The technical rehearsal started at ten a.m. At nine-thirty, as I was putting foundation on my beard-rashed skin, David phoned.
‘Where’s my blue shirt?’
‘Which one?’
‘Eleanor, don’t be more idiotic than God created you, the one Phyllida gave me last birthday.’
I ripped it to pieces then boiled it in hydrochloric acid.
‘It’s hanging up in the wardrobe.’
‘How many times do I have to tell you, Eleanor, shirts don’t go in the wardrobe, it makes them musty.’
‘David, I’m sorry but I must get on.’
‘No you mustn’t. This is more important than your…play-acting.’ His tone was contemptuous, but the ears hearing him were no longer tuned to his frequency.
‘What do you want it for anyway? You only wear that for special occasions.’
His sigh could have been exasperation, but I suspected it was hastily covered guilt. ‘I’ve got a lunch.’ Slight pause. ‘With my publisher.’ I doubted the blue shirt would be worn in honour of the unmade bed that printed his esoteric pamphlets on old bones.
‘Oh, I thought you might be seeing Phyllida.’
‘No. Why should I be seeing her?’
‘To thank her for the anti-freeze?,’ I said sweetly.
He exploded. ‘What are you implying? Just because you were too stupid to do it you’re going to get jealous… Oh, this is ridiculous. I’ll talk to you later.’
What did I care? I had a lover too. He couldn’t hurt me. So why was I crying? He wasn’t my life any more, this dressing up was real life – it had to be. The youngsters laughing at nothing, excited to be a day closer to the West End, the rest of us needing gin and Prozac to get through the next fourteen hours of gruelling repetition, frustration and tiredness.
I looked at my all-too-familiar features, the ones I was so tired of trying to transform, and after so many years in so many mirrors I wondered if it was worth it. When I’d started out everything had seemed possible; now only the impossible presented itself. The only way I was going to look like Elizabeth Taylor was with a face transplant. I’d aimed for the stars and had collided with the ceiling like a fly with a windscreen. David infested my mind as I picked calcified glue off my false eyelashes, losing confidence with each piece that hit the bin. Luckily, before I opened a vein, Ruby called everyone to order and the pre-show music started.
‘Ladies and Gentlemen, please turn off your mobile phones. Because if one should erupt, the cast are likely to come down off the stage and ram it up your arse. You are also advised to unwrap noisy sweet papers before the end of the overture because you really don’t want to upset this bunch of psychos you’ve just paid fifty quid to watch.’ Slight pause. ‘Sorry. It won’t be fifty quid till the West End.’
Then silence, uninhabited by the audience chatter that would follow in two days’ time. A soundtrack of street noises started up and Kelvin’s strong tenor soared out. I crept into the wings to watch for a moment. He got through the first verse before Ruby interrupted, slouching onto the stage wearing a headset.
‘Save it, Kelvin…’ He listened to the voice in his ear, then: ‘Thank you. Reset to the top, everyone. From houselights down.’
And so it would go on, stop-go, back and forth until the first dress rehearsal when the show, which had taken two days to put together technically, was done up-to-speed for the first time. By which time we’d all have lost the plot and the will to live.
Back in the dressing-room there was a subtle knock at the door and my dresser walked in. A professional lifetime of being discreet and invisible for leading ladies had given her a nun-like presence. She laid out my first costume, a violet sequined sheath with spike-heeled sandals.
‘So glamorous,’ she murmured, stroking the glittering material.
‘Maybe on the outside,’ I said, pulling on my microphone belt, which was attached to a length of broad, black elastic-band around the right thigh. On this was sewn a cotton envelope for the battery-pack. It was like a calico gun-belt. From the dressing-table I picked up the battery, larger and heavier than an iPod, with two terminals sticking out of the top. One housed the aerial, which had to be free and dry at all times, the other was the socket for the mike lead. I pushed it into the pouch, clicked the plug into the socket, threaded the cable under my knickers, up my back, under my bra, round the strap and over my head. A toupee-clip held it in place in the centre of the wig net. Over the top, holding the centre of the wig in place on my forehead, went the jet black hair. The tiny mike was barely visible as it protruded from under the flesh-coloured lace of the wig that framed my face, and which I glued to the skin in front of my ears so tightly it looked like a bad face-lift.
