Centre Stage

by Judy Nunn

  However cloudy Julian’s motives, he decided to hang onto the play. For a while at least.

  And for some strange reason Alex didn’t nag him about it as Julian had thought he would. In fact, ever since Julian’s outburst in Aviemore, Alex had kept his distance to a certain degree and treated Julian with a healthier amount of respect. He still dropped the odd hint and made passing remarks about the play, though. Particularly following Myra Nielson’s average review of one of Julian’s comedies: ‘The polished wit we have come to expect from a Julian Oldfellow comedy was certainly evident but it is to be wondered whether perhaps Mr Oldfellow isn’t becoming a touch complacent, whether perhaps he shouldn’t vary his style a little.’

  ‘You see, Julian, the critics want something different too. A drama would really do the trick,’ Alex hinted slyly, ‘what do you reckon?’

  But the suggestions were no stronger than that and, when Julian shrugged disinterestedly, Alex dropped the subject. He never made any direct reference to the play he had suggested at Berchtesgaden.

  And now Harold’s impending death was far too time-consuming for Alex to contemplate undertaking any new venture. Although he was busy negotiating a London deal for Friend Faustus, policing the current Sydney revival of I, Me and Us and casting the forthcoming tour of Julian’s latest play, Alex spent every moment he could at the hospital.

  One Wednesday morning, in the waiting room, he bumped into Susannah. He hadn’t seen her in nearly four years. Not since she’d remarried and moved to Los Angeles. She was in Australia to spend Christmas with her parents, she said, and she’d come to pay her last respects to Harold.

  Susannah hadn’t married her My Fat Friend co-star. She’d only lived with him. In fact she was already living with him when Alex returned from his trip overseas with Julian.

  ‘I told you we needed to talk, Alex,’ was all she’d said and Alex had been quite taken aback. He’d mainly been taken aback at Susannah’s choice. Courtenay Frame was such a ‘big girl’s blouse’! A good actor certainly, very stylish, but soft and squishy and definitely considered a closet gay. Alex supposed the man couldn’t be gay if Susannah was shacked up with him, but nevertheless her choice of successor rankled.

  Six months later, a dashing American commercial airline pilot went to a Sydney Theatre Company production of Pygmalion and fell in love with Susannah’s Eliza. His ardour was such that Susannah immediately became infatuated with the pilot and, just as immediately, disenchanted with Courtenay. Alex felt much better about that. He actually wished her well when she moved to Los Angeles to marry the pilot and he sent the couple a very expensive wedding present.

  It was a surprise, therefore, to see her looking so drab. She’d put on weight, he thought. Not that she was fat—far from it. But she was ‘average’. The acute angles which had made her face so dramatic were no longer there. The long neck, the wide, bony shoulders, everything that had made Susannah the aesthetically interesting, high-bred creature she’d once been had gone. She looked ‘average’: averagely attractive, averagely intelligent, averagely stylish. And there was something else missing, something she’d lost. What was it? Alex wondered. Yes, he decided, that was it. It was her intensity.

  ‘I’m sorry about Harold, Alex,’ she said. ‘You two were always so close. You must be very sad.’

  Alex dismissed her sympathies with a wave of his hand.

  ‘How are you, Susannah? You look so different.’

  ‘I’m happy,’ she answered. And, as she smiled, her face positively glowed. ‘I am so happy, Alex! I have two babies, did you know that? Both girls.’

  Five minutes later Alex was so bored that he excused himself. Susannah had become less than average, he decided. Susannah had become ordinary.

  Strangely enough, the day Susannah visited Harold turned out to be the same day Maddy chose to make her visit, although their paths didn’t cross at the hospital.

  Maddy and Jenny were holidaying in Sydney, spending Christmas with Helena and Todd.

  Maddy didn’t agonise too much about whether or not she should make her presence known to Harold, despite Julian’s warnings.

  ‘He might unintentionally let something drop to Alex,’ Julian had told her. ‘He’s semiconscious a lot of the time lately and he’s always mumbling about the past.’

  ‘Too bad if he does say something,’ Maddy replied. ‘I want to see him, I really do. As long as Alex doesn’t find out about Jenny, who cares what he says?’

