A Deadly Habit

by Simon Brett

  He knew the line was rather crass. He didn’t know why he’d said it. Well, he did, actually. It was a reaction against Tod Singer’s pious abstinence. There was also something sexual there too. He had picked up a vibe that Tod was interested in Kell, and Charles wanted, as it were, to claim her allegiance to the cause of the drinkers. Allegiance to him too, perhaps.

  ‘You got anything planned, Immy?’ asked Kell.

  The redhead’s freckled face was irradiated by a smile. ‘Meet up with a few friends. Then early night too.’

  ‘You, Liddy?’

  Charles was keen to hear more about her plans, after the intriguing hint she’d dropped backstage.

  But before she could answer, Liddy looked out of the window and saw someone she recognized. A thin young man in a blue pinstriped suit stood outside. He had a flop of hair across his forehead and an expression of petulance.

  ‘Sorry, excuse me a moment,’ she said and hurried out.

  As soon as she joined him, the young man engaged in heated discussion with her. He seemed angry about something, and was waving his arms around.

  ‘Has Liddy got a stalker?’ asked Charles.

  ‘That’s no stalker,’ said Kell drily. ‘That’s her husband. Derek. He was asking for her at the stage door earlier.’

  They watched as Liddy and Derek walked off out of sight. The girl’s body language was now as angry as her husband’s.

  Kell Drummond looked at her watch and downed the remains of her coffee. ‘Back to the House of Fun,’ she said. ‘See you lot at two tomorrow, unless you hear to the contrary.’

  ‘We’ll be there,’ said Tod, and Kell gave him a broad smile.

  ‘Sure will,’ said Charles, and Kell gave him a broad smile. He couldn’t quite be certain, but he reckoned the one she’d given Tod was marginally broader. Or was he being paranoid?

  ‘I must go too,’ said Imogen, gathering up her bag and adding mysteriously, ‘lots of things to sort out before this evening.’

  After the women’s departure, there was a silence between the two men. The easy camaraderie of their Glasgow days didn’t seem equal to surviving Tod’s sobriety.

  ‘So how are you going to spend this unexpected leisure time, Charles?’

  ‘Ooh, I don’t know. But it might involve going to a pub and having a drink. I don’t suppose you …?’

  The expression on Tod’s face gave him his answer. As he knew it would. Charles recognized he was being childish, goading his former friend by bringing up the subject of alcohol. He should be showing respect for Tod’s self-control, rather than teasing him about it.

  ‘No, no, I didn’t really think you would. Instead, you’re going to fill the idle hour with an AA meeting?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How often do you do that?’

  ‘Most days.’

  ‘How long do they last?’

  ‘Varies. Hour, hour and a half.’

  ‘Do you have to go far?’

  ‘You’re usually quite near a meeting.’

  ‘What, even when you’re on tour?’

  ‘Oh yes, if a town’s big enough to have a theatre, there’ll be an AA branch. In the West End of London, there’s quite a choice.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Charles. Then he remembered a good story he’d heard. ‘“Friend of mine had a drink problem. So bad he joined Alcoholics Anonymous. He still drinks, but under another name!”’

  Tod’s face demonstrated clearly that he didn’t find the joke as funny as Charles did. ‘You should try coming to a meeting.’

  ‘What, me? Alcoholics Anonymous?’

  ‘Why not? You’ve obviously got a problem.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Tod. All right, yes, I drink a bit more than I should. But I haven’t got a problem.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘If you say so.’ Tod’s tone sounded, to Charles, smugger than ever. ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘I must be on my way. If you change your mind about coming to the meeting …’ He gave the address. ‘Six o’clock. Only an hour this one. So that actors who’ve got performances can get in before the “half”. There’ll be a lot of people from “the business” there. Lots of people like you, Charles.’

  With a sardonic smile, Tod Singer left the café. Charles went straight to the nearest pub.

  He was nearing the end of his second pint – he’d already downed the second chaser – and not getting very far on an intractable Times crossword, when his mobile rang.

