Centre Stage

by Judy Nunn

  Julian had handed it over with his usual self-deprecating request to ‘be kind’, as it was a rough draft only, but as usual it had the masterly Oldfellow touch and Alex, although only halfway through it, already loved it. Others mightn’t, he conceded: the comedy was very black and sometimes sick, but it was hysterically funny. Hell, Alex thought, if he could inspire Julian to this degree after the lengthy falling out they’d had, what couldn’t he do during their trip to Europe together? Alex couldn’t wait.

  Several days before their departure for Europe, Alex finally heard from Susannah again. ‘Hi, it’s me,’ said the voice at the end of the phone. ‘We close in Auckland this Saturday and I’m flying back on Tuesday. We have to talk.’

  ‘I won’t be here,’ Alex answered. ‘Julian and I leave next week. We’re holidaying in Europe before pre-production meetings for The Conjurer in Chichester.’

  There was a pause. ‘Congratulations.’ Then a longer pause. ‘Have a nice trip. We’ll talk when you get back.’

  Alex hung up and didn’t give the conversation or Susannah another thought.

  Only one thing marred the excitement of the impending trip for both Alex and Julian. Harold had been diagnosed with cancer. After finally being persuaded to seek medical advice, if only to alleviate the pain, he’d been told that he had a year, possibly two, left.

  ‘If he’d come to us earlier it might have been operable,’ the doctor complained to Alex and Julian, who were acting as nearest of kin. ‘But, given his age, I’m loath to recommend surgery now.’

  Strangely enough, now that Harold had something really big to whinge about he didn’t bother. His new medication kept the pain at bay and, after the initial shock, the thought of death didn’t seem too disturbing to him.

  ‘After seventy it’s something you tend to live with,’ he confided to Julian. ‘And according to the doctor I shall well and truly make my four score years. I should have been most unhappy if I hadn’t. Now you two go off and have a wonderful time in Europe and don’t worry about me. I shall be here when you get back, I promise.’

  Despite the unease he felt at having Alex for a travelling companion, Julian was very excited about the trip. He was a thirty-six year old writer, after all, he scolded himself, and he should have seen much more of the world than he had.

  Although a seasoned traveller, Alex was even more excited. Or he certainly seemed to be. During the flight he flirted with the flight attendants and talked endlessly to Julian about the wonderful places they’d go and the things they’d do.

  Gradually Julian’s unease dissolved and, by the time they landed in Zurich, he felt as warmed and charmed by Alex as he had when they’d first met nearly fifteen years ago.

  They hired a car in Zurich and travelled to Innsbruck where Alex had planned a weekend’s skiing. Julian found the drive through the picturesque villages nestling in the splendour of the Swiss-Austrian alps as breathtaking as Alex had promised it would be.

  To his surprise, Julian’s first day’s skiing lesson also proved to be as much fun as Alex had said it would be. All arms and legs, he spent most of his time flat on his back or with his face in the snow and the two of them giggled like schoolboys.

  ‘I admit you’re not a natural,’ Alex said over rum-laced coffees by the open fire that night. ‘But you’ll be fine with a couple more days’ instruction.’

  ‘Hardly fair on you, though. Tomorrow I’ll sign up with one of the pros,’ Julian insisted. ‘Then you can be left on your own to tackle the slopes.’

  ‘I was hoping you’d say that,’ Alex grinned.

  Julian laughed. He was loving it all. However transient their present camaraderie might prove to be, Alex was the perfect travelling companion. And their holiday had only just begun. Still to come was a full ten-day sightseeing drive around the border areas. Then a drive to Munich and the flight to London. London and Maddy, Julian thought. What a perfect holiday.

  Maddy had been thrilled to hear from Julian a week before he left for Europe. They hadn’t been in touch with each other for over a month. The weekly phone calls had become a thing of the past as Julian worked round the clock on the final draft of Friend Faustus and Maddy prepared for the opening night of The Misanthrope.

