Read Online The Men and the Girls by Joanna Trollope - Free Book Online

here.’
    â€˜Don’t tell me. Don’t tell me James is throwing you out—’
    â€˜No. No. Nothing like that.’
    â€˜Then—’
    â€˜Helen, if I could explain myself properly, I would. I’ll go on helping on my usual days, but I can’t do more. I’m sorry, but I can’t.’
    â€˜I see,’ said Helen, who didn’t, and put the telephone down.
    Kate drew her knees up so that her feet were on the seat of her chair, and wrapped her arms round her shins. I’m changing, she said to herself, I’m changing. How could I say no to Helen when I know what she does, how hard she works? How could I? But I did, and I don’t want to ring her and take it all back, either. What’s happening? I feel I’m losing all the things in myself that I value, that I’m hardening, that I’m trapped. Is it because I live with someone a bit inflexible, someone a bit old? I’m mad. Sixty-one isn’t old. Sixty-one’s nothing. It’s very wrong of me to think of James as old. And it’s very wrong of me not to want to help Helen. Help, Kate thought, pushing her knees into her eye sockets, help. Where is all the loving going?
    The door opened. James put his head round it.
    â€˜Kate. Are you all right?’
    She raised her head. She looked at him. She managed a smile.
    â€˜I’ve just been very unhelpful to Helen, on the phone.’
    â€˜Good,’ James said, who thought Helen was bossy.
    â€˜No,’ Kate said, shaking her head. ‘No. Not good at all.’

Four
    The Penniman Agency in London occupied two small but graceful rooms in Bedford Square. Vivienne Penniman, who had been a Rank starlet in the days when Hugh Hunter was first entering television, had set up the agency with all the shrewd realism of an actress whose career manifestly had a certain lifespan, and no afterlife. The purpose of the agency was to organize money-making public appearances for celebrities, in order that they might be able to put something by for the bleaker days ahead when the public, reminded of them by a chance remark, would say, ‘He’s never still alive! Heavens, I thought he’d copped it years ago, you never see him now, do you?’
    Actors and actresses, television personalities, footballers and lesser tennis players came to Vivienne Penniman to be offered things to open or promote, supermarkets, garages, sports complexes, leisure centres. Depending upon the position their star currently occupied in the popular firmament, she could offer them either a four- or more often a three-figure sum for an appearance of not more than two hours, minus her ten per cent. Some of her clients were realistic and cheerful about this, enjoyed joshing around with the public, and had no illusions about the ephemeral nature of their best success. Others were resigned, but professional, and regarded the whole business as a necessary evil, with whining about it being out of court. Yet others felt diminished and resentful, unable to pass up several hundred pounds an appearance, and equally unable to reconcile themselves to how it was earned. Being of this latter group, Hugh Hunter had so far resisted joining Vivienne Penniman’s agency.
    But Julia had talked to him. She had been very sweet, not in the least patronizing, only sympathetic and firm. Hugh had been surprised at how firm she was. She had said look, there’s this problem and here are some of the ways I think we could help solve it. If you have better ideas, fine; if you don’t, perhaps you would look at mine. Julia had reminded Hugh about Vivienne Penniman.
    Hugh reminisced about Vivienne for a bit. ‘She was fearfully pretty. I remember her coming in to the studio with a whole lot of other Rank girls, and it was like having a bunch of flowers sitting there. They were asked to predict their futures, and told that we’d look at them again in ten years, and see where they’d got