by Simon Brett
The baby was not taking kindly to its move. The little mouth strained open like a goldfish and the pebble eyes almost vanished in folds of skin as it screamed. It was a long time since Charles had held a baby and he had forgotten the little tricks he had used when his own daughter Juliet was small. He tried rocking the little bundle and murmuring the Skye Boat Song. It didn’t work.
On the television screen the credits rolled. Inevitably, ‘CHRISTOPHER MILTON’ came first. Then ‘in STRAIGHT UP, GUV — by WALLY WILSON’. Then ‘with’ the names of a couple of those comedy supports who are never out of work and the inevitable wild studio applause faded into the show proper. (Why do studio audiences always applaud signature tunes and credits? The fact that they clap when nothing has happened casts serious doubts on the credibility of their subsequent reactions.) The episode started; Charles couldn’t hear a word above the baby’s howls.
In desperation he dipped a finger in his Scotch and proffered it to the bellowing mouth. The tiny lips closed round it as if determined to remove the skin. But there was silence.
It didn’t last. After a few moments the suction was released and the bellowing recommenced. Charles hastily dipped his finger back in the glass and the mouth clamped on again. By repeating the process every two minutes he found he could watch Straight Up, Guv in comparative comfort.
It was not bad. The show was built around the adventures of a second-rate con-man Lionel Wilkins (played of course by Christopher Milton), whose attempts to pull off the big coup were always crowned with disaster. Wally Wilson’s script was workmanlike, but uninspired; it was Christopher Milton’s performance which raised it above the ordinary. Lionel Wilkins was a genuine comic creation, whose doomed cockiness was strangely engaging. He was the original Wobbly Man; every time you pushed him over, he bounced back up again. As catastrophe followed catastrophe and his face crumpled into crestfallen embarrassment, the audience roared. Each time he picked himself up with some new incongruous scheme and the audience roared again. Even Charles found himself laughing out loud at times. Christopher Milton’s face in repose was unremarkable, but in the character it seemed capable of infinite comic variation. It was easy to see why the show had become a cult.
And, like many cult shows, it had a catch-phrase. As the worst reversal hit him, Lionel Wilkins paused in horror, the audience laughed in anticipation, and then, with perfect timing, he said, ‘I beg yours?’ As Charles heard it, he recognised it, recognised it from shouting schoolboys in the street, giggling secretaries in the tube and half-heard impressionists on the radio. ‘I beg yours?’ was Christopher Milton; he said it and the entire nation followed him.
When Jim and Susie returned, Charles and the baby were still watching television, and between them they’d got through half the bottle of Bell’s.
CHAPTER THREE
The Welsh Dragon Club near the Elephant and Castle had been built in more elegant times as a meeting-place for expatriate Welshmen of the upper and middle classes. It then boasted four tennis courts (grass), fielded six rugby teams and held very proper dances on Saturdays. The members tended to wear blazers or tweed, they had strong religious principles and, when drunk, broke into mournful song.
The club was now lost in a forest of concrete blocks. Two of the tennis courts had been sold for development and the others were now pink shale stained with moss. The only rugby discussed in the bar was what was seen on the television and the Saturday dances had been replaced by intermittent bookings for disco-parties (which were rarely profitable because of the number of broken windows). The members had gone down in class and numbers. They tended to lounge around in jeans and patterned pullovers, propped against the moth-eaten baize of the old notice-boards, occasionally throwing a desultory dart or pulling without hope at the arm of the one fruit machine. When they got drunk, they still broke into mournful song.
The club had one paid employee, who doubled the roles of caretaker and barman. His name was Griff and he spent whole days propped over the bar reading an apparently inexhaustible copy of the Sun.
The club activities could not possibly make any profit, but the Welsh Dragon stayed open. All its revenue came from hiring out rehearsal rooms. There were two — one where old cue-racks and brass score-boards against treacle-coloured panels accentuated the absence of the long-sold billiard tables, and the other, grandly called the ‘Ballroom’, a long expanse of bare boards with a tiny stage at one end and a wall of French windows which in the old days were left open for dances after summer tournaments. Many of the window panes had been broken and covered with asymmetrical offcuts of hardboard.
