by Simon Brett
‘Oh, good,’ said Charles, permitting himself an edge of irony. Down at his level in the profession, you didn’t get days off rehearsal for doing other jobs; it was only so-called stars who could get that kind of thing written into their contracts.
But Gavin seemed unaware of the intonation. ‘Then I was terribly lucky to get Felicia Chatterton for Lady Macbeth. Ever come across her?’
Charles shook his head.
‘No, well, you wouldn’t have done unless you’d been with the Royal Shakespeare. She went straight out of Central to Stratford and hasn’t worked anywhere else. Done some lovely stuff . . . super notices for her Perdita. And a smashing Celia. Anyway, like most of them do, she’s now venturing out into the real commercial world.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Late twenties.’
‘Bit young to be partnered by George, isn’t she?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. She’s very clever. And, anyway, I think a younger Lady Macbeth helps the sensuality in the relationship. Don’t you?’
Charles tried another nod this time.
‘The sexual dimension is so important. You know, that whole business of whether she’s had children or not . . . She has the “I have given suck . . .” speech, but then Macduff says, ‘He has no children.’ Now, are we meant to assume –?’
‘Yes.’ Charles diverted the subject forcibly. ‘Who else is there?’
‘What, in the company?’
‘Yes. Who’s Duncan, for instance?’
‘Oh.’ Gavin smiled slyly. ‘I got Warnock Belvedere for that.’
‘Ah.’
‘From your tone of voice, I gather you know him.’
‘Only by reputation.’
Again Gavin Scholes read something in Charles’s intonation. ‘Oh, I think that’s probably all bullshit. I mean, you know how easily someone gets a name for being difficult. One director they don’t get on with, and suddenly all these stories start circulating round the business. I’m sure he’ll be fine.’
‘You haven’t worked with him?’
‘No. I’ve spoken to him on the phone, and he sounds absolutely charming. Anyway, when you book someone like that, one of those larger-than-life characters, in my experience you get so much in return. You know, those older actors really know how to fill the stage. Don’t you agree?’
Charles did agree, and said ‘Yes.’ But he didn’t say that, in his experience, actors who ‘filled the stage’ hadn’t a lot of time for the other actors who tried to share it with them.
‘Oh, I’m not worried,’ Gavin went on breezily, though something in his expression belied the words. ‘With most so-called difficult actors, I think it’s all down to how the director handles them. Don’t you agree?’
This time there was no mistaking the naked appeal in Gavin’s eyes. It confirmed Charles’s suspicion that he had been booked as much to give the director moral support as to give his Bleeding Sergeant and Drunken Porter.
‘No, there’ll be no problem,’ Gavin continued protesting too much. ‘Most actors who behave badly are just insecure. If you take a firm line from the start –’
But the director didn’t get time to articulate his full theory of how to deal with difficult actors. Behind them the swing doors into the bar clattered dramatically open and a huge fruity voice boomed out, ‘Who do you have to fuck to get a drink round here?’
Gavin Scholes and Charles Paris looked round. But they both knew what they would see before they saw it.
A mountainous man propped up on a silver-topped walking stick swayed near the door. He wore a shapeless suit of thick checked tweed over a bottle-green waistcoat across which a watch-chain hung pretentiously. His mane of white hair and beard seemed to have been modelled on the elderly Buffalo Bill. A monocle was screwed firmly into the veined purple face.
‘Charles Paris,’ said Gavin Scholes as he moved towards the door, ‘I don’t believe you’ve met Warnock Belvedere . . .?’
Chapter Two
THE OLD ACTOR’S presence was so commanding that it was only as Gavin and Charles drew near that they noticed he had not entered the bar alone. Slightly behind Warnock, eclipsed by his bulk, stood a thin boy, scarcely out of his teens, on whose face an eager-to-please smile hovered nervously.
‘Oh, hello, Russ. Charles, I don’t think you’ve met Russ Lavery either . . .?’
‘No, I –’
‘Never mind that,’ boomed Warnock Belvedere. ‘Time enough for pleasantries when you’ve got me that bloody drink. God, a man could die of dehydration in this place.’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said Gavin, scuttling back to the bar, and suggesting to Charles that the director’s ‘firm line’ in dealing with the supposedly difficult actor would be based on abject subservience.
