A Decent Interval

by Simon Brett

  ‘Peri Maitland?’

  ‘Yes. Peri was helping carry things.’

  THIRTEEN

  It was perhaps symptomatic of Charles Paris’s career that he didn’t receive one of Peri Maitland’s business cards. The Personal Manager had sprayed them around lavishly at the Hamlet read-through and during subsequent encounters with the company, giving a card to anyone who might need to make contact about Katrina Selsey’s career, anyone who might at some stage, in some circumstances, be important. Charles didn’t qualify.

  He didn’t have any difficulty finding one, though. Peri, whose entire business as a public relations consultant was predicated on her being instantly contactable, had thoughtfully pinned a card up on the Green Room noticeboard.

  Charles copied down her number on a scrap of paper. Calling her straight away was not an option. When dressed in full armour as the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father he tended not to carry his mobile.

  In fact he didn’t want to contact Peri Maitland straight away. He tried to persuade himself he didn’t need to contact her at all. So, Katrina Selsey’s Personal Manager had lied about when she left the Grand Theatre, which train she had got from Swindon back to London. She no doubt had reasons of her own for doing that. Did those reasons have anything to do with Charles Paris?

  Dennis Demetriades had also lied to the police, but Charles wasn’t about to expose him to Detective Constable Whittam. Nor did he particularly want to get Peri Maitland into trouble. He couldn’t help being intrigued, though. If he hadn’t been the one who found Katrina Selsey’s body he might not have cared. But somehow that unhappy discovery made him feel inextricably caught up in the investigation of her death. Charles couldn’t detach himself. He needed to find out anything there was to be found out.

  Don’t do anything till the interval, he decided. The Ghost of Hamlet’s Father still had his appearance to make in Gertrude’s closet, and he’d feel a fool putting in a call to Peri Maitland in full armour. Maybe he’d wait till after he’d played both his parts, till he’d finished his stint as the First Gravedigger. But even as he had the thought he knew he was just procrastinating. If he waited till the end of the evening he wouldn’t phone Peri; he’d convince himself he’d left it too late. No, if the deed were going to be done, it should be between his exit as the Ghost and his entrance as the Gravedigger.

  One decision made, Charles was faced by another uncertainty. Was phoning Peri Maitland actually going to be the best way of contacting her? If he got through, identified himself and she didn’t want to talk to him, it could be a very short conversation. He didn’t really have any firepower, or threats with which he could keep her on the line. The only advantage he did have was private knowledge, the information he’d been given by Dennis Demetriades. But he didn’t want to tell her that straight away.

  While he was mulling this over, the interval came and the dressing room was suddenly full. All the young actors who shared with him immediately started doing what all young actors did at any break during rehearsal or performance: getting out their phones and texting.

  Texting? Charles didn’t do it much. He knew how to, but he found the process very laborious and cumbersome. His fingers felt too big for the tiny keys. On the rare occasions he did send a text, it took ages, holding the phone with one hand while a single finger of the other pecked away at the keyboard, making frequent mistakes, constantly having to delete and rewrite, getting confused by the outlandish suggestions thrown up by predictive text. He struggled … while the younger generation seemed to rattle away two-handed with the ease of an infinite number of monkeys typing up the Complete Works of Shakespeare.

  Particularly the girls. When they were texting, their fingers were just a blur in front of the screens of their phones. Maybe, Charles wondered, it was because they tended to have longer fingernails. Yes, longer, pointy fingernails painted in garish colours must limit the number of errors and make the whole process much simpler.

  On the other hand, when he thought about it, despite the deficiency of his skills he could see the advantages of texting Peri Maitland. The main one was that he felt pretty certain she didn’t know his mobile number and wouldn’t be able to guess who the text had come from. Which, if he phrased the message right, would be an advantage.

  He did the deed straight after the interval. The dressing room had emptied again as the other actors got ready to swell the ranks of Fortinbras’s army in Act IV Scene iv. Charles Paris had got out of his Ghost of Hamlet’s Father kit. The armour wasn’t all actually metal, thank God, except for the helmet, a mighty coal scuttle with a lot of interior padding. But the chain mail (silver-painted knitted tunic and leggings), small bendy bits (silver-painted leather) and big rigid sections like the breastplate, vambraces, greaves, etc. (fibreglass) still made it a lot to lug around for any length of time. It was a costume he always removed with some relief.

