One of the joys, and problems, of the technological world is the diversity it brings. If you think of your ancestors years ago, before there were televisions, before books, before theatres, before cinemas, before varivision - what do you think they had for entertainment.
"What'll we do tonight, Dad?"
"Well, we could sit around the fire and tell stories."
"Hooray! Dad's taking us to the campfire tonight."
What would your contemporary technokids think of that? There is an atavistic gene in most of us that makes us enjoy a night under the stars, but can it make up for the lack of variety? Today we are indeed spoiled for choice, and that is great for the consumer and a nightmare for the writer. We have all the traditional arts to exercise our skills with as well as all the new ones. I'll only talk about writing since that's my chosen way. We all dream about writing a static classic - I mean a novel which the reader starts at page one and puts down at the end, whether on paper or screen is irrelevant. The writing is everything. Then there is the traditional drama, where the writer's work is spoiled, or sometimes improved, by the actors and directors. Similarly, the traditional film, television and holovision are taken from the writer's desk and filtered through the script committees before they are ruined by the actors and repaired again by technological obfuscation and raucous soundtracks. Now, too, we have the varibooks, varivision and varifilms. These are the interactive things that have taken the twenty-first century by storm, leaving the traditionalists to their campfires.
The varibook is the most personal to experience. You read it on a computer screen, and the computer allows you to play with it at anytime during the story - depending on the Class of Book and Class of Reader, naturally. For example, if one of the characters has a particularly stupid name you might want to change it to one you like - or one that is even stupider. You can change the point of view from narrative observation to first-person experience for any of the characters. You can even supply as much of the dialogue or setting as you like. Early experiments with this were tedious and juvenile, offering at critical moments in the story a choice of plot development. All possible choices were written by the author, and the computer simply jumped to the chosen part. This was boring because the reader knew all along exactly what would happen, and it was exhausting for the authors for all but the simplest of books. It was only when books became true computer programs that the genre left its infancy, and we can say today that it has passed into maturity.
Varivision is similar to the varibook, except that the controlled story is a television show. The family watching the show vote on how to control the narrative, and it changes accordingly. This is still primitive and, to artists, puerile, since the choices are often limited to highlighting the product endorsements that accompany every transmission. For example, if Mrs Brown was doing her washing, the viewers could change the brand of detergent she used, and, depending on who was sponsoring the show, her washing would come out accordingly brighter or duller. In a more emotionally involving scene, Mrs Brown's daughter might have to choose a man for a husband, but if the audience votes that she marries the one that doesn't drive a Ford - why then the marriage will soon end in acrimonious divorce. The audience of varivision, despite being numerous (estimated at 95% of the world's population) is predictably undemanding, and that is satisfactory to all concerned.
Variable interactive drama started in radio, since only voices had to be changed according to observer input. The listeners were hooked in by telephone to the station computer which displayed their suggestions as the play was acted, and the actors improvised accordingly.
Actors love and hate this. Mostly they hate it, and the few who could do it well were in demand.
The stage version of the variplay developed in the 2020s. Interested patrons brought along their personal computers which they rested on their laps in the traditional posture, and plugged them into their armrest where they connected to the play control computer. They could suggest plot developments, vote on computer suggestions of plot development, or even supply dialogue if they were quick enough, but it had to be very good to get through the central computer's garbage filter.
From the very beginning of variable entertainment there has been concern about the rewriting of history with varibooks. Each book comes with an historical rating these days, but that was not always the case. It is strictly forbidden to rewrite history and publish it as fact, but consenting adults may do it in the privacy of their own homes, as in certain circumstances may children under adult supervision - depending on the Class of document. The most complete art books are written as varibooks, but any published work may be read by a variread program. Not many people actually do this with historical documents since it doesn't work very well, but with anything filmed it's quite easy to, for instance, view an assassination with the tables turned - that is with the assassin as the victim and the assassinated as killer. So although news programs are still transmitted "straight", it's easy enough to record them and replay them with any variation you care to devise. News programs are therefore transmitted with a Class 1 historical rating - that is, it is forbidden to play them in variation, though class A viewers are allowed to vary camera angles. To be a class A viewer, though, you need to be pretty close to the President. Some can get temporary permits for, say, police investigations, but the prime rule is that the information in Class 1 histories is immutable.
