by Sue Townsend
Jack was scowling across the road at Anne Hathaway’s cottage where lines of tourists were tramping up and down the path to the front door.
“I don’t understand it,” said the Prime Minister.
Jack winced at the Prime Minister’s pronunciation of ‘it’ as ‘ut’. He noticed it more frequently now that they had been in each other’s pockets for seven days, and almost waited for it. Jack said, “Understand what?”
“Your antipathy to thatched cottages,” said the Prime Minister.
“They’re so bloody smug and self-satisfied,” said Jack. “Let’s go for that drink.”
♦
“I wanted to be an actor when I was a boy,” said the Prime Minister.
He and Jack were sitting in the Dirty Duck in Stratford-upon-Avon. A group of actors were eating lunch at an adjacent table.
“They say that politicians are just ugly actors, don’t they,” said Jack with a laugh.
The Prime Minister looked crestfallen. “Who says that, Jack?”
“They!”
“But who are they?” pressed the Prime Minister. Jack replied, “It’s just a figure of speech.” “But politicians are no uglier than most of the population,” said the Prime Minister.
Jack said wearily, “The point is, Ed, that politicians are primarily actors.”
♦
Ali was looking through the multi-paned window of a gift shop in the pedestrianised shopping centre. It was his eldest son’s birthday next week and he had bought him a ‘William Shakespeare T–shirt but he was having doubts now—what fifteen-year-old boy would want to be seen wearing a T–shirt what had a picture of an old bald-headed git on it, innit. And he couldn’t just buy a present for Mohammed, could he? The others would expect something an’ all.
♦
The Prime Minister was happy to be in the Dirty Duck with a Campari and soda on a little table in front of him; he felt sure that his mother would approve of him, drinking at lunchtime in the company of theatrical folk.
An actor with a familiar pock-marked face leaned over and said, “Aren’t you Victoria Rotherhide? Weren’t we on The Bill together in 1988? I’m Guy Sutherland.”
The Prime Minister blinked rapidly and said, “Hi, Guy, I’m Edwina St Clare.”
“Yeah, course you are, I’m crap at names,” said Guy. “You were a woman whose kids were abducted and I was the nutter.”
The other actors at the table laughed and one said, “Typecast again, Guy.”
The Prime Minister said coquettishly, “May I join you?”
He wanted to get away from Jack for a while and be with creatures of his own kind. After all, he had the theatre in his blood. Jack was behaving like a moody adolescent lately, and such cynicism—how could anybody find a thatched cottage less than charming?
He sat next to Amaryllis, a dark-haired actress with intense black eyes and artfully arranged scruffy clothes. She said, “I assume you are here for the audition, you’re terribly like Edward Clare.”
Jack looked over from the bar and saw that the Prime Minister was laughing with his head thrown back showing his Adam’s apple. Jack frowned; he had warned the Prime Minister not to do that, it was a dead giveaway. Still, at least he was laughing.
The Prime Minister and Amaryllis were swapping their life stories: according to the Prime Minister, he had studied at RADA with Helen Mirren and shared a flat with Simon Callow. After working in rep in Nottingham and Bristol he had worked mostly in TV and films but theatre was his first love. “One feels, y’know, legitimised by the audience.”
Jack saw one of the actors at the table turn his head and stick his fingers down his throat.
♦
Opposite the pub in a stage manager’s tiny office in the back of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre sat Sir Digby Priest, celebrated theatre director. He was due to start rehearsals in three days on a play called The Life and Spiritual Death of Edward Clare by ‘Wayne Sparrow, a left-wing playwright who had won critical acclaim for his first play, Fart.
Sparrow had been commissioned three years before but had missed deadline after deadline and had finally delivered the Clare play two nights ago. He had been drunk or drugged and had mumbled, “It’s fucking rubbish and it’s only twenty-seven minutes long. I’ve been having trouble with my identity.”
