by Simon Brett
‘Yes, I agree. I am an unlikely person to be involved with Derby University Dramatic Society. It’s a coincidence. I’ve only moved into this house recently and I sold my previous one in Meadow Lane to a lad called Willy Mariello. Have you met him yet?’
‘No.’
‘No doubt you will. He’s with this lot. Well, the conversion here was more or less finished, but the summer’s not a good time to get permanent tenants—holidays, the Festival and so on. So when Willy said this crowd was looking for somewhere, I offered it for the six weeks.’
‘Brave.’
‘I don’t know. They pay rent. There’s no furniture, not much they can break. And they’ve sworn they’ll clean everything up before they go. I just hurry in and out and don’t dare look at the mess.’
‘What about noise?’
‘This flat’s pretty well insulated.’
‘Largely by books, I should imagine. And this has only just been converted too? I can’t believe it.’
The Laird glowed. Obviously Charles had said the right thing. But the flat did seem as if it had been there for centuries. Brown velvet upholstery and the leather spines of books gave the quality of an old sepia photograph. A library, an eyrie at the top of the building, it reminded Charles of his tutorials at Oxford. Dry sherry and dry donnish jokes. True, the sherry was malt whisky, but there was something of the don about James Milne.
‘You like books?’ He half-rose from his chair, eager, waiting for the slightest encouragement.
Charles gave it. ‘Yes.’
‘They’re not first editions or anything like that. Well, not many of them. Just good editions. I do hate this paperback business. Some of the Dickens are quite good. And that Vanity Fair is valuable . . .’
Charles wondered if he was about to receive a lecture on antiquarian books, but the danger passed. ‘. . . and this edition of Scott might be worth something. Though not to the modern reader. Nobody reads him nowadays. I wonder why. Could it be because he’s a dreary old bore? I think it must be. Even we Scots find him a bit of a penance.’ He laughed. A cosy-looking man; probably mid-fifties, with a fuzz of white hair and bushy black eyebrows.
Charles laughed, too. ‘I’ve read half of Ivanhoe. About seven times. Like Ulysses and the first volume of Proust. Never get any further.’ He relaxed into his chair. ‘It’s very comforting, all those books.’
‘Yes. “No furniture is so charming as books, even if you never open them or read a single word.” The Reverend Sydney Smith. Not a Scot himself, but for some time a significant luminary of Edinburgh society. Yes, my books are my life.’
Charles smiled. ‘Wasn’t it another Edinburgh luminary, Robert Louis Stevenson, who said, “Books are all very well in their way, but they’re a mighty bloodless substitute for real life”?’
James Milne chuckled with relish, which was a relief to Charles, who was not sure that he had got the quotation right. ‘Excellent, Charles, excellent, though the point is arguable. Let me give you a refill.’
It turned out that the Laird had been a schoolmaster at Kilbruce, a large public school just outside Edinburgh. ‘I retired from there some five years ago. No, no, I’m not as old as all that. But when my mother died I came into some money and property—this house, an estate called Glenloan on the West coast, a terrace of cottages. For the first time in my life I didn’t have to work. And I thought, why should I put up with the adolescent vagaries of inky boys when I much prefer books?’
‘And inky boys presumably don’t appreciate books?’
‘No. Some seemed to—appeared to be interested, but . . .’ He rose abruptly. ‘A bite to eat perhaps?’
Half a Stilton and Bath Olivers were produced. The evening passed pleasantly. They munched and drank, swapped quotations and examined the books. Their crossword minds clicked, and allusion and anecdote circled round each other. It was the sort of mild intellectual exercise that Charles had not indulged in since his undergraduate days. Very pleasant, floating on a cloud of malt whisky above everyday life. The book-lined room promised to be a welcome sanctuary from the earnest denim below.
Eventually Charles looked at his watch. Nearly one o’clock. ‘I must go down to the bear-pit.’
‘Don’t bother. I’ll make up the sofa for you here.’
‘No, no. Downstairs is the bed I have chosen, and I must lie on it.’
The bed he had chosen had been left vacant for good reason. At half-past three he woke to discover it had come adrift in the middle and was trying to fold him up like a book. He wrestled with it in the sweaty breathing dorm and then tottered along to the lavatory.
