by John Gardner
‘Sorry man, it was a stupid mistake.’ The black singer offered a large palm which Douglas grasped with warmth; there was no mistaking the equal amount of affection and gratitude which passed through Joe Thomas’s hand to Douglas. It had obviously been an unpleasant and tricky time for the man.
‘We are releasing Mr. Thomas on his own guarantee that he will present himself at the Uxbridge magistrates court at ten o’clock tomorrow morning,’ the inspector said, the voice of a junior executive. ‘I would add that Mr. Thomas has impressed all of us here.’
They shook hands and spent a few minutes working out whether it would be better to smuggle Joe Thomas out (in the end they decided against anything like that), and what their next move should be. The police and customs had released the luggage and it had been brought down to the station in a Land-Rover, two tall policemen now transferred it to Douglas’s car.
‘Shit, of all the stupid, silly damned idiotic things to happen. Doug, baby, I really am sorry.’ A flaming violence, almost as though he was inflicting a wound upon himself.
They had come down the police station steps at some speed, avoiding the clutch of reporters and refusing to make any comment. Joe Thomas began his outburst before they had hardly drawn away from the curb.
‘Don’t worry, Joe. I’m sure nobody here’s averse to a mature man like yourself using a little pot. Tell me what actually happened?’ Douglas did not take his eyes off the road ahead.
‘That’s what’s so stupid.’ Joe went on to tell how Smiley had put the cannabis in his soap container, how he had hardly registered the fact when told, and woke up to it only while being questioned by customs.
‘I shouldn’t get too worried,’ young Robert Hughes leaned back behind Douglas. ‘The police seem anxious enough to play this one down. That’s certainly the impression I get.’
‘I thought they liked to clobber people like me.’ Thomas swivelled round in the front passenger seat.
‘Oh certainly there’s the influence on the public bit, but in your case they don’t want to mess up relations with the public or with the whole Shireston Festival scene I should imagine; they seem concerned that you shouldn’t appear a raving red-eyed junkie.’
‘How are you going to handle it?’ asked Douglas over his shoulder.
‘On those very lines. To show that Joe isn’t a junkie; that he was completely honest and courteous and co-operative with the police and customs; that he is a man of good character; that the small amount of cannabis was provided by somebody else in an attempt to keep him relaxed at the beginning of what might be a very difficult time for him.’ He went on to outline exactly how Joe should behave in court.
‘You got me a dandy lawyer here, Doug.’ Joe smiled when Robert finished.
‘I think I have,’ Douglas grinned back. ‘I only met him last week but I reckon I’ve probably got a new solicitor for the company.’
‘Your people use big guns from the Smoke,’ said Robert shaking his head in the darkness.
‘The trustees do, but we always need somebody around to deal with individual matters within the company. You fancy that?’
‘We aim to please.’
‘Then I think we’re going to see a lot more of Mr. Hughes around Shireston.’
There were three magistrates on the Bench at ten o’clock the following morning: two men, both slim, moustached, in their fifties, and one younger woman.
‘Wilson, Kepple and Betty,’ Douglas whispered to Art who had driven over with them. He was conscious of his own nervousness being the spur to frivolity.
The court was unusually crowded, the fact that the legendary Joe Thomas was appearing on a drugs charge having flushed coveys of reporters from Fleet Street as well as the major television companies.
Even though they had made an early morning start from Shireston, Joe looked rested and meticulous. On the previous evening Jennifer (having sought Emilio’s assistance) had welcomed them with a meal, after which they got the singer to bed as early as was tactfully possible.
The case was the first to be heard, and the chairman of the Bench, the slightly more military-looking of the two male magistrates, carefully explained to Joe Thomas that he could have his case dealt with straight away, but that he was within his rights to choose a trial by jury which would take place at the next quarter sessions. On Robert Hughes’s instructions Joe elected for a decision by the magistrates and pleaded guilty to being in possession of 120 drams of cannabis resin at Heathrow Airport on the first of January Nineteen Hundred and Seventy-One.
The first evidence, called by the police, came from the customs’ officer who had discovered the drug: a simple and straightforward telling of facts. Then Robert Hughes rose.
‘Did my client appear to be in any way truculent either before or after you detected the small amount of cannabis?’
‘No sir, quite the contrary. He did seem a shade nervous at first, and I must apologize for not recognizing who he was.’ The man looked over in Joe’s direction, ‘I’m sorry sir, I’ve heard a lot of your records but I’m really not one for the television.’
Robert smiled. ‘What about when you found the cannabis?’
‘I didn’t really find it,’ the man looked shamefaced, ‘he told me, Mr. Thomas told me it was there. I picked up the soap container and he said “Okay I’m busted”.’
There was general laughter.
‘And he behaved in a normal manner?’
‘Well it depends what you call normal. A lot of people get angry and shout a bit when we face them with this kind of evidence.’
‘Mr. Thomas did not do that?’
‘No, sir, as I said, he behaved with dignity: in a most responsible manner.’
Those same words, ‘in a most responsible manner’, were used by the police inspector who concluded the prosecution evidence.
Robert told the magistrates that he only wished to call one witness: Joe Thomas himself.
