‘They want us on television,’ said Mrs Fly, finally, over the washing-up next morning. She was confused by the fact that Virginia hadn’t asked what the surprise was to be. She was a funny girl, in some ways, Ginny. None of the ordinary things seemed to excite her.
‘Who want us on television?’ Virginia had, indeed, forgotten all about the surprise.
‘That Geoffrey Wysdom, you know. The one who does all the serious documentaries, true to life.’ Virginia had heard of him, but as she rarely watched television she had never seen one of his programmes.
‘Who does he want on his programme?’ she persisted. Once again Mrs Fly seemed confused. She clattered some plates noisily in the bowl.
‘Well, not so much us, your father and I. It’s you they want, actually.’
‘And what do they want me to do?’
‘That,’ said Mrs Fly with a sudden determination, probably caused by fear of breaking the point of the news, ‘is what I’m going to leave the researcher to tell you. She came round here yesterday evening. That’s what she said she was, a researcher. A very nice girl. Very quiet voiced. I said it would be all right for her to come round about eleven this morning. I said you’d be in, and might be able to help her …’ Mrs Fly trailed off.
As it was Saturday morning there was no school, only a pile of essays to be corrected. Virginia went up to her room to make her bed. She had had a good night, no dreams, and felt light-hearted as ever she could hope to feel on a dun-coloured winter morning with the prospect of an empty weekend ahead. The television news, though she would never admit it to her mother, caused a mild flicker of anticipation within her. It was probably something to do with education; views on teachers’ lousy pay, perhaps. Well, she knew her subject. She could be fluent about that, and the idea of cameras gave her no sense of fear. In fact, it could be interesting. It could be a breaking point in her life. Someone might see her, and invite her permanently on to an educational programme or fall in love with her, write to her care of the B.B.C.—Dearest Miss Virginia Fly, I saw you on the box the other night. I hope you don’t mind my writing but it seemed to me you are the girl I have been looking for all my life…
Virginia firmly opened the first exercise book. A bee and a spotted elephant had a fountain and a rainbow. They went for a walk in the forest and they saw some animals … Red pencil in her hand, the letter from the unknown viewer remained faintly on her mind.
The researcher came promptly at eleven. Jenny, she was called. Red curly hair, bad legs stuffed into trendy boots, a friendly smile, and a peculiarly alert look about her, as if she was all prepared to be interested instantly in everything.
Mrs Fly suggested coffee.
‘Oh how lovely,’ said the researcher. ‘That’s just what I need. If it’s not too much trouble?’ She looked out of the window at the scrawny garden, the mildewing leaves on the ugly paving stones. ‘It’s so lovely to get out of London,’ she said. ‘That’s one of the great advantages of my job. You go all over England.’ Virginia felt the girl must be playing for time. She smiled helpfully.
‘It must be an interesting job,’ she said. Then a thought struck her. ‘How did you find me?’
‘Oh, we have people who put us on to people. Contacts, you know.’ Jenny was professionally vague. She buried most of herself in a huge shabby handbag and finally emerged with a notebook. ‘Now, why I’m here.’ She gave a sympathetic, rather guilty smile. ‘About our programme … I expect you’ve often seen it? You know the sort of thing we do? – ‘
‘I don’t, I’m afraid, no,’ said Virginia. ‘I don’t often watch television.’
‘Really?’ Jenny failed to conceal her amazement. ‘Most people have. I thought we’d become popular viewing.’ She gave a gurgly sort of giggle at her own joke. ‘Anyhow, our aim is to get ordinary people on to the screen, and get them to talk exactly as if they were in their own homes – which in fact they usually are. And the amazing thing is, you’ve no idea how fluent the man on the street becomes once he gets on to his troubles.’
‘Troubles?’ inquired Virginia.
‘Well, I mean, that is, in cases where people are in trouble. I have to admit, most of our programmes deal with sociological problems.’
