Charles was less than impressed at being used by Tod as some barometer of rectitude. Without comment, he ordered the fizzy water and a pint for himself. He also took vindictive pleasure in adding a double Bell’s as a chaser.
‘So, what’s all this about?’ he asked, once they had sat down with their drinks.
And his friend told him. At length. There is an old adage that ‘anyone who breaks a habit generally frames the pieces’, and it certainly applied to Tod Singer. The drinking, which had started as recreational – and indeed Charles had thought of it as recreational back in Glasgow days – had gradually got out of hand until the next drink had become the greatest imperative in Tod’s life.
It had started to affect his career. From being a reliable jobbing actor, who was never going to be a big star but who never experienced more than the odd month out of work, Tod Singer quickly gained a reputation as someone who was ‘not so good in the afternoon’. Offers of work dried up, and on the rare occasions when he was employed, increasingly he failed to deliver. The point of no return came when he was sacked for being drunk onstage and slurring his words as Feste in a production of Twelfth Night in Bristol.
Round the same time, Tod’s marriage had broken up. His ex-wife, for reasons he could now fully understand, turned him out of the family home. He was reduced to sleeping on the sofas and floors of friends. He had no work, nor – given the speed with which news travels round the world of theatre – any prospect of any. Being drunk onstage – or, to be more accurate, allowing being drunk onstage to affect one’s performance – was one of the final disqualifications for an actor. No director was going to cast someone with that kind of reputation.
After six months of this, drinking even more, being unable to face the day ahead without a few morning slugs of vodka, Tod decided that he had a choice. Either he could spiral on down to his death, an unsanitary one on the streets or possibly suicide (it would be hard to tell them apart), or he could take on the challenge of cutting out alcohol altogether. He had gone for the second option.
So then he began to chronicle his way out of the morass into which he had descended. This second stage of the narrative also went on for some time. Charles had needed to break into it to make a return trip to the bar for a second pint and a second large Bell’s chaser – Tod was hardly halfway down his fizzy water.
A sense of reassurance had settled on Charles. Yes, he knew he drank too much, but he’d never been in the straits that Tod Singer was describing. More than a few times he’d gone on stage in a condition that would have disqualified him from driving a car, but only rarely had his performance been compromised. There was some power, rather like the healing powers of ‘Doctor Theatre’, which sobered an actor up the minute he got under the lights.
Or so Charles Paris believed. So, though the recital he was listening to was undoubtedly boring, he found it comforting as well.
It turned out that the salvation of Tod Singer had been Alcoholics Anonymous. After many failed attempts to control his drinking by his own willpower, he had been taken to a meeting with a friend who shared the same problem. The path to abstinence had not been an easy one. There had during the early stages been many backslidings, but eventually the programme had worked. He was still an alcoholic, he would always be an alcoholic, but he had found the resources to resist the temptations of the booze. As he insisted on repeating, Tod Singer had now not had a drink for three years, seven months and fourteen days. And tomorrow he would not have had a drink for three years, seven months and fifteen days.
Charles was surprised how strong his reaction was to this narrative of redemption. It didn’t make him feel moved to empathy or congratulations. It made him feel rather angry.
It also made him drink quicker. He was near the end of his second pint and the second chaser was long emptied. Just when Charles was wondering whether his companion might offer to buy him a drink, Tod looked at his watch.
‘Still, good you’re back in work now,’ said Charles. ‘The Habit of Faith.’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it the first job you’ve done since—?’
‘Good Lord, no. AA hasn’t just been the salvation of my health. I’ve also made some very good contacts there. You’d be surprised how many directors and producers there are at the meetings.’
When he thought about it, Charles wasn’t surprised at all.
‘Which also means,’ Tod went on, ‘word gets around the business that I’m now dry. Other directors start believing it’s safe to cast me again. I haven’t had a drink now for three years, seven months and fourteen days.’
Charles was getting a bit sick of this pious mantra. Presumably, like a rubber date stamp, Tod Singer’s mind had to be recalibrated every morning to add another day. Time to change the subject. ‘Have you worked with Justin Grover before?’
‘Way back. Bridport, it was.’
‘Oh, I worked with him there. Gave my Rosencrantz to his Guildenstern – or possibly the other way round.’
‘Justin got a lot of work down there. Great mates with the director … can’t remember his name.’
Charles couldn’t either. Oh dear, was this a sign of early onset Alzheimer’s kicking in? He seemed to remember reading somewhere that forgetting people’s names was one of the first symptoms. Mind you, he had forgotten where he’d read it.
‘So, did you audition for the part of Brother Philip?’ he asked.
