by J M Gregson
He didn’t think they would. They all seemed as surprised and delighted by the idea of Hamlet as he was. They’d soon realize that if they were going to succeed in this, they’d need to forget any previous differences and work together as a team. All the same, he decided at the very last minute to take his own precautions.
He had reached the front door of his handsome house before he turned abruptly and went back up the stairs. He entered the bedroom which he used as a study, unlocked the bottom door of the desk, and picked out the object wrapped carefully in an old linen serviette.
The Beretta pistol with the ivory handle was small: a weapon more suited to a woman, he had always thought. It wouldn’t blow a man’s head away, like the Smith and Wesson which featured in so many films. But it would kill a man or a woman easily enough, if the occasion arose. The probability was that it never would, of course.
But Terry Logan liked to be prepared.
Eight
John Lambert had been alone in the bungalow for half an hour before he heard their voices in the hall. Jacky and her mother were animated, noisy, suffused by a small and harmless hilarity. He divined that for the first time in years, mother and daughter had been on a shopping expedition together.
Christine Lambert was an unusual lady, in the view of the modern media. She resented hours wasted on shopping, had to force herself to expend upon it time she grudged because she would rather have used it for other things. It wasn’t just the weekly grind of the supermarket visit she found trying: even more adventurous sorties to purchase clothes, which most of her friends anticipated eagerly, were anathema to Christine Lambert. She normally postponed such expeditions for as long as possible. For your children, all things change.
As the two came into the room still animated with the excitement of their purchases, Lambert felt himself suffused with a petty resentment. Why should Jacky be able to lift her mother out of herself and her normal habits? It should be him who could raise Christine’s spirits like this. This alien daughter who had long flown the Lambert nest had no right to come back and lift his wife so effortlessly on to another plane.
Jacky flew across the room to plant a kiss on his forehead, and then there were plastic bags flying on to every chair, in what had two minutes ago been a tidy, peaceful room. John Lambert tried and failed to join in the brouhaha of female animation over the myriad small and unremarkable additions to their respective wardrobes. His bonhomie was as false and forced as theirs was spontaneous and joyful.
Eventually he put on his broadest smile and said, ‘Well, I was just on my way out to the garden when you two arrived. I must go and move a few of the autumn leaves.’
His wife understood him and his falsities, as wives irritatingly tend to do. She followed him through the kitchen door. ‘You should be pleased to see Jacky showing an interest in life. She’s having to be brave to do it. This separation’s bitten deeper than either of us realized it would.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. I’m an old curmudgeon. I just wasn’t coping very well in there. I was afraid of saying the wrong thing.’
‘Just be yourself, John. It’s her dad she wants to see, not some diplomat afraid to open his mouth for fear of offending her.’
He couldn’t tell her that it was her laughter, not Jacky’s, which had upset him, that there was an unseemly jealousy within him that it should be his daughter and not himself who was touching this part of Christine. He said, ‘I’m glad to hear Jacky laughing, glad to see her happy again. I am really.’ He spoke as if he was trying to convince himself of that, rather than Christine.
‘Make the most of it, then. Your daughter’s cheerfulness is very brittle.’
Everyone was apprehensive at the first proper rehearsal. That was natural enough: the beginning of every amateur production is fraught with angst, as each member of the cast begins to appreciate the difficulties of what has seemed great fun until now, as everyone abruptly wonders if these distraught fumblings with lines and cues and casting will ever develop into a performance.
Something which they might put on stage; something which they might expect people to come and watch, and perhaps even to enjoy.
But there was an additional massive thought which lingered unspoken in the minds of everyone in Mettlesham’s village hall. This was Shakespeare. It was surely ridiculous for amateurs even to aspire to put a great tragedy on stage, surely folly for them to expect an audience to attend to their efforts with anything more than derision.
All of this was vaguely understood among the people who assembled in that unpretentious wooden building on a still and chilly November evening. The place was full of a brittle laughter as they greeted each other; of vague, unconnected, incomplete conversations as each of them realized that the fear they had brought with them into the hall was translating itself into a collective anxiety about what they had taken on together.
Bert Hook had a greater fear about the exposure of his personal inadequacies as an actor than anyone else present. Everyone save him had recent experience of being on stage; that included even the two youngest members of the seven who had assembled for this first active evening of preparation. And by all accounts, they had all been successful. Beneath Bert Hook’s calm and stoical exterior, his heart was pounding as the young toughs of Gloucestershire and Herefordshire never caused it to pound. A small, panic-stricken part of DS Hook was insisting that it was still not too late to get out of this.
The two younger people seemed to Bert to be preoccupied with each other, though Becky Clegg had given him a friendly, uncharacteristically shy, greeting when she had seen him come in. At least she had acknowledged him: many youngsters seemed to find that their code forbade them to display any sort of friendliness towards a police officer. The lad with her seemed to be bound by that code: he denied himself any communication with Bert, who learned only from listening to his exchanges with their director that he was Jack Dawes and had been provisionally assigned the role of Laertes.