Even before we started filming Victor was annoyed that the Board of Rating and Censorship would only give his film a Class 4 licence. He considered his history sacrosanct, and could not bear the thought of people taking liberties with his life, though who knows what manner of perversion they got up to with his characters in variflix.
Wendy was full of suggestions. For example, one day she said to Victor, "Do you remember that variflick you did where you played King Arthur?"
"Pendragon: another sword fight? Of course."
"I watched it last night. But I made Guenevere into a cane toad for all the scenes you kissed her. It gave new meaning to 'tongue sandwich'".
Was she talking to me as well? Did she know that I had entered a photograph of her into a dancing program on my writing computer, and that every night she performed for me, and a digitised representation of me kissed her? Don't think for a moment that I go any further, for there is a limit to the amount I want to disappoint myself. I had dreams, and working with Wendy I had a very good chance, I thought, of making them reality. But Victor was disgusted with that type of behaviour. His court battles about changing the rating of his films were legendary ever since VV Times magazine listed its readers' ten favourite ways of making him behave.
A Class 4 rating was not bad, actually. That meant the viewer or reader can change the dialogue and some character names, as long as they don't significantly alter the historical facts, but not alter at all an historical fact which has any effect on the rest of the world. For example a reader could give Victor a cold, as long as that cold does not make him so irrational he shoots the pilot of an aeroplane he is in so that the plane crashes into the middle of a crowded city. That's straight into the class 10 drivel-fiction bracket with the science fiction, romance fiction, gardening magazines and psychological life-enhancement books.
Readers must have a rating depending on age, education and psychological profile. Once you have been convicted of fraud you'll only get a Class D permit - which is really only good for comic books and philosophical textbooks, since such readers have proved they can't be trusted to vary anything else. Curiously, a study made of imprisoned fraudsters found that most of them were quite content with those categories.
While nearly everyone agrees that changed histories should not be propagated as fact, the reader categorisation has such ardent critics as censorship has always attracted. If anyone wants to view, in the privacy of their own home, Germany winning the second world war, or Jesus surviving crucifixion to become a leading rabbi, why should they not if it entertains them? This brings up another problem - what to do with those books already published as "speculative fiction" in which (for instance) Germany wins the second world war or Jesus survives crucifixion? At first they became known as "static" variable books since they played with history in a fixed way, but as soon as they were read by a varibook program it was possible to make them dynamic and enter the varied version into a real history book as if it were fact, using as authority the verifiable fact that they were published before varibooks were invented. It was not obvious to everyone that some people played with historical facts in the days before computers did it.
So it was legislated that once something was published on fixed medium - read 'paper' - it became a Class 1 document and therefore unalterable. This was impossible to police, since it is a matter of moments for a computer to scan a book into its memory and alter it beyond recognition. Thus in just a few years the number of histories of the world, and the number of potential histories of the world waiting to be read on the varibook screens, was far greater than any number of possible histories, and it would be a miracle if anyone ever again had some idea of the actual history of the world as it must have occurred. The varibook philosophers would say that once it has been written about - or read - it must have happened that way, at least if the reader believes it. But, as you can imagine, there aren't many gullible people left.
The first morning after shooting began I happened to be watching the morning news on telly. I prefer to watch it straight in the morning, and I usually manage to turn it off before "Show Buzz" with Kirsty Kitty comes on, but that morning I distractedly let the voices drone on as I contemplated my work. I looked up to hear Kirsty's ingratiating, irritating voice, and her glossed-over size 13 mouth talking about Victor.
"News now of the first day's shooting of Victor Lawrence's lavishly self-funded film version of his best-selling autobiography, where it appears that not all the shooting on the set is done by the camera jocks. Sources say that personality differences between Victor and the award-winning director Wendy Hill have already flared into tempestuous rows..."
