The Strangling on the Stage

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The Strangling on the Stage Page 8

by Simon Brett


  Nor was he the only one who seemed relieved by the old woman’s absence. Davina Vere Smith, despite her reputation as a ‘close chum’ of Elizaveta, was relaxed and apparently had given up any pretence that she was in charge of the production. She meekly took on board Ritchie’s notes and suggestions, even when they applied to performances other than his own. The actor was yet again doing a play on exactly the terms he desired.

  Davina accepted all that, but what did annoy her was the regular list of absentees from every rehearsal. Two were involved in a Charity Marathon and one had shingles.

  Olly Pinto, self-appointed toady to Elizaveta Dalrymple, did not leave the production, as Storm had suggested he might. But all the time there was something chippy about him, especially in relation to Ritchie Good. He grimaced a lot behind Ritchie’s back, and muttered words of dissent at a level that was not quite audible.

  Olly also talked a lot about Elizaveta and Freddie Dalrymple. He had been fortunate enough to meet the blessed Freddie just before he died, and reminiscences of the two of them were constantly on his lips. Elizaveta Dalrymple may have walked out of the production, but Olly Pinto ensured that no one in the Devil’s Disciple company was allowed to forget her.

  Able to observe everything at close hand, Jude was again struck by Storm Lavelle’s talent. She really was making something of Judith Anderson. Since Jude didn’t have her own transport, Storm ferried her to and from rehearsals in her Smart car – Fethering was virtually on the route from Hove. And in the course of those journeys the two women talked a lot – well, to be more accurate, Storm talked and Jude listened a lot. All her friend talked about was the play and how she was approaching the part of Judith Anderson. So far, she seemed too preoccupied with her acting to waste any energy throwing herself at Ritchie Good. Which was a considerable relief.

  But Jude did tend to arrive at rehearsals in a state of mental exhaustion from all the listening she’d had to do.

  Jude’s observations of Hester Winstone at rehearsals were less encouraging. The prompter still seemed very nervous and unhappy. Both Ritchie and Neville Prideaux virtually ignored her and, having met Mike, Jude didn’t reckon Hester was getting much support at home either. She tried to be friendly, but her suggestions of going for a drink together at the Cricketers after rehearsals were met with polite refusals. Hester Winstone was continuing to do her job as prompter, but apparently no longer wished to be involved in the social side of SADOS.

  And then of course Jude herself had to get back to the idea of acting. The stuff she had done in the past had arisen directly out of her work as a model. There’s an enduring idea amongst agents and producers that someone beautiful enough to be photographed professionally must also be able to act. Though it can work in the cinema where short takes and clever editing can disguise complete lack of talent, the inadequacy of models is more likely to be exposed by a full evening on the stage of a theatre.

  But Jude had actually been quite good, she had discovered a genuine aptitude for acting, and she was surprised at how much she enjoyed coming back to it and playing Mrs Dudgeon. Also, in her early twenties she had been cast only for her beauty – in other words in straight roles. She had suspected back then that the actors in character parts were having more fun and, as Mrs Dudgeon, she found that to be true. There was a great freedom to be derived from playing a crotchety old curmudgeon, so different from her own personality.

  Jude was unsurprised that Ritchie Good made no further attempt to come on to her, and indeed behaved as if their meeting in the Crown and Anchor had never happened. Any attraction she might have felt towards him quickly dissipated in the course of rehearsals. Seeing what a control freak he was in his discussions with Davina Vere Smith – they had long since ceased to be arguments – Jude was turned off by his egotism.

  But she remained intrigued by him. There was something about his personality that didn’t ring true, something that had struck her in the Crown and Anchor and had only been reinforced by further acquaintance. His habit of coming on to women was clearly a knee-jerk reaction, but Jude wondered how far he wanted any kind of relationship to develop. Had she proved more amenable when they met in the pub, seemed keener on spending time with him, would they have ended up under her duvet in Woodside Cottage that evening? She somehow doubted it.

  Neville Prideaux, Jude could see as she watched him at rehearsals, was a more subtle operator. Jude kept remembering that it was Ritchie who’d chatted up Hester Winstone, but it was Neville who had actually gone to bed with her. He didn’t have Ritchie’s obvious attractiveness, but maybe he was the more ruthless seducer.

