Next morning, I went in to rehearse my songs with Karen and share the knowledge that God didn’t wear underpants – and she wasn’t there. We’d developed a friendship based on mutual respect, professionalism and a passion for fried-egg sandwiches. I trotted round the building but there was no sign of her.
In the strip of garden, Dan was smoking and working out the rehearsal schedule with Flossie.
‘Have you seen Karen?’
Dan looked up. No smile, his eyes as hard as David’s blue topaz cufflinks. He handed me his tobacco pouch. Though I didn’t like smoking, Susan had turned making a roll-up into an advert for her manual dexterity. I wanted to show him what my fingers were capable of, even though sharing an ounce of Golden Virginia seemed about as intimate as we were likely to get.
‘She’s gone home.’
‘Oh. Is she ill?’
‘No. She hasn’t been paid.’
‘Oh no, not her as well.’ I sat on the edge of the bath. ‘Is it just this week?’
‘The creative team doesn’t get paid by the week, we have three payments and the first one was due on the first day of rehearsal.’
‘But that was a month ago.’
‘She’d been working for three weeks before that.’
For the first time, Dan showed something other than laid-back good nature. This was Karen’s smiling tiger. ‘He hates confrontation but he’s not afraid of it,’ she’d said.
‘So she’s had nothing for seven weeks?,’ I bleated incredulously.
‘That’s right,’ said Flossie. ‘She’s missed a mortgage payment. Her husband’s ill and can’t work and she’s very slightly desperate. So she slipped away at lunch-time. Didn’t think anyone would notice.’
‘So what are we going to do?’
They both shook their heads. ‘Nothing we can do,’ said Flossie. ‘It’s between her and the management.’
The management was now an inexperienced general manager, an expensive firm of accountants and an even more expensive firm of ‘lawyers’, as Izzy called the firm of solicitors famously known as The Axis of Evil. From Izzy, through this complex triumvirate, a thin trickle of cash was filtered, and despite rafts of receipts there was always an excuse for the lack of money.
I felt something like a taut elastic band snap inside me. It took me aback. I was angry. I was so unused to the feeling I almost mistook it for indigestion.
‘Right, can I call a company meeting, Dan?’
He looked surprised. ‘Sure.’
By the time I’d assembled everyone, my small campfire of fury had flared into a fine blaze.
‘Um… Er… I’m sorry to call you all together like this, but…’
I didn’t feel it was a very convincing start. I looked at the expressions on the company faces around me and saw everything from open good-natured trust from two of the girl dancers, to the tight-lipped ‘so impress me’ look that Susan habitually wore. Though, to be fair to her, it could just have been her make-up. Underneath she may have been gazing on me with the adoration of a besotted nun.
‘Karen hasn’t been paid for seven weeks and she’s left the building…’ Oh God, did that sound ridiculous? Shades of Elvis? I needn’t have worried; only two of the cast were old enough to recognise the phrase and one of them was deaf. ‘…as she feels unable to continue working without payment.’
There were nods of approval, Lee’s the most emphatic of all, which surprised me. Had I judged his all-consuming self-interest too harshly? I’d save the guilt that caused till later.
‘And, personally, I don’t want to continue rehearsing until she is paid. I’m not asking for a strike, but may I put it to you that we tell Izzy unless her money is in her account by five o’clock today, we won’t be in tomorrow. I just feel, if he does this to her he can do it to any of us, and we need to nip this in the bud now.’
I needn’t have added the justification. When I asked for a show of hands they were unanimously in favour of supporting Karen.
My head was above the parapet. As I went to telephone the general manager, I knew it would only be a matter of time before someone took a shot at it.
‘Hallo, Jonty?’
The general manager answered in his Leslie Phillips ‘Well, hello’ voice. I was precise and polite; he was surprised and unprepared.
‘Well, Eleanor…I don’t know what to say. I put the paperwork through. Um…I’d better call Izzy.’
I rang off and found Dan standing beside me, proffering a roll-up.
‘Well done,’ he said. Approval. I glowed. ‘Going to the pub after?’
I needed to do my roots, to brood on betrayal, to practise the dance routines in the bathroom mirror…
‘Yes, sure.’
‘Good. I’ve got a production meeting but I’ll see you after.’
I felt my face getting hot and beads of sweat on my upper lip. I hoped it was excitement, not the onset of the menopause. It hadn’t occurred to me he’d find a shop steward attractive.
My mobile rang. I answered it as Dan turned away.
‘Hallo…? Oh, Izzy.’
Dan turned back.
‘Hi, pal.’ What on earth had given him the impression I was his pal? ‘I can’t believe what Jonty has done. You know, he’s a nice guy, I gave him a big chance with this job, he’s young, maybe a little cocksure, but I can’t believe he’s done this. You know I’ve been a producer and a businessman for forty years and no one has ever accused me of not paying what I owe.’
‘Well, Izzy –’
‘See, this is the way it is, pal, this is the bottom line. Karen hasn’t signed her contract.’
I knew that wasn’t true, she’d borrowed my pen. I told him.
‘Are you saying I’ve got her signed contract? Is that what you’re saying?’ His blustering rage was intended to see me off, but he didn’t know he was speaking to a woman scorned.
