A Deadly Habit

by Simon Brett

  But again, it was America which raised him from that level to West End stardom. Vandals and Visigoths was not the first computer game that Hollywood’s poverty of imagination had turned into a feature film, but it was one of the few which really caught on with the cinema-going public. In the first movie there was some vague fidelity to historical facts about the Germanic tribes who hastened the fall of the Roman Empire, but even in that one there were sorcerers, shape-shifters and dragons, as well as the requisite bloodshed and nudity.

  For the second and subsequent films in the franchise, in the fine tradition of Hollywood, historical accuracy was thrown out of the window. The influence of magic, in the post-Harry Potter boom, intensified. The incidence of bloodshed and nudity increased. Every episode saw more of the original characters killed off.

  And greater amounts of the screen-time were filled with computer-generated monsters. Of these, by far the most popular was the Skelegator. As its name implied, this was a kind of skeletal alligator, coloured, for no particular reason, a luminescent green. But the creature had skills not possessed by your standard alligator. Though its main means of destruction remained its rows of razor-sharp teeth, a Skelegator had the ability to stand on its back legs and wield a variety of swords, daggers, maces and axes in its prehensile hands. Merchandising of Skelegators really caught on. Few households with children in them lacked a set of luminescent green figurines. Mugs, toothbrushes, school bags, pyjamas and duvet covers all featured the odious reptiles. And no children’s fancy-dress party went by without the appearance of at least two Skelegators.

  As the movie franchise developed, the number of Skelegators – and their role in the proceedings – increased. Soon they had a leader, double the size of his acolytes, called Spurg. He represented pure evil, and his mission in life was to destroy as many Vandals and Visigoths as he could, in as bloody a way as possible.

  But, riding above all the carnage, impervious to the surrounding slaughter, equal to any dastardly challenge that Spurg might throw at him, rose the figure of the Visigoth leader, Sigismund the Strong. And the actor who played that part was called Justin Grover.

  From the moment he landed the role, his international profile just grew and grew. The success of the movies fed the sales of the original Vandals and Visigoths computer game. The sales of the computer game sent more people all over the world scurrying to the cinemas or downloading the movies on to whatever was the latest technology.

  Justin Grover had ceased to be an actor; he had become a brand. The image of Sigismund the Strong’s head in its horned helmet (totally wrong period for either a Visigoth or a Vandal) became almost as recognizable as that of Sherlock Holmes, Mickey Mouse or Elvis Presley. Figurines of Sigismund the Strong outsold even those of Spurg the Skelegator.

  The result was that there was no media outlet where Justin Grover was not visible. Charles Paris got sick of reading articles where the former Guildenstern pontificated about how seriously he took his art as an actor, what lengths he went to in order to inhabit the persona of Sigismund the Strong. And how his real love would always be for the theatre.

  Which, Charles reckoned, if you were making squillions of pounds from your screen career, was an easy thing to say.

  He wondered if, on the sets of the Vandals and Visigoths films, no action could take place until their star had finished his Buddhist chanting.

  Justin Grover had been awarded an OBE ‘for services to the theatre’, and in showbiz circles it was reckoned to be only a matter of time before the knighthood came along.

  As a result of this worldwide fame, of course, he now had carte blanche to do whatever theatre he chose to. His name would put bums on seats, and no theatre producer was too worried that many of those bums would be dressed up as Vandals, Visigoths or Skelegators, who might be disappointed if he didn’t wear his horned helmet as Hamlet.

  So, whenever a gap in the Vandals and Visigoths shooting schedule allowed, Justin Grover would do a short run in a West End theatre, taking the lead role in whatever play he fancied.

  Which was how it came about that he was doing The Habit of Faith.

  ‘What?’ Charles asked Maurice Skellern on the phone when the name of the play was first mentioned. ‘And you’ve arranged for me to be interviewed for a part in it?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking, yes.’

  Charles had heard too many of his agent’s ‘manners of speaking’ not to be suspicious. ‘What exactly do you mean?’

  ‘I had a call from the producer’s office checking your availability for the run.’

  ‘And is that why you’re ringing me now? To ask if I’m available.’

  ‘No, of course not, Charles.’ Maurice chuckled at the idea. ‘I said you were. You’re always available.’

  Charles decided not to contest the insult. ‘So, are you ringing to let me know when they want to do an interview?’

  ‘No, there’s no interview involved. They’re offering you the part. West End. Three months guaranteed.’

  ‘They’re offering me the part?’ Charles echoed, dumbstruck.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Apparently, Justin Grover remembered working with you in the past and thought he might do you a good turn.’

  Charles’s reaction was divided into two parts. Half of it was: ‘Patronizing bugger! If he thinks I’m going to accept charity from him …’ The other half was: ‘On the other hand, three months guaranteed on West End money …’

  He didn’t vocalize either to Maurice. Instead, he said coolly, ‘Well, get them to send me a script—’

  ‘Oh, we don’t need to bother with that. I’ve said you’ll do it.’

