‘Well, let’s take your story,’ I said. ‘Young flier, gallant, handsome, reckless. Local girl, pretty daughter of the local poacher. Wartime England. Training base for pilots. Now. Remember that scene we’ve both seen a thousand times in the films - the aircraft go off over Germany. Shot of pilots’ mess - pin-up girls, pretty rather than sexy, doesn’t do to suggest our boys have the cruder instincts. A handsome boy reads letter from mother. Sporting trophy on the mantelpiece.’ A pause. ‘My dear, yes, I do agree with you we do that film rather too often.’ ‘The aircraft come in to land. Two of them are missing. Groups of men stand around to wait, watching the sky. A muscle tightens in a throat. Shot of pilots’ bedroom. Empty bed. One young man comes in. He says nothing. He sits on his bed and looks at the empty bed. A muscle tightens in his throat. Then he goes to the empty bed. There is a teddy bear lying on the bed. He picks up the teddy bear. A muscle tightens in his throat. Shot of aircraft in flames. Cut to young man holding teddy bear, looking at photos of a pretty girl - no, not a girl, better a bulldog. Cut back to aircraft in flames and the national anthem.’ There is a silence. The newsman with the rabbity face and no nose is shouting: ‘War in Quemoy. War in Quemoy.’ Reggie decides he must be mistaken, so he smiles and says: ‘But my dear Anna, you used the word comedy.’ ‘You were acute enough to see what the book was really about - nostalgia for death.’ He frowns, and this time the frown sticks. ‘Well, I’m ashamed and I’d like to make reparation - let’s make a comedy about useless heroism. Let’s parody that damned story where twenty-five young men in the flower of their youth, etc., go out to die leaving a wreckage of teddy bears and football trophies and a woman standing at a gate looking stoically at the sky where another wave of aircraft are passing on their way to Germany. A muscle tightens in her throat. How about it?’ The newsman is shouting: ‘War in Quemoy,’ and suddenly I feel as if I’m standing in the middle of a scene from a play that is the parody of something. I begin to laugh. The laugh is hysterical. Reggie is looking at me, frowning and disliking. His mouth, previously mobile with complicity and a desire to be liked, is shrewd and a little bitter. I stop laughing, and suddenly all the propelled laughter, speech, is gone, and I’m quite sane again. He says: ‘Well, Anna, I agree with you, but I must keep my job. There is a wonderfully comic idea there - but it’s a film, not television. Yes, I can see it.’ (He is talking his way back to his normality, because I am normal again.) ‘It would be savage of course. I wonder if people would take it?’ (His mouth has twisted back into whimsical charm. He glances at me - he can’t believe that our moment of pure hate has occurred. I can’t either.) ‘Well perhaps it would work? After all it’s ten years since the war ended - but it simply is not television. It’s a simple medium. And the audience - well I don’t have to tell you, it’s not the most intelligent audience. We have to remember that.’ I buy a newspaper which has the headline: War in Quemoy. I say, conversational: ‘This is going to be another of the places we know about only because there’s been a war in it.’ ‘My dear, yes, it is too awful isn’t it, the way we are all so ill-informed.’ ‘But I’m keeping you standing here, and you must be wanting to get back to your office.’ ‘As it happens I am rather late - good-bye, Anna, it was such fun meeting you.’ ‘Good-bye, Reggie, and thank you for the lovely lunch.’ At home I collapse into depression, then angry self-disgust. But the only part of that meeting I am not ashamed of is the moment when I was hysterical and stupid. I must not respond to any more of these invitations for TV or films. What for? All I am doing is to say to myself: You are right not to write again. It’s all so humiliating and ugly you should just keep out of it. But I know that anyway, so why go on sticking the knife in?