Stage Fright

by Christine Poulson

  ‘I’d offer to collect Agnes from the nursery, but I’ve only got one car-seat.’

  ‘All sorted. Don’t worry. They’ll keep her until six and we’ll bring her back to the theatre. I’m going to get my eldest, that’s Tilly, to come and baby-sit. Kevin’ll be here until God knows when. It’s going to be all hands to the pumps.

  ‘That reminds me,’ she went on. ‘I’ll have to go over to the car-hire place – sort out a car with a baby-seat, otherwise Kevin won’t be able to take Agnes home. Will you be a love and drive me over to Mill Road later on, so that I can drive it back here?’

  ‘’Course I will.’ I looked at her with affection – and a touch of envy, too. Was there anything she couldn’t cope with?

  ‘Have you ever thought of running for prime minister?’ I asked.

  She grinned. ‘Nah, wouldn’t be enough of a challenge.’

  There was no one in the green room. I filled the kettle and Stan dropped into one of the leatherette chairs. There was a knock on the door. Without waiting for an answer, Jake poked his head into the room.

  ‘OK if we come in?’

  Stan looked at me and rolled her eyes.

  ‘If you must,’ she said.

  Jake slipped into the room, followed by the silent Geoff. He propped his bum on the edge of the table and began leafing through the latest copy of the Stage. Geoff leant against the wall, his camera resting on his chest. He was wearing beige trousers and an off-white shirt. With his tow-coloured hair, he was almost camouflaged against the cream-painted brickwork. I realized that I’d almost stopped noticing him. He had a talent for effacing himself.

  I made the tea and sat down in the other armchair. I flipped over the pages of my scripts, looking ahead to the next scene I’d be rehearsing. Stan heaved a sigh and wrapped her hands round her mug.

  No one said a word.

  Jake tossed the Stage on to the table. ‘This is about as interesting as watching paint dry,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not feeling very chatty,’ Stan said.

  ‘Me neither,’ I agreed without looking up from my place.

  ‘Of course, I know everyone’s upset,’ Jake said. ‘I hardly slept last night myself.’ His voice was full of emotion. I looked up in surprise. It was true: there were shadows like bruises under his eyes. Perhaps I’d misjudged him.

  ‘It could have meant the end of everything,’ he continued. ‘I haven’t got nearly enough in the can. And worse than that: if the play doesn’t actually open, the company’ll pull the plug on the documentary.’

  ‘And goodbye, to Jake’s dream of being the brightest star in the documentary firmament,’ Stan said. Her voice was rich with contempt.

  ‘A woman goes missing, leaving her baby behind, and that’s all you care about?’ I said incredulously.

  Jake flushed. ‘Well, no, I’m worried about Melissa, of course I am.’

  Stan got up. She went over to Geoff and put the palm of her hand over the lens of his camera.

  Geoff prised himself off the wall. ‘Careful,’ he muttered, ‘you’ll scratch the lens.’ It was the first time I’d heard him speak. He had a Scottish accent of the soft, West Coast variety.

  ‘Turn it off,’ Jake said.

  ‘No, on second thoughts,’ Stan said. ‘Let’s have this on tape.’ She put a hand on the camera and swivelled it towards Jake. ‘Can I point out, Jake, that there’s more than one way of looking at this? An injection of drama is just what you need to make your documentary go with a swing. So don’t be surprised if you find the police taking a long, hard look at you!’

  Now it was Jake’s turn to look outraged. His eyebrows shot up. His mouth fell open.

  ‘No one could think … I wouldn’t…’ He turned to me. ‘Cassandra, you don’t think I had anything to do with this?’

  I couldn’t help laughing in spite of the seriousness of the situation.

  ‘Of course I don’t and neither does Stan. She’s trying to wind you up, that’s all. I should try to disguise that naked ambition if I were you. It’s not very attractive.’

  But he wasn’t looking at me any more. And a moment later I realized why. The door behind me was creaking open.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ Kevin said.

  Everyone looked at him. Stan was still standing next to Geoff with her hand on the camera. Kevin scanned our faces. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked again, looking at me.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ I said. ‘Really.’