  ‘Oh, Julian, what perfect timing! We start previews next week and we open in a fortnight. The show’ll be well run-in by the time you get to London, although God knows what you’ll think of it. Honestly, I don’t know myself—I’ve lost all objectivity, with the shitfights that have been going on between Viktor and the National.’

  Julian smiled as he realised this wasn’t going to be the quick phone call he’d intended, just to announce his impending arrival. Maddy needed to talk. He put that night’s Faustus workload on mental hold and settled back in the armchair with his coffee.

  ‘What shitfights? Tell me.’

  ‘Well …!’ And off Maddy went. The members of the National Theatre Board had gone off their collective heads when they’d discovered Viktor was rehearsing the play half in French and half in English. Viktor had gone off his head when the Board had insisted that they were an English theatre company, their audiences were English and the play had to be performed in English.

  ‘Doesn’t sound altogether unfair, does it?’ Julian said.

  ‘Perhaps not. But Viktor’s used to total control. Being ordered around by a committee sent him absolutely insane. He walked out twice and then, when they were talking about appointing a new director, he walked back in. He couldn’t believe they’d do the production without him—there was no way he was going to let them.’

  Julian laughed. ‘So who gave in in the end?’

  ‘They made a compromise that actually might work. About a quarter of the play is performed in French. When the characters lose their tempers or whisper bitchy asides they break into French and, if the meaning’s obscured, the line is repeated in English.

  ‘It’s really quite effective,’ she rattled on excitedly. ‘The French has become a sort of exclamation mark. Anyway, it’s given the production authenticity if nothing else. But it’s also added half an hour to the show, so maybe it’s just going to be plain boring. I really can’t tell. I’ve never worked so hard or been so confused in my life.’

  ‘Or so stimulated, by the sounds of it.’

  ‘Yes, well, that’s Viktor,’ Maddy sighed in exasperation. ‘I love him, but … Oh, darling, I can’t tell you how good it is to have someone to talk to. Jen’s with me for the school holidays, of course, but I think I’ve already bored her witless.’

  ‘What about Douglas? Isn’t that what lovers are for?’ Julian tried to keep the note of concern out of his voice.

  ‘Oh.’ There was a pause as Maddy drew breath for the first time. ‘Douglas is still away.’

  ‘But when I spoke to you over a month ago you were expecting him back in a couple of days.’

  ‘Yes, he came back. But only for a minute. And now he’s gone away again.’

  Julian smiled. When Maddy got the sulks she sounded like a ten-year-old. ‘All right, I can tell you don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘Not right now,’ Maddy admitted. ‘Can we talk about it when I see you over here?’

  ‘Of course we can,’ promised Julian. ‘Now I have to hang up or you’ll never see me over there. I’ve promised myself I’m not going to get on the plane until I’ve finished the new play.’

  ‘Oh no!’ Maddy sounded mortified. ‘Julian, I’m sorry, I’ve talked about myself non-stop. How’s it going? Tell me, tell me.’

  ‘When I see you over there,’ Julian laughed. ‘Goodbye, my darling.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  Maddy hadn’t wanted to talk about Douglas because she wasn’t sure there was anything to talk about. She wasn’t even sure if she was ever going to see him again.

  The customary flowers had preceded his last return and their reunion had been as thrilling as it always was. For both of them. They luxuriated in each other’s bodies an
d, when they were sated, there was the simple joy of being together.

  ‘I never know how much I miss you until we’re together again,’ Douglas said. And Maddy felt exactly the same way.

  Except for one thing. Her guilt about Jenny. The questions the bomb threat had raised were still there and Maddy still didn’t have the answers. She couldn’t convince herself that it was right for her daughter to live in the same space as a man who carried a gun and whose life was possibly under threat. And Jenny was due home for the school holidays shortly after Douglas’s return.

  Douglas read her ambivalence and, as he did, he felt his own surge of guilt. She shouldn’t have her guard up, he thought, she should be thrilled at the prospect of her daughter coming home.

  He made an instant decision. ‘Pity I won’t be here. I have to leave on Saturday.’

  ‘But you only just got back.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’ Something in his voice said he didn’t want to talk about it.