  She meant it. Over the last few years Alex had seemed to pose less and less of a threat to her. Perhaps because he was less of a threat to Jenny. Jenny was now nineteen. One more year of her acting course at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and she’d be out in the big, bad world all on her own.

  Jenny, about to graduate from London’s RADA! It seemed incredible to Maddy. It seemed only yesterday she herself was topping the first year at Sydney’s NADA.

  However, as adult as Jenny might be, and as diminished as the threat of Alex had become, Maddy was still strongly convinced that they shouldn’t meet. Not unless Jenny professed a desire to know her father. And, caught up in her studies as Jenny was, any interest in that area seemed to have disappeared altogether.

  No, Maddy decided, seeing Harold didn’t pose any real threat at all, especially if she arranged her visit for a time when there was no possibility of her bumping into Alex.

  Julian worked it out for her. ‘Harold receives visitors twice a day,’ he explained. ‘Midmorning and late afternoon. Alex is normally there at both sessions but this Wednesday he’s going to a matinee of the new Davison play at The Wharf so you’re quite safe.’

  They got to the hospital early. Fortunately no other visitors had yet arrived. Julian made Maddy stay in the waiting room while he checked out Harold’s condition. He so wanted her to see the old man on one of his good days.

  ‘Julian! Dear boy.’ Yes. It was one of Harold’s good days. He was propped up in his bed, prepared and eager for his visitors. A gaudily decorated Christmas tree stood in the corner of his private ward. Harold had insisted on it. He was determined to last until Christmas. That was his goal.

  ‘I have a special visitor for you, Harold.’ A moment later, Julian ushered Maddy in.

  ‘Hello, Harold,’ she said, smiling warmly.

  Although she’d prepared herself, Maddy was shocked by his appearance. She’d expected an old man, of course; Harold was now eighty-five. And she knew he was dying so she’d expected a sick, frail man. But the man in the bed was unrecognisable to her. This couldn’t be Harold. He was tiny. And Harold had always been so huge. People didn’t shrink that much when they were dying, surely.

  As the eyes in the old man’s wizened skull stared blankly back at her they seemed to cloud over. Oh no, Julian thought, he’s going under. ‘Do you know who this is, Harold?’ he prompted.

  Very slowly Harold nodded. ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘yes, I know who this is.’ The voice was quieter, more gentle, certainly, but it was just as thrilling to Maddy as it had always been. It was Harold’s voice. He opened his frail arms wide and smiled. And, as the cloudiness left his eyes and his mind came back to her from out of the past, he was the Harold of old. ‘Maddy! My darling girl.’

  She sat on the bed and he held her to him while the tears rolled down her cheeks. For such a fragile creature his embrace was fierce.

  Maddy was angry with herself. She hadn’t meant to cry. ‘I’m sorry, Harold,’ she sobbed. ‘I really am. It’s just that it’s been so long since I saw you and …’ Oh hell, she was only making things worse.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, my dear,’ Harold told her, soothingly, as if she were a child. ‘I’m having the most wonderful time. Now, tell me, how do you stay so young? You must be all of thirty.’

  Maddy laughed. The tears dried up quickly and Harold didn’t seem so tiny any more. ‘I’m thirty-eight, Harold.’ She longed to say ‘and I have a nineteen year old daughter’ but knew she daren’t.

  ‘Good heavens above
! You look as young as you did when I saw you last. I thought I was tripping when you walked in. The drugs do that to me a lot lately.’ He gave a chesty laugh which turned into an extended wheeze but, when Maddy looked to Julian, he shrugged. If it doesn’t bother Harold, we don’t worry about it, he signalled back.

  And it certainly didn’t worry Harold. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,’ he gasped when he’d finished wheezing. ‘What a wonderful surprise, Julian, I do so thank you. Why isn’t Alex here to share this moment?’

  When Julian reminded Harold that Alex was at a matinee that afternoon, Harold waved the news aside impatiently. ‘Oh yes, and a Davison play at that! He should be here to share such an occasion.’

  Maddy looked beseechingly at Julian, who explained, as simply as possible, that Maddy would rather Alex didn’t know she was in Sydney.