I had to laugh, for I knew Victor would be watching and that he would be very angry. Indeed when I caught him limping that morning I suspected he had kicked Wendy, but no, he said, "I kicked the television." Televisions have always been heavy objects, but now that they are just a flat screen hanging on a brick wall there is really little sense in kicking them.
He said, "I don't understand why I behaved that way. After all, I've had to put up with the sleaze of show business for a long time now, and my hide is as thick as an elephant's. True sleaze is usually harmless."
Truth? I had not known Victor long, but I was wary whenever he spoke of it. "Truth..." I did not complete my thought, for I still needed the job.
"Do you want to know the real truth, Tim?" he continued. "I'm nervous as hell. It's been so quiet and peaceful working with you on the script. But now I must face Wendy's direction, and she distracts me from what is the greatest challenge of my life. If she's not annoying, she's just being beautiful. It bugs me, Tim."
It bugs him does it? He's old enough to be her grandfather, the randy bastard. I wanted to punch his guts, to tell him to leave Wendy alone, but all I did was say, "You'll be right as soon as the camera rolls, Victor." Not that cameras actually roll these days.
I was right, for although my thoughts of him were sometimes tinted by unnecessary jealousy, he was truly a professional, and as soon as Wendy called "Action!" his tensions dissolved to reveal Victor the actor. I must say I thought he was marvellous as a seventy-year-old man pretending to be his eighteen-year-old self. It was almost good enough to do away with the post-production computer simulation changes I planned for his face.
If you read Victor: my varied life [Chapters 14-18] you will remember that his first job was in a radio station running errands.
VICTOR IS SITTING AT HIS DESK CHEWING ON A PENCIL AND STARING OUT THE WINDOW AT THE YACHTS ON THE HARBOUR. HE COMPLETES A THOUGHT AND BEGINS DICTATING TO THE COMPUTER.
VICTOR (VOICE OVER) On the night of my eighteenth birthday I travelled to Sydney on the mail train from Moree. I'd been drinking all night and I had to find a hotel to sleep off the effects before I showed up for my interview at the radio station. I need not have bothered, for as soon as I arrived I was put to work as the station's errand-runner, odd-jobber, and cleaning robot. It was hard and tireless work, but all through the station I could hear the voice of the announcers, and after work I was allowed to stay and watch the transmission of the Interactive Radio Play, and occasionally even speak to the famous actors afterwards, trying to rub shoulders with them, hoping their notoriety would rub off on me.
INTERIOR OF RADIO STATION. VICTOR IS OBSERVING THE STUDIO. HE WALKS IN AND SEATS HIMSELF AT THE CHAIR AND SPEAKS SOUNDLESSLY TO THE MICROPHONE. HE LOOKS UP SUDDENLY, THEN GUILTILY SLINKS AWAY.
Our biggest problem with filming the Interactive Radio Play was that none of the original actors was still alive - well it was fifty years ago and we couldn't trace them. Wendy teased Victor by insisting he do it as if it really were live, but she new he wasn't up to speed any more, and besides the last Interactive Radio Play was broadcast 40 years ago and there were no actors around who could do it. You may not even remember this primitive form, so I'll describe it briefly in case you didn't read Victor's book (in which he gives an unnecessarily detailed History [Victor: my varied life, chapters 21-25 'Radio Without me, Life for Radio, Life for the Planet, Waning Radio, Death Rays']). It started early in the century, or even in the late nineties. A team of actors started playing from a script. Listeners were hooked in with their computers over the phone, and they sent in their suggestions for the way the plot should go. The producer would read them as they came in, choose what they thought was best and display it for the actors who improvised the dialogue accordingly. You can see the roots of true varivision in this, but there are fundamental differences. The main one is that nothing is really done by computer except the communication. All the selection and improvisation is done in real time by real people. There were very few actors who could do this in a way that didn't allow the play to degenerate into something completely silly, where the only entertainment comes from word-play, farce and the most rudimentary slapstick. To continue something tragic and unpredictable might seem easy, but from what I read, Victor was one of the few who could carry a team through it, and even then only rarely. Incredibly, we found an archived recording of Victor's first performance, and that is the one he wanted to perform for his film. That was an odd experience; I had actually to go physically to the Australian Sound Archive in Canberra, and I spent an afternoon touring along the endless corridors of tapes on shelves. They expect their automated system to come on line any day now.
