Staging Death

by Judith Cutler

  By the time she’d repeated deadpan all the ingredients in one of her health drinks, stamping her foot and tearing at her hair, I reckoned we’d mastered it. We’d also managed something else – a small step in the direction of friendship. If ever she forgave me for saving her about a million quid, that is. I’d better not push my luck and suggest we played tennis, however, even though she walked down to the stable yard with me.

  Christopher Wild hove into view. He greeted us both with enthusiasm, kissing my hand first, which was clearly a mistake, resulting in the circumambient temperature dropping about ten degrees.

  Without being asked, another mistake, which reduced the air to below minus on the Celsius scale, he embarked on a detailed account of his arboreal activities, down in the area of what he now called, with quite visible capital letters, the Sculpture Park.

  ‘A son et lumière?’ Allyn repeated. ‘Since when?’

  Silently I tried to urge caution, but it was like scowling at one of the statues.

  ‘Oh, Toby and I agreed it weeks ago,’ he responded blithely. ‘Probably just the two voices, of course, but if push came to shove I thought we could use you as a third, Vee.’

  I jumped in with both feet. ‘But how very much more appropriate to use Allyn as one of them. As your hostess, Chris,’ I said pointedly, ‘and your employer’s wife. Not to mention as a damned fine actress.’

  He might once have had sufficient actorly skills to convince audiences that he was a brainless yokel – though I was cross enough to wonder whether he was simply typecast as an idiot – but he didn’t have enough nous to retrieve that gaffe. ‘Oh, of course – if you’d rather she did it.’

  Allyn’s lips were pinched so tight they had almost disappeared.

  ‘It’s not for me to decide,’ I said. ‘I’m just working here, Chris, the same as you are.’

  ‘But I thought that someone with your reputation—’

  ‘Reputation as what?’ Allyn cut in, her ego obviously burning.

  ‘As an old warhorse of an actress,’ I declared heartily. ‘Never a star, but always ready to turn my hand to anything. All those years in weekly rep, darling.’ I had a terrible feeling that he was going to declare that that humble background made me a better choice than some jumped-up Hollywood star. ‘Look, Chris, this is a matter for Toby and Allyn. It’s their home.’

  ‘Ah, and those lads of hers,’ he muttered bitterly. How much had he drunk? It was only just noon, but he’d plainly been imbibing for some time. Unless he was still hung-over from last night. I knew he had a reputation as a lush, but I had a terrible fear he might be a fully paid-up alcoholic. What had I done, to bring him into Toby’s life? Apart from getting him a nice big fee to buy further booze?

  Which he would drink while operating a chainsaw and/or up a ladder.

  I prayed for some interruption. Anything – from a thunderbolt to a summons from Miss Fairford. There was a deep and threatening moment of silence. It was up to me, then.

  ‘How are they getting on with their cricket coaching?’ I asked Allyn, deliberately turning my back on Chris, and somehow setting Allyn in motion again, even if it was away from my car. ‘It would be wonderful to see two American-born lads play at Lord’s.’ Hell, that sounded familiar.

  ‘That’s what Toby says,’ she said resentfully. At least she seemed to have forgotten that I might have heard him. And then she tensed.

  Another car was sliding into view – a macho gas guzzler with tinted windows. It throbbed with the bass notes of something on the music system. The engine stopped. The pulsating noise stopped. And Allyn’s breathing stopped.

  From the driver’s seat emerged this Greek god, six foot plus in his thick tennis socks, shoulders wide enough to carry a willing virgin back to his bed and a bum to die for. He had as many gleaming teeth as Allyn herself, and a perma-tan as deep as hers. He dived into the back of his vehicle and produced a bag capable of carrying as many racquets as Andy Murray might use on the Centre Court. Then he dug out a basket on stilts, full of yellow tennis balls. Yes, he was fully established as a bona fide coach. So why did he look so nonplussed to see me, and she so guilty? Need I ask? No wonder she didn’t want to practise her tennis with me.

  I applied my brightest smile, and told Allyn that I must go. But not before Apollo had strolled over to me, with an irritating my-balls-are-so-big swagger. He shoved a manicured hand in my direction, and switched on his own smile, full of appreciation for my feminine charms, even though I was old enough to be his mother.

