by Anne Morice
“No special hurry, is there?” Clarrie asked to no-one in particular and in her most languorous voice.
“None whatever, as far as we’re concerned,” I assured her. “Robin doesn’t absolutely need to leave for London until about seven.”
“Okay, sarkie, come and help me do something about it, if that’s your attitude,” she said, hauling herself upright, which seemed to require quite an effort. “Sorry it’s only cold,” she added to the others, “but the bloody old stove is on the blink.”
“The sad fact is, Tessa,” she explained, taking my arm as we went into the house, “I’m ever so slightly squiffy.”
“Oh no, really?”
“Yes, really! Mainly your fault, too. Only I don’t blame you for that.”
“I’m so glad. What did I do wrong?”
“Got here at a civilised time, is all. We might have guessed Dolly would bitch things up and that’s just what she did. They were hammering on the door at twelve-thirty, would you believe? I’d only just stepped out of the bath.”
Despite this, there was evidence to prove that someone had been at work that morning and had also spent a small fortune at the charcuterie, because a substantial buffet lunch was already set out for us in the room between the verandah and kitchen, which served as combined sitting room, hall and dining room. There were not less than a dozen dishes, each covered with a teacloth, and when I raised a few of the corners I saw that we had been provided with an impressive selection of pates, pies, salads and cheeses. There were also four opened bottles of claret and two more of the same, unopened, on a side table, which did not bode quite so well.
The furnishings of this room, although ugly in the extreme, had a more solid look about them than those on the verandah. Nearly everything, in fact, looked like a reject from a defunct Edwardian boarding house and I concluded that the function of this tasteless hotchpotch was to provide some light and shade in a life spent principally in the company of expensive and beautiful objects.
“What’s the matter with the stove?” I asked.
“Nothing, as far as I know. I just threw that in because I thought she’d turn up her vulgar nose at a cold lunch. She drives me into these sinful falsehoods. And, in case I forgot to mention it, I’m a bit squiffy and liable to say anything at all, so take no notice.”
“And not the only one, I’m afraid. Philip’s looking decidedly glazed.”
“Yes, I know, but, as he’s slightly less boring drunk than sober, who cares? Would you be most terribly kind and make the salad dressing? I’ve put all the ingredients out on the draining board, but the operation itself requires a cool head and steady hand, neither of which I possess at this particular moment in time.”
She was certainly going out of her way to draw attention to her inebriacy, although in fact I could see little real evidence of it, her speech and movements appearing to be perfectly under control. I concluded that it was a pose, deliberately adopted to provide herself with an excuse in advance, in the event of becoming unable to resist the urge to break into yawns or open rudeness.
The sink was filled with long-stemmed pink roses, many of which had drooped and died while still in the bud stage, immersed up to their dislocated necks in water. In reply to my enquiry, she told me that his Godliness had brought them.
“Oliver?”
“Don’t sound so surprised. He used to fancy me once upon a time, you know. Wanted to push it to the limits too, until I explained about the other fella in my life. Whereupon he retired with a gentlemanly bow.”
“And is he now coming out of retirement, bearing gifts?”
“No, he was on his way to talk some business with his junior partner, the red-head, who is spending the weekend with his parents in their Cotswold manor. I think the roses were a bait and he was hoping to be invited to stay on for lunch. He would have too, if that donkey hadn’t blown it.”
“How did he do that?” I asked, guessing which donkey she referred to.
“Told him who else was coming, of course. As soon as he heard her ladyship was on the guest list he was up and away. I thought I’d leave the roses there and take them back to London with us. Not that I care for them all that much, but it will be my small revenge. He’s fiendishly jealous, you know, that young man. Gets quite violent sometimes. It can be embarrassing. Honestly, Tessa, nobody knows what I have to put up with.”
“Not for want of being told, though. And, in the meantime, where does one wash the olive oil off one’s hands?”
“Door on the left at the top of the stairs.”
It was like falling back into a half-forgotten dream, because Philip was standing with one foot on the bottom step of the narrow staircase, in the act of hauling the other one up to join it. This time, though, I did not attempt to follow him, since it could be assumed that his destination was also the door on the left at the top. Furthermore, Dolly was standing behind him, with one hand on the bannister rope, the other flattened against the opposite wall, as though forming herself into a human crash barrier. Hovering a few paces behind them and watching with a glint of amusement was Pete. None of them noticed me and considering it inadvisable to draw Clarrie into the fray, I turned in the other direction and padded silently back to the verandah, where Robin was looking predictably bored and aggrieved.
“What the hell’s going on?”
“I was hoping you’d be able to tell me.”
“All I know is that after you left there was a heavy silence while Pete, or whatever his name is, sat smirking at us all and then Philip started droning on about something he’d said or done when he was on tour in South Africa until, more or less in mid-sentence, he simply nodded off. Hardly surprising really; it was a most tedious story.”
“Did one of you wake him up?”
“No, that’s when it turned into pure farce. Dolly said it might be dangerous to disturb him and we’d better all keep quiet, so there we all sat; but after a few minutes he woke up by himself and began behaving like a querulous child, complaining that he wanted to go to the bathroom.”