‘I see. You’re sort of welfare workers of the air,’ said Virginia, and before Jenny could deny it, added, ‘but I haven’t any troubles.’
‘Troubles? Well, no, of course you haven’t.’ Jenny twitched a bit, and tossed her frizzy red hair about, sensitivities rising. ‘That’s just some of the programmes. Others are just … explorations into human predicaments, or different outlooks, if you know what I mean.’ She smiled again, so nicely that Virginia could not but feel warm towards her.
‘How can I help you?’ she asked. ‘Teachers’ pay? I can tell you a lot of illuminating stories about that.’
‘Well, no, nothing to do with being a teacher at all, as a matter of fact,’ replied Jenny, who found approaching some of the stupider of the working classes a great deal easier than dealing with people with any intelligence. ‘What we are doing, simply, is making a programme about, um, pre-marital love. Love to-day. Does it still exist? If so, how? That sort of thing.’
Jenny gave another dazzling, relieved smile. She had got the most difficult part of the explanation out. In return, Virginia looked at her wryly.
‘I don’t think I’m at all the person to help you,’ she said. ‘I think your contacts have misinformed you. I’ve never been in love. I haven’t even got a boyfriend.’
‘That’s just why you can help us. You personify, if you like, the old-fashioned concept. You are – if you don’t mind my saying so – a virgin, aren’t you? And thirty-one, I think?’ Virginia flicked her eyes in agreement. ‘That’s what I heard. Now, do you see where you come into our programme? We’re going to talk to unmarried mothers in their teens, débutantes who’ve had abortions, ugly girls who can’t find lovers, couples who are officially engaged for years and bust up – and so on. So you would fill the virgin gap, as it were. I mean, to-day, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, there aren’t many of them around. Your state of – intactness’ (she knew when to flatter) ‘is a rare one, to-day. Unbelievably interesting …’ Jenny had got into her stride. The worst of the news was over. Virginia let her chatter on about the programme, about the great interest and indeed help the state of her virginity would be to millions of viewers, about how a few old-fashioned concepts about love still persisted to-day amid all the anarchy … All the time Virginia pondered.
‘Geoffrey would be interviewing you himself,’ Jenny was saying, with the air that Virginia would take this as a great compliment, ‘there’s no one like him to get people to talk.’ She bit her lip, realising she’d gone too far.
‘I’m afraid I’ve never seen Mr Wysdom,’ said Virginia. ‘But my mother watches his programmes.’
Jenny giggled conspiratorially.
‘Well, I wouldn’t watch telly either, actually, if it wasn’t for the fact I was in it. We’re supposed to keep in touch. Anyhow, how do you feel about it? Would you like a few days to think it over?’
‘No thank you,’ said Virginia, sharply, ‘I’ll do it.’
At that moment Mrs Fly came in with a tray of coffee. She turned to her daughter full of anticipation.
‘Well, dear? What’s the answer?’
‘I’ve said I’ll do it.’ More dully, this time.
‘Well, that is nice.’ Mrs Fly always felt she had been denied some measure of fame. ‘It is such a good programme, so honest. It’s not as if they’ve asked you on one of those vulgar quiz shows, is it?’ She laughed happily. ‘You’ll have to think about what to wear, being colour. No stripes, they say, don’t they?’
‘For heaven’s sake,’ said Jenny quickly to Virginia, ‘don’t give a second thought about what to wear. Just look like you do every day.’ – I see, thought Virginia, she doesn’t want me dressing myself up, climbing out of my drab virgin image. Right. I won’t disappoint her.
‘Will these things be all right?’ she asked, mildly. Jenny closely observed her navy cardigan and skirt, the dark lacy stockings – the only frivolous thing about her – the pale cheeks and severely drawn back hair.
‘Great,’ she said, with an enthusiasm which Virginia wondered was strictly professional or wholly natural, ‘absolutely great. Just look like that on the day.’
