Irene set off for the first read-through of The House on the Canal in a conquering mood, ready for anything, but when she reached the rehearsal room she was disconcerted to find that it was a bleak, dusty church hall without even a proper stage. Boxes of what looked like jumble were stacked at one end. At the other, half a dozen people were standing, all holding thick mugs in their hands and talking excitedly. They had wonderful, huge smiles on their faces.
Irene stood just inside the door, wondering whether she had gone to the wrong address until she saw Richard. He was standing at the far end of the room, looking graciously down at Bella Hawkins, who was gazing up at him with an expression that made Irene want to spit. Good company he might be, a splendid director he certainly was, but he was definitely not the kind of perfect, god-like being that Bella’s awed adoration suggested.
He looked away from her enraptured face, saw Irene and nodded. Having said something to Bella, he left her and crossed the long room to the front door. There, with a nicely judged air of excessive delight, he kissed Irene on both cheeks.
‘You are a pig, you know, Richard,’ she said by way of greeting.
‘Charming. What have I done to deserve that?’
‘The way you’re letting that child worship you. It’s indecent.’
‘Nonsense. It’s good for her; it’ll make her listen properly and do as she’s told. Will you?’
‘Will I what?’
‘Do as you’re told?’
‘Richard, don’t go all tyrannical on me. I get enough of that at home. I warn you, I’m not prepared to take it from you, too.’
He laughed. ‘Surely you know that all directors are tyrants. We have to be. Seriously though, it’s important for the actors that you and I are seen to be working happily together. It’ll panic them if they think we disagree. Will your residual acting skills be up to pretending you think I’m wonderful, too?’
‘I suppose they might be stretched that far if it’s really important,’ she said, hugely enjoying the fact that it was possible to trade insults without any kind of anger or intent to hurt. ‘Will yours?’
He took her face between both hands and kissed her. Straightening up, he said: ‘Yes, but I shan’t need them. You must know I think you’re brilliant.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Irene, which made him laugh again.
Taking her by the arm, he introduced her to the actors, each of whom said something charming about the play. In spite of their bright smiles, she saw that they all had frightened eyes and she began to understand why Richard wanted to make them all feel safe. They reminded her a little of Helena, which gave her own smiles an extra warmth. For herself safety was the last thing she wanted. Her need was for excitement and danger, as much of it and as soon as possible.
A young stage manager brought her a mug of tea just as Richard said: ‘And this, of course, is Peter Callfield.’
Irene took the mug and flashed a grateful smile at the stage manager before holding out her free hand to Callfield.
‘This is such an honour,’ she said, hoping that she was hitting the right note of confidence-building enthusiasm without sounding too much like a gushing fan. ‘I’ve seen virtually everything you’ve been in for the past ten years.’
‘How frightfully nice of you,’ he said in the famous broken-glass-and-concrete voice that she had had in her mind as she wrote every word of his part. ‘I can’t think why we haven’t met before except that Richard’s always tended to be selfish about keeping his friends to himself.’
‘To tell you the truth,’ said Irene, shuddering at the taste of a mouthful of ferociously strong tea, ‘I’ve only just met him again after more than quarter of a century. It’s very odd: in some ways I feel I know him better than almost anyone else in my life, and yet we’re complete strangers.’
‘Really? What fun! Mysterious disappearances and surprising reunions are just my bag. Do tell me how it happened.’
‘It’s not all that thrilling,’ Irene said, knowing perfectly well that he was merely making conversation and could not have cared less about her relationship with Richard. ‘We were at the Theatre School together and then lost touch when I left to get married. I had no idea my agent was going to send him this play and was amazed when I heard.’
‘Well …’ Callfield began just as Richard interrupted: ‘Stop flirting, you two. There’s work to be done. Irene, I want you to meet Carrie Fletsham, who’s to play the elder Maria, and Annette Brimfield.’
Irene shook hands with them both, saw how nervous they were and wished that she could make their anxiety less. Almost as soon as she had told them both how much she had admired their work in the past, Richard took her to the far end of the room, where Adam was standing beside his model of the set. He kissed her, too, and stood back so that she could see the model. He seemed to have done an enormous amount since he had left them in Amsterdam, and showed her exactly how the different scenes would work, pulling up the various flats that would be stored in the fly-tower and letting them down again. She looked at everything with great care and heart-lifting excitement. For the first time she felt that she could truly envisage her play in performance.
‘It’s brilliant,’ she said at last. ‘So economical and yet so beautiful; realistic, too. I can’t tell you how pleased I am. It’s much better than my ideas of Venice could ever have been. Thank you.’
‘Good,’ said Richard from behind her. ‘Come along, Irene. We must get going.’
