Dead Room Farce

by Simon Brett

  ‘But the attraction of having a drink’s still there?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Charles Paris replied, in one of the greatest understatements of his life. ‘The attraction’s still there.’

  ‘This doesn’t seem to be a very heavy-drinking company, does it?’

  ‘No, maybe not. Mind you, old Ran was pretty far gone last night.’

  ‘Really? Didn’t know he was into the booze.’

  ‘Well, last night he was. Came back to the cottage, you know, one I’m staying in with a couple of the stage management bods, and Ran was so far gone he had to stay the night.’

  ‘Ah.’ Cookie Stone’s face took on a cynical twist, as her voice dropped into cartoon canary, ‘Doing dat old twick, is he?’

  ‘What old twick?’

  She was instantly back into her normal voice. ‘It’s one he’s used a good few times before, I gather. I bet he pulled it at somebody else’s place on Monday night.’

  ‘You’ve lost me.’

  ‘What Ran does, Charles, when he’s on tour, is to keep ending up in other people’s digs. Sometimes he’ll just leave it too late to get a taxi back; sometimes he’ll do the too-much booze routine – as he did with you; and on occasions he’s been known to joke his way into young actresses beds . . . all for the same reason.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘So that he doesn’t have to pay for digs. He’s managed to get through whole weeks without touching his touring allowance.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh yes, Charles. I’m afraid Ransome George is the original sponger. He knows all the wrinkles. And of course you know about the way he keeps borrowing money from people?’

  ‘Heard something about it, yes.’

  ‘Never pays it back, never has done.’ Cookie chuckled. ‘It’s incredible, really, that someone with a reputation like that can still get away with it. You’d have thought there couldn’t be a single person left in the business who didn’t know about his little habit. And yet every production he’s involved in, he still manages to find some dickhead who’s stupid enough to lend him a fiver.’

  ‘Really?’ Charles was beginning to get sick of that particular litany. ‘But, Cookie, you’ve never heard of anything really bad about Ran, have you?’

  ‘How do you mean – really bad”? I would imagine the dumbos who haven’t got their money back reckon that’s bad enough.’

  ‘No, I meant anything . . . criminal?’

  Cookie Stone shook her head. Her red hair brushed gently against her face. In the candlelight, her eyes didn’t seem so close together, and her face softened into a kind of beauty.

  Charles Paris lightened the tone of the conversation. Though Mark Lear’s death remained on his mind, he didn’t want to sound too inquisitorial. ‘Quite a boring company all round, isn’t it, actually? Boring company in a boring place.’

  ‘Norwich?’

  ‘Hm. Doesn’t seem the hub of the universe to me. I have this theory that the most boring places in England are places that aren’t on the way to anywhere. It’s as if it’s the pressure of knowing that the only people who go there are people who actually have to go there, rather than being on their way to somewhere else, that makes those places so dull. It’s the same with bits of eastern Kent . . . and bits of Cornwall, I suppose . . . and, of course, all of Wales.’

  Cookie grinned a crooked grin, and dropped into a husky Mae West voice. ‘So, if you and I are in a boring place, I guess we’re reduced to making our own entertainment, eh?’

  Charles Paris wasn’t quite sure whether or not this was a come-on, but to his surprise her words prompted a trickle of physical interest. He moved hastily on to less dangerous ground. ‘No, I suppose what I meant about this company being boring is that none of them seem to have any dark secrets, do they?’

  ‘Well, no dark secrets which aren’t extremely badly kept dark secrets,’ said Cookie.

  He cocked his head interrogatively. ‘Who’re you talking about?’

  ‘Let’s say a young lady called Pippa Trewin . . .’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Charles, you know.’

  ‘I don’t think I do.’

  ‘Young actress fresh out of drama school, gets a lead part in the new Bill Blunden farce, gets one of the best agents around, keeps having to rush off to see television casting directors about new series, movie casting directors about new movies . . . do you think that’s just the result of her exceptional talent?’

  ‘No. Well, if it were, it’d be a first in this business.’

  ‘Exactly. All down to having the right contacts, isn’t it?’