  ‘Have you been causing trouble, Jake?’ Kevin spoke quietly but there was something in his voice that made me glad the question wasn’t addressed to me.

  ‘I haven’t done anything, really I haven’t.’

  ‘I hope that’s true. Don’t forget that I have a veto on this documentary. I’m not sure that I want you here at all now, not sure that it’s still appropriate. But certainly if I hear so much as a whisper that you’ve been upsetting any of the cast, you are dead meat. Understand?’

  To my relief Jake had enough sense not to say anything. He nodded and slipped out of the door. Geoff followed.

  ‘Are you really going to boot him out?’ Stan asked. ‘I know he’s a tiresome little bugger, but he’ll be screwed if you do.’

  ‘Oh, Christ. I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.’ Kevin lifted a hand wearily to his head. ‘I’d almost forgotten what I came down for. Cass, could you go and see Fisher? He’s up in Melissa’s dressing-room. He wants to talk to you.’

  * * *

  I felt a nostalgic longing for a past that was only two days old. The dressing-room looked as if Melissa might walk in at any moment to take up the reins of her life. The make-up box was there and the small mirror on its stand. The same old pink cardigan with a frayed sleeve was hanging on the back of the door. Only one thing had changed: Fisher was now sitting where Melissa had sat. And yet as I looked around the room I wondered: was that the only thing that was different? I wasn’t quite sure that everything was just as I had last seen it.

  ‘I wanted to ask you a bit more about that letter Miss Meadow showed you,’ Fisher said.

  ‘Yes, of course.’ I was still scanning the dressing-room. There was something, but what was it? Something missing or just something out of place?

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

  ‘What? Oh, nothing, sorry.’ I gave him my full attention. ‘You wanted to know more about the letter?’

  ‘Mr Kingleigh hasn’t been able to put his hand on it. It’s not at the cottage. And it’s not here either. We’ve just looked through the drawers. Mr Kingleigh says that his wife told him about the letter when he spoke to her the night before last on the phone. He didn’t actually see it.’

  I remembered my certainty that Kevin had first heard of the letter only when I mentioned it. I wondered if I should say something, but after all it was only an impression. Perhaps Melissa had told him about it. But why had she concealed it from him in the first place? I wondered again if the letter was from someone in Melissa’s past.

  ‘You did actually read it yourself?’ Fisher continued.

  ‘Yes, here in this very room.’

  ‘You said it was typed?’

  ‘Word-processed, yes. The font was unusual. Gothic script. And the signature, “The King of Cups” – well, it wasn’t a signature, exactly – it was printed – did I mention that it was upside down?’

  He frowned. ‘Wouldn’t that be rather difficult to do?’

  ‘Not really, You could print out the letter without the signature, then turn the sheet of paper round and send it through the printer again to add the signature. You’d have to fiddle about a bit to get the spacing right, but it wouldn’t be all that hard. I could do it on my own printer.’

  ‘OK. What did you make of the content of the letter?’

  ‘About the signature, I had no idea. But I did recognize the poem and I’ve found out a bit more about it since then. It was written in eighteen seventeen in Venice, where Byron was leading a pretty riotous life – and he�
��d also just heard of the birth of an illegitimate daughter, Allegra, by a mistress he’d already discarded. And he’d left England under a cloud the year before – his marriage had failed and there were rumours of incest with his half-sister.’

  ‘But the poem didn’t seem to mean anything to Miss Meadow?’

  ‘She seemed mystified by it. Didn’t even know that it was by Byron. And I got the impression that there was something else – apart from the content – that Melissa found disturbing. But I didn’t get a chance to ask her what it was.’

  ‘You can’t hazard a guess?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘What did she do with the letter after you’d read it? Did she put it in her handbag perhaps? That would explain why we haven’t found it.’

  ‘Just let me think.’ I closed my eyes and tried to visualize what had happened. I saw the letter in my hand. We’d still been talking about it when Kevin came in. I heard the sound of the door hitting the wall and felt again the force of Kevin’s presence like a gust of wind through the room. I saw his face smiling and apologizing. And what had I done with the letter? It was infuriating. I simply could not remember. But I did remember that Melissa hadn’t wanted Kevin to see the letter. So had I perhaps slipped it into my handbag? And then what? Had I handed it back to Melissa later? No, I couldn’t have done that, because I’d left the room before Kevin. Could it be that it was still in my handbag?