Anyway, after an exhausting day I found the archive of Victor's first play. It turned out to be a silly one, but that would contrast nicely with the dramas in which he acted in his later career. That was what he thought, anyway.
Here is an excerpt from a transcription I made for the screenplay. It was one of the Detective Blake stories. There was an open-ended, ongoing series of Detective Blake stories, and since he was a bit of a nasty character the producer had to filter out the audience's plentiful, varied and gruesome suggestions for killing him.
VICTOR(VOICE OVER) The story so far: The first woman to be ordained into the Roman Catholic church has been murdered while taking a funeral. Detective Blake is interviewing the Pope, whose armoured car was seen in the area at the time.
SOUND FX: KNOCK ON THE DOOR
BLAKE Hello. Anybody here? Excuse me sir I'm looking for His Holiness.
POPE You have found him my son, God Bless You.
BLAKE Fine - er thanks for the blessing by the way - My name is Blake - Detective Blake. I wanted to talk to you about the murder of that Priest woman.
POPE The woman priest?
**AUDIENCE PLOT SUGGESTION: POPE INVITES HIM TO TEA IN THE SISTINE CHAPEL**
POPE Certainly. Won't you come into the Sistine Chapel for tea?
BLAKE I'm a coffee man, myself.
POPE It's through here.
BLAKE I'm wondering, your holiness, if you can tell me why your armoured car was near the cemetery where Father Marion was conducting the funeral service. Hey! Nice painting.
POPE Yes, we like it. And I'm sorry detective, I had no idea it was out there - the armoured car. You'll have to speak to the driver. Milk in your coffee?
**AUDIENCE PLOT SUGGESTION: THE SISTINE CHAPEL IS BEING REDECORATED**
BLAKENo but I take sugar. Your driver said you told him to take it out for a wash.
POPEQuite.
BLAKE By driving around Rome? Hey I like that colour. Hey you up on the ladder. What colour is that?
PAINTER It's rusty beige. Nice, ain't it? Covers anything with just one coat.
POPE I love it myself. We're having the whole ceiling done.
**AUDIENCE PLOT SUGGESTION: SHOOT DETECTIVE BLAKE**
BLAKE Do you trust that painter?
SOUND FX: GUNSHOT.
BLAKE Hey! You can't do that.
SOUND FX: MOAN. GASP. BODY FALLS. VERY LONG PAUSE.
POPE Nice shot Mick. Quick. Get this body out of here. You nuns over there. Stop that praying and get over here.
SOUND FX: COMMOTION AS BODY IS BEING DRAGGED AWAY
POPE Well, that's got rid of him at last.
NUN Where shall we put the body father?
POPE With the others.
NUN Er ... I'm new here. Where is that?
**AUDIENCE PLOT SUGGESTION: BURN HIM AS A HERETIC**
POPE I have a better idea. The man is a heretic and we shall have a public burning to set an example.
NUN Oh goody. We haven't had one of those for centuries.
BLAKE*** No! I will not allow it.
NUN Who are you?
BLAKE I am Detective Blake.
NUN But your voice is different.
BLAKE That's because I'm dead.
POPE This is insupportable. I will not allow ghosts in the Vatican.
NUN Father!
POPE Er... except the Holy, one of course...
