Therapy

was? Of course you do, you did PPE at Oxford. Sorry. I have to admit he was just a name to me before the weekend, but now I know more about him than I really want to. Not the most obvious subject for a TV film, you must agree. By the way, in case you think I’ve got his name wrong, that’s the way they pronounce it in Danish, Kierke gawd , as in “Oh my Gawd,” which is what Ollie said when I told him Tubby wanted to take me to Copenhagen and why. I heard him sighing and muttering to himself, and the click of a lighter as he lit a cigar, and then he said, “Look, Samantha my love, go along with it, humour him, do the Kierkegaard bit, go through the motions, but just keep reminding him at every opportunity about The People Next Door, OK?” I said, OK.
    Have you ever been to Copenhagen? Neither had I till this weekend. It’s very nice, but just a little dull. Very clean, very quiet — hardly any traffic at all compared to London. Apparently they had the very first pedestrianized shopping precinct in Europe. It seems to sum the Danes up, somehow. They’re terribly green and energy-conscious. We stayed at a luxury hotel but the heat was turned down to a point that was almost uncomfortable, and in the room there was a little card asking you to help conserve the earth’s resources by cutting down on unnecessary laundry. The card is red on one side and green on the other, and if you leave it green side up they only change your sheets every third day, and they don’t change the towels at all unless you leave them on the bathroom floor. Which is all very sensible and responsible but just a teeny bit of a downer. I mean, I’m as green as the next woman at home, for instance I always buy my shampoo in biodegradable bottles, but one of the pleasures of staying in a luxury hotel is sleeping in crisp new sheets every night and using a fresh towel every time you take a shower. I’m afraid I left my card red side up all through the weekend and avoided the chambermaid’s eye if I met her in the corridor.
    We flew from Heathrow on Friday evening — Club Class, nothing but the best my dear, a hot meal with real knives and forks and as much booze as you could down in the two hours. I drank rather a lot of champagne and probably talked too much in consequence, at least the woman in the row in front kept turning round to glare at me, but Tubby seemed quite amused. By the time we got to the hotel, though, I was beginning to feel rather tired and I asked if he’d mind if I went straight to bed. He looked a bit disappointed, but then said gallantly, no, not at all, it was a good idea, he’d do the same and then we’d be fresh for the morning. So we parted very decorously in the corridor outside my room, under the eyes of the poner. I fell into bed and passed out.
    The next day was bright and sunny, ideal for exploring Copenhagen on foot. Tubby had never been there before either. He wanted to get the feel of the place, and also look for possible locations. There’s no shortage of well-preserved eighteenth-and early-nineteenth-century buildings, but the problem is modern traffic signs and street furniture. And there’s a picturesque dock called Nyhavn, with genuine old ships moored in it, but the genuine old buildings overlooking it have been converted into trendy restaurants and a tourist hotel. “We’ll probably end up shooting the film somewhere else entirely,” Tubby said, “somewhere on the Baltic or the Black Sea.” We had a smorgasbord lunch at a place on the Nyhavn and then went to the City Museum where they have a Kierkegaard room.
    Tubby was very excited about this in anticipation, but it turned out to be a bit of an anticlimax, at least I thought so. A smallish room for a museum, about thirty feet by fifteen, with a few sticks of furniture and half a dozen glass cases displaying bits and pieces connected with Kierkegaard — his pipes, his magnifying glass, some pictures and old books. You wouldn’t have given them a second glance in an antique shop, but Tubby pored over them as if they were sacred relics. He was especially interested in a portrait of Kierkegaard’s fiancée, Regine. He was engaged to her for about a year and then broke it off, but regretted it ever after according to Tubby. The portrait was a small oil painting of a young woman in a low-cut green dress with a dark green shawl round her shoulders. He stared at the picture for about five minutes without blinking. “She looks like you,”