Play to the End

by Robert Goddard

  Respectfully,

  Derek Oswin

  Yesterday afternoon, I knew nothing of Derek Oswin. This morning, I was still unaware of his name. Now, within six hours of our first meeting, he had me dangling on a string. I cursed him roundly under my breath as I walked through the crowds along North Street in the approximate direction of the Sea Air, wrestling in my mind with the conundrum of how to respond to his message.

  He wouldn’t be at the Rendezvous, of course, even if it was still open. He wouldn’t be at home either. He’d make sure I had no chance of speaking to him until the time he’d chosen: 8 p.m. And to speak to him then, with curtain up at 7.45, I’d have to pull out of the evening’s show. Such, in his own quaint phraseology, was the earnest of my good intentions he’d decided upon. Common sense said I should scorn his summons. Pride in my own professionalism rammed the point home. But there was the definite hint of a threat in his closing sentences. There’d be a penalty to pay for standing him up. That was certain. And only he knew what it was.

  I didn’t get as far as the Sea Air after all. I doubled back to Bond Street and skulked about on the opposite side from the stage door. When I’d left, Brian had been putting the understudies through their paces, but I didn’t reckon that would take long. The last week of a Londonless run is no time for doing more than the minimum. Sure enough, I’d not been there above ten minutes when Denis Maple and Glenys Williams emerged into the lamplight.

  I dashed across the road and caught up with them before they’d reached the corner. They looked understandably surprised to see me.

  “Hello, Toby,” said Glenys. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I replied. “Could we have a word, Denis?”

  “Sure,” said Denis, frowning at me.

  “I can take a hint,” said Glenys. “See you both later.”

  She beetled obligingly off, leaving Denis with the frown still fixed on his face. “Shall we go back in?” he asked, nodding towards the stage door.

  “No. What about a quick drink somewhere?”

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

  “Oh yes.” In ordinary circumstances, drinking so close to a performance would have been a very bad idea. But the circumstances weren’t ordinary. Not by a long way. “Definitely.”

  I piloted a bemused Denis to a youth-oriented pub in the North Lane, where anonymity for a pair of middle-aged actors was virtually guaranteed. Denis is easing his way back into the theatre after heart trouble and I was well aware he didn’t need the stress I was about to inflict on him. The least I could do was give him a chance to get used to the idea that tonight wasn’t going to be quite like every other night on tour.

  I ordered a scotch and persuaded him to join me, then we plonked ourselves down as far as possible—which wasn’t very—from the nearest rock-blaring loudspeaker.

  “Something on your mind, Toby?” Denis prompted.

  “Yes.” I took a swallow of whisky and came straight to the point. “You’ll be playing James Elliott this evening.”

  “What?”

  “You’ll be standing in for me, Denis.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just what I say. I won’t be there.”

  “But…there’s nothing wrong with you.”

  “I have to be somewhere else.” I would have lowered my voice as I ploughed on, but the wall of sound meant our conversation had to be conducted at a bellow. “It can’t be helped.”

  “You’re baling out?”

  “Just for tonight. Normal service resumes tomorrow.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “No. I’m serious, Denis. You’re on.”

  He stared at me for a moment, then said, “Bloody hell,” and gulped down most of his whisky.

  “Want another?”

  “Better not, if I’m performing tonight.” He thought about the prospect, then added, “On reflection, perhaps I better had,” and held out his glass.

  By the time I’d fetched our refills, his shock had lessened enough for puzzlement to show through. “Not like you to let the side down, Toby.”

  “No choice.”

  “Care to elaborate?”

  “Can’t.”

  “Are you planning to phone in sick?”

  “No. Brian would be round to the Sea Air quicker than you can pour a Lemsip. And I wouldn’t be there. So, I wondered if…”

  “You want me to tell them?”

  “Would you?”

  “Bloody hell.” Denis made a pained face. “What am I supposed to say?”

  “Exactly what’s happened.”

  “It won’t go down well.”

  “I imagine not.”

  “Leo will get to hear.”

  “Of course.”

  “It’ll be a black mark against you.”

  “Not the first.”

  “Even so…” Denis worked with me on several episodes of Long Odds. We know each other well enough for much to be left unsaid. The consequences of my no-show were sure to be uncomfortable, but, given the severely limited future of Lodger in the Throat, no worse than that. A little local difficulty was all either of us had cause to anticipate. “You do know what you’re doing, don’t you, Toby?”

  “I think so. Besides…” I smiled. “You’ll wow them, Denis.”

  There was well over an hour to go till I was due to meet Derek Oswin when Denis and I parted. I walked down to the front and stared out to sea. I could still have changed my mind then. In fact, I did change my mind, several times, as I contemplated the fallout from what I was about to do. Leo would play the heavy producer with a will. And I could hardly complain. Walking out on the show, albeit for one night only, was gross dereliction of an actor’s duty. Part of me was appalled that I was even considering it.

  But, in the final analysis, what did it really matter? They can say what they like. They can even dock my salary if they want to. The play’s going nowhere. We all know that. Whereas my rendezvous with Derek Oswin…

  I suddenly decided that maybe I didn’t have to choose after all. I ran most of the way up to the taxi-rank in East Street and jumped breathlessly into a cab. We were in Viaduct Road ten minutes later. Telling the driver to wait, I dashed to the door of number 77 and hammered at it with the knocker.

