Midsummer Madness

by Stella Whitelaw

I shook my head. ‘I don’ t know why you thought it was me in it. I remember that I’d left my mohair in Elinor’s dressing room and went home wearing my poncho.’ I didn’t mention that I’d slept on Elinor’s couch and then had breakfast with Joe. ‘Have they found out yet what caused the collapse?’

  ‘There’s going to be an enquiry, so that’ll take months, years even. You know what enquiries are like. Drag on and on.’

  ‘I’m sorry you got hurt.’

  ‘I’m a hero, really,’ he said casually. ‘I was throwing myself at the prompt corner in order to save you. I thought you were inside the fluffy jumper.’

  ‘Thank you, Sir Galahad.’

  ‘And I’ve found out something you’ve got to know about. Someone has got it in for you.’

  ‘Some people always have it in for me.’

  ‘She’s been up to some pretty dirty work. You won’t like it. The fragile Fran has been sharpening her nails on a grinder. Are you wearing police-issue body armour?’

  I patted myself all over. ‘No.’

  ‘Well, you’d better get some.’

  At least Bill’s sense of humour hadn’t been injured. Millie arrived with a puzzle book and a happy smile.

  ‘We’re working our way through this puzzle book,’ she said. ‘I’m trying to keep his brain alive.’

  ‘A worthy cause,’ I said, rising and leaving. They didn’t need me. It took me ten minutes to find my way out of the multistoried labyrinth. It’s a wonder I wasn’t X-rayed and wheeled on a trolley to geriatrics with a plastic label on my wrist.

  I stood on the pavement outside the Royale Theatre, aghast at its derelict appearance. My heart spiralled down, its edges ripping. The builders had shored up every wall and there was only one small entrance through the side stage door. It bore no resemblance to a theatre at all. Within a week the walls would be covered in boldly signed and sprawling graffiti.

  ‘Sophie. God, am I glad to see you. You’ve come back, then,’ said Joe, getting out of a taxi. He looked weary. There were lines on his face that I’d never seen before and the shadows said he hadn’t been getting much sleep. I wanted to touch him, console him. But I didn’t. ‘I’ve missed you. How long are you here for?’

  ‘A couple of days. My mother is still in hospital but doing very well. She’s bustling round the ward, organizing everyone. She’ll be allowed home soon.’

  ‘Where’s home?’

  ‘A very small, windy cottage on the top of a dramatic cliff,’ I said, ignoring what he wanted to know. ‘Do you need any help?’

  ‘Yes, all the help we can get. There’s a lot of stuff to move before it deteriorates. I’ve found a warehouse we can rent for a few weeks while we find a new theatre. The show must go on,’ he said, adding the cliché drily.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ I said inadequately. ‘It’s quite awful.’

  ‘Do you think Fran could have done this?’ His voice was bitter. ‘Is she up to this degree of sabotage? I know her loyalties are suspect, but this would take the skill of a bomb expert.’

  ‘It’s probably an old tunnel that’s collapsed,’ I said. ‘There are hundreds criss-crossing under London. They excavated everywhere when they were building the underground, and sometimes abandoned ones that weren’t suitable. No one knows where half of them are. Huge water pipes come from the reservoirs, and gas and electricity cables are all buried under the ground. And dozens of rivers were diverted. The Fleet was one of them and the Tyburn and the Walbrook. There’s miles of water flowing down below that used to be up above.’

  A smile flitted across Joe’s face. ‘You are so articulate, Sophie. That’s what I like about you. All this information stacked in your head.’

  I still felt so guilty. My thoughts had predicted this catastrophe. Had I somehow caused it to happen? Was that possible?

  He took my arm. ‘I’ll escort you inside in case you fall down a hole and into a river. Can you swim?’

  The interior was practically unrecognizable. We stepped carefully over the boards laid for us to walk on. The stage had been cordoned off, a voluminous dusty black area. My prompt corner was lost behind a boarded screen billowing with grey tarpaulin. Goodbye corner. No need to project now.

  Joe took me downstairs to the basement which had been declared stable. Hilda and some stage crew, Alf and Bert, were packing costumes, boots, swords into coffin-like boxes. She threw me a weary smile. She’d been at it for hours.