The day was the following Saturday. For a week the house had tingled with an air of expectancy conjured up by Mrs Fly. She had put all her energy into dusting, polishing, arranging and re-arranging the half-dozen rather tatty chrysanthemums that were left in the garden, and fussing about whether everyone should have coffee in mugs or Mr Wysdom should be given one of the best cups.
News of the invasion affected Mr Fly in a quiet way. He walked about rather stiffly, that week, with a strange quiet pride, only admitting to a close friend at work that his daughter would be famous, now. Recognised for her integrity. Virginia herself was calm, apparently little interested.
Mrs Fly had seen to it the neighbours weren’t unaware of the event. Making the best of her reflected glory, she made sure they knew the time the camera cars were expected. And indeed, when the time came, they did not fail her. Virginia, peeping behind a curtain, noticed a certain amount of restlessness in the nearby gardens: people suddenly emerging at ten o’clock to pick a flower or to search for an invisible milk bottle, and at the same time give a quick glance up at number 14. This, felt Virginia, was her mother’s hour.
Jenny, followed by a cameraman and his assistant, a sound recordist and lighting man, came with all the equipment into the house. A tall pale man who said he was what they called the director, then laughed, began giving instructions. He ordered the furniture, that Mrs Fly had spent hours arranging carefully the night before, to be moved. But he was very nice about it all.
‘You don’t mind, Mrs Fly, do you? We’ll put it all back. But can we just get rid of that sofa and pull this armchair up here – and get rid of those flowers?’ With each idea he waved his long milky hands in the air like underwater plants, and Mrs Fly said yes, of course, to everything.
Mrs Fly, eager to be helpful, tense from the sleepless night the excitement had caused her, was shaking. She had chosen to wear a hyacinth blue dress that glittered in the dullest light, hardly suitable for a dank November morning. Its deep boat-neck, trimmed with white cony fur, unkindly highlighted the rash of nervous pink patches that had flamed over her chest. Virginia had suggested that, considering the time of day, ordinary clothes might have been more appropriate. But Mrs Fly would not hear of any such thing. Television, after all, was almost like a party.
Mr Fly, for his part, sleeves rolled up, maty jokes with each member of the crew, kept getting caught up in all the wires and cables. At one moment he knocked over the tripod, and at another he fell over himself.
‘I’ve always been interested in the technical side of things,’ he said, as he struggled to his feet, trying to preserve some sort of dignity. Jenny, alert as ever, read an unseen message from the director’s eye. ‘His technical interest is a bloody nuisance,’ it said. ‘Get him out of here.’ So Jenny suggested to Mr Fly they should retire to the kitchen. She did it with such tact that Mr Fly, had he been a less innocent man, might well have taken it as an overture to an especial relationship between them.
For most of the preparations Virginia stayed upstairs. At five past eleven she saw the arrival of a long silver car, out of which stepped the man who must be Geoffrey Wysdom. He wore a very wide-shouldered overcoat and leather gloves with holes punched in the backs. Walking up the path to the Flys’ house he nodded at the neighbours in their gardens, and shouted a couple of good mornings with the ease of someone who is used to being recognised. No one replied.
Virginia went downstairs. Geoffrey Wysdom was taking off his coat but he stopped, half out of it, when he saw her.
‘Ah! Hallo, hallo. I’m Geoffrey Wysdom. You must be Serena Fly.’
‘Virginia.’
‘Virginia, so sorry.’ He held out his left hand, as his right was still in the overcoat sleeve, full of bonhomie. ‘Are my lot nearly ready? Not causing too much confusion, I hope.’
Mr Fly and Jenny came out of the kitchen at that moment.
‘Geoffrey Wysdom,’ Mr Wysdom said quickly, to Mr Fly, before Jenny had a chance to introduce them. ‘How are you, Mr Fly?’ Then he bounced towards the sitting-room, took Mrs Fly’s shaky hand, and established he was Geoffrey Wysdom once again.