  No response, of course, and no light showing. That was as I’d expected, really, but it had been worth a try in case I caught Oswin on the premises. My guess was that he was already lying in wait for me at the meeting-place he’d nominated. I leapt back into the cab and named it as our next port of call.

  Hollingdean Road is one of the limbs of the “Vogue Gyratory,” as the driver called the confused meeting-point of thoroughfares near the Sainsbury’s superstore out on the Lewes Road. He stopped just short of the railway bridge, in the gateway of a used-car pound, where I told him to wait again. The cuboid roofline of a modern industrial estate loomed above me as I got out, next to the older brick ramparts of the bridge. You think Brighton is all pier and theatricals and in my game you don’t have to question the thought, but Oswin was drawing me into a duller, grimmer Brighton altogether. I just had to hope I could draw myself out again in double quick time.

  I hurried under the bridge, checking my watch as I went. It was gone seven now. The point of no return was approaching more rapidly than I’d allowed for. The road curved sharply right on the other side, while an access lane led straight on into a dimly lit sprawl of depots and factories. Two stark blocks of flats reared above them to the west. I looked around. There was no sign of Oswin.

  A minute passed. And part of another. Then I knew. Oswin wasn’t going to show up early. I wasn’t going to catch him out. The terms he’d set were all or nothing. I started back to the cab.

  “Where now?” the driver asked, as I opened the door and slumped into the passenger seat.

  I looked at my watch again. It was 7.05. I could still be at the theatre by 7.10, the latest acceptable arrival time for the cast, or at least very shortly after. It w
as what I should do, professionally, prudentially. It was crazy to let Oswin mess me around. I didn’t need to. I simply wasn’t willing to. And yet…“I will not give you another chance of learning what this is all about.”

  “Back into the centre?” the driver prompted.

  “Yes,” I answered in an undertone. “Back into the centre.”

  He pulled out into the road, then reversed into the gateway, preparatory to heading back the way we’d come. I thought of Jenny and the true nature of the chance Oswin might be offering me.

  “No,” I said suddenly. “I’ve changed my mind. I’m staying here.”

  By 7.20, Denis must have broken the news. Jocasta and Elsa would probably be worried about me. Fred’s reaction would veer more towards the sarcastic, Brian’s the disbelievingly dumbstruck. But he would have to believe it. As for what Donohue might say…

  By 7.40, after fruitless attempts to raise me on my mobile as well as at the Sea Air, Brian would authorize the announcement to the audience. “In this evening’s performance, the part of James Elliott will be played by Denis Maple.”

  At 7.45, as the curtain went up, I was standing under the Hollingdean Road railway bridge, watching and waiting. I silently wished Denis luck—and myself some too.

  “Mr. Flood?” I heard Oswin’s call before I saw him, slipping out of the shadows along the access lane. “I’m over here.” It had just turned eight o’clock.

  I moved forward to meet him. His face was a sallow mask in the sodium lamplight. I didn’t have much doubt in that instant that I was dealing with a madman. But I already knew his was a very strange kind of madness. Almost more of an alternative sanity.

  “Thanks for coming,” he said.

  “You didn’t leave me much choice.”

  “You could have honoured your contract with Leo S. Gauntlett Productions. Just as I could have honoured my promise to leave Mrs. Flood alone.”

  “So, why the bloody hell didn’t you?”

  “I explained in the letter. You took me by surprise. I…panicked.”

  “Still feeling panicky?”

  “A little. I thought you might be…angry.”

  “I will be.” I stepped closer and stared straight at him. “If you don’t tell me now what this is really all about.”

  “Oh, I will. Of course, Mr. Flood. Everything.”

  “For a start, what are we doing here?”

  “I used to work round here. Like my father. And his father before him. We all worked for the Colborns in our time.”

  “Doing what?”

  “What we were told. I’ll show you the site.” He led the way up the gently sloping land and I fell in beside him. “That’s the wholesale meat market,” he said, indicating the long, low building to our right, above which we were steadily rising. “And this is the City Council’s technical services depot.” He pointed to the drab, straggling structure to our left. “Up here used to be the entrance to Colbonite Limited.”

  What in God’s name, I wondered, was the point of all this? We’d reached a padlocked wiremesh gate, blocking access to a compound of slant-roofed shacks, decrepit workshops and debris-strewn yards. I gazed past Oswin into the dark and dismal middle distance, perceiving nothing of the slightest significance.

  “It covered the whole area between here and the railway line,” he went on. “There used to be a siding serving one of the warehouses. It was disused by the time I started, in nineteen seventy-six, straight from school. My A levels weren’t much use at Colbonite, but Dad reckoned I should be…contributing.”

  “What did Colbonite do?”

  “Made things, Mr. Flood. Anything and everything in plastic. Kitchenware. Garden furniture. Radio and television casings. And boxes. Lots and lots of boxes. Mr. Colborn’s great-grandfather founded the business in eighteen eighty-three. And his father wound it up one hundred and six years later. I haven’t had a steady job since. Thirteen years there. And thirteen years away.”

