KT and I stood outside the back door of the rehearsal room, admiring the landscape. A thin strip of garden ran the width of the building. An old enamelled bath contained a vast cockroach. Actually it was probably only a beetle, but anything with more than two legs is either a roach or a chorus line.
‘Hi. May I join you?’ Izzy’s tone, only moments ago that of power-mad American general, was now that of an oft-rejected child. I felt sorry for him. Perhaps the bluster was just that; underneath he was as unsure as the rest of us.
‘Of course.’ We made room on the edge of the bath.
The cockroach made a dash for the plug hole. He’d summed Izzy up quicker than we had. Izzy didn’t perch beside us but paced up and down. KT and I prepared for small talk, but where three were gathered together, Izzy saw an audience.
‘Say, Eleanor, I’m going to show you the image. The poster, flyers, ads, the whole works. Your agent wanted billing; I said no, no.’ He clamped the cigar between his unseen teeth while he reached into his bag. ‘Above the title, I want for her. You know we coulda had Judi Dench, Meryl Streep. But they can’t do what you can. You’re better. And younger.’ Not to mention cheaper and more desperate. ‘See? Whaddyathink?’
He held up a poster – of a salsa dancer and a palm tree – which could politely be described as naïf. The palm tree appeared to be growing out of the dancer’s head. I arranged my face into admiration. KT didn’t bother:
‘Bloody hell! Who designed that? Withenshawe Comprehensive?’
Izzy looked astonished. ‘You don’t like it?’
‘You’re never going into the West End with that, are you? It’s naff beyond belief.’
I held my breath. Izzy had already sacked eight directors, four stage managers, five general managers and a bloke from Rank Xerox who he thought was in the chorus – one twirly more or less wouldn’t matter.
‘Viola, Viola, come here.’ His wife came over, looking like a defeated question mark.
‘Yes, Izzy.’ She leaned on the ‘i’, filtering it through a diphthong.
‘Viola, honey, KT here doesn’t like the poster.’
Her eyes widened in tearful fear behind her glasses. ‘Oh, really? Oh, well. I didn’t know what to do, we couldn’t find an image. I mean, if you have an idea, sure, let’s use it.’
KT appreciated being asked. These people were putting their own money into this project, they should be protected. They looked at him helplessly.
‘Well, I’ll tell you what, why not go to De Kuyper’s? They do all the big West End shows. They’re the best in the business.’
Viola, despite her stiffness of body, squirmed. Her voice rose in pitch and whine. ‘We did. We went to them and they did nothing – they just wanted our money.’
KT and I looked stunned. Almost every iconic show image was theirs, but Izzy simply battered us with reasons why he knew better.
‘I been a part of Broadway for thirty years, I know class and they ain’t class. They may do stuff here, Lloyd Webber maybe, but he’s had his day. Did we have to find our leading lady in a call centre?’
I was beginning to understand how the Indians must have felt under the Raj. KT smiled his most disarming smile and said, in his broadest Swansea accent: ‘You is as mad as a bag of ferrets, aren’t you?’
I saw anger settle on Izzy’s face. For a moment I thought KT would be picking up his P45. Then Izzy opened his frog mouth and honked. It was as close to laughter as he could get.
‘Mad as a bag of ferrets? I like that. It’s funny. You’re a funny man, you know that?’ He poked KT in the chest to show how serious he was. ‘And you know what? I know funny.’
Izzy was still repeating ‘ferrets’ when Ruby, the stage manager, who favoured a single red earring and lycra cycling shorts, called Viola and Izzy in for a production meeting. Viola followed Izzy, twittering, ‘Why ferrets? Are ferrets funny?’
‘Poor dab. She’s so dim she couldn’t light up a fridge,’ said KT, with affectionate contempt. ‘I’m going over the greasy spoon. Coming?’
Aware of the dimpled fat still wobbling beneath my baggy rehearsal clothes, I declined. Once alone, I regretted my decision, as my thoughts were immediately colonised by David.
I’d seen a couple of telephone boxes outside. I could phone Phyllida’s – maybe he’d answer, I might hear his voice. I’d already worked out that if rehearsals were scheduled in the usual way I’d have at least a day off during the week, as my character disappeared for a chunk of the show. I could drive down there and…
I stopped myself going over again the well-thumbed snapshots of the confrontation, anger and forgiveness that would be followed by David and I living happily ever after in deeper understanding and more profound love. If wishes were horses, beggars would be riders. Who’d said that? An actor whose life was lost in a brandy bottle.
Forcing myself to walk past the phone boxes I headed for Tesco. Organic grapes and a copy of the Daily Mail. Back. Past the telephone boxes.
