After a couple of sherries in the Mexican bar, thoughts of Lee and Susan were as distant as the Wicked Queen in panto. God and Glenda floated in with their usual straightforward good humour, which was only slightly dented by the shock of moving to Plymouth, where their colour and perfection turned heads and stopped cars.
‘This is not a place of beautiful people,’ said Glenda sadly.
As if to reinforce her observation, Izzy and Viola walked in. This was as unusual as it was unwelcome.
‘Hi, guys,’ said Izzy, with the relaxed bonhomie of a satellite navigation system.
‘Come and sit down.’ I moved up on the banquette seat, hoping I sounded convincingly welcoming. God and Glenda, seizing their opportunity, left for the cinema.
Izzy sat next to me while Viola folded into the chair by KT like a step ladder being put away. We made awkward small talk for a while, then Izzy made a break for the monologue. Conversation was effectively dead.
‘I gotta tell ya, I’m worried about the direction this show is going. That run we did on Saturday – lemme tell you, Eleanor, you were great. I cried. You saw me cry, right?’
‘Did you, Izzy? Must have missed that.’ KT kicked me.
‘But where was Viola’s masterpiece? All I saw was a lot of horsing around. Juvenile jokes, kids running around carrying furniture –’
‘I think that’s because there wasn’t the budget for a big set…’ I might as well have tried to speak over Niagara Falls.
‘– You know, I was brought up poor, but after I made a million, maybe two, I married good, right? I’m a businessman, yeah?’ We nodded wearily. ‘But I’m a producer first. I started out with nothing, I learned. You know. I had to.’
He lowered his voice and his head, leaning close enough for me to share his breath. I was shocked at how yellow the whites of his eyes were.
‘You know, my grandparents, both sets, they were gassed in Auschwitz.’
He paused for our shock. Mine was not because of the Holocaust, but at the thought that anyone could use such a tragedy to manipulate their listener into acquiescent silence.
‘This show is a monument to them. That’s why I’m here. To make sure they didn’t die in vain. Viola has written what she knows, but putting it on is my tribute to Yenta, Israel, Miriam and Solomon. I think it’s difficult for some people to understand this, that I produce with my soul. To some people, some people in this company even, it’s just a paycheck and they lack respect.’
My silence wasn’t respect but disgust. Izzy was prepared to use a taboo sledgehammer to smash a nut, and it soon became clear that nut was Dan. Viola sat, her shirt collar turned up round her elongated neck, which was reddening as Izzy talked. She looked down into her glass of fizzy water as if she wished it was a lake.
‘You know, pal…’ Izzy had been talking continuously, interrupted by nothing but my lack of attention. ‘I think Dan has some problems…mainly with Susan.’
Now he had my attention. Dan had never shown irritation with her self-absorbed stupidity. ‘No,’ I heard myself saying. ‘Dan…er…admires Susan. She’s got a great voice.’
‘Sure, kid – I know she has a great voice.’ He said it with a look that said I’d come top of the class. ‘But Dan doesn’t know talent like I know talent. He’s not giving her the time and the big focus. She’s gotta be seen.’
How could you miss her?
He sat back and glanced at Viola, she was now hunched over, her face contorted. I wished she smoked, drank or took class A drugs, just to give her some rest from whatever demons were pursuing her.
‘He’s using her.’ He stabbed the air with the cigar. ‘He thinks she’s got a great ass. But he’s forgetting she’s got a great voice, and I wanna hear it.’
I could only be grateful Izzy was as unseeing of his audience as an actor on a brightly lit stage. Was he trying to bait me? Was he such a control freak he couldn’t bear the idea of a relationship that didn’t include him? I didn’t know what to say, but before I could formulate a reply that didn’t implicate me, Viola spoke. Her voice was more strangled than usual. Her eyes unwilling or unable to rise from the depths of her glass.
‘Izzy? Izzy I think you’re wrong. Dan wouldn’t do anything to hurt the show…’
As Izzy continued to conjure up pictures of Dan grazing on Susan’s veal-white body, I looked at KT. He was far quicker and more accurate than I was, but we both arrived at the same conclusion – it wasn’t me Izzy was trying to provoke but Viola.
