by John Gardner
And I looked at you along time
Before I left,
Thinking how beautiful you sleep
And so I wouldn’t waken you I dressed in the darkness,
And covered you against the morning cold.
Soon Jennifer would be back and, however he tried to convince himself, the folly with Carol would be out in the open desert: a matter of choice.
***
Julia Philips was not on call during the Monday, but she was there for the evening performance. In fact Asher did not see her until she was on stage, an incident which threw him slightly so that he fluffed a line. But she was there, waiting in the passage near the men’s dressing-room, when he came out after the performance.
She looked terrible, as though she had gone without sleep for days, which was ridiculous because only one night had intervened; her complexion had taken on a dirty grey look and the eyes were ringed, violently red. Asher tried to read some meaning behind them but they were dead, the dead eyes of a fish. She spoke almost in a whisper as he approached.
‘Can I come home?’
The question most longed for and most dreaded. For a day he had languished in that terrible limbo of needing her yet hoping, in the small background of his consciousness, that she was gone for good. Now those withdrawal symptoms had to be exorcized.
‘Of course you can.’ Hesitation. ‘If that’s what you really want.’
She nodded, a dumb shake like a nervous affliction.
Asher took her arm and led her out of the stage door.
Back at the Chamber of Horrors they did not talk, Julia going through the automatic actions, putting on the kettle for coffee, getting something to eat, opening a tin of meat which looked like a solid wodge of pink blotting paper. They sat opposite one another: coffee, luncheon meat and sauce, bread and butter, half a tomato each.
‘Would you like me to tell you what happened?’ Asher asked at last.
The nodding again, it seemed to have taken over from real communication and he felt the first risings of irritation, nevertheless he went on to tell her about the audition and the following talk with Douglas Silver, spinning it out and saving the final glory so that it was blurted in an unexpected spurt.
She nodded again.
‘Can’t you say anything? You haven’t spoken.’
‘No. I knew you’d get it. I knew. You’re bloody good, Ash.’ A long sigh, self pity, or at least that was how it sounded. ‘And me?’
Asher chose the words carefully, putting the accent on the fact that they would have good living accommodation rather than the grimmer news that Julia would only be walking on.
‘Anyone who’s in this season will be at an advantage in the future, no matter how little they have to do. I promise you love.’
Yet again the nodding, followed by a quivering lip and the whole relished dissolve. ‘Asher you’re so good to me and I’ve been such a cow. You should beat me.’
‘I did, yesterday, or have you forgotten?’
Between the sobs. ‘No. You should take your belt to me like my father used to. Hold me Asher, hold me close...’
He knew that he had returned to the old treadmill, that he was being used as an emotional sump and that, in spite of it, he wanted her.
During the following weeks, Douglas Silver virtually moved his office down to Shireston. The development of the season began to take a more definite shape and the transfer to the theatre, and Shireston House, had the value of removing Douglas physically from Carol Evans’s immediate orbit; though there were the constant business trips to London which led, inevitably, to telephone calls, meetings and bodily satisfaction, always at her apartment.
In the offices at Shireston House things began to stir. Tony Holt’s bell symbol looked fine now that it had been printed up on dummy posters and programmes on instructions from Adrian Rolfe who was now installed in the house and working like a beaver.
Douglas showed the dummies to Sir Basil, who was both pleased and impressed, promising that there would be no artistic or financial difficulty with the board of trustees.
Casting was all but complete, and, apart from the main leads, they had gathered together a sparkling group of actors and actresses. Elizabeth Column, known internationally as a highly successful and brilliant actress, was to play four roles: Portia, a part which, at the age of thirty-five she had not yet acted, Emelia in Othello, Queen Margaret in Richard III and Lady Montague in Romeo and Juliet.
The young, very up and coming, actress Rachel Cohen was cast as Jessica, Bianca and Queen Elizabeth (in Richard III); while well-known names like Murray Fleet, Peter Berger, Laurence Pern and Ronald Escott were all taking on important roles.
Douglas had also solved his largest problem, that of appointing an executive director. It happened almost by accident on a chilly November evening. Douglas had gone up to London to see Sir Basil and decided to postpone his return to Shireston until the following morning, mainly for the old reason of seeing Carol.
He called her from the flat in Elton Court and, as usual, she was overjoyed to hear that he was in Town.
She came straight into his arms as he walked through the door.
‘Sorry baby,’ she whispered, ‘my timing’s off. The curse started ten minutes after you phoned so we’ll have to be ingenious.’
‘I don’t only come to see you for that.’ Douglas’s voice gentle at her shoulder.
She laughed, ‘Don’t let us kid ourselves that this relationship raises itself much above the navel sweetie. Sure I’m crazy about you; you think I’m a reasonable actress but I know my mind can’t get a quarter of the way up yours, while you can get all the way—’ He stopped her with a kiss.
They decided to have dinner out and it was half in Douglas’s mind that he might drive down to Shireston in the early hours, a thought quickly rejected for its callousness.
Normally he was careful about the choice of restaurants with Carol, never taking her to places where he went with Jen: it was not simply an act of intrigue but one of respect. Tonight, however, his guard dropped and Douglas ordered the cab driver to take them to the Campagna in Marylebone High Street, a small and exceptional Italian restaurant which he seldom visited with anyone but Jen.
