Sicken and So Die

by Simon Brett

  Charles, desperately willing the guy would settle for second – or even third – best, held his position. Damp was now creeping down his tights into his boots.

  He sneaked a look at the watch he should by rights have taken off – and must remember to take off the following night. Alexandru Radulescu would probably applaud the anachronism, but Charles was determined not to give him the opportunity. He’d already secretly decided to ditch the Guns ‘n’ Roses T-shirt for the first night. He knew he’d get stick from the director afterwards, but had promised himself he’d give at least one performance of Sir Toby Belch as Shakespeare had intended the part to be played.

  The watch revealed it was nearly quarter past nine. God, and they’d only reached Act One, Scene Five. Charles wished he’d gone straight off and got lost after his exit. By now he could be sitting somewhere dry with a large Bell’s in his hand. But he knew his professionalism wouldn’t let him do that; he’d be letting down the rest of the company. He only had to wait a few minutes and then Sir Toby was off till Act Two, Scene Three.

  The few minutes while the parcan was adjusted seemed more like hours, but eventually even the lighting designer was happy with the new setting. ‘OK.’ Alexandru Radulescu’s voice came through the rain. ‘Take it from after Sir Toby’s exit.’

  ‘That mean I can go to the dressing room?’ asked Charles.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, sure. We’re moving on.’

  The alacrity with which Sir Toby Belch moved to get offstage was ill-judged. Losing his footing on the wet boards, he skidded and fell hard on his bottom, prompting a trickle of uncharitable and disembodied laughter.

  It was as he hurried off, pressed against the clammy walls of the hessian tunnel, that Charles remembered he hadn’t got anything to drink in his dressing room. Oh shit, shit and again shit.

  He had had one of his misplaced attacks of righteousness that morning. Deciding that the booze had been at least a contributory cause of his cool parting from Frances, he had made yet another vow to cut down. He shouldn’t be drinking on a rehearsal day, anyway.

  So there was no comforting half-bottle of Bell’s tucked away in his jacket pocket in the caravan. (The word ‘caravan should perhaps be explained at this point. In a theatrical context it might be expected to describe a lavish trailer of the kind used by Hollywood stars on location. But no. The caravans parked at the back of the stage at Chailey Ferrars were old, green-stained, noisesome and damp. They were also horrendously overcrowded. Three served the entire Twelfth Night company. There was really only room inside for the costumes, not the actors who were going to put them on.)

  Charles got the feeling that actors weren’t very high on the priority list for the organisers of the Great Wensham Festival. No one had greeted or welcomed the Twelfth Night company when they arrived, and they had been left to find their own way around the facilities. It made them feel like strolling players, newly come to the next barn they were due to storm.

  He emerged from the end of the hessian tunnel slithering in the mud. A solitary working light hung in a tree spread a meagre glimmer over the scene. As he squelched off in the direction of the caravans, Charles met someone coming towards him. She was recognisably a woman, dressed in a navy plastic anorak, which was sleek with rain. On the front of the anorak was the white logo of the Great Wensham Festival. This was a fanciful combination of the letters ‘G’, ‘W’ and ‘F’ together with a shape that might have been a waterfall, or a scallop shell . . . or possibly a unicorn. It was a piece of amateur artwork which explained instantly why major corporations will spend millions to get a good logo.

  She looked up into his face, and Charles recognised Moira Handley, the festival administrator.

  ‘Oh hi,’ he said.

  ‘Charles Paris, isn’t it?’

  ‘You have a very good memory. We only met the once at the press conference.’

  ‘Ah, maybe, but I’ve lived with you for nearly six months.’ Seeing the puzzlement in his face, she laughed. ‘Well, lived with your photograph.’

  ‘Oh.’ That was flattering. Charles Paris didn’t have that many fans, but all comers were welcome – particularly when as attractive as Moira Handley.

  Her next words quickly disillusioned him. ‘It’s one of my jobs to get all the programme copy together, so my office is spilling over with photos and biogs.’

  ‘Ah. Right.’

  ‘God, you look drowned.’ She giggled. ‘How’s it going out there – the underwater Twelfth Night, starring Esther Williams as Viola?’

