Killings on Jubilee Terrace

by Robert Barnard

  ‘No, of course I wasn’t.’

  ‘Then any other sort of interest is definitely not worth the expense of a wedding. This is just a move to have a laugh at Bill’s expense – right?’

  ‘Right.’

  But Bet still thought it was a pity. They were in so many ways suited.

  James Selcott put down the phone and lay back on his bed. Another rejection. A polite one, regretful, hoping she would be free next time he rang. But a rejection nonetheless.

  It didn’t really worry him, he told himself. He could go along to a club any time he liked, pick up a girl for sex any time he liked. In his life the club was more important than the sex. At a club he could be looked at, watched, admired. He was the centre of his own life, and no one was ever going to push him to its sidelines.

  James knew he had what it took to make a great actor. One day, and that day soon, he was going to be asked to audition for the National or the Royal Shakespeare. That invitation would not be the result of his work on Jubilee Terrace, but of the small slots he worked on in his times out of the soap – one-acters at lunchtime theatres in London, companies that sprang up, had a coterie success on the Edinburgh Festival fringes, then faded as quickly as tropical blooms. Soon the notices he got in The Guardian and the Independent on Sunday would pay off, and he would slough off the Terrace as if it was an unwanted skin.

  What it took to be a great actor (returning to an earlier thought) was self-absorption, tunnel vision, the ability to absorb a fictitious role and weld it into his own personality. Over the eighteen months of his appearing in Jubilee Terrace Will Brown, his character, had changed, and recently he had become less likeable by the episode. James was quite conscious of this. James didn’t do likeable.

  What James did was single-mindedness. He was destined for a career of outstanding distinction because he was the foremost young actor of his generation. Fuck that incredible twerp Hamish Fawley who suggested he’d gone into acting when he’d failed to get into plumbing. He’d show Hamish. He’d ram his distinction as an actor down Hamish’s throat till he choked. That’d be the only suitable punishment for him. James was quite happy to be disliked, but he couldn’t tolerate being despised, or – most difficult of all to forgive – being condescended to.

  In her Northern Television flat in Pudsey – recently decorated with no taste whatsoever – Susan Fyldes cooked herself a Marks and Spencer’s meal for one and began planning her evening.

  She was going to Marco’s Place with Stephen, Mariella, June, Richard, Halvard and Wayne. All of them except Wayne were young people her parents would have approved of. They were of ‘the right sort’, and if they, her parents, were unaware of some of the things their daughter’s group did, or things that they took – well, ignorance was bliss, and Susan was the last person in the world to enlighten their darkness.

  Wayne was perhaps – no, not perhaps, definitely – well beneath their class, but he was a lovely boy, and had worshipped her from the moment she walked on to his TV screen on her first appearance in Jubilee Terrace. So Wayne came along on most of their clubbing nights, and provided a willing pair of ears for Susan’s tales of her family’s past: how her grandfather had been Lord Lieutenant of West Yorkshire, how her great-great-grandmother had been the mistress of the Duke of Edinburgh (‘not the present one, of course’ she would say with a giggle, ‘but Queen Victoria’s second son’), how an uncle had been a top civil servant in the Ministry of Agriculture, and a second cousin a mannequin with Hardy Amies. All these claims were, so far as Susan knew, true, but people had been known to be less than impressed by them. Wayne, dear old Wayne, drank them in and asked for more.

  Of course these days a lot of people professed to be indifferent to claims of family distinction. You are what you are, they tended to say, not what your great-great relatives and ancestors were. Susan thought people like that were just jealous. Anyway, she had more than proved her worth in her own right – proved it every weekday night, when Jubilee Terrace was broadcast. She didn’t need ancestors, though she certainly loved to talk about them.

  That jibe about apprentice plumbers still rankled.

  Winnie Hey put a saucepan of milk on the hotplate and spooned Ovaltine into a cup. She liked a drink at the end of the day, but not an alcoholic one, which had the opposite effect on her to that it had on most people: it kept her awake.

