by Simon Brett
But she wasn’t going to be diverted. ‘I’ve checked with Gavin. Very low lighting for that scene.’
Before Charles could pursue his objection, she raised a stained crimson jerkin and a pair of stained crimson slashed breeches from the pile. ‘That’s the Porter.’
‘But I’ll never be able to do up that jacket.’
‘You’re not meant to. If you have it undone and stick your stomach out, you’ll look fat and debauched.’
Charles flicked at his eyebrow in mock-affectation. ‘Oh dear, love, another character part.’
But the girl from Wardrobe seemed to have been inoculated against jokes. She lifted up a full-length russet-coloured brocade gown. ‘Old Man who talks to Ross in Act Two Scene Four.’
‘What do I wear under it?’
‘You can put it on over your Porter costume. It won’t show.’
‘But the shoes will.’
‘Audience won’t notice shoes.’
‘I’m not thinking of the audience.’ He dropped into his best theatrical knight voice. ‘I’m thinking of me. You know, a lot of actors say, Get the shoes right and then you get the characterization right.’
Once again the attempt at humour was ignored. ‘As the Third Murderer you wear this.’
It was a ragged garment of greenish net, like the sort of stuff used to camouflage aircraft in the jungle in B-movies.
‘Just that?’
‘Yes. Gavin says the lighting’s very dim.’
Not just the lighting, thought Charles.
The girl held up an object which at a Fancy Dress party might have passed for a coal-scuttle.
‘Um. Let me guess . . .’ said Charles. ‘Scottish Doctor carries that, in case Lady Macbeth’s sick in the Sleepwalking Scene . . .’
‘No, it’s what you wear as an Apparition of an Armed Head.’
‘Just that? But I’m going to be seen from the waist up.’
‘It said ‘Armed Head’ in the notes Gavin gave me. Nothing about the rest of the body. Anyway, I thought you were in the cauldron.’
‘The cauldron only comes up to my waist.’
‘Then you’ll have to crouch. This one . . .’ she produced a long white nightshirt ‘. . . is what you wear as the English Doctor. And this . . .’ She produced an identical garment in black ‘. . . is what you wear as the Scottish Doctor.’
Finally, she indicated a mass of silver-painted dishcloth chain-mail, a noisome sleeveless sheepskin jerkin and a horned helmet. ‘And that lot’s for when you’re a soldier.’
‘But I have to be two soldiers,’ Charles objected.
‘What?’
‘I have to be on Malcolm’s side, and then on Macbeth’s side.’
‘Oh.’ The girl was momentarily stumped, but then saw a solution. ‘You can turn the jerkin inside out.’
‘Oh, what?’ said Charles. ‘You mean really be a turncoat?’
She didn’t get that one either.
Oh, the pain of the first night party!
God alone knew how many first night parties he had attended, but Charles Paris was certain this was the first one he had attended without benefit of alcohol.
He felt sacrilegious, as if he were offending some basic tenet of his professional faith, sitting there in the bar watching the ice melt in his Perrier, while around him wine and beer glasses were tipped and emptied.
John B. Murgatroyd leant close over him, breathing out tantalising fumes of bitter. ‘I felt, Charles Paris, that I had to say I thought your Drunken Porter this evening was masterly.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You had me remarkably convinced that you were smashed out of your skull.’
‘Acting, mere acting,’ Charles confessed modestly.
George Birkitt was sitting near by, knocking back the red wine. ‘Of course,’ he said, appropriating a line that had been said of Lee Marvin’s drunken performance in Cat Ballou, ‘it’s the part you have been rehearsing for the last forty years.’
‘But such a remarkable performance,’ John B. continued in a tone of theatrical preciousness, ‘from a teetotaller.’
‘Oh, shut up,’ said Charles.
‘What I fail to understand . . .’ John B. had now dropped into a surprisingly accurate pastiche of Felicia Chatterton’s earnest huskiness, ‘. . . is how you could give a performance of such truth without being the role. I mean, in other words, how you could appear so pissed without actually being pissed.’