  This was unusual. Having a mobile phone was essential for a contemporary actor. Who could say what time of the day or night might come the call from one’s agent saying that the National Theatre wanted one to give one’s Lear? Also, when one was actually in work, information from the stage management about rehearsal calls tended to come in the form of text messages. But those were the only reasons why Charles possessed a mobile. He wasn’t interested in the many other facilities it provided. He didn’t want to listen to music on a phone, or to Google, and his fingers seemed too big and clumsy to deal with the tiny keyboard. On the rare occasions when he sent emails, he used the laptop back in Hereford Road.

  He wasn’t like the generation of younger actors who checked their phones (and drank Perrier) the moment each rehearsal break was announced.

  The call was from Frances. ‘Hi, Charles. I was wondering how your schedule was working out.’

  ‘My schedule?’

  ‘Rehearsals. Don’t you remember, this morning you said you might be free this evening and, if so, you’d take me out for dinner.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Yes.’

  ‘So are you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Free this evening?’

  ‘Yes. Sure.’

  ‘Well, then …?’

  Charles had to readjust his plans for the day. He had indeed forgotten the morning’s exchange with Frances, and had been contemplating, with some relish, a day’s drinking. He was already under way on that, but if he stopped now, he told himself, he’d be sober by the time he met Frances.

  ‘Yes. Sure,’ he said again.

  There was a burst of laughter at a punch-line delivered by one of a group of men at the bar. ‘Where are you, Charles?’ Frances asked suspiciously.

  ‘Oh, just in a place having a drink. There’s a break in rehearsal.’ Why was he lying to his wife? Long habit?

  ‘By “a place”, I assume you mean “a pub”?’

  ‘No, just a coffee shop.’ Oh God, another lie.

  ‘I see,’ said Frances, and he was rather afraid she did. But she moved on. ‘So, tonight … what time? Eight’d suit me.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Usual place in Hampstead.’

  ‘That’d be good.’

  ‘OK, I’ll book it. As you said this morning, your last free evening for three months.’

  He had forgotten saying that too, but responded, ‘True enough.’ He chuckled. ‘And I suppose you’re expecting me to go through the whole evening without an alcoholic drink?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Frances. ‘I’m glad you’re getting the message, Charles.’

  It was nearly four by the time he left the pub. He would have stayed there longer, but the call from Frances had prohibited his normal way of killing time. Four hours till he needed to be in Hampstead. Not worth going back to Hereford Road. He supposed there might be a movie about to start in one of the cinemas around Shaftesbury Avenue, but he didn’t feel up to the effort of finding a newspaper and checking the listings. (It didn’t occur to him that that kind of information could be easily accessed on a mobile phone.)

  Then he remembered that for the next three months, he had a pied-à-terre in the West End. His dressing room in the Duke of Kent’s Theatre.

  The stage doorman, Gideon, was massively fat. His body spread down into his chair like a jelly just released from its mould. But he had a smile of universal beneficence, as he looked up from his laptop to greet the new arrival.

  ‘Hi. My name’s Charles Paris.’

 
‘Of course. Got your name on the list for The Habit.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So, we’ll be seeing a lot of each other over the next three months.’

  ‘We certainly will.’

  Charles had to squeeze up against the wall, as a bulky man carrying a reel of electrical cable pushed through.

  ‘So many people here for the get-in,’ Gideon commented. ‘In and out through the scene-dock and here. I’m meant to get them to sign in and out every time, but sod that for a game of soldiers. Just let them come and go as they please.’

  ‘You have to,’ Charles empathized.

  The stage doorman nodded. ‘Yes. Of course, I knew Justin Grover way back, just when he was starting his career.’

  ‘Where was that?’ asked Charles, thinking it’d be really spooky if the answer was Bridport.

  But no. Gideon replied, ‘RADA.’

  ‘Did you act too?’

  ‘Only for a few years. Don’t think I was very good. Didn’t get the parts, anyway. And then I had health issues.’

