Death of a Scriptwriter Read Online Free Page A

a winner. Besides, the book they meant to serialize 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 ?’
    Patricia gave a patronizing little laugh. ‘I often found Miss Sayers’s plots a trifle loose .’ And Dorothy Sayers is long dead and I am alive and my books are going to be
on television, she thought with a sudden rush of elation.
    She said goodbye to Sheila at the station, thinking that it was a pity such a pretty girl should wear such odd and dreary clothes.
    Sheila walked thoughtfully away down the platform after having seen her charge ensconced in a corner seat. She scratched her short blonde crop. Did Harry realize just how vain Patricia
Martyn-Broyd was? But then he had endured fights with writers before. Writers were considered the scum of the earth.
    At a conference a week later, Harry announced, ‘I’m waiting for Jamie Gallagher. He’ll be main scriptwriter. I gave him the book. He’ll be coming along
to let us know what he can do with it.’
    ‘I wouldn’t have thought he was at all suitable,’ suggested Sheila. ‘Not for a detective series.’
    ‘BBC Scotland likes his work, and if we want them to put up any money for this, we’d better give ’em what they want,’ said Harry.
    The door opened and Jamie Gallagher came in. He was a tall man wearing a donkey jacket and a Greek fisherman’s hat. He had a few days of stubble on his chin. He had greasy brown hair which
he wore combed forward to hide his receding hairline. He was a heavy drinker, and his face was criss-crossed with broken veins. It looked like an ordnance survey map.
    He threw a tattered copy of Patricia’s book down on the table and demanded truculently, ‘What is this shite?’
    ‘Well, shite, actually,’ said Harry cheerfully, ‘but we need you to bring all that genius of yours to it.’
    Jamie sat down and scowled all around. He was battling between the joys of exercising his monumental ego on the one hand and remembering that he was currently unemployed on the