Ian Proudfoot and Maggie Dalrymple, veterans of many successful Mettlesham Players’ productions, gravitated naturally towards each other in this nervous prelude to the business of the evening. Bert found himself spared any of Maggie’s well-meant but cringe-inducing eulogies about his potential as an actor. This wasn’t a moment when he wanted his supposed triumphs as a boy-soprano urchin in the chorus of Oliver thirty years ago to be recalled in Mrs Dalrymple’s stentorian tones.
Bert watched Maggie talking to Proudfoot, snatching glances at the text of the play, flinging quick looks of encouragement in his direction, and keeping a nervous eye upon their director as he prepared to call the meeting to order. Her body language gave him a moment of cheer as his stomach threatened to reject his evening meal. Bert realized in a sudden bright shaft of illumination that in a different way the formidable Mrs Dalrymple was almost as nervous as he was.
The only person who spoke to no one was the man who was the original spur to all this activity. Michael Carey sat alone at the edge of the hall, his fair hair dropping over his forehead, his nose looking a little longer in the poorly lit spot he had chosen, his blue eyes cast steadily down upon the text of the play. If he had nerves, he did not show them. Cocooned in concentration, he seemed to be already within the play, already to be calculating the effects he might make by nuances of voice, movement and reaction.
When Terry Logan rapped his pen against his clipboard and told them briskly that it was time to make a beginning, it was a bitter-sweet moment for Bert Hook. There was relief that the stomach-churning minutes of waiting were over, and at the same time a panic that the moment had finally arrived when a staid policeman feared he was about to make a laughing-stock of himself. He told himself that this must be a perfectly natural reaction, that the others were probably nervous as well, but he did not dare look at them to check on this.
He became dimly conscious of Logan explaining that this was a first rehearsal for principals only, that although not all of the bit parts had even been cast as yet, it wa
s time to make a start. He gave a short pep talk on the commitment involved, stressing the fact that non-attendance at rehearsals would be a grave blow to the team involved in this most complex of the Players’ enterprises. In the winter months, colds and chills were inevitable, but he hoped everyone concerned would make supreme efforts to keep to the rehearsal schedule. Even death, he pointed out, would be accepted as an excuse only with some reluctance. There were a few nervous titters at this. Bert Hook, who hadn’t been entirely sure that this had been intended as a witticism, joined in with them belatedly.
Terry Logan announced that they would make a start with the first court scene, in which all the principals save Ophelia were involved, and then move on to the domestic scene in Polonius’s house, where the father gives his famous advice to Laertes and then questions his daughter about her relationship with Hamlet. That would be quite enough for a first evening, he told them, with an experienced twinkle in his eye. Bert realized with a sinking heart that he had a lot of lines to deliver in the next two or three hours.
The director spent some time positioning them on stage, and then gave them a single important thought for the first court scene. ‘Everyone is relaxing, brilliantly dressed in a court newly released from mourning. Everyone save one figure, who is obstinately and insultingly clad in black: Hamlet, bringing to the revelry his conviction from the earlier scene that “something is rotten in the state of Denmark”. All the tensions in the scene proceed from this single visual anomaly.’
It worked. Their progress was halting, of course, and they were still reading from their books. But even a very nervous Bert Hook could feel the tension crackling as Hamlet made his bitter jokes and Claudius, knowing very well what was going on, chose to ignore them and deliver his avuncular, face-saving homilies to a Prince increasingly frustrated by his refusal to take offence. He wasn’t bad, this Shakespeare bloke. Hook began to feel the thrill of being involved in something very special.
Michael Carey was the only one who didn’t need a script. He knew his every line and his every cue already, and he roamed the stage like a feral cat, darting his verbal claws at anyone who claimed his attention. Bert, and no doubt the others on stage with him, felt a resentment at this dazzling control, exercised without seeming effort, whilst others fumbled desperately towards some sort of effect.
Yet Carey’s uneasy brilliance was indisputably raising the performances of those around him. The reactions to the Prince’s attacks upon hypocrisy and his puncturings of pomposity became sharper as his bitter ironies struck at the others on stage. Even Bert Hook, when he delivered the elaborate circumlocutions and self-satisfactions of Polonius, realized now that he was part of a larger whole, setting off the razor-sharp perceptions of the central figure in the play with his verbosity and his delusions.
It felt as if everyone save Hamlet had staggered through the scene, yet Logan at the end of it was plainly now as excited as everyone else. He pronounced this an excellent start, gave them a few general pointers, said that he would have more moves to suggest to them by the time they came back to the scene at the next rehearsal. He did not comment directly upon the dazzling exhibition from his central character, contenting himself with pointing out how all their performances would be lifted once they knew their words, when they would be able to move properly and react to others on stage more naturally. Perhaps that was a subtle way of telling them that he expected all their performances eventually to rise towards the level already being displayed by the eponymous hero.
