A Nice Cup of Tea

by Celia Imrie

  Sally rose and moved into the kitchen. While fiddling with the kettle and rooting out some bread for the toaster, she reeled back the years in her mind. Really, it was so obvious. But, as everything was done in plain sight, Phoo and Dermott managed to get away with it. Paddy and Pat were the loving couple, always squabbling, but clearly besotted with one another. That’s how the public saw them. It’s how everyone saw them. And now Paddy was dead. And Pat, sad old Phoo, was left all alone. All alone with the man who let it happen.

  Sally laid a tray and carried it through. She was bursting with a thousand questions which she knew she could never ask.

  ‘So anyway, Sally. I beg you to be a little understanding of Phoo’s situation. She’s really been through the mill these last few months. That’s why I brought her down here. For a break. Of course her initial mourning was helped because the public always associated them as a screen couple. When she broke down at the funeral, it seemed quite natural. The family simply took it as the typical over-the-top behaviour of some mad actress with whom their own beloved real-life husband/father had worked. An embarrassingly dramatic thesp overplaying her moment. But, you see, really her grief was gargantuan.’ He took a bite from the toast and chewed it slowly and deliberately. When he had swallowed he continued. ‘Covering his tracks, naturally Dermott left Phoo nothing in his will. Not even the tiniest keepsake. So she is doubly bereft. She took it as a kick in the teeth from beyond the grave. And I know she shouldn’t take it out on you, but . . . believe me, she’s taking it out on me too. I pity poor Theresa. Every time Phoo sends a plate flying towards me and it ends up smashing on the wall of our flat she must hear it downstairs.’

  ‘She is angry with you, Eggy? But to me you seem to have been too understanding?’

  ‘Ah!’ Eggy took a sip of tea. ‘She’s furious. Poor old Phoo can’t stand the fact that it was Dermott who died, not me. She’ll never forgive me for being alive while he’s lying rotting in some North London cemetery.’

  He cradled his cup in his hands and hung his head.

  Sally saw a tear fall.

  How to deal with this?

  Up to now, Sally had thought that Phoo behaved like she did due to Eggy playing around, but it seemed they both were as bad as one another.

  Now was the moment …

  ‘But you weren’t always the faithful old dog, darling, were you? Admit it!’

  Eggy looked up, puzzled.

  ‘The casting director of this film?’

  Eggy swallowed and gave a slight shake of his head.

  ‘You’re a smart one, Sally, and no mistake. I suppose this is from a few snatched words you might have overheard while we were together in the car, no?’

  Sally shrugged.

  ‘Clever old Sal. You worked out a bit of the story. But certainly not the whole picture.’

  ‘So you’re not responsible for her, erm, current situation?’

  Eggy gave a little snort. ‘God, no. I’m far too old for all that baby malarkey.’ He sighed a sigh which came right up from his feet and through him. ‘I do my best in life. Or try to. Looking after that poor little girl was my third errand, dispatched from the hospital bed.’

  ‘Not Dermott? Dermott was the father?’

  Eggy nodded.

  Sally could barely breathe as Eggy continued.

  ‘Phoo was right to be nervous. Dermott really was seeing someone else. It had been going on a few years. Not only that, but the someone was young enough to be his granddaughter. Hers too. I suppose the old dog thought it would give him an edge in the TV world, get him that longed-for film role which would let him be someone other than Paddy in the eyes of the public.’

  ‘But the baby? God, Eggy. These are consequences that will last a lifetime . . .’

  ‘As I said, Dermott was very careful when writing his will and testament. He had to preserve his precious reputation: Paddy the family man, the Irish darling with the heart of gold, the scally who upheld old-fashioned values. So, naturally, he made absolutely no provision at all for the forthcoming arrival. Poor girl. I gave her a bit of money. Not nearly enough. And I’ve offered to help wherever I could. She in turn tried to help me out by getting me this film. Even if I was only the last-minute standby!’

  ‘She didn’t cast Phoo, though?’

  ‘Oh, she knows all about Phoo and Dermott. When Dermott was with her Phoo regularly made abusive calls to him, calling her – the unknown mystery woman who had stolen him away – every vile name under the sun.’