Douglas realized that he had made a mistake the moment he stepped inside the long narrow room; Umberto, the head waiter, allowed his eyebrows to raise a fraction of an inch and it was enough to warn Douglas that the visit with someone other than Jen had been noted. The other reason for Umberto’s lifted eyebrows did not at first make itself apparent.
They were seated at a table on the left hand wall of the room, side by side facing the line of tables which stood along the opposite wall. Douglas glanced up and took in the fact that three of the tables were occupied: turning back to the menu, which Umberto had handed him, he was also vaguely aware of someone rising from one of the other tables. The next moment he looked up into the face of David Wills, a man he had not seen for the best part of three years.
At the age of thirty-seven David Wills was a man who had stood at the threshold of success in British Theatre on at least four occasions during the last decade, but triumph had eluded him, one of those strange disappointing quirks which so often beset talent in the precarious world of the arts. It was a sad story of near tragedy, for David Wills combined a keen penetrating mind with endless enthusiasm for any project in which he became involved.
‘Douglas Silver.’ Wills smiled down, hand outstretched: a tall thin man, lean-faced with alert eyes that looked, at this moment, tired and wary.
Douglas half rose. ‘David,’ the echoes of surprise at their unexpected meeting. He introduced Carol, and Wills explained that he was dining with his agent. The conversation became stilted and fragmentary.
‘What are you doing at the moment?’ Douglas’s question about David Wills’s work was completely innocent but he detected a bleak look crossing David’s face.
Wills shrugged. ‘Nothing, old chum. Bloody nothing. To be honest, my
agent’s giving me dinner. It’s been a bad year.’
The idea flared in Douglas’s mind, but discipline held it back. ‘Could you give me a call tomorrow afternoon at Shireston?’ He gave Wills the number.
So it happened. That night, sleepless in the afterglow of Carol’s ministrations (He would never touch a woman during her period but Carol was really the first woman he had ever known who could give him satisfaction in other ways while seeming to get great sexual pleasure herself) Douglas gave the matter a great deal of thought. David Wills was a good director and his methods were neat and orderly. It followed that he would be neat and orderly as an executive. David also knew the Theatre, he knew Drama, particularly the Elizabethans, which would be a great asset.
The main details were settled on the telephone the following afternoon. Within two days they had lunched together and spent twelve hours in each other’s company at Shireston. David Wills was excited and stimulated by the idea of being Douglas’s executive director, for one thing it might give him a possible stability.- for which he had long sought: he was ready to take up the appointment immediately and part of Douglas’s mind became eased, knowing that some strains would now be reduced.
The question of a restaurateur was settled by Adrian Rolfe who found an Italian with the startling name of Emilio Benneto right on the spot at Shireston.
Benneto had come to England shortly after the Second World War, worked hard and finally set up his own restaurant in London only to watch the profits slide off to a protection firm. Eventually the restaurant itself slid away and he was forced into the more mundane area of running a coffee shop in Shireston, from whence his English bride had come. But Benneto was an enterprising and experienced restaurateur, a man whom, Adrian told Douglas, they could happily leave in charge, allowing him to deal with the major problems, the hiring and firing of staff and the general running. Douglas took it a stage further, authorizing Benneto to take control of the whole of Shireston staff catering as well as the new restaurant. The Italian was hesitant at first but finally agreed and was due to take up his appointment in the second week of December.
Adrian Rolfe’s first major press release went out in the last week of November — a bulky dossier filed in an elegant grey folder upon the flap of which the new Shireston Festival bell motif was printed, crossed with raised silver lettering in sixty point Gothic proclaiming
SHIRESTON ‘71
The preliminary hand-out began in traditional Theatre journalese: For his first season as director of the Shireston Festival, Douglas Silver has gathered together a company which is unique in modern theatrical history...
Other features dealt with the major members of the company, while there were news stories about the refurbishing of the auditorium, the new restaurant, the personalities behind the company, a personal article by Douglas Silver in which he wrote of Shakespeare’s validity in the present age of change, revolt and a new stabilization. The dossier was completed with photographs of the leading players, a couple of Tony Holt’s rough drawings for costume designs and a plan of the new Shireston which Tony had done for Adrian with the idea of reproducing it in the programme.
In all, the press release dossier went out to all major newspapers, national and provincial, specialist papers and magazines and some selected weeklies such as the local Shireston Gazette. Adrian had also slipped in a section on getting to Shireston, having already done half-a-dozen deals with coach and tour operators: this in itself guaranteed a lot of free publicity, particularly from the tour operators.
The opening of the campaign was a block buster, with the London evening papers devoting entire pages to the new Shireston structure. The dailies were also generous with space and Douglas suddenly found himself in the middle of a publicity floodlight with precious time being taken up in television appearances and broadcasts.