They had a short break and a swift cup of tea, which the young girl whom Logan had introduced as his stage manager and general dogsbody had made for them. Then, with a few encouraging words about the start they had made, the director dismissed all save Bert Hook and the two youngest members of the company. Bert wondered if this was a subtle plan to work with the least experienced members of the cast without the embarrassment of more experienced observers. His estimation of Logan as a director was rising with each minute of the evening.
It was quite a relief to move into the lower key of the domestic scene for Polonius and his son and daughter. During the opening speeches, Bert was comforted to hear in their voices that Becky Clegg and Jack Dawes were almost as nervous as he was. But Terry Logan stopped them and explained the more light-hearted nature of this scene, encouraging them to relax. Bert realized as the scene proceeded that these two young people who were playing his children were good, both together and individually.
Their youth sparkled, and they began to enjoy their humorous but tender mocking of their parent. It was almost like having an older version of his two sons at home, having fun at the expense of their out-of-date old dad; some things did not change very much over four hundred years. He’d have to be on his toes, to keep up with Becky and Jack. Their developing confidence reminded him again that both of them had been on stage before. Whether it was from natural talent, or previous experience, or a combination of the two, they knew what they were about.
When their director told them that that was enough for the evening, Bert was amazed to see that three hours had passed. Terry Logan said that he’d just like a word with Jack Dawes, which wouldn’t take long. The other two could go.
For a moment, Becky Clegg looked from the director to the young man who had starred for him in a school production five years ago, wondering what this could be about. Then she turned abruptly and went out of the village hall with Bert Hook. She chatted happily enough, not feeling the cold, gazing up at the clear navy sky, still full of the joy and excitement of their successful rehearsal. Bert understood her animation: he felt that it would take even a staid middle-aged man like himself some time to wind down.
When he could get a word in, Bert said awkwardly, ‘Do you want a lift home? I go quite near to where you live, I think.’
‘No thanks, I’ll wait for Jack Dawes. I came with him on his motorbike, you see. And Terry Logan said he wouldn’t be long, didn’t he?’
Bert Hook went away smiling. As he pressed his remote control to unlock the doors of his Ford Focus, Becky Clegg took a step or two after him. Then she called tentatively through the darkness, ‘I got that job, by the way. Thanks for everything.’
Chris Rushton spent the last twenty minutes of the film wondering what he should do afterwards. He was still old-fashioned enough to wonder what was expected of him rather than to plan how to achieve exactly what he wanted to do. For a handsome young man who had made Detective Inspector by the age of thirty, he was in many ways an anomaly. But his modesty and uncertainty were precisely what had attracted Anne Jackson to him.
She chatted about the film as they walked arm-in-arm towards his car. ‘I knew it wasn’t going to work for them after the first half an hour.’
‘Did you? I was hoping they’d come through everything and make it together by the final scene.’
Anne smiled and squeezed his hand. ‘You are a sucker for the old Hollywood happy ending, Chris Rushton! You’re a sentimentalist at heart.’ She sounded quite happy with the idea.
‘I suppose I am.’ Without realizing that he was going to do it, he suddenly turned her towards him and kissed her. She was taken by surprise, but she responded strongly, until they both emerged breathless and a little shocked by the strength of their feelings.
‘Well!’ was all she said. He didn’t think he had ever heard such a variety of pleasurable emotions compressed into one syllable. He giggled, and surprised them both anew. Chris Rushton was not a natural giggler.
He kissed her again and more predictably when they were in the car. She said into his ear, ‘I’d better get back. I’ve got thirty eight-year-olds to face first thing in the morning.’ But she sounded reluctant, so Chris didn’t mind. He was getting quite used to the delicious idea that Anne Jackson was really rather fond of him. He kissed her again before she got out of the car and hurried into her digs. She waved to him shyly from the doorway after she had turned her key in the lock.
It was only when she had gone and he w
as basking in a joyous moment of self-content that he realized that he had never mentioned his golfing scheme to her.
Terence Logan was pleased with the way the rehearsal had gone. The central heating had switched itself off half an hour ago, but still he sat in the village hall, digesting the experience of the evening, adding yet another reminder to himself at the end of the copious notes he had made for future reference.
An excellent start. He had always known that Carey was going to scintillate, but that didn’t dilute his exultation over the man’s performance this evening. He could see how impressed the others had been, how this central figure was eventually going to raise the standard of all the people around him. Whatever his personal difficulties with Michael Carey, he was certainly a man on whom you could centre a production. He had looks as well as a formidable stage presence, and he understood the subtleties of this most complex of plays. Terry knew that it was part of a director’s brief to cut out any personal problems he had with his cast. Well, this director had always been good at doing that.
He went through the other people who had been there tonight and found that he was giving mental ticks to all of them. They would need licking into shape, but he was confident he could do that; he knew when to offer the carrot and when the stick to the people in his productions. The ones he had been confident about were going to be as good as he had hoped: the ones about whom he had had reservations all had the potential to be good, perhaps even very good. The exchange he’d had with Dawes, after the others had left, could only improve his performance over the next couple of weeks. Perhaps he’d compare notes with the girl and spur her on as well. He was glad he’d kept tabs on the two of them over the last few years. Good research was never wasted.