When Geoffrey Wysdom entered the room, lit like a stage now, something recharged the atmosphere. Awe, respect, admiration, perhaps. He had about him an air of supreme self-confidence. He was full of merry quips and extravagant praise for the room, the furniture and the dreary garden outside. Sincerity shone from him. Mrs Fly thought he was wonderful, and he was quick to respond.
‘Good heavens, Dresden, aren’t they?’ he asked her, pointing to a cabinet of china. Mrs Fly blushed.
‘Well, no, not really Dresden,’ she admitted, ‘but just as precious to me.’
‘I know quite a lot about china,’ Mr Wysdom went on, ‘in fact I’m something of a collector on the side. My wife and I have a marvellous collection at home.’
Virginia saw the director, who had stopped his directing by now, give a slight raise of one eyebrow towards Jenny, who concealed a smile. For a moment Virginia wondered if it had been old medals, or shells, in the cabinet, Mr Wysdom would have had a collection of those at home too. Perhaps it was all part of the putting at ease system: make the interviewee feel they have something in common with you, the man on the screen. But certainly he was doing a good job on Mrs Fly, anyway – congratulating her on her dress, her sofa and her curtains. She had almost stopped shaking, and the fiery red patches on her neck were beginning to fade.
Suddenly Virginia realised that the hubbub had died down. The room was empty of everyone but the cameraman, the sound recordist and the director, who for some reason chose to squat behind a rather small armchair, head bowed but still clearly visible.
Virginia was sitting on the sofa, ankles crossed, hands loosely together in her lap. Geoffrey Wysdom, opposite, was offering her a Turkish cigarette. All his smiles had disappeared, and now he no longer moved his mouth, it was hardly noticeable. Under the lights his hair, fraying slightly round the edges, was a greenish colour, and his high forehead glistened. In contrast to the glare of his wide, salmon pink tie, he looked very grave. Virginia had the impression that his eyes had become slightly damp.
From a long way away Virginia heard the quiet whirr of the camera, and part of the first question.
‘… and so, as a teacher, how much chance do you have for a full social life?’
How much chance do I have for a full social life? Virginia smiled. Perhaps it would be this first smile that would win over the unknown viewer.
Dearest Miss Fly, when you smiled on television the other night I knew my life had changed… Geoffrey Wysdom asked the question again. His eyes were on her, very intent.
‘I don’t have much social life,’ she said, quietly. ‘I’m quite happy here in the evenings, reading. I go to a concert with a friend every few weeks, but I’ve never really felt the need for a social life.’
‘Why?’ Geoffrey Wysdom’s voice was now so soft she found it difficult to hear him.
‘What?’
‘I said: why? – Why do you feel no need for a social life?’
She answered as well as she could his questions about her unexciting evenings, wondering of what interest they could possibly be to the viewers. Then suddenly someone said ‘cut’, and everything stopped.
The look of pain whipped magically off Geoffrey Wysdom’s face, and he quickly lit another cigarette. He chatted on about his own social life, something about having to go to dinner with the Director General so many times it was almost becoming a bore. Virginia shifted her position slightly. It was very hot in the room, and she felt she was being dull.
When the cameras restarted, once again Geoffrey Wysdom assumed instant concern. He gave a small shrug of his grey flannel shoulders, and a little twisted smile, so that briefly his mouth showed again.
‘Now some people might say, Virginia, that in this day and age it’s a little strange for a girl of your age and your, er, looks, to be content with quite such a quiet life.’ Pause.
‘I suppose they might,’ said Virginia.
‘Now you are, I believe, still a virgin?’ The uncertainty in his voice was curious, thought Virginia, considering the only reason he’d come here was her virginity.
‘Yes, I am.’
Geoffrey Wysdom allowed a respectful silence to pass. Then he nodded two or three times, as if the gravity of the situation had only just come to him. Virginia, seeing no reason why she should be the one to break the silence, said nothing. Geoffrey Wysdom nodded again, but still the silence remained. At last he gave a kind of stifled sigh, and sympathetic pain shot through his eyes.
‘And how does it feel, at your age, to be a virgin?’