‘What’s it to be?’ Gavin asked from the bar.
‘Brandy. Large one,’ Warnock Belvedere replied as he limped heavily across the room.
Charles reached out his hand to the young man who had been introduced as Russ Lavery. ‘Charles Paris. Are you in the company?’
‘Yes, it’s my first job out of Webber Douglas.’
‘Welcome to the business.’
‘Thanks. Yes, I just finished my training this summer. I was very lucky. An agent liked what I did in one of the final term productions and signed me up.’
‘Well done.’
‘It was Robbie Patrick, actually.’ The boy was demonstrably keen to get the name into the conversation. And with reason. Robbie Patrick was one of the most successful and fashionable agents on the scene. To be signed up by him was about the best start any aspiring actor could have.
‘Anyway, Robbie put me up to audition for Gavin and it went okay, and I’ve got one of the Pinero’s provisional cards.’
‘Again, well done.’ It was quite an achievement. The actors’ union, Equity, paranoid about too many people entering a hopelessly overcrowded profession, restricted most theatres to admitting two new members a year. To have got one of the coveted union cards so quickly was what every drama student in the country prayed for.
‘What are you playing?’ asked Charles, with a grin.
The grin had the right effect, and the boy seemed more relaxed as he replied, ‘Fleance and Young Siward.’
‘Great.’
‘Yes, I’m very excited about it. You know, the chance to play two contrasting roles. Using different voices.’
There was something puppyish about the boy’s enthusiasm. Charles for a moment felt almost patronising, until he reflected that he himself had reacted in exactly the same way to the prospect of playing two minor roles.
‘I’m sure you’ll have lots of fun,’ he said.
‘Yes, I mean just the chance to work in a company with –’
‘Come over here, boy!’ Warnock Belvedere bellowed from the bar. ‘Come and sit by me. Pretty boy’s just bought me dinner. Least I can do is to get him a drink.’
Russ Lavery flushed and moved across to the bar. Charles followed more slowly. He didn’t like the sound of what Wamock had just said. The old actor was a notorious sponger, but to sponge off someone like Russ seemed pretty shabby. Nearly all actors are poor, but the ones who’ve just finished drama school tend to be even poorer than the rest.
Nor did Charles like the ‘pretty boy’ reference. Wamock Belvedere’s reputation encompassed fairly aggressive homosexuality, and Charles hoped that Russ wasn’t going to find himself in an awkward situation with the old actor. There was an air of naïveté about the youngster, which was capable of misinterpreting Warnock’s interest as something more altruistic, the simple desire of an old stager to help someone making his first tentative steps in the business.
Charles’s misgivings were not dispelled when the old actor put his arm round the young one’s shoulders and hoisted him on to a barstool. ‘Now what’s it to be, Russ? It’s still Gavin’s round, so ask for whatever you want.’
Russ Lavery coloured. ‘Oh, after all that wine we had at dinner, I don’t think
I need anything else –’
‘O! reason not the need!’ Warnock quoted grandiloquently, prompting Charles to wonder whether the old actor had ever actually played Lear. If he ever did, Charles thought vindictively, I bet it was a really hammy Lear.
‘Good heavens,’ Warnock continued, ‘you can’t come into this business if you can’t take your liquor. Christ, boy, what do you think keeps the theatre going? It’s not talent, it’s not arty-farty acting, it’s not blooody Arts Council grants – it’s alcohol, pure and simple. Wouldn’t you agree?’
This last was flashed maliciously at Charles, who found the question a slightly uncomfortable one to answer. Much as he hated to side with Warnock Belvedere, he could not deny the considerable contribution that alcohol (in particular, Bell’s whisky) had made to his own theatrical career.
‘Come on, boy, have something.’
‘Well, um, a small sherry.’
‘Sherry! After dinner. Good God, have you just let go Mummy’s apronstrings? Don’t you know anything?’