It was locked and a strange sound came from inside. As Charles took advantage of the washbasin in the adjacent bathroom, he identified the noise through a haze of malt. It was a man crying.
CHAPTER TWO
The very sky turns pale above;
The earth grows dark beneath;
The human Terror thrills with cold,
And draws a shorter breath—
An universal panic owns
The dread approach of DEATH!
THE ELM TREE
THE EDINBURGH FREEMASONS’ revenue must shoot up during the Festival, because they seem to own practically every strange little hail in the city. Each year the gilded columns of these painted rooms witness the latest excesses of Fringe drama, and the gold-leaf names of Grand Masters gaze unmoved at satire, light-shows, nudity or God-rock, according to theatrical fashion.
On the Monday morning the Temple of the Masonic Hall, Lauriston Place, was undergoing A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare’s Immortal Comedy Revisualised by Stella Galpin-Lord. As Charles Paris slipped in, it was clear that the process of revisualisation had hit a snag. The snag was that Stella Galpin-Lord was having a directorial tantrum.
‘Where are those bloody fairies? Didn’t you hear your bloody cue? For Christ’s sake, concentrate! Bottom, get up off your backside . . .’
As she fulminated, it was clear to Charles that Stella Galpin-Lord was not a student. Far from it. The over-dramatic name fitted the over-dramatic figure. She was wearing rehearsal black, a polo-necked pullover tight over her presentable bosom, and clinging flared trousers less kind to her less presentable bottom. Honey-blonded hair was scraped back into a broad knotted scarf. The efforts of make-up—skilful pancake, elaborate eyes and a hard line of lipstick—drew attention to what they aimed to disguise. The slack skin of her face gave the impression of a badly erected tent, here and there pulled tight by misplaced guy-ropes. The tantrum and her twitchy manner with a cigarette spelt trouble to Charles. Neurotic middle-aged actresses are a hazard of the profession.
‘Well, don’t just amble on. You’re meant to be fairies, not navvies. For God’s sake! Amateurs! This show opens in less than a week and we don’t get in the hall again till Thursday. Good God, if you don’t know the lines now . . . Where is the prompter? Where is the bloody prompter!’
Charles, who had only come down to check the details of staging in the hall, decided it could wait and sidled out.
Back in Coates Gardens he looked for somewhere to work. In the men’s dormitory a youth was strumming a guitar with all the versatility of a metronome. Sounds from upstairs indicated a revue rehearsal in the girls’ room. Charles felt tempted to seek sanctuary with James Milne again, but decided it might be an imposition. He went down to the dining-room. Mercifully it was empty.
With a tattered script of So Much Comic, So Much Blood open on the table, he started thumbing through an ancient copy of Jerrold’s edition of Hood, looking for The Dundee Guide, an early poem which might add a little local interest for an Edinburgh audience. It was not there. He was perplexed for a moment, until he remembered that only a fragment of the work survived and was in the Memorials of Thomas Hood. He started thumbing through that.
So Much Comic, So Much Blood had begun life as a half-hour radio programme. Then Charles had added to the compilation and done the show for a British Council audience. Over the year
s he had inserted different poems, played up the comic element and dramatised some of the letters. The result was a good hour’s show and he was proud of it. He was also proud that its evolution predated the success of Roy Dotrice in John Aubrey’s Brief Lives, which had set every actor in the country ransacking literary history for one-man shows.
‘I’m going to make some coffee. Would you like some?’ Charles looked up at the girl in the photograph, Anna Duncan.
‘Please.’ She disappeared into the kitchen. He stared with less interest at the extant fragments of The Dundee Guide.
‘Here’s the coffee. Do carry on.’
‘Don’t worry. I like being disturbed. I’m Charles Paris.’
‘I know. Recognise you from the box. It’s very good of you to step into the breach.’
‘I gather you did more or less the same thing.’
‘Yes. Poor Lesley.’ A brief pause. ‘What is your show about?’
‘Thomas Hood.’
She did not recognise the name. ‘Why’s it called what it is?’
