CHAPTER NINE

CHARLES WAS GLAD to get to Bristol. He hadn’t enjoyed the previous few days. Investigations apart, Leeds had ended in scenes of cynical recrimination with Ruth. After a final fierce coupling on the Sunday morning and a silent drive to the station, he had had a long slow journey to King’s Cross for her unspoken accusation to fester in his mind. He couldn’t just laugh it off. As many times before, he cried out for the ability to say, that was good while it lasted, or that didn’t work, oh well, time to move on. But he was bad at the sort of insouciance that should have accompanied his style of sex life. Feelings kept snagging, he kept feeling sorry for people, kept feeling he was using them. And, as always, lacking the self-righteousness necessary for anger, he ended up feeling self-disgust.

A half-day in London hadn’t helped his mood. The bed-sitter in Hereford Road had not got less depressing in his absence. With the change in the weather it was as cold as a morgue when he opened the door. Nor did Sunday papers he’d bought offer any cheer. Bombs in London restaurants and the continuing apparent hopelessness of the Herrema siege led to fears of the imminent collapse of society, that terrible plunging feeling that tomorrow everything will stop and animal chaos will reign.

He rang his wife Frances in an attempt to shift the mood. But her phone just rang and rang and he stood, his finger dented by the twopence in the coin-box and his mind drifting, trying to remember what she had said in their last conversation about this new man she was seeing, forming silly fantasies of her with the new man, even of her upstairs in their bed with him, hearing the phone and saying, ‘Shall we answer it?’ and him saying, ‘No’. It was stupid, childish; it was as if he were again a sixteen-year-old, his stomach churning as he asked his first girl out to the pictures. And this was Frances, for God’s sake, Frances whom he knew so well, who was so ordinary he had left her. But his feelings swirled around, unanchored. He put the phone down.

Back in his room (the telephone was outside on the landing) he had turned immediately to the obvious solace, a half-full (or, in his current mood, hall-empty) bottle of Bell’s. He drank with the kamikaze spirit of self-pity, sadly identifying with Everard Austick.

So Bristol, by comparison, was pleasant. He got a lift down on the Monday morning with a couple of the dancers who lived in Notting Hill and, apart from the fact of being in company, the staged sparkle of their camp chatter put him in a good mood. Then there was where he was staying. Julian Paddon, an actor friend from way back, was a member of the resident company at the Old Vic and had issued an immediate invitation when he heard Lumpkin! was coming to Bristol. His wife Helen was charming and had the enormous advantage after Ruth that Charles didn’t fancy her at all (and even if he had, she was eight months pregnant and thus satisfactorily hors de combat).

Julian, whose nesting instinct, always strong, had been intensified by regular employment and the prospect of an addition to his family, had rented a flat in a Victorian house in Clifton and Charles was made to feel genuinely welcome.

Lumpkin! too responded to the new town. The day’s break after the heavy rehearsal schedule in Leeds meant that everyone came to it with renewed vigour. The makeshift musical arrangement for I Beg Yours? had been improved and expanded by Leon Schultz, an American arranger flown over at enormous expense by an edgy management. The song was greatly enhanced and on the first night in Bristol it stopped the show. Once again Christopher Milton’s theatrical instinct had been vindicated. The management was so pleased with the song that they asked Schultz to do new arrangements for all other numbers in the show. It would mean a lot more rehearsal, but in the new mood of confidence no one complained.

Away from the gloom of Leeds, Charles found it difficult to believe in thoughts of sabotage. The long sequence of crimes he had rationalised became unreal, another part of the general confusion over the show and Ruth which Leeds had meant for him. When he unpacked at Julian’s flat, he had to look closely at the Gordon’s gin bottle to convince himself that anything criminal had ever happened.

Part of his relaxation was due to Dickie Peck’s absence. His suspicions had now homed in firmly and until the agent rejoined the company, he did not fear further incidents. What he should do when another occurred was something he tried not to think about.

Anyway, rehearsals kept him busy. Desmond Porton from Amulet Productions was to come and see the show on the Thursday and give the final all-clear for the scheduled first night at the King’s Theatre on Thursday, November 27th. That gave a sense of urgency and a healthy edge of determination to everyone in the show.

The first two nights made Charles begin to think he was, for possibly the first time in his life, about to be connected with a success. Apart from reflections on the irony of a fate which withheld major triumph from shows he had cared about in favour of the commercial banality of Lumpkin!, it was a pleasant feeling.