ET CETERA
Note the point I have marked *** when Blake's voice changes. The actor who played Blake was so taken by surprise by the plot suggestion to kill him, since he was the star - in fact I suspect the producer didn't mean to let that plot suggestion through - that the noise of the gun caused him to have a heart attack and fall over. The commotion on the recording is the sound of him being taken away to be resuscitated. You remember the quote from Victor: my varied life that "the best breaks come when somebody dies"? Victor was watching the broadcast and naturally came to assist the fallen actor. He was useless in the medical sense, but he was standing next to the microphone when he was seized with the irresistible urge to speak, thus he took over the part of Blake - or Blake's ghost. Evidently he did it quite well since the producer liked him. He jumped straight from dogsbody to star. And Detective Blake had a new lease of life with Victor. In fact Victor remained him through his whole career, and it was never really mentioned again - it certainly isn't mentioned in any of the 3 megabytes of Victor's autobiography - that his most famous character was once shot dead.
The day filming began I rang Wendy to ask if she needed a lift.
"No. I have to pick someone up on the way. Can you tell Victor I have a surprise for him?"
Victor knew what that meant.
"She's doing something to irritate me, isn't she?"
"She didn't say."
"She doesn't have to."
I felt I should at least try to defend her, after all, neither of us knew what she had planned. It was certainly nothing to do with my script, and even though he suffered most by it, afterwards Victor conceded that at least it was in the artistic spirit of the film. That was strange since I now believe his first reaction was more accurate - she did it to irritate him.
One of Wendy's scouts, or private detectives, or whatever she was using, had found the radio actor who had had the heart attack - the one Victor replaced in the role of Sergeant Blake. That was when he was forty eight, yet here he was in front of us at ninety nine, happily driving around the set of the radio studio in his electric wheelchair. He came with an attendant nurse, but the nurse's medical knowledge was not apparent. Victor and I suspected that Wendy chose the nurse from among the film extras, but we never saw him again after that day. The old man could hardly speak, let alone act a part, so we sat him in the corner letting him be an old man observing his past. He sat there quietly enough, just watching. We were soon to discover that he was not so quiet all the time, though infuriatingly he always waited until the cameras were rolling before speaking.
The set was imaged to look like a turn-of-the-century radio studio. There were five actors, who had remembered their improvised dialogue, standing around microphones, a large computer screen to display the audience plot suggestions, and a control room where the producer did nothing and Victor made the coffee.
The old man parked his chair where he could watch, and when the clapper fell and action was called he said, "This all seems oddly familiar."
The first time was only mildly irritating, and actually rather amusing, for it was the first take of the movie.
"I suppose it does," said Victor, looking nervously at the frail old man. If you read Victor: my life varied, you will understand that Victor believed that the man had died, and to confront his ghost after fifty years was putting butterflies on our set. He said nothing further, so I assumed he was back in his shell. The nurse who had come with him had not bothered coming over, being busy with one of the crew on irrelevant matters, so we went for take two.
During take two the old man woke up again.
"Do you remember my wife?" he asked.
Victor came over and frowned at him, and replied that he did not remember his wife.
"Pity," he said, though not sadly. "I thought you might be able to tell me what she was like." He went into hysterics then, and attempted to slap his knee, the effect of which was to send him half out of his wheelchair. The nurse appeared from nowhere, picked him up and reseated him properly, and between the coughs and the laughs he said, "That one kills them at the home." Then he fell asleep again.
He slept through take three, but the actors forgot their lines.
In take four he said, "You think I'm senile, don't you? I'll tell you a secret. I'm just pretending. It passes the time. It's no fun being old these days. The drugs are too good. They won't let you be crazy any more, and all you can remember are the old jokes." He slept again.
Take five was perfect apart from the snoring, but that could be edited out, then when he finally worked out where he was he said to Victor, "Hey! you're the young bastard that left me to die on the floor then took my job!"
Churlishly he replied, "I shouldn't have called the bloody ambulance either, then you wouldn't be here ruining my film."
His head came up off his chest and he looked at the place where he thought Victor was sitting. "You don't care that we lost the grand final do you? That game was everything to us. Everything."