‘Because he once wrote “No gentleman alive has written so much Comic and spitten so much blood within six consecutive years”. In a letter to The Athenaeum actually.’
‘Oh. I don’t think I’ve even heard of Thomas Hood.’
‘I’m sure you know his poems.’
‘Do I?’
‘Yes. “I remember, I remember . . .’
‘“. . . the house where I was born”? That one? I didn’t know that was Hood.’
‘It was. And November. Faithless Sally Brown. Lots of stuff.’
‘Oh.’
Her eyes were unusual. Very dark, almost navy blue. Her bare arm on the table was sunburned, its haze of tiny hairs bleached golden.
‘What are you reading at Derby?’
‘French and Drama in theory. Drama in practice.’
‘Last year?’
‘One more. If I bother.’ The navy eyes stared at him evenly. It was pleasantly disconcerting.
‘I’ve just been down to the hall. Saw the lovely Stella Galpin-Lord. A mature student, I thought.’
Anna laughed. ‘She lectures in Drama.’
‘Ah. She seemed rather to have lost her temper this morning.’
‘That’s unusual. She’s always uptight, but doesn’t often actually explode.’
‘She was exploding this morning.’
‘Everyone’s getting on each other’s nerves. Living like sardines in this place. I’m glad I’m in a flat up here.’ (On reflection, Charles was glad she was too.) ‘And people keep arguing about who’s rehearsing what when, and who’s in the hall. It’s purgatory.’
‘You’re rehearsing the revue at the moment?’
‘Yes, but I’ve got a break. They’re doing a new number—about Nixon’s resignation and Ford coming in. Trying to be topical.’
‘Is the revue going to be good?’
‘Bits.’
‘Bits?’ Charles smiled. Anna smiled back.
At that moment Pam Northcliffe bounced into the room, her arms clutching two carrier bags which she spilled out on the table. ‘Hello. Oh Lord, I must write my expenses. I’m spending so much on props.’
‘What have you been buying?’ asked Charles.
‘Oh Lord, lots of stuff for Mary.’
‘Did you get the cardboard for my ruff?’
‘No, Anna, will do, promise. No, I was getting black crepe for the execution. And all these knives that I’ve got to make retractable. And some make-up and stuff.’
‘Good old Leichner’s,’ said Charles, picking up a bottle which had rolled out of one of the carriers. It was labelled ‘Arterial Blood’.
‘What other sort is there?’
‘There’s a brighter one, for surface cuts. It’s called . . .’ Pam paused for a moment. ‘. . . oh, I forget.’ And she bustled on. ‘Look, I’m not going to be in your way, am I? I’ve got to do these knives. I was going to do them on the table, if you . . .’
‘No, it’s O.K. I’ve finished.’ Charles resigned himself to the inevitable. Anna returned to her rehearsal and he went to see if the men’s dormitory was still being serenaded.
Passing the office, he heard sounds of argument, Michael Vanderzee’s voice, more Dutch in anger, struggling against Brian Cassells’ diplomatic tones. ‘. . . and the whole rehearsal was ruined yesterday because that bloody fool Willy wasn’t there. Look, I need more time in the hall.’
‘So does everyone.’
‘But I’ve lost a day.’
‘That’s not my fault, Mike. Look, I’ve worked out a schedule that’s fair to everyone.
‘Bugger your schedule.’
‘It’s there on the wall-chart—’
‘Oh, bugger your wall-chart!’ Michael Vanderzee flung himself out of the office, past Charles, to the front door. The windows shook as it slammed behind him.
Brian Cassells appeared in the hall looking flushed. When he saw Charles, he smoothed down his pin-striped suit as if nothing had happened. ‘Ah, morning.’ The efficient young executive was reborn. ‘I’ve . . . er . . . I’ve got your posters. Just picked them up.’
‘Oh, great.’
‘In the office.’
On the desk were two rectangular brown paper parcels. ‘A thousand in each,’ said Brian smugly. ‘Did the Letrasetting myself. Do have a look.’
Charles tore the paper and slid one of the printed sheets out. As he looked at it, Brian Cassells grinned. ‘O.K.?’
