A week later my head was wrapped in cling film while the wig-maker traced my hairline with a Mr Men felt-tip pen. I looked like something out of Alien Nation.
Contrary to Izzy’s wishes, we’d decided to make me look like Elizabeth Taylor. To bring that off, I’d have to be lit through a gauze the consistency of vinyl cushion floor, but we were optimistic the black wig and clever make-up would transform me into the Glamour Queen of Salsa, and not a ringer for Lennox Lewis, which seemed to be the Ducks’ idea of impossible chic.
I looked at my reflection, and the confidence that had been building ebbed away, leaving me beached on the shingle of my own inadequacy. What was I doing? No one was going to mistake me for Jennifer Lopez’s sister. I looked more like Trini Lopez’s mother.
Smiling, I thanked the wig lady. She was whippet-thin and beautifully made-up. Perhaps she’d like to play the part? I trailed back to the rehearsal room with my confidence so low I almost called David, but as I reached for the mobile it rang.
‘Hallo?’
‘Eleanor, where have you been? I’ve been trying to contact you for days.’
‘Phyllida?’ I stopped dead in the middle of a zebra crossing.
‘Oi, you stupid tart, put it in forward or reverse!’
I waved my apology to the irate taxi driver and ran to the kerb. ‘Is that you, Phyllida?’
‘Of course it is. Now Eleanor, are you listening?’
‘Er…yes.’ Was this it? The admission? The ‘Eleanor, David’s asked me to tell you…’
‘Good. David’s e-mailed me.’
‘He’s what?’
‘E-mail, Eleanor.’ She sighed. ‘He said you didn’t do technology. He wants you –’ She was in a hurry. Maybe her conscience was pricking. I interrupted her.
‘Why didn’t he phone me?’
There was the briefest pause. ‘No phones. He found an internet café.’
‘In the Amazon?’
‘Oh Eleanor, really. Anyway, he wants you to put anti-freeze in the Mercedes – London’s due for snow. You’ll do that, won’t you? Oh, there’s someone at the door, I must go. Bye. Don’t forget, will you?’
‘But Phyllida –’
Too late. I stood staring into nothing. Anti-freeze? Maybe I should drink it.
‘Give us a smile, beautiful, it may never happen.’
Beautiful? From a Big Issue seller. Ah, the kindness of strangers.
•
Dan was justifying his reputation as an Olympic-standard turd polisher when I slipped into the rehearsal room. He was crocheting Mrs Duck’s ramblings into something, if not Shakespearean, then certainly entertaining. The plot was still ludicrous, the characters ridiculous and the dialogue as buoyant as a lead parachute, but under Viola’s adoring gaze it was improving.
‘Ah, Eleanor, we’ve missed you.’ He caressed my arm, at once protective and possessive. Was that the moment I fell in love with him?
Susan the Soubrette saw the gesture and looked as if she’d swallowed a wasp. Dan’s appreciation and her jealousy would be a poultice on the boil of my abandonment. And, for medicine, the rivers of alcohol consumed during company ‘bonding’ sessions after rehearsals were better than the waters of Lethe.
‘That’s near Edinburgh, isn’t it?,’ said KT. ‘Down by the docks?’
‘Lee-thee. What you drink to forget.’
‘You don’t want to be doing no forgetting till you’re ready to do forgiving. Anti-freeze? You want to get some curry powder.’ He looked at me over a pint of Bloody Mary. ‘If you forgive that husband of yours this side of Alzheimer’s, I will slap you so hard.’
We were in the pub where Izzy preached interminable homilies to anyone who’d listen: increasingly few, as people dived into lavatories or out of windows to avoid him. In rehearsal he’d pace up and down barking into his mobile, commanding the world with his unlit cigar until we closed the door on him as if he was an incontinent puppy. At tea-break, though, he’d be on us, demanding attention.
For the first three days he’d come into the room, as he thought, unobtrusively. A piranha in a goldfish bowl would have had more chance of going unnoticed. Even his silence was loud, but not as loud as his ‘Dan, Dan, may I have some input here?’
Unable to interrupt Izzy’s monologue about the dark side of human nature being released by the show, so relieving the audience of their baser instincts, we listened politely. Dan mentioned that it was a musical comedy, and undiluted rape and pillage were unlikely to raise anyone’s spirits, let alone a laugh.