Russ Lavery looked deeply humiliated. It was clear that the answer to both Wamock’s questions was affirmative. Charles observed how, as with the snipe at him about alcohol, the old actor had a knack of homing in on people’s private anxieties. It made him a potentially difficult person to deal with.
‘Get the boy a sherry,’ Warnock ordered, and Gavin Scholes obediently reached for his wallet.
‘Sweet, medium or dry?’ Norman the barman asked impassively.
The old actor looked at Russ. ‘Well, come on boy. You must give Mine Host an answer. I’m afraid I don’t know the appropriate etiquette for after-dinner sherry drinking.’
The boy blushed as his humiliation was rubbed in. ‘Dry, please,’ he said in a small voice.
Still impassive, Norman poured the drink. Warnock, seeming for a moment to regret his cruelty, continued in a softer voice. ‘Oh, I remember, when I was young, I once made a terrible cock-up over drink. It was when I was working with Ralph.’
‘Ralph Richardson?’ asked Russ Lavery, awe-struck.
‘Yes,’ Warnock Belvedere conceded casually, well aware of the impact his words were having. ‘I was quite new to the business . . . maybe a little older than you – and not nearly as pretty, I’m afraid . . .’
Russ looked confused, confirming Charles’s suspicion that the boy didn’t know how to deal with this homosexual badinage. It’s always difficult in the theatre. There’s so much effusiveness, so much jokey campness that it’s sometimes hard to spot an authentically gay approach. In this case, though, Charles could have told Russ that he was up against the real thing.
‘Anyway, at the end of the rehearsal one day, Ralph said he’d buy us all a drink. I was about as clueless as you are, young Russ, so I thought, well, here we are in the big, glamorous theatrical world, and I asked him for a glass of champagne. Hadn’t a clue what it cost. And in those days, it was going to be a question of opening a bottle – none of this wine-bar nonsense where they keep one open under the counter. Anyway, give the old darling his due, he bought it for me without demur. Handed me the glass, and, as he did so, he said – very straight-faced, ‘You show good taste, young man. If you always insist on living life by champagne standards, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t succeed. No one ever lost out by aiming too high.
“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for?” Never forgotten that bit of advice, you know.’
Needless to say, for the reported lines, the old actor dropped into impersonation. Charles had yet to encounter an actor who didn’t do an impression of the late Sir Ralph Richardson. The quality varied from reasonable verisimilitude to a kind of decrepit bleat, but every actor had one tucked away for the vast supply of stories, true and apocryphal, which had accreted round that larger-than-life figure.
Warnock Belvedere’s impersonation was actually rather good, but whether or not Richardson had ever given him the advice claimed or had ever quoted Browning at him, Charles doubted.
Russ Lavery was, however, impressed and so Warnock Belvedere pressed home his advantage with one of the more familiar Richardson anecdotes.
‘Actually, dear old Ralph . . .’ (he pronounced it ‘Rafe’, needless to say) ‘. . . once did something rather wonderful at a first night of some turgid new play he was doing. Started the First Act and, you know, they were getting nothing from the audience, but nothing. Obviously the thing was a real turkey . . . flopperoonie wasn’t in it . . . So suddenly Ralph stops in the middle of a speech, walks down to the footlights, and says to the audience, “Is there a doctor in the house?”’
‘Little bloke stands up at the back of the stalls. “Yes, I’m a doctor”.’
‘Doctor,’ says Ralph, ‘isn’t this a terrible play?’
Though familiar to Charles, the story was well told, and he joined in the laughter that greeted its punchline. Even the barman Norman allowed himself a flicker of a smile. But, as Charles laughed, he wondered why Warnock Belvedere had suddenly turned so affable. He had a nasty feeling that the old actor wanted to ingratiate himself back into favour with Russ Lavery; he realised he’d pushed too far about the sherry, and was now making up for that lapse. What Warnock’s ulterior motive was, Charles didn’t think would be too difficult to guess.
Before the old actor could plunge into another anecdote of the distinguished company he kept, the bar-room doors rattled again and they all turned to look at the new arrival.
