdone, I also yelled out “Well done, Indeeyah”, which, judging by her own pained expression and the admonishing “Da-ad!” I got from Florence, may have been a gesture of support too far. Afterwards, we all – Florence, India, Alison, Glenda, Vic, Anneke, Doug and I – went off to some mentally over-priced supposedly wood-burning pizza place. This had apparently been arranged in advance but nobody said a word to me until we were actually leaving the school. Even so, given that I simply had to win my rutting competition with the interloper stag, aka Doug, it was essential that, when the bill arrived, I was seen to be the big-hearted generous Daddy of them all who picked up the tab. There are times when cloth cutting, however advisable, is a secondary consideration.

  When we left – all of the others going back to no-longer-New-Pemberley, and me to miserable Bayswater – I told India for the hundredth time that she had been better than Judy Garland, better than Emma Bunton, better than anyone who’d ever set foot on a stage, before giving her one last big hug, and a matching one to Florence. And then I watched them all disappear laughing and joking into the night, with Doug clearly the cheerleader, or so, in my depression and sense of exclusion, I was determined to believe.

  That night, I hardly slept at all. I finished ‘Monica’s Story’ and with nothing else to read, and the rest of ‘Seinfeld’ series nine unreachable in my office along with my phone and Peggy’s number, I just lay on my bed and brooded. My fiftieth birthday was on Monday, now just four days away. And, to compound my unhappiness, it dawned on me that neither Florence nor India had asked me at the restaurant what I might be doing to celebrate. In fact, neither had said a word about it since that one conversation when I had been reading India a story, weeks and weeks before. How ironic, I reflected bitterly, that the only reference to Monday had been made by Alison who’d drawn me aside to say that we had things to discuss and to make sure, whatever I did, to drop by the house after work.

  *

  Fuck them I thought. Fuck them all. Fuck Geoff and Vince and Alison and Doug and Lucille and Mick Hudnutt and yes, to my eternal shame, I probably thought fuck Florence and India too. And then came the thunderbolt, and the flash of lightning that enabled me to see what I must do. And what I mustn’t. I wouldn’t ring Peggy back. No, I would get on a plane and fly to Tumtum and knock on her door and speak to her in person instead. And I would do it on Monday – that was how I would celebrate my fiftieth birthday, that would be my birthday surprise! For several minutes I must have just lain there, marvelling at the wonderful simplicity of my idea. All my problems answered in one. I no longer felt the burning resentment against all those who had slighted me and brought me low – how could I feel anything but goodwill towards anyone when I would, so soon, come face to face with the face of which I dreamed? At that moment, I think I very probably felt as excited and as thrilled with the brilliance of my idea as I had on that day in New York when I had coined the line, ‘Do you have a bee in your bonnet about compacts?’

  But then the awful spectre of cloth cutting started to cloud my mind. I wasn’t at all sure I had enough money in my account to pay for the ticket. No, thinking back to the screwed-up bank statement, I knew that I hadn’t. I had credit cards, yes, but with all the bills that I still had to settle – shit, why on earth hadn’t I let Doug win the rutting contest at the wood burning pizza place? The money that had cost would have got me a couple of hundred miles past Dublin at the very least.

  And then I remembered that I had a company credit card. And then, somehow, I made a sudden leap, as the creative mind will, to something else entirely, at first seemingly quite unconnected. I remembered Margot’s brother and his friendship with Jerry Seinfeld’s agent. Hadn’t she said that either Jerry or Jerry’s agent was a really nice guy? She certainly hadn’t said that one of them wasn’t. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more it stared me in the face that they both must be really nice guys. If Jerry was a really nice guy would he have a nasty guy for an agent? And if his agent was a really nice guy would he have a nasty guy for a client? (Yes, the earning power of a client who could turn down a hundred and ten million might have a bearing there, but I chose to ignore that.) So here we have two really nice guys – one of them, it was true, who it was reported – third hand – had pissed himself over the phone from New York. But how did we really know what he was laughing about? Maybe it had nothing to do with the idea of Jerry appearing in a British commercial for non-chocolate chocolatey thingummies. A really nice guy like that probably had a really good attitude to his staff, and maybe the office gofer, who would be encouraged to go ahead and express himself at all times, had just cracked the funniest joke ever and that was what made Jerry’s agent piss himself. At four in the morning in Bayswater with nothing else to cling on to, you certainly didn’t want to rule it out.

  And did Margot not have a direct line to these really nice guys? She just had to call her brother. And did I not have a dire
ct line to her? So wouldn’t it be true to say that last night, by the most amazing coincidence – now, here, really was a reason to believe there might be some divine force out there – I had been given a direct line to Jerry’s agent and thence to Jerry and that they both, according to all understanding, were really nice guys. And given that, Mick, what I am telling you is that there is now a real opportunity to pull off the astonishing coup of having Jerry Seinfeld appear in a commercial for non-chocolate chocolatey wibbelys and I am personally flying to New York over the weekend to handle the negotiations.

  Madness, you say, sheer madness. Yes, I say, yes, but members of the jury, that is my point.

  *

  The cold light of day sometimes reveals the flaws in plans hatched in the middle of the night, but you have to be of a mind to see them. Whereas, by the time I was turning the Porsche out of the Fitzrovia traffic and into the car park under the BWD office early on Friday morning, I had totally convinced myself of the rightness of all I was about to do. In Dr Pepper terms, what was the worst that could happen? I would fly to New York, not have a meeting with Jerry or his agent, but fly back and report that I had. I would explain that, unfortunately, as nice as these guys really were, they could not be budged. It wasn’t about the money, and Jerry really loved the script but he just didn’t want to do any commercials. I had tried and failed. I had gone the extra mile, the extra three thousand miles in fact, but to no avail. Could I really be blamed for that?

  I had thought everything through. First, I would write a brief document to distribute at the meeting – documents always add weight to the most negligible of propositions. I chose as a title: Seinfeld Reborn. Then I added a question mark. Seinfeld Reborn? Better. ‘Never over-promise’ is always a good rule when you’re trying to sell something. Then I bunged in a bit of jargon filled rhubarb about how appropriate the ‘Seinfeld’ idea had always been for the non-chocolate chocolatey doodads and some sort of vague itinerary for my trip. Obviously getting a hearing would be tricky but I reckoned that if I was able to get this piece of paper in front of Mick Hudnutt, they would have to hear me out. I called Julia in, asked her to type it up – triple spaced for extra weight – run off half a dozen copies, put them in binders with shiny plastic covers, all the usual bullshit, and threw in some dire threats of a gruesome end if she breathed a word to anyone. Then I asked her to book me the first available business class flight to New York, and a really nice hotel room somewhere – if everything went to plan I might even be doing some entertaining – and also to check out which room the meeting would be in. It turned out to be Twain, always, as it happened, my preferred choice. This was because several of his sayings were painted on the walls, which at least provided something interesting to look at when the meetings got as tedious as they invariably did. There was one in particular that I would point to when I was trying to flog something to a nervous client: ‘A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.’ I decided I would use that today as the soaring finale of my oration. “That person,” I would tell them, looking Mick Hudnutt straight in the eye, “is me!” I could see the heads nodding already.