He was sitting in the pub during the Tuesday performance (having dutifully checked in for the ‘half’ and let the stage manager know where he’d be) when the girl approached him. Her pale blue eyes had the unfocused stare of contact lenses, but there was nothing vague about her manner. ‘Are you in Lumpkin!?’ she asked, the directness of the question emphasised by an American accent.

‘Fame at last,’ he replied with irony. ‘Yes, I am.’

‘Good, I thought I recognised you. I saw the show last night.’

‘Ah.’ Charles left the pause for comment on his performance which no actor can resist.

But the girl didn’t pick up the cue. ‘My name’s Suzanne Horst,’ she said. ‘I’m a free-lance journalist.’

He emitted another ‘Ah’, again succumbing to an actor’s instinctive reaction that the girl wanted to write something about him.

She soon put him right on that. ‘I’m trying to make contact with Christopher Milton.’

Of course. He blushed for having suspected anything else, and let out another multi-purpose ‘Ah’.

‘Would you introduce me to him?’

‘Well . . .’ This was rather difficult. The past month with Christopher Milton had revealed to Charles how carefully the star’s contact with the press and media was regulated by his agent. To introduce an unexpected journalist could be a serious breach of professional etiquette. ‘I think probably the best thing you could do would be to make contact with his agent. It’s Dickie Peck of Creative Artists.’

‘I don’t want to mess about with agents. Anyway, I’m here in Bristol. What’s the point of contacting a guy in London about someone who’s only a hundred yards away at this moment?’

There wasn’t a great deal of logic about it, but that was the way stars worked, Charles explained.

She was not put down. ‘Yes, I know that’s the correct way to go about things, but I don’t want to go the correct way. I want to go the way that’ll get me the interviews I’m after.’

‘Well, I don’t know what to suggest.’ Charles felt churlish, but thought he was probably doing the right thing. ‘What are these interviews you are after?’

‘One’s for radio. Only got Radio Brighton interested at the moment, but I’m sure I’ll be able to get it on one of the networks. That’s only secondary, anyway. The main thing I want him for is an article I’m doing on the nature of stardom. Want to know what makes him tick, you know.’

‘Who’s that for?’

‘Don’t know who I’ll offer it to yet. Cosmopolitan, maybe.’

‘It hasn’t been commissioned?’

‘No, but I’ll sell it all right.’ Whatever Miss Horst lacked, it was not confidence.

In fact she didn’t lack much. Certainly not looks. Her shoulder-length hair was that streaky yellow which might be the natural result of sun on brown hair or the unnatural result of hairdressers on any colour. Her belted Burberry formalised but did not disguise her lithe figure, and though her overpowering confidence might be a slight deterrent, the general effect was distinctly tangible. ‘Can I get you a drink?’

‘Thank you. A vodka and tonic, please.’ The barman eyed Charles knowingly as he supplied the drink. Suzanne didn’t seem to notice. ‘Are you sure you can’t introduce me?’

‘Honestly, it is difficult. You know, people like Christopher Milton have to guard their privacy very carefully. I’m afraid they tend to be a bit resistant to journalists.’

‘But, look, I’m not going to do a big exposé or anything. It’ll be an appreciative piece. I mean, I’m a fan.’

‘I don’t think that’s really the point. It’s rather difficult to get near him.’

‘But you see him at rehearsal, don’t you?’

‘Well, yes, but –’

‘Then you could ask him if he’d be prepared to do an interview with me.’

Her persistence didn’t make it easy. Charles cringed with embarrassment at the thought of putting the girl’s request to Christopher Milton. It was difficult to explain to someone outside the closely defined relationship that exists between actors in a working context. ‘Look, I’m sorry, I really don’t think I can.’

‘Why not? You do know him, don’t you?’

‘Yes, I do, but –’

‘Well then,’ she said, as if that concluded the syllogism.

‘Yes.’ Under normal circumstances he would have given a categorical ‘No’, but under normal circumstances the people who made this kind of request didn’t look like Suzanne Horst. He said something about seeing if he had a chance to raise the matter at rehearsal (which he had no intention of doing) and asked the girl how much journalism she had done.

‘Oh, quite a lot in the States. I got a degree in it, but the scene over there isn’t very interesting, so I decided to check it out over here.’

‘What, you’ve given yourself a sort of time limit to see if you can make it?’

‘Oh, I’ll make it.’