‘No, no, Izzy, I’m just –’
‘If Jonty has it, I don’t know. How should I know? I can only do what he tells me. That’s what I employ him for.’
His voice was getting louder, distorting in my ear.
‘Yes, but Izzy –’
‘I can’t do things if I don’t know what hasn’t been done. There’s things that haven’t been done that I know haven’t been done, there are things that haven’t been done that should have been done, there are things that haven’t been done I don’t know haven’t been done and this guy, a guy letting me down, not doing what I paid him to do. I had a guy like that in New York, big-shot lawyer. You know what? I just went into his office one day and fired him. Like that. No comeback. That’s the way I am.’
Trying to interrupt him was like trying to throw a pebble through the spokes of a moving bicycle.
‘Izzy.’ I raised my voice over his. Three years at the London Academy had given me the lungs of a sea lion. ‘When she turned up for work she was employed by you. The ink on the line is a secondary consideration. She’s been working for you for seven weeks and hasn’t been paid. And, unless she is, we don’t feel able to continue, because she is as much a member of this company as I am.’
He backed down at this display of decibel feminismo, but immediately went into suspicious mode.
‘Did she complain to you? Is this her?,’ he hissed. ‘If she had a problem she shoulda called me. I tried calling her, you know that? And her agent. But they won’t take my calls. You know she can’t play salsa, she just can’t do it, no rhythm, it was Dan wanted her –’
My unwillingness to be bullied or bullshitted into a compromise gave me courage, and in the face of his American Producer act I became more and more British – Edith Evans haggling with a totter.
‘Izzy, I’m sure this misunderstanding is absolutely nothing to do with you. And I’m equally sure you’ll sort it out before five o’clock this afternoon if you want rehearsals to continue tomorrow morning.’
I rang off, shaking. Why couldn’t I face Phyllida like that?
The young union representative was standing beside me. He was ashen under his spiky red hair.
‘Eleanor, I phoned Equity, they say they can’t back us if we come out on strike.’
‘It’s not an Equity matter,’ I said tersely. ‘It’s self-preservation.’
The lad subsided, fearful of losing his job but torn by his desire to do the right thing. I put my arm round him, though he was head and shoulders taller than me.
‘Don’t worry, Izzy’s a school-yard bully. It’ll be all right.’ I was surprised at how convincing I sounded.
Fifty-five minutes later, Karen called Dan to say the money was in her account.
Fifty-five minutes. I didn’t feel triumphant, I felt disgusted. Word got round the company and I was a heroine. But, as always, mistrustful of popularity, I ran away, leaving a note for Dan saying I’d be in the Red Lion rather than our usual.
•
I found a table away from the glowing coal fire because David would have said: ‘Eleanor, you shouldn’t sit so close.’
Why not? Would I really self-immolate if I drank my wine in its fierce heat? And if I did, wouldn’t it be worth it not to spend my whole life cowering in the shadows? Today I was brave. I’d had a small victory in the eyes of my small world.
I moved tables, held my hands out to the flames and felt the delicious heat of the wooden bench through my trousers. I wondered if there was a greater sense of freedom than this. It was such a tiny thing, sitting alone in a pub, defying a husband who would have cared only that his authority was being flouted.
Through the window I watched a thin frightened cat quivering on a roof. Had it been wearing a wedding ring it would have been my reflection. I looked down at the smooth gold band on my finger and, with the help of a little oil from the peanuts I was eating, eased it off. The flesh was indented. Bloodless. Not any more. I wanted to throw the ring into the fire in a fine Wagnerian gesture, but caution and thrift made me put it in my bag. In the dark. Another little triumph.
By seven o’clock I’d lost the flavour of my success and was sure I’d been stood up. By seven-thirty the fire had faded and so had I. Slowly I left the pub, still hoping he would appear. But this was real life and even though it was probably half-over, I still hadn’t got used to it.
Indulging my misery, I went home, changed into a shapeless shift and liberated my one remaining soft toy from the top of the wardrobe where David had banished him.
My script was open, poached eggs ready and chocolate on standby when the phone rang. I was reluctant to answer it, but then the thought it might be David propelled me across the room so fast I dropped the receiver.
‘Sorry… I’m sorry about that. Hallo?’
‘Eleanor?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s Dan.’
I panicked, as if he could see me cuddling a pink elephant to my bra-less bosom.
‘Oh. Yes.’ Very witty.
‘Sorry I missed you, the production meeting went on for two and a half hours. Izzy.’
‘Ah. Yes. Izzy.’
‘Do you fancy a pizza?’
‘Well…yes. Where are you?’ What if he was on the doorstep? What would I do? I dumped the pink elephant behind the sofa.
‘At home. In Russell Street, by the British Museum.’
I started to make excuses, I lived the other end of London.
‘I’ll send a cab for you.’
I put the phone down and ran to the bathroom. Apologising to pink elephant, I propped him up on the lavatory cistern and jumped into the shower. Life had gone from grey to technicolor. Why would he want me to go to his house at this time of night if he didn’t want to…
I raided my knicker drawer for the packet of condoms KT had given me as a joke. David didn’t think that sort of thing funny, so I’d hidden them. I prayed they weren’t luminous green with tentacles.
Still damp, I threw myself into the taxi and had forty minutes to make up my face by the dim interior light and Braille.