‘They said the same about Showboat,’ Izzy cried triumphantly. ‘Inter-racial relationships. Black people and white people. That’s miscegenation!’ He paused, doubtful. ‘Say… You have that here in England?’
The next day he came in with three complete strangers and forced an impromptu concert for this triumvirate, who turned out to be Turkish Cypriot waiters and not, as Izzy thought, delegates from the Costa Rican embassy. But the last straw was when Izzy had half the cast in a recording studio making a hip-hop version of Lee’s number to sell the show to gay clubs. Lee, the coffee drinker next to KT at the read-through, was in heaven. By the time he got back to the gulag, he’d fantasised a platinum album and a solo on the Royal Variety Show. Unfortunately, Dan knew nothing about it.
In the pub at the end of the first week, Dan was drawing on a roll-up and sipping his lager and lime, into which someone had stuck a plastic chrysanthemum.
‘Izzy’s just a child with a toy-box. Problem is, we’re the toys.’
‘The problem is,’ said Morag acidly, ‘that wee shite’s the producer.’
Dan was about to reply when Glenda and God came in. Every head turned. They moved with the grace of big cats, so perfectly made they looked like another species. Glenda immediately draped herself over Flossie, the non-salsa choreographer, while God got the drinks in.
‘So, Dan,’ I said, ‘what do you think we should do?’
He didn’t reply. He couldn’t. He was looking at Glenda like a five year-old at Hamley’s Christmas window. Megan pursed her lips.
‘Och, for Christ’s sake, get him a drip tray. Oh, sorry, God,’ she said, as he handed her a large vodka tonic.
Dan’s look of unrequited longing didn’t fade. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘If a show goes tits-up, it’s customary to nick anything that isn’t nailed down.’
‘Yes,’ we chorused.
‘Well, I’m having Glenda.’
Hearing her name, she languorously turned towards him.
‘Hi Dan. Okay?’
Under her great doe-like gaze, Dan, always so articulate, gibbered, grabbed his drink and almost put his eye out on the chrysanthemum. Glenda pouted.
‘He doesn’t like me,’ she said quietly to me.
‘On the contrary,’ I replied. ‘You’re so beautiful he doesn’t know what to say.’
She looked across at him, a mischievous smile curving her perfect, full lips. ‘Oh yeah…iss natural.’ And he was dismissed with fond satisfaction.
I consoled myself with the thought that she had no conversation and she’d bore Dan rigid, as she was nothing more than a beautiful but empty skin. Who was I kidding? The only part of him that would be rigid in her company wouldn’t be discussing Proust’s cake recipes.
Dan, who was charmingly unaware of his own physical perfection, had no difficulty talking to Viola, and overwhelmed her in the same way Glenda overwhelmed him.
‘I shouldn’t worry,’ KT whispered to me. ‘He won’t shag that, not even to get the show on.’
‘He’s shagged worse for less,’ I hissed back.
‘Ooh, saucer of milk for you, my gell.’
Izzy was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps Viola had persuaded him to leave us alone – or perhaps he’d been raped, murdered and dumped in a ditch. Either way we were happy. She listened in a trance of adoration while Dan explained his plans for restructuring her script, which still looked like the Bridge on the River Kwai before Alec Guinness took over.
•
Back in rehearsal after the wig-fitting, Lee was in full flow:
‘Dan, darling, I just think I need a number, I mean what we’ve got doesn’t establish my character. The audience just won’t know who I am.’
Dan was more dismissive with this irrepressible self-promoter than I’d so far seen him. ‘Lee, if you’re wearing a gold sequined catsuit, no one will be in any doubt about not only who you are but what you are.’
Everyone laughed, including Lee, but I saw a sliver of malevolence cross his face. I could understand Dan’s terseness; Lee’s contributions were invariably laced with a desire to turn the production into a Shirley Bassey floor show, with himself as Shirley Bassey.
‘Dan, I’ve been in musical theatre for fifteen years.’ Twenty actually, but that would have given away his age. ‘And I can tell you, we need something spectacular here, where the first act sags. Doesn’t it, Eleanor?’