Charles was beginning to find this self-conviction a little wearying, so he brought in a damper. ‘Yes, unfortunately it’s a bad time to get started in that sort of area at the moment. Journalism’s getting more and more of a closed shop. It’s like acting, getting increasingly difficult to make the initial break into the business.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Suzanne, as though explaining to a child, ‘People with talent always get through.’

He couldn’t think of anything to say after that.

But Suzanne suddenly got an idea. ‘Hey, you could actually be quite useful on this stardom article.’

‘In what way?’

‘Well, you could give me a bit of background on Christopher Milton. After all, you’re working with him.’

Charles was hesitant, but overruled. She had whipped out a new shorthand notebook and a freshly-sharpened pencil and was poised in the attitude of someone who had taken a degree in journalism. The question came out formal and rehearsed. ‘Tell me, as an actor, what do you think it is that makes some people stars?’

‘And some dreary old hacks like me? Hmm. Well now –’ dropping into an American accent – ‘what is a star? What is it that picks out one from the myriad throng of the moderately talented and gives him that magic name? What is it that sets one talent glowing in the limelight, that scatters the moondust of stardom on that one chosen head? Is it of the earth or is it made in heaven? Perhaps in that Great Casting Agency in the Sky, there sits the one Eternal Agent who –’

‘Look, are you taking the rise out of me?’

He lapsed back into his normal voice. ‘No, sorry. I was just getting my bearings. Stardom? I don’t know really. In the sort of theatre I normally do it’s rarely an issue.’

‘But I suppose, if I had to give an opinion . . . Well, talent certainly, that must be there. Not necessarily a great deal of it, nor anything very versatile. In fact, there should be no versatility. The star must always be recognisable – if he puts on voices, he must put them on almost badly, so that everyone knows it’s him. That’s talent. Okay. What else? Dedication certainly, the conviction that what he does is more important than anything else in the world.’

‘Isn’t that likely to lead to selfishness?’ Suzanne interposed with studied professionalism.

‘Inevitably. Bound to. Hence, presumably, all the stories that one hears of stars hating competition and being temperamental and slamming dressing-room doors and that sort of thing.’

He realised that it could get a little awkward if Suzanne asked him to relate his last observation to the star of Lumpkin!, and hurried on before she had the chance. ‘I think there’s also something about the way the entertainment industry works, certainly for actors. Being an actor is, potentially, the most passive function on earth. Most actors are completely dependent on directors, because it’s directors who control the jobs. Some manage to assert themselves by deep commitment to their work, or by directing or writing and devising shows. Some do it by political affiliations . . . starting street theatres, workshop communes, even – in cases of extreme lunacy – joining the Workers’ Revolutionary Party. Some do it by forming their own companies, that kind of thing. But what I’m getting at is, that, given this lack of autonomy, when an actor becomes very much in demand, as a star might be, he wants to dictate his own terms. It’s years of frustration at living on someone else’s terms. It’s also a self-preservation thing – once someone’s got to the top, he tries to do everything to ensure that he stays there, and that may involve being careful about the people he works with, seeing that none of them are too good. I mean, often when you see a show with one big star name above the title and the rest of the cast nonentities, it’s not just because the star’s fee has exhausted the budget, it’s also so that he shows up in such mediocre company. The Whale among Sprats syndrome.

‘Then there’s management, which is very important. Choosing work, not doing anything that’s beneath the star’s dignity, or anything in which he’s not going to shine. Can’t take a risk, everything that is done has to be right, even at the expense of turning work down. For that reason you often find that a real star won’t do anyone a favour, won’t step in if someone’s ill. It’s not just bloody-mindedness, it’s self-preservation. When someone’s at the top, there are any number of people sniping, ready to read the signs of a decline, so it never does to be too available.’

‘Do you think a star has magic?’ asked Suzanne, with awe-struck italics.

‘I don’t know. I –’

‘Oh, Mr Paris, there you are.’ Gwyneth of the stage management stood before him, her customary calm ruffled by anxiety. ‘You should have been back in the theatre half an hour ago.’

On the Wednesday morning they were rehearsing the first act finale, Ooh, What a Turn-up, which had been rearranged by Leon Schultz. Pete Masters, the M.D., was not in the best of moods. Having seen his own arrangements thrown out of the window, he found it galling to have to teach the new ones to the impassive band. The musicians had long since lost any spark of interest that they may have had for the show and sat mentally sorting out their VAT returns, eyes occasionally straying to their watches to see if the rehearsal would spread over into another session at M.U. rates. Christopher Milton was onstage directing, while David Meldrum sat at the back of the stalls reading The Stage.