  ‘Everything has to be brushed down before packing,’ she said. ‘Don’t want to take the dust with us.’

  ‘I’ll help,’ I said, taking off my anorak. This had to be done before these priceless costumes were ruined. Joe was looking at me in a weird way, as if I might disappear in a puff of smoke, pantomime genie style.

  ‘Will you still be here later?’ he said as if scared to hear my answer. He was echoing Mark.

  ‘I’m staying for two days,’ I repeated. ‘I’ll be back at my flat. You’ll know where to find me.’

  ‘I have to talk to you.’

  ‘OK. Any time.’

  ‘You’re speaking in your own voice. It sounds nice. You should use it more often.’

  That threw me but I laughed. ‘I’d almost forgotten how.’

  Hilda gave me the low-down as we worked together. Fortunately, not many people had been around, mostly stage crew getting the set ready for the performance. A few cast had arrived but not Elinor or Fran. Jessica had been at the stage door, signing autographs, always early. Getting into her part, she’d said.

  ‘There was this almighty groan and then a crash, like in the blitz or something, and dust flying everywhere. Everyone was coughing and choking. We didn’t know what had happened. No one could see anything and we were too scared to move. We thought it was an unexploded bomb, y’know, left over from the war.’

  ‘It might have been, quite possibly,’ I said, folding Jessica’s dress into mountains of tissue paper after brushing every inch. ‘They don’t know anything yet, do they?’

  ‘There’s an enquiry and you know how long that’ll take. Twelfth Night will be Fifteenth Night by the time they decide anything. It’s Joe Harrison that I’m sorry for. Poor soul. He’s a lost soul without his play. Or whatever he’s lost.’

  Hilda still had her sense of humour despite the extra work. I should imagine Joe was making sure she got paid for the extra hours and taxis home out of his own pocket. Management were not overgenerous with expenses. Profits before people was the rule they lived by. And now they had to get their lawyers on to complicated insurance claims.

  ‘You want to look out,’ said Hilda, hours later when I was flagging. ‘Fran’s got it in for you. She’s been spreading nasty stories about you and Mr Harrison. I mean, just because you have flats in the same building, doesn’t mean that anything’s going on, does it? I mean, that’s just jumping to conclusions, isn’t it?’

  ‘Nothing’s going on,’ I said wearily. ‘I wouldn’ t have the energy. My flat is two floors higher. In the roof, among the pigeons.’

  ‘She’s cooking up something. I’ve got that feeling.’

  ‘Probably laced with a toxic substance.’

  ‘Want a Jaffa cake?’ said Hilda, offering me the packet. ‘You can’t work on an empty stomach. I don’t suppose you’ve eaten.’

  My evening call to Dorset was taken by a young man tripping over things to tell me. He was practically bounding down the phone.

  ‘So how is Superman this evening?’ I asked.

  ‘High altitude flying. Rescued a few screaming damsels in distress. Saved a couple of buildings from total destruction by aliens. The universe is next.’

  ‘Save the universe.’

  ‘How’s your precious Royale Theatre?’

  ‘It looks as if a bomb has hit it. Maybe it was an unexploded bomb from the Second World War. I’ve been dusting down and packing costumes all day.’

  ‘You are coming home, aren’t you? You said.’

  ‘Of course. One more day here, working, and the
n I’m coming home. I promised, didn’t I?’

  ‘Gran will be coming out of hospital soon.’

  ‘Good. I’ll give her a quick call before they put the lights out. We’ll be there to fetch her. Be nice to everyone, say polite pleases and thank yous. Miss you.’

  ‘You bet. They’ve got two hamsters here. Real cool.’

  He rang off. I would have to teach him some new words. He had to be rescued from word starvation.

  Hilda had been listening to my half of the stilted conversation. She looked at me enquiringly, trying to make out the age of whom I was phoning. I didn’t enlighten her. I wasn’t ready to share Mark with anyone.

  I walked back to my flat, almost legless, but not a unit consumed. I was exhausted. Who says the theatre is glamour? It’s bloody hard work. Forget your name in lights. I climbed the stairs to my flat on autopilot, almost beyond the designated floors. Inside was a damp, chilly reception and a pile of junk mail someone had kindly brought up. No heating or fresh air for days. Go pile on the thermals.