‘We have all heard what happened yesterday afternoon at Heathrow, Mr. Thomas,’ Hughes began, facing Joe Thomas, ‘but would you tell the court exactly why you were at Heathrow.’
‘Certainly. I am here to work with the Shireston Festival Company. I am playing Shakespeare’s Othello and Capulet in Romeo and Juliet.’
‘This is the first time you have acted any Shakespeare?’
‘It is. I’m not really an actor by profession. I’ve made a couple of movies but basically I’m a song and dance man.’
More laughter.
‘Can you tell us why you’re playing Othello if you are really what you call a song and dance man?’
‘The director, Mr. Douglas Silver, talked me into it. He seems to think I can do it.’
‘Do you think you can do it?’
‘I’ll give my best, but I’m no judge of my own talent.’
‘I’m sure we all wish you well in this venture.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Does the prospect make you nervous?’
‘Very nervous.’
‘You have in fact been very nervous about it for some time.’
‘That is true.’
‘Do you regularly use cannabis or any other drug?’
‘I use alcohol and nicotine, and I like the ladies, but I very rarely use pot: only occasionally to relax me.’
‘Would you tell us why you were carrying the pot, the cannabis, that was found at Heathrow.’
‘Sure, a friend of mine came to help me with my baggage at Los Angeles. As I was leaving to board the plane he told me that he’d put a little pot in the soap container in my dressing case. I didn’t hardly think about it until I got to London. He said it might help if I was going to be under strain after I arrived.’
‘Is there anything else you would like to add?’
‘Yes. Thank you, I would like to apologize for any inconvenience I have caused to Her Majesty’s customs’ service, the police and this court. I’d also like to say how well and politely the customs’ officers and the police have dealt wit
h me.’
Robert Hughes summed up, telling the three magistrates that it was obvious to everybody that Joe Thomas was not in any way a drug addict and, if necessary, he could bring medical evidence to support this; that Joe Thomas was an entertainer of extraordinary calibre and, as such, was often under an unnatural strain; those facts, together with the evidence they had heard should be enough to move their worships towards leniency.
The trio of magistrates did not even leave the Bench; they muttered together for several minutes and finally composed themselves in obvious agreement. At last the chairman addressed Joe Thomas.
‘Joseph Thomas, I want to make it quite clear to you that this court is not normally inclined towards leniency in cases of this kind. We always view the possession of drugs, particularly when it concerns someone like yourself in a position to influence the public, as a matter for the highest concern. However, the evidence laid before this court makes it clear that you are acutely aware of what you have done. You are fined the sum of fifty pounds — and this Bench wishes you the best possible fortune in your appearances at the Shireston Festival.’
The relief was clear on Thomas’s face. Douglas, sitting at the back of the courtroom, let out a long sigh.
That evening the television newscasts all had fleeting references to the incident together with brief snatches of film showing Joe Thomas arriving outside the court.
On the following morning the Sunday newspapers had their mild fling, but Douglas need not have been so alarmed; there was no smear campaign. The Sunday Mirror carried a picture of Joe coming down the steps outside the court, shoulders at a tilt and one foot poised to descend, hand stretched out: a splendid, fluid moment frozen and captured in black and inky grey. A big banner headline proclaimed JUST A SONG AND DANCE MAN, while the story gave only brief and simple facts. The People and News of the World played it in a similar manner and the Express only mentioned it in a small paragraph. The two heavies, The Sunday Times and the Observer, gave impartial treatment to the story, both using it on the front page and adding facts about the festival. In all, the affair had been a matter of publicity for the festival and nobody had taken out axes.
By lunchtime on Sunday, Shireston was fully alive, the house resonant with activity and noise as the final members of the company began to occupy their apartments, settled in, started to explore and get themselves domestically organized before the official reception which was to take place at eight o’clock in the green room, now bright with flowers, the long tables ready to bear the cocktail food and drinks lovingly prepared by Emilio, his chef Dominic and their assistants.
Adrian Rolfe had taken a great deal of care over the reception, seeing that name labels, complete with small silver safety pins, were distributed well in advance, and that the press invitations were limited to one by-line columnist and one photographer for each invited paper or magazine. He knew from past experience that general invitations would result in little parties arriving, from London or the larger provincial cities, freeloading and then not filing any copy, or worse, features writers turning up and pinning down people like Joe Thomas or Conrad Catellier for an hour at a time. The party was primarily for members of the company to meet each other together with the executives, stage staff and administrative chiefs: the press was there partly as a concession and partly because Adrian was loath to let any occasion pass without press coverage; but they were there as observers and not as probing minglers.
As he returned to his apartment in the late Sunday afternoon, Adrian realized that he had developed a strange possessiveness towards Shireston, feeling twinges of indignation because he now had to share Shireston House with all these actors. The sense of the place taking on new life was apparent in every small noise that wafted through the corridors; the far_ away bang of a door, footsteps as yet not absorbed into the pattern of familiarity; voices calling, laughing, talking, sounding like murmurs. So many talents and individual lives enveloped within this particular set of walls. Adrian, being very much a man of moods, held on to the passing thought: how many of these lives would be changed by the experience of the next few months? How many talents would be broadened, refound, fully expressed? How many minds would be enriched? How many stifled?