  Eggy wrung his hands then polished off his cup of tea. What more was there to say?

  Reeling from the convolutions of the whole saga, Sally decided to change the subject. Tonight’s filming would be their last scene together. The final shoot for both of them.

  ‘Ah well, Eggy,’ she said. ‘Thanks for letting me know all this. I shall think of Phoo in quite a different way now.’

  ‘Thanks for that, darling.’

  ‘And now . . .’ Sally stood up. ‘I suppose we’d better start preparing for tonight. I hear Marina Martel is already down here on the Côte d’Azur, ensconced in her hotel in Monte Carlo. Perhaps she’ll turn up on set today.’

  ‘I hope not. Not today.’ Eggy winced. ‘Will you be taking an afternoon nap, Salz, before the rigours of tonight?’

  Sally nodded.

  ‘Me too. But first remember I’ve got that hot lunch date. I just met this woman – I told you. And she made me laugh. These days I need all the laughter I can get. So hopefully a laughing lunch.’

  Eggy chomped through the last slice of toast.

  ‘One thing I have learned from Dermott, Sally, and it’s a lesson for all of us, is that we have to make the most of now. We’re none of us going to live for ever. But we’re nearer the precipice than most.’ He got up and moved to the door. ‘Thanks for the tea. See you on the green, old girl.’

  TWENTY-THREE

  Cooped up in the flat with Chloe, Theresa had spent an excruciating afternoon. While they ate lunch, seated at the glass table, Chloe had told her all about Neil. How wonderful Neil was, how kind Neil was, how good-looking Neil was, how Neil was the only person in the whole wide world who understood her, how Neil should be an actor, how Neil had been so brilliant playing Friar Laurence.

  Theresa held her tongue. After her own experience last night with a tableful of actors, she didn’t think she would be recommending that occupation to any sane person.

  As the afternoon dragged on, Chloe gave up flicking through the French TV channels, took out her mobile phone and started typing frantically on to the screen. Theresa knew that this had to be a conversation with Neil and wasn’t quite sure whether she was meant to prevent it. Imogen had left no regulations regarding her daughter’s utilisation of electronic equipment, only that Theresa should not let the girl out of her sight.

  While Chloe was hunched over the phone Theresa took out a book and tried to read, but she couldn’t concentrate. Her mind kept going back to two things: the awful embarrassing evening with Sally’s actor friends and the threats, or veiled threats, which someone was sending her. And it certainly looked as though that person was Cyril. He had obviously picked up her album from the countertop at La Mosaïque, and was sending the photos to her; he had lured her to Nice where he had taken a picture of her, and sent her gifts, roses – a knife, for God’s sake. All butchers had knives galore.

  Suddenly she had an idea and decided to listen to the CD, Daphnis et Chloé.

  As the ravishing music started, filling the room with its swirling mystery, Theresa stayed behind the kitchen counter, tidying up.

  ‘What’s this?’ The music had been playing only a few seconds when Chloe looked up. ‘It’s lovely.’

  ‘It’s named after you, sweetheart. Daphnis et Chloé. It’s a ballet by a French composer, Maurice Ravel.’

  ‘A ballet!’ Chloe exclaimed, leaping up and springing around the room like a gazelle. ‘I love it. OMG. It’s wonderful. It’s exactly how I feel about Neil.’
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  Chloe dashed into the kitchen space, then she bent low and backed out on tiptoes, arms outstretched. Up in the air she sprang at great speed. Theresa just caught a vase Chloe had skimmed before it toppled. She was now wishing she had not put the darned music on. But while Chloe was so enchanted, it would be churlish to rip the CD from the machine half-played.

  So, instead, she pottered around the flat, avoiding collisions with Chloe who performed an animated dance-drama involving the sofa, the four chairs around the dining table and the entire length of the kitchen counter. At one point Chloe even grabbed the feather duster from the corner and flung it about like a magic wand, running it along the countertop, pointing it ferociously towards Theresa, who wasn’t really sure whether she was supposed to make some dramatic gesture in return.