  Philip Marston had rung in the early evening to see if she wanted to come out to the pub. She often enjoyed being with a little knot of Terrace people who drank regularly at The Palace: she thought the other actors enjoyed her tales of Rep disasters in the Fifties and Sixties – and if they didn’t they were good at hiding the fact. She enjoyed their vitality and optimism – so different from the stale and bitter cynicism of Hamish. But she knew Philip asked her more from a sense of social correctness than anything else: she had once heard him say ‘the old are people like the rest of us’, and she’d thought grimly: ‘until they start losing all the things that make them individual’. She enjoyed pub nights, was grateful for being asked, but tried to refuse often enough not to become a fixture.

  She sat in her chair in the two-roomed flat in The Calls, bought before prices had gone through the roof but when they were already touching the ceiling. She was happy, satisfied, almost complacent. The end of Cyril was in sight, which meant a final farewell to Hamish. And what made her complacent was that nobody had suggested that Lady Wharton would move away from her inappropriately working-class flat in Jubilee Terrace. And why should she? She had friends there, things to do. If she, Winnie, had been a Lady Wharton she would have stayed on. The enchanting prospect was rising before her of employment until death, or until the dreaded nursing home became an inevitability.

  She had during the last years had a fantasy of being in a nursing home and acting as executioner to all who offended her morals or her tastes: gropers, lovers of Radio One, greedy coveters of other people’s unconsidered trifles. It would be so easy in a nursing home to kill someone, several someones, because people were dying all the time. She felt sure she could ram tablets down their throats while they were asleep, or even while they were in their usual comatose condition.

  Her fantasy of killing Hamish had become less vividly real as his departure date came nearer. Pity, really, because it had been a good idea. And, like all those people she would enjoy bumping off in her old people’s home, it presented itself to her as an act of social and moral sanitation: benefiting all by an act that improved the quality of their lives.

  Yes, it was a shame that she would no longer be called upon to rescue people in advance from having to endure the agony of acting in a play, film or soap whose cast was also graced by that moral leper Hamish.

  But of course she’d never been serious, had she?

  Bet Garrett pushed open the door of her own semi-detached home – or what had until recently been that – and listened. Not a sound. The girls were still at school, and she’d ascertained the fact that Bill would be filming. She hauled her empty suitcases into the hall and went upstairs to the bedroom she had shared (on and off) with Bill. She pulled out the drawers in the dressing table and left the doors of the wardrobe open so she could simply grab the most desirable items and bundle them in the cases. There was no guarantee, she told herself, that Bill would not take all that remained and give them to one of the charity shops.

  She was happily, if haphazardly, engaged in filling the larger case when she became aware of a face at the door.

  ‘Christ, Debbie, you made me jump. What the hell are you doing home?’ She gave another, lesser jump when another face appeared behind the first. ‘Rosie! What is this? What’s that f–ing useless father of yours mean by letting you wag school?’

  ‘We’re not wagging school,’ said Debbie. ‘It’s half term.’

  ‘How was I supposed to know that when nobody told me?’

  ‘You haven’t been around to tell,’ said the third figure to appear at the door. ‘And Dad’s not useless.’
>
  ‘Well, he’s obviously using you as an unpaid childminder.’

  That was rich, Angela thought.

  ‘I’ve been an unpaid childminder since I was five. And I’ve never asked for pay from you, so I don’t see why I should from Dad.’

  ‘Oh, have it your own way. It’s not for me to worry about you now.’ The children remained silent. Leaving them alone had never worried her in the past. ‘Well, I think that’s all I can manage at the moment. Tell your dad I’ll be back for one more instalment, then he can do what he likes with whatever’s left.’

  ‘I expect he’ll put it out with the garbage,’ said Angela.

  ‘Oh do you, young lady? Well, if he was the caring, sharing bugger he pretends to be he’d take it to a charity shop, or give it to the Sally Army. Too much trouble, I suppose. Well, he’ll see what trouble three small monsters like you are, won’t he? I suppose I should say “Be good”, but I won’t bother because I hope you give him hell.’

  She clicked her case shut with a ringing finality, then pushed past the two younger ones, gave a look of particular dislike at her eldest, then humped the suitcases down the stairs. As she came to the hall she stopped and picked up an envelope from the little table.

