‘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.
Ben gave her a surprised look. ‘What have you got against sex?’
Nell flushed. ‘Nothing, of course,’ she said quickly. ‘I just think that the public are tired of having it thrust at them the whole time.’
His