Charles took the opportunity to redirect the conversation. ‘A propos of nothing, how is the get-Felicia-into-bed campaign going?’
John B. touched a finger against the side of his nose knowingly. ‘Slowly, but surely. At my current rate of progress, I am not unhopeful of achieving my end – or should I say ‘getting my end away’ – within the next three millennia.’
Charles chuckled. ‘Rather what I found.’
‘Did you, you dirty devil?’ John B. slipped back into Felicia’s voice for the next line. ‘Of course, one could only do it if it were right for the part.’
‘Of course. And that being the case, the only one who’s in with any chance of scoring is dear old George.’
‘Oh, really?’ said George Birkitt, misunderstanding, and preening back his hair as if about to open another supermarket. ‘Whole thing seemed to go rather damned well tonight, I thought. Never expected to get a round on my first entrance.’
This had been the work of a little claque of television sit com fans, who had greeted their hero’s appearance with unruly ecstasy. Once he started speaking Shakespeare, they had grown noticeably quieter.
‘No, went well for all of us,’ said George, remembering the magnanimity which distinguishes great stars. ‘Damned clever little actress, that Felicia, isn’t she?’
Yes, way out of your league, Charles thought. He had been deeply impressed by Felicia that night. Given the stimulus of an audience, her performance had gone up several notches. Her talent was awesome. Felicia Chatterton would go far.
He looked across at her. Talking earnestly to Russ. Oh well, that was nice. No doubt, having been let down so badly by her substitute confidant’s having gone to sleep, Felicia was returning to what she knew would be a ready audience. They could soon get over the embarrassment of their previous misunderstanding.
And, who could say, now the play had actually opened, maybe Russ would be in with a chance . . .? Charles doubted it, though. A role as demanding as Lady Macbeth was going to take all her concentration. He rather suspected that the only way to have an affair with Felicia Chatterton would be to book it with her agent six months in advance.
‘Smashing, all of you. All the hard work’s paid off. I can’t thank you enough.’ Gavin Scholes had joined them, full of relief and bonhomie.
Also more than a little drunk. A lot of quick alcohol, after two days of eating only the odd sandwich, combined with the relief of actually having opened the play, had left him cheerfully glazed and indiscreet.
‘No, you all came up trumps. Terrific. Can’t thank you enough. Because God knows I needed this show to be a success.’
‘Oh?’ asked Charles diffidently.
‘Having a bit of trouble with the Board. Money, you know. Not getting enough bums on seats. To be quite frank, my job was on the line. If this show hadn’t worked, I could have been out on my ear.’
If that were the case, thought Charles, Warnock Belvedere’s disruptive presence must have been even more of a threat. His file of motivation for Gavin Scholes grew.
The mutual congratulation continued for a while, and then George Birkitt and John B. Murgatroyd drifted away to chat up the prettier two Witches.
When they were alone, Gavin looked at Charles and his eyes seemed slowly to find their focus. ‘Charles, that policeman was round the office again today.’
‘Detective Inspector Dowling?’ The Director nodded. ‘Wants to have another talk with you.’
‘Oh yes?’ was all he said, but the news gave Charles an unpleasant frisson. ‘Whe
n?’
‘He’ll be around tomorrow afternoon. Four-thirty or so. Wondered if you’d mind having a chat between the Schools Matinée and the evening show.’
‘No problem,’ said Charles with an insouciance that didn’t go very deep.
‘I wonder what he wants . . .’
Charles shrugged.
‘Presumably he’s still investigating Warnock’s death,’ Gavin mused. ‘I thought they’d had the inquest.’
‘They have, but it was adjourned pending police enquiries.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Well, I assume it means that the police haven’t yet worked out what they think about the case.’
Gavin’s fuddled mind was having difficulty grasping simple ideas. ‘Why, what could they think?’
‘Well, they could think it was an accident . . .’
‘Yes.’
‘Or they could think it was murder.’
Gavin’s jaw sagged. ‘You don’t believe that they really think that, do you?’
‘I don’t know what they think. Presumably I will find that out tomorrow.’