  ‘I missed this. When did it come?’

  ‘This morning,’ Angela said. ‘Dad had already gone.’

  ‘My bloody solicitor, getting his finger out at last. Well, tell your dad I mean every word. He’s not getting his way over this – why should he?’

  And not specifying what she was talking about, she threw open the front door and banged it shut behind her. Angela went and looked at the envelope. The inscription in the top left hand corner read: ‘Bland, Witterley and Kemble, Solicitors.’ She easily opened the self-adhesive envelope.

  Later that day, when Bill arrived home, Angela left a quarter of an hour, as she often did, then went down to talk to him. She found him on the sofa in the sitting room, his head in his hand, sobbing. The letter was on the rug in front of him. She ran over and put her arms around him.

  ‘Dad! Dad! She doesn’t mean it! She was here today. I know she doesn’t mean it. She doesn’t want anything to do with us. She made that quite clear.’

  Bill dabbed a handkerchief to his eyes.

  ‘Oh, I know that, my darling. I know she couldn’t care less about you. But that’s what I’m afraid of: that some damn fool of a judge will give custody of you to someone who doesn’t give a damn about you.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Deathbed Scene

  Charlie Peace looked at Reggie Friedman and Melvin Settle and he saw in their faces nothing but bewilderment. They studied his ID card – ‘Detective Inspector Dexter A Peace’ – as if it were a piece of dog dirt found on the immaculately maintained set of Jubilee Terrace.

  ‘Yes?’ said Melvin Settle, with a combination of hauteur and condescension.

  ‘We have received an anonymous letter,’ began Charlie, conscious it was not a brilliant opening.

  ‘Oh? Don’t the police normally suggest that such garbage is thrown straight in the bin where it belongs?’

  ‘Sometimes we do. Since this one concerns a national figure – though a very minor one – we thought we could be in deep trouble with the tabloids if we didn’t do a certain amount of investigation.’

  ‘Oh, the tabloids,’ said Reggie, as if the last thing Northern Television would pay attention to was The Sun or the Mirror. ‘And what national figure, might I ask?’

  ‘The letter named an actor called Vernon Watts—’ began Charlie. The result stopped him in his tracks.

  ‘Christ Almighty,’ said Reggie. ‘He’s been dead more than four months.’

  ‘—who played the part of Bert Porter, I believe.’

  ‘He did, yes.’ Reggie looked at his watch. ‘Look here, Melvin, I’ve got to be at a script conference. Could you take over here?’

  ‘You seem to forget, Reggie—’ the voice was oiled and urbane, ‘—that my work title is Script Editor in Chief. I chair all script conferences.’

  ‘Oh, I know, Melvin, but we’re in agreement on all the main subjects so I can easily chair this one in your absence.’

  ‘I shan’t be absent, Reggie. The matter of this new curate and whether the part should be developed is coming up. It’s a tricky business. A vicar is all very well in Emmerdale, and long ago they had a wet young curate in EastEnders, but a lot of people feel that a curate would fit in ill with a North Country soap, even if we manage to make him into a real character.’ He turned to Charlie. ‘The meeting won’t last longer than an hour. Can you amuse yourself for that long?’

  Charlie nodded, but they were not looking, and were already ushering him out – pushing would better describe it – and locking the door to Reggie’s office, where Charlie had been shown when he had first arrived. As the pair bustled off down the corridor Charlie looked at his watch: eleven twenty. He felt condescended to by that phrase ‘amuse yourself’ but nevertheless felt he could wander round and see how a soap was made. Alternatively he could leave the studio and look for the nearest pub. Or did they serve real beer in the Duke of York’s? He knew there were regular visits to the studio by the public and fans, chaperoned and kept on the rails by employees of Northern Television.

  He decided to opt for the fantasy world, and hope that the alcohol would not turn out to be cold tea. He felt he could do with a chaperone himself, but decided instead to wander on spec and to home in on any area that noise was coming from. His initial explorations produced little but corridors, sometimes containing offices with what he suspected were outrageously over-hyped job descriptions on the door. Eventually he landed up on the outskirts of a set where filming was taking place. The setting was a room with a view (on to red-brick houses forming a terrace) and a bed – not a marital or an extra-marital bed, but a sick one. Charlie slipped inside the door of the studio and registered that on the other side, sitting straight-backed on an upright chair, was an elderly lady.