  ‘It is absolutely disgusting,’ Charles replied, ‘but I don’t see anyone stopping it. If the show’s to open tomorrow, we’ve somehow got to get through this tech.’

  Moira nodded. She understood the imperatives of the theatre. ‘Yes, if it’s still like this tomorrow evening, we’ll have to cancel, but the show has to be ready to go up.’

  ‘Which means you can cancel a performance, but not the tech.’

  ‘Exactly. I’m surprised you’re doing it in costume, though.’

  ‘Alexandru insisted. So did the lighting designer. Said you can’t judge the overall effect unless everyone’s dressed as they will be for the show.’

  ‘Which is true, of course. What was the wardrobe mistress’s reaction?’

  “‘Resigned”, I think would be the word. I mean, the costumes have in theory been designed to cope with anything the elements can throw at them . . . I just don’t envy her trying to get everything dry for tomorrow night.’

  ‘No.’ Moira lingered for a moment, as if about to move off. Then she said suddenly, ‘Don’t suppose you fancy a drink?’

  ‘Those,’ Charles replied, ‘are the most wonderful words I’ve heard all year.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  CHARLES followed her. On the back of her navy anorak was printed in white: ‘MUTUAL RELIABLE – FOR ALL YOUR FINANCIAL NEEDS – AND FOR THE GREAT WENSHAM FESTIVAL.’ Above the words was the professionally designed MUTUAL RELIABLE logo on which a large corporation had spent millions.

  The Portakabin into which Moira led him was a few steps up in comfort from the dressing room caravans. One side was filled with desks on which piles of posters, handouts and programmes threatened to overwhelm the computers and telephones; on the walls planning charts outlined elaborate schedules and rotas with coloured strips and stickers; everywhere, papers bulged from the open drawers of battered metal filing cabinets.

  On the other side of the room a dead sofa and a couple of terminally ill armchairs huddled round a table scattered with coffee jars, coffee cups and coffee stains. The impression was one of controlled chaos.

  ‘Is this the main administration office?’ asked Charles.

  ‘No, it’s the Chailey Ferrars outpost. The main office is in the town, but so much needs doing out here, we have to have somewhere.’

  As she moved towards one of the filing cabinets, she noticed a figure hunched in a chair, almost totally obscured by the mountain of paper on her desk.

  ‘Oh, hi, Pauline.’ A small, harassed face peered out over the debris. ‘Charles, did you meet our press officer?’ asked Moira, as she produced a bottle of red wine from a drawer.

  ‘Yes. At the photocall. Hello . . . er . . .?’ The name had gone completely.

  ‘Pauline,’ she supplied. ‘Pauline Monkton. I recognised your costume from last time, anyway.’

  ‘Except it wasn’t soaked through then.’

  ‘No.’

  Moira was now over at the grubby little sink, swilling out two glasses. Only two, Charles noticed. Pauline wasn’t going to be invited to join them. Good.

  ‘Surprised you’re still here,’ the administrator observed. Was Charles being hypersensitive to detect a hint in the voice that perhaps the press officer should be on her way? Moira had stripped off her MUTUAL RELIABLE anorak, and he was aware of the firm outline of her body in its jeans and Guernsey sweater. Oh dear. The old stage manager syndrome was getting to him once again.

  ‘Just came in to check
the answerphone, Moira, see if any more of the press have said whether they’re coming or not tomorrow. I mean, I’ve sent them all invitations with RSVP on, and none of them has even had the courtesy to ring back.’ Clearly Pauline Monkton’s approach to publicity hadn’t changed a lot in the last couple of weeks.

  ‘We must know how many so we’ve got the right number of seats reserved for them, Pauline. You’ll have to do a ring-round in the morning and check who is actually coming.’

  ‘Oh, will I?’ asked Pauline pathetically.

  Moira was implacable. ‘Yes.’ She sat down on the dead sofa and gestured Charles to join her. She slopped wine into the two glasses on the coffee table ‘Was there anything on the answerphone?’

  ‘Something from . . . Saniserve, I think it was . . .’

  ‘What?’ The administrator was instantly alert.

  ‘They said they’d tried to deliver at four this afternoon, but there was nobody around to let them in.’