‘But why you? What can you tell them?’
‘I was there, wasn’t I? I’m their only possible witness.’
‘Yes, but you were dead drunk all the time, weren’t you?’
‘Suppose the police thought I wasn’t telling the truth . . .? Suppose they thought I just pretended to be out cold . . .’
The conclusion to Charles’s unfinished sentences was, in his mind, that he might then become the police’s number one murder suspect. But Gavin’s shocked face suggested the director hadn’t reached the same conclusion, and his words confirmed it. ‘You mean you could have actually seen anything that did go on?’
‘If I’d been awake, yes, I could have done,’ said Charles, unnerved by the look in Gavin’s eyes and trying to lighten the conversation. ‘But I was dead to the world. Really.’
‘Dead to the world,’ the director echoed. His eyes narrowed as he said, ‘I hope you really were. For your sake.’
Chapter Sixteen
HIS IMPERSONATION of Felicia Chatterton was now becoming one of John B. Murgatroyd’s party pieces. ‘But it’s just so difficult,’ he complained huskily in the dressing room on the Wednesday afternoon, ‘to try and give a full performance at this time of day. I mean, one’s body-clock is tuned to peak round eight in the evening, not straight after lunch.’
Charles chuckled, but he could see that Felicia, whom John B. was quoting verbatim, had a point. Matinées are welcomed by few actors. They make for a very long, hard day’s work. And they always leave that awkward gap between afternoon and evening performance, not long enough to do anything properly, not long enough to wind down fully before winding oneself up again.
But of course on that particular day, Charles Paris had an engagement to bridge the gap. Detective Inspector Dowling. It was not an engagement he looked forward to.
‘It does seem pretty callous scheduling,’ he observed, ‘to put in a Schools Matinée on the second day of the run.’
‘Bums on seats, love.’ John B. Murgatroyd’s voice had now taken on Gavin Scholes’ slightly ineffectual tone. ‘Need the money, I’m afraid. Being a set text, you know, we can really cram them in for this show.’
None of the cast had thought much of the prospect of doing two shows on the Wednesday. Indeed, the Equity representative in the company had got quite heavy about it, citing any number of rules and regulations against the scheduling. But of course it had been billed for a long time, the seats had been sold to schools from a wide area, and there was very little that could be done about it.
Charles looked with dissatisfaction at the scar on his face and applied another trickle of blood. Not really very good. But the best he could do if he was going to have to whip it off and appear as an unwounded Sewer in Act One Scene Seven. Hmm, maybe if someone in the company was going up to London, they could buy him a stick-on rubber scar. Trouble with those is you have to match the make-up around them so carefully.
‘Ping-ping-ping,’ said John B. Murgatroyd suddenly.
‘What’s that for?’
Back into Felicia’s voice for the reply. ‘Sorry, just the alarm on the old body-clock. Telling me I need a little sustenance.’ John B. reached into his shoulder bag which lay on the floor, and produced a pewter hip-flask. He unscrewed it and proffered the bottle to Charles.
The head was nobly shaken. A saint, not an ordinary man, thought Charles in wry self-congratulation.
‘Well, please yourself,’ said John B. in his own voice. ‘I don’t think I could get through a Schools Matinée without a few shots of this.’
Charles watched in a long pang of envy as his friend raised the bottle to his lips and swallowed.
‘Sounds fairly rowdy already,’ Charles observed, referring to the noise which came from the dressing room Tannoy. Actors all know the familiar buzz of a pre-performance audience, indistinguishable conversations and muffled movements from the stage microphones by the curtain. But the noise from a Schools Matinée is completely different in quality, much higher in pitch and with more giggling and movement. Most of the movement is caused by last-minute changes of seating arrangements, as boys jockey for positions next to the girls they would most like to sit in the dark with, and every child tries to avoid the awful ignominy of sitting next to the teacher.
The lot who were filling the Pinero auditorium that afternoon sounded louder than the average, and that did not augur well for the company.
‘What lines do you reckon are going to get them going?’ asked Charles.
