Situation Tragedy

by Simon Brett

  Fortunately, Walter seemed to realise how low he was getting and made a determined effort to pick himself out of his slough of despond. With something approaching the old bravado Charles remembered, he said, ‘Still, a man has to do what a man has to do. I don’t really regret any of it. Okay, I was very cosy at the BBC, and, to some extent, at home, but I was dying on my feet. At least I’ve seen a bit more of life and things by cutting loose.’

  ‘Things . . . being women?’ Charles fed gently.

  Walter responded to this man-of-the-world approach. ‘Oh yes, there have been one or two. It’s only when you’re on your own that you realise quite how many of them there are.’

  Charles laughed conspiratorially, hoping to stimulate further information, but got nothing more than an answering chuckle. He would have to be a bit more direct in his approach. ‘Down at W.E.T., the other day, someone was saying you’d had a bit of a fling with someone there.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Walter smiled a Lothario smile, but then seemed to recollect something unpleasant and changed his manner. ‘Yes, it was very unfortunate. The girl died.’

  ‘Really?’ said Charles ingenuously.

  ‘Yes, she was . . . well, you were there.’

  ‘I was there?’

  ‘When you were making that pilot, you remember, the girl who fell off the fire escape.’

  ‘Oh, Good Lord, you mean that PA? What was her name . . . Sadie?’

  ‘Sadie Wainwright.’ Walter nodded. ‘Yes, we had a thing. It went on . . . well, on and off . . . for two or three months.’

  ‘How awful for you, for her to have . . .’

  ‘Yes, it was pretty upsetting. But in fact the affair was over, had been for a month. Didn’t work.’

  ‘But I seem to remember . . .’ (Charles tried to disguise the interrogation in casualness) ‘. . . that you said you’d talked to her on that evening.’

  ‘Oh, talked to her, yes. We were still on speaking terms . . . at least I’d thought we were.

  ‘You mean she wasn’t pleased to see you?’

  ‘She was bloody rude, if you must know.’

  ‘Seems to have been a habit with her.’

  ‘Yes, she had a sharp tongue. Mind you, that was only her manner. She could be very . . . well, different.’ Walter Proud seemed to recollect some moment of tenderness, but quickly snapped out of the mood. ‘No, I’d gone to see her because she knew everything that was going on at W.E.T.. I thought she might know of something coming up for me. The fact is, Charles, not to put too fine a point on it, I am out of a job. I’ve been out of a job now for five months. I’ve tried writing round all the companies, going to see people, using every contact I’ve ever made, and all of them lead to the same answer – nothing doing.’

  ‘Couldn’t you go back to the Beeb?’

  ‘No chance. They’re in as bad a state as anyone else. Worse. They’ve got no money and can’t think of taking on new staff. And if they did, I don’t think people who resigned three years ago at the age of fifty-four would be top of the list. The BBC is very paternalistic and looks after you very well, so long as you remain on the staff. But if you commit the unforgivable affront of resigning, well, you look after yourself, matey. It’s fair enough, but I’m afraid it means, in answer to your question, No, under no circumstances could I go back to the Beeb.’

  ‘Something’ll come up,’ Charles offered meaninglessly.

  ‘It’d better. Needless to say, I’ve screwed up the full pension I would have got if I’d stayed.’

  ‘Have you got any savings?’

  Walter laughed shortly. ‘Never had many. By the time I’d sorted out the divorce and moved a couple of times . . . And then being out of work is bloody expensive. Trying to get jobs is, anyway. I mean, if you’re chatting up an old friend who happens to be a Programme Controller somewhere, then you take him out to the sort of lunch you would have taken him out to in the old days. Except of course in the old days, you would have had an expense account. When you’re paying with real money, boy, you notice the difference.’

  ‘So Sadie . . .’ Charles steered the conversation back on to the course he required.

  ‘Yes, Sadie was a last-ditch attempt. A contact. I thought she might know the scene at W.E.T.. Tell me if they’d got all the producer/directors they needed for the new stuff they were doing. I mean, I know they’ve got Wragg and Bowen coming up, and I worked with them at the BBC. And then there’s this series for the elderly. A real F.G., if ever I heard one.’