The transformation was pleasing, if a little intimidating. The blonde wimp that was me was replaced by a black-haired woman with fierce eyes. I was convinced by her, until I sat down and the aerial stabbed me in the clitoris. I’d put it on upside down.
I walked slowly – and carefully – to the stage-right wing, holding myself like a great and famous beauty, not, hopefully, like someone with intimate bruising. On stage the cast milled about in the bright lights, waiting. The wings were dark and cluttered, a quiet world of obscurity separated from the glare of exposure by a few paces. Nervous for no reason, I waited for my first entrance, a slow walk down the magnificent staircase. Dear God, if I felt like this at eleven o’clock on a Monday morning what state would I be in by seven-thirty on Wednesday night?
To relieve the shortness of breath, the urge for the lavatory, the compulsive pacing and the urge to eviscerate David, I relived the night before.
•
Dan was unaffected by our being seen together and dismissive of Susan. ‘I’ll give her a cuddle in the morning and tell her she’s the new Elaine Paige.’
But even as I pulled the curtain across the firmly closed windows, I could still feel her angry jealousy. I knew she’d be poisoning the youngsters against me. That sliver of insecurity grew into bleak thoughts of David and certainty that he was right: I was a bad person and a lousy mother. I broke off from a long lazy kiss that I was reciprocating more through fear of offending than pleasure.
‘I’d better phone home.’
Dan let me go with no objection and sat down by the fire while I went into the cold hallway.
It was too late for David, he was ratty with jet-lag.
‘Yes?’ He’d obviously been asleep.
‘It’s me. Did you get home safe?’
‘No. I’m lying in the middle of the M25 with a machete in my head. What do you think? For crying out loud, Eleanor, don’t you know I’ve got jet-lag?’
Very ratty.
‘Well… I just wanted to say hallo and tell you I didn’t have time to get any eggs but there’s stuff in the freezer –’
‘Eleanor. It’s two o’clock in the morning. I’ve just travelled non-stop for eighteen hours. I want to go to sleep.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, David. The M4’s a bugger isn’t it?’
‘What?’
‘From Heathrow. The M4. From Heathrow. What did you think I meant?’ A pause. I could hear him breathing. Pity. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow, shall I?’
‘Why bother?,’ he spat. ‘You’re no good to me in Plymouth are you? If you can’t be bothered to be here, you needn’t bother to phone.’
And he hung up on me. With no idea of why I’d put myself through that, I went back into the living room and stood defeated and lost in front of Dan.
‘You look like a little girl,’ he said, putting his arms round me. ‘And I like little girls.’
‘Well I’m glad you do. My husband prefers boot-faced old bags.’
‘Oh.’
‘Sorry, you didn’t come here to listen to my problems with my husband.’
He didn’t contradict me; after all this wasn’t a relationship.
•
‘You loo’ fantastic.’
Glenda had slid up behind me, silent and sensuous as a python. She touched my dress and hair.
‘You so beautiful. Really, Eleanor. Beautiful.’
This from a girl whose looks could have stopped the charge of the Light Brigade. I glowed with pleasure.
Susan joined us in a fountain of pink chiffon frills, held up by rhinestone straps that cut into her well-upholstered shoulders. On her feet were four-inch-high white sling-backs rarely seen outside Chigwell. I hadn’t seen anything wobble like her since my Auntie Renee made a blancmange for my tenth birthday.
‘Oh Susan, you look fantastic. That colour’s perfect. Such a pretty dress, and it moves so well.’