  ‘I might still have it. I think I’d better just check,’ I said.

  Feeling self-conscious, I tipped the contents of my handbag out on to my lap: mobile phone, purse, lipstick, a book, a small knitted rabbit that belonged to Grace, biros and pencils, an electricity bill, screwed-up paper handkerchiefs, a little black leather-bound notebook. There were also several letters, but Melissa’s wasn’t among them.

  ‘Sorry, no, it’s not here,’ I told Fisher, as I stuffed everything back in. ‘I’m afraid I can’t quite remember what happened to it.’

  ‘Pity,’ he said. ‘Let me know if you do remember.’

  He sat back and stretched out his legs thoughtfully. He smoothed back the grey-flecked hair, which was cropped short like the coat of a dog.

  ‘Tell me about the play,’ he said.

  ‘The play?’ I was surprised.

  He sat up and leaned forward. ‘It’s a Victorian melodrama, isn’t it? But Mr Kingleigh also said that you’d had a hand in it.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I see. Kevin thought it needed updating a bit in terms of language and so on. That’s where I came in. East Lynne actually started off as a novel.’

  ‘Oh, that much I do know,’ he said. ‘Written in the 1860s, by Mrs Henry Wood. And would I be right in saying that it was one of the novels of sensation, the successors to the Silver Fork novels of the 1840s? East Lynne could be said to combine their interest in high society with elements common to the sensation novel, such as – let me see – sexual transgression, moral retribution?’

  I stared at him with my mouth open.

  He was enjoying my surprise.

  ‘The most famous line, “Dead, and never called me mother,” appeared not in the novel, but in the stage version and was parodied in the music hall. Now, was East Lynne published after Mrs Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret or before?’ he mused.

  I got a grip on myself. ‘Before, actually. Eighteen sixty-one. Lady Audley’s Secret was eighteen sixty-two. But I’m surprised you don’t know that.’

  ‘Touché. Couldn’t resist showing off,’ he said, smiling. ‘Actually, that really is about all I know. I’m doing an Open University degree and I did a credit on the nineteenth-century novel a couple of years ago. I looked up East Lynne last night. I’ve never actually read it. Could you run it by me, tell me what happens? And about the part Miss Meadow was playing?’

  ‘Yes. Of course. Let me see.’ I thought for a moment, getting it clear in my mind. The interview was developing the reassuring give-and-take of a tutorial. I was on my home ground here. It was only later that I realized how skilfully Fisher had put me at my ease.

  ‘Well, you were right about the aristocratic element,’ I told him. ‘Melissa was playing Lady Isabel. Her father gambles away all their money, and when he dies, the family lawyer, Archibald Carlyle, buys East Lynne, the ancestral home. He asks Lady Isabel to marry him. He’s a long way below her socially, but he’s a gentleman and a good, honest man. He’s played by Clive Ashton. Isabel not only accepts his proposal, but falls passionately in love with him. They get married and have three children. But then everything starts to unravel. Isabel finds out that Archibald is having clandestine meetings with Barbara Hare, a young woman who used to be in love with him. The meetings are actually about Barbara’s brother, who is on the run for a murder he didn’t commit, but Isabel doesn’t know that.’

  Fisher was nodding and fingering the magnifying mirror, tilting it this way and that on its stand. The feeling that I’d had earlier came back to me. There was something missing. What had been on the dressing-table before? Wig stand? Yes, that was still there …

  ‘What happens next?’ Fisher had stopped playing with the mirror and was looking at me.

  ‘Oh, yes. sorry. Well, there’s a villain of course, the real moustache-twirling thing. That’s Captain Levison, who’s played by Kevin. Levison works on Isabel’s jealousy and seduces her. She runs off abroad with him and of course she’s absolutely ruined. Archibald divorces her. There’s an illegitimate baby and she’s abandoned by Levison. It was all very topical: the novel was written only four years after the eighteen fifty-seven Divorce Act. Anyway, then she’s nearly killed in a railway accident and the baby dies. Back in England they think she’s dead, too. She returns in disguise as Madame Vine and is employed as governess to her own children.’