  He hadn’t yet donned the muddy habiliments of the First Gravedigger, but sat cooling himself in just his black briefs. (Charles Paris hadn’t ever made the move to boxer shorts; he liked to feel that everything was nice and secure under his clothes.)

  So, nearly naked, he composed his text to Peri Maitland, not straight on to the phone, but with a pen on the back of an old rehearsal schedule. He did it very slowly, wanting to get the wording exactly right. What he came up with, after considerable rewriting, was: ‘I HEAR THAT YOU HELPED KATRINA MOVE HER STUFF INTO THE STAR DRESSING ROOM THE NIGHT SHE DIED. IF YOU’D LIKE TO TALK ABOUT IT, CALL THIS NUMBER.’

  He was quite pleased with what he’d done, but still not convinced he’d got the tone right. He didn’t want to sound too threatening. The suspicion that Peri Maitland might have killed Katrina Selsey had not entered his head. But he felt sure the Personal Manager knew more about the circumstances of the girl’s death than he did. He was after information. All he wanted from his message to Peri was that it should prompt her to call him back.

  Charles knew he wasn’t going to improve on the wording, but still he dithered. What would he say if Peri Maitland did ring back? Slowly, deliberately, he keyed the message into his mobile. Copying from the scrap of paper he’d found in the Green Room, he entered her number. Then, again, he started to get cold feet.

  It was the low mumbling from the dressing room tannoy that forced him to act. There was singing from onstage. Charles turned up the volume to hear, in Milly Henryson’s pure soprano:

  ‘Let in the maid, that out a maid

  Never departed more.’

  Near the end of the Mad Scene. Time he got into his First Gravedigger outfit.

  He pressed the ‘send’ button on the phone. Even as he did it, part of him hoped that he’d copied Peri Maitland’s number wrong, or that some technical glitch would divert the text from its destination.

  But the deed was done. He felt his way into the First Gravedigger’s grubby smock.

  At the end of the show Charles Paris found himself going towards the Stage Door with Geraldine Romelle. ‘Oh, we talked about having a drink together one evening, didn’t we?’ He pitched the words incredibly casually, as if the original suggestion had been of little moment, and hadn’t gained much more moment in the intervening days.

  ‘So we did,’ said Geraldine. ‘But then life – or rather death – intervened, didn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Mind you, as a plan, I think it had quite a lot going for it.’ Still keeping it all very light, he consulted his watch. ‘We’ve actually got time to have a drink now.’

  ‘Have we?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Charles, so laid back he was almost falling over. ‘What would you say to the idea?’

  ‘Why not?’ said Geraldine Romelle.

  Since she wasn’t one of the regular post-show pub-goers, Geraldine wasn’t aware that Charles didn’t take her to the closest one, where other members of the Hamlet company might be encountered. He didn’t want to depress her totally by taking her to The Pessimist’s Arms, but there was another small cosy hostelry just off the High Street,
a couple of roads away from the Grand Theatre’s Stage Door.

  Geraldine said she’d like a red wine, so Charles decided he’d join her and came back from the bar from a bottle of Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon and two glasses. She did the smallest of eyebrow-raises. ‘You’ll have to drink more of that than I will.’

  ‘I’ll force myself,’ said Charles as he sat in the alcove opposite her and filled the glasses.

  ‘I can’t stay long,’ said Geraldine Romelle.

  ‘No problem. It’ll be closing time in half an hour, so they’ll kick us out, anyway.’ He thought, but didn’t say, And if you were to fancy another drink you could come back to my digs.

  He raised his glass and they clinked. ‘Felt like a good show tonight.’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, it’s settling down.’

  ‘Had quite a lot to settle down from.’

  ‘You can say that again. Still, it’s an ill wind …’

  ‘Meaning what, Geraldine?’

  ‘Meaning that, while wishing the accidents to Jared and Katrina hadn’t happened, we have ended up with a considerably better show.’