Had Glenda been so insincere? No. She was gloriously untouched by hypocrisy, but then, like a child, she loved anything that glistened even if it was base metal. I waited for Susan’s reciprocal dishonesty. She simpered, looking me up and down, pausing at the wig.
‘You’re so brave, Eleanor, black’s so ageing.’
Then she turned to Lee and cooed over his skin-tight gold lamé trousers, as he minced on stage to laughter and congratulations. He looked ‘wonderful’, ‘perfect’, ‘so good’. Susan turned to me, as there was no one else to speak to; Gaffer Gusset didn’t count.
‘You know he had liposuction. In Estonia. Much cheaper than Harley Street. Still looks fat though, no muscle-tone you see.’
That was the pot calling the kettle beige but I did a bit of ‘No! Really? ’, and I could see she was pleased. Her smirk at my ignorance was intended to put me in my place. Luckily I knew my place. And so did she: slap bang in the middle of the curtain call. And with that between us, there was no possibility of anything more than a wary truce. She didn’t have anything I wanted.
•
They didn’t get to my entrance until after the morning tea break. Izzy was pacing up and down in the wings, chewing on his cigar and scowling. Viola sat a couple of seats away from Dan in the stalls, poring over the latest version of the script. Karen, the musical supervisor, was on stage behind me listening to the fold-back speakers. There was no tension as I stood waiting for the sound balances to be rectified. Dan was talking to the lighting designer and Ruby was waiting, hand on hip, to restart, when out of the blue-lit dark strode Izzy, straight to centre-stage.
He shaded his eyes from the battery of lights and squinted into the auditorium, cigar pushed deep into his cheek. His yellow face was livid with anger.
‘Dan, Dan, I need a little input here.’
The sort of silence that settles on a forest when the predator appears engulfed us. I looked across at Ruby and, imperturbable though he was, his eyebrows rose. Mine did too.
‘Yes, Izzy?’ Dan’s voice was calm, friendly even.
‘The door knobs.’
‘What about the door knobs, Izzy?’
‘What about the door knobs? I don’t like the door knobs is what about the door knobs.’ He was shouting now. ‘This is a mansion, right? No fancy house would have door knobs like that, Dan. You gotta get rid of them.’
Izzy went to pull one, but it hadn’t been screwed on and came off in his hand. There were hastily suppressed sniggers from the dancers.
‘Look at this cheap crap! You got no class, Dan. This show is about class and you – you got no class, Dan… Look at these, they look like class to you?’
By now he was screaming. About a pair of door knobs.
There was a stunned pause before Dan spoke. The show was being painstakingly assembled, like a gigantic meccano set, and Izzy was hysterical about door knobs? Dan came to the front of the stage. He wasn’t smiling.
‘Izzy, the ones that were ordered haven’t arrived. Morag put these on just for the tech. Now, there’s a lot to do, could we get on?’
‘I don’t like ’em! They’re no good, ya hear me? Get rid of ’em!’
Morag appeared at the side of the stage.
‘Izzy –’
He rounded on her. ‘I don’t like the knobs. They’re cheap.’
‘So is this fucking show, you wee scheister. The supply company hasnae been paid, so I had to go to B&Q in ma tea break and get these out the sale bin.’
This was the cue, the accusation Izzy had been waiting for.
‘Are you saying I don’t pay? I’ve never been accused of not paying what’s due.’ He was yelling into her face, covering her in a shower of saliva. ‘You need more money? You didn’t say you needed more money. Why didn’t you say, you dumb ass?’
Morag was scarlet now, but she stood her ground.
‘I’ve said it so many bloody times I’ve got repetitive strain injury. You gave me a budget and I’ve worked damn hard to bring this show in under it, even though it’s like limbo-dancing under a snail’s belly, but even I can’t do anything if the bills aren’t paid.’
Unable to intimidate her, Izzy increased the volume of his screaming.
