Dead Room Farce

by Simon Brett

  ‘Anyway, I must get on. Thanks again for mentioning us to Tony Delaunay.’

  ‘No problem. See you, Lisa.’

  ‘’Bye.’

  He put the phone down, feeling disproportionately sensitive. He’d said ‘See you’, and she’d only said “Bye’. Did that mean she didn’t want to see him? Did that mean her talk of further audio books had just been professional flannel?

  Charles knew his reaction was ridiculous. He just felt exposed, nerve endings too near the surface of his skin. It was a combination of factors, the tensions of a play about to open . . . the ugliness of his relationship with Frances . . . the stupid situation he’d got himself into with Cookie . . . And Lisa Wilson’s talk about Mark had raised the old worry about his own drinking.

  His behaviour the previous week had been appalling, and the blame for it could be fairly and squarely attributed to alcohol. If he hadn’t drunk so much, none of it would have happened. He must cut down.

  But not quite yet. There was bound to be a pub on the way back to his digs.

  Charles Paris was about to go out through the stage door, when he was surprised to hear voices coming from the Green Room. He thought all the company would have hurried off as soon as they could. He moved closer to the Green Room door.

  He was even more surprised to hear that one of the voices belonged to Bernard Walton. ‘Listen,’ the star was saying, ‘it’s even more important at the moment that you keep quiet about the whole thing.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Ransome George’s voice cajoled lazily. ‘No problem. I’ll keep stumm.’

  ‘The thing is, there’s this guy who’s going to be around for the next couple of days, name of Curt Greenfield. He’s writing a biography of me, and it would be very awkward if he found out anything that –’

  ‘You have my word, Bernard. There’s no danger I’ll say a dickie bird.’

  ‘Good.’

  The star didn’t sound totally reassured, so Ransome George went on, ‘Listen, it’s not in my interests, is it, Bernard? I don’t want to spoil the arrangement we have at the moment. It’s suiting us both fine, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well . . .’ Bernard Walton wasn’t convinced about that.

  Ran chuckled. ‘Well, it’s suiting me fine. No, your secret is absolutely safe with me, Bernard. There’s no way I want anyone sharing it. I’d be extremely miffed if I thought anyone was sharing it.’ He dropped into a punch-drunk boxer’s voice. ‘In fact, I’d do a mischief to anyone I thought was trying to share it.’

  ‘OK. Fine.’ Bernard Walton sounded partially reassured. ‘Well, look, I’d better be on my way . . .’

  At the sound of movement, Charles Paris glided silently away from the Green-Room door. He didn’t want to be caught eavesdropping.

  Bizarre, though, what he had heard. There was now something else in his mind of which he couldn’t make sense.

  As he’d intended, Charles Paris found an anonymous pub on the way back to his digs. He started with a couple of large Bell’s. After a busy day’s technical rehearsal, he felt he’d earned those. Then he moved on to the wine, at some point interrupting the flow with an unmemorable portion of shepherd’s pie. When ‘last orders’ were called, he had another large Bell’s as a nightcap. And the half-bottle back at his digs still contained enough to drown him into sleep.

  Chapter Five

  ON THE Tuesday, there was a lot of tension in the not on your wife! company, and it rose to a crescendo in the break between the afternoon’s dress rehearsal and the show’s first performance at seven-thirty. It wasn’t that the dress rehearsal had gone particularly badly; it was something else that was bugging people.

  Every cast of every play that’s ever been put on has been nervous of facing an audience for the first time, but the not on your wife! company were suffering from an anxiety unique to the world of comedy. In the rehearsal period for most plays there are predictable fluctuations in company confidence. The day of the read-through is always tense and tentative, with cast members insecure, sniffing round the unfamiliar, each masking his or her individual paranoia in standoffishness or forced joviality. In the next few days confidence usually builds. The company begins to bond, they get excited about the work they’re doing, they start believing that they could be involved in a really major success.