  ‘Oh, shit!’ Moira was furious. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’

  ‘Is it important?’ asked Pauline mildly.

  ‘Yes, it is bloody important! Julian assured me he’d got someone lined up to wait for them. Oh, bugger, and there won’t be anyone in their office now till the morning.’

  ‘What were Saniserve trying to deliver?’ asked Charles cautiously.

  ‘Only the most important thing in the entire operation. That without which the show cannot go ahead.’ He looked at her quizzically, as he sifted through the possibilities. Extra lights? Back-up generator? Fire extinguishers?

  ‘Portaloos,’ Moira announced. ‘We’ve got nine hundred people booked in tomorrow. At the moment there are no seats for them to sit on to watch Twelfth Night, but that’s OK – we could still go ahead with the performance. But if we’ve got no toilets for them to sit on, then we might as well forget the whole thing!’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Charles, you may think a festival like this is about the plays and the concerts and the performers who come together down here. It isn’t. All it comes down to basically is seats and lavatories – that’s the bottom line.’

  He grinned at her inadvertent pun, and was pleased that, through her annoyance, she could see the funny side too.

  ‘But, if worst comes to worst, can’t the audience use the loos inside the house?’

  Moira’s hands shot up to her face in mock-horror at the suggestion. ‘Inside Chailey Ferrars?’

  ‘Uhuh.’

  ‘Charles, you could have the entire audience in the terminal stages of dysentery and the Trustees would still not let them inside Chailey Ferrars out of opening hours – and unless they’d bought entry tickets.’

  ‘Ah, dealing with dinosaurs here, are you?’

  ‘Good heavens, no,’ said Moira. ‘They’re not nearly as far advanced along the evolutionary track as dinosaurs.’

  Charles chuckled. He liked her cynical turn of phrase. And she was very tactile.

  ‘Better be on your way, Pauline,’ Moira called across the room. ‘Big day tomorrow. You’ll need your sleep.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think I’ll sleep a wink tonight,’ said the press officer, gathering a sheaf of papers on her desk. ‘The thought of all those press people coming.’

  ‘Or not coming,’ Moira suggested.

  ‘Mm. I think I’d prefer that. If I actually knew that none of them was coming, then I could relax.’

  Once again Charles was forced to question whether Pauline Monkton had the right priorities for someone in the job she had been given.

  ‘Still raining out there, is it, Moira?’

  ‘Pissing down.’

  ‘I’d better take another of these.’ Pauline Monkton reached to a pile of polythene-bagged plastic anoraks. She split one out of its package and slipped it on, revealing the MUTUAL RELIABLE logo on the back.

  ‘You seem to have plenty of those,’ Charles observed.

  ‘Yes,’ Moira agreed. ‘Bye,’ she said in response to Pauline Monkton’s muttered ‘See you in the morning.’ The press officer scuttled out into the dark, holding her hood up against the continuing downpour.

  Moira Handley looked at Charles Paris and grinned. He grinned back, as she picked up the conversation. ‘Bit ironic having all those anoraks, actually, since we’ve now lost Mutual Reliable as a sponsor.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘They supported the festival last year – seemed all set to do it again – then suddenly backed out three months ago. Needless to say, just after we’d had the preliminary programme printed – with their name all over everything.’

  ‘Why’d they back out?’

  Moira Handley spread out her hands and made a little plosive, ‘Pff. Didn’t reckon they were getting enough out of it. Sponsorship’s not undiluted, altruistic charity, you know. All sponsors want a quid pro quo. It was decided at Mutual Reliable that they weren’t getting their quid – or is it their quo? – out of the Great Wensham Festival, so . . .’ She shrugged. ‘Now they’re sponsoring a golf tournament instead.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘The majority of the corporate clients would much rather get hopelessly pissed in a marquee at a golf club than have to sit through three hours of Shakespeare.’

  ‘So who’s sponsoring the festival now?’

  Moira shrugged again. ‘A hotch-potch of local firms and, let’s say, anyone we can get our hands on. Anyone who’ll stump up a few bob. And in the mean time we have to go round scratching Mutual Reliable logos off everything in sight – and trying to offload the plastic anorak mountain.’ She gestured to the pile. ‘We’re handing them out all over. You fancy one?’