Charles was directed to the Ballroom, where a flotsam of chairs and upturned benches represented the expensive set of Lumpkin! (The designs, by Derbyshire Wilkes, were elaborate and featured considerable use of revolves and flown pieces.) The scene was like any morning in any rehearsal room. Actors and actresses sat on chairs round the edges of the room like the sad wallflowers who had once moped there after missing vital backhand returns in the mixed doubles. Little clusters formed round crosswords or gossip. Bleary bodies shuffled slowly out of the cocoons of their coats. A member of the stage management moved purposefully around the room, following some logic of her own. Hangovers and television were discussed, knitting was unwound.
The director, David Meldrum, was poring over the script at a small table isolated in the middle of the room. He was balding, with rimless glasses and somehow managed the pinched look of a clerk from a Dickens serial. Charles knew him by sight and introduced himself.
‘Ah, Charles, hello. I gathered your name was being mentioned for the part. Nice to see you.’ He did not seem particularly interested in the addition to his cast. ‘Gwyneth will give you a rehearsal schedule.’
At the mention of her name, the stage management girl homed in and handed Charles a cyclostyled sheet of times and scenes. Instinctively he assessed her. Old habits die hard and one of the first moves on joining any company is to examine the available crumpet. He decided that Gwyneth looked too dauntingly efficient for his taste. Not a high cuddlability rating.
As he sat down to study the schedule, Charles reflected that it was rather pathetic for him still to be studying the crumpet. He was nearly forty-nine years old and his emotional track record was not spectacular. There was a nice wife, Frances, in Muswell Hill, with whom he hadn’t lived for fourteen years (in spite of occasional reconciliations) and who was now reputed to have a boy friend. Apart from her, it was a history of intense casual affairs, which were either too intense or too casual. Thinking about it depressed him, so he channelled his thoughts in another direction.
It was strange that David Meldrum had accepted his appearance so casually. Indeed, it was strange that the director had had no part in his selection for the role. ‘I gathered your name was being mentioned for the part.’ As if it had nothing to do with him. Charles racked his brains for any stray comments he had heard about the director and from some source he couldn’t identify he remembered the words, ‘A good technician, love, but about as much imagination as a bread-board. Ought really to be in local government. Approaches a production like planning a car park.’ That made sense. David Meldrum was a director who would see that the show got on the stage. He might not have many ideas of his own, but at least he wouldn’t argue with anyone else’s. Charles felt certain that Christopher Milton’s contract also included an Approval of Director clause.
He looked round for the star, but there was no sign of him. Five to ten. Perhaps he was one of those actors who makes a point of arriving just at the moment of the call.
As the room filled up, there were one or two familiar faces from a long time ago. He saw Michael Peyton, with whom he’d worked on his own production of She Stoops to Conquer in Cardiff. They grinned at each other across the room. A couple of other actors smiled vaguely, as unable to remember Charles’ name as he was to remember theirs.
There were few actresses. Thinking of the original play, Charles could only remember thr
ee female characters — Mrs Hardcastle, Kate Hardcastle and Miss Neville. He identified them easily. The middle-aged lady in a tweed trouser-suit and a scallop of blue-grey hair he recognised as Winifred Tuke. Good workmanlike actress. He remembered once overhearing her saying, ‘Been a feature player all my life and very happy at it — I’ve never wanted to be a star.’ She must be playing Mrs Hardcastle. The thin girl with aquiline nose and straight blonde hair must be Miss Neville and the shorter one whose mouth and teeth were attractively too large looked absolutely right for Kate Hardcastle.
Michael Peyton came over to chat and confirmed the identification. The girl playing Kate was called Lizzie Dark, apparently only a year out of Sussex University and generally believed to have a glowing future.
‘Nice looking kid, isn’t she?’ Charles observed.
‘Yes. Fairly regular boy friend. Often comes and picks her up after rehearsals.’
‘Oh, I wasn’t thinking…’
‘Of course you were.’