  ‘How long will you be this time?’ Maddy asked on the day he was to leave. ‘Do you know?’

  ‘No I don’t. Quite a while, I should think.’

  There was something unspoken between them and Maddy was confused. Should she say to him, ‘I know you’re going because of my daughter’? She was sure he was. Perhaps he was waiting for her to say, ‘Don’t go because of Jenny’, but she couldn’t.

  Finally it was Douglas who said it—more or less. ‘I understand how you feel,’ was actually what he said. Then he kissed her goodbye. ‘Give my love to Jenny.’ And, before she could answer, he left.

  Oh no, Maddy thought miserably. What was that supposed to mean? Is he coming back or isn’t he?

  Over a month later, the day before Julian was due to arrive in London, she still hadn’t heard a word from Douglas.

  ‘I can’t wait to see Julian tomorrow.’ Jenny topped up her glass of orange juice. ‘Can we go to his play at Chichester when it opens?’

  ‘I don’t see why not. You’ll be back at school by then but we can pop down one weekend.’

  Julian had rung from Munich the previous day to tell Maddy of his arrival details.

  ‘Oh great,’ Maddy had said. ‘Sunday. I can meet you at the airport.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Maddy,’ Julian said somewhat testily, ‘Alex’ll be with me.’

  ‘Oh. Of course. Sorry, I forgot. Are you all right? You sound funny.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said, but his voice was strained. ‘I’ll tell you all about it on Sunday.’

  It was Saturday night. Maddy and Jenny had just arrived home from the theatre. Jenny had seen The Misanthrope for the second time and was still slightly reserved in her opinion.

  ‘It’s much better than the preview I saw,’ she said. ‘I’m glad they cut a bit more of it out, it was awfully long. And I’m still not sure about all that French.’

  You’re not the only one, Maddy thought. The press had been good. They’d called it ‘an innovative production’, and the houses weren’t bad, but the advance bookings were another thing altogether and Maddy suspected that word had got out that the play was a little long and a little esoteric.

  Viktor was happy, though; he felt he’d made his point. His production had been critically acclaimed, which meant the National’s reputation had not been sullied, and he was presently nagging the board to arrange an exchange production with the Comedie Francaise in Paris. It looked as though he was going to pull it off too. ‘And then, Madeleine, my darling,’ he confided, ‘we do Moliere three-quarter in the French and one quarter only in the English. Perfect, eh!’

  Another whole new production, Maddy thought wearily—and it would be at breakneck speed, of course. Viktor was a darling but he was so exhausting to work with.

  ‘Hey Jen, you’d better check your nachos,’ Maddy reminded her. As Jenny raced off into the kitchen, Maddy turned on the television set to get the late news headlines. ‘Don’t serve up too much for me, and go easy on the chilli sauce,’ she called.

  There’d been a matinee that afternoon and Maddy hadn’t read the papers but everyone had been talking about the bomb blast in Northern Ireland. The opening news headlines gave it full coverage. ‘Late this afternoon, in Armagh, Northern Ireland, a bomb killed eighteen people and seriously injured thirty-two,’ the announcer stated. ‘Our Northern Ireland correspondent has the details.’

  The reporter was standing in the streets of Armagh at the scene of the crime and obviously not long after the bomb had exploded. The air was still smouldering and he had to virtually yell to get above the screams and general confusion in the background.

  This was the devastation that had been wreaked by the explosion of a one-thousand pound bomb, he said, and the IRA had claimed responsibility. The reporter talked about the massive damage and loss of life, and then the camera followed him as he walked through the streets among the crowd. Then the reporter said, ‘Now let’s talk to some local people who’ve been witness to this shocking event.’

  And there he was. The first person the reporter spoke to. Douglas Mackie. But was it? For a brief second his face had been clearly caught by the camera then he’d turned away. He was a frustrating subject for the cameraman and the reporter as he kept gesturing to the streets and the buildings and it was impossible to cover him.

  Maddy couldn’t catch the name he gave and, as the reporter attempted to thrust the microphone at him, the man continued gesticulating and saying over and over again, ‘A terrible thing, what a terrible thing it is.’ The accent was pure Belfast.

