The Strangling on the Stage

by Simon Brett

  ‘No, we certainly aren’t,’ Carole endorsed.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘We’ve just been bearers of a chaise longue which I’m lending to be part of the set.’

  Mimi Lassiter looked seriously disappointed. ‘So you’re not even in the crowd scenes?’

  Jude assured her that they weren’t.

  ‘And does that mean,’ asked Mimi almost pathetically, ‘that you don’t want to join SADOS?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ replied Carole, as if she’d just been asked to do something very dirty indeed.

  ‘Oh.’ Discomfited, the Membership Secretary drifted away.

  By now the bearded man had got their drinks which he handed round with old-fashioned gallantry. He introduced himself to Carole and Jude as ‘Gordon Blaine – I’m in charge of the heavy backstage stuff for the SADOS – building sets, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Oh yes, Storm mentioned you,’ said Jude. ‘Your Land Rover’s broken down.’

  He looked a little affronted by that. ‘It’s more in a process of refurbishment. I’m putting in a new engine. Haven’t quite finished yet. So thanks for the use of your car.’

  ‘It’s my car actually,’ said Carole tartly.

  ‘Sorry. Then thank you,’ he said without rancour.

  Jude noticed that Janie Trotman was kind of lingering on the edge of their group, as if she wouldn’t mind getting away. But maybe she thought, having accepted a drink from Gordon Blaine, she must stay with him for at least a little while.

  ‘Sorry,’ he was saying, ‘didn’t get your names.’

  They identified themselves and Jude, to compensate for Carole’s frostiness, asked, ‘So, Gordon, will you be building the set for The Devil’s Disciple?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘And designing it too?’

  ‘No, no. I’m not given the name of “designer”,’ he replied with careful emphasis. ‘Lady over there is “the designer”.’ He gestured to a thin woman in her thirties, whose short blond hair was dyed almost white. ‘I merely interpret the squiggles she puts on the page and turn them into a practical set which won’t fall over. And from all accounts, Disciple is going to be a real bugger to build.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Jude. ‘Why? I’m afraid I haven’t read the play.’

  ‘Nor have I,’ said Gordon with something approaching pride. ‘I only arrived at the end of the read-through. I never read the plays we do. Just do as I’m told and get on with whatever I’m instructed to do by the director and the designer.’

  ‘So why is The Devil’s Disciple going to be such a bugger?’ asked Jude, not feeling she was sufficiently part of the SADOS to abbreviate the play’s title to ‘Disciple’.

  ‘Well, apparently it’s got lots of sets. There’s the Dudgeons’ house and then the Andersons’ house … which aren’t too bad because you can use one basic structure and differentiate the two locations by a bit of set dressing. But then in Act Three there’s also the inside of the Town Hall and the outside of the Town Square where the scaffold is set up. Logistical nightmare.’

  ‘So how are you going to manage it?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll manage it,’ he replied with almost smug confidence. Jude had readily identified Gordon Blaine’s type. He was the kind of man who would build up the difficulties of any task he was given and then apply his miraculous practical skills to succeed in delivering the impossible. In her brief contact with the professional theatre, she had met a good few characters like that, mostly involved in some backstage capacity.

  ‘I think the only way it can be done,’ Gordon went on, ‘whatever fancy ideas the designer may have, is for me to build a basic box-set structure and then—’

  He might clearly have gone on for quite a while had they not been interrupted by the appearance of Storm Lavelle, bringing in her wake a tall, good-looking man in his forties. His long hair flopped apologetically over his brow, and there was an expression of mock-innocence in his blue eyes.

  Seeing the man approach, Janie Trotman took the opportunity to detach herself from the group round Gordon Blaine and go to join some of the younger members of the company. Whether this was a pointed avoidance of the newcomer neither Carole nor Jude could not judge.

  ‘Jude!’ Storm emoted, loud against the background hubbub. ‘I really do want you to meet Ritchie.’

  ‘You haven’t properly met my friend Carole who—’

  But the introduction was lost as Ritchie Good – it must have been him, there couldn’t be two Ritchies in SADOS – took Jude’s hand in both of his and said, ‘Where have you been hiding all my life?’

  It was one of the corniest lines in the world, but she admired the way it was delivered. He imbued the words with a sardonic quality, at the same time sending up their cheesiness and leaving the small possibility that they could be heartfelt.

