Ten days later, Ricky Ricky and Rudolph were still on the run and Izzy had returned to threaten both the union and the Home Office. Now he was preparing for the verdict on the work permit appeal hearing.
‘They don’t come through, I pull the show. You know how many Brits that’ll put outta work? How stupid are these people? I’m trying to help their theatre, for Chris’sake.’
The stage was ready, the technicians idle, the actors aimless and the production haemorrhaging money every day no audience came. The focus of the Ducks’ ire was Dan, who was single-handedly sabotaging their life’s work. It didn’t occur to them they were at fault, or that their arrogance had brought the Nazgûl down on Ricky Ricky.
‘I’m a businessman,’ repeated Izzy on his first day back. ‘Dan’s scum. That scummy guy is stopping me doing my business.’
To prove Izzy’s anger was no rattle of an empty vessel, his lawyer fired off letters to Karen and Dan threatening to sue them for the entire cost of the production. Three and a half million pounds. Each.
Karen, beyond desperation, consigned the letter to the bin. ‘I don’t even own my own teeth,’ was her only comment.
Dan, though, closer to breaking-point and desperate for money, collapsed. At his flat, I found him unshaven, gaunt and tearful; petrified of bankruptcy. The turbulence and sheer viciousness of the fight with Izzy had defeated him. And that was precisely what Izzy was counting on.
‘It’s the way they do things in America,’ said Dan, handing me the lawyer’s letter. The brash phraseology and paranoia in the words was un-English, despite the smart London address. ‘If he sues me, I’ll have nothing. I couldn’t even afford to defend myself.’
Izzy’s bullying and relentless cruelty blew away any vestige of compliance left from my years with David.
‘Right, Dan, you’re going to see Felix, my solicitor.’
‘I can’t afford it. I’m so broke I don’t know how I’m going to live. I owe money everywhere.’ He looked utterly defeated.
‘I’ll buy you an hour’s worth.’
Felix gave me a good rate when I promised him champagne in the dressing-room. ‘And may I sip it from your slipper?’
‘Felix, I’ll buy a pair specially – size ten, wide-fitting.’
‘Tell your director friend to write down everything so we don’t waste time telling the story.’
Dan was nervous when we went in with the bullet-point list. Felix might be my fantasy flirt, but he was pretty intimidating with his hanging judge half-glasses and impeccable vowels. He gestured us to sit while he read the catalogue of woe. Dan looked round the room, at the ominously ticking clock, then at the boxes of papers stacked along the wall.
‘Have you been here long?,’ he asked, to break the ice.
Felix glanced up. ‘Three hundred years.’
‘Ah,’ said Dan, sinking into his raincoat.
A couple of minutes later Felix started to smile, then laugh out loud. ‘Mr Duck sacked you, then Mrs Duck sacked Mr Duck?’
We nodded.
‘…Then Mr Duck threatened divorce? Followed by attempted suicide?’
We nodded again.
‘Then Mrs Duck reinstated Mr Duck, following which Mr Duck fired you again?’ He was fighting to catch his breath now, barely able to speak for laughing. ‘Well…this really is a canard.’ That set him off again. ‘Or a pair of canards, should I say?’
Eventually, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes with an immaculate white handkerchief, Felix delivered his verdict.
‘First, Mr Cawdron, we’ll stop the clock at half an hour, there is no case for you to answer here. It’s my opinion Mr Duck has absolutely no grounds on which to sue you. Indeed you would have every right to consider suing him for your outstanding fee. However,’ – he looked over his glasses, to continue his judgment – ‘you may have to pursue him to the rainforests of Costa Rica for that pleasure, if that is where his assets are. And the costs involved may be considerably more than you are owed.’ Felix turned to me. ‘I take it Mr Duck has no assets in this country?’
‘Only the show. The company manager’s paying for a lot of stuff on his credit card, then reclaiming it.’
‘I hope he knows what he’s doing,’ said Felix drily. ‘As for this letter, I shall reply to it or ignore it as you wish. Mr Duck’s solicitors and my firm have enjoyed skirmishing for many years. Of course not three hundred in their case, they are comparatively nouveau. Which, of course, would suit Mr Duck, being –’
‘A parvenu?’ I suggested.
‘American,’ he said smoothly.
I left Felix with a brief but heartfelt kiss on his well-shaved cheek.
Dan was still on the brink of penury, but was so relieved, he took me to the Savoy for a glass of champagne. I paid.
‘So what’s happening about rehearsals?,’ he asked, spearing a rugby ball of an olive.
‘Well…while Izzy and Viola were AWOL, we didn’t do any. But now they’re back, and we’re rehearsing on stage, they call Ricky in Paris and he directs us down the phone.’
I thought Dan was going to choke. ‘You’re not serious.’