The mists of November settled into the harsher coldness of December with its rain and threatening snow. The heating system of ancient hot water radiators at Shireston House had to be supplemented with a few electric fires, but it was still deplorably sub-standard and Douglas passed a memo on to David Wills asking if they could take some temporary steps towards an efficient heating system, at the same time costing out something more permanent and modern for the following year. He was worried about people like Joe Thomas having to spend a first winter in the depth of the stark English countryside with little but neat brandy and an available female walk-on to keep him warm. A bad winter might make life intolerable for the whole company living in the huge house with such atrocious heating.
The days moved swiftly on, then, two weeks before Christmas, Jennifer arrived back in London unexpectedly.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Against her wishes, Jen had stayed on in Los Angeles to post-synch a few scenes from Hidalgo: location sequences where the microphones had not picked up her voice clearly, or a jet had suddenly pushed a scene ludicrously into the present. She spoke to Douglas twice a week and had sadly told him she saw no chance of getting back until immediately after Christmas. Then, out of the blue she discovered that her schedule was all wrong and that she had only two small scenes left to complete. She prayed that, during the next couple of days, Douglas would not telephone her, for it was always much more exciting to surprise him with her presence, even if she was in London and he at Shireston.
Jennifer got a seat on a direct flight and finally landed at Heathrow in the cold misty drizzle of a late midweek afternoon. In other circumstances the weather would have been depressing, but Jen had a facility for day-dreaming about future events. During the flight she had gone over her arrival a hundred times: the cab to Elton Court, the breathless telephone call to Shireston, Douglas either dropping everything, dashing up to Town, or sending a car to speed her down to Shireston. The whole business was drenched in the rosy glow of emotional sunlight, for, while Jennifer was a gifted and controlled actress, her one emotional blind spot was Douglas Silver. Even so, she still managed to keep just within the bounds of reality. She knew the demands made upon Douglas by his work and the moods he underwent: her day-dreamed romances did not include Douglas sweeping her off her feet, with a background score of a hundred strings, lifting her in his arms and carrying her to a cushioned bed upon which their mutual passions could explode in sweating climax. She knew Douglas too well for that. The moment would come, but, if he was hard at work, it would have to be her doing and at this moment she could not deny that her needs within that area were most explicit: she needed Douglas as a stimulant for her mind; he was always the motive force behind her life, and the sensuality, never far below the surface of her consciousness, was inevitably roused by his nearness.
The flat at Elton Court had a stale feel to it, tidy enough, but that was the work of the cleaning woman who came in at least twice a week when they were not there; now there was a sourness about the air, mingled with something else which Jennifer could not quite define.
Out of habit she dumped her suitcases in the bedroom, turned on one of the fires, lit a cigarette, dropped into a chair and picked up the telephone. She had not even bothered to take off her coat. With the pressure of the instrument against her ear Jennifer could hear her heart tripping. Stupid, like a schoolgirl, she thought, or one of those women’s paperbacks, opiate for the housewives who never even got as far as ‘0’ Levels. She smiled to herself and began to dial.
The impulses clicking on the line: the final whirr and then the ringing tone.
‘Shireston Festival Theatre. Good afternoon.’
‘Douglas Silver please.’
‘One moment.’
Click. Click. The switches and the little lights.
‘Mr. Silver’s secretary. Can I help you?’ The voice was heavily overlaid with middle class county vowels, the kind which, at one time, had been the complete horizon to Jennifer’s life.
‘Could I speak to Mr. Silver please?’
‘I’m not sure if he’s in. Who’s calling please?’
Jennifer did not often u
se her married name, but the smug voice of the secretary-to-the-big-man gave her the nudge.
‘Mrs Silver,’ she said with as much edge as she could muster.
There was a pause.
‘Mrs. Douglas Silver or Mr. Silver’s mother?’ The protective instinct of the unseen secretary rose to the occasion. ‘Mrs. Douglas Silver.’ Acid on the line.
‘Just one moment Mrs. Silver.’
Jen smiled to herself, there had been a slight change of note in the final sentence.
‘Putting you through.’
‘Thank you.’
Douglas was on the line, over-anxious. ‘Jen? Surprise. You all right?’
‘Fine darling.’
‘What’s the weather like out there?’
Christ the eternal conversation piece, the meteorological situation. Chilly day. Looks like rain. Red sky at night is the shepherd’s delight...It took her a few seconds to realize that Douglas thought she was making a transatlantic call. ‘Not good,’ she said loudly. ‘Nasty drizzle.’
He laughed. ‘Snap. The same here.’
‘Well I’m not that far away. I’m phoning from the flat’
‘The...?’
Jennifer was intrigued: the sudden stop and silence did not have the right feel.
‘Jen? Where are you?’
‘I told you darling, in London. I’m back, Doug, back for good.’
‘You’re in...?’ Douglas was thrown badly. He had been looking over a complicated memo from Adrian dealing with advertising: not really a memo, more of a report from a fact-finding commission, breaking down types of advertising and going into minutiae like the idea of providing picture postcards of the house and theatre for hotels and tour operators. Immersed in this, Jen’s unexpected call put everything out of perspective. The whole wide screen business of living and working moved to tilt. He had even shelved the problem of Carol in the knowledge that there was plenty of time to work it out before Jen’s return. Now the time had shrunk and life was altered dramatically.
