I did the show in a daze between calls to Dan’s mobile. Every few minutes a worried cast member came to my dressing-room. Would we get to London? Would the new director want to keep the dancers? I reassured them I’d do what was necessary to keep Dan and the show exactly as they were. By the end of the performance I was seeing myself as a cross between Arthur Scargill and Saint Joan. That they were both doomed egomaniacs was forgotten as I walked to the company meal. KT was with me, spitting pure acid about Izzy and Viola’s duplicity. The Leather Queen was beneath his vast contempt.
‘That ugly bitch is behind sacking Dan. She’s trying to save her marriage to that bloody gargoyle.’
KT’s loyalty ran through him like Brighton through a stick of rock, and his deadly tongue was never so poisonous as when slicing into the flesh of the traitorous. The flaky chorus-boy image, swayed by the passing breeze of opportunity, was simply to fit in with those adrift in a sea of insecurity.
‘You’ve got to understand, Nellie, some people aren’t happy unless they’re making misery – for each other and everyone else.’
•
At the subterranean Chinese restaurant, the cast were arriving in small groups, ignoring Viola and Ricky, who were deep in conversation outside. Gesturing to KT that he should go in, I gatecrashed their intimate chat with a smile and a deliberate insensitivity to their furtive plotting.
‘It’s great you’re joining us Ricky, fantastic idea,’ I said.
A lie so big it lay like a walrus on the pavement beside us. They didn’t seem to notice, though Viola looked wary. The Leather Queen was all over me like sunblock.
‘Ohmygod! Eleanor, you’re just so out there. You are soo beyond… I cannot wait to start working with you. That duet you have with Lewis?’
The intonation of his voice indicated a question, as did his exaggerated expression of humble openness beneath his floral headscarf.
‘I see…’ His hands created the scene. ‘I see four boys waltzing behind you. With each other. You get it? With each other, wearing tutus, like it’s totally normal.’ I must have looked like a stunned mullet. ‘Really play up the comedy. Yeah?’
He didn’t think I’d got it. He spoke louder and slower.
‘Then, Eleanor…the sofas you’re sitting on? We put them on wheels and they push them on…’ – he paused to see if I was following – ‘…towards each other.’
‘While we’re singing?,’ I asked in disbelief.
‘While you’re singing!’ He yelped in triumph.
I couldn’t imagine any moment of Viola’s script being described as plumbing the depths of emotional realism, but, as my cut-price Evita found true love with the elderly gardener, our duet was as close as it got. And it gave the audience a rest from the high-octane surrealism of the rest of the show. It was a touching little oasis.
Viola was peering up at her new director. I could see she wasn’t convinced either, but this was Izzy’s revenge. Anything of Dan’s would be thrown on the bonfire of his ego.
There was no point blocking Ricky so early.
‘Exactly the lines Dan was going down,’ I said. ‘Build up the comedy. Let the audience know they can laugh.’
My approval was his cue to open the floodgates of creativity.
‘Oh, wow, like, yeah. And the beginning? I see silk…I…see…SILK!’ The sibilance was painful. He paused, visualising billowing sails. ‘I see silk with the title, okay? The Merchant of Venezuela!, big letters, gold – I see gold…then, then…’
His arms were swinging. An old man passing looked at him like Don Quixote at a windmill. ‘Bloody queer,’ he muttered. Ricky didn’t notice.
‘Then…the silk disappears under you as you enter on…a ship!’
A ship? The man was psychiatrically challenged. I couldn’t wait to see him tell Basher. I could hear the reaction: ‘Fuckin’ ship? Fuckin’ bollocks.’
‘See, Eleanor…’ He bent towards me conspiratorially. ‘You are the Star and somewhere along the line Dan has lost sight of that.’ I hoped my eyes were not spinning in their sockets as they looked into his.
‘Ah, yes.’ My voice sounded rigid against the deceptive flexibility of his Californian tones. ‘Dan. I wonder if we might have a talk. With Izzy, perhaps?’