  Since his character of General Burgoyne only appeared in Act Three of The Devil’s Disciple, Neville was not at as many rehearsals as most of the company. As an actor, Jude found him impressive technically, though she wasn’t moved by him. But perhaps that was the right way to play General Burgoyne. The right way to play Shaw, anyway. His characters were all, in the view of many playgoers, more like mouthpieces for opinions than people one could engage with on an emotional level.

  The impression Neville Prideaux gave out of orderliness and detachment was strengthened by the time Jude spent with him during the inevitable post-rehearsal sessions in the Cricketers. She kept being reminded of Ritchie Good’s rather bitchy comments about how, during his days as a schoolmaster, he’d run the drama department like his own ‘private fiefdom’. Neville was probably as much of a control freak as Ritchie, but the characteristic manifested itself in different ways. He never took issue with Davina at rehearsals, meekly taking her notes and doing what she told him, but he still contrived to play General Burgoyne exactly the way in which he wanted to play the character.

  One evening in the Cricketers Jude was with Neville Prideaux when the subject of Elizaveta Dalrymple’s defection came up. ‘Have you known her long?’ asked Jude. ‘Were you with SADOS in the early days?’

  ‘Oh, good heavens, no. I only joined up after I retired … what, six years ago.’

  ‘And I gather you have some kind of role as the society’s dramaturge?’

  ‘It’s nothing as formal as that. Nothing official. It’s just that there aren’t perhaps that many people round SADOS who know a great deal about drama, and having spent my entire career researching and exploring the subject, I do feel I have something to contribute.’

  ‘Well, it’s nice to have a hobby in retirement.’

  Jude’s words had been no more than a bland conversation-filler, but Neville Prideaux reacted to them with some vehemence. ‘I hardly have time for hobbies,’ he retorted. ‘I’m busier since I’ve been retired than I ever was as a teacher.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I run workshops and drama classes. And then of course there’s my own writing.’

  He spoke of this with some awe, which made Jude feel perhaps she ought to know about something he’d written. Better to confess ignorance, though. ‘Sorry, I don’t know about your writing … except Ritchie said you’d written some lyrics for the SADOS’ panto. Is that the kind of stuff you do?’

  ‘Oh, good heavens, no. That’s just recreational stuff. No, basically I’m a playwright.’

  ‘Ah. Have you written lots of plays?’

  ‘Not as many as I would have wished. There was no time when I was teaching, so I’ve only really been able to concentrate on it in the last six years.’

  ‘With any success?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve had some very positive responses,’ Neville Prideaux replied. Jude didn’t think she was being too cynical to read this answer to her question as a ‘No’.

  ‘And,’ he went on, ‘the SADOS’ Play Selection Committee are very keen to do one of my plays next season, but I’m not convinced that that’s a very good idea.’

  ‘Oh? Why not?’

  ‘Well, I just feel a production down here might be too low-key. I think the play would probably benefit from exposure in a larger arena.’

  Like the West End? thought Jude. But she didn’t ask the questi
on. She was already getting a pretty clear view of the dimensions of Neville Prideaux’s ego.

  ‘And what’s the play about?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, there are a lot of themes,’ he said rather grandly. ‘It’s set in a school – or apparently set in a school.’ Well, that’s the only setting you know, thought Jude. ‘But obviously the school has considerable symbolic resonance.’

  ‘Obviously,’ she echoed, prompting Neville to look at her rather sharply, assessing whether she might be sending him up. Jude’s face maintained an expression of total innocence which had proved very useful to her over the years.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Neville, ‘it’s very difficult to talk about one’s work – particularly in the drama. A play can only be fully realized and judged when it is acted out in front of an audience.’

  Jude nodded agreement. ‘And how do you think the current one’s going?’

  ‘Play? The Devil’s Disciple?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I think it gets better in Act Three.’ When the character of General Burgoyne comes in, was Jude’s thought – i.e. when you’re on stage. ‘And I think Ritchie’s losing a lot of the nuance in Dick Dudgeon’s character – particularly in Act One.’