After reading the manuscript Sir Digby had considered paying to have Sparrow’s legs broken. As a boy Digby had helped his uncle to deliver milk to the Krays, and he still had contacts in the East End.
However, the brochure advertising the production had been printed and the posters were up in the shops around Stratford, so the show would have to go on.
Digby was still searching for the lead actor; he turned the pages of Spotlight, in which he had been desperately scanning the photographs of leading men for anyone resembling the Prime Minister. “Why did the bastards keep the same photograph in the book for twenty years? He had auditioned leading men who had served at El Alamein, for Christ’s sake.”
As he left the rehearsal room he took a call from a casting agent who told him that she was lining up a couple of likely Edward Clares, but one would have to have time off for a telly job and the other was a bit on the short side, though he was prepared to wear lifts in his shoes.
Digby said, “How short is on the short side?”
“He’s almost five foot one.”
“It’s not a lift he’ll need in his shoes, darling, it’s a fucking escalator,” shouted Digby.
The phone rang again. It was Amaryllis, whom Sir Digby had once directed in Streetcar. She had been a disaster as Blanche; her southern accent had sounded as if it had come straight from the ‘Welsh valleys. Amaryllis said, “Digby, darling, the definitive Edward Clare is sitting in the Duck. He’s a woman, but she is he.”
Sir Digby took a small brush from out of the shoulder bag he carried everywhere and brushed his hair and goatee beard. He was between wives and was ever hopeful of finding female companionship. As he hurried through the building and out into the street he was greeted, or at least recognised, by almost everybody he passed. He had often spoken in interviews about his ‘absolute need for privacy’. However, his flamboyant Falstaffian appearance and booming voice meant that, tragically, he was unable to melt into a crowd. Brian Blessed had once been heard to remark, “I adore darling Digby, but Christ is he loud.”
Jack watched as Sir Digby Priest strode into the bar. He had read Priest’s published diaries and felt as if he knew the man. Because of this familiarity Jack raised his hand in greeting, then dropped it again when he realised that Priest was in fact a stranger to him. He wondered why a man who was in his sixty-fifth year would rig himself up in jeans, cowboy boots, a Rolling Stones T–shirt and a black leather jacket.
He watched as Sir Digby cleared a path through the bar towards the Prime Minister.
Digby saw at once that the creature in the gypsy dress and cheap blonde wig was awesomely suitable to play the Premier.
Amaryllis introduced them, Sir Digby boomed out, “Get lost, cattle,” and the actors got up obediently and moved to the other side of the room.
He took the Prime Minister’s hands and held them inside his own great paws. He looked deep into the Prime Minister’s eyes and said in what he thought was a confidential whisper, though Jack heard it at the bar, “I’m quite used to transsexuals, my dear; my first wife was a man. I went to a Catholic school so I knew nothing about women and was a bit of a lemon sexually, but it was the sixties and one didn’t like to admit to being less than clued up about women’s bodies, so I assumed that my first wife, sweet, sweet girl, Cassandra, had a larger than usual clitoris. However, the poor love was in private despair because she was actually a man who had an absurdly small penis. I paid for her to have the chop and the marriage struggled on for a while but one day there was an ugly row about something silly—she’d used my shaving brush and hadn’t rinsed it—and we divorced. But tell me about yourself, my dear.”
The Prime Minister
talked for a few moments about the highlights of his career—a suicide in Casualty, the Inspector in An Inspector Calls, Gwendolyn in the Importance of Being Earnest—“But I’ve always longed to work at the RSC.” Henry V was a part he was born to play.
While the Prime Minister had been talking Digby had been watching every movement of the Prime Minister’s face and listening to every nuance of his voice, that mixture of hesitation and command. Digby tried to calm himself; he had been in this perfect casting situation before, when Sylvester Stallone had almost signed up to play Bottom in the Dream. That had ended in tears when Stallone’s agent had requested that it be written in the contract that Stallone would be allowed to kill a mother-fucking swan if it came near him. When Digby had phoned LA to say that the swans at Stratford were owned by the Queen and were protected by law the agent had screamed, ‘The deal’s off! Doncha know a fucking swan can break a man’s arm?’