Virginia felt a flicker of antipathy. She was brusque.
‘It feels as it’s always felt. As I have no idea what it must be like not to be a virgin, I obviously can’t compare the situations. It’s nothing I’m particularly proud of or, equally, worried about. When the time comes for me to be seduced, believe me, I shall give my fair share. But I don’t spend my life craving for that time.’
She felt she had been quite as convincing about her lack of desire as he had been about his china, and smiled.
‘I see.’ A few more nods from Wysdom, slightly astonished this time. ‘And have you any pictures in your mind about what it’ll be like, when the time comes?’
Virginia quickly flicked through some of her well-remembered dreams.
‘Oh yes. Absolutely. I’ll be in a large field, breast-high in buttercups. It’ll be summer. In the distance I’ll see this beautiful young herdsman, very brown and thin, guiding a herd of cows. He’ll leave them all and come over to me. Neither of us will speak, and he’ll lash at the buttercups a bit with his stick, in a titillating sort of way, then he’ll tear off my clothes and leap upon me, and the cows will be crashing about everywhere so we’ll have to hurry before they get out on the road.’ She stopped. Again there was silence. God, thought Geoffrey Wysdom, Jenny didn’t tell me the girl was a case as well as a virgin: perhaps the two are synonymous. Still, it’s lovely footage.
This time it was Virginia who helped Wysdom out of the silence.
‘I mean,’ she said, ‘it would be an awful anticlimax, after thirty-one years, to end it all with an immemorable fumble in the back of a mini van, wouldn’t it?’
‘Yes. Yes, indeed.’ Wysdom laughed slightly and touched his tie. The vivid pink reflected on to his fingers.
‘Sorry, Geoff.’ The cameraman was speaking. ‘Could we go back over the cows bit again? We had a bit of trouble.’
Geoffrey Wysdom smiled bravely in the face of a break in the atmosphere.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said to Virginia, ‘technical troubles. Would you mind telling the story about the cowherd again? And add on the bit about the mini at the end, if you wouldn’t mind, and then we’ll just carry on.’
Virginia obediently repeated her dream, and even at the second telling Geoffrey Wysdom responded with a look of overpowering interest.
In the rest of the interview Virginia sensed that she disappointed Mr Wysdom. Was she happy in her virginity? Yes, she was. He looked a trifle downcast. Was there no private, promiscuous being within her trying to get out? No, there wasn’t. Then how was it, in this day and age – he was a master of the softly spoken cliché – that she maintained her unusual state? Simply, that, believe it or not, Mr Wysdom (she refused to call him Geoffrey, though he kept calling her Virginia) the occasion for ending that state had never arisen. No one had ever asked her. A look of some disappointment crossed Wysdom’s face, almost instantly replaced by one of sympathy. Perhaps, thought Virginia, he was expecting bloodcurdling stories of how she had fought off dozens of pursuers. Then she remembered the man in the Welsh graveyard, and decided it might cheer Wysdom up. But it was too late. Cut, said the cameraman, and Mrs Fly was cued in with coffee and all her best cups.
It was during this coffee break that Geoffrey Wysdom suggested, in a tortuous way, that Mr and Mrs Fly might like to join in what they in television called ‘natural sync’. In other words, the Fly family would have a nice natural chat round the fire about virginity, while the cameras whirred, and none of them need worry because he, Geoffrey, would step in if anyone dried up. Mrs Fly was overcome. This unexpected bonus caused her to tremble again. She patted at her hair to disguise her excitement, and said in a shaky voice,
‘I don’t see why not, Ginny, do you? If it’ll help the television people.’
‘That’s the spirit, that’s the spirit,’ encouraged Geoffrey Wysdom, his perceptive instincts telling him that the Flys were the very stuff that good natural sync was made of. Then, controlling his excitement at having won her over, he added in a serious voice,
‘I think it would make a most valuable discussion, Mrs Fly.’
Mr Fly was less easily persuaded.