  ‘Why?’ Harold demanded.

  ‘Because she would, that’s why!’ Julian said rather brutally and he signalled Maddy not to interrupt. Harold was threatening to become difficult and Julian knew that when Harold became difficult the only way to treat him was like a naughty child. ‘She leads a different life altogether now and the last thing she needs is a blast from the past—and certainly not a blast like Alex.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ Harold replied peevishly.

  ‘Do you promise not to say anything?’

  Harold’s look to Julian was sullen. Then he turned to Maddy. ‘Is that what you really want?’

  ‘Yes, Harold,’ Maddy nodded. ‘I’d rather you didn’t say anything.’

  ‘Very well.’ Harold seemed satisfied with that. ‘I shan’t.’

  Harold kept his promise for five days. But on Christmas Eve, as his mind wandered through the maze of yesterdays, he blurted it out. Alex was seated beside the bed at the time, holding the old man’s hand. Harold had been semiconscious for most of the day and the few other visitors had long since gone.

  The doctors had told Alex that it was likely Harold would never regain consciousness and that he could die at any moment so Alex had been studying him intently, determined to witness the actual instant of death. He was startled when Harold’s eyes sprang wide open.

  ‘She came to see me yesterday.’

  ‘Oh yes? Who?’

  The eyes started to sag again. ‘So beautiful. Still so beautiful.’

  ‘Who?’

  The eyes were closed now. ‘Maddy. Your Maddy.’

  ‘That’s nice.’ Maddy, Alex thought. The old man was remembering Maddy in his flights of fancy. Alex could barely recollect what she looked like himself. He could remember the photos he took of her, though. My God, they were horny, he thought. I wonder whatever happened to them? Chucked out with all the rest of the junk when he moved in with Susannah, he supposed. Alex never kept memorabilia.

  ‘And Julian,’ Harold continued. ‘So over-protective. Selfish, I thought.’ There was a peevish note to his rambling. ‘Selfish to keep you two apart. Selfish to keep secrets.’

  ‘Julian?’ Alex stopped concentrating on the imminent death and focused on what Harold was saying. ‘Julian brought Maddy to see you?’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ The eyes remained closed and the brow furrowed irritably. ‘Secrets, silly secrets.’ Harold became incomprehensible as he once again lapsed into semiconsciousness.

  Alex leaned forward to study him closely. Any minute now, he told himself. But, while he watched, a question lurked in the back of his mind. Why on earth would Julian want to keep Maddy a secret? Why was he being so ‘overprotective’? Why was he swearing a dying man to secrecy?

  Alex stored up the knowledge as ‘useful information’ and concentrated his full attention on Harold’s breathing. It had become very shallow.

  Once again it was a shock when the old man’s eyes sprang open. For a moment Harold seemed to hold his breath as he concentrated very hard.

  ‘What day is it?’ he asked finally.

  Alex hesitated for only a fraction of a second. ‘It’s Christmas Day, Harold.’

  The eyes remained open and they were bright and clear. ‘Christmas Day …’

  ‘Yes,’ Alex lied, ‘you made it.’

  Harold breathed a sigh of contentment. He was wide awake now. ‘It’s been a good life. And you’re here with me at the end of it, Alex. That makes me very happy.’

  Alex nodded, riveted. There was such joy in the old man. Such a surge of energy, right before the moment of death. It was fascinating.

  If Harold had had the strength he would have thrown back his head and given a huge, boisterous bellow of laughter. Alex was so readable! But it didn’t matter at all to Harold that Alex was waiting to witness his very last breath. In fact it was wonderful, it was joyful. He had remained fascinating to Alex until the very end.

  Harold racked his brains to think of the perfect line for his departure. He had it. ‘“To die would be a very great adventure”,’ he said. ‘I always wanted to play Peter Pan so that I could say that line. But they only let girls play Peter Pan. “To die would be a very great adventure.”’ He said it again and the words rolled off his tongue as he savoured every syllable.

  Magnificent, he thought. Surely his finest performance. And he closed his eyes to capture in his mind the look of pure admiration on Alex’s face. ‘Mr Barrie was quite right,’ he said as he drifted off to sleep.