  There was some warmth from the electric fire. It said a mellow, dusty hello. I fell down in front of it, like a humble disciple of Buddha. My bones were dissolving with exhaustion.

  I curled up on the rug like a dog, only I didn’t have a dog. If I lived in Dorset, we could have a dog, and a cat. I’d like a cat, a knee-hugging cat, all purrs and claws, like a breathing hot water bottle. Mark would like a cat and a dog, a hamster, anything that moved.

  There was a knock on my door. I knew that knock. It was Joe so I opened the door without checking.

  Joe was holding a big bag of groceries. ‘Long ago I promised you a meal,’ he said. ‘So here it is. Can I come in?’

  ‘Any bringer of gourmet food can come in,’ I said. ‘This is a food desert, Mother Hubbard land, the empty cupboard. The most I can offer is two packets of out-of-date crisps.’

  ‘Crisps and caviar? How does that strike you?’

  ‘The caviar sounds good.’

  Joe tipped out his carrier bag like some contestant on Ready, Steady Cook. There was scampi, rice, peppers, caviar and a bar of dark chocolate.

  ‘So what are you going to do with that?’ I asked.

  ‘Watch me. I am trained,’ he said, taking off his jacket and going into the kitchen.

  Now, I did have a bottle of red Merlot hidden away for emergencies and this was definitely an emergency. Joe had shed his coat and was rolling up his sleeves. But he was tired. I opened the caviar so it could breath, put out a dish of crisps.

  He was cooking rice with peppers in the microwave, scampi in a pan of olive oil. I opened the wine and poured it into two of my best cut glass.

  ‘Do you know that Fran has sent a letter to the Press saying that you and I are having an affair which is apparently jeopardizing the success of Twelfth Night,’ he said, stirring. ‘How having an affair could create a hole that size, I fail to see.’

  ‘A dynamic affair perhaps? She’s an idiot. Nobody cares about affairs these days,’ I said, wishing it were true. I’d like an affair with Joe. Never mind the stairs. I’d crawl up or down them, to be with him, whichever way I had to go.

  ‘You don’t mind the gossip?’ He looked at me wonderingly. ‘People talking about us.’

  ‘I don’t care about people talking. Who’s interested? It’s only gossip for the tabloids. Twenty miles out of London and nobody reads it. I don’t mind what letters she writes. I’d be more concerned if she tried to get me the sack.’

  There was a split second of softness between us but then it had gone.

  ‘That, too.’ Joe was heating dishes. I rushed about laying the table with my best as if royalty were coming. ‘She’s written a complaint to the management.’

  That stunned me. I wanted my job. I loved it and I needed it. I had to keep young Mark in trainers and bicycle tyres. And there was no reason for a complaint. I had done nothing wrong. Quite the reverse, I had supported her poor performance all along the line, to the limit. She ought to be grateful I’d not thrown the book down and gone off in a huff.

  Joe was dishing out scampi and rice on to plates. It smelt gorgeous because the scampi was fresh and he had thrown in some herbs. My basil. We sat down at the dining table and faced each other.

  ‘Eat,’ he said. ‘Before we both fall down with exhaustion.’

  We ate and talked. It was a lovely meal, wrapped in being together. I don’t know what he planned to cook with the bar of dark chocolate, but we ate it straight from the silver paper, on the sofa, watching late-night television. Don’t ask me what the programme was. Some flickering classic film resurrected from the archives.

  Joe was slumped against me, almost asleep. Somehow I edged my way out from under his weight and put a cushion under his dark head. I took off his handmade shoes and stroked his black silk socks. Then I covered him up to his shoulders with the duvet from my bed.

  So this was an affair? Joe on the sofa, as before, me curled up in my teddy bear pyjamas in bed, freezing. Fran didn’t know what she was talking about. She needed to wake up to the real world, and what the hell was my mohair doing in the rubble? I couldn’t remember moving it from Elinor’s dressing room.