Sir Digby said to the Prime Minister, “Shakespeare bores me rigid. I will only work on contemporary plays by living authors. I want you to audition for the lead in a play called The Life and Spiritual Death of Edward Clare.”
The Prime Minister said, “The lead?”
Digby said, “You bear an uncanny resemblance to our esteemed leader and your voice is remarkably similar. Are you available?”
“Yes,” said the Prime Minister. “I’m resting at the moment.”
“Then let us go and see what you look like in a suit, shall we, my dear?”
“Blimey,” said the Prime Minister. “This is rather exciting.”
Jack followed Sir Digby and the Prime Minister over the road to the rehearsal rooms; he allowed himself to be introduced as the Prime Minister’s agent and was grudgingly admitted into the rehearsal room where the audition was to take place. The Prime Minister was led away by the wardrobe mistress and reappeared ten minutes later dressed in a blue suit, a white shirt, a red tie and lace-up shoes, and wearing his own hair. The little crowd of theatre workers in the room applauded spontaneously as the Prime Minister made a shy entrance.
Sir Digby paced the room issuing instructions to the Prime Minister: the Prime Minister had to laugh, cry, get angry, talk to God, address the UN, pretend to be a dog, sing, dance and be a ten-year-old boy.
Jack cringed with embarrassment. In his opinion the Prime Minister was completely unable to play himself. And he had no idea of what to do with his hands. But Sir Digby announced after a few minutes of conferring with his assistant director and others in the production team that the Prime Minister would be expected at rehearsals at ten o’clock on Monday morning. He addressed the room with a voice trembling with emotion: “This is a fucking important play; it is about the spiritual degeneration of a political leader and his capitulation to American imperialism.”
The Prime Minister looked nervously over at Jack and said to Sir Digby, “I’ll need to talk to my agent, of course, but crikey it’s very nice of you to give me the part.”
Ali was inside one of Stratford’s multifarious gift shops immersed in an English world of childhood iconography. He was surrounded on all sides by ‘Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore, Roo, Peter Rabbit, Rupert the Bear, Thomas the Tank Engine, the Fat Controller, Noddy, Big Ears, Alice in ‘Wonderland, the Mad Hatter, Toad of Toad Hall, Ratty, Badger and Mole. He was sweating with indecision—would Areefa, his three-year-old, prefer Winnie the Pooh to Rupert Bear? Would Sedek be insulted by the floating Noddy soap dish? Would his missis be offended if he bought her a Toad of Toad Hall soft toy? (Ali’s private name for her was Froggy ever since she’d had thyroid trouble in the late ‘90s, though thanks be to Allah that was cleared up now.) Hassina, the eldest daughter, at thirteen, would be impossible to please anyway, but maybe she wouldn’t object to Peter Rabbit.
∨ Number Ten ∧
TWENTY
Norma woke up and lay for a moment before she remembered that today was the big day. She threw the heavy bedclothes back; she could take a few off now that the room was lovely, gorgeous, like it was summer. Since James had come she’d agreed to have the heating on all day and all night. It was daring, she knew, but it was true what James had said: “The electric bill comes four times a year but we could die tomorrow.”
She liked the way he always said ‘we’, always included her, like they were partners in business and in life. She loved James. She knew it couldn’t never be that kind of love—she was seventy-one and he wasn’t even twenty. Although there had been a couple on Jerry Springer who said they were happy; he was bald and dribbling out of the side of his mouth and she was just sixteen and a bit retarded, poor kid.
Anyway, she was glad she didn’t have to do that ever again. She’d only enjoyed it with Trevor, and he hadn’t bothered her that often. Christmas, Easter, Blackpool Illuminations week and other odd times when he’d had just the right amount to drink. Too little and he’d be a bit shy, too much and he’d have a bit of a struggle to get a purchase on it.