  ‘Yes. Sam’s a real talent, isn’t he?’

  A vigorous nod. ‘The real thing. He’s electrifying in the Closet Scene. Don’t see that very often.’

  ‘And Milly …?’

  ‘Good. Good enough. And you do see that quite often.’

  ‘So you think Sam’ll get to the top, and she’ll be left trailing and flailing in his wake?’

  Geraldine Romelle shrugged. ‘Who knows? As I’m sure you realized long ago, Charles, talent is only a small part of it in this business. It’s getting the breaks and …’

  ‘That sounded rather heartfelt.’

  ‘Not particularly. Oh, I see what you mean. Was I bemoaning the fact that in my career I hadn’t got the breaks?’

  ‘Well, I …’

  ‘It genuinely doesn’t bother me, Charles. Sure, everyone’d like to be hailed as the greatest thing since Sarah Bernhardt. And we’d all like to have a bit of the money that goes with star status.’

  ‘Or a nice juicy television series that sells around the world?’

  ‘Hm. I’ve never much enjoyed working in television.’

  ‘One can put up with a lot for the kind of money they pay.’

  ‘Maybe. Though, in my experience, every time I’ve started out on a job thinking, “Wow, the money’s good,” I’ve ended up earning every penny and just desperate for it to finish.’

  Charles nodded. ‘I know what you mean.’ Then he mused, ‘That’s an expression that would never be heard from anyone involved in a Tony Copeland production …’

  ‘What expression?’

  ‘“Wow, the money’s good.”’

  Geraldine Romelle giggled. She had very straight teeth, white but not whitened. Somehow that comforted Charles; it made him feel she was part of his generation. The generation that still had naturally coloured teeth. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I mentioned to a friend that this show might be going to the West End and he said, “You’ll clean up there.” Then I told him Tony Copeland was producing and he immediately changed his tune.’

  ‘You said “might be going to the West End”. I thought that was kind of written into the contracts.’

  ‘Charles, Charles, don’t be naive. Options are written into the contracts, not guarantees. Surely you’ve been around long enough to know that.’

  ‘Yes, of course I have, but—’

  ‘I never believe anything in this business until it’s happened. Find that approach saves a lot of heartache.’

  ‘Yes, I’m normally like that. But Tony Copeland has talked very positively since day one about the show going in.’

  ‘On day one it starred Jared Root from Top Pop and Katrina Selsey from StarHunt. Now we’ve got Sam Newton-Reid and Milly Henryson from nowhere.’

  ‘They’re much better actors.’

  ‘That’s not the point. Who is there in the cast now who’s going to put Tony Copeland’s demographically young bums on seats? You, Charles? Me? I don’t think so.’

  He grinned ruefully. Of course she was right.

  ‘And first and foremost Tony Copeland’s a businessman. He’ll pull the plugs on this Hamlet without a second thought if he doesn’t think he’s going to make a profit.’

  ‘But surely he’s got the Richardson Theatre booked?’

  ‘I’m sure it’s just another option, Charles. Which he can take up or drop as he wishes. Or he can kill Hamlet after the tour and put in something else. What – a line-up of singing wannabes from the latest series of Top Pop? It wouldn’t be out of character for Tony Copeland.’

  Charles Paris liked Geraldine Romelle. Her cynicism about – and love for – the theatre matched his own. Sitting opposite, he was again struck by how dishy she was. The copper-coloured hair was tight against her head, not yet having got its bounce back after the hours it had been constrained under Gertrude’s wig. She had scraped off her stage make-up and only replaced a neat dab of pale lipstick.

  But Charles had never before been close enough to see what astonishing eyes she had. On forms they’d probably be written down as ‘hazel’, but that was an inadequate description of the multifaceted flecks of colour they contained. There were glints of gold in there, which made Charles think of Gustav Klimt paintings.

  Geraldine Romelle’s body was trim and toned. The discreet cleavage revealed by her open-necked shirt promised firmness and infinite speculation.

  She was aware of his scrutiny and gave a smile which both excited and embarrassed him.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, picking up the conversation, ‘anyone who goes into the theatre for the money needs their brain testing. It’s certainly not what drew me into it.’