  ‘Can I put it up louder?’ Chloe cried, leaping over Theresa’s pouf, grabbing the knob of the hi-fi and turning it up to full. ‘It’s sooooo wonderful!’

  Although, with the volume this high, Theresa would normally be worried about disturbing the occupants of the flat upstairs, at this moment she didn’t give a flying fig; in fact, after last night, she’d be rather glad if she could upset them.

  Feeling exceedingly childish, Theresa flung open the back door and let the music swell around the courtyard.

  As the music reached its dramatic finale, Chloe, panting, flung herself along the length of the sofa, both arms outstretched, one leg pointing upwards towards the ceiling. Then she mimed total collapse and let her whole body go as floppy as a rag doll.

  In the subsequent silence Theresa moved to the window to look out at the sea. Suddenly, with a jerk, Chloe jumped up, rushed past Theresa and out into the courtyard, shouting,

  ‘O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?

  Deny thy father and refuse thy name.

  Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,

  And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.’

  Theresa realised before the long verse that the music had gone entirely to the child’s head.

  While Theresa wiped down the countertops, Chloe was standing outside the door speaking Shakespeare to the sky.

  Theresa supposed there was no harm in it. Most parents, especially schoolteachers she’d have thought, would be only too delighted to have children who could spout Shakespearean speeches at the drop of a hat. Chloe even seemed to be putting on a slightly lower voice to play Romeo’s lines.

  ‘I take thee at thy word:

  Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptised . . .’

  Moving through the flat, Theresa hovered near the back door.

  ‘Henceforth I never will be Romeo.’

  ‘No,’ shouted Chloe towards the windows of the Hotel Astra. ‘Because you’ll always be my darling beloved Friar Laurence!’

  Theresa looked up to see, leaning out of a tiny window, Chloe’s Romeo, Neil Muffett.

  Sally had been in Make-up a good half hour, before she went back to the trailer to put on her costume. Eggy had not come into the dressing room this evening with his usual bright hello.

  After their conversation earlier, Sally felt really bad. She worried for him. Perhaps he was avoiding her, embarrassed at how much she now knew of his wretched life with Phoo.

  When the car had arrived to pick her up this afternoon, Eggy had not been inside. The driver told Sally that Mr Markham’s wife had come down to tell him that today Mr Markham was making his own arrangements.

  Sally wondered whether she should go looking for him, but knew that that was the job of people on the crew, who would be well aware of where he was.

  She perched on the seat in the trailer, all decked out in her costume. An evening dress, high heels and copious jewellery. This scene followed the pair of second-rate crooks doing a spectacular but accidental robbery at a party. They were only there to case the joint. But their presence coincided with the real robbery by professional robbers (Marina Martel and Steve Baxter). The principals had amassed the jewellery and stashed it behind a plant pot, ready to take it home at the end of the evening. But Eggy and Sally had to get there first. They fortuitously came upon the pile of diamond necklaces, rings and bracelets which the pros had removed from the safe. They then had to walk calmly out of the party with all the stolen jewellery plainly on show, around Sally’s neck, fingers and wrists, with the odd bracelet sticking out of the pockets of Eggy’s dinner jacket.

  Sally stood in front of the mirror and tried working her wrists. With all this junk around the joints of her arms and hands, it was going to be rather hard to operate the throttle in the boat, but it had to be done. She wondered whether the boat would have similar controls to the last one.

  A sudden gust of wind shook her trailer.

  That did not bode well.

  She didn’t fancy being out in the dark on a small craft in a high sea.

  She slung the chain of the evening handbag she had also been given around her wrist and picked up her mobile phone.

  After a few more practice flicks she decided to go and visit Eggy in his wee trailer, just to say hello or something. She had to break the ice, to normalise things, otherwise tonight could be hell.

  A rap on the trailer door.

  ‘Ready for you on set, Sally!’ It was the runner. ‘Your car is the grey one, to the left of the chuck wagon.’

  Sally delicately climbed down the caravan steps in her high heels, scooping up the skirt in her be-ringed fingers.

  ‘You look great, by the way.’ The runner put out a hand to help her. ‘This scene will be very funny.’

  ‘Where’s Eggy?’