I looked at Viola. She didn’t say anything, but let me lead the way into the restaurant.
The company was sitting at a long table, talking and drinking. They appeared relaxed, but every one of them looked apprehensive or hostile as we came down the stairs.
Izzy sat at the bar, knees wide to the corners of the room, baseball cap pulled down low over his watchful eyes. Next to him, Susan perched on a bar stool in a ferment of vivacity. She threw back her head in appreciative laughter; seconds later she was leaning close, biting her lip with concentration as he spoke. She slid off the stool, moving closer to hear him. Her generous curves pushed out into the room as she shifted her forearms onto the bar – you didn’t have to be an expert in body language to understand her proprietorial stance. Or to notice the waiters were treating her like an obstacle in a shipping lane.
Viola, Ricky and I sat in a side booth, studied surreptitiously or blatantly by those at the table. Lee, swaying a large glass of red wine before him, uncoiled and sashayed over, a predatory gleam in his small still-mascaraed eyes. He bent over, head up, neck extended, showing Ricky his imaginary cleavage.
‘Ricky, I am so thrilled you’re on board. We are so needing you.’
‘For the choreography,’ I said, cold enough to chill his rioja.
He didn’t bother to acknowledge me. To him the king was dead and so was his court. He pursed his lips in a shadow of a blown kiss towards Ricky and twirled away, his buttocks a riot of semaphore.
I waited until we’d been provided with drinks before I started my pitch. Izzy watched from across the long table but showed no desire to join us.
‘Look, I don’t want to sound racist here.’
That got their attention. Ricky looked startled, but that could just have been his face-lift, and Viola just looked.
‘But there’s little or no appetite for Americana at present, there’s a slight anti-American whiff in the air for obvious reasons.’
I could see neither of them had any idea what those reasons might be.
‘If you impose Broadway “pizzazz”,’ – I held the word at arm’s length – ‘it may be regarded in certain quarters as riding roughshod over local sensibilities.’ They both looked as if I was speaking Aramaic. ‘What I’m trying to say is, are you intending to keep Dan on board in any capacity?’
Viola squirmed and looked down at her hands. Ricky saw her discomfort and jumped in.
‘Hey, Eleanor, I always said I want to work with the guy. I love him and I have so much respect… You know what my dream is?’
A flock of flamingos in tap shoes, perhaps?
‘My dream,’ his fingers spread, conjuring the image, ‘is to sit Dan down in the stalls, let him see my work, let him love what I can bring to this party and then…massage his shoulders!’
‘Pardon?’ What else could I say? – besides, You need locking up?
‘Oh, Eleanor.’ His expansive gesture now became a priestly clasp of my hands. ‘Dan is so great, I can see you’re so into him but he’s tired. Exhausted. All I want to do is lighten his load. I do not, you hear?, do not want to take anything away from him.’
‘Good,’ I said firmly. ‘Because without him you run the risk of losing the good will of the company. Saving your presence, Viola,’ – I flicked her a cursory glance – ‘Izzy has spooked this cast enough. Much more and you’ll have a stampede on your hands.’
That woke her up.
‘Are you saying people will walk? They can’t do that. It would kill him.’
Not all bad news, then…
‘Oh, don’t worry about that, Viola, I’m sure everything’ll be fine if Dan and Ricky work together, and there’s no more grandstanding by Izzy.’ I could hear a dead horse being flogged. ‘Oh, and um…’ I paused; the thought had only just dropped into my head. I felt the thump like a satisfyingly large bundle of letters hitting the doormat. ‘…you do have a work permit, don’t you?’
Rudolph, who’d oozed into the booth after we sat down, came to life. ‘It’s just a matter of filling in a couple of forms.’
‘Really? Only if we want to work in America it’s all but impossible to get a work visa.’ I paused, certain I was on to something the shape of a spanner, which I itched to ram into all their works. ‘So I’m right in thinking you don’t have one?’
‘It’s not a problem,’ snapped the agent, closing the subject with a look that would have felled an ox.