  Fisher’s eyes were fixed on me. He seemed about to say something. I waited for him to speak but he nodded for me to continue.

  ‘By now Archibald is happily married to Barbara Hare, and Isabel suffers torments seeing them together.’

  ‘So she’s punished for leaving her husband and children?’

  ‘Oh, yes. She suffers terribly. It’s agony for her, especially being apart from her children. Maternal love: that’s a real driving force in the novel. I think that was one reason for its popularity. And of course it’s terrifically sentimental. We’ve had to tone that down. It’d be too much for a present-day audience.’

  ‘And what happens to the seducer?’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, he doesn’t get off scot free, far from it. He turns out to be the real murderer. There’s a really grisly courtroom scene where the judge puts on a black cap and Levison faints in the dock. In the end the sentence is commuted to penal servitude for life, but it’s pretty dramatic all the same.’

  Fisher said, ‘That last rehearsal, the one where Miss Meadow broke down. Which part of the play was it?’

  ‘It was the scene when Levison persuades Isabel to leave her husband.’

  ‘And the next day Miss Meadow disappears, too. Maybe that’s more than a coincidence.’

  When he put it into words, I could hardly believe that I hadn’t made that connection myself. I was just too close to it all, I suppose that’s what it was.

  ‘That hadn’t occurred to you before?’ Fisher said, seeing the expression on my face.

  I shook my head. ‘No, but now that you’ve mentioned it, yes, life does seems to be mirroring art in a rather disturbing way.’

  ‘It sounds to me as though she had a very demanding part, especially for a woman who’d just recently become a mother herself. In the play her baby dies, and then the older child. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘She was finding it demanding,’ I said slowly. What had she said to me in this very room about squeezing the gap between herself and the character she was playing? Had it just become too difficult, too painful? I shook my head.

  ‘I just can’t see it. I mean, if she was upset about the children in the play, surely that would make it even less likely that she’d
go off and leave her own child behind.’

  ‘That’s what she seems to have done,’ Fisher said.

  ‘Is there any chance – I mean, I’m sure you’ve thought of it – what if she didn’t leave of her own accord?’

  ‘That she was abducted?’ He pursed his lips. ‘No sign of forced entry – except by you, of course.’ He smiled at me. ‘She took her handbag. She seems to have left in her own car.’

  ‘Someone could have forced her to drive it away.’

  ‘But how would that person have got to the cottage in the first place if they didn’t have their own transport? They’d have had to walk from Ely station – in the dark probably, though that depends on when she left. We won’t be in a hurry to rule anything out, don’t you worry, but some kind of nervous breakdown is by far the most likely explanation.’

  I nodded.

  The interview seemed to have reached its end, and I waited for Fisher to indicate that. But he remained seated, looking down at his notebook. There was more to come. He raised his eyes to mine.

  ‘I have to ask you this,’ he said. ‘Could there be another man involved?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I have wondered,’ I admitted. ‘But I never got the slightest hint of anything like that. Apart from anything else, how would she have found the time – or the energy? She had a six-month-old baby and was in rehearsal for a play that opens next Monday.’

  Fisher nodded. ‘Was the marriage in good shape, would you say? It can be a difficult time, when a baby comes along. Some men don’t take kindly to not being the centre of attention any more … perhaps Mr Kingleigh…’ Fisher shrugged. ‘He’s an attractive man, after all.…’

  Yes, Kevin was attractive: that easy charm, that energy. There would be no lack of opportunity. He seemed devoted to Melissa, but how well did I really know him?

  Fisher picked up on my hesitation. ‘Well?’

  ‘Things seemed OK.’

  Fisher nodded. He didn’t speak. Neither did I. I recognized this technique. In fact, I used it myself in tutorials. If the silence stretched out for long enough, someone would usually feel impelled to break it. Now I knew what it felt like to be on the receiving end.