  Poor Allyn, falling for this louse.

  Since it was still well before noon, I reckoned I would find Chris still on the premises, with luck on his own, toiling away in the sculpture park. He was more or less toiling, but the most back-breaking work was being undertaken by a lad of much the same build as the tennis coach, but with, presumably, different proclivities. I summoned Chris with a jerk of the head.

  He sidled over, looking apprehensive, and raising his hands in surrender. ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry. Rather put my foot in it there.’

  ‘At least you’re sober enough to realise it.’ There was no point in beating about the bush, was there? ‘How dare you drink when you’re doing work like this? What sort of fool are you?’ Chainsaws might be one hazard. Others included saws and axes. ‘I wash my hands of you, Chris, I really do.’

  ‘I was only trying to put a bit of work your way,’ he whined. ‘A sort of quid pro quo.’

  ‘You ought to realise I wouldn’t get any quids for helping a couple of friends, nor would I expect any. It would be—’ I nearly said a labour of love. ‘It would be fun just to be acting again, as it happens. But when a man’s got his wife handy – a Hollywood star, no less – he couldn’t possibly ask any other woman to help. And speaking of acting, I’ll thank you to return my accent CDs.’

  ‘What accent CDs?’

  ‘The ones you borrowed from my car. You remember, the morning after the night you stayed over. And as payment you were kind enough to leave the daffs you’d no doubt nicked from the garden of one of my neighbours.’

  His face was a study in blankness.

  ‘Forgotten, have you? Well, you were so pissed I nearly had to carry you home, so I suppose it’s hardly surprising you can’t remember. What really impressed me, though,’ I continued, venom gathering with every syllable, ‘were your breaking-and-entering skills. When did you learn them? And did you learn to hot-wire a car at the same time? Make sure you only do it when you’re sober, though, or the police can do you for being drunk in charge of a car, and then where would your licence be?’

  ‘I did not break into your car. I did not borrow your CDs – why should I want them? I only do Mummerset, don’t I? And as for leaving you flowers – frankly, my dear, much as I usually adore you, you’re simply not my type.’ He sounded very convincing.

  But would anyone believe an old soak like Chris? I certainly didn’t want to. Because then I’d have to ask another question. If Chris didn’t break into my car, who did?

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Before I could arrive at a satisfactory answer, my mobile phone rang. Still not Caddie. Greg, with a funny note in his voice. Would I meet him at the barn conversion he’d mentioned the other day? Now?

  I could think of no particular reason to be awkward, not when he sounded so boyishly eager, so I set off straight away.

  Before I’d even parked, I could see the reason for his excitement.

  The barn conversion – for some reason named the Old Barn – was utterly lovely from the outside. Inside the conversion was wonderfully sympathetic, light and airy but retaining its essential solidity. According to the spec, it was insulated to the highest standards, with all sorts of energy-saving measures built in. The latest solar panels were already in place, rainwater flushed all the loos, and movement-activated electric lighting had been installed in the bathrooms. The fitted kitchen was occupied by top-of-the-range equipment, all rated at least A+. In the vendor’s place I would have furnished i
t before offering it for sale, because the high ceilings and wooden floors detracted from the sense of it being a home, the very intimidating acoustic making every footstep sound as though it had emerged from the soundtrack of a B-movie.

  ‘Seen all you want?’ Greg demanded at last, as proud as if it were his own. Why he’d chosen to specialise in older properties when he clearly preferred modern ones I didn’t know. Unless, perhaps, he suffered from the same problem as I did – a reluctance to wave goodbye to favourite houses – and solved it by not dealing in what he wanted for himself. And he wanted this. His eyes gleamed as they had when he was a young man, and had just seen in a showroom the first car he could afford to buy new, as opposed to a rust bucket discarded by a mate.

  In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he did buy this, since it had an air his present Seventies place lacked, for all his wife’s attempts at grandeur. I would love to furnish it for him. OK, I’d love to furnish it for anyone, given this blank canvas and an equally blank cheque.