  So his suspicions had been right. There was something going on between Bernard Walton and Pippa Trewin. There couldn’t be any other reason why she was in the show. Charles would listen with new cynicism to the next interview in which Bernard waxed lyrical about the perfection and sanctity of his long-running marriage.

  ‘Knowing the right people, that’s what gets you ahead in this business.’ Cookie Stone hadn’t finished. A hobby-horse was being mounted. Her mouth contracted into a tight purse of resentment, as she went on, ‘God, I’ve got more talent in my little finger than that kid, but do I get put up for the kind of parts she does? And, if I make it to an interview, am I the one who ends up being cast? Am I hell?’

  ‘Oh, come on, who’s ever pretended that this business is fair?’ Somehow it seemed only natural for Charles to reach out and stroke Cookie’s hand as he gave this reassurance. His reward was a warm sparkle from her eyes. ‘The people who make it, Cookie, are the ones who use every contact they’ve got. Like old Bernard himself. Do you know, I directed him in his first major stage role.’

  ‘Did you?’

  Charles nodded. ‘Young Marlowe in She Stoops . . . Cardiff, way, way back.’

  ‘Oh?’ Cookie looked at him shrewdly. ‘So is that why you’re in the show?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We were talking about contacts. Are you in not on your wife! because of the old pals’ act with Bernard?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so.’ But, even as he denied the allegation, Charles Paris had a recurrence of the nasty feeling that it might be true. It was Bernard Walton who’d suggested that Parrott Fashion Productions should see him for the part of Aubrey, so perhaps it was to Bernard that he owed his casting. Not the first time he’d had cause to be thankful in that direction. Charles wouldn’t have minded if he thought Bernard Walton offered such gestures out of pure altruism, but they seemed to be made solely to provide an opportunity for the star to patronise his former mentor. At least, thank God, Charles thought, Bernard’s already been done on This Is Your Life; there’s no longer any danger of me being wheeled out as the unknown actor ‘who was awfully influential in the early days of my career’.

  ‘You know someone’s writing a biography of Bernard?’ said Cookie.

  ‘Yes. I did hear it mentioned. Seems inconceivable, though. I wouldn’t have thought Bernard had been around long enough to provide sufficient material.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it. Plenty of showbiz names to be dropped, I’m sure. And with the telly and stuff, there are a lot of punters out there who’d want to read that kind of book.’

  ‘Have you heard if it’s going to be a warts-and-all job, a proper exposé?’

  Cookie Stone laughed away the idea. ‘No way. Authorised biography, or near as dammit. Another stepping stone towards Bernard’s knighthood, all carefully calculated, I bet. There’ll be nothing in the book to sully the image of Showbusiness’s Mr Squeaky-Clean.’

  Mind you, thought Charles, the revelation of an affair with an actress young enough to be his daughter might sully the image of Showbusiness’s Mr Squeaky-Clean. Charles wondered if, by any chance, Mark Lear had known about that particular liaison.

  Cookie had the wine bottle poised over her glass. ‘I feel pretty selfish, sitting here slurping away on my own. Sure I can’t tempt you, Charles?’

  For a moment his
resolve held. Then he pushed his glass forward. ‘Oh well, just the one.’

  Boring town though Norwich might be, it was a good place for theatrical digs. As well as some excellent inner-city addresses, the stage door list at the Palace Theatre also included a few in the countryside around. Charles Paris and his stage management friends were staying in one such, but it wasn’t nearly as pretty as the tiny cottage outside which the taxi deposited him and Cookie Stone soon after midnight that evening. It was a crisp October night, and an early frost sparkled on the thatch.

  ‘One of the nice things about touring,’ she said in response to his expressions of admiration, ‘is getting to stay in places you could never in a hundred years live in permanently.’

  It was clear once they were inside the cottage that Cookie was a home-maker. All actors approach touring in different ways. Some see it as an opportunity to explore the countryside, taking advantage of their National Trust membership to visit sites of interest. Others use it to develop hobbies such as collecting books or antiques. Some fill their free afternoons catching up on films at the local cinemas; others wile them away in betting shops. Bridge-loving actors have been known, if they’ve found three like-minded people in the company, to spend an entire three months playing cards.