It was a woman, mid to late forties. Her hair was probably naturally black, but had been assisted to a uniform blackness which did not quite look natural. The blue eyes were rimmed with heavy make-up and her slightly sulky mouth was outlined in a harsh red. She wore a tight black skirt, seamed black stockings and shiny cream blouse. Chunky jewellery clustered at her neck and on her wrists. She didn’t quite look tarty, but damn nearly.
Gavin and Norman’s reactions to the arrival showed that she was a familiar figure in the theatre. The barman seemed to look away with lack of interest, while the director gave a little wave and called out, ‘Sandra, love. Get you a drink?’
‘Please. A Tia Maria.’
Norman had the bottle in his hand and was pouring from it before she said the words.
‘Oh, I’ve just finished sorting it all out,’ the woman sighed, depositing herself with elaborate mock-exhaustion on the bar-stool.
‘The postal bookings?’ asked Gavin.
She nodded. ‘Using credit cards is supposed to make the whole thing simpler, and I’m sure it does when everyone gets their details right. But when they ask for the wrong price, or the wrong night . . . huh. Some of them even get their credit card numbers wrong.’
Gavin moved the glass of dark brown fluid across the bar to her. ‘Never mind, you’ll feel better after this.’
‘Thanks.’ She took a long, grateful swallow.
‘Sorry, should introduce you. Warnock Belvedere . . . Charles Paris . . . Russ Lavery . . .’ The actors nodded acknowledgement. ‘This is a most essential lady – our Box Office Manager – or should it be Manageress . . .’
‘Manager. I do the job quite as well as a man would,’ she insisted with perhaps unnecessary vehemence.
‘You certainly do,’ Gavin Scholes gave a sycophantic smile of agreement. ‘Sandra Phipps.’
She smiled round at them, then said, ‘Give us a packet of peanuts, Norman. I’m starving.’
The barman handed them over, asking for, and apparently expecting, no money in return. Sandra glared at him. ‘Don’t look so hangdog. We will get something to eat later.’
‘I didn’t say anything.’
‘No, you just looked it. We’ll pick up a Chinkie on the way home.’
‘Fine.’ The barman turned to straighten up the rows of fruit juice bottles.
Gavin Scholes stepped into the rather awkward silence that ensued. ‘Should explain, Sandra and Norman are married.’
‘Oy,’ she said skittishly. ‘Don’t spoil my cha
nces with all these lovely young actors.’
‘Thank you for the “young”, Madam.’ Warnock Belvedere leant across and kissed her hand with mock-courtesy. ‘Nicest thing anyone’s said to me all evening.’ Then, in an elaborate aside, he whispered, ‘Fancy nipping down the car park for a quickie?’
Knowing the actor’s sexual orientation, Charles found this remark unbearably arch, but it appealed to Sandra Phipps, who burst into a raucous ripple of giggles.
‘All the same, you bloody men,’ she accused (inaccurately, as it happened, in Warnock’s case), ‘only think about one thing.’ Then, with a glance at Norman’s back, added, ‘With exceptions, of course.’
Clearly, this sexual sniping was part of the couple’s relationship. It made Charles feel rather uncomfortable.
Gavin again stepped in as the peacemaker. ‘I tell you, without Sandra and Norman, the Pinero would just literally fall apart. I mean, sod the actors and directors, if you don’t sell the tickets, you’re left with a marked lack of bums on seats. And, if the audience can’t get a drink in the interval, well, it’s the end of everything.’
‘And, if the cast can’t,’ said Warnock, banging his glass on the counter to attract Norman’s attention, ‘it’s the end of civilization as we know it.’
Silently, the barman refilled the brandy glass and looked around quizzically at the others. Russ Lavery shook his head, but the rest signalled acquiescence and had their glasses recharged.
‘How’s the advance?’ Charles asked Sandra Phipps, feeling he should show an interest in her work.
‘Pretty good. Considering we don’t open for nearly a month. Fridays and Saturdays okay – though a lot of those are subscription seats – and the Schools’ Matinees are virtually full.’
‘Comes of doing a set text,’ said Gavin smugly. ‘All the kids have to come and see it or they’re going to make a balls-up of their exams. Eminently satisfactory.’
‘For the management, maybe,’ said Charles. ‘Not so hot for the actors.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Warnock Belvedere.