In the rehearsal room there were comments about my choice of reading matter. I was shocked, I hadn’t even considered the Independent or Guardian. David didn’t approve of them.
Clutching my lunch, I sat outside with the cockroach, enjoying the pale sunshine and watching the early flies which swarmed over the creeper-covered arch by the door. Hanging from it was a wooden plank on which was painted The Last Chance Saloon. Did I see the same sympathy in the cockroach as I’d seen in the old spaniel?
Just as I was beginning to think chocolate would assuage my longing for David and the comfort of my living room, Dan came out, rolling a cigarette from a small, black, leather pouch. His hands moved with lazy dexterity.
‘Mind if I join you?’ He had a slight accent. Yorkshire maybe. I’d once had a dalliance with a Yorkshireman who thought erogenous zones were in Lancashire, hence his reluctance to go anywhere near them.
‘Yes, please, sit down.’ I indicated a paint-spattered chair. ‘How was the production meeting?’
He smiled conspiratorially. ‘Well, Izzy’s got some interesting ideas.’
‘Like?’
‘Well…’ He lit his roll-up. ‘He wants you to look like Maria Montana.’
It took me a moment to take this in. Maria Montana was six feet tall, built like Marble Arch – and black. She also had the taste in costumes of a colour-blind interior decorator, and had spent a lifetime making vulgarity an art form.
‘But, I’m, well…’ I knew I was whimpering, but couldn’t control myself. I wanted to look soignée, sophisticated and, above all, slim. ‘I’m five-foot-five with no neck and a short waist. And most of all…I’m white.’ That threw him. ‘I mean, I can’t wear anything too, well… I’ll look like a failed transvestite.’
Dan was enjoying himself. ‘Izzy and Viola also want you in shoulder pads, a false bust and padded hips for the final scene where you kick over the traces and appear like a new person.’
‘Who? Widow Twankey? Do they expect me to black up as well?’
Morag overheard this as she joined us, scrabbling for a Marlboro.
‘God, that man’s a nutter.’ We didn’t have to ask who. ‘It’s the sales and he’ll no give us any money to buy costumes. He expects me to pay with my credit card and he’ll pay me back. He’s got two chances of that: nain and fuck-all.’
We considered this, not knowing what to say, except, ‘That’s outrageous.’
‘He says that’s the way they do it on Broadway.’ She paused. ‘Away and shite. Does he think I’ve just come up the Thames on a banana-boat?’
Dan turned his ‘lie down and let me lick this tin of condensed milk off you’ look on me.
‘Eleanor, you’re the leading lady. We need your help.’
‘But Dan, I –’
Any excuse not to get involved. But as I spoke, I remembered how infuriated I’d always been at actors who moaned and whinged but never stood up for anything for fear of…what? Getting a reputation as difficult? Not being employed again? I knew what was right and I had to do it.
I knew that the moment I saw Dan lick his bottom lip. I wondered how he felt about Marmite as I followed him into the Duck’s lair.
Izzy was pacing back and forth, barking into his mobile phone: one, I later found out, of three. Dan signalled to him that we’d wait. We went into the stiflingly hot, smaller rehearsal room, where Jimmy’s drums were now set up next to an upright piano, at which sat, next to Sampson, a long-limbed woman in her forties, dressed incongruously in hip-anchored jeans and a cut-off top over unfettered but plainly much used breasts.
Her short, curly hair was an indeterminate auburn rinse and her face a collection of good features made imperfect but more interesting by British dental work and sun-damaged skin. She stood up and greeted me with outstretched hand, a fine freckled brown hand. The overall impression was of striking attractiveness and open good nature.
‘I’m Karen Tyler, the musical supervisor. Hallo.’
With her wide open smile and patently old-fashioned manners, I almost expected her to say, ‘Golly gosh, isn’t this ripping?’
‘Are we in the way, Dan? Only Sampson’s trying to teach me to play salsa.’ She laughed. ‘Absolutely impossible I’m afraid. I’m making an absolute horlicks of it.’
The composer, Ildefonso, who was sitting in the corner, came to her defence. ‘No Karen, you’re wonderful. So talented. I can’t imagine to do the show without you.’
She turned scarlet at his soft voice and softer eyes. It was definitely a golly gosh moment.
‘Um… They don’t use the gerund in Spanish as much as we do,’ she murmured, as her cheeks warmed the room.
Izzy broke the mood.
‘Hi, guys. You want to see me? I was just doing publicity. You know we’re going to have the BBC here in a coupla days. That okay with you, Dan?’ He didn’t wait for the reply. ‘You know the BBC doesn’t do this, we’re going to have five minutes, prime-time. It’s because we’re a great show. They know that and they want to be the first to get it.’