‘Problem is the dance numbers. He counts the band in, but there’s a one-second delay – three people fell off the stage yesterday and the drummer went out and got so drunk he was arrested.’
‘Is he back?’
‘Yes, but only because the police refused to deport him.’
•
I went into the theatre the next morning, after a passionless night with Dan. Sex hadn’t survived the chaos and I wondered if friendship would when we finally crawled out of the wreckage. The balance of attraction had changed between us and I didn’t want a child any more than he wanted a mother.
KT, having a smoke in the urine-soaked alley by the stage door, greeted me as I arrived.
‘He’s only gone and thrown the toys out the pram.’
‘Who?’
‘This week’s director, Nokia Nell. Stupid tart’s run out of ideas so he’s thrown a hissy fit and slammed the phone down. We could hear him screaming “I’m an artiste – the natural successor to Bob Fosse. I cannot, repeat cannot, work like this!”’
Above us a window rattled up; Ruby’s head appeared as if beneath a guillotine.
‘All right you two, this is not a place of entertainment, get yourselves on stage for the Crazy Frog’s next trick.’
•
Viola and Izzy stood with their backs to the auditorium, Susan between them. She was wearing a look of smug satisfaction. It didn’t suit her.
‘Hi, everyone. I have good news. Great news!,’ called Izzy to his Happy Campers. We braced ourselves. ‘I’m real pleased to announce that this morning we persuaded Susan to take over the direction of the show.’ Several jaws dropped and a whisper of ‘shoot me, shoot me now’ was clearly audible to everyone except Izzy. ‘It’s just until Ricky gets back with us, which should be in the next thirty-six hours.’
‘Oh, does that mean he’s got his work permit?,’ I piped up.
Viola chewed her lower lip, Izzy waved his cigar as if I were a late-summer wasp and Susan sucked her cheeks in so far I was afraid her lips would rupture. What was the cure for collagen poisoning?
‘She has great experience as a director so we’re real lucky she’s agreed take the show on.’
She simpered and said, in a little girl voice, ‘Of course, I’ll do my best. I just, well, I just want to be here for all of you.’ Lee tutted, but she was on a roll. ‘If anyone’s got any problems, just come to me and I’ll try to sort them out. I’ve had fifteen years of getting shows on –’
‘Where’s that then, Susan?,’ chimed in KT, all innocent enthusiasm. She paused, then went on with no awareness of her inadequacy.
‘The Brenda Thorn Theatre. I’ve done eighteen shows with them. As choreographer and director.’
‘I’ve never played there,’ said Lee, frowning with confusion. ‘Is it a producing or receiving house?,’ knowing full well it was a corrugated-iron Scout hut on a traffic island in Croydon.
‘It’s non-professional,’ she replied regally. ‘I always draw a line between non-professional and amateur, which is a state of mind.’
‘Oh…well that’s all right then,’ said KT with such sincerity Susan was flattered. ‘And, just one other thing. What shows have you done there?’
‘Bugsy Malone, Jack and the Beanstalk, Aladdin –’
‘Fab,’ interrupted KT. ‘We’re in safe hands.’
‘So if everyone’s okay with me taking over…?, we’ll work through from the beginning.’ Then, as if remembering a sexually transmitted infection: ‘Oh, Eleanor, is that all right with you?’
She was expecting me to be spitting broken glass. Her saccharine smile and quick glances towards Izzy and Viola spoke more eloquently of her satisfaction at my discomfort than any words.
‘Frankly,’ I said, ‘I think it’s a great idea for you to take over, especially with the experience you’ve had. I can’t think of anyone better qualified to work with Izzy and Viola.’
She draped her jacket round her shoulders and clapped her hands, quite the Ninette de Valois. ‘Okay, people, let’s start – and please, no talking, this is going to be really hard for me, my voice is tired, so I need you to be focused one hundred per cent. I’m only doing it to help all of you –’
In the wings Lee vented his feelings in a poisonous whisper. ‘Non-professional theatre? Oh per-lease. All she’s done is panto, looking after the under-tens. She’s not a director, she’s a fucking classroom assistant. Well, I’m telling you, I’m not being directed by her.’
His outpouring was interrupted by Susan’s voice: ‘Lee, can you come on stage please?’
‘Yes, darling, I’m here.’ He walked into the light and shaded his eyes, looking out to where she sat in the stalls. ‘I think it’s fabulous you’re doing this, Susan, so brave. We’re all so grateful.’
In the half-dark of the wings, KT shook his head and Kelvin mimed slitting his wrists.
•
In the ten days of uncertainty before Izzy’s Home Office appeal hearing, more previews were cancelled. The Ducks consulted their Parisian Muse and more outrageous requests for set changes were relayed to an increasingly grumpy Basher.