‘No. funny thing … I just had a call from my agent out of the blue. I was offered the part. Needless to say, I took it. Four months on West End money …’
He didn’t need to finish the sentence. For some reason, Charles didn’t volunteer the fact that his experience had been identical. Was it just insecurity on Justin Grover’s part – this need to surround himself with people he’d worked with before? Though quite a long time before …
Anyway, the topic was not pursued, as Tod Singer stood up. ‘I must be on my way.’ Then he said, with pride, ‘I’ve been here for more than half an hour. That’s the longest I’ve managed to stay in a pub since I started with AA.’
Bully for you, thought Charles. What am I supposed to do – give you a bloody medal? He too got up and made his way to the bar.
‘See you in the morning,’ said Tod.
‘Sure.’
‘Oh, and, Charles …’
‘Yes?’
‘If you ever seriously want to deal with your problem …’
‘My problem?’
‘… I’d be happy to take you along to a meeting.’
‘An AA meeting?’
‘Yes, of course.’
Without any response to his departing friend, Charles attracted the barman’s attention. He didn’t bother with the pint this time, just the large Bell’s. As soon as he’d received the glass, before the ice had had a chance to chill its contents, he downed it in one and ordered another of the same. That he took back to his seat.
He pulled The Times out of his pocket. It was already folded back to the crossword. On his tube journey from Queensway to White City that morning, he’d been too nervous about the read-through to fill in more than a couple of clues. Now, in the pub, his concentration was also shot to pieces. It wasn’t the booze, he was certain of that. It was anger engendered by his recent conversation with Tod.
The patronizing tone was what had infuriated him. All right, Tod Singer had had a serious drink problem and he was dealing with it. Well done. But for him to treat Charles Paris as though he were in the same category of need was presumptuous and insulting. To offer to take him along to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting … Charles seethed.
His angry thoughts were interrupted by the arrival in the pub of a familiar figure. Seamus Milligan had slipped furtively through the door, and looked around, hoping not to encounter anyone he knew. The sight of Charles was a disappointment to him.
In quieter moods, Charles would have let the writer sit and drink on his own, but the booze had made him uncharacteristically expansive. ‘Seamus, hi!’ he called across the room. ‘Let me get you a drink!’
Seamus came unwillingly towards him.
‘What will you have?’
‘Pint of Guinness, please.’
Charles went to the bar to get the order. Since a double Bell’s went down so much quicker than a pint, he ordered another one.
He sat down opposite the writer. ‘Great play,’ he lied. ‘Read really well, didn’t you think?’
‘Bits of it sounded all right,’ Seamus Milligan conceded grudgingly.
‘Is it something you’ve been working on for a long time?’
‘A few years.’
‘And you’ve never actually had any experience of being a monk?’
‘No.’
Which explained, as Charles had suspected, why the monastic background was so imprecisely sketched in. ‘But you clearly know all about the Catholic stuff?’
‘Yes.’
‘Brought up a Catholic, were you?’
‘Yes.’
There was a silence. The writer was not about to volunteer anything. Charles persisted. ‘And now …?’
‘Lost my faith.’
‘But don’t they always say: “Once a Catholic” …?’
‘Do they?’
This was not the most fruitful conversation of Charles’s lifetime. ‘Still, brilliant to get your play on in the West End, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Have you worked with Justin before?’
‘Way back. He was in a play I wrote that was done in Bridport.’ Bridport again. ‘I wrote a few for down there. Anyway, the one I did with Justin … Hopes of it going to the West End, but nothing happened …’
Seamus spoke as if nothing happening to his plays was a common occurrence.
‘I worked at Bridport. The Imperial. What was the name of the guy who ran it?’
‘Damian Grantchester was artistic director when I was there.’
‘Yes, of course, that was his name.’
‘He directed The Damascene Moment.’
‘That was your play?’ From the title – and from listening to The Habit of Faith that morning – Charles didn’t imagine it had been a barrel of laughs.
‘Yes.’
‘And did Justin play the lead?’
‘No, no. He was playing a very minor role.’
‘Oh?’
‘It was before he got starry.’
‘Ah. It was at Bridport that I first worked with him.’
This prompted no response, so Charles didn’t have to repeat his Rosencrantz and Guildenstern routine. With an air of finality, Seamus Milligan drained his glass of Guinness and put it down on the table. He rose, suddenly very anxious to leave.
‘Sorry, got to go. I’ll return the compliment another time.’
‘Fine.’ Charles mused, ‘Funny, you know, the Bridport connection with Justin. Me and Tod Singer, you … Makes me wonder if—’
‘Nothing happened in Bridport!’
The ferocity with which the words were said, and the speed with which Seamus Milligan went out of the pub, left Charles in a state of puzzlement. Also with the feeling that he’d like another drink.