Charles passed the paper over. It was headed:
DUDS ON THE FRINGE
. . . and the greatest of these is Charles Paris’
So Much Comic, So Much Blood.
‘Oh,’ said Brian, ‘I am sorry.’
Undisturbed rehearsal in the Coates Gardens house was clearly impossible. Charles decided a jaunt to one of his Edinburgh favourites, the Museum of Childhood in the Royal Mile, might not come amiss. It was only Monday and there was a whole week till he had to face an audience. And with Brian Cassells in charge of publicity, the chances were against there being an audience anyway.
Back at the house late afternoon, he found Martin Warburton hovering in the hail, as if waiting for him. ‘You’re Charles Paris, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve written this play. Who Now? We’re doing it. I want you to read it.’ A fifth carbon copy was thrust forward.
‘Oh, thank you. I’d like to.’
‘You don’t know. You might like to; you might think it was a waste of time.’
‘I’m sure you wouldn’t have written it if you thought it was a waste of time.’
The boy looked at Charles fiercely for a moment, then burst into loud laughter. ‘Yes, I might. That’s exactly what I might have done.’
‘Why?’
‘Everything we do is just random. I happened to write this. It’s just chance. I might have written anything else. It’s nothing.’
‘I know sometimes it seems like that, but very few things are random—’
‘Don’t patronise me!’ Martin’s shout was suddenly loud, as if the volume control on his voice had broken. He reached out to snatch the play back, then changed his mind, rushed out of the house and slammed the door.
In spite of Brian Cassells’ assurances, the Masonic Hall was not free for Charles to rehearse in on the Tuesday afternoon. When he arrived at two o’clock Michael Vanderzee had just started a workshop session with the Mary cast and most of the Dream lot too. Brian was not there to appeal to (he’d apparently gone down to London for a Civil Service interview), so Charles sat at the back of the hall and waited.
Everyone except Michael was lying stretched out on the floor. ‘. . . and relax. Feel each part of your body go. From the extremities. Right, your fingers and toes, now your hands and feet. Now the forearms and your calves—feel them go . . .’
Charles’ attitude to this sort of theatre was ambivalent. He had no objection to movement classes and workshop techniques. They were useful exercises f
or actors, and kept them from getting over-analytical about their ‘art’. All good stuff. Until there was a show to put on. At that point they became irrelevant and the expediency of getting everything ready for the opening left no time for self-indulgence.
Michael Vanderzee (who drew inspiration from the physical disciplines of East and West and created a theatre indissolubly integrated with working life) obviously did not share these views. ‘Right. O.K. Now I want you to sit in pairs, and when I clap, you start to tell each other fairy stories. And you’ve got to concentrate so hard, you tell your story and you don’t listen to the other guy. Really concentrate. O.K. I clap my hands.’
While the assembly shouted out a cacophony of Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks, Charles looked down at Anna. Squatting on the floor, mouthing nonsense, she still appeared supremely self-possessed. Her T-shirt did nothing to hide her contours and the interest she had started in him was strengthened.
The door of the hall opened noisily. An enormously tall young man in blue denim with a Jesus Christ hairstyle strolled purposefully up the aisle. ‘Willy!’ roared Michael. ‘Where the hell have you been? Why weren’t you at rehearsal this morning?’
‘I had things to do.’ The voice was sharp and the accent Scottish.
‘You’ve got things to do here as well. I had to drag you in yesterday.’
‘Piss off.’ Willy collapsed into a chair in the front row, ungainly as a stick insect.
‘Look, do you want to be in this show or not? You’ve got to rehearse.’
‘I don’t mind rehearsing, but I don’t see why I should waste time poncing about with relaxation and pretending I’m a pineapple and all that. I’m only meant to be doing the music.’
‘You’re playing Rizzio in the show, and you’re meant to be part of an ensemble.’
Willy gave a peculiarly Scottish dismissive snort. ‘All right, all right. What do you want me to do?’
‘I want you to shout, all of you. Scream your heads off. Really uninhibited screams. Let everything go. Right. When I clap.’
The noise was appalling. Charles sunk into his chair with hands over his ears. It was going to be a long time before he got the stage to himself.