The rehearsal had reached an impasse. Leon Schultz’s new arrangement introduced a short violin figure which bridged from the verse into the chorus and there was no dancing to cover it. The cast tried freezing for the relevant three seconds, but that lost the pace of the number. A couple of the dancers improvised a little jig, which looked alien and messy. There was a long pause while Christopher Milton stood centre stage, the ominous faraway expression in his eyes.

Suddenly he was galvanised into action. ‘Where’s the sodding choreographer?’

‘She wasn’t called for this rehearsal,’ said the musical director smugly, ‘following assurances that the new arrangements would not involve any major changes in the choreography.’

Christopher Milton seemed not to hear the dig. It was as if his mind could only focus slowly. ‘Then what can we do?’ He enunciated the words very clearly and without emotion.

‘No idea.’ Pete Masters shrugged. ‘Unless we cut the meaningless little bit of schmaltz altogether.’ His tone was calculated to provoke, but produced no reaction. Emboldened, he pressed on:

‘Or go back to the original arrangements, which were quite as good and a darned sight less fussy.’

‘What, your arrangements?’ Christopher Milton asked slowly.

‘Yes.’

‘Your sodding arrangements.’ The build to anger was slow, but now it had started it built to a frightening intensity. ‘Your little tuppenny-ha’penny amateur tea-shop quartet arrangements. This is the bloody professional theatre, sonny, not some half-baked student revue. Your arrangements! This isn’t Penge Amateur Operatic Society, you know.’

Pete Masters’ face had gone very red, but he fought to keep his voice calm and give a dignified reply. ‘There’s no need for you to speak to me like that. You may prefer the new arrangements to mine, but there’s no need to be offensive about it.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, was I being offensive?’ The last word was pronounced with savage mimicry that exactly echoed Pete’s public school tone. ‘How foolish of me. I had forgotten that I was speaking to someone who has a degree in music and therefore knows everything about the subject. What a silly-billy I am.’

The impersonation was funny and, though Charles cringed in the wings and the musicians continued to stare impassively, it did produce an unidentified laugh from somewhere up in the flies where the stage crew were invisibly watching the proceedings. It gave Christopher Milton a stimulus and he continued to vent his lacerating irony on Pete.

Eventually the M.D. struck back. Still he tried to sound in control, but his wavering voice let him down. ‘Listen, if you’re going to speak to me like that, I’m going.’

‘Go. See if anyone cares. Just don’t think you can treat me like that. You’ve got to get it straight, boy, what matters in this show. You don’t. You go, there are a hundred second-rate musicians can take over tomorrow. I go, there just isn’t a show. Get your priorities right, boy.’

Pete Masters mouthed, but couldn’t produce any words. He did the only possible thing in the circumstances and walked off stage. The musicians looked at their watches with satisfaction. A row like this made it almost certain that they’d go into another session. The atmosphere in the theatre was heavy with embarrassment.

It blew over. Of course it blew over. That sort of row can’t go on for long. The pressures of keeping the show going don’t allow it. Pete and Christopher Milton were working together again within a quarter of an hour, with neither apologising or commenting on the scene. All the same, Charles Paris was relieved that Dickie Peck had not been present to witness the latest challenge to his protégé.

It wasn’t just the clash at rehearsals that morning, but something changed the company mood on the Wednesday afternoon. Perhaps it was a small and silent house at the matinée. Perhaps it was Desmond Porton’s impending visit and the fear of having the show assessed. Or perhaps it was The Cold.

Actors, whose working tools are their voices, are naturally terrified of colds, sore throats, ’flus and other infections which threaten their precious vocal cords. They all have their own favourite remedies and preventative methods when germs are in the air, or, in some cases, even when they aren’t. Large doses of Vitamin C are swallowed, dissolved or crunched. (So are most other vitamins of the alphabet, with a kind of pagan awe.) Strange elixirs of lemon and honey (with bizarre variations involving onions) are poured down tender throats. Aspirin, codeine, paracetamol, Anadin, Veganin and others are swilled down, discussed and compared as connoisseurs speak of malt whiskies. Names of doctors who can ‘do wonders for throats’ (as well as others who deal with backs and nervous twinges) are exchanged like rare stamps. It is all taken very seriously.