  The runner hesitated before replying. ‘We’re getting hold of him. But we need you to run through the rehearsal for the lights and camera. After all, you’ll be the one driving the boat.’

  Sally sensed that the man was keeping something from her. Had something happened to Eggy? What did ‘getting hold of him’ mean? Eggy was clearly not at the location yet, otherwise the runner would have said, ‘He’s in Make-up’ or ‘He’s grabbing a quick bite at the chuck wagon.’ ‘Getting hold of him’ meant he was not here.

  She fiddled around with her handbag and realised that she had inadvertently dropped her mobile inside. Phones were banned on set, so she’d have to hand it to someone later, but for now it could prove useful.

  As the car pulled out of the car park, the film-set base today, on to the main road, she dialled Eggy’s mobile number. No reply. Just voicemail. She tried again. No luck.

  What if he had done something stupid? Sometimes confessions led to deep depressions.

  She remembered her own horrible marriage situation all those years ago, but it came nowhere near poor Eggy’s.

  Sally sat back in the car seat and wondered what she could do next.

  She didn’t have a number for Phoo or she would have called her.

  Then she remembered that Phoo and Eggy were staying in the flat above Theresa, so she hastily dialled her number. She’d ask Theresa to run upstairs and find out from Phoo when she had last heard from Eggy.

  That was the answer.

  ‘Grandma!’

  Theresa went to the back door, where Chloe was still standing, gazing upwards.

  ‘There’s a man up there, making strange faces at me.’

  ‘Not Neil?’

  ‘No.’

  Theresa looked up. It was starting to get dark, and the setting sun caught the hotel windows, turning them into red mirrors.

  ‘I don’t see? Where?’

  Theresa feared that it could be Cyril looking down. Certainly someone had been up there that night a few days ago, whispering her name into the well. Could it be him again, alerted by the two kids larking about with their Romeo and Juliet routine?

  ‘Has he been there a long time?’ Theresa squinted up and still could not make out any faces framed in the red glow of the setting sun’s reflection.

  ‘There was some other creep earlier, but he disappeared when I came out and started up the Shakespeare rap.’

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sp; ‘Some other creep?’

  ‘That creepy man who came up to you at breakfast, Gran. You remember?’

  So it was Cyril up there.

  ‘Which window?’

  ‘Not the same one as the weird man. He was in one of the low windows. Bottom floor at the near end.’ Chloe’s finger was pointing up, then she shifted it. ‘But this weird bloke’s still there, making faces. Look. One, two, three, fourth-floor centre . . . Looks like he’s got no clothes on . . .’

  Theresa’s mobile phone rang. She ran back in to fetch it.

  ‘Theresa? It’s Sally. Sorry to disturb you. But I’m on my way to the set and Eggy seems not to have shown up today. Could you do me a favour and run upstairs to ask his wife if she’s heard from him?’

  Theresa glanced at Chloe in the courtyard, gazing up at the Hotel Astra, where her beloved Neil was. While Neil was in sight, Chloe would hardly notice if she popped out, just for a second. At least not while they were still talking to one another and making dramatic mimes.

  Phone pressed to her ear, Theresa left the flat and walked up the steep stone steps leading upstairs. She rapped on the door. After what felt an eternity Phoebe Markham opened up.

  She was clearly drunk.

  ‘I’ve got Sally Connor on the line.’

  ‘Who?’

  Theresa remembered that the Markhams would only know Sally by her maiden name – her stage name.

  ‘Sally Doyle.’

  ‘What does she want?’

  Theresa passed the phone over.

  From Mrs Markham’s responses Theresa gathered that she had not seen her husband since early this morning when he had gone up to Sally to run through some lines and had told her that he was getting a cab into work today.

  Phoebe then thrust the phone back at Theresa and slammed the door in her face.

  Standing on the tiny landing Theresa continued the call: ‘All done?’

  ‘I’m very worried,’ said Sally.

  ‘They’re both mad as hatters,’ Theresa replied.

  ‘You don’t understand, Theresa. There are reasons. For both of them, actually. But, please, I beg you, if you see Eggy, call me at once. I am worried for him.’