  ‘Oh no!’ came a voice from the bed. ‘You’ve marched bang between me and the camera. It’s amateur night all over again. Did you train with the Oswaldtwistle Players? The focus here is on me. I’m dying slowly. It isn’t on my spiritual mentor, or would-be mentor. Get it? You’ll be lucky if the great unwashed audience ever sees your face.’

  ‘I decide where the focus is,’ came from a man in jeans and trainers by a camera.

  ‘Jim Carrington,’ said the elderly lady in a whisper. ‘Reggie Friedman’s second in command. Does episodes Reggie doesn’t want to do.’

  ‘I’m sure you had to learn the tricks of the trade when you started in television,’ said the youthful figure in a dog collar and flannels. ‘I’m learning as quickly as I can. Try to exercise a bit of charity.’

  ‘Christ Almighty!’ said Hamish Fawley, obviously suspecting a tongue in cheek, and rightly. ‘He’ll be sending in his application for the Archbishopric of Canterbury next.’

  The edge of humour in the ‘curate’s’ intervention pleased Charlie, though he was not sure if the young actor’s ‘taking the piss’ was aimed at Hamish or at his own role as wet-behind-the-ears curate.

  ‘He’s new,’ came the woman’s voice from the other side of the doorway. Charlie looked down at her and liked what he saw.

  ‘I think I’ve seen you in the show,’ he said. ‘With a different voice.’

  ‘Oh, the different voice goes without saying,’ she said. ‘My father was manager of the City Varieties for three years back in the Forties, so of course we lived in Leeds. Yorkshire comes quite naturally to me, and I’ve never lost it. It’s been useful over the years, and luckily Gladys Porter is not meant to be broad.’

  ‘Ah yes, Gladys Porter,’ said Charlie, who had perhaps seen Jubilee Terrace a dozen times.

  ‘I’m Marjorie Harcourt-Smith. Are you auditioning for a new part?’

  ‘Auditioning? No. Do I look like an actor? I’m flattered.’

  ‘I don’t see why you should be flattered. It’s o
nly slavery with the added disadvantage of frequent unemployment.’

  ‘I’m flattered because in television drama everybody is twenty-five per cent better looking than his or her equivalent in real life would be and twenty-five per cent better dressed as well. Anyway you’ve got your token black, haven’t you?’

  They both looked to the other end of the studio, where Susan and James, ever together and ever apart, were sprawled in two easy chairs.

  ‘Oh, we don’t have token blacks – I mean, we’ve had lots in the past: Mr Raschid the garage proprietor and…’ Her voice and memory failed her. ‘Yes, we have one token black. For the moment.’

  ‘Not popular?’

  ‘A right little shit. You don’t mind my saying so?’

  ‘Not at all. All minorities have the right to produce shits. Or even monsters. Anyway, I’m Charlie Peace.’ He got out his ID. ‘Inspector Peace.’

  Marjorie Harcourt-Smith peered at the plastic.

  ‘Inspector? Health and Safety?’

  ‘No, law and order.’

  ‘Oh. Good Heavens.’ Charlie watched her eyebrows going skywards. ‘Well, you’d know all about tokenism.’

  ‘You were married – in the soap – to Vernon Watts weren’t you?’

  There was a throb in the voice when she simply said: ‘Yes.’

  ‘What sort of man was he?’

  ‘Look, we were about as close as those two over there. Not close at all. You won’t get a balanced account from me.’

  ‘Well, I’ll settle for an unbalanced one. So far I have nothing on him.’

  ‘Well—’ She stopped before she started. ‘But why are you interested in Vernon?’

  ‘Never mind that. Just tell me about him, and why you didn’t get on.’

  Marjorie closed her eyes.

  ‘He was an ageing music hall star. Made a good living for a time in the variety theatres and working men’s clubs. Got used to the spotlight, loved it and needed it. Then when the music hall faded—’