Lee was looking to me for support. My years with David had taught me to be placatory. I realised married meekness had reduced me to defensive passivity. Perhaps this new self-awareness would make me a better actor, but in musicals introspection was as rare as a Trappist auctioneer – and about as useful. I called on the extrovert in me to confront Lee’s insatiable quest for lebensraum, but David’s wife mumbled:
‘Sorry, I don’t know, I was having a wig-fitting. But I’m sure we’ll do whatever’s best for the show.’
The other me kicked her.
The bruise was still aching when I joined the dance call, where I looked like a member of the Douglas Bader Formation Troupe. God finally lost patience with me as KT, holding my hand, went over the steps that a theatrically dyslexic snail could have mastered in ten minutes.
‘Eleanor! No puedo trabajar contigo! ’
‘What did he say?,’ I asked, my face setting into a truculent scowl.
‘He say he can’t work with you,’ said Glenda helpfully.
‘Well, tell God,’ I snapped, ‘that he is definitely mistaking me for someone who gives a fuck.’
I was sorry God had to be the first to meet the old me, but I was glad to have her back.
•
Back at home, Mrs Doormat twittered with worry:
I shouldn’t have snapped.
I shouldn’t have walked out.
What will people think?
And: Bugger, I’ve run out of wine.
I opened the bottle of champagne David had brought back from Odessa. More likely Oddbins, I now realised. Luckily KT called round before I’d finished the first glass.
‘I thought you’d be on the business end of a bottle. Do you have any idea how many calories are in that?’
I was defiant. ‘Not as many as in these chips.’
KT was delighted; he threw himself on the sofa and turned on the television. ‘Oh, tidy. Champagne and chips, my favourite. Don’t you dare pour me a drink, my gell.’
Two bottles and two thousand calories later, we’d blamed my hissy fit on PMT, God, and my complete inability to prance about like the brief Brownie I’d been when skipping round that bloody toadstool.
‘Scarred me for life that Brown Owl did. Mind you, the only ballet class I went to was worse: “You’re all bumble bees flying in a summer garden.” I flew straight into a plate glass window and broke my nose.’
‘What happened?’
‘It got a great laugh.’
KT was soon reassuring me and leading me drunkenly through the choreography that had been such a problem.
‘I don’t know why you can’t do it, you daft cow. Susan picked it up right away.’
‘I’m too intelligent. The instructions have to go through my brain to get to my feet. Anyway, she’s ballet trained, or so she keeps telling everyone.’
Susan had no doubt been a nymph in the Dolores Philbrick Dance Academy but now, despite her protestations that she had an hourglass figure, she looked more like a solidly built half-hunter.
‘You want to watch ’er, she’s a poisonous trollop that one,’ said KT, hoovering down a handful of chips dripping with tomato sauce.
I looked disapproving, guilty at my bitchy remark. ‘KT, she’s fine. She was with you in Grease, wasn’t she?’
‘Fame. The Middle East tour. She got pregnant by a British Airways air fairy, flew home for an abortion and was bumped up to first class. Has she done the ‘I’m in therapy because I used to mistake sex for affection – it’s because my dad was a Chippendale’ or some such bollocks?’
‘Oh come on, KT, she’s all right. She lent me some DVDs. I thought that was really sweet.’
‘Give me strength.’ He shook his head. ‘She’s after making herself indispensable to you, you know. The ‘I’m the star’s best friend ’ crap. Reflected glory off you, till she can shaft you. And she’s trying to pull Dan, you know.’
Now he had my attention. I was wide-eyed with revulsion and jealousy. The phone rang.
‘Bugger. Hallo?’
‘Eleanor? Phyllida.’
‘Oh, yes, Phyllida. Are you having a nice day? I’m having a lovely day here, on my own.’
‘Eleanor, are you drunk?’
‘Yes.’
‘David said you might go to pieces.’
‘Oh yes? When was that?’
‘I’m phoning to make sure you’ve seen to the car.’
‘Yes, I’ve taken its wheels off and propped it up on bricks, smashed the window and stolen the radio –’
‘Have you put the anti-freeze in?’
‘No – I’m drinking it.’ I put the phone down on her and had another glass of Bulbfield Bravery.
I started watching Susan after that, and sure enough, as the days passed, her skirts got shorter and her décolleté deeper. She’d even taken to rolling Dan’s cigarettes.
‘Oh wow, Dan, I’d so love to be able to smoke but the Voice. I have to guard the Voice.’ She stroked a mini-spliff suggestively before putting it between Dan’s lips.