  ‘For the rest of the rehearsal, you bet. And Alexandru’d probably think it was great. He seems determined to get as many anachronisms into this production as possible.’

  ‘I don’t detect a little hint of criticism there, do I, Charles Paris . . .’

  ‘What? Heaven forbid.’ But he could tell she saw through his denial. ‘Anyway, even if the director sanctioned an entire production of Twelfth Night in Mutual Reliable anoraks, I somehow don’t think the lighting designer would allow it.’

  ‘No.’

  Charles still felt soggy, but better in the warmth of the Portakabin. The wine was slipping down a treat too. And he didn’t think he was completely misreading the signals in Moira Handley’s shrewd brown eyes.

  He looked round the room. ‘So this is your domain, eh?’

  ‘Part of it. Won’t be able to shift from here much till your show’s opened tomorrow night.’

  Charles listened to the rain drumming on the flat roof. ‘If it does open tomorrow night. Don’t suppose you’ve got nine hundred of those anoraks, have you – one for each member of the audience?’

  “Fraid not.’ She picked up from what she’d been saying before. ‘So I’ll be staying here tonight . . .’

  ‘Will you?’ asked Charles foolishly.

  ‘Mm.’ She offered him an enigmatic grin. ‘More wine?’

  ‘Please.’

  After she’d filled the glasses, there was no doubt that she ended up closer to him on the dead sofa.

  ‘You married, are you, Charles?’

  The direct question gave him a straight choice. If he really meant what he kept telling himself about his need to get back with Frances, then he should say ‘Yes’. To say ‘No’ would show up the hollowness of all his fine protestations.

  In the event, he replied, ‘Well, still technically, but . . . How about you?’

  A firm shake of the head. ‘Never appealed. The thought of committing myself to one man . . . The thought of only ever making love to one man for the rest of my life . . . Well, not for me, I’m afraid.’ Slowly but definitely, she put her hand on Charles’s knee. ‘The thought of making love to lots of different men, though . . . The thought of making love to any man I fancy.. .That I find more attractive.’

  ‘Mm . . . Yes, it’s a good philosophy, that. Good approach to life, really,’ he agreed fatuously.

&nbs
p; Moira gave another of her little shrugs. ‘Workable, anyway.’

  ‘Right.’ There could be no doubt about her signals now. Charles, rendered doubly cautious by the existing climate of political correctness surrounding all interpersonal relationships, still couldn’t find any ambiguity in what she said.

  He looked into her eyes. They were sharp and teasing, daring him to take action. His face moved towards hers.

  Their lips were almost touching when they were stopped by an electronic crackling. It came from a field telephone on a desk.

  A voice emerged through the bacon-sizzling sound. ‘Does anyone know where the hell Charles Paris is? He’s needed on stage immediately.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  HIS BOOT-SOLES skidding in the mud, Charles Paris hurried back through the trees towards the stage. Rain still dripped obstinately from the branches and sheeted across the open spaces below. He wished he had taken one of the Mutual Reliable anoraks, after all.

  As he had the thought, someone dressed in one came hurrying towards him. It was a woman; the thin working light caught on the water-shiny plastic outline of her breasts. Though the head was averted against the weather – or perhaps against him – Charles could see straggling blond hair flicker out from under the anorak’s hood.

  The woman said nothing to him, possibly hadn’t even seen him, but turned abruptly away between the trees in the direction of the cast caravans.

  Charles pressed forward, feeling an idiot. For him to have missed his cue was a serious black mark. A tech is hell for everyone, a major test of company patience, but it is the duty of all cast members to be on hand – or at least somewhere whence they can be quickly summoned – at all times. There are enough technical problems to slow the process down without lost actors screwing things up. Charles didn’t anticipate a warm welcome when he made his belated entrance.

  On top of that, he was feeling stupid about what had happened with Moira. He berated himself for the weakness of his will. She was attractive, she appeared to be amenable – even enthusiastic – but he still shouldn’t have responded so easily. His sole aim in life should be to make it up with Frances, for God’s sake.