“And then what?”
“He managed to get to his feet, with a little help from Pete, who was practically killing himself by this time, and off they all shuffled. Any chance that we could just slip away?”
“We can hardly leave Clarrie to cope with Dolly fussing, in her present state. Besides, all the pubs will be shut now and I’m starving. I doubt if I could last out till we get back to Toby’s refrigerator. Tell you what, though; I’ll go and see if she’d mind our helping ourselves to a slice or two of something, while Philip gets sorted out.”
“And we can’t just eat and run either, so that’ll mean being stuck here for at least another half hour. Oh well, do whatever you like. They’re your friends.”
Feeling like a buffer state getting more than its fair share of buffeting, I trudged back indoors again and was making for the kitchen, where I could hear raised voices from Pete and Clarrie, when, ahead of me, I perceived her ladyship coming downstairs again.
“How’s Philip?”
“Resting, thank you. God willing, he’ll be able to get up in a few minutes and I can take him out of this bedlam.”
“It’s not serious, then?”
“Not as far as I know, but all this ridiculous hanging about would be too much for anyone, after the sort of week he’s been through and God knows what they put in those drinks.”
I could have told her exactly what they put in those drinks, but, not wishing to add fuel to these already raging fires, I said: “How about something to eat, while you’re waiting? Robin and I have decided to go ahead.”
“You please yourselves, my dear. Personally, I’ve gone past it. I only came down to tell our hostess that we shall be leaving in a few minutes.”
“She and Pete are having a conference in the kitchen.”
“How typical!” her ladyship said and jangled off to break it up.
“I hope you’ve no objection to our helping ourselves?” I asked Cl
arrie, when she and Pete joined us on the verandah about ten minutes later.
“Not at all. Be my guests!”
“We are your guests,” Robin informed her. “Although it is not always easy to remember that.”
“Have they gone?” I asked, metaphorically thrusting myself between them.
“Yes, God be praised! Actually, poor old Philip was quite keen to stay when it came to the point, wasn’t he, darling? Said he’d been momentarily overcome by waves of fatigue, but it’s passed off now and a little something to eat would do him good. However, her ladyship was adamant. I have a strange feeling that she loathes the sight of me.”
“Nothing strange about it,” Pete said, “seeing how that drunken, lecherous old husband of hers was hugging and slobbering over you.”
“Oh, nonsense, darling! That doesn’t mean a thing. He does it to all the girls below the age of ninety.”
“Is that true, Tessa?” Pete demanded, placing me in the deftest of sticks, since Robin also looked keen to hear the answer.
“Oh, well,” I said feebly. “Well, you know how actors are?”
“No, I don’t know how actors are, I’m pleased to say, but I do know how Clarrie is and, of all the sickening exhibitions, this took some beating.”
“Oh, shut up, will you, darling? Anyone would think I’ve had enough to put up with, without you starting on me. I was only trying to be pleasant, after all.”
“In the only way you know how!”
“Kindly stop insulting me in front of my friends, if you’ll be so good? And, anyway, who invited them here in the first place and whose fault was it that Philip got so stoned he practically passed out? Just answer me that!”
It was clear that they were now boiling up to a first-class row and, by tacit consent, Robin and I set our plates down on the rickety little table and, as though carrying out a well-rehearsed routine, blew some kisses into the air and silently stole away. They were both in full spate by then and hardly seemed to notice.
“How thankful I am not to have been with you!” Toby said, when we had described these goings-on.
“Yes, you’d have hated every minute, and those two getting into a drunken brawl was just about the last straw. Although, to be fair, I don’t believe Pete was drunk at all. He was most abstemious where his own intake was concerned, but he’s so neurotically jealous that it only needs the tiniest provocation to set him off.”
“And to be fairer still,” Robin remarked, “I wouldn’t say that Clarrie keeps him short of provocation.”
“No, she doesn’t. In fact, she goes out of her way to supply it. Like all the fuss she was making over those depressing roses Oliver had brought her. I daresay that was at the back of Pete’s outburst. It’s hard to believe that he could genuinely regard Philip as a rival.”
“It all sounds highly distasteful and, if there ever was a love affair too hot not to cool down,” Toby said, quoting some of his favourite lines, “I should say this was it. I see trouble ahead for them if they don’t pull themselves together and grow up.”
As it happened, he was right, although the trouble, when it came, was not due to circumstances which any of us could have foreseen and was far too serious to be placed in the category of just one of those things.
Chapter Three
It was on Monday, the day after Clarrie’s disastrous luncheon party, that the first letter arrived and, if anything could have been better calculated to lower morale still further, I would pay someone ten thousand pounds to name it.
Not that any of us, with one notable exception, was disposed to treat it seriously at first. We concluded that one of our number had become so mentally deranged by the oppressions and apprehensions that hung over us as to have imagined it might create an amusing diversion to cheer us up. Even Philip, surprisingly enough, seeing that he was the victim, seemed as ready as anyone to dismiss it as a rather tasteless joke, but naturally no-one could have expected him to destroy the letter without so much as mentioning it to his wife and it would have been asking for a miracle to imagine that it would not then get to the ears of everyone.