The love she and James had for each other was the pure type but more exciting than the love she felt for Stuart, Yvonne and Jack, and James needed her help. He was like a life and business partner, and as soon as he was cured of crack he was going to take her travelling abroad. A cruise first, just to break her in—she’d never been out of England before, though she and Trev had planned a holiday to Disneyland but then Trev had fallen off that roof. If you get the right ship where everybody speaks English it’s just like being in England, James had told her.
They cleaned the house together; she liked it clean for visitors. Then James said, “Let’s do some cooking, Mother.” He led her into the kitchen and sat her down. He took a roll of aluminium foil out of the cupboard drawer and used it to line the surface of the table. He then searched for and found a baking tray, a Pyrex bowl, a little milk pan, a roll of clingfilm, a large metal spoon, a sharp knife, a cola tin partially scraped clean of its paint and a hole-punch. In minutes the table was transformed into an alchemist’s work bench. She watched him like she used to watch her mother as he sifted and mixed a bit of white powder, a sprinkling of bicarbonate of soda and a few drops of water in the Pyrex bowl. Then he took the little milk pan and heated the mixture until it snapped, crackled and popped.
♦
Sir Digby was reluctant to let his astonishing new discovery leave without giving him a firm commitment. “Edwina, stay in Strafford with me. I’m renting a delightful thatched cottage; we could work on the script together. I’ve done a little research myself and I think I’ve got the measure of our celebrated PM.”
“What are your own politics?” asked the Prime Minister. Sir Digby was surprised to be asked. His name regularly appeared immediately after Palm and Paxman on petitions and round-robin letters to the press on every conceivable radical issue from prison reform to the war against Iraq.
“I’m afraid I’m rabidly anti-Establishment. I was thrown out of the MCC last year for trying to start a Mexican wave in the members’ enclosure at Lords.”
Jack laughed.
Sir Digby said testily, “I know it’s not akin to throwing oneself under a tank, but there are very few opportunities to do so in the streets of this country.” He looked almost regretful, then said, “Edwina, together we could make a difference, we could bring down the Clare government. Please say you’ll play Edward Clare.”
Then Jack said, “Edwina and I need to discuss it. We’ll be in touch—don’t call us, Sir Digby, we’ll call you.”
Jack then escorted the Prime Minister to where Ali was parked with his hazard lights flashing on a double yellow line. Before they could pull away from the kerb, Sir Digby thrust a copy of the script through the open window saying, “We’ve almost signed Sharon Stone to play Adele. She’s being a bit precious about the false nose, but I’m sure once she’s tried a few on.”
Jack said, “Drive on, Ali,” and the car drew away slowly and joined the tourist traffic leaving Stratford. The Prime Minister read aloud from Wayne Sparrow’s skimpy script. One of the liveliest scenes was set
in the Oval Office at the White House and involved the Prime Minister of Great Britain and the President of the United States wrestling naked by firelight; the victor would win the dubious honour of issuing the command to rain missiles on to the major cities in all the troublesome ‘Axis of Evil’ countries.
Jack said, “Sparrow’s obviously a D.H. Lawrence fan. I’ll ask Sir Digby to double the money if he’s expecting you to show your arse, Ed.”
Ali said, “It sounds like a film my missis was watching the other night.”
In another scene, Sparrow’s Prime Minister was dressed as a poodle and was jumping through a burning hoop held at arm’s length by the Statue of Liberty. The dialogue throughout was littered with obscenities and expletives.
When Jack took the script and read out a monologue Ali said, “Ain’t you read the notice on the dash, Jack? No bad language!”
♦
Lately, Palmer and Clarke couldn’t wait to get to work and resented having to hand over to the night shift. They had offered to work around the clock, sleeping and eating in the office, but the boss had refused them permission, citing Health and Safety regulations. They had grown fond of their surveillance subjects and had cheered loudly when Jack had pulled that mutton-chopped bastard farmer from out of the tractor cab and duffed him up.