  ‘I’ve been hiding all over the place,’ Jude replied evenly. ‘Currently in Fethering.’

  ‘Oh, lovely Fethering, where the Fether rolls down to the sea,’ he said, for no very good reason.

  ‘Ritchie’s our Dick Dudgeon,’ said Storm enthusiastically. ‘He’s just done a terrific read-through.’

  ‘Well, you were no slouch yourself, Storm. It’s only possible to give a good performance when you’re up against other good actors.’

  Jude was amused by the solipsism of the compliment. While apparently praising his co-star, he was also putting himself firmly in the category of ‘good actors’.

  ‘Well, I thought you were wonderful,’ Storm insisted. ‘You really were Dick Dudgeon. I was nearly tearing up in the last act.’

  ‘Oh,’ Ritchie said airily, ‘I was just demonstrating a few shabby, manipulative tricks. My performance will get a lot more subtle as we go through the rehearsal process.’

  ‘I’m sure it will,’ said Storm devoutly.

  Oh dear, thought Jude. She had seen the symptoms in her friend before. It looked as though Ritchie Good was in serious danger of receiving the full impact of Storm Lavelle’s adoration. And Jude didn’t think it was an encounter that would have a happy outcome.

  ‘Oh, look, there’s Elizaveta,’ said Ritchie, waving across the bar. ‘Must go and say hello to her.’

  Storm took Jude’s arm. ‘You must come and meet Elizaveta too. She is just so funny.’

  And the three of them swept away. Leaving Carole with Gordon Blaine.

  Her nose, susceptible to frequent dislocation, was once again put out of joint. She was taken back to the agony of school dances, where her prettier friends had all been very friendly to her until they’d been swept away by the handsome boys. And she’d been left either pretending that the last thing on her mind was dancing, or stuck with one of the nerdy ones. Like Gordon Blaine.

  ‘There’s a little trick I used,’ he was saying, ‘when I was building the Midsummer Night’s Dream set for the SADOS. Obvious, but it was surprising how few people thought of it. You see, by hingeing the flats at the back so that they could open up to reveal the cyclorama, and using gauzes for the scenes in the woods, I …’

  Carole Seddon’s eyes glazed over.

  THREE

  ‘So I said to the director: “Do you want me to do it your way, or do you want me to do it right?”’

  This was a cue for sycophantic laughter from the group around Elizaveta Dalrymple. Jude had heard the line before – it had been attributed to various Hollywood stars – but clearly the grand dame of the SADOS was presenting it as her own coining.

  Elizaveta Dalrymple must have been a very beautiful young woman and in her seventies she was still striking. She wore a kaftan-style long dress in fig-coloured linen, which disguised her considerable bulk. Her dyed black hair was swept back from her face and fixed by a comb with a large red artificial flower on it, suggesting the image of a flamenco dancer. Her make-up was skilfully done, though it could not cover the lines on her face – bright red lips and lashes far too luxuriant to have grown out of any human eyelid.

  The manner in which she h
ad spoken her line suggested that she had spent rather too much time watching Maggie Smith.

  Storm took the natural break given by the laugh as an opportunity to introduce Jude.

  ‘Ah, I didn’t notice you at the read-through.’ Elizaveta Dalrymple gave the impression that there were a lot of people she didn’t regard as worth noticing. ‘Presumably you’re doing something backstage, are you?’

  ‘No, I’m not involved in the production at all. Just lending my chaise longue for the set.’

  ‘Ah, chaises longues,’ said Elizaveta in a voice intended to be thrilling. ‘How much fun one has had on chaises longues. A long time ago, of course.’ She chuckled fondly. ‘And a lot of it actually with Freddie.’ She allowed a moment for murmurs of appreciation for SADOS’s late founder. ‘Who was it who said: “Marriage is the longing for the deep, deep peace of the double-bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise longue?”’

  Jude said, ‘Mrs Patrick Campbell’, because it was something she happened to know, but the pique in Elizaveta Dalrymple’s face suggested her question had been rhetorical and not one to be answered by mere chaise longue owners.

  To reinforce her disapproval, she turned away from Jude to Storm. ‘I thought you did a lovely little reading this afternoon as Judith. And the American accent will come with practice.’