Rehearsals for The Habit of Faith ran pretty smoothly. Nita Glaze, as Charles had suspected she would, did not try to impose herself too much on the production. She was skilled in the mechanics of directing, she blocked the play sensibly and was liked by the cast. She seemed, even more importantly, to be liked by the backstage crew. A director who irritated the stage manager or wardrobe or the lighting designer could find their life made very difficult. But Nita was tactful and engendered a good company spirit.
The notes she gave to the actors were practical and encouraging, though Charles was always aware of the way she was constantly checking Justin Grover’s reaction to what she said. He suspected that the two of them had private sessions at the end of the day’s rehearsal, where the star would brief his director about his overall plans for the production.
But Justin almost never argued with her publicly. He was a quiet, respectful presence in the rehearsal room, and meekly accepted the notes that he had instructed his director to give him.
There was only one occasion when the company in the rehearsal room witnessed dissension involving their star. Nita was blocking the very beginning of The Habit of Faith, a dramatic scenario which Charles found rather unsubtle, though he had no doubt that it would work effectively with an audience.
The tabs rose on the stage in total darkness. Bells rang, not a cheerful carillon of celebration, but ominously repeated single notes of different frequencies. As they did so, lights above slowly grew in intensity to reveal the full cast, in a line facing front. By some accident of casting – Charles couldn’t believe it had been deliberate – all the male cast members were more or less the same height. They were dressed in their habits, faces hidden under their cowls. One by one, in time to the intoning of the bells, the monks pulled off their hoods to reveal their faces. All revealed male, tonsured heads, until the last in the row. That was Liddy Max, and when she uncovered herself, abundant (courtesy of the wig department) blond hair would ripple down over her shoulders in a mini-coup de théâtre.
But as Nita was blocking this scene, and lining the cast up onstage in the order specified on their scripts, Justin Grover said, ‘Oh, I thought we’d agreed a change here.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said the puzzled director.
The star looked out towards the stage manager’s desk, next to which sat Seamus Milligan, sullen and crumpled with his script on his knee, as he would throughout the rehearsal process. ‘I thought we’d agreed this, Seamus,’ said Justin. His tone was even, but it carried authority.
‘No,’ the writer responded truculently. ‘We can’t spoil the play’s first authentic moment of drama.’
He sounded as if he was preparing himself for a stand-up row, but all he got from the star was a subdued ‘Hm.’ Nita Glaze continued her blocking of the opening line-up with Liddy Max as the final unmasking.
But, significantly, at the next day’s rehearsal, very early on in proceedings, the director said, ‘I’ve had a bit of a rethink on the opening of the show. It seems to me that making The Girl the final reveal is a bit obvious, not to say sexist. To me it’d make more sense if we change the order, so we have The Girl in the penultimate position, get our audience reaction to that, and reveal that the last unknown character is Abbot Ambrose. He, after all, is the puppet master, a bit like Prospero, really … you know, the one who controls the action. I think the dramatic integrity of the play would be strengthened by having him as the final reveal. So, can we try that, please?’
Charles could see the suppressed anger in Seamus Milligan’s body language as the new order was rehearsed, but the playwright made no vocal objection. Nor did any other member of the cast. Clearly, some overnight discussions had taken place. Nita and Seamus had been persuaded that The Habit of Faith’s ‘dramatic integrity’ would be incomparably improved by letting Justin Grover steal the end of the first scene.
And, Charles thought cynically, the star had probably already calculated that the first sight of him each performance would prompt a round of applause from fans of Sigismund the Strong.
But Nita Glaze had made the idea for the change sound completely as if it was her own. Maybe the girl had a future as an actor as well as a director.
Meanwhile, after that small ruffling of the surface, the harmonious process of rehearsal flowed smoothly on.
There was only one company member with whom Nita Glaze did not seem to bond, and that was Liddy Max. Whether this was a gender issue, Charles did not know. He had long since given up trying to understand what caused some women not to get along. There seemed to be so many complex layers of slight and counter-slight in their relationships, it was confusing for a mere male. Maybe there was just an instinctive antagonism between the two young women, both in their twenties. Or maybe Nita felt more confident being dictatorial to someone of her own sex and age than she did to the male cast members, most of whom were considerably older and more experienced than her.
Their disagreements never erupted into open conflict, there was just an identifiable tension between them in the early days of rehearsal. Nita seemed to give more notes to Liddy than to the other cast members, particularly about her first big scene, in which The Girl has a long speech describing the assault and rape which has led her to seek sanctuary in the monastery. Maybe, as a woman, Nita felt that she could identify with that experience and was therefore more sensitive to false notes in Liddy’s interpretation.
Though the tension between the two of them did not dissipate completely, as rehearsals continued there was less open verbal disagreement. Charles Paris thought it highly possible that Justin Grover had had a word with his director.