He led her away from the models and the costume sketches that she had not been allowed time to see and put her into a chair at the end of a horseshoe-shaped row. The actors, all moving with enviable grace, took the rest of the chairs and looked expectantly at Richard.
‘I’m not going to go into any detail about The House on the Canal,’ he said, looking round impartially at all of them. ‘I want you to read it straight through without stopping for questions or comments. We will then discuss it and sort out any immediate problems. I know that Irene will answer any questions you may have. All right with you, Irene?’
‘Of course,’ she said, surprised to find herself quite without anxiety. There was so much that could still go wrong that she ought to have been worried at the very least, but all she could feel was curiosity about the way the actors would bring out the parts she had written for them.
‘Whenever you’re ready, Annette,’ said Richard.
They set off, while Irene listened in a mixture of fascination and frustration. She kept wanting to interrupt to say, ‘No, no, not like that,’ but Richard’s icily forbidding expression stopped her making any sound at all. By the time they reached the end she felt as though she might pop. Bella Hawkins said the last line and they let their scripts flutter down into their laps.
‘That’s wonderful,’ said Callfield, sighing as though in an ecstasy of relief. ‘It’s got everything: tragedy, excitement, love, loss, and wit too. It’s going to be a humdinger.’
‘Oh, thank you,’ Irene said, reminding herself that he was a brilliant actor and might not be quite as sincere as he sounded.
‘Now, some of you must have some questions,’ suggested Richard.
Later, when Helena asked how the rehearsal had gone, Irene could not remember a single thing she had been asked or said, but the discussion went on for nearly an hour and her throat was aching by the time she got home and so she must have been speaking. The only thing that stuck in her mind was Bella’s saying: ‘I’m not sure about the very end. This confrontation between the woman and the girl. Will the audience believe in it since they’ve known from the beginning that the two of them are the same person?’
Irene was about to say, well, if they don’t they’re stupid or insensitive, when Richard took it upon himself to answer for her.
‘We won’t know that, Bellissima, until we’ve got there. It’s the kind of resolution that can only come out of the work that we’ll be doing. If it seems false, I’m sure Irene will modify it for us.’ He turned to look at her, raising his eyebrows.
Irene, who was appalled at the prospect of changing anything else in the play or doing any more rewriting, did her best to look enthusiastically confident as she nodded.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Anything that needs changing …’ She could not make herself finish the sentence and saw Callfield looking at her with so much sympathy that she thought he must understand exactly how she was feeling.
Eventually the actors drifted away and Irene was left alone with Richard, who put a hand on her shoulder.
‘You’re looking pretty sick. Don’t let it get you down. This is all very preliminary stuff and it always hurts. If it didn’t there would be something to worry about. The actors are terrified and no-one knows where we’re going with it yet. It isn’t only you.’
‘No,’ she agreed, frowning. ‘But there were moments when it sounded so banal, so empty. There seemed to be nothing there at all. No point. It’s like this beastly great room.’ She shivered.
Richard put both arms around her and hugged her in a completely sexless embrace.
‘There’s plenty there,’ he said. ‘But we’ve got to dig it out ourselves now. That’s why I don’t want you with us for the next week while we start chipping away.’
‘At the play?’
‘No, at our obstructions to it.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Don’t you? No, I suppose not. Look here, the play is real in itself, but it cannot be made to seem real in performance until the actors have found it in themselves and themselves in it. Don’t worry too much. The words don’t exist to explain the process they have to go through – and I with them. You’ll see when you come back to us that we’re beginning to get there. Don’t be afraid. Have you got something nice to do this week?’
‘No.’
Richard laughed at her obstinate refusal to be comforted. ‘Well, find yourself something. Have a massage. Go to a health farm. Have a scene with your wretched husband. Take your stepdaughter to Amsterdam. Anything. Just don’t brood or you’ll lose what’s left of your courage. If that happened, you wouldn’t be you at all, and that would be a disaster. D’you see what I mean?’
‘No,’ she said again, adding: ‘But I’ll do my best.’
‘Good girl. Now, off with you. I need to talk to the cast. I’ll ring you up at intervals to tell you how it’s going. Goodbye.’
Dismissed, Irene left and tried to believe that it would be fair to drop in on Helena. She decided that it would not and took the tube back to Herbert Crescent, which seemed gloomier and more oppressive even than usual. Her study was her own again now that the dining room table had been reassembled in its proper place and she retreated there.
She knew she ought to be thinking about a new play in order to build on the success she still hoped would come from The House on the Canal, but she felt as though she would never have another fruitful idea in her life.
The telephone rang and she went out to answer it and found her daughter on the line.
‘Jane!’ she said, working to put enthusiasm into her voice. ‘How are you?’