‘Well…’
‘There’s always the tour.’
‘Hmm.’
‘And the dancers.’
‘When do they join us?’
‘Next week. They’re rehearsing separately.’
‘How the hell do dancers fit into She Stoops to Conquer?’
‘If you think this show bears any relation to the play as we did it in Cardiff, you can’t have read the script.’
‘True. I’ve only read my scenes.’
‘There’s an actor for you. I hope you didn’t count your lines.’
‘No,’ he lied.
David Meldrum stood up and moved to the centre of the set in a rather apologetic way. ‘Um, perhaps we ought to start.’
He was interrupted by the entry of a man in a donkey-jacket, who whispered something to him and sat down on a chair adjacent to the table. He had brown curly hair and a boyish face with a snub nose, but his skin belied the impression of youth. It had that papier-mache quality which is the legacy of bad acne.
‘Who’s he?’ Charles hissed.
‘Spike. He’s the stage manager. Nice bloke. He must be down to see if we’re actually going to be able to negotiate Derbyshire Wilkes’ amazing set. Of course, there’s always the stage staff,’ he added irrelevantly.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Potential crumpet.’
‘I’m too old.’
‘Come off it. Nothing like a warm little props girl to comfort a chap in his old age.’
‘Um, I think we should make a start,’ said David Meldrum.
‘Where’s the star, Michael?’
‘Oh, he’s never called till ten-thirty. It’s in his contract.’
In 1773 Oliver Goldsmith decided that Sir Charles Marlow should not appear in his play until the fifth act, so Charles Paris’ rehearsal schedule was not too onerous. That much had survived the translation of She Stoops to Conquer into Liberty Hall and even the transmogrification of Liberty Hall into Lumpkin! The result was that, although there was ground to be made up and Charles would have to go through his scenes with the assistant director and be taxied off to Soho for a costume fitting that afternoon, he was not actually called for the morning. And because Griff the barman interpreted such concepts as club membership and licensing hours with a commendable degree of independence, by ten-thirty Charles and Michael Peyton were sitting in the bar over a couple of pints of bitter.
Griff was hunched over the Sun, reading between the lines of a photograph. In the corner a gloomy figure in denim battledress confronted the fruit machine, willing it to swallow his money and confirm his failure. Charles decided it might be a good moment to find if Gerald’s suspicions about the two accidents were shared by an ordinary member of the company like Michael Peyton. ‘Funny way of coming into a show for me, you know, Mike. After an accident. Sort of dead men’s shoes situation.’
‘Ah well, it’s an ill wind.’
‘Yes. Poor old Everard.’
‘No one can expect to drink that much and stay perpendicular. Against the laws of physics.’
‘Yes. I suppose he just fell…’
‘Suppose so,’ said Michael without interest and certainly without suspicion.
‘Hm.’ No harm in probing a bit further. ‘Funny, though, that accident coming straight after the other one.’
‘Other one?’
‘The rehearsal pianist.’
‘Who? Alec?’
‘No, the one before him.’
Michael jutted forward his lower lip in an expression of ignorance. ‘Didn’t know there was one.’
‘Oh, I heard some rumour. Must have got it wrong.’ Obviously to the ordinary member of the company there was nothing bizarre going on. There was no general feeling of doom, of a ‘bad luck’ show. Gerald’s imagination had been overstimulated by thoughts of the size of his financial investment. For Charles, it was just an acting job. He raised his glass to his lips and reflected on the differences between unemployed drinking and drinking with a nine-month contract. A warm glow filled him.
‘Griff love, can you do me a port.’ The new voice belonged to a good-looking young man in a smart blazer and check trousers. ‘I’ve got the most frightful throat coming on and David’s just sent me to go through my songs with Alec up in the billiard room.’
‘Port, eh?’
‘It’s the only thing for a throat, Griff.’
‘Huh.’
‘Mark, have you met Charles Paris?’