  The next downturn regularly occurs when they ‘come off the book’, because actors don’t all learn their lines at the same rate. But once the text is firmly assimilated, there is another upswing. Yes, they are involved in something good; the show’s really going to work. That mood is unfailingly dashed as soon as the company gets into the theatre and starts working on the actual set. That is why technical rehearsals are always so ghastly. But, as the best productions run up to the first night, there develops a nervous bubble of thrilled anticipation. The show’s not ready, they need more rehearsal, but if everything comes together, if they have a following wind and a sympathetic audience, then it could be wonderful.

  In comedy, while all of this regular pattern is followed through, the stakes are much, much higher. The play that seemed so hilarious at the read-through, the play whose stage business frequently made the entire company collapse in hysterics during the early stages of rehearsal, becomes dull by familiarity. In the week before it opens, when all concentration is on the technical aspects of the production, the play seems about as funny as a bowl of cold sick. And, as the moment of first exposure to a paying audience approaches, the awful fear creeps into the mind of every company member: ‘Suppose they don’t find it funny at all? Suppose nobody laughs?’

  There is no escape. The average ‘straight’ play with a couple of mildly humorous lines in it will be hailed by the critics as ‘witty’; but when a show’s billed as a ‘comedy’ or a ‘farce’, nothing less will suffice than continuous laughter. A farce company is so horribly exposed. Everyone has experienced the personal humiliation of telling a joke which gets no reaction.

  Charles Paris had also had the personal experience of being in a farce whose audience would have got more laughs at a funeral. The show had been loosely adapted from some French original, under the title of Look Out Behind You, Louise! It had completed its three-week run in Newcastle to tiny and stony-faced audiences, before being finally put out of its misery. And it had elicited from the Gateshead Gazette the following notice: ‘But for the word “farce” on the poster, I would have assumed the play to be a serious documentary about the casualties of “care in the community”.’

  It was Look Out Behind You, Louise! whose dark shadow lurked in the back of Charles Paris’s mind, as the first performance of Bill Blunden’s new farce drew ever nearer. But each member of the company had his or her own comparable nightmare of failure. Privately, they all twitched with terror.

  Generally speaking, the first night of not on your wife! didn’t go too badly. The play didn’t get all the laughs it should have done, but it did get some laughs. There was something to build on.

  And at least, for the company, that dreadful moment of presenting a comedy for the first time was past. They breathed a communal sigh of relief.

  On the Thursday lunch-time, when Charles arrived at the studio, it looked as though Lisa Wilson’s vigilance had been insufficient. Mark Lear was extremely drunk. He must have spent the morning taking continuous top-ups from the bottle in the Gents’. Charles hated to think how high Mark’s ‘maintenance dose’ might be.

  They had arranged on the phone that Charles should arrive before the other members of the Not On Your Wife! company involved in the commercial. It had been Mark’s suggestion. ‘Come round twelvish. We’ll have a couple of pints before we do the recording.’ The rest of the actors were called for two o’clock.

  He had agreed to the earlier meeting because there had been a quality almost of desperation in Mark Lear’s voice. Charles was determined, though, that, whatever Mark might do, he himself wouldn’t drink. He had woken up in his digs that morning with yet another hangover, and there was a show to be
done in the evening. He needed all his wits about him. Under the circumstances, it would have been deeply unprofessional for any actor to drink at lunch-time.

  But somehow, once they were actually inside the Queen’s Head, it all seemed less important. The very smell of the beer was heady and seductive. And Charles knew how much better a pint would make him feel. Just the one pint, mind, just to counter the morning’s dehydration. Charles Paris knew when to stop.

  Besides, Mark Lear needed him. The desperation Charles had heard on the phone was intensified in the flesh. Mark looked haggard and dispirited. To let a man in that condition drink alone would have been inhuman.

  Charles got the first two pints and ordered sandwiches. After they had both taken greedy gulps from their glasses, he said, ‘You don’t look too good, Mark. Anything the matter?’

  ‘You name it. Where shall I start?’

  ‘Well, let’s start with the most important. Will you be in a state to produce this commercial this afternoon?’

  His question prompted anger. ‘Of course I bloody will! What do you take me for, Charles? When I was at the Beeb, I’d do huge, elaborate, three-day productions and not draw a sober breath the whole time. And they were bloody good, bloody good programmes!’