When a show involves singing, the panic and precautions are doubled. Vocal sprays are brought into play. Little tins and envelopes of pills are ostentatiously produced and their various merits extolled. Some favour Nigroids, small pills which ‘blow your head off, dear, but really do wonders for my cords’; others will not stir without ‘The Fisherman’s Friend’ – ‘quite strong, darling, but they really relax the throat’; there are Friar’s Balsam, Vocalzones, Sanderson’s Throat Specific and a whole gallery of other patent medicines available, all of which have their staunch adherents.

The Cold started with one of the dancers, who had difficulty in preventing his sneeze during the matinée. Then Mark Spelthorne, quick to seize any opportunity for self-dramatisation, thought he might have one of his throats coming on. During the evening performance many of the cast were walking round backstage massaging their throats, talking in whispers (‘conserving the voice, dear – may have a touch of ’flu coming on’) and generally putting on expressions of private suffering which they had learnt when rehearsing Chekhov. It helped to make the atmosphere around Lumpkin! suddenly spiky.

Charles just made it to the pub as time was being called after a sedate Bristol house had given its qualified support to the evening performance. He was the only one of the company who went. Most went straight home to nurse themselves in anticipation of The Cold.

He managed to get in an order for a pint of bitter (performing always made him thirsty) and was letting the first mouthful wash down when the girl came up to him. The American voice twanged. ‘Did you ask him?’

‘Who? What?’ He pretended innocence, but knew full well what she meant.

‘Christopher Milton. You were going to ask him about the interview.’

‘Oh yes, of course. I hadn’t forgotten. Trouble is, today was very busy, what with the two shows. And we were rehearsing some new arrangements this morning.’ It sounded pretty feeble.

But she didn’t seem to notice. ‘Never mind. You’ll do it sometime.’ Surprisingly benign. He’d expected her to tear him apart for his omission. ‘Some time,’ she repeated and he realised that she was drunk.

‘Can I get you a drink?’

‘Haven’t they closed?’

‘Nooo. Never. Barman. What is it, Suzanne?’

‘Vodka tonic.’

‘One of those, please.’

She took the drink and gulped it down like water. She stood close to him and swayed so that they almost touched. ‘How’d the show go?’

‘Not world-shattering.’

‘’Smy birthday today.’

‘Ah.’

‘Had a few drinks to celebrate. Alone in a foreign country.’

‘Ah.’

She leant against him. ‘Give me a birthday kiss. Back in the States I never go without a birthday kiss.’

He kissed her dryly on the lips as if she were a child, but he felt uncomfortably aware of how unchildlike she was. Her breasts exercised a magnetic attraction as she swayed towards him. He drained his beer. ‘Well, better be off. They’ll be turfing us out shortly.’

‘You going to see me home?’ she asked kookily. Miss Suzanne Horst with a few drinks inside her was a very different proposition from the hyper-efficient lady who was about to set British journalism afire.

‘Is it far?’

‘Not far. Staying at a hotel.’

‘Ah.’ Charles found he said a lot of ‘Ahs’ in conversation with Suzanne. Because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

They hadn’t got far from the pub when she stopped and rolled round into his arms. ‘Kiss me properly,’ she mumbled. Light filtered across the road from the lamp over the stage door.

He held her warm and cosy in his arms. He didn’t kiss her. Thoughts moved slowly, but with great clarity through his mind. The girl was drunk. He was nearly fifty. He should keep away from women; it always hurt one way or the other. The silent resentment of Ruth was too recent a memory. And before that there had been Anna in Edinburgh. And others. A wave of tiredness swept over him at the eternal predictability of lust.

He felt a shock of depression, as if the pavement in front of him had suddenly fallen away. What was the point of anything? Women could alleviate the awareness of the approach of death, but they could not delay it. He was cold, cold as though someone was walking over his grave. The intensity and speed of the emotion frightened him. Age, it must be age, time trickling away. He thought of Frances and wanted her comforting touch.

The girl in his arms was still, half dozing. He took her elbow and detached her from him. ‘Come on. I’ll get you back to your hotel.’ Gently.

At that moment he heard the clunk of the stage door closing and looked across to see Pete Masters emerge with a brief-case under his arm. The M.D. didn’t see him, but started to cross the road, going away from him.

The Mini must have been parked near by, but Charles wasn’t aware of it until it flashed past. He turned sharply, seemed dumb for a moment, then found his voice, too late, to shout, ‘Look out!’

Pete Masters half-turned as the wing of the Mini caught him. He was spun round on his feet and flung sprawling against a parked car. From there he slid down to lie still in the road. The Mini turned right at the end of the street and disappeared.