“Terrible thing, isn’t it,” says Dougie solemnly. “To do something like that…to be that desperate. Was he a nice bloke?”
“He was quite…um…emotional…a bit hard to take seriously sometimes…but I never imagined for one moment that he might do something like this.”
“Yeh, well, people are weird, aren’t they?” says Boyd/Boyle as he walks away. “…you can hang on to the paper.”
I read on. There are three pages about Gavin, mostly tributes from people who couldn’t stand him. If the truth were told, he wasn’t that good an actor. When you were playing a scene opposite him, it always felt as if he had decided exactly what he was going to do in advance. Even if you changed your delivery during a retake, he kept his performance precisely the same, beat for beat. That’s what someone does when they’re scared. And he was always scared.
“You could ask to go to the funeral.”
“Not appropriate, Dougie…we…we weren’t mates…besides if I turned up, the reptiles would turn it into a circus.”
“Oh yeh, hadn’t thought of that. You’ll have to just send flowers then.”
“Yeh.”
“How old was he?”
I search through the tributes.
“Um…forty-seven.”
“God, that’s no age, is it?”
Poor Gavin. All these kind words about him, but none when he needed them. How hard we all were. Dougie moves his rook. I am about to put the paper down when my eye lands on a quote from Derek. Derek! Who has only been on the show a matter of weeks!
“This is repulsive,” I mutter.
Derek’s words are mawkish, self-regarding, grief-porn. I sling the paper away in disgust.
“Are you OK?” asks Dougie.
“Yeh…just got a bad taste in my mouth.”
“It’s your move.”
When someone close to you dies, you always feel that you let them down. No matter what your objective, rational self tries to tell you, somehow you feel you should have saved them; you should have done more. It’s an understandable response, people we love are taken from us and we are helpless bystanders. Eye-witnesses. Shocked, angry and guilty. That’s how you feel when someone close is stolen. But why the hell was I having those kind of feelings about Gavin? Why were my eyes filling with tears? We were not even friends and yet that night – the night after I read the newspaper article – my mind would not let me rest. Try as I might, I could not get the image of Gavin out of my head; he was standing on the parapet of that bridge, alone and beaten. I tried to conjure up other images of him – memories of him enjoying himself on set – but there were none to be found. The only other picture of him I could recall was his taut, anxious face when we had our little confrontation in the canteen, the one about the sausage-factory. For a moment, I wished I’d made the effort to get to know him better but, deep down, I knew that in a few weeks’ time that thought would have faded into nothing.
So, if he meant so little to me, why was I feeling this disturbed? Perhaps it wasn’t about him, perhaps this was about the others. Perhaps he was just the stick that was stirring up the mud. Whatever the truth, waves of indefinable emotion kept breaking over me until I realised that I had to get some kind of control to give myself any hope of sleeping. For a few minutes, I concentrated on breathing deeply through my nose to try to restore calm. Then I began compiling mind-clearing, pointless lists.
By about two in the morning, I had moved on to famous Belgians and actors who had played Sherlock Holmes. The prison’s night-time soundscape was the usual emptiness, with the occasional melancholy of a guard’s slow, echoing footsteps.
Tedium. Same old, same old.
Then, suddenly, from a distant cell, comes the most spine-scraping sound. First, a long scream, then a series of staccato shrieks that sound more like a fox caught in a trap than a human being. Sweat starts trickling down the back of my neck. The shrieking gets louder. What can be happening in there? I get out of my bunk.
“Dougie…what’s going on? Who is that?”
Dougie is fast asleep.
I can hear many footsteps now, people hurrying, boots click-clacking along floors.
I get back into bed and press the pillow hard against my head but the shrieking cuts right through. Why doesn’t he stop? Just make him stop. More feet clank rapidly down staircases and now the screaming is mixed in with indistinct shouts.
I lie rigid in my bed like a child fighting the urge to yell for Mum, and I don’t know which is the more terrifying: the piercing, bestial screams, or the suddenness with which they stop.
I decided to send flowers to Gavin’s funeral, without really understanding why. Mentally, I didn’t feel up to organising it myself, so I used my allocated phone call to ring my agent’s office. They could contact a florist for me. True, they had kept a considerable distance from me during my personal difficulties, but I was still on their books and they were collecting commission, so they could earn their keep.
The receptionist sounds bright-eyed and keen. I wonder if she is being paid.
“Good afternoon, Jackman International.”
A fog shrouds my thoughts for a moment. Should I ask her to sort out the flowers for me? That will require a lot of explanation to a total stranger. “Jackman International,” she repeats.
“Oh…hi, erm…could I speak to Roland, please?”
“Roland? Roland Abbot?”
“Yuh.”
“I’m afraid he’s left the company.”
What? When the fuck did that happen?
“Erm…right…um…so who’s dealing with his clients?”
“I’ll put you through to someone.”
“Only I’m one of Roland’s…”
“Who shall I say is calling?”
“Kevin Carver.”
“OK, Kevin.”
Not a flicker of recognition. Why should I be so surprised? The world forgets about you, that’s to be expected. Now I’m being played “Mandy” by Barry Manilow. Then a voice cuts him short.