‘I pay my bills! Are you saying I don’t pay my bills? You’re nothing, you know that? You’re only on this show cos Dan wanted you. I don’t want you, you’re not even second-rate.’ He strode up and down the stage. ‘The bills are Jonty’s responsibility. That’s what I pay him for. Get me Jonty! I want him here. Now! I’ve never been accused of dishonesty.’ He turned his fury back on Morag. ‘You’re nothing, where have you worked before? You ever worked on Broadway?’
‘This isn’t Broadway and you’ve spent more on bloody lawyers than you have on the sets and costumes, ye wee shite. And don’t you dare blame Jonty, he doesn’t have the authority to sign off cheques because you won’t let him. Everything goes through you, so don’t come all the I didn’t know anything about it bollocks, cos ma head doesnae button up the back.’
I thought Izzy was going to spontaneously combust. He snatched the cigar from his mouth and approached her, stabbing the air in front of her face with it.
‘Okay, okay, that’s it. You’re fired. You hear me? I been doing theatre forty years and I never heard crap like you talk. Get out of my theatre. Are you still here? I told you, you’re out, lady!’
‘Jesus Christ, Izzy,’ she yelled back, not moving. ‘Is that your answer tae everything? The only friggin’ reason I have nae walked out before now is Dan. Not you, ye wee dictator.’
Viola had come down the stalls to stand next to Dan.
‘Izzy, Izzy, stop this. I mean it, honey. Stop this. It’s not good for you.’ Not good for him? He was the only person who hadn’t gone into shock.
‘Get that woman outta my sight and outta my theatre.’ He jutted his jaw towards Morag. ‘I’ll see to it you never work again.’
I thought Morag was going to hit him. Ruby put himself between them. Dan jumped onto the stage and Viola wailed.
‘That’s a break everyone. Back in fifteen.’ Ruby didn’t dissipate the poison, but he did disperse the company. Reluctantly they shuffled away. Morag didn’t move.
‘Izzy,’ said Dan quietly. ‘Shouting and bawling may be the way to get things done in America, but there isn’t a corner of the British Isles where it works, and I won’t have any member of my team spoken to like that. Now…I suggest, if you want this production to open on time, you allow us to get on and save the histrionics for New York.’
Izzy simmered in silence, and Morag, chin up, eyes bright with angry tears, stared at him, waiting for the apology which was never going to come, then said quietly:
‘I’ll get you new door knobs tomorrow. Here, in Plymouth. And I’m sorry I lost ma temper.’
Izzy couldn’t be gracious, even in triumph. ‘Okay. Get ’em fixed by tomorrow or you’re out.’
Only Dan’s hand on Morag’s arm prevented her ramming the door knobs down the producer’s throat. Izzy stomped off the stage, leaving a bomb crater of shock and hurt. Viola scuttled after him.
‘Izzy…Izzy…wait…’
Dan glanced across at me. He looked as if he’d been slapped. It was left to Ruby to sum up.
‘Tosser,’ he said. ‘I’m going for a fag.’
Morag followed him, already lighting a Marlboro even though her hands were shaking.
As Dan wanted to talk to Basher, I went to my dressing-room, hoping Izzy might have caught bubonic plague by the time we were called back. The phone was ringing as I opened the door.
‘Hallo?’
‘Eleanor? David.’
I’d forgotten about him. For the first time since I met him I’d gone two hours without thinking about him. Now he was back like toothache.
‘Eleanor, I’m not angry at you. I just think it was disrespectful that you should have taken this job without consulting me –’
‘You were in the Amazon. By the way, did you find out what killed your bodies?’
David ignored the question, perhaps he couldn’t bear to tell a lie. ‘I’ve got some bad news, Eleanor.’ I was looking in the mirror, thinking maybe Susan was right, my wig was too harsh. ‘Gabriel Michael’s daughter phoned. He committed suicide last Monday. The funeral’s on Friday in London.’
My mind split in two, half skittering through trivia, half struggling to accommodate the death of my first love. The pictures of him so vivid, alive in the past but not the present.
