Sally Wentworth - Shadow Play

She smiled a little. ‘You don’t look like a writer.’

‘Why not?’

‘Too tough.’

‘Ah... So we obviously have entirely different ideas about what a writer should look like.’

Nell shook her head. ‘No—we just look in different mirrors.’

Ben laughed at that; a laugh of genuine amusement. Different lines appeared around his mouth, and for the first time she thought that maybe this unwanted collaboration might just work after all.

Maybe Ben thought so too, because he took her synopsis and the book from his briefcase and put them on the table, drew up a chair. ‘I like the book. I tried to get hold of a copy, but there don’t seem to be any around.’

‘No. I found out that it was published privately; that’s why there isn’t a copy in the British Library.’

‘Vanity publishing,’ Ben commented. ‘Somebody must have really believed in the story to do that.’

‘Or else have felt the need to tell it,’ Nell said, coming to sit opposite him.

He raised his left eyebrow, the one that arched more than the other as if he was in the habit of questioning what he heard. ‘You think it’s a true story? That’s hard to believe.’

‘Stranger things have happened.’

‘Yes, but for the love-affair to have gone on for so long without the heroine realising who her secret lover was? It’s hardly credible.’

‘Maybe in her heart she did know but didn’t want to believe it. She didn’t want to spoil what was perfect.’

‘Perhaps you’re right. It’s certainly very sensitively written.’

‘And that sensitivity is what I want to come over in the adaptation,’ Nell said earnestly. ‘I don’t want this to be just another serial with explicit sex scenes—bare limbs all over the place and moans and groans in the appropriate places. This is a romance in the true sense of the word. That’s the way it’s got to be treated if it’s going to be successful.’

‘Are you implying that I can’t handle that?’

She drew back, realising that her vehemence could have sounded like an accusation. ‘Not at all. I’ve watched the Eastern Trilogy again; you handled that really well.’

‘Again?’

‘I got the tapes out of the television film library to watch last weekend,’ she admitted.

‘Checking up on me?’

‘Doing my homework.’

Ben nodded. ‘Fair enough. But this book differs a great deal from the trilogy. There’s deep passion here as well as romantic love. Earthy, physical passion. That’s what makes the book, and will make it interesting to the viewers. You can’t cut it out.’ He paused, waiting for her to speak, but when she didn’t Ben went on, ‘It needs to be delicately handled to combine the two, but I think we should be able to do it.’

Nell didn’t comment on that, instead reaching out for the book. ‘Shall we make a start?’

‘OK. The first thing to decide is how many episodes.’

‘Max said he couldn’t get money for more than three of one hour.’

‘That should be enough. It will give us an opportunity to express the length of time covered in the book. It’s about twelve years, isn’t it?’

‘Twelve winters.’

‘Yes.’ Ben gave her an appraising look. ‘You’re very obsessed with this story, aren’t you?’

‘I told you; I’ve been working on it for a year.’

‘And you’ve started to identify with the heroine,’ he said shrewdly.

‘You’re supposed to identify with the characters when you read a book.’

‘But not when you’re adapting it for television. You have to have a clear mind; to be able to cut where necessary, not to be so involved with it that you can’t bear to lose a line of dialogue because you’re in love with the characters.’

It was said bluntly, almost rudely, and made Nell angry. ‘I have adapted books before,’ she pointed out coldly.

‘I know; I did my homework, too. But never a full-blooded love story, have you?’

Her mouth tightened. ‘I am not in love with the characters,’ she answered shortly. ‘The whole idea is ridiculous.’

‘Good,’ Ben said smoothly. ‘Then you won’t mind making any necessary cuts.’

She gave him a glare, knowing that she’d been outmanoeuvred. ‘Shall we get on with it?’

His lips twisted slightly. ‘All right. The next thing is to decide where the episodes will end. Now, the basic storyline is of a young girl, Anna, who is married off, in the mid-nineteenth century, to an older man she doesn’t love, a man she finds cold both physically and emotionally. Not a rotter, not unkind, just unable to rouse any feelings in her. They don’t have any children. Then one winter she goes alone to visit her parents but on the way back the carriage gets caught in a snow storm and she has to take shelter in the nearest house, which is inhabited only by a couple of servants who say that their master seldom comes there any more.’

Ben picked up the synopsis, glanced at it, then went on, ‘They give her the master bedroom and the first night nothing happens, but one of the horses has slipped and hurt its leg, so she has to stay on. The second night she feels very tired, and while she’s in bed she has a dream in which a man makes love to her. The most perfect, wonderful experience she could ever have imagined. The next day her husband turns up to look for her and everything is back to normal. But she treasures the memory of the dream, especially when she finds she is pregnant at last—but her husband hasn’t recently made love to her.’

‘She wouldn’t have thought of it as making love, not with her husband,’ Nell interrupted with certainty.

‘No. The act of procreation, then. So she thinks maybe it wasn’t a dream, maybe it was true. Anyhow she lets the husband into her bed, just in case, but finds his attentions even more abhorrent now— Is that the kind of language that suits you?’ Ben broke off to ask Nell.

Missing the slightly dry note in his tone, she nodded. ‘Yes, that’s how she would think.’

‘OK.’ He put his elbows on the table and pyramided his hands. ‘The child is born, a girl, but the husband still needs an heir, which isn’t forthcoming. So, two years later, in the depth of winter, she goes to visit her parents again, and ends up at the same house. Again the man comes to her and they make love, but on both nights this time. Again she seems to be in some strange kind of dreamlike state while it’s going on, but she knows it’s true because she sees the marks of his hands on her body the next day.’

‘Anna gets pregnant again, and this time she has a son.’ Nell took over. ‘She becomes desperate to find her lover and when her husband goes away on business she goes to the house to find him. But the house is closed up and empty, and no one can tell her whom it belongs to. She thinks that she’s lost him and is terribly sad, but when she passes that way the next winter she calls there out of sentimentality, and to her joy finds everything the way she first remembered: the same servants, the place warm and inviting, the same bed...’

‘And the same lover,’ Ben finished for her. ‘She begins to suspect that perhaps her food or drink was drugged before, so has nothing. She leaves the lights burning in the room, wanting to see her lover’s face, but it’s a big old-fashioned four-poster bed with heavy curtains all round, he blows out the candles and she doesn’t see him. She tries to talk to him, though, but he silences her with kisses, exhausts her with love, and when she wakes he’s gone. Afraid that by trying to see him she might have lost him, that night she drinks and eats, and again it’s like a dream when he comes to her.

‘So every winter she goes back. She has two more children but one of them dies. She is distraught and her husband can give her no comfort. It’s summer, but she goes to the house anyway, finds it empty as before. She sleeps on the bed and this time feels the warmth of his arms, his strength and love and is comforted for her loss. She leaves a locket behind with a picture of her dead child in it.’