  Seconds later the reporter decided to give up on him. ‘That was local resident Daniel McSwiney who was witness to today’s tragedy and it is indeed a terrible thing. Excuse me, miss …’

  The reporter turned to the next person in the crowd but Maddy didn’t see who it was. She didn’t see the television at all as she stared blindly at the screen.

  All she saw was Douglas’s face in that split-second before he’d turned away. It had looked grimy, unshaved. What had he been wearing? She racked her brains to remember, but it had all happened so fast. Surely it had been peasant clothing of some description. He hadn’t really looked like Douglas and yet she knew it was him. And that Irish brogue had been so authentic. What had happened to the Scots burr? It hadn’t sounded like Douglas’s voice, but she knew it was.

  And, last of all, the name. Daniel McSwiney. The passport she’d found flashed through her mind. The name Donald McBride opposite his picture. Then the admission to the other aliases he’d assumed: ‘Does it matter whether I’m Douglas Mackie, Donald McBride or David McGuinness?’ he’d asked. And now it was Daniel McSwiney.

  Yes, Maddy thought, sickened by the knowledge, it had been Douglas all right.

  Julian pretended to be asleep through the entire flight from Munich to Heathrow. But he could hear Alex flirting with the attractive young woman seated across the aisle. She was obviously falling for it too.

  As far as Alex was concerned it appeared nothing had happened. He’d forgotten Berchtesgaden completely. But Julian hadn’t. He would never forget Berchtesgaden.

  The drive around the Austrian, Swiss and Italian border country had been magnificent. And so companionable that, as they wound their way up the mountain to Berchtesgaden, any doubts that Julian had about travelling with Alex had well and truly disappeared.

  How could he have allowed himself to be lulled into such a false sense of security? Julian wondered, wishing that the drone of the plane’s engines would send him off to sleep so that he could escape the turmoil in his brain. Alex had been playing with him all the time—just as a cat allows a captive mouse a taste of freedom before it pounces again.

  ‘You’ll love Berchtesgaden, Julian,’ Alex enthused. ‘Very pretty, very tranquil. I always drive up here after a skiing trip—a sort of pilgrimage before I have to go back home.’

  Alex was right. Berchtesgaden was very pretty: a little snow-covered village high in the Alps, a stream, a bridge, a town square. But it was
not all that much different from many of the other alpine villages they’d passed through, Julian thought. And then he saw the statue. A stone statue, by the fountain, in the middle of the square. It was beautiful.

  It was a woman, lifesize, lowering a bucket into the well, with a small child by her side, tugging at her skirts. All of her weight was on the ball of one foot as she concentrated on the bucket and the well. But there was no way she would falter. She was perfectly balanced. And she was strong. Strong, capable and womanly. Julian wandered around her, admiring from every angle. He felt the folds of the stone skirt where the infant had such a fierce hold, he felt the smoothness of her strong forearms and examined the delicate touch on the earth of the foot which wasn’t bearing the weight. What a wonderful mixture of strength and delicacy, he thought, and he sought out Alex so that they could admire it together.

  Alex’s attention was equally captured. He was leaning over the railing staring up at the side of the mountain high above. Several other tourists were at the same spot, staring up at the same mountainside, some with binoculars.

  ‘Hitler’s winter weekender,’ Alex explained as Julian joined him. ‘Interesting, isn’t it?’

  Of course, Julian remembered, that was why Berchtesgaden had a familiar ring about it. It was the village closest to the Berghof, Hitler’s eyrie. He looked up at the dwelling carved high into the side of the neighbouring mountain. Then he looked back at Alex.

  ‘Interesting man,’ Alex murmured. ‘Very complex.’ He turned to Julian. ‘Fascinating, too, don’t you think?’

  Julian had the feeling he was being led into something and he didn’t like it. ‘Perhaps,’ he said glibly, ‘if you find evil fascinating.’

  ‘Oh, don’t evade me, Julian,’ Alex snapped irritably. ‘Everyone finds evil fascinating. Are you ready to go?’