National Youth Theatre. Sleeping in the wardrobe store under Richard II’s velvet cloak. The smell of mothballs and damp. His, the first hand on my breast. Laughing at the seriousness of sex. Playing bar billiards at the Monarch. Walking all night through London because I was too frightened to sleep with him but too much in love to let him go. Aggressive, self-destructive, drunk, gentle, funny, kind and too intelligent to survive as an actor. To live, he wrote romantic novels as Olive Tapenade. Always bored with his own company, locked away with his lap-top, he’d get conservatory salesmen to call at his eighth floor flat.
We’d stayed friends through his disintegrated marriage, his self-sabotaged relationships and the growing up of his children. But his life wasn’t the one he’d signed up for. He’d never got the hang of the pointlessness of existence and I understood why my Gabriel, my first kiss, my first heartache, had taken pills and died with no audience.
But that didn’t make the pain of his going any less. And now, with David rattling through the funeral arrangements, I wanted his smell of red wine and fine soap and Gitanes. I wanted to phone him to hear his naughty boy giggle. But I’d never hear him, see him nor touch him again. Ever.
I sat and cried until David gave up and rang off. The last thing Gabriel had said to me was: ‘Eleanor, it’s not too late to save me from myself. David is a gold-plated – not even 24-carat – shit. Ditch him and come back to me.’
And he hadn’t even known about Phyllida. I was laughing through the sobs, thinking what he would have said, when KT came in and knelt down in front of me.
‘Nellie, Nellie, what’s the matter? Oh Nellie, don’t cry.’
I couldn’t speak, I howled, floundering in the pointlessness of constructing shelters against death.
When I finally got control of my voice I asked him not to say anything to anyone in the company. There was nothing worse than the voyeuristic sympathy of people sidling up in the wings asking, ‘Are you all right?’, while desperately hoping you’ll break down and have to be carted off to a secure unit. ‘Poor Eleanor keeps crying, some story about a bloke, but it’s really trying to get sympathy because she’s not up to it…’ That kind of gossip travelled faster than the internet. Discretion, like full employment, was unknown.
The tech dragged on, passing as if during a heavy period – a mixture of pain and fear of leakage. My red eyes and occasional tears were excused as an allergy and I spent the afternoon being bombarded with sprays, pills and folk remedies rather than tell the truth.
KT tidied me up, repainted my panda eyes and pushed me back on stage, where Izzy was now complaining about the colour of Susan’s legs.
‘She’s supposed to be from Venezuela and she’s orange. Look at her calves, they’re the colour of a carrot.’
But the shape of aubergines, I thought.
‘Where’s the designer? What the hell has she done to my actress?’
‘Actually, Izzy…’ Susan was all big eyes and finger-twisting curls. ‘I did it. Did I do wrong? I wanted to look exotic –’
He was brought up all standing by this ‘Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?’ act.
‘Ohh…say…Susan… I didn’t realise. What a great thing you did. Isn’t that a great thing, Viola? The kid used her own money to help the show.’
Viola clasped her hands to her sternum, and gazed up at Susan. I noticed Viola never came onto the stage, whereas we couldn’t keep Izzy off it. He put his arm around Susan – or as far around as her waist would allow anything but an orangutan’s.
‘You’re a star, kid. A real star.’
•
The concentration required to get through the rest of the tech put Gabriel out of my mind until my saccharine ballad in the second act. Viola’s inane lyrics, rhyming ‘love’ with ‘God above’, suddenly had the potency of John Donne, and I sang it so well even the band woke up.
At the end of the evening, after our ‘Well done, but still more work to do’ speech from an exhausted Dan, Karen timidly put her head round the door.
‘Are you all right, Nell?’
Her kind, bright face undid me, but not as much as her words of comfort and praise. I went home to an empty bed and fell asleep staring at the ceiling rose and crying mascara into my pillowcase.