  ‘That’s all right then,’ said Charles soothingly. ‘So that’s not what’s upsetting you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Which means it must be something else?’ Mark Lear was silent. ‘If talking about it’s going to help . . . I’m happy to listen. If, on the other hand, you don’t want to talk about it, that’s entirely up to you.’

  Of course Mark wanted to talk about it He had never been much of a one for the stiff upper lip, for buttoning in his emotions. That wasn’t his way. If he had a problem, then other people were bloody well going to hear about it. Mark Lear had always craved sympathy, ideally from a wide-eyed young girl, but when one of those wasn’t available, anyone with open ears would do. At that moment Charles Paris fitted the specification.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, Charles, it’s all such a bloody mess.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Everything. I mean, the way everything’s gone wrong in the last couple of years. I’m out of the BBC . . .’

  ‘Just as you always said you wanted to be.’

  ‘I know, I know. But somehow it’s different on the outside. And now I’ve lost Vinnie and the kids.’

  ‘Again you always said you wanted freedom.’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t know . . . I just feel . . . I mean, I was never that great a father, but at least I had contact with them.’

  ‘And now you don’t see them at all?’ suggested Charles, feeling an unexpectedly strong and sudden pang of guilt about his own daughter. When had he last seen Juliet? Or his grandchildren, come to that?

  ‘No,’ Mark replied. ‘I suppose I should make the effort, but . . . well, the kids don’t seem that interested in seeing me. They only hear Vinnie’s side of things, obviously, but . . . anyway, two of them are off at university.’

  ‘I thought all three of them were.’

  ‘No, Claudia, the youngest . . . she’s having some time out. She had this eating disorder . . . which I think was kind of started by us splitting up . . . so at the moment she’s living with Vinnie and the new husband . . . though I can’t imagine that makes her situation any less stressful. Oh, it’s all such a bloody mess,’ Mark repeated abjectly. ‘I feel so guilty. Perhaps I should have stayed with Vinnie.’

  ‘I gathered that wasn’t an option.’

  ‘Well . . . Maybe if I’d tried harder at the relationship?’

  ‘It wouldn’t have worked,’ said Charles firmly. ‘Vinnie is out of your life for good. And come on, cheer up. It’s not as if you haven’t got a rather good replacement. I wouldn’t mind having . . .’ He nearly said ‘Lisa’, but changed it to ‘a girl like Lisa around. You’re a lucky man.’

  ‘I know, but . . .’

  ‘But what?’

  Mark Lear shook his head self-pityingly. ‘It’s just not working. I mean, it’s not the same. I think she’s had enough of me.’

  ‘Anything particular make you say that?’

  Mark grimaced. ‘A girl like her . . . well, she’s going to have had other boyfriends, isn’t she . . .’

  ‘I would assume so. She’s very attractive.’

  ‘. . . in the past.’ Mark seemed not to be listening to what Charles said. ‘Boyfriends in the past. She’s talked about them, told me everything. There was this married man she had a long affair with . . . and quite a few others . . . in the past.’ His eyes misted over as he picked away at the scab of his unhappiness. ‘But how can I be sure they are all still in the past? How can I be sure she isn’t still seeing them?’

  ‘Mark, Lisa is living with you and has gone into partnership with you on the studios. Short of having your babies, I don’t know what more she can do to express commitment.’

  ‘No, but . . . I don’t know. With her, sometimes I just feel so old. I mean, what woman’s really going to want someone of my age?’

  Mark had chosen the wrong person to put this question to. Perhaps it might have gone down well with one of his nubile totties; for Charles Paris it was too uncomfortably pertinent to his own situation.

  ‘You’ve got Lisa,’ he said brusquely. ‘You’re being given a second chance. If I were you. I’d be down on my knees thanking the Lord for His generosity.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Mark Lear’s mood was too entrenched to be shifted so easily. ‘I don’t know, Charles . . . I just don’t seem to have anything to look forward to . . . I can’t really see the point of going on.’