  ‘What! Maurice, as my agent, it is your job to—’

  ‘Well, you will do it, won’t you?’

  There was a silence before Charles conceded, ‘Probably, yes.’

  ‘See, I knew you would. Why bother farting around with sending scripts, eh?’

  Charles Paris’s next words were every actor’s instinctive question. ‘What’s the money?’

  Maurice told him. It sounded a gratifyingly large amount, but Charles still said, ‘Have you tried getting them up a bit?’

  ‘It’s good money, Charles. And we don’t want to make waves. Don’t want the producers changing their minds, do we?’

  ‘Well,’ said Charles, ‘give me overnight to think about it.’

  ‘No time for that. I’ve already said you’ll accept.’

  ‘But, Maurice—’

  ‘Come on, this is the best offer you’ve had for a long time, Charles.’

  ‘Maybe …’

  ‘The only offer you’ve had for a long time.’

  ‘All right. There’s no need to rub it in.’

  There was a silence before Maurice asked, ‘Well, aren’t you going to say something?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like “thank you”.’

  ‘Maurice, can I get this right?’

  ‘Get what right?’

  ‘Justin Grover decided he wanted me to play a part in The Habit of Faith …?’

  ‘Ye-es,’ the agent conceded cautiously.

  ‘He told the producers that, and asked them to offer me the part …?’

  ‘Right …’

  ‘And they then rang you and offered it?’

  ‘OK …’

  ‘And you’re asking me to say, “thank you”?’

  ‘Of course. It’s only polite.’

  ‘But can you tell me what I’m meant to be thanking you for? What contribution did you actually make to my getting this part in The Habit of Faith?’

  ‘I was at the end of the phone when they called about it,’ said an aggrieved Maurice Skellern.

  TWO

  A few days later, at his studio flat in Hereford Road, Charles did receive a copy of the play script. After nipping to the café round the corner to pick up a large strong Americano, he settled into his armchair to read it.

  Long habit made him look at
the cast list first. It was headed by the name of Abbot Ambrose, the part, some instinct told him, that Justin Grover would be playing. Then there were a lot of characters called Brother This and Brother That. The accompanying letter from the production office announced that Charles Paris would be playing the part of Brother Benedict.

  There was only one female character in the dramatis personae, a fact which gave him a knee-jerk reaction of disappointment. It wasn’t that he was living in hope of starting an affair with some nubile cast member. Given the improving state of his relationship with Frances, he was way beyond such fantasies (well, that is to say, unless the right opportunity presented itself). His disappointment arose, he told himself, from the fact that he found exclusively masculine company rather stifling. The presence of women in a production always provided some necessary leavening.

  Still, on the plus side, there was a strong chance some of the backstage staff might be female. And members of the stage management had provided some of the most rewarding interludes in the life of Charles Paris.

  He was also a little put off by the fact that the only female in the cast list was called ‘The Girl’. Experience had taught him that plays featuring characters with names like ‘The Man’, ‘The Woman’ or, even worse, ‘He’ and ‘She’, had a strong tendency to be pretentious.

  He read through The Habit of Faith. Like all plays set in monasteries, the dramatis personae were fairly predictable. There was the Abbot, a Saintly Man Whose Moral Integrity Was Hard Won And Whose Continuing Internal Conflict Between Warring Aspects Of His Personality Was Expressed In A Lot Of Long Monologues.

  Then, inevitably, there was The Monk Who Had Lost His Faith, The Monk Who Had Difficulty Controlling His Lust Towards Women, The Monk Who Had Difficulty Controlling His Lust Towards Men (Especially Towards The Young Novice Who Had Just Joined The Monastery), The Young Novice Who Had Just Joined The Monastery And Who Was Still Confused About His Sexual Identity, and The Old Monk Who Had A Childlike Belief In Everything Offered By His Faith And Who Was A Bit Educationally Subnormal.

  Charles Paris had got the short straw of Brother Benedict, The Monk Who Just Listened To All Of The Other Monks Who Maundered On In Long Speeches About Their Own Internal Conflicts. Most of Charles’s lines were ‘Really?’ and ‘Did you?’ It was one of those parts, like Horatio in Hamlet, where the actor playing it knows that everyone else onstage is having more fun than he is.

  And where did The Girl fit in? She was a rape victim, who had escaped the carnage of the wars that swirled around outside, to seek sanctuary in the monastery. And, of course, she was a plot device, the stranger whose arrival changed everything. Her presence disrupted the serenity of an all-male society, to reveal the seething suppressed passions beneath.

  On the title pages, below the cast list, was printed: ‘The action takes place in any time – it could be now’, which Charles thought was rather coy. He was wary of plays set in an unspecified time zone. Playwrights who wrote them claimed that this gave their work ‘universality’, but Charles knew this wasn’t the real reason. By giving his play a timeless setting, Seamus Milligan had avoided having to do any research into contemporary politics or the way in which a real monastery might be run.