  ‘I thought he was coming across quite strongly.’

  ‘Oh, yes, it’s a competent performance, one can’t deny that. Ritchie has a few acting tricks and tics to wheel out. But every part he plays is exactly the same. He never gets below the surface of a character.’

  ‘But I thought that was the right way to play Shaw. His characters don’t have great emotional depth.’

  Neville Prideaux shook his head in sage disagreement. ‘That’s a very arguable statement, Jude. I mean, yes, GBS is more in the Ben Jonson tradition than the Shakespearean, and he looks forward to Brecht in some ways. His characters are “types” if you like, rather than psychologically complex individuals, but he doesn’t go for the full Brechtian verfremdungseffekt. I would agree with you, there is emotional distance in Shaw’s plays, but there’s a high level of psychological engagement too.’

  Jude felt she knew what it must have been like to be a sixth former in one of Neville Prideaux’s classes.

  ‘And the trouble is,’ he continued, ‘that Ritchie doesn’t get near that psychological engagement. His Dick Dudgeon is nothing more than an assemblage of character tics. But he’s not going to change. He doesn’t listen to criticism. The only thing someone like Ritchie Good listens to is his own enormous ego.’

  Well, it takes one to know one, thought Jude.

  A little later on in the pub she was approached by Mimi Lassiter, her hair an even less likely shade of red. ‘Now, Jude,’ she said, ‘now that you’re playing Mrs Dudgeon, you can’t deny that you’re an Acting Member of SADOS.’

  ‘I wouldn’t attempt to.’

  ‘So I’m afraid you have to join the society and pay a subscription.’

  ‘I’m very happy to.’

  ‘Everyone who acts in a SADOS production has to be a member.’

  ‘Except Ritchie Good.’

  ‘Hm.’ An expression of displeasure crossed the little woman’s face. ‘Yes, I’m still arguing with Davina about that. Now, as an Acting Member, your subscription will be …’

  Jude paid up.

  TEN

  ‘Though I say it myself,’ announced Gordon Blaine, ‘I’m not unpleased with the result. Obviously it did present various engineering challenges, but none I am glad to say that proved beyond my capabilities.’

  A month had passed. It was a Sunday at the end of March. They’d reached the stage where Davina would have liked all of the cast to be ‘off the book’ – in other words, knowing their lines. Some of them had achieved that milestone, others were still fumbling. Hester Winstone was kept busy in her role as prompter.

  Jude was a member of the virtuous group; she was ‘off the book’. She had been surprised how easy she had found committing Mrs Dudgeon’s lines to memory. And of course, given the old lady’s early departure from the action, there weren’t too many to learn.

  Though they usually worked on the stage of St Mary’s Hall, on this particular Sunday the rehearsal was taking place in the auditorium. The curtains were firmly closed, but from behind them various thumps, hammerings and muttered curses had been heard in the course of the afternoon. Gordon Blaine was building his gallows.

  He’d been hard at work since the Saturday morning. Though all the components of the device had been made in his workshop at home, he was actually assembling them in situ. And, assuming he got it finished in time, the structure was due to be dramatically revealed to the Devil’s Disciple company at the end of the afternoon’s rehearsal.

  With this coup de théâtre in prospect, there was around St Mary’s Hall an air of excitement mingled with a bit of giggling. Gordon Blaine, the SADOS Mr Fixit, was clearly something of a joke amongst the members, and Jude could understand why. Though it was Carole rather than she who had received the full blast of Gordon’s monologue the first evening they had gone to the Cricketers, that did not represent a permanent escape from him. Gordon Blaine was around quite a few rehearsals and he was very even-handed in the distribution of his conversation; he made sure that no one evaded their ration of it. And Jude, being new to the society, had certainly got her share.

  The SADOS Sunday rehearsals started at three (so that those who needed to could enjoy their family lunch) and finished on the dot of six. Then everyone rushed to the Cricketers. Maybe this schedule had been established in the time of fixed licensing hours, but it had continued into the era of all-day opening.