  Alex didn’t have to wait too long. An hour later Harold stopped breathing.

  The funeral was the day after Boxing Day but Maddy didn’t go. Not because she wanted to avoid Alex. There would be so many people there she was sure she could have sat up the back unnoticed. She didn’t go because she was on a plane back to London to start rehearsals for Woman in Mind the following day.

  She sent some flowers: yellow roses. Harold’s favourites. And she rang Julian from the airport, just before he left for the funeral. ‘I wanted to let you know I’ll be thinking of you,’ she said. ‘Of you and Harold and … everything.’

  ‘Yes,’ Julian answered. ‘It’s the end of an era, isn’t it? Did you see Whitlam’s obituary in this morning’s Herald?’

  ‘Yes, she did him proud, didn’t she? He would have loved that.’

  Maddy took a sleeping pill during the flight. It was something she rarely did, but she felt a bit miserable. Empty somehow. And more than a little lonely. Jenny had offered to curtail her holiday and come back to England with her mother but Maddy had thought that wasn’t quite fair on the girl. She so loved her visits to Australia.

  Maddy and Jenny had taken to spending each second Christmas in Sydney and Jenny adored the bizarre alternation. Snowmen, log fires and traditional hot turkey dinners at Windsor with Robert and Alma one year. Then the following year, beaches, sunbaking, oysters, seafood and cold meat platters on the Sydney harbourside patio with Helena and Todd.

  Dear Jen, thought Maddy as she accepted the cushion and blanket the flight attendant offered her. She was such a pillar of strength and such a good friend. Maddy had become very reliant on her company, particularly over the last two years since Jenny had moved into the flat full-time.

  ‘This beats boarding school, Mum, I can tell you,’ she’d say time and time again as she messed about in the kitchen or sprawled out on the sofa with a stack of the weekend newspapers.

  ‘You weren’t unhappy at boarding school, were you?’ Maddy asked guiltily. ‘You never said—’

  ‘Stop getting paranoid. Of course I wasn’t, I had a great time. This just beats it, that’s all.’ The tone in Jenny’s voice brooked the end of the discussion and Maddy felt she would never know whether or not her daughter was lying to protect her.

  The plane hit a pocket of turbulence and Maddy was jolted out of the sleep she’d been drifting towards. She mustn’t become too dependent on Jenny’s company, she warned herself as she settled down again. There’d be lonely days ahead when Jenny graduated from RADA and went out on her own. Lonely days like those following Douglas’s departure when work didn’t seem as fulfilling as it once was, when the theatre lo
st some of its magic.

  She’d often wondered, over the past five years, whether she should have accepted Douglas’s offer and gone to Hong Kong. Too late now, of course. But she was still wondering as the sleeping pill took over.

  Rehearsals for the new production were so consuming that Maddy didn’t actually have time to miss Jenny too much. Her role in Ayckbourn’s black comedy of a woman having a nervous breakdown was exhausting to say the least. The play reminded her a lot of Julian’s style of writing and she told him so over the phone.

  ‘It’s about as black as you can get, but hysterically funny at the same time. Just like your plays.’

  Julian accepted the comment as the compliment it was intended to be, but he felt slightly goaded at the same time. ‘Well, I just might surprise you, my darling. I’ve written a drama, totally different style, which Alex is going to produce.’

  There. He’d said it. Maddy was the first person he’d told and it somehow clinched in his mind the reluctant agreement he’d made with Alex.

  It had been the day of Harold’s funeral that Julian had changed his mind. Not long after the service, as a matter of fact.

  He and Alex had bought a bottle of Scotch and gone down to Double Bay. Neither of them wanted to go to the wake immediately. It was bound to be a raucous affair, which Harold would have loved, with the majority of the theatrical profession in attendance. It was being held at Kinselas, a trendy actors’ nightclub. Harold’s idea. ‘Very apt, dear boy, very apt,’ he’d chuckled. Kinselas was a converted funeral parlour.

  They looked out at Sydney Harbour, the same view they’d looked at so many times from Harold’s flat, and it was a full five minutes before either of them spoke.

  ‘He’s left his flat to the Actors Benevolent Fund, did you know that?’ Alex asked.