  Charles Paris’s view, on finishing the script, was that The Habit of Faith was pretty deadly. In fact, a seriously crap play. If he had any pride – or indeed the income to sustain any pride – he should have got straight on to Maurice Skellern and said he didn’t want to do it. But … anything with Justin Grover in it would put those bums on seats. And a guaranteed three-month run in the West End was a guaranteed three-month run in the West End. A bit of stability, both geographical and financial, could only help the progress of his current rapprochement with Frances. He’d do it.

  Before the read-through for The Habit of Faith started, at a rehearsal room in White City, Charles had been intrigued as to how Justin Grover would play things. Knowing the star’s propensity for meticulous planning, there was a reasonable chance that he would just mumble through the text, with a view to working privately on his part in the course of the rehearsal period.

  But it became clear that his preparation had already been done. As soon as the read-through started, Justin’s interpretation of Abbot Ambrose was firmly in place. Every intonation, every nuance was fully formed. At times, although they were all seated, he could not stop himself from doing some of the hand gestures on which he had worked so assiduously.

  What was more, to the dismay of all the other cast members, he already knew every line. Throughout the read-through, he didn’t open his script once.

  This was partly showing off, partly gamesmanship, but more importantly a statement of power. Justin Grover’s performance was already there and immutable. The rest of the cast would have to fit their performances around it.

  And the director’s vision of the play would also have to be adjusted to match that of its star.

  The person taking on the directing role had been very carefully chosen – and Charles felt pretty sure that it had been Justin Grover who had done the choosing. Nita Glaze was very much up-and-coming. Having done lots of theatre while at Manchester University, she had set up her own company, Chip and Pin, soon after graduation. Five years of touring the country and maintaining a strongly controversial presence on social media had raised her profile to the point where she started being offered assistant director jobs at some of the major regional theatres. The unwillingness of most directors to share their artistic vision made these fairly thankless postings, but they all helped build up Nita’s CV. Soon she progressed to directing her own shows at various well-known London pub theatres and other venues. She became a regular arts commentator on Radio 4’s Front Row, and even once appeared on television’s Newsnight. Critics hailed her as a rising star.

  The Habit of Faith would be her first West End production.

  Giving her the job was a bold choice by Justin Grover, but a canny one. Media coverage would praise the appointment of someone young, vibrant and female, instead of the usual middle-aged, male ‘safe pair of hands’.

  And, to tick another of the right boxes, Nita Glaze was black.

  In spite of her impressive credits, however, she was very inexperienced at the level of directing a major West End show. And of dealing with a star. Her previous work had demonstrated a shrewd eye for spotting talent and developing nascent careers, but that was a very different matter from dealing with someone as established as Justin Grover. He had such a clear idea of how he wanted things done, that it would take an exceptionally dominant personality to make him change a single intonation. Though strong-willed and confident, Nita Glaze did not have that kind of strength.

  Her room for manoeuvre had also been circumscribed by the fact that the producers – or more likely Justin Grover himself – had appointed a designer with whom he had worked many times before. So, although there had been some illusion of consultation with Nita in the run-up to the start of rehearsal, she found herself in nominal charge of a production in which the set and the central performance had already been decided before she came on board.

  Charles Paris knew there were two options for someone in that situation. Nita Glaze could either try to impose her own vision on the play, make every rehearsal an argument which she was ultimately bound to lose; or she could zip her lip, put on the show that Justin Grover wanted to be put on, and later reap the benefit of having had her credit on a major West End production. Charles knew what he’d do in the circumstances. But then he’d always done anything to avoid confrontation. He wondered whether Nita Glaze would have the good sense to do the same.

  Anyway, there were no open conflicts at the read-through. Everyone was charming to everyone else. The official proceedings started with a welcome from the producer, saying what an exciting adventure they were all embarking on. Then Justin Grover also said a few words, confirming what an exciting adventure they were all embarking on.

  In the general milling around which had preceded
the start of the read-through, the star had greeted Charles warmly, ‘Hello. I’m Justin Grover.’

  He recognized this trick of old. It was a form of inverted egocentricity, whereby a famous person humbly maintains the illusion that no one knows who he is.

  ‘I know that, Justin. You may remember that we worked together in Bridport. I was Rosencrantz and you were Guildenstern – or possibly the other way round.’

  ‘Yes, of course I remember, Charles. But I thought you might have forgotten.’

  This was taking mealy-mouthed humility a bit too far for Charles’s taste, but he didn’t make any comment. Just said a conventional, ‘Anyway, I’m delighted to be working with you again.’

  Justin Grover shrugged magnanimously. ‘If an actor can’t help out an old chum, what has the world of theatre come to, eh?’

  Charles winced inwardly. He had never liked being patronized. There was no false humility from the star now. Justin Grover was saying unequivocally, ‘I got you this job, and it therefore behoves you to be eternally grateful to me.’

  Charles had known, from the various emails that had been sent around to the cast in the weeks running up to the read-through, that he’d be working with at least one other actor he knew. The part of Brother Philip, The Monk Who Had Difficulty Controlling His Lust Towards Men (Especially Towards The Young Novice Who Had Just Joined The Monastery) was being played by Tod Singer.