  ‘So what did?’

  ‘I love acting,’ she replied simply. ‘It intrigues me. Or perhaps I should say that human nature intrigues me, and acting is a wonderful way of exploring it. That’s another reason why I don’t enjoy television. It’s all done too quickly – particularly these days. You used to get a bit of rehearsal, now they just let the cameras roll. Which is why so many television actors can only do one thing. Simple for the director. Whenever he turns the camera on them he knows exactly what performance he’s going to get. So when you’re acting in that kind of set-up you fall back on technique rather than genuinely trying to get inside a character’s mind. I like the rehearsal process, the slow excavation of the person the playwright’s created. That’s what gives me a buzz. Don’t you feel it too?’

  Charles Paris’s protective layer of cynicism had been hardened over so many years that he normally avoided discussions about how acting worked. It was a subject that attracted a great deal of vacuous pretension and bullshit, the kind of stuff that was regularly pilloried in the Private Eye ‘Luvvie’ column. But, transfixed by Geraldine Romelle’s amazing eyes, he couldn’t help admitting that he too got a buzz out of discovering the depths of a character.

  Somehow they’d got through most of the Cabernet Sauvignon. Charles divided the last dribbles equally between them. ‘You see. I didn’t end up drinking most of it.’

  ‘No, I seem to have kept pace with you pretty well, don’t I?’ Geraldine looked at her glass a little wistfully. ‘Perverse, isn’t it, how one bottle never seems quite enough. But sadly, they’ve called time, so there’s nothing we can do about it.’

  Charles was about to say that he had a very good idea of something they could do about it, when his mobile rang. ‘Excuse me, Geraldine, I’d better take this.’

  ‘Sure.’

  He pressed the relevant button and heard, ‘This is Peri Maitland.’

  ‘Just take it outside. Won’t be a moment. Don’t go.’

  He scuttled outside as he heard Peri asking, ‘Who is this I’m talking to?’ Her voice retained the professional poise of a public relations consultant, but there was an underlying tension there too.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked again.

  ‘Charles Paris.
’

  ‘Ah.’ There was a silence as she assessed this information. ‘And I have got the right number? Did you send me a text about the night Katrina …?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve been at one of my client’s concerts at the O2 and only just switched on my phone.’

  ‘Right,’ responded Charles, still uncertain which way she was going to jump.

  ‘We need to talk,’ said Peri Maitland.

  ‘Isn’t that what we are doing?’

  ‘Face to face. I could get up to Marlborough tomorrow morning. Would you be free to meet about twelve?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll text you in the morning with the venue.’

  Charles was aware of Geraldine Romelle emerging from the pub. ‘Right, but could you just—?’

  The line went dead.

  Geraldine touched him on the arm. ‘Thanks for the drink, Charles. I must be off.’

  ‘Oh, but I was thinking we—’

  ‘See you tomorrow evening,’ she said as she walked away.

  ‘But …’ Charles Paris cursed inwardly. ‘Yes, see you tomorrow evening.’

  He slouched disconsolately towards his digs, in the opposite direction from Geraldine Romelle. And back to his bottle of Bell’s.

  FOURTEEN

  It was the ping announcing the arrival of a text that woke him the next morning. Before seven o’clock, which he reckoned was a bit early for a working actor (not to mention a drinking one).

  Because he didn’t send many texts he didn’t receive many either. The one that had just arrived could only be from the Hamlet stage management or from Peri Maitland. It was the latter.

  ‘GIVE ME AN ADDRESS FROM WHICH I CAN ARRANGE A CAR TO PICK YOU UP AT ELEVEN THIRTY. PERI.’

  The vehicle which arrived five minutes early at Charles’s digs very nearly qualified as a limousine. It was a private hire car, driven by a uniformed chauffeur who gave the impression that he would talk or not according to the wishes of his passenger. Charles didn’t feel like any chit-chat, so they drove in silence out of Marlborough in the direction of Frome. But before they reached the town, the car veered off along a network of country lanes till it turned through the tall gates of what a discreet sign announced to be a ‘boutique hotel’. The chauffeur parked in front of the main door of a perfectly proportioned Georgian mansion.