KT and I were extras in a nasty little film that, as always, starred Izzy Duck. The plain, unattractive mouse that had been Viola Allen had been saved from barren spinsterhood by Izzy Duck and now he suspected her of infidelity. If Viola hadn’t slept with her director, it didn’t matter – Izzy inhabited every part of his wife; any thoughts that wandered from him were a betrayal of adulterate proportions.
Perhaps he was right, perhaps she had become infatuated with the man who never put her down and who treated her as if she were an attractive young girl. In retaliation, Izzy was trying to destroy his wife’s small, unformed fantasy with images of her hero in the throes of passion with a woman who was her physical antithesis. In a way it was touching that Izzy would think anyone but him could be remotely interested in Viola, but the ruthlessness with which he was combating that suspicion was cruel. However, not cruel enough for me to tell him Dan would rather sleep with the fishes than his wife.
As KT and I walked home from the theatre that night we laughed at the idea that anyone but Izzy and Viola would want to have sex with Izzy and Viola, but there was still something like the faint aroma of rotten fruit that stayed with me as I walked down the hill. It took away the pleasure of the view.
Once in the flat I opened a bottle of wine and waited for Dan.
It was almost midnight when I heard a tap on the bay window. His face was just visible as he leaned across from the steps leading up to the front door.
‘Hallo.’ He leaned on the wall, a bit awkward, a bit shy, almost formal, after the intimacy of the previous night. He didn’t kiss me but that may have been because, suddenly self-conscious, I turned away to lead him into the flat.
‘Wine?’
‘Sorry Ellie, I didn’t have time to get any.’
‘No, I didn’t expect you to. KT and I did a shop. How’s the fit-up going?’
‘Basher’ll have the set up by the morning. Everything’s fine.’
He pressed close behind me as I poured the wine, gently kissing the nape of my neck. What Viola Duck would give for this delicate arousal.
I turned to meet his lips and opened my dressing-gown. We both needed something quicker, less personal than making love and within ten minutes he was rolling a cigarette and I was peeling an Aero.
The night was moon-bright and cold, so I lit the gas fire, almost losing my eyelashes in the process, then sat on the floor with my back against Dan’s knees. He played with my hair much as he might have caressed a labrador’s ears. Comforting but hardly sensual.
‘Izzy said – no, implied – you’re having a thing with Susan.’
The hand stopped moving and withdrew. His silence made me turn round. I knelt between his knees. His eyes were in shadow but I could tell they weren’t soft with love. ‘And what did you say?’
I laughed. ‘Have you ever known him to leave a pause big enough to say anything? I got the feeling he was trying to warn Viola off you.’
Dan stood up and went to the table in the bay window where the wine was sitting in a bowl of iced water. The battleship in the bay was lit up like a Christmas tree. Beautiful.
‘Watch your back, Dan. You’ve banned Izzy from rehearsals and he’s had to get your permission to come into the technical – I just think he’s not one to take any loss of control easily, particularly if it involves Viola. She’s the only proof he’s got that he’s ever been viable as a man.’
‘So what do you think I should do?’
This was one of the most attractive things about Dan: when he asked a question he genuinely wanted to know the answer. In rehearsals, he patiently listened to everyone and never dismissed even the silliest or most self-serving suggestion. But he was so bright he was always ahead of us, and I could see from his amused expression he was ahead of me now.
‘I think you should try and include him. I don’t know, ask his advice maybe.’
Dan smiled and reached for my hand. ‘Bind friends close and enemies closer? Good advice from a wise woman.’
His hands slipped inside my dressing-gown again. Outside a group of drunks approached, singing at the tops of their voices. It took a second to realise they were doing the Act One finale from Les Misérables. I looked out of the window and there, looking in, as if through the glass of a fish bowl, was the stage management team, Jonty, a couple of the dancers…and Susan.
Dan opened the window and leaned out, chatting with them, laughing at their jokes about him giving me extra coaching. But Susan wasn’t laughing. She could see I was naked under the green-gold silk of my dressing-gown, and that the deep flush across my chest wasn’t due to the cold. Her sucker mouth was drawn in and she was staring at me through melodramatically narrowed eyes – Christopher Lee playing Fu Manchu in a fright wig.
I now had everything she wanted.