‘Listen, Izzy. Ah’m going to say this dead simple, so you’ll understand. If you want silk, ships, catafalques, a flying moon or a firework chandelier, the specifications have to be in yesterday.’
‘Talk to the director. I’m just the producer,’ said Izzy, intimidated by Basher’s enormity.
‘How can I?,’ he rumbled. ‘I can’t get the big jessie on the bloody phone. And when I do he talks bollocks. So…’ He heaved his rigger’s belt further up his impressive belly. ‘You’ll have to do Dan’s production. No bloody choice you dozy yank. Cos you’ve bolloxed about till it’s too bloody late to do it any other way.’
Izzy and Viola, in that moment, realised there was a price to pay for their imperial idiocy.
‘Right, you two, I’m off for a cheeky pint. If you want me, I’m in the pub.’
Now Dan had them over a barrel: they would have to pay. He could close us immediately if we performed his version. His rejoicing was muted, though; there was enough that wasn’t his in the show to allow for a mighty perversion of what was. His original thinking, wit and humour were being swamped by over-zealous acting, ludicrous dialogue and perverse changes. And, despite Susan’s surrogate care, Izzy and Viola were obsessed with Ricky’s unique ability to save their baby.
Miraculously, Dan’s cheque arrived the next morning, but now Izzy was totally out of control. Imagining plots and conspiracies behind every curtain, he suddenly burst in on a call that Flossie was taking and accused him of leaking stories to the press that made him, Izzy, look stupid.
‘You don’t need me to do that,’ said Flossie, with unmistakable clarity.
‘I never liked you!’
Flossie, unwilling to be baited, moved to leave.
‘Stay where you are, fella. You walk out that door, you walk out of a job.
Flossie kept his temper. ‘Excuse me, you think I’m going to stand here like a seven year-old till you give me permission to leave? Fuck off.’
Izzy’s voice rose, triumphant, the cigar stabbing towards his prey. ‘You’re not an actor, you can’t dance and you sure can’t choreograph shit. And now you’re telling the papers about this show. That’s disloyal and you know what I do with disloyal people like you? I fire them.’
Flossie, who’d only been holding on through loyalty to the cast, blew: ‘You can’t fire me, you disgusting gremlin. I’m walking out. I’m walking out on you, your talentless cow of a wife and this whole pile of dog mess. The best thing you had on this show was Dan, and now you’ve let him go you’ve got exactly what you deserve – a cack-handed vanity project with absolutely nothing to recommend it. Except a cast working their arses off to try and save your concrete balloon of a show. But oh no, every time someone tries to float it, you blow another hole in it and you have the gall to blame them. Well: Good, Fucking, Luck.’
He’d reached the auditorium doors. He kicked one of them open and was gone.
Susan looked satisfied. Lee examined his nails. The rest of us realised we were on our own.
Izzy was madly triumphant. ‘I didn’t fire him, he walked out. You all saw that. You saw it. He walked. I’m going to sue, believe me, he’ll be left with nothing.’
‘Oh, I shouldn’t do that, love.’ It was KT. Every eye turned towards him. ‘He hasn’t got a pot to piss in. He hasn’t been paid for the last month.’
If he’d thrown a grenade at Izzy, it couldn’t have caused a greater explosion.
‘Okay, pal. You’re out. I watched you for weeks, you’re like some kinda disease, but I kept you on and now you’re accusing me of not paying wages?’ He stabbed the air at us all. ‘Anyone of you not been paid? Anyone else accusing me of dishonesty?’ We shuffled and looked anywhere but at him or KT. Izzy was screaming now, sweat running from under his baseball cap, staining his shirt collar. ‘See? See? You’re on your own, pal. And here’s the bottom line: you’re no longer in this show. Get out of my theatre. Now. You’re fired. Goodbye.’
KT was ashen, but he’d been in the business too long to expect anyone to defend him.
‘Izzy…’ I thought he hadn’t heard me. ‘Izzy, may I say something?’
‘No, Eleanor, you may not. You’ve said enough on this show. I don’t want to hear any more outta you.’
I thought Susan was going to die of pleasure; sadly I was wrong. Izzy beckoned her over and whispered into her hair. She nodded with an overdone look of resignation, then, as Izzy and Viola left the stage, she clapped her hands.
‘Okay, people. Let’s take five. Then we’ll pick up with Lee’s number. We’ll have to respace it without KT. Oh, and Eleanor, you’ll have to learn the words – Izzy wants it to be the play-off number in the finale.’
‘We’ll discuss that later,’ I said, dismissing the cocky little madam.
She didn’t even look at KT as she swept out after her masters. Once she was gone, everyone, even Lee, crowded round KT, offering outrage and condolences.