  “Well, I…”

  “Not much to look at, is it?”

  “No, but—”

  “Why should it be? That’s what you’re thinking. Companies come and companies go. Livelihoods with them. So what? Who cares?”

  “Apparently you do, Derek.”

  He looked round at me in the darkness. I couldn’t tell what sort of an expression he had on his face, couldn’t tell if there was any expression at all. The traffic rumbled under the bridge behind us. A dog barked somewhere. The wind rattled a corrugated roof on the other side of what had once been the premises of Colbonite Ltd.

  “How about coming to the point?” I said, trying to squeeze the impatience out of my voice.

  “Yes. Sorry. Of course. Mind if we walk on?”

  “Where are we going now?”

  “Back towards Viaduct Road. My route home every working day for thirteen years.”

  The lane curved sharply to the left ahead of us and climbed between a high wall to one side and the Colbonite site to the other. There wasn’t a soul to be seen. What exactly did I think I was doing prowling around such an area with a borderline head case for company, when I was supposed to be on stage at the Theatre Royal? So far, I’d gained nothing but unsought and unwanted information about Derek Oswin’s one and only spell of regular employment. He’d worked for the Colborns. He no longer did. As he himself had said: so what?

  “Since my parents died,” he went on, “I’ve had a lot of time to myself. Too much, I expect. Living on your own, you get…set in your ways.”

  That was undeniable. But there are ways…and then there are Derek Oswin’s ways. “You said you were going to come to the point.”

  “I am, Mr. Flood, I am. Colbonite is the point. I’ve studied its history, you see. I’ve become an expert on it.”

  “Have you really?”

  “I probably know more about it than Mr. Colborn does himself. Do you want me to tell you about Mr. Colborn? Young Mr. Colborn, I mean. I imagine you do. Is he worthy of Mrs. Flood? The question must have crossed your mind.”

  “What would you say?”

  “I’d say not. He has…a treacherous character.”

  “But it was his father who closed down the business.”

  “Under pressure from his son. Roger Colborn wanted to close us down from the moment he first became involved. Colbonite held a valuable patent on a dyeing technique. He reckoned it was more profitable to sell that than keep us going. He was probably right.”

  “You call that treacherous?”

  “I do, yes. The workforce didn’t get a slice of what the Colborns sold the patent for. All they got…was redundancy.”

  “Even so—”

  “And there was more to it than that. A lot more. So, I decided to put my excess of spare time to some use. I compiled a detailed history of Colbonite. I wrote the whole story. From start…to finish.”

  The lane had turned another bend by now and brought us out onto a busy road leading down into the city. A brightly lit tanker was visible in the far distance, cruising across a wedge of darkness that was the sea. We started down the hill towards it.

  “This is Ditchling Road,” said Derek. “It’s a straight line of sight from here down to St. Peter’s Church and out to the Palace Pier. It always was a lovely view to walk home with.”

  “I’m sure it was, but—”

  “I want the history to be published, Mr. Flood. That’s the thing. I can’t bear to think I’ve gone to all that trouble for nothing. I asked Mr. Colborn for help. He’d know the right people to approach. Or he could finance publication himself. He can well afford to. But he refused even to consider the idea. Of course, not everything in it is…to his credit…but it is the truth. Isn’t that what matters?”

  “It should be, Derek.”

  “Not the whole truth, of course. I can’t claim that. There are things I know—things Mr. Colborn knows—that aren’t in it. He’d realize that if he read it.”

  “But he hasn’t read it?”

  “I don’t
think so. I’ve sent him a copy. More than one, actually. I thought the first might have gone astray. He doesn’t respond to my messages. That’s why I’ve been trying other ways to get his attention.”

  I’d found Roger Colborn out in a lie. He knows Derek Oswin. I suspect he knows him only too well. It’s not much of a lie, of course. Why trouble your fiancée with such a tale? A half-cracked ex-employee with a no doubt unreadable company history he wants you to usher into the literary world is someone any of us could be forgiven for airbrushing out of our acquaintance. As for closing down Colbonite and flogging off a patent, some would construe that as good business practice. Hard-headed, yes, but not especially hard-hearted.

  “It’s become clear to me that I’m wasting my efforts where Mr. Colborn is concerned,” said Derek.

  “You may well be.”

  “I have higher hopes of you, Mr. Flood.”

  “Really?”

  “Your agent, Moira Jennings, represents writers as well as actors.”

  “How do you know who my agent is?”

  “It wasn’t difficult to find out. It’s not difficult to find out lots of things, if you have the time.”

  “You want me to get your history of Colbonite published?”

  “It’s called The Plastic Men. What do you think of the title?”

  “Not bad. But—”

  “Anyway, I don’t expect you to work miracles, Mr. Flood. I just want the book…seriously considered. If it’s not deemed marketable, I shall accept that.”

  “You will?” Derek’s sudden ascent into realism had taken me aback.

  “I’ll have to.”

  “Well, er, yes, you—”

  “Would you be willing to ask Miss Jennings to take a look at it?”