  Some notice where they are and get a lot of feedback from the constant change of surroundings. For others, like Charles Paris, one place looks much like another.

  And for him, touring always meant living out of a suitcase. Literally living out of a suitcase. Whether in digs or a rented house, away from home he made no pretence at personalising his environment. (Mind you, the few people who’d seen his studio flat in Hereford Road would probably say he’d made no pretence at personalising that environment either.) For Charles, touring meant one big suitcase, containing books, a bottle of Bell’s (or at least it always had until his Lisa Wilson-inspired conversion) and three changes of clothes. While he was wearing one set, the other two remained, more or less folded, in the suitcase, except for their occasional – and not quite frequent enough – trips out to the launderette.

  Cookie Stone, however, did not belong to that school of touring. The row of old production photographs on the cottage mantelpiece, the cuddly toys on the back of the sofa, the artfully scattered magazines on the coffee table, all showed her to be someone who enjoyed making any space her own. Maybe she was one of those actresses who was away so much, so often on tour or on location, that she had to take her home with her and stake her claim, set up her camp afresh, in each new setting. Or maybe she was just an old-fashioned homebody.

  As soon as they were through the sitting-room door, Cookie had crossed to the drinks tray and lifted a bottle. ‘It’s Bell’s, isn’t it, Charles?’

  ‘Well, back in the days when I was drinking . . . yes, it was Bell’s.’

  She shrugged. ‘You’ve had half a bottle of red wine already tonight.’

  ‘Mm.’

  She held the bottle by its neck and let it sway gently from side to side. ‘Up to you . . .’

  Again his resolution was short-lived. ‘Yes, I can’t think of anything I’d like more.’

  ‘Oh, I hope there’s something you’d like more,’ said Cookie, in a Marilyn Monroe little-girl voice, as she poured Scotch into two tumblers. ‘How do you like it? With water or . . .?’

  ‘Ice, if it’s convenient. Otherwise, on its own.’

  ‘Ice is perfectly convenient.’ Crossing towards the kitchen, Cookie Stone chucked over a box of matches. ‘If you could just do the fire . . .’

  The grate had been neatly laid. Shredded newspaper underneath kindling, lumps of coal and a log on top. As he put a match to the paper and watched orange shoots of flame lick upwards, Charles wondered if Cookie had a fire set in the cottage every night. Or was it only when she was expecting company?

  She brought in the drinks, and they sat side by side on the sofa. ‘Clink, clink,’ said Cookie. They clinked their tumblers together.

  Then Charles took a long swig of Bell’s. God, he had missed it. God, it tasted wonderful.

  He wasn’t sure quite how they started touching, whether he moved first, whether she moved first. It didn’t seem to matter; neither of them thought it was a bad idea.

  ‘We’re grown-ups, after all,’ said Cookie, as they withdrew from their first long kiss. ‘And it’s not as if we haven’t done this before.’

  ‘No, for two people of our age to have got through life without having kissed anyone before would be pretty bizarre,’ Charles agreed fatuously.

  ‘I didn’t mean “kiss anyone”. I meant it’s not as if we haven’t done this together before.’

  ‘No. Right.’ He chuckled knowingly, but really wished he could remember exactly what they’d done before. How much they’d done before.

  Still, this was no time for piecing together the past; his body was getting too interested in the present. His hand slid naturally down to the surprising firmness of Cookie’s breast. ‘You’ve got the body of a teenager,’ he murmured into the soft redness of her hair.

  ‘Oh God!’ said Cookie in her best Hammer Horror troubled heroine mode. ‘We must find this teenager and give it back to her!’

  ‘No, we mustn’t.’ Charles’s hand was slipping down from the breast. ‘First we must check all the bits are where they should be, to make sure we’ve got the right body.’

  The fire’s warmth was spreading now, and their clothes seemed to slip away without embarrassment. Cookie let out a little gasp as Charles’s hand found the soft centre of her. ‘Do we want to go upstairs to the bedroom?’ she murmured.