Who was going to tell him the London local news always covered West End openings? Or that the trick was to get them to come just before first night in the West End, not week two of rehearsals in the Abu Ghraib of South London?
I tried to approach the subject subtly.
‘Oh, I’m surprised. They usually come closer to opening. Mike must have a lot of publicity lined up if telly are coming in so soon.’
Izzy waved his wet cigar. ‘Mike Kominovsky’s gone. I didn’t like his style. He just wanted my money, but he didn’t wanna do anything for it.’
And there was me thinking Mike hadn’t been at the read-through because he was grooming the Dalai Lama for I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! Izzy had sacked a PR genius and replaced him with the spotty adolescent who’d been up and down with his mobile so often KT named him the Bouncing Bogbrush. In the next few sentences, Izzy revealed his recipe for long life, the way to make a million dollars overnight and the size of his swimming pool. I realised why Morag looked so stressed: everyone was working against the clock and Izzy was behaving as if Einstein’s theory of relativity was the rehearsal schedule.
I took a deep breath.
‘Um, Izzy. I’m just a tiny bit worried.’
Izzy was all attention. ‘Eleanor, you’re my star. I don’t want you worried.’
‘Well,’ I went on with just a hint of Bette Davis. ‘Morag’s found some fabulous dresses for me and they’re half-price in the sales but –’
‘– you being as tight as a duck’s arse we cannae get them.’
Luckily Izzy didn’t understand Morag’s accent. She went on in something closer to what Izzy recognised as English.
‘Aye, and we’ve to get 43 pairs of shoes sent over from Italy. There are 68 costumes in all, as well as the shirts for the band and all the understudies’ costumes.’
‘And apparently, Izzy,’ I fluttered, ‘there’s no money.’
Izzy was relishing being the centre of attention, of our pleading.
‘Sure, there’s money, Eleanor, I’ll have my accountants let Morag have – how much you need?’
Morag didn’t miss a beat. ‘Five thousand for now.’
Izzy rounded on her as if she was a shoplifter.
‘I give you the money, okay. But I want receipts for every last thing. When we did this show before, in Costa Rica, I gave money, you know? I didn’t get a thing for it. I want receipts and results. On my Broadway show the costume budget was two million, you know that? I want Eleanor to look that good. You understand?’
Morag was just starting to tell him it was five grand, not five loaves and a couple of haddock, when Viola slid into the room. Her martyred voice was barely audible, translating what Izzy had just said.
‘We’ve had such bad experiences, Morag. We don’t know who to trust. We had a director, before Dan, he’d done Shakespeare but we sacked him and now he’s threatening to sue us. He says he wrote the script!’
I thought it unlikely anyone from the RAC, let alone the RSC, would want The Merchant of Venezuela! on their CV, but I resisted saying so.
‘It’s so upsetting.’ Her eyes may have filled with tears, but it was difficult to see through her all-covering glasses. I reassured her about Dan, even though I didn’t know whether he’d done time for rape, murder or embezzlement. Suddenly I was her friend.
‘Oh, Eleanor.’ She had a way of making everything sound as if she was speaking through a migraine. ‘You know we’ve mortgaged our house for this. But, you know, in Costa Rica everything’s so corrupt. We wouldn’t pay off the surveyor so he valued it at half what it’s worth.’
I looked shocked and I wasn’t acting. ‘What did you do?’
‘We had to go to the banks.’
Alarm bells deafened me. Had these people any idea how much it cost to finance a West End musical? I’d seen vanity projects before where the producer developed palsy in his cheque-writing hand as his savings ran out. As soon as I could, I found Dan and told him what had been said. Again, the warm reassuring smile.
‘She saves the bread rolls from the hotel breakfast for lunch, too. But you know she’s a millionaire Texan oil-heiress, don’t you?’
‘No, I didn’t. So why doesn’t she have plastic surgery?’
‘Where would they start?’
‘True. Are you saying the money’s secure then?’
‘Absolutely. No problem. The bond is lodged for Plymouth and they’ve got plenty of time to put the West End bond in place. Don’t worry.’
So why did they have to go to the banks? The question nagged at me. The bond would cover our wages for two weeks if the show folded. But looking, or rather falling, into Dan’s eyes, I had faith it wouldn’t.
‘Eleanor, this is their dream and I think we can make dreams come true.’ As one whose dreams usually turned into nightmares, I looked doubtful. ‘They’re a funny couple but, well, I feel sorry for them. Let’s show them not everyone is out to shaft them. I’m sure they’ll lose the paranoia if we involve them in the creative process.’
Swimming in those Aegean blue eyes, I could believe anything.