  So maybe his huge bulk was due to some medical condition. Charles said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. The amount of sheer terror I’ve seen on actors’ faces when they’re coming in to do a show – be enough to put anyone off. I think I’m on the right side of the fence. And I get all the showbiz gossip sitting here, you know.’

  ‘I bet you do.’

  ‘I think I was only ever really in it for the gossip.’

  Charles chuckled. ‘Anyway, could I have my key? Got a couple of hours to kill.’

  ‘Sure.’ Gideon reached round to a board with numbered hooks on it. ‘Seven. Nice dressing room. View into the kitchens of a Chinese restaurant. Apparently, Edith Evans once had it for a long run.’

  ‘I will be appropriately respectful of her memory.’

  ‘You do that.’

  ‘Do you know, apparently once in rehearsal, Edith Evans thought the director was giving too much attention to working on one of the other actor’s speeches, so she demanded: “And what am I supposed to do in this long pause while he’s talking?”’

  Gideon roared with laughter. He was a glutton for theatrical anecdotage, and Charles knew that his own impersonation of the Great Dame’s strangled diction was rather good. Most actors had a few such tricks up their sleeves, and it was amazing how durable they could be. Long after their deaths, Green Rooms could still be silenced by impressions of Coward, Gielgud and Richardson.

  Eventually, the laughter subsided, and Charles felt he’d made a useful ally. Gideon handed the key across. ‘Make sure you give it back to me when you leave.’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘And mind the stairs!’

  Up in dressing room Number Seven, Charles settled into the chair in front of the bare mirror, and tried to focus his mind on The Times crossword.

  He woke up feeling shitty. The afternoon’s drinks had given him a headache which normally he would have dispelled by having more of the same, but the prospect of his rendezvous with Frances ruled that out. He felt in his pockets for paracetamol, but hadn’t got any.

  The fact that he hadn’t completed any more of The Times crossword clues did not improve his mood.

  In fact, he felt really depressed. He was ruining his life. He seemed to be on kamikaze autopilot. Frances had offered him a lifeline, and he seemed to be doing everything possible to avoid taking hold of it.

  He thought about his drinking and, in his diminished state, realized that it was out of control. Left to his own devices that afternoon, he would probably have stayed in the pub for a couple more hours, then shambled back to Hereford Road, picking up a bottle of Bell’s on the way. And there wouldn’t have been much left in it by the end of the evening.

  Tod Singer was right. He had got a problem.

  He looked at his watch. Twenty to six. He remembered the address. Only five minutes away from the Duke of Kent’s Theatre.

  Maybe it was time he took back control of his life. Maybe it was time he attended an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

  He bought some peppermint chewing gum on the way.

  He didn’t like it. The meeting took place in a church, which made him feel even more as if he were participating in the ritual of a religion, whose observances were unfamiliar. He had felt the same on the few occasions when he’d had to attend funerals in Catholic churches. He didn’t know the responses, he didn’t know the hymns, he didn’t know when to stand up and when to sit down. He felt alienated by the congregation’s smug familiarity with the routine. He felt everyone was looking at him.

  The visit had started all right. Tod Singer had spotted him the moment he slunk into the church, and the greeting was genuinely warm. For him, Charles’s appearance was no doubt a vindication. Another lost soul was being guided on to the path of righteousness.

  But Tod reassured the visitor that he didn’t have to say anything. ‘You’ll be offered the opportunity to tell everyone that this is your first meeting, but if you don’t want to do that, then fine. Participate as much or as little as you want to.’

  Tod had also introduced the newcomer to a lot of other attendees. Charles was taken aback by how many of them he already knew. He shouldn’t really have been surprised. An AA meeting in the middle of Soho was, as Tod had suggested, bound to attract a lot of people ‘in the business’. There were one or two present starry enough to have their names in lights on Shaftesbury Avenue, but there was no obeisance to professional hierarchy. Before the proceedings proper started, there were a lot of man-hugs, and a general feeling of slightly camp camaraderie. Charles found it quite appealing.