‘It’s not a subject I’ve ever discussed,’ he said, plainly embarrassed. ‘I have no views, really.’
‘Come on, Ted. It’s different, on television. People discuss all sorts of things,’ his wife encouraged. Perhaps realising what it would cost him if he refused, Mr Fly lowered himself blushingly down on to the sofa, which put him closer physically to his wife than he had been for years, and agreed with an unhappy smile.
Geoffrey Wysdom then invited Virginia to pull up an armchair near her parents. She surprised him by declining.
‘I’m afraid not,’ she said. ‘I’ve done my bit. If my parents like to discuss my virginity in front of the millions, they’re welcome to do so. But nothing you can say will make me join them.’ There was a hard edge to her voice. Geoffrey Wysdom quickly decided not to try to persuade her, and smilingly suggested she should merely listen. Maybe, when the time came, she would feel there was something she would like to say …
The whole performance started again. This time the director came out from his hiding place behind the armchair and sat in it instead, settling himself down, it seemed, with the happy confidence of one who is going to be well entertained for the next twenty minutes. Virginia sat beside him, noting the return of her mother’s nervous rash, and the downward droop of her father’s mouth, revealing that for him the whole business had gone too far, but who was he to fight the will of a great corporation?
‘Mr Fly, as the father of a, er, pretty daughter who at thirty is still a virgin, can you tell me what you feel, as a father, about her well-preserved state in these days of free love and promiscuity?’
At the word ‘pretty’ Mr Fly’s eyes briefly lit up. No one had ever described Virginia as pretty to him before, and unless he was a bigger sucker than he thought, this Mr Wysdom meant it. While pondering on these things Mr Fly missed the rest of the question, and so when it came to an end the room was filled with one of the now familiar silences.
‘You see, Mr Fly, some people might say …’ Geoffrey Wysdom started up again only to be interrupted by Mrs Fly, who could contain herself no longer.
‘Let me say, speaking for my husband and I’ (she nudged him in the ribs, at which point Mr Fly realised with dismay she had snatched away his answer and he had now lost his chance) ‘… let me say that Ted and I are proud of our daughter …’
It was with horror that Virginia then watched the interchange of ideas on the concept of virginity between her parents. She sensed that the crew, the director, Jenny and Geoffrey Wysdom were all inwardly patting themselves on the back. This, indeed, this ghastly spectacle of people knowing not what they say when the cameras are turned upon them, was for them most valuable natural sync. Geoffrey Wysdom only had to prod a little farther and Mrs Fly, drunk on the excitement of it all, would come out with the after-glow story. And that, naturally, would be far too good television to discard when it came to editing. In spite of the heat in the room Virginia felt quite cold, and when the interview was over she went up to her room to put on a second cardigan.
The television people left with all the merry clamour they had come. Jenny gave Mrs Fly ten pounds cash for ‘facilities’ (‘all the electricity we’ve used, and of course the coffee’) and once again Mrs Fly was overcome almost to the point of speechlessness.
‘My goodness, all the fun of it, and getting paid too,’ she just managed to say. Geoffrey Wysdom repeated how valuable it had been to all of them, to him personally, and how really valuable it would be to the viewers. He shook hands with everyone, calling Mr and Mrs Fly Ted and Ruth by now, and left in a silver flash of his long car, designed once again to cause some wonder in the hearts of the neighbours.
When they had all gone Mrs Fly, with an effort to force herself back to reality, went to check on the lunch. Virginia paced the sitting-room marvelling at the renewed peace, the space, the quiet. On the one hand she despised herself for ever having agreed to do the interview. On the other hand, it left her full of a strange hope. Someone, somewhere, might be inspired by that smile.
She went to join her mother. Mrs Fly, apronless, was frying chips in a dream-like state. Suddenly, fat from the frying pan spat up on to the neck of her party dress, clotting a lump of the white cony fur. She looked down at it, for once uncaring.
‘The price of fame,’ was all she managed to say.