  ‘Don’t see the necessity. Very nice down here.’

  They both chuckled at the double meaning. Her hands were doing their bit too. She held him just hard enough, stroked him just softly enough. She knew what she was doing.

  ‘Oh, you’re beautiful,’ Charles mumbled, as the waves of pleasure mounted. ‘Beautiful.’

  Cookie contradicted him. ‘No. I may be sexy, I may be attractive, I may have a good body, my face may “have character”, but there’s no way I’m beautiful.’

  ‘Oh yes, you are,’ said Charles Paris, as the imperatives of their bodies grew unanswerable. ‘You’re beautiful, Cookie Stone, you’re beautiful!’

  It was good. As they subsided into the nest of discarded clothing on the hearth-rug and the firelight airbrushed away the blemishes of their bodies, both of them lazily untwitched.

  The only tiny nagging question in Charles’s mind remained: Was that the first time I’ve made love to her, or did it happen in London too?

  ‘Well . . .’ Cookie purred on a wave of fulfilment. ‘That was better than the last time.’

  A remark which, unfortunately, did not help clear up Charles Paris’s confusion.

  He felt good the next morning when he returned to his digs. The alcohol had left him with no hangover, and it was a long time since he’d had good sex – or any sex, if the truth be told.

  Also there was a message at the digs for him to ring Maurice Skellem. Maybe he was getting closer to finding out who had murdered Mark Lear as well.

  The only slight cloud on his horizon was the news from one of his fellow lodgers that, taking advantage of Charles Paris’s absence, Ransome George had spent the previous night in his bed.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘NOTHING ON Bernard Walton or David J. Girton yet . . .’

  ‘Oh, well, thanks for trying, Maurice.’

  ‘But give me time, give me time. I did get something on old Ran, though.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘I mean, his is a complete history of fiddles and not paying back money he’s borrowed and all that stuff . . .’

  ‘I know.’

  Maurice chuckled down the phone. ‘And I dare say nothing’s changed in that department over the years. He’s still finding idiots stupid enough to –’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Charles briskly. ‘What’ve you actually got on him?’

  ‘All right, all right. Let me get
there. Notice, incidentally, Charles, that I haven’t asked why you want this information. I’ve been very restrained.’

  ‘Yes, and your restraint is much appreciated, but I’m sorry, I have to get off to the theatre shortly, so if you could just let me know what you’ve found out . . .’

  ‘Of course. Now, the Mark Lear you mentioned, he had a lot of money, right?’

  ‘His wife, Vinnie, had a lot of money, yes.’

  ‘Hm . . . Well, I think some of it could have ended up in Ransome George’s pocket.’ Maurice Skellern let the information settle, saying nothing more, challenging Charles to prompt him. Charles resisted the temptation and let the silence extend itself until, with a disgruntled edge to his voice, Maurice went on. “Ran got involved with some people who were making porn tapes . . .’

  ‘Videos?’

  ‘No, it was just audio tapes in those days. Ran may have started by acting in them, I don’t know, but he certainly got involved in the business side too. Now the thing is, I’ve found out that certain BBC radio personnel were brought in to help produce the things . . .’

  ‘And was Mark Lear one of them?’

  ‘Can’t be sure about that yet, but, if he was, that’d be your connection, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Could be.’ Charles was unable to hide the disappointment in his voice. He’d been hoping for more concrete information.

  ‘It’s also a fact, Charles, that some of the BBC people were encouraged, by Ransome George I think, to invest in the company that was making and marketing these tapes. And, when the inevitable happened, they lost their stakes.’

  ‘By “the inevitable”, you mean when the company went bust?’

  ‘Exactly. As a lot of those seedy little operations did. Mind you, my information suggests that Ransome George himself may not have lost money. In fact, I’m pretty sure he creamed off quite a lot.’

  ‘That would be in character. By the way, Maurice,’ Charles asked curiously, ‘where do you get your information from?’

  ‘Ah, now I can’t tell you that, can I?’ The agent’s voice was heavy with reproach. ‘I just happen to have certain rather useful specific skills.’