It crossed my mind to go into competition with her, but it had been years since I’d felt remotely attractive to anything but the local wildlife, and even they had to be bribed with peanuts and bacon on bits of string.
Before we’d started rehearsals, in an orgy of masochism, I’d looked in the mirror over my shoulder and made excuses for the folds of flesh on my lower ribs. It’s only natural, I said to myself. Lots of women have them. But I wasn’t lots of women. Soon complete strangers would be paying fifty quid a skull to look at me. Fascinating though its ruin was, my body was unlikely to draw gasps of admiration from anyone but a coach party of pathologists.
Now I rushed home to see the small transformations brought about by the hours of dancing. The breasts had risen sufficiently to accommodate no more than a flip-flop. The bottom, though still as flat as Susan’s top Cs, seemed to have inched north. And the under-arms no longer hung like bread dough. To help this transformation I ate only one meal a day – though the intake of full-fat Pinot Grigio made up for lunch and breakfast.
A ray of happiness was penetrating the fog of self-pity. I had a leading role in a new musical and I was looking good. Maybe I should consider an affair; not with Dan obviously, but there must be someone out there who’d give me a fall of soot.
I could hear David’s scornful laugh: ‘Good God, Nellie, you think fellatio is a character in Les Misérables. It’s not enough just to turn up, you’re supposed to join in.’
I seemed to remember I’d once been quite good at sex…well, enthusiastic anyway. But as with my cycling proficiency certificate, I hadn’t taken it any further. At my age, a lover would expect a bit of finesse.
‘How do you give a good blow job?,’ I asked KT in a tea break.
‘Keep a good tune in your head.’
He proceeded to demonstrate with a banana and Mozart’s 40th. I was impressed by his choice.
‘It’s on my mobile.’
•
One morning, trying to look nonchalant, I peeled off my jumper to reveal a figure-hugging bit of lycra. The gasps of admiration were more than gratifying. Dan even looked up from his script.
‘Eleanor…’ He put his hand on my back, the fingertips lightly playing my vertebrae. ‘I would not crawl over you to get to Nicole Kidman. You look fabulous.’
Next morning, I was in early and about to put some lip-gloss on when Susan came into the green room.
‘Oh Eleanor, after what I went through last night I hardly need a warm-up.’ She flopped down with a Starbucks double latte, legs akimbo. ‘Dan’s doing absolute wonders for my turn-out.’
I felt as if I’d been winded. I tried to tell myself it wasn’t because he didn’t pick me. I hadn’t put myself on offer; why would he? It was just unprofessional – that was it, unprofessional. I caught myself just before I joined the ranks of disappointed middle-aged actresses passed over for newer, younger models.
What made it worse was David. Had he really been chasing chicken-eating spiders in the Amazon basin I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. I pictured myself at home during his other trips away. Writing long accounts of the trivia of my life in diaries I never showed him as he never displayed any interest. Relieved to reach three o’clock, so I could turn on the television and watch cosy quizzes until it was time to eat comfort food and enviously watch bad actors in bad soaps.
But my confidence even when sober was growing, though I suspected it would crack with one hard tap from a sharp object. David’s tongue, for example.
The anti-freeze remained a symbol of my defiance, until I came home one night to find Phyllida on the doorstep.
‘Where have you been, Eleanor? I’ve been waiting.’
Was I expecting her? I couldn’t remember.
‘I’m sorry, was I expecting you?,’ I asked, opening the door.
‘No,’ she said, sweeping past me. ‘David e-mailed me again about the car, and I knew you hadn’t done it.’ She went straight to the bowl on the hall table and took out his car keys.
‘What are you…?’
I trailed off as she marched out with a large and luminous bottle of anti-freeze. Expertly, she raised the Merc’s bonnet and guddled about in its innards.
‘Really, Phyllida,’ I said, considering letting it drop on her head, ‘you should have married David, you’re so much better at these things than me.’
She turned and looked up at me. ‘No Eleanor, you’re the perfect wife for David. He wouldn’t want anyone…like me.’
‘I suppose not.’
It could be an accident, the shattering of her skull as the bonnet crashed down, severing her spine.
‘There. That’s done.’ The bonnet slammed down on empty air. ‘Any message for David if he e-mails again?’
‘Just…’ I tried to think of something stinging and witty. ‘Send him my love.’