“Hi Kevin, it’s Kara.”
Kara? She hears my hesitation.
“We met a few years ago…at the Christmas party.”
Oh Christ, Kara! Now I remember. Oh well, she was as blind drunk as I was. We were just two pissheads who ended up in a cupboard. Or was it a toilet?
“Oh hi, Kara…how are you?”
“Good, thanks. And you?”
“Erm…I’ve been better.”
No laugh.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she says. “Are you calling me from…?”
“Prison, yuh.”
“Right…so how can I help you, Kevin?”
“Well, um…when did Roland leave?”
“Ooh, three or four months ago.”
“Why?”
She sounds slightly amused by the question.
“Well…he sort of retired. Y’know, the agency has been getting a lot bigger, the client list’s a lot longer, the business is a lot more full-on and, um, Roland’s been having some health issues, so…”
“Serious health issues?”
There is a pause as she reaches for the right words.
“Health issues…relating to his lifestyle.”
Oh right, that’ll be drinking, Roland always liked a drink. When he took me on, as a young actor, we would spend a few minutes in their tiny, shambolic offices chewing the fat and then adjourn to the Blue Posts. The office isn’t in a Soho backstreet any more, it’s a big glass and chrome job in Victoria.
“What can I do for you?” she asks.
I remember now, it was definitely a cupboard.
“Erm…I need some flowers sent…to a funeral. Gavin Plunkett.”
“Oh I know, wasn’t that sad.”
“I don’t know exactly where the funeral is happening.”
“Leave it with me, Kevin. That’s no problem. Was there anything else?”
Suddenly, a decision bursts upon me.
“Yeah, actually, Kara, I think I’d l
ike to come off the books.”
“Sorry, I…”
“I don’t think I need the agency to represent me.”
“Oh…right.” She sounds surprised. I feel very surprised. Thirty seconds ago this thought had not even entered my head.
“I’m not dissatisfied or…y’know, I’m not…there’s not another…sorry, I’m not expressing myself very…I’ve not been getting much sleep, so…I don’t need an agent, let’s be honest…when I get out of here…I’m going to be poison so…”
“Well I wouldn’t go that far.”
“I won’t be an actor again, that…that part of my life is over, isn’t it?”
“Again, not necessarily.”
“No one will employ me.”
She falls silent. Other inmates are queuing for the phone.
“I don’t want to be an actor again,” I tell her.
“There’s still the occasional residual payment coming in.”
“OK, can you process those for me and…”
“Sure.”
“If anyone asks, I’ve quit the business.”
“Understood.”
I feel a light tap on my shoulder.
“What’s the message?” she asks. “On the card, with the flowers.”
“Oh, erm…‘In fond memory’.” No, Kevin, that sounds ridiculous. “No, scrub that Kara…erm…‘in loving remembr…’ – actually, you know what, forget the flowers, they were a stupid idea. Sorry.”
“OK. No problem.”
“Sorry, Kara.”
“No, it’s fine.”
There’s a firmer, more final tap on my shoulder, so I apologise one last time and then hang up.
It’s amazing how little sleep you can get by on, provided you don’t have to achieve anything. The weeks continued to slouch past and the insomnia remained constant, but it hardly mattered.
Conversations became hard work. On many occasions, I would find that even though I had been talking to people for a while, I had barely taken in a single word.
Watching TV was OK. In one ear and out the other. A sequence of pictures that asked nothing of me.
I fought the passivity a little.
I took Malcolm’s advice and signed up for the five-a-side. Mildly therapeutic. I would charge around the gymnasium like a man possessed, losing myself in the angles of the passes and the pointless pursuit of victory. For one hour, I was a kid again and, apart from being elbowed in the face by an embezzler, it was fun. I pushed myself to the limit, chasing every lost cause in a conscious effort to exhaust myself. I emptied the tank.
And it worked. I began to get some sleep – but only in the daytime. I started nodding off in the TV room, the games room, the canteen, the toilet but, come the night time, once again, my brain would fizz with chaos.
The lack of sleep created a new problem – clumsiness. To begin with, I would scrape or graze myself, or catch a finger in something, or pour liquids down my front, but soon I was routinely walking into stationary objects, or dropping trays to ironic cheers.
Finally, I was coming down some metal stairs and my brain told me the steps had finished when there were still two more. Next thing I knew my head hit the floor, followed by more ironic cheers. The guard who took me to hospital for the X-ray said that it was the best pratfall he’d seen since Norman Wisdom. Pratfall. Yeh, the right word.
Nothing was broken, but I did lose a tooth.
So, all things considered, I am in a pretty bad way when Sandra pays me her first visit in several months.
It doesn’t start well.
“You look like shit,” she says. “What’s happened?”
I push the tiredness away and put on a brave face.
“I’m fine really. Just a bit short of sleep, that’s all.”
“You’re not on drugs, are you?”
“No.”
“Are there drugs in here?”
I give her a look.
“Sandra, it’s a prison.”
“Are you eating all right?”
“Yeh.”