  That Sunday afternoon, as six o’clock drew nearer, the level of giggliness increased. Davina Vere Smith was facing an uphill battle, trying to get some concentration out of the actors involved in the opening scene. Jude was rock solid on her lines, but Janie Trotman as Essie, along with the actors playing Anderson and Christie, kept breaking down and cracking up with laughter. At about five to six, Davina gave up the unequal struggle and declared the rehearsal over.

  As if on cue, Gordon Blaine had then appeared through the curtains to make his announcement. Having duly patted himself on the back for completing his task in the face of insuperable difficulties, he continued for a while talking up his prowess as an engineer.

  Jude looked around the assembled company. There was still a level of excitement there, but as Gordon began to speak, the giggles were threatening to take over. Nearly everyone seemed to have stayed for the forthcoming revelation. Glancing round the room, the only significant absentees Jude was aware of were Ritchie Good and Hester Winstone.

  The former’s disappearance was explained as soon as Gordon Blaine, with an inept attempt at flamboyance, went into the wings to draw back the curtains. Onstage stood a very convincing-looking gallows, beneath which was a small wooden cart. On the cart, with the noose around his neck, stood Ritchie Good. The Devil’s Disciple company let out a communal half-mocking gasp of appreciation and started a small round of applause.

  Stepping back onstage, Gordon Blaine beamed at this appreciation of his talents. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Yes, not a bad bit of work, though I say it myself.’

  From behind his back he produced a noose identical to the one hanging from the arm of his gallows. One end was neatly tied in a loop; at the other was a metal ring, clearly designed to hook on to something. Gordon stretched the noose with his hands, demonstrating its strength and solidity. ‘Simple piece of equipment, really, isn’t it? But very effective for ridding the world of undesirables.’ He chuckled a little, indicating that what he’d just said was a Gordon Blaine joke.

  ‘Still, we don’t want to have any accidents in our Devil’s Disciple, do we? Particularly to a fine actor like Ritchie Good. So just in case we have any Health and Safety inspectors in the building, let me give you a demonstration of the means by which, in the use of this apparatus, unpleasant accidents may be avoided.’

  He moved ponderously across the stage and took up the T
-shaped pulling handle of the wooden cart. ‘A few words, did we agree, Ritchie?’

  ‘Yup. Ready when you are.’ And the man with the noose around his neck went into Dick Dudgeon mode, though preferring his own words to the ones George Bernard Shaw had written for this dramatic moment. ‘“It is a far, far better thing that I do now …” Oops, sorry, wrong play. That’s A Tale of Two Cities. No, what I want to say to you all is that I’ve been through everything in my mind over and over again and I’ve decided –’ he gestured to the noose around his neck – ‘that this is the best way out.’

  There was a ripple of laughter at his melodramatics. Ritchie Good, ever the showman, was enjoying his moment in the spotlight.

  ‘Also I’d like to say that public hangings used to be one of this country’s most popular spectator sports, until some wet blanket of a do-gooder decided that they weren’t an appropriate divertissement for the Great Unwashed to gawp at. So you’re very honoured, ladies and gentlemen, fellow members of SADOS, to have this much-loved entertainment re-created for you, here in St Mary’s Hall, Smalting. And with that – let my hanging commence!’

  At what was clearly a prearranged cue, Gordon pulled the cart away from beneath his feet. Ritchie Good’s hands shot up to grasp the strangling rope around his neck, and for a moment he swung there, choking and kicking out into the nothingness.

  The gasp which followed this had no element of irony in it. People rushed forward to the stage.

  But before he could be rescued, Ritchie released his grip on the noose and dropped down to the floor, as neat as an athlete finishing a gymnastic routine. His mocking laughter revealed that the whole thing had been a set-up, and he looked boyishly pleased with the trick he had played on everyone. ‘Not bad, is it? Full marks to Gordon!’

  Mr Fixit glowed and did a half-bow to acknowledge the rattle of applause. Then he moved across to demonstrate the cunning secret of his handiwork. The noose was no longer a loop, but two parallel pieces of rope. ‘Oh, the magic of Velcro,’ said Gordon, as he pressed the two ends together and reformed the circle.

 

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