‘So so. Is Dad there?’
‘No.’ Irene looked down at her watch. ‘He’s sitting today. I shouldn’t think he’ll be back for another hour at least. Anything I can do?’
‘Not really. He sent me a cheque, you know.’
‘Yes, he told me when I rang him from Amsterdam. I’m very glad, darling.’
‘Are you? He said in his letter that you disapproved,’ said Jane, clearly not the least interested in what her mother might have been doing in Holland.
Irene did not mind that, but she was furious with Fin. Trying to keep the rage out of her voice, she said: ‘That’s not exactly true, but we’d better not go into it now. Did it settle all the bills?’
‘Most of them, but not quite all. There’s one other I must pay, which is why I need to talk to him.’
‘Is it a big one, Jane?’ asked Irene, thinking about her latest bank statement and the bills she would have to settle before Fin paid the next tranche of housekeeping into her account.
‘That depends on how realistic you are,’ her daughter said tartly. ‘It’s seventy-five pounds for the electricity. They’re threatening to cut it off and the hot water runs off it as well as the lights. I can’t do without either of them. I thought I’d have enough, but, having pacified the bank manager, I haven’t.’
‘Don’t worry about it any more. I can cover that much. I’ll send you a cheque straight away.’
‘You?’
Irene grimaced at the astonishment in Jane’s voice. ‘Yes. Don’t bother Fin with this one. I can cover it from the housekeeping, and I couldn’t bear the thought of you having to have cold baths.’
‘Thanks,’ said Jane, still sounding as though she could not believe her ears.
‘Heard anything from Ivo?’ asked Irene, wanting to prolong the contact between them.
‘Not a lot. He seems pretty busy at the moment. I thought he rang you all the time.’
‘Not these days. I imagine he must have a lot of work.’
‘He’s not the only one,’ said Jane drily. ‘I must go. The bill’s urgent. It’s a red one and there’s only another day.’
‘I’ll go the post office now and express it to you.’
‘That’s great, Mum. I mean … really. Anyway, thanks.’
‘It’s a pleasure,’ said Irene, but she was saying it to a blank receiver. Jane had gone.
Having reached the post office just in time, Irene returned to the house more slowly and then decided to allow herself the rare treat of ringing Ivo. She did not often do that, not wanting to cluck over him or bore him, but she was sure he would be interested in her weekend, much more interested than either Jane or Fin. She listened to his telephone ringing and then heard the clicks and recorded message of his answering machine. Disappointed, but making herself sound cheerful, she said: ‘It’s me, Ivo. I hope things are going well. I had a good weekend in Amsterdam and a fairly dramatic time on the way back. I was stopped going through Customs and searched for drugs. Me! It was seriously undignified. I can’t think why they should have picked on a respectable middle-aged woman like me. Can you? Anyway, do give me a ring when you’ve got a minute. I’ve got lots to tell you and it would be nice to hear what you’ve been up to. ’Bye.’
Putting the receiver back on the telephone, she realized that she had nothing else to do but cook dinner for herself and Fin. As she peeled and chopped she began to think about all the other meals she had cooked and the number of times Fin had returned to the house in a bad mood, unappreciative of her efforts and unaware of her as anything but his housekeeper, and his unpaid housekeeper at that. She found herself rehearsing old arguments and thinking up new ones, getting angrier and angrier until by the time she heard his key in the lock she was almost ready to hit him.
As it turned out, she did not need to do any such thing. He, too, was in fighting mood and unknowingly obliged her by saying as he put his briefcase on the floor by the kitchen table in the most inconvenient possible place, where she was bound to trip over it: ‘I suppose it was necessary to make all that noise last night?’
‘What noise?’
Fin just looked at her, his thin nostrils distending and his lips lengthening. ‘You know perfectly well. You were very late back from the airport, weren’t you?’
‘Yes.’ Irene waited for him to ask why so that she could tell him everything and watch his resentful irritation turn to apology and support. She really wanted him to be on her side for once.
He turned his back, leaving his briefcase where it was, and walked into the cloakroom beside the front door to change his shoes. It was all she could do not to follow him, shouting out her need. Instead she kicked the briefcase to push it under the table out of her way and went back to her pans.
‘Could you lay the table?’ she called as she heard Fin emerging in his house shoes. ‘I haven’t had time. Three courses. We’ll be ready in about ten minutes.’
She waited for a comment. Anything would have been welcome, particularly something on the lines of: three courses! You are amazing to have gone to so much trouble for me, especially after all the work you’ve been doing all day. How did it go? Are you pleased with your play? Do you like the actors?
Even an angry refusal to help would have been bearable, not least because it would have allowed her to be angry back, but Fin could not be bothered to give her even that.