Victor looked to Wendy who was trying to disengage the nurse from the sound crew, and the old man's film career was terminated. His part was sheer theatricalism anyway. From then on things went more smoothly, until something even stranger happened to interrupt us. I thought little of it at the time, but, in the light of certain later events, Victor may not have been entirely wrong when he said that there was foul play in the studio that day. Perhaps Victor was finally getting senile too, or maybe he had adopted a persecution complex, but let me present the evidence to you for your own appraisal.
Take thirteen was running perfectly. The actors were good, the old man quiet, and everything went well until the moment that someone suggested the death of Sergeant Blake and the shot rang out through the studio. There was no gun. Not even a toy one since all the sound effects were called up from a computer memory, even in those days. Even so it was a realistic sound, and while the actor playing the old man as a young actor fell to the ground in simulated cardiac arrest, the old man appearing as himself as an old man stood up in front of his wheelchair and screamed with a vigour we would all have thought impossible from such a frail old frame.
"No! Not again! Nooooooooooo." After the wail his face twisted in pain and he fell on his face across the sprawling figure of the actor playing him as a young man, who, being on the point of regaining his feet met the old man's head with his own and was knocked unconscious.
Victor was on the spot, being ready to take the place of the young man playing the old man as a young man. I think he was expecting filming to continue, but the days of improvisation were long gone and there was chaos on the set. The electric wheelchair, being vacated without warning, immediately called for an ambulance, and about fifteen people were crowding around the two collapsed bodies trying to prove that smothering attention is still no substitute for one incompetent doctor. Twenty-first century medicine would keep them both alive when the ambulance arrived, but until then they had to survive the face slapping of monkeys pleading, "Please wake up! Don't die here!"
The nurse was nowhere to be found. Neither was the old man's wheelchair which, having lost its occupant, was wandering the corridors looking for him crying, "Attention! I have lost my invalid. Attention! Help me please. I have lost my invalid."
The ambulance finally arrived and took the old man away on a gurney, left the young man with a couple of pills to fix his headache, and asked where the old man's wheelchair was. It was, in fact, approaching Victor from behind, and there being nowhere to turn, waited behind him for Victor to move. Victor was wiping his brow, exhausted and anxious from the activity. He turned and saw the chair behind him and gratefully fell into it. But the chair was sensitive to weight and knew immediately that this was not the old man. It said, "You are a new invalid. Please give the password."
"I beg your pardon?" asked Victor, who had no experience with talking chairs.
"Incorrect. Please give the password or get off me."
"But I don't know the password."
"Incorrect."
Straps suddenly appeared from the arms and seat of the chair and quickly attached themselves to Victor's wrists and thighs, effectively pinning him in his seat.
Victor screamed, "What the bloody hell is going on?"
The chair announced, very loudly, "Attention! This wheelchair is being stolen. Attention! This wheel chair is being stolen."
Victor was struggling, trying in vain to free himself from the straps, his swearing extemporaneous but with the standard vocabulary.
The chair, quietly now, said to Victor, "Please don't try to move sir. You won't be able to. Why don't you relax? I have called for the police and they will be here shortly."
A few of the film crew pulled at the straps at Victor's wrists, but found no way to free him. The chair spoke to them angrily: "Get away from this chair. It is currently being stolen, and any involvement could be construed as aiding and abetting a felony." When the others had moved back, it said to Victor, "Now, Sir, while we wait for the police, might I have a moment of your time to show you the benefits of owning a GMH electric wheelchair? A screen popped out of one of the arm rests and folded itself over onto Victor's lap. "You can see here just a part of our full range of equipment aimed at all those with mobility problems, or those who just don't like walking. Let's have a closer look inside the Starlane 57, the top of the range. You know you're sitting in one right now? All the Starlane models are equipped with complete medical communications services, and medicines for all occasions. It can diagnose and administer automatically with no user programming. For a very special customer like yourself, we'd like to offer you a free sample of our latest sedative - Twenty Seven Winks."
Victor screamed and thrust his waist forward. With his arms and legs pinned he could only move his buttocks a handspan away from the chair, but that was enough space to see the hypodermic syringe that had administered his free sample of Twenty Seven Winks.