‘They really are mistaking me for someone who gives a fuck,’ he hid behind the traditional bravado phrase. ‘I’m off to the pub.’
I caught up with him as he was clearing his dressing-room. He was trembling, and when he looked at me his eyes were red.
‘Sorry KT. I’m really sorry.’
He tried to speak, but his throat had constricted. I knew that agonising ache, the sharp pain under the ears, the stab at the root of the tongue. I wanted to hug him, but that wasn’t his way; nor was it mine.
‘It’s just…’ He almost lost control. ‘…anger and frustration, girl.’
Kelvin came in a couple of minutes later and brooked our reserve. He put his arms round KT and held his stiff body until KT disengaged himself, squeezed Kelvin’s arm and left, his bag slung over his shoulder. Dick Whittington – but there’d be no turning again, neither from him nor Izzy.
•
We went on rehearsing for rehearsal’s sake, parrots caught in a nightmare of mindless repetition, unable to prevent disastrous changes and with no one qualified to polish what we were in – Carry On Costa Rica, as performed by the cast of the Marat-Sade.
Susan continued to call us at ten a.m daily.
‘I need to nail the laughs. Comedy is accuracy.’
‘She couldn’t get a laugh with a kipper pinned to her minge,’ said KT, a couple of nights after his exit. He, Kelvin and I were shovelling mounds of pasta into our faces. KT had taken on the role of cook and mother with alarming alacrity, and he provided a refuge as our balsa-wood raft tossed on the tricky tides of Izzy Duck’s ego.
‘So, Ellie,’ said KT, dolloping tiramisu into our bowls, ‘Izzy’s not going to sack you then. Not with a week to go to press night and no sign of Ricky.’
‘No, much as he’d like to lever Meryl Streep into my sequined basque, no one with half a brain would touch it now with a sterilised bargepole.’
Where I had been vague about Izzy and Viola’s behaviour, the papers were now joyfully rummaging through their past and turning up all sorts of juicy gobbets of tittle-tattle. And none of it had come from me – I’d had to make a public promise about that:
‘If I take over directing this show permanently –’
‘Susan, you’re only baby-sitting till Ricky gets back.’
‘Eleanor, you’re not making this easy. I’m risking my career taking this on. If word gets out that I’ve taken over –’
‘But you’re not taking over.’
‘I don’t want people getting the wrong idea about me.’ Susan clutched her jacket round her, arms crossed on her breast. I thought she was going to launch into the Dying Swan. ‘I’m just a company member who wants the best from the show.’
‘Don’t you mean for the show, Susan?,’ I enquired sweetly.
‘That’s what I said,’ she snapped, with a quick clench of her sphincter-lips. ‘And I don’t want anyone, I mean anyone’ – she was looking only at me – ‘leaking my presence as director to the press.’
The ego of the woman. As if Max Clifford would be hammering on the stage door to sell her life-story to the News of the World.
‘Well,’ I said, humbly, ‘If they get to hear of it, I swear it won’t be from me.’
‘I don’t want my name appearing in the papers. Do you understand? You have the ear of the press and I really don’t want you making things difficult for me.’ She was loving it. As fey as Garbo. ‘I want to be left alone to do my job.’
‘I assure you, Susan…’ How could I phrase it? ‘Your name won’t be printed anywhere if I have anything to do with it.’
‘That’s the point, Eleanor,’ she said, waiting for us to appreciate her cleverness. ‘I don’t want you to have anything to do with it.’ She paused like an infant school teacher in front of the new intake. ‘Do you promise?’
‘Of course, Susan. I promise.’ I dipped my head and stared at the newly painted floor-cloth. Susan sucked her cheeks in and turned her massive intellect to the problem of getting Lee off the stage without giving in to his demand for a solo encore.
That was about the last thing that had happened to make me laugh. After KT’s departure, the company fractured, with several of the younger girls, including the South African juvenile, falling into Susan’s exclusive clique. As a form of defence, other groups and pairs started to form alliances of self-interest. Most of them fell silent if I appeared. Some, like Tizer, Glenda, God and the Liza Minnelli look-alike, because, in their misery, they didn’t know what to say. Others, like Lee and his group of carrion-eaters, complacently certain of my fall, whispered in corners: I was responsible for all the ills of the show; I was keeping Ricky out of the country, endangering all their jobs; I knew I was crap in the show, so didn’t want it to open; I was scared of eight shows a week, scared of nodules on the vocal chords, scared of being found out.
The longer it went on, the closer I came to the edge of reason. Maybe Ricky’s work permit was irrelevant and his replacing Dan was no bad thing… Maybe the new script was a vast improvement… Maybe I was afraid of being trashed by the critics…
I pressed a mental nail into my flesh and clung to the truth. As I saw it.