‘The giggles? Hmm.’ John B. gave the question serious consideration. ‘Well, the Witches’ll certainly get a few titters. I’m still not sure Gavin’s right to be playing them with lesbian overtones . . . And when George and Felicia kiss in Act One Scene Five, that’ll start the usual whistles and catcalls. Individual lines . . .? Well, the obvious words’ll trigger reactions. “Come to my woman’s breasts . . .” Ooh, and if they’re paying attention, George should get a boffo when he sees the line of kings in the Apparition Scene.’
Charles supplied the relevant quotation. ‘“And some I see That two-fold balls and treble sceptres carry”.’
‘Exactly. They’ll like “two-fold balls”. And George should get a goody on “The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon!”’
‘Do you think I’m going to get anything on the Drunken Porter?’
John B. shook his head firmly. ‘No chance. What, on a Shakespearean comic character, with school kids? Forget it. Well,’ he then conceded generously, ‘suppose you might get a tickle on the word “urine”, but that’s all. Mind you, could get something on your first entrance . . .’
‘As the Porter?’
‘No, Bleeding Sergeant. “What bloody man is that?” Should be good for a giggle.’
‘Hmm. I think Felicia’s going to get the biggest laugh. Wonder how she’ll cope with it . . .?’ Charles mused.
‘Which line?’
‘“I have given suck.”’
‘Ooh, yes.’ John B. giggled with relish. ‘Yes, particularly the way she delivers it. With that long pause afterwards, I don’t think even the slowest schoolboy mind could miss the ambiguity.’
Charles felt a moment of conscience. ‘Do you think we should tip her off? Then she could hurry the line through.’
‘No way.’ John B. looked professionally affronted. ‘Don’t be such a wet blanket.’
‘Trouble is, John B., I know what I’m like. Once we start getting those sort of laughs, I begin to break up. Giggle through the whole show.’
‘Of course. But that’s what matinées are for, aren’t they?’
‘Later in the run, maybe.’
‘No, right from the start.’ John B. Murgatroyd shook his head like a parent whose son has just been caught smoking cannabis behind the school cycle-sheds. ‘Honestly, Charles, since you’ve given up the booze, you’ve got really prissy.’
; To reinforce his point, he took another infuriatingly slow swig from the hip-flask.
At that moment the dressing-room door opened to admit Gavin Scholes. As if by magic, the hip-flask disappeared into the folds of Lennox’s brocaded gown.
‘Oh, Charles,’ said the director. ‘Just a note I forgot to give you yesterday.’
Was it imagination, or did Gavin really seem to be avoiding his eye?
‘Yes? Which character is this a note for?’
‘Apparition of an Armed Head.’
‘Right, I’m now thinking Apparition of an Armed Head.’
‘Last night from out front it looked as if you had been waiting in the cauldron all evening.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, your head sort of came up tentatively.’
‘You try not being tentative on that trap-door platform. It’s very unstable. Particularly when you’re not allowed to show your torso, because that’s still dressed as the Third Murderer.’
‘But it looked as if you were holding on to the sides.’
‘You bet I was holding on to the sides. Bloody dangerous with that thing if you don’t.’
‘Well, could you try it not holding on?’ Charles looked dubious.
‘Oh, go on, just for this afternoon. Please. Must dash.’
As the director hurried out of the dressing room, Charles felt a little cold tremor run down his back.
It was a riotous performance, for the audience at least. Every line John B. Murgatroyd had predicted got its laugh, and a good few others did as well. The audience of schoolchildren, confident that their teachers could not identify them individually in the dark, settled down to have a good time. Having early on decided that the cause of that good time was not going to be Shakespeare’s great drama, they enjoyed every ambiguity the text offered.
The company could not be immune to what was happening in the auditorium and, again as John B. had predicted, they became very giggly and undisciplined. George Birkitt seemed unworried by all this; perhaps all his years of television sit corns had led him to expect laughs in whatever role he played. But, for Felicia Chatterton, to judge from the tight scribble of lines between her brows, it was a very trying experience.