‘No, Mike, I haven’t. Hello, I’m Mark Spelthorne.’ He left an infinitesimal pause for Charles to say, ‘Yes, of course, I recognise your face from the television,’ but Charles didn’t, so he continued. ‘You’re taking over from poor old Everard?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, don’t drink too much of that, or you’ll go the same way.’
‘I’ll be careful.’ It wasn’t worth objecting to the young man’s patronising tone.
‘Do you know, Mike,’ said Mark Spelthorne, though he was addressing the world in general rather than anyone in particular, ‘my agent is a bloody fool. He had a call yesterday from Yorath Knightley — do you know him?’
‘No.’
‘BBC. Telly. Drama. Wanted me for a play, super part. Rehearsals the week after this opens. Lovely, just what I need. But my damn fool agent says, oh no, out of the question, they may have some rerehearsal and what have you on Lumpkin! Honestly. I said, well, surely, love, we can get a few days off, sort round the contract, organise the filming round the schedule for this show. Oh no, he says, you’re under contract. No bloody imagination. I think I must get another agent.’
‘Sorry it took so long. Had to open a bottle. Don’t get much call for port here. One or two of the ladies has it with lemon, but most of the gents drink beer or spirits.’
‘Never mind, Griff. Bless you,’ said Mark Spelthorne bountifully. He took a sip of the drink and gargled it gently, then swallowed. ‘Better.’ He repeated the process. Charles and Mike watched in silence as the glass slowly emptied. ‘Ah well, better test out the old singing voice.’
‘If you want to hear real singing,’ said Griff morosely, ‘you want to listen to a Welsh male voice choir.’
‘Ah.’ Mark was nonplussed, not certain what his reaction should be.
‘We used to have a choir here at the Welsh Dragon. Lovely singing. Better than anything I’ve heard since you lot’ve been here.’
‘That’s a matter of opinion.’ Mark hesitated, uncertain whether or not that was a good enough exit line. Failing to come up with a better one, he exited to the billiard room.
‘Should I know him, Mike? He behaved as if I should.’
‘Not unless you’re a fan of The Fighter Pilots, Charles.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You’re obviously not. It’s an ITV series. Another cashing in on the nostalgia boom. Mark Spelthorne plays Flying Officer Falconer, whose daring missions and dreary love life fill up most of each episode.’
�
��Oh. I’ve never heard of him in the theatre.’
‘I don’t think he’s done much. Presumably he did his forty weeks round the provinces to get the Equity card, but I think that’s it. He’s one of the media mushrooms who has sprung up overnight as a fully developed television star.’
‘Then why is he in this?’
‘Publicity, Charles. So that he can be billed on the poster as Mark Spelthorne of The Fighter Pilots. That’s to mop up the one per cent of the population who haven’t come to see Christopher Milton of Straight Up, Guv.’
‘The television take-over is complete.’
‘Yes.’
‘He seemed to have a fairly inflated opinion of himself.’
‘Ah, he would like to be a big star, Charles.’
‘And will he make it?’
‘I don’t know. Somehow I don’t think so. Don’t think he’s got what it takes.’
‘What’s he playing?’
‘Your son, Young Marlow.’
‘That’s the best part in the play.’
‘Was, Charles, was. Maybe that’s what Goldsmith intended, but that was before Christopher Milton got his hands on the script.’
‘Yes,’ the gloomy man at the fruit machine chipped in suddenly and savagely. ‘Before Christopher Milton got his bloody hands on the script.’
There was a moment’s pause before Michael Peyton recovered himself sufficiently to make the introduction. ‘Charles Paris-Kevin McMahon.’
‘Ah yes. You wrote Liberty Hall.’
‘In a previous existence, I think.’ His voice had the rough blur of a hangover and there was a large Scotch on a table beside the fruit machine. Having registered his protest, he seemed to lose interest in the two actors and, with an air of self-mortification, pressed another ten pence into the slot. Or maybe he turned away as a deliberate snub to the man entering the bar. ‘Morning, everyone. Hello, Griff. Charles Paris, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Delighted you’re with us on the show.’
Charles took the offered firm handshake and looked into the clear, honest face. ‘My name’s Christopher Milton.’