Victor's face was white. He tried to sit again, but sat straight back onto the needle, screamed again and strained at the straps. I looked and watched the needle retract, and told Victor it was gone. He sat slowly down again, and the chair said, "We also offer a full range of energy supplements, fortified by our very special vitamin mix. Here's a free sample." Victor screamed again and tried to get his bum away from the needle. He signalled to two big blokes from the film crew.
"Hold me up," he cried. They each grabbed a handful of his trousers to stop Victor sitting again.
"Please sit down," said the chair. "I'd like to talk about our incredible medical insurance plan. And there are more free samples."
At that moment the police came bursting in with their plastic truncheons twirling. They ran to the chair and were about to start beating Victor with them when the nurse sauntered in after having spent, from his appearance, a good half hour in the make-up room. But he was quick-witted and he ran quickly to Victor's aid yelling "Victor Lawrence you rotten bastard!" at the top of his voice. The chair immediately released the straps restraining Victor, and said, "Welcome, friend. Thank you for choosing GMH wheelchairs. We know you'll be happy and proud to own a Starlane 57. What's your name?"
Victor was weak but he stood, turned to the nurse, and from his pallid, sweaty face he asked, "What did you just call me?"
"It's the password to operate the chair. You shouldn't sit in them if you don't know the password. Did it give you any free samples?"
Wendy had been quietly watching from behind the scenes, scribbling notes onto her script-pad and glaring occasionally at Victor. She said very low, "Have you quite finished, Victor?"
The nurse had programmed the chair to inject Victor with something to counteract the free samples. His colour had returned and he was even more energetic than before. He said, "Such compassion. Yes I'm awfully sorry. It was all my fault. Shall we begin again?"
"Certainly, Victor, as soon as you rebuild the set." The police batons had knocked over a few props on their way out, dissatisfied that their was no flesh to hit.
He came over to her, stuck his face in hers, and screamed, "I said I was sorry, but the set is not my problem. It's yours, so just get to work on it will you."
"You temperamental, prissy little prima bloody donna..." Wendy ranted for some time, and Victor smiled at her, letting his gaze fall on her magnificent hair which, as it was shaken up and down, broke its bob-making restraints and fell tangle-free over her shoulders. It was a bewitching physical moment, and I saw him reach out to touch it. She turned to face me as I approached and, seeing that I intended to intervene in their argument, dropped her voice to merely sarcastic: "And what do you want, Mr Writer?"
She quietened further and met my calm gaze with her own implacable, boring stare. I said, "You're making a mess of your hair," and brushed it simply with the back of my hand. Up until then I had hardly said a word that day. I once thought that writers must be the most voluble of people, that having the most things to say they must obviously go about talking all the time. This is perhaps not as ridiculous as inviting carpenters to dinner and expecting them to build a cabinet on you kitchen table, but it is an unnecessary generalisation, if not a stereotype, for writers, like nurses, come mixed. Some are fat and some are thin, some eat and some don't (but most drink), and some talk and some don't. I am usually taciturn and reticent on the set because I feel my part is done and I am now the plaything of forces beyond my control.
I must have appeared particularly sensitive and intelligent then for Wendy had fallen quiet, and I could see Victor wondering if there was something deeper in my relationship with her. He had probed for it, but we both left him guessing, she to tease him with jealousy, I because I felt empty. But at this moment they were both quiet, and with the anger defused I turned Wendy to face Victor as I said to her, "Why don't you let him go and change while we reorganise the set?"
No one had noticed before, but either the medication or the fright in the electric wheelchair had opened Victor's bladder. It was our first moment of real embarrassment together, the first emotion we all shared that was at all binding. Wendy smiled sheepishly as she turned away again. "Hurry up and change you rotten ..." She finished quietly and gently, "Victor Lawrence you old bastard." Victor was so bemused by the affection in her voice that he did not notice the wheelchair creep up behind him.
"Welcome, friend. Thank you for choosing GMH wheelchairs. Won't you sit down?"