  In fact, why not make a bid now? ‘I think you should talk to the vendor about some drapes and enough furniture to give a would-be purchaser an idea of what it might look like. As it is, it sounds like one of those posh restaurants where you can’t hear anyone speak because of the echoes. It wouldn’t cost a lot, not if I sourced it.’

  ‘Never miss a trick, do you, my wench?’

  ‘We share the same genes, Greg,’ I observed dryly. ‘Come on, if the vendor spent ten thousand, he could ask another twenty-five. More. And if I really did a good job, then he might even be able to sell the furnishings as part of the deal. No one would want to break up a Homes and Gardens look, would they?’

  ‘Let me have a think about it,’ he said, drifting away from me, something so uncharacteristic in my decisive brother I wondered for a second if he might be ill.

  I jotted a few notes about the potential decor in my elegant Burford’s leather folder. It was better than looking at the garden, still, to be honest, a builder’s yard, despite the hopeful potted bay trees standing self-consciously either side of the front door.

  When he ambled back he was looking a tad absent-minded, so I said, ‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you, Greg, about the Thorpes. Does the fact I’m negotiating with them over the price of their cottage mean I’ve officially moved up a grade? I know you’ve let Simon go. And the agency’s done well recently. I’d like to see myself on the permanent staff. Maybe not full-time. But at times I feel like a glorified usherette, or a National Trust guide. I’d like to be a proper part of the firm.’ He’d understand that even if it wasn’t wholly true.

  ‘You’ve got some good bonuses coming up,’ he mused. But whether he saw that as a positive or a negative it was hard to tell. ‘I get very good feedback about you… Tell you what, you couldn’t fix it for me to see some of your work, could you?’

  ‘You mean watch me talk to the clients, as if I were an apprentice?’

  ‘I know you’re good at that. The interior decor work, of course.’

  Why was he asking about that? That wasn’t the job I wanted – I was already doing it. So I asked, ‘March in on Toby Frensham and ask to see the before and after, you mean?’

  ‘That’d be very nice,’ he said, obviously missing my irony. ‘And Mo would certainly like to hobnob with him and his missus. But what I really expected was some before and after photos, like, and a few sketches. Maybe some swatches of fabric, like you show your clients.’

  ‘Easy-peasy. Either you can pick them up at my place now or I can drop them in when I next come into the office.’

  We agreed on the latter.

  But it was an exciting couple of days before I did. Exciting and profoundly disappointing.

  Caddie phoned just as I got home from seeing the barn, to summon me to an audition. ‘Mug up modern,’ she urged. ‘Think Pinter. Think serious but subtly funny.’

  The train journey to London saw me learning chunks of The Birthday Party. I wasn’t, to be honest, sure what to wear for auditions anymore. The Nicole Farhi might have suggested I didn’t need the work; on the other hand, someone really au fait with the fashion world would know it wasn’t this season’s. Wear it and be damned? I wore it.

  Big, big mistake. I should have worn my gardening jeans and old trainers. It turned out I was auditioning for a good old-fashioned actors’ cooperative, where no one earned a bean, and everyone mucked in with all the jobs, from cleaning the loos to taking the lead. It wouldn’t even pay the rent, not at London rates – I gathered most of the cast were going to sleep on sympathetic floors. It wouldn’t even look good on my CV. So I made my excuses, and toddled off to calm down in the lofty rooms of the National Portrait Gallery. How many hours had I spent there? Although I might sneer at Allyn for naming her kids after characters from the period she was researching, I’d never attempted a part without looking at portraits of the contemporaries of the playwright. Their costumes affected their posture – try slumping in a corset – and their posture affected the way they spoke. As did the corsets, of course.

  I always made a little pilgrimage to see the women I admired, some of whom felt like friends, even mentors: the Swan of Lichfield, for instance, Anna Seward. And Aphra Behn. Jane Austen, obviously – that tiny, precious scrap of a portrait that was probably nothing like her. The miserable Brontës, with their sadomasochistic heroes. And on to the actresses, my real heroines. Sarah Siddons looking grand; Ellen Terry, her fire contained but not extinguished by her husband GF Watts; Victoria Russell’s portrait of Fiona Shaw in her undies. No one would paint me in my undies! And then, as always, came the sad realisation that no one was likely to paint me at all.