  Rather than bridling at being so patronized, Storm smiled meekly, saying, ‘Thank you very much, Elizaveta. And your Mrs Dudgeon was wonderful.’

  ‘Yes, it’s something when an actor like me ends up playing a grumpy old woman who dies offstage during Act Two.’ The grande dame smiled. ‘I’m thinking of it as a character part.’ That got a laugh from her coterie of admirers. ‘I really wasn’t going to do it. I really do keep intending to give up “the business”.’ You’re just an amateur, Jude wanted to scream, acting is not your profession. ‘But Davina twisted my arm once again.’

  Elizaveta Dalrymple turned an expression of mock ruefulness to a dumpy woman with a long blond pigtail, who was dressed in black leggings and a high-collared gold lamé top. This, Jude remembered from the flurry of introductions when she’d joined the group, was Davina Vere Smith.

  ‘Oh, you were dying to do it, Elizaveta,’ protested the director of The Devil’s Disciple. ‘There was nothing going to keep you away from this production, away from anything that SADOS does.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it, Davina. I really do think there has to come a time when one has to retire gracefully. And I think I’ve reached that time.’ The coterie protested violently at this suggestion. ‘I’d rather go at a time of my own choosing than get to the point where I can no longer remember the lines and the old acting skills start to dwindle.’

  ‘That day’ll never come,’ insisted the most toadyish of the coterie, a young man who had been introduced as Olly Pinto. He was nearly very good-looking, but the size of his shield-like jaw gave him a cartoonish quality. ‘Your reading this afternoon showed that you’re still at the height of your powers.’

  ‘Oh …’ Elizaveta Dalrymple simpered at the compliment. ‘And yours was lovely too, Olly. Your Christy’s going to be great.’

  The young man grimaced. ‘It’s not much of a part,’ he said.

  ‘There are no small parts,’ said Elizaveta magisterially, ‘only small actors.’

  Again she made it sound as if the line was her own, though Jude knew it had been around for years, usually attributed to Stanislavsky. Again Elizaveta Dalrymple received a laugh of approbation from her coterie.

  ‘Well, I think you’re going to show that Mrs Dudgeon is far from a small part,’ said Olly Pinto, still sucking up.

  ‘I suppose if I can still do something to help out SADOS … it’s what Freddie would have wanted me to do.’ Elizaveta Dalrymple left a silence for a few more respectful grunts. Then she turned to the director. ‘Were you pleased with the way the read-through went this afternoon, Davina?’

  ‘Yes, pretty good, really. Obviously a few absentees. Three of my soldiers have got flu and my Major Swindon is still off skiing. I suppose, like most amateur productions, I’ll be lucky if I get the full company on the first night.’

  Elizaveta Dalrymple clearly thought she had been silent for too long. ‘I’m determined to have fun playing Mrs Dudgeon. And it’ll be nice to give my old American accent a little run for its money.’

  ‘It’s very good,’ said her toady. ‘Did you ever live in the States?’

  ‘Good heavens, no,’ said Elizaveta on a self-deprecating laugh. ‘But I always have had a very good ear. I’m just one of those lucky people who can pick up accents … like that.’ Her eye lingered pityingly on Storm Lavelle. ‘Of course, there was a time when I’d have been natural casting for Judith Anderson, but those days are gone …’

  Jude couldn’t understand why her friend didn’t knock the malevolent old woman’s block off, but Storm was still listening intently, as though at the feet of a guru. And when Elizaveta said she would invite Storm to one of her ‘drinkies things’, Jude’s friend looked as if she’d just been made a Dame.

  ‘Of course,’ Elizaveta Dalrymple went on, ‘my American accent was really given a workout when Freddie and I did On Golden Pond. I remember there was someone from Boston in the audience, and he couldn’t believe that I hadn’t been brought up in the States. He said he’d never heard—’

  But her reminiscences were interrupted by the appearance of Len, the Cricketers’ landlord, at the edge of their group. ‘Department of Lost Property,’ he said, and he held out a star-shaped silver pendant on a silver chain. ‘I think it got left here during the pantomime. Someone must’ve dropped it. So I thought I’d wait till you all came back and see if anyone claims it. Somebody said it might be yours, Elizaveta.’

