I recently heard a man give a talk about actors being either nervy, excitable ‘high-key’ types, such as Kirk Douglas, or ‘low-key’ such as Gary Cooper. And much as I’d love to pace steadily through life saying ‘nope’ to the children at well-spaced intervals, I have to admit I fall into the former category.
Especially before lengthy journeys when the family have long since learned to scuttle away out of range of me and my armfuls of lists, large dusty suitcases and little, last-minute jobs for them to do. On the whole, though, it isn’t my family but newly-met strangers who cause my nerve endings to start twanging away like tuning forks. Until I am really familiar and comfortable with new people I seem to feel that it’s my job to fill each shy, restful gap in the general conversation with great outbursts of nervous chatter.
This was particularly true at a party once, when I suddenly came face to face with just about the most handsome chap I’d ever seen.
‘You two are just made for each other,’ gushed our hostess, to my acute embarrassment. In my experience chaps as good looking as this one were made for the Brigitte Bardots of this world. Or at the very least for shirt commercials.
He obviously thought so, too, and for several seconds we gazed woodenly at each other. In sheer nervous desperation I then came out with one of the silliest remarks I’ve ever made.
‘Did you know that guinea pigs were used as lawn mowers in Elizabethan times?’ I asked feverishly.
‘Er, no, I didn’t,’ he mumbled, cringing back.
There was another long, dazed silence during which it became even more evident: that we weren’t meant for each other.
‘We always used to have tadpoles when I was a child,’ I cried.
‘I used to have tadpoles,’ he said, brightening up very, very slightly.
I’d like to be able to say that we then clamped arms round each other’s waists and strolled off into a rosy future. But perhaps he felt, and who can blame him, that a mutual background of tadpoles wasn’t quite enough.
I suppose, during some long-past, character-building moment, I’d heard someone say that animals make good ice breakers. The trouble is that we ‘high-key’ types never seem to get it quite right. And not only do we say all the wrong things, we frequently emit terrible, uncontrollable honks of laughter, sometimes making great, uncoordinated swooping movements while doing so. And when we’re not flinging ourselves about in an exaggerated way we quite often get sudden attacks of nervous deafness or hiccups or we start winking uncontrollably. To cover all this we put on pitiful shows of jaunty cool. I seem to become especially afflicted when meeting editors.
‘Goodbye and thank you for the lovely lunch,’ I enthused to one, shaking hands with her and her assistant ed. ‘Yes, yes, I know my way from here, don’t worry, cheerio and thanks a lot,’ I called, darting firmly out of the door, round a couple of corners and back face to face with them again.
‘Isn’t this an incredible view?’ said another, speaking over my shoulder as I stood gazing out of her skyscraper window. Thinking that she meant another, even better view behind me and being desperately eager to please, I spun right round and cried: ‘Oh it is! Yes it is!’ only to find myself staring rapturously at a blank wall.
I am also nervously afflicted by those dreadful telephone answering machines which suddenly – deliberately – commandingly say: ‘Speak now!’ – well, I don’t suppose I’m the only woman in the world to gasp, tremble and squeak: ‘Oh my God, it’s one of those – er – sorry – never mind!’ before crashing the receiver down and blundering shakily off to tackle a little house-cleaning therapy.
Another good temporary cure seems to be to spend time in the company of someone even more keyed-up than we are. I have one particular friend who simply never stops rushing about, gossiping, gasping and waving her arms in the air. In fact on especially het-up days I’ve known her eyebrows to rise right up over the top of her head and disappear altogether.
A quick telephone call and over she dashes, chattering, chattering all the way. In her company there simply isn’t the opportunity to do more than squeeze in a very occasional ‘yep’ or ‘nope’ before she’s off on another verbal trailblazer, leaving me relaxed (limp even) and very low-key indeed.
However, carrying this theory to the extent of marrying one of the Kirk Douglases of this world may not be the ideal solution to personal problems of hypertension.
I once knew a very vivacious, active girl who married an even more vivacious, active husband. After several shared years with this chap dancing about on the balls of his feet, shadow-boxing, practising his bird calls, swiping at imaginary cobwebs and doing his ‘I say, I say, I say’ routine, his wife became so low-key she even began to look like Gary Cooper.
No, I think the best thing is to marry a nice restful sort of partner. Then tell yourself that whatever our clench-jawed, nerve-twangy, over-excitable faults may be, they’re a sign of higher intelligence. They must be. Because haven’t you noticed how many really clever women marry comfortable, homely-looking men? Sometimes even short, bent, really ga-ga ones.
While the handsome chaps, of course, often get the complete bimbos because only girls entirely devoid of – shall we say – nervous intelligence would be dumb enough to think themselves worthy of such Apollos. (Well, that’s one theory anyway.)
However, before you naturally assume that my husband is short, bent, etc, I hasten to say that in fact he is tall, well-built and entirely oblivious to my nervous chatter. This can be just a shade irritating at times but at least it got us smoothly over any wildly blurted initial conversations about Elizabethan lawn mowers.