Viola said nothing but had an ‘Ah don’t know nuthin’ about making work permits, Miss Scarlett’ look plastered all over her face.
‘So, am I right in thinking – until you get your paperwork sorted out with the Home Office visa department –’ Listen to me, Little Miss Prim… ‘– that when we get back to London, you will be rehearsing with Dan? With Dan as director.’
‘Like I said…’ Ricky held his palms towards me so I could see his sincerity. ‘I really want to work with him. I don’t want to do anything to upset the company or the show. Izzy’s a great guy, but he was kinda crazy to say what he did; I don’t need to have the title, Dan’s got that, Dan’s the director. I just want to help.’
‘Is that right, Viola? Dan is still the director?’
‘Er…well… I suppose…’
‘It won’t take more than twenty-four hours to sort the permit,’ chipped in Rudolph.
‘Should we talk to Izzy?,’ I asked.
‘No,’ she replied quickly. ‘If that’s what Ricky wants, then Dan is still the director. Izzy…just made a mistake.’
•
Was it really that easy? Was I that good? Despite being congenitally mistrustful of success, I allowed myself to swell a little with pride. I got up from the booth and sat down next to KT.
‘Well?’
Everyone was straining to hear the answer.
‘It’s fine. Ricky’s going to work under Dan. Izzy was just flying a kite,’ I said, with a broad grin of triumph.
It was swiftly wiped away by the sight of David and Phyllida coming down the stairs with the avenging fury of angels entering the fiery pit. Behind them their two friends hovered close to the door, unwilling to descend to our level.
I had forgotten all about them. That in itself was an achievement for a woman obsessed with images of the cogs of her husband’s testicles pumping away between the ship’s pistons of his mistress’s sturdy thighs.
David was an unhealthy shade of furious and Phyllida looked like an ill-tempered dredger. KT flanked me defensively.
‘Where the hell have you been, Eleanor?,’ David barked, loud enough to be heard at the back of an average-sized parade ground. ‘We’ve been waiting in the street for an hour.’
I didn’t bother with contrition.
‘I forgot about you, there were more important things to deal with.’
David exploded: ‘How dare you speak to me like that? You seriously think playing in the dressing-up box more important…? Phyllida’s absolutely frozen. Apologise immediately.’
My voice, so different now from when I had last seen him, ricocheted off the walls.
‘I will not apologise to you – or your mistress.’
Mistress? What badly written script had I remembered that from? The absolute silence in the restaurant lasted five seconds before Izzy shattered it.
‘Who the hell is this guy?’
David took a breath. I beat him to it.
‘This guy is my fucking husband who’s been fucking this fucking woman and now he wants a fucking apology. He should be fucking grateful I’m only eating fucking prawn balls tonight. And as for his fucking horse-faced shag, give her a lump of sugar before she passes out.’
I looked round the room. Susan’s jaw was scraping the loudly patterned Axminster, and had Lee been holding a fan he’d have been flapping it about like a towel in a breeze.
For the first time since I’d known him, David was speechless. His mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out. Phyllida spoke for him.
‘You cow,’ she said. ‘You ghastly, ill-bred –’
‘Oh tell you pedigree chum to shut her fuckin’ row.’ It was KT riding to my defence, all guns blazing. ‘And as for you, Mr Dick-for-brains –’
He turned on David. I’d always admired KT’s turn of phrase, but his comparing David with a mange-ridden camel whose hump was standing next to him was one of his best. Left with little alternative, David slapped my face. I was stunned, but not as stunned as I was when KT hauled off and decked him with a right hook.
‘I haven’t forgotten everything I learned in Swansea Docks,’ he said, as David smashed backwards into the fresh fish display.
Phyllida, screaming, crouched beside him, pulling shrimps out of his hair until the manager and four waiters bundled them up the stairs into the street. He wasn’t going to eject any of us – we hadn’t paid yet.
KT was shaking as he led me to the bar and ordered a bottle of champagne. ‘It’s on your bill,’ he said. ‘Here’s to your divorce. About time too, you dozy mare.’