  But once the meeting began, his attitude swiftly changed. It wasn’t just the venue that made it feel like a religious service. On the wall behind the person in charge hung a scroll of the famous Twelve Steps, looking for all the world exactly like a manifest of the Ten Commandments. Obviously, the contents of the two lists were different, but Charles was surprised to see how much ‘God’ came into the Alcoholics Anonymous version.

  He was also put off by the responses that the rest of the congregation knew so well. He had heard anecdotally about every comment being prefaced by ‘I’m (INSERT FIRST NAME HERE) and I’m an alcoholic’, but hearing it actually being said he found a big turn-off. The possibility that he might be adding to the conversation by saying, ‘I’m Charles and I’m an alcoholic’, already remote, quickly vanished over the horizon.

  He found the congratulations offered when people announced how long they’d been without a drink, and the confessions they made of how the drink had ruined their lives, equally excruciating. Who cared about their lost jobs, their arrests, their relationships broken down by booze? They were a bunch of losers. Unlike him. He’d never let alcohol get in the way of anything really important.

  Above all, he disliked the imposed sense of community. Charles Paris had never been a joiner. Maybe that was part of the problem.

  The meeting certainly did not make him any likelier to give up alcohol. It made him, like a resentful child, even more determined to kick against this new expression of authority. An hour before, in his dressing room, Charles Paris would definitely have owned up to being an alcoholic. In that church, though, surrounded by the genuine article, he found his mind forming the words, ‘You may be one, but I’m bloody not!’

  Perversely, all the piety and bonhomie made him desperate for a very large Bell’s.

  However Charles Paris was going to achieve what Frances wanted of him, it wouldn’t be through Alcoholics Anonymous.

  When the meeting finally came to an end and the man-hugs and camp camaraderie turned to farewells, Charles thanked Tod Singer very much for inviting him.

  ‘You don’t have to go right now, do you, Charles? Why don’t you join us round the corner for a coffee?’

  He knew it was childish, but he couldn’t help replying, ‘No, thanks, Tod. I’m going to get a real drink.’

  He was surprised at how angry he felt. The exp
erience of the meeting had released a great flood of bile within him. Was it guilt? Or a deep unwillingness to be identified with the other sinners? Or resentment at having drinking identified as a sin?

  He went straight to the nearest convenience store and bought a vastly overpriced bottle of Bell’s.

  Then back to the Duke of Kent’s. The man-mountain Gideon was not in his cubbyhole, so Charles entered and took his key.

  Then he went up to his dressing room and started drinking. Hard, destructive drinking.

  He didn’t know where he was when he woke up. His brain seemed to have shattered into hard, dry shards of flint that were grinding against each other. He reached for the bottle to ease the pain, and found it two-thirds empty. He took a long, restorative swig.

  He had a feeling that things had happened during the evening. He’d met people, he’d talked to people. But his memory could not recall their names, their faces, or what they had talked about. He didn’t know what was real and what was not real.

  Charles looked at his watch. A quarter to eleven. And then he remembered Frances.

  Clutching the bottle, in sheer panic he rushed down the vertiginous staircases.

  At the bottom, at stage level, there was what looked like a pile of costumes. Closer inspection revealed it to be one of the monk’s habits.

  Inside it was Liddy Max. Blood from an unseen wound had reddened her blonde hair and pooled around her head.

  She was dead.

  That was real.

  SIX

  The stage door was again unmanned. Charles hung his key back on its hook and hurried out of the theatre.

  He was in no condition to deal with Frances. He was in no condition to deal with anything. He hailed a cab and gave the driver the Hereford Road address.

  Once there, he had to sleep. So he finished the bottle of Bell’s.

  The only good thing that happened on the Tuesday happened early. He received a text from Kell to say that there would be no rehearsal call that day.

  Which was just as well because he was in no condition to deliver any kind of performance. To deliver anything, in fact.

  He also found a series of increasingly anxious messages and texts from Frances. She had left them the previous evening. He must have been aware of the blips from his phone as they arrived, but known he was in no state to get back to her. He couldn’t really remember.