She was convinced that the practical joke, if such it was, had been perpetrated by someone in the company, and unhappily, there could be no doubt that she was right. For one thing, the letter had undoubtedly been delivered by hand, since it was not inside an envelope. It was waiting for him, pinned at one corner by a jar of cold cream, when he arrived at the theatre and it was virtually inconceivable that an outsider could have got past the stage door keeper and found his way unobserved into and out of one of the dressing rooms. Moreover, even in that unlikely event, the chances of picking on a moment when it was neither occupied nor locked up must have been in the vicinity of a thousand to one.
And, in addition to this, there was yet another feature which proved it to have been an inside job, in that it contained a direct bearing on the play, and the part of the grandfather in particular, which no-one who had not read it could have known about. One of several sub-plots actually centred on an anonymous letter writer and it was the old man himself who, by a combination of sagacity and perception, was able eventually to unmask the culprit, to the great surprise of all the other characters and ultimately, we hoped, to the audience as well.
The real life message, however, was much blunter and more succinct than any of those used by the fictitious character, consisting of the single statement: Let us eat and drink for tomorrow you die. It must have taken time and patience to compose, though, because each word had been clipped from a newspaper headline and pasted on to a square of brown wrapping paper.
There was also a difference of opinion between her ladyship and the rest of us as to what should be done about it. Predictably enough, she was clamouring for the police to be informed without delay and there was even a hint or two that she imagined Philip’s knighthood would entitle him to special protection. Fortunately, however, he was under no such illusion himself and, to our relief, was not only astute enough to be aware of the adverse publicity which would follow from police involvement, but for once had the courage to take the opposite view from Dolly’s and to stick to it. He insisted that nothing should be done until Oliver had been told and the onus put on him to decide what action, if any, should be taken.
“And you know what will come of that, I suppose?” was Clarrie’s rhetorical question when the unofficial conference had broken up. “His Godliness will hand the whole business over to Redhead, who won’t have the first idea how to cope.”
“Which will be the ideal solution,” I told her, “because, between us, we can surely spike Dolly’s guns and get it through to Benjie that it was just some puerile joke and nothing whatever to worry about. That’ll let him off the hook and, with any luck, we’ll hear no more about it.”
This turned out to be an accurate prognosis, except for its conclusion which, unhappily, was several miles wide of the mark. Benjie reacted just as we had hoped he would, but it was far from being the end to it because, when Philip returned to his room after the lunch break, the second letter was already awaiting him, propped up against a mirror. The text this time was: The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death, and the same device had been used of words clipped from newspaper headlines and pasted on to brown paper.
Luckily, this turned out to be one of the rare occasions when Oliver was in front throughout the afternoon session and he was still there, conferring with the director, when it ended. After a brief discussion I was delegated to convey the news to him, and I went through the pass door, up to the tenth row of stalls and asked if he could kindly spare me a few minutes to discuss some urgent business.
He said he would be only too delighted, if I could bear to wait for just a few minutes, so I went down to the fifth row, where he joined me a quarter of an hour later, full of apologies.
Courtesy was not Oliver’s only grace. He was also good-natured, cultivated and generous, always immaculately, though soberly, dressed, somewhat in the style of an exceptionally well-t
urned-out civil servant. In other words, as far removed as could be imagined from the popular image of a theatrical impresario and not bearing much resemblance to the reality either.
Clarrie’s name for him was “His Godliness,” which was apt, in a way, because he did adopt a rather sanctimonious attitude when unsure of himself, although her allusion lay in the adjacency of this attribute to cleanliness, which was Oliver’s most noticeable one.
In the initial stages we had considered ourselves fortunate to have such a civilised captain at the helm, but lately some doubts had crept in to erode our enthusiasm. It had made a pleasant change to have the orders from the bridge relayed in such considerate terms, less satisfactory when the orders were either indecisive or not forthcoming at all. The feeling had been growing that a coarser spirit might have been more effective in steering us through these troubled waters.
His reaction to the latest news was fairly typical: “Oh, not another? Poor old Philip! How absolutely abominable! Ought I to go and commiserate?”
“No, I think he’s gone home now.”
“So not too upset about it?” Oliver asked, looking relieved.
“Not as badly as most people would have been, perhaps. In fact, he’s keeping amazingly cool, all things considered, but I’m afraid the same can’t be said of Dolly. She’s the one who’s kicking up the row. She wishes to know what you intend to do about it.”
“And I only wish I could tell her, my dearest. The problem is that I hardly see what anyone can do about it, short of handing it over to the police and I gather from Benjie that, on the whole, you wouldn’t be in favour of that?”
“No, we’re not. It’s accepted that they can be very discreet, but even so they’d have to question everyone in the company, including, with no exceptions, all the technicians and stage hands. There’d simply be no other way of handling it and that certainly wouldn’t create a very harmonious atmosphere during the run-up to the first night.”