  ‘Well, yes, I do have one that looks very like that. May I have a look?’ The barman handed the necklace across. Elizaveta Dalrymple turned it over to look at the back. ‘Yes, this must be mine. It’s funny, I hadn’t noticed …’ She reached up to her neck to find a silver chain around it. She pulled at it and out of the top of her kaftan dress came a silver star, similar in size to the other one. ‘Oh no, I’ve got mine.’

  She offered Len’s pendant round to her group. ‘Anyone claim this? It’s not yours, is it, Davina?’

  ‘No,’ said the director. ‘I don’t wear jewellery like that.’

  Elizaveta Dalrymple made an elaborate shrug and handed the unclaimed pendant back to Len. ‘Be worth asking round the other SADOS members.’

  ‘Yes. And could you mention it at rehearsal?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘I’ll keep it behind the bar till someone claims it.’ And the landlord drifted away, ready to offer the necklace to other groups.

  ‘Let me know if anyone does claim it,’ Elizaveta called after him. Then she turned back to her coterie. ‘A rather amusing story about jewellery came out of the production of When We Are Married that Freddie and I did. You see, there was someone in the cast who—’

  But she was cut off in mid-anecdote by the appearance in their little group of a tall, balding man dressed in black jeans, black shirt and a black leather blouson. In his wake came a pretty but nervous-looking red-haired woman in her forties wearing grey leggings under a heavy off-white jumper.

  ‘Elizaveta,’ said the man. ‘Lovely reading, as ever. You too, Storm, great stuff.’

  ‘I am duly honoured.’ Freddie Dalrymple’s widow made a little mock-curtsey. ‘To have a compliment from the great George Bernard Shaw expert.’

  Jude had recognized the man from Storm’s description before introductions were made, and he did indeed prove to be Neville Prideaux.

  The woman identified herself as ‘Hester Winstone’. She had a glass of orange juice, Neville was drinking red wine.

  ‘And what part are you playing in The Devil’s Disciple?’ asked Jude.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ the woman replied dismissively. ‘I’m not important. I’m just the prompter.’

  ‘I’ve seen amateur productions
where the prompter has been extremely important. In fact, sometimes I’ve heard more of the prompter than I have of the actors.’

  ‘Well, that’s not the kind of production you’ll ever see from SADOS,’ said Elizaveta cuttingly.

  Jude felt suitably reprimanded. She grinned at Hester Winstone and was rewarded by a little flicker of a smile. But the prompter seemed ill at ease, not quite included in the circle of thespians, but still for some reason needing to be there.

  At the arrival of the newcomers, Jude noted that Ritchie Good had detached himself from the circle around Elizaveta Dalrymple and drifted off to chat to another group. She wondered if she was witnessing some masculine territorial ritual. Had Neville Prideaux’s appearance threatened Ritchie Good’s position as alpha male?

  ‘Well,’ Neville said, ‘I hope this afternoon’s reading has convinced everyone I was right to champion The Devil’s Disciple … against considerable opposition.’

  The way he looked at Elizaveta Dalrymple as he said this suggested that at least some of that opposition had come from her.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘I think SADOS will probably get away with it.’

  ‘We’ll do more than get away with it. It’s a very fine play.’

  Elizaveta twisted her mouth into a little moue of disagreement. ‘I can’t help remembering that Freddie always described Shaw as “a left-wing windbag”.’ Her coterie awarded this a little titter.

  ‘But,’ Neville objected, ‘we agreed at the Play Selection Committee Meeting that SADOS ought to be doing more challenging work.’

  ‘I’m not arguing with that, Neville love. When Freddie founded the Society, he was determined that we should present material that was “at the forefront of contemporary theatre”.’

  ‘And yet it ended up, like every other amdram in the country, doing the usual round of light West End comedies and Agatha Christies.’

  ‘No, I don’t think that’s fair, Neville.’ Clearly nothing that contained the mildest criticism of the hallowed Freddie Dalrymple was fair. Jude also got the impression that Neville and Elizaveta were reanimating an argument which they had visited many times before. ‘We have done some very contemporary material,’ Elizaveta went on. ‘When we did Shirley Valentine, that was quite ground-breaking for Smalting – I mean, doing a play based in Liverpool.’