  ‘Oh, Mark, for God’s sake . . . You’re only fifty. You could have half your life still ahead of you.’

  His friend shuddered. ‘What a repellent thought.’

  Charles continued trying to jolly Mark out of his gloom, but he recognised it was a hopeless task. Having been in that trough so frequently himself, Charles knew one could only wait for the mood to shift. And, though at the time he could never believe it would, ultimately it always did. Or, the depressive in him qualified pessimistically, it always had so far.

  Mark Lear clearly didn’t want to be shaken out of his gloom that day. He was in a bleak, self-destructive mood. Charles had only one more pint, but Mark kept ordering double Scotch chasers to go with his beer, and left the sandwiches untouched. As the hands of the clock approached two, he didn’t have the air of a man capable of producing his hand from his pocket, let alone a radio commercial.

  And one thing he said in the course of his maudlin ramblings stayed with Charles for the rest of the day. ‘I feel afraid, actually afraid. I don’t know what it is, Charles, but I feel as though something awful’s going to happen. I feel as if someone’s out to get me.’

  They got back from the Queen’s Head a little after two, to find the other not on your wife! actors waiting outside the studio. The atmosphere was scratchy. Since the beginning of the week their schedule had been punishing, and the previous day they’d done a matinée as well as an evening performance. The fact that they were being paid to do the radio commercial was not enough to raise their spirits, and the general mood was not improved when they realised that the man who let them into the studios was extremely drunk.

  David J. Girton had won his point about having a lot of voices for the commercial. Though the expense involved went against all the penny-pinching instincts of Parrott Fashion Productions, it was an issue on which the director had proved surprisingly intransigent. Perhaps, finally recognising that he wasn’t having much influence on the actual production of not on your wife!, he was determined to have his one moment of assertiveness over a detail.

  As a result of his insistence, therefore, the actors who had been called were Bernard Walton, Ransome George, Cookie Stone and Pippa Trewin. David J. Girton was also present, of course, though in a bad mood. He’d won his point about the number of actors, but had failed in his attempt to make the call later than two o’clock. A
s a result, he’d had to rush his lunch at Popjoy’s to be there in time.

  The mood of the assembled company went down another notch when they realised that Tony Delaunay was not present. The company manager it was who would be bringing the text of the commercial they were to record. That was being organised by the Parrott Fashion Productions office, and was to be faxed through to the Vanbrugh Theatre. But there had been some hitch at the London end, with the result that Tony Delaunay, who was never late for anything, was late.

  The company members drooped around the studio, whose sitting area did not boast enough chairs to accommodate all of them, while Mark Lear stumbled about, trying to locate microphones and reels of tape. His antics and slurred speech did not inspire confidence. Charles wished to God Lisa Wilson was there; she’d have got everything sorted out within seconds.

  There was a communal sigh of relief when Tony Delaunay came hurrying in, but it turned to a communal groan of exasperation when he announced that there were a couple of points in the script which still needed checking with Parrott Fashion Productions. He immediately dialled through to London. The actors looked even more bad-tempered, as Mark Lear continued to fumble around the studio.

  ‘Hope we’re not all going to be crammed into that little dead room of yours,’ Charles said to Mark jovially, trying to lighten the atmosphere. He turned to the rest of the actors. ‘Last time I was in there, there was no air at all; after half an hour I just couldn’t breathe. It was some problem with the air conditioning.’

  No one seemed particularly interested in what he was saying, but Mark responded, ‘We’re going to be in the big studio. Just as soon as I’ve got it all rigged up properly.’

  ‘But the air conditioning in the little one has been fixed, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Mark responded tetchily. ‘That’s another bloody thing I’ve got to sort out.’ And he blundered through the open door of the larger cubicle to stare hopelessly at the rows of switches, faders and jack plugs. For the first time, the anxiety struck Charles that Mark might not actually know how to work the equipment. As a producer at the BBC, he would always have had a team of studio managers to sort out the technical minutiae for him; and from what Charles had seen, in their new studio Lisa Wilson dealt with that side of things. He began to regret his recommendation to Tony Delaunay.