Conrad Catellier viewed the scene with a mental bleakness. At first he had been angry at having to wear a label with his name on it: Conrad Catellier written in a neat tight hand in blue ink on an oblong of card and pinned to his lapel. It was unnecessary, he felt; whimsical; trivial: if people could not recognize him by now then it was too bad. But the sharp Adrian Rolfe had told him that it was only right that the big names should wear tags as it helped the unknown members of the company. He did not explain how or why and Conrad was certainly in no mind to ask or argue with him.
Unknown? Catellier queried in his mind, we’re all unknown in the long run. He looked down at his glass, still half full, then out at the crushed scene. The noise was horrific, but you could only expect a rising crescendo of gabble if you put forty actors and actresses together with forty assorted people, including the press who, up until now, he observed, seemed intent only on getting their fair share of the food and drink, though, he grudgingly realized, he had noticed a number of flashbulbs directed at him. Young Crispin had come up and said politely that it was going to be nice working with him again; and Pern was deferential, but they were well-tried actors who knew how to behave. Catellier was not so certain about the black singer, Joe Thomas, who appeared to be holding court at the far end of the room. Perhaps, Catellier thought with a desperate melancholy, it had been foolish of him even to think about joining this kind of company: it was not really his style, most of these people did not know about his nerves and the internal chaos he had to support in preparing a role. Or did any of them really understand the absurd loneliness of an actor in his situation? Not just the sexual thing, that could easily be settled here, only yesterday two of the young walk-ons had approached him separately, leaving no doubt as to their proclivities: he had but to beckon and they would come, both of them well-built, good-looking boys but neither with the intellectual stimulus which might act as a flint to spark some deeper relationship. There were not so many of those in life, and, he supposed, he could count his on the fingers of his right hand: in his mid-twenties there had been the Italian boy. He still could not bring even his mind to speak the name for it had engrossed his thoughts and body for the whole of those seven years, remembered still in detail: through his rise to fame as an actor, the Italian was a spur, then suddenly, just when things seemed to have settled, inched into a stable life style, he was gone. There one day, laughing, happy, sparkling with a rare wit and intelligence; the next day, gone, a nothing crushed between metal as two cars squirmed together at speed on a wet road near Florence. Only memories, and they did not go easily from the head. Since that, there were three he could really count, and each of those had ended in turmoil. It was better to immerse oneself in work, to become a more proficient actor, a great interpreter of roles. Yet the thought of actually doing it did not act as a balm to the fears; few people would ever guess at the anxious twist of true stagefright which was a constant guest of Conrad Catellier’s being; as bad, he sometimes considered, as Lord Nelson’s seasickness.
The same nervousness of public appearances was present even now as he stood, pressed against the wall, looking out across the bobbing heads, his eyes acting like camera lenses, zooming in on the holes of moving mouths, the tricks of fingers playing together, or with another’s hand or body; panning on to examine the clothes worn carefully, or carelessly, covering hard and soft bodies, gross bodies, thin ungiving, rounded and erotic; hair, heads turning; smiles; laughter; glasses tipped back; quips, almost visible, hurtling across the room.
‘Conrad.’ Elizabeth Column, tall, dazzling in something scarlet and expensive, placed her lips firmly against his cheek. Out of usage, Catellier lifted his arms to embrace her, forcing a smile; she was not one of his favourite people.
‘It’s so nice to
see you again,’ she mouthed, the eyes never still, looking across him into the throng. Catellier thought he knew what she was searching out: Elizabeth Column was still far from the sere and yellow, yet even at thirty-five rumour had it that her taste eased towards very young men.
‘So you’re doing Portia at last,’ he said in an attempt to hold her, keep her there, at least as another human being with whom he could talk on reasonably equal terms.
‘Yes.’ She looked up at him with a broad grin and made a purring noise. ‘She’s such a nasty lady really.’ She gave him another grin, patted his arm and began to disengage herself. ‘Do excuse me darling, I must have a word with our director. So many people.’ And she was away into the fringes of the clutching crowd.
Catellier sighed and returned to sipping his drink.
‘It’s going to be an education, this season. You know what we’ve got here? We’ve got an actors’ kibbutz.’ Maurice Kapstein swallowed a mouthful of his third gin and tonic, leering openly at the young female journalist who was giving a convincing performance of hanging on to his every word.
‘What newspaper did you say you were from?’
‘I’m only on the local rag,’ said the girl, head cocked, her pencil poised. ‘The Shireston Gazette.’
‘Don’t knock it kiddie. You live locally then?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, you let me have your address. There are a lot of things Maurice Kapstein could do for a young girl like you.’
‘Thank you Mr. Kapstein. You talk about this being an actors’ kibbutz. Aren’t there dangers in putting all these people under one roof?’
‘What kind of dangers? Plenty of people live in communities.’
‘Yes, but, well, actors and actresses.’
‘You think all the men actors are going to leap on all the lady actors?’
‘I mean temperamental dangers. The clash of personalities. It’s always been a local feeling that it’s a danger to have so many artistic talents crammed together.’