“What’s the food like?”
“Basic.”
“You’ve lost weight.”
“Well, I was carrying a bit, wasn’t I?”
She looks upset.
“The love handles have gone,” I tell her.
She’s chewing her lip with tension.
“Don’t forget to breathe,” I remind her.
She seems to be scanning my face, looking for clues. I don’t like seeing her so anxious.
“How are the wedding plans going?” I ask, trying to up the energy.
“Yeh, no, good thanks, yeh…good.”
“How long now?”
“Five weeks…”
“Church wedding?”
“No. Has Mac been to visit you recently?”
“No, well, he’s still touring with that show, isn’t he? The…um…musical about…the Tonypandy massacre.”
“Oh God, yeh.”
At last, a laugh, she’s laughing, that’s a relief.
“Limits him a bit, doesn’t it,” she giggles. “In terms of bums on seats, doing shows about massacres.”
“He’ll be OK once Lloyd Webber writes Culloden.”
We kick around the notion of an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical about the annihilation of the clans, starring Michael Crawford as the butcher Cumberland, and for a few minutes it is like the old days, before all the nonsense.
“So it’s a registry office job?” I ask.
“Yeh.”
“Are you excited?”
God, this is like pulling teeth.
“Is he excited? He should be, he’s a very lucky lad.”
She shifts in her seat slightly. Am I making her uncomfortable?
“All right, I’ll stop the interrogation.”
“Pete’s lovely…he’s very caring.”
A terrible thought starts to take form.
“And you love him?”
“Totally.”
She’s being so defensive that I can’t help myself.
“It’s just…y’know…I’d hate to think…somehow…you were…”
A pair of brown eyes are drilling into me. It’s very disconcerting and my addled brain hunts for the right word.
“…settling.”
I don’t think that was the right word.
“I’m not settling, you arrogant shit. What the fuck gives you the right to say that?”
“I’m sorry. I’m…knackered, I…can’t—”
“Pete is wonderful.”
“Good, that’s brilliant, and, I’m sorry, I’m not thinking straight.”
She flops back in the chair and exhales, hard. This is a disaster. I reach for a joke.
“That’s why I got thrown out of the Diplomatic Corps.”
She’s not playing. Behind her, a guard glances at his watch.
“With Pete,” she begins, haltingly, “I…I’m going to have a crack at the stuff we never managed…I want to just…sit with someone curled up in front of the telly, like that’s the only place in the whole world…I want to hear a key in the door and think ‘oh great, he’s home’ and not ‘where the hell has he been?’ I want to take our kid to the zoo, and don’t make that face.”
I wasn’t aware of making a face, but she obviously spotted something. She gets louder.
“My friend Natalie’s just had her first and she’s two years older than me…so why the hell not? Lots of women have babies in their forties now. And if necessary, we can adopt. I’m going to do it, Kevin.”
This is the first time since we separated that she has got angry with me. There are tears in her eyes.
“There are some things you don’t have the right to ask me any more,” she murmurs.
Damn this exhaustion, I can’t think. Think! There is a feeling I want to – but the words are – everything is scuttling away from me.
“Listen…the…there’s…I’m sorry, how things turned out…and I know that was down to me…and I really regr
et that…because I know that if I hadn’t played around, then…”
“That wasn’t the worst part,” she interrupts.
“Oh…what…what was the worst part, then?”
“…You hide.”
“Hide?”
“I probably know you better than anyone and yet I hardly know you at all.”
“…Well, everyone hides a bit…don’t they?”
She laughs.
“A bit, maybe. But you hide inside yourself – or rather yourselves. You’re like a Russian doll.”
What does this – this accusation – what does this amount to? Is love about surrendering up every innermost thought to someone else? What is she talking about? Does this…this Pete person…does he come home and spill his guts every night? Is that what she wants? Never mind, concentrate on the apology, that’s all that matters right now.
“I’m sorry if that’s…the signal I give off.”
“It’s not a signal, it’s the substance.”
“…Maybe so…” I rub my face to try and clear my head. “I just want you to know, that you are the only woman I have ever felt…truly comfortable with…” She mutters the word “comfortable” “…and I will always regret the fact that my behaviour meant…that it didn’t work out between us, and that—”
“It would never have worked out between you and me, Kevin. To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure it could ever work out between you and anyone.”
There is a tremor in her voice now.
“The walls are just too high.”
It is a moment or two before I can take in what she has said. I am still processing it as she scrapes back her chair and starts putting on her jacket.
“I’d better go.”
“But the bell hasn’t gone.”
“We don’t need the bell,” she says.
* * *
My immediate reaction was to dismiss Sandra’s comments as simplistic sentimental rubbish. Relationships are far more complex than that and besides, she puts up walls, so does everyone, it was all bollocks. Self-absorbed tosh.
But a few days after her visit, my psychological and physical well-being started to plummet dramatically. The first major change was that I stopped eating. I stopped wanting to eat. I stopped wanting to talk. Or move. I even stopped looking at people. I wanted no form of contact whatsoever. Even Dougie got locked out.
The Star Witness Page 16