  I phoned Caddie to report on the audition, and, with luck, to scrounge an early supper before I headed to Marylebone. She’d have loved to feed me, she trilled, but she was just getting ready for a film premiere. One of her clients, of course.

  One of her other clients.

  ‘This is mistake! This is not Old Barn!’ the man declared. His face showed seven shades of fury, each more worrying for his cardiologist than the last. Given he must have been about fifty, weighing something perilously close to twenty stone, I should imagine he was already at considerable risk. I just hoped I wouldn’t have to give him mouth-to-mouth. He muttered furiously to his companion, a beautiful young woman with white-blonde hair and six foot two of slender legs and body. Think Maria Sharapova. Perhaps out of consideration for her much shorter escort, she wore the most wonderful flat shoes – purple with black velvet laces. If she spoke any English at all, I would simply have to ask where they came from. Her black bag was quite brazen about its origin – Dolce and Gabbana. Her silk trouser suit was anonymous, but its immaculate cut told me I ought to have recognised it without the vulgarity of a label.

  ‘It is old,’ I ventured, when he gave me a chance to interrupt. ‘But the inside has been taken away and replaced with—’

  ‘I want old house! Very old house!’ Was he going to burst a blood vessel or strangle me?

  Cool. I must keep my cool. After all, he had been misled, however inadvertently. ‘That’s not a problem, Mr Zhubov. We have a couple on our books you might want to see. I might even be able to take you to them this morning.’ I opened my folder so that they might both see the range of properties on offer. He grabbed it, and, with the Sharapova clone peering over his shoulder, leafed through, muttering all the while. Why he hadn’t checked the particulars when he’d booked the viewing, I had no idea. But maybe I could placate him by offering him an immediate look at Langley Park and Oxfield Place. Even as I phoned to check that a visit was possible, I wondered what on earth I was letting myself in for. This was the very type of man who had so scared me before. To be sure, Greg, in an unwonted burst of efficiency, had completed all the details the heart could desire. The computer file was veritably bursting with them. He had even ticked the checkbox for passports. However, although all the information insisted that they were Russian, I was still by no means sure. Those accents�
�

  Claire almost reluctantly admitted it was possible to show them the other houses. She and I had had a long talk about safety, and we had agreed all the things Heather insisted on for her staff. We had told Greg what we had decided, rather than ask his opinion. Confronted by Claire in active rebellion, he had instantly agreed; indeed, it rapidly became his very own idea, even to the colour codes for the folders I should mention if I were in distress.

  The pattern of the other visits was so completely replicated I almost asked the Zhubovs what they were up to so I could short-circuit the whole deal for them. My goose was pretty well cooked, anyway. They’d insisted on following me in their throaty Porsche, so they were extremely well-acquainted with the number of my car. It wouldn’t be hard to trace where I lived, and, no doubt, open the car and leave a bunch of daffodils on the seat. It might even be a fully fledged wreath this time, if I annoyed them. The bulge in his pocket left me in absolutely no doubt that he was carrying a gun.

  I did tepidly ask them to stay together at both properties; I received the same disrespectful smirk in response. They didn’t even bother with excuses. Off she went, with her monster bag, and back eventually she came. This time I would swear that the bag, though no less bulky when she returned, was distinctly lighter.

  We bade each other farewell, and off they drove.

  I didn’t follow. This time I was going to find out what they were up to.

  Before I plunged back in, I checked my mobile. Yes, it was switched on, with plenty of battery life left. And there was enough network coverage, not something that is always guaranteed in the countryside. I could summon help with one press of the thumb. Excellent. For a moment, I felt reasonably brave.

  But puzzled. The place was unfurnished, so the number of places to conceal anything was limited. The Sharapova clone was nearly a foot taller than me, so she could have stowed something above my eyeline. But here at Oxfield Place there were no obvious high shelves, nor, when I’d given the place a thorough going-over, did I find any out-of-the-way ones.