  It hadn’t got there on its own woolly legs.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Fran Powell pulled a surprise rabbit out of the hat. She appeared on the outback version of the television programme I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! Her minuscule outfits were too weird for words. Scraps of torn itzy-glitzy material held together with Sellotape and Blu-tak. She was taking this jungle thing a bit too far. I didn’t know how such an air-head managed to get herself on to the show or knew she could have time off from Twelfth Night in advance. More little trip-ups?

  It was all very suspect but no one could be bothered to work it out. Mark and I saw one hysterical episode where she was in a pit of snakes and rats and worms, in a tiny sequinned bikini, screaming her head off. Mark’s eyebrows went skywards. She never earned food for her team, always too selfish. She got voted off pretty soon, mainly because no one could stand the sight of her.

  ‘So she’s an actress?’ Mark asked like it was an alien race.

  ‘Sort of aspiring actress. Understudy for Viola. And lady in waiting, but she didn’t have any lines.’

  ‘What’s aspiring mean?’

  ‘Shortage of breath.’

  But I heard Fran reappeared instantly at the management office of West Enders demanding that her role of understudy be upped to one matinée and one evening performance a week, on the strength of her new television celebrity status.

  ‘People will come to see the play because it’s me,’ she said confidently.

  ‘That’s absolutely outrageous,’ said Elinor, on the phone. ‘I’ve never heard of such an arrangement. Sometimes it happens when a lead is new and untried and has eight performances a week. An understudy might take over matinées, to give the lead a break. But I’m fine now, and as soon as we move to a new theatre, I’ll be right on the ball. And I shall tell her so.’

  A new theatre was in sight. A pretty dreadful play about a man living in a sewer had folded after two weeks of dwindling stench-retching audiences, and the management were only too pleased to house Joe Harrison’s flamboyant production of Twelfth Night. Special terms and all that. The theatre was plain, functional. I’d have a draught-proof concrete corner. Plenty of room in the wings.

  Joe phoned me. I don’t know where he got the number from, somebody doing some clever redialling. My number was circulating like a round robin.

  ‘We’ll need you back soon,’ he said. ‘There’s going to be a very tight rehearsal schedule before we can reopen. Is your mother getting better?’

  ‘She’s home now and doing well,’ I said. ‘I’ll come back to London whenever you need me.’

  I didn’t want to leave Mark. We were becoming good friends, good pals, often walking the cliff paths together (no adders in sight), cheering on at football matches, had the occasional fish and chip supper wh
en Gran had gone to bed early. The wild sea thrift and gorse on the cliff top hide dozens of plants and flowers on our walks. I tried to remember their names from Botany, but Mark was more interested in their shape and colours. He would examine a petal as if it was under a microscope.

  ‘This looks like it should be growing under the sea,’ he said, absorbed.

  ‘Perhaps it was, once, millions of years ago.’

  ‘I don’t approve of this fried junk food,’ said my mother every day, her tongue no worse for the bits removed from her body. ‘All these E-additives. They are not good for you. Radicals or something.’

  ‘I don’t think chips have E-additives,’ I said. ‘These were oven-cooked.’

  Mark kept a straight face. We had talked about food, junk consumed in moderation. We had talked about almost everything under the sun. I no longer need to hot walk him like a frisky racehorse. But he never asked me about his father. And I wondered why. What had my mother told him? One day I would find out.

  I knew this time together was coming to an end and I couldn’t bear it. London no longer held that special magic for me. The hurrying, unyielding crowds made me cringe. I wanted to be saturated in sunlight reflected from the white cliffs. Joe would go back to the States. I started to think about staying in Dorset, finding some job which would keep me nearer to my son while he was growing up. I’d already wasted too much time pursuing my so-called theatrical career.

  Then a letter arrived from London from the management of West Enders. They were still using the old Royale Theatre stationery and envelopes.

  Dear Miss Gresham.

  Following numerous complaints about your inability to prompt efficiently during recent performances of Twelfth Night, we regret that we have to give you a month’s notice.

  Due to circumstances beyond our control, the show has been without a theatre for some weeks, therefore we suggest that you consider yourself not employed by us from now onwards.

  Yours truly etc.

  I was stunned. Unshed tears grated like sand in my eyes. I could not believe that the management would act on the tittle-tattle of a posturing, one-dimensional, mediocre actress like Fran Powell, whose entire talent lay in being able to paint her toe nails without smudging them.