  ‘F.G.?’

  ‘Franchise-Grabber. You may have been aware, Charles, that all the ITV companies’ franchises run out in a year or so. And so suddenly all of them have started doing very worthy programmes – stuff for minorities, heavily subsidised operas, all kinds of noble enterprises that they wouldn’t normally do in a million years. It’s just so that they can show the IBA what public-spirited and responsible companies they are, and why they ought to continue to have their franchises and continue to make huge amounts of money from their usual run of crap.’

  This cynicism was unlike Walter, who had always been one of those people, like Peter Lipscombe, who found television enormously exciting. He read Charles’s reaction. ‘Well, I’m just sick of the whole bloody business. God, I wish I’d just stayed in the BBC and coasted quietly down to my pension. Even taken an early retirement. I don’t think I’d have any pride left about that sort of thing now. Have you any idea what it’s like going round to people all the time, begging them to employ you?’

  Charles shrugged. ‘I’m an actor.’

  ‘Yes, of course, so you know all about it. But at least you’ve had practice. I find it’s a bit late in life for me to learn how to cope with it.’

  ‘But Sadie,’ Charles insisted mildly, ‘couldn’t help?’

  ‘Wouldn’t help certainly. Probably couldn’t either.’ He looked very doleful. ‘Oh, she was probably right.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘That I was past it. Past everything, she said. Certainly washed up as a television producer.’

  ‘Oh, come on. You did some terrific stuff in the past.’

  ‘In the past, yes. And what have I got to show for it? A few press clippings, some stills, cassettes of the later stuff – though that’s ironical; I can’t afford to keep up the rental of my video cassette recorder, so that’s gone back. So I’ve got nothing. Not even Angela. She’s dying quietly in Datchet and here am I drinking gin I can’t afford and . . .’

  Walter Proud seemed to be on the verge of tears, which Charles didn’t think he could cope with. He wrenched the conversation brutally on to another tack. ‘That evening of the pilot, when you came to see Sadie, when did you arrive?’

  ‘When did I arrive?’ the producer repeated blankly.

  ‘Yes.’

  Suddenly Walter started to laugh. It was a weak and not a jovial sound. ‘Oh, Charles, I don’t believe it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re off on one of your bloody detective trips, aren’t you?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Now you think Sadie was murdered and –’

  ‘I think there may have been something strange about the death. I mean, she was a grown woman, she hadn’t been drinking, why should she suddenly fall off the fire escape?’

  ‘The railing gave way.’

  ‘Or was helped to give way.’

  ‘Oh really.’

  ‘I’m not the only person who said that.’

  ‘What, you mean all those self-dramatising fools at West End Television think someone gave her a shove?’

  ‘Not that, necessarily. She might have done it herself.’

  ‘Suicide?’

  ‘Possible.’

  ‘Not if you knew Sadie.’ Realisation dawned on Walter. ‘You mean, you thought she might have . . . because of me? Because we’d broken up, you thought she might . . . oh, Charles. It’s so wrong it’s almost flattering. No, I’m afraid I didn’t rate that highly on her list of priorities. I was
a few bouts of sex before she decided I was . . . what was her expression . . . past it? I don’t think I was bloody past it, I think anyone would have found the same with her. I really think she was a nymphomaniac. I don’t mean the kind of avid partner one dreams of, but the real thing, someone with a pathological and insatiable desire for sex. It’s not very pleasant when you encounter it.’

  Charles, who never had, agreed uncertainly. And, since any cover he might have had had been thoroughly blown, asked, ‘And you didn’t kill her?’

  ‘No, no, sorry. There were times when it might not have been a bad idea, but I’m afraid I never thought of it.’

  ‘So what time did you arrive at W.E.T., that evening?’

  ‘Oh, I see, the full interrogation. I don’t get off the hook so easily. Right, I got there about nine. I have cause to remember that, because the doorman wouldn’t let me in. Good God, I’ve produced two or three series for the company, and he wouldn’t let me in to the building. Said I had to be vouched for by a member of staff. I got him to page practically every name I could remember ever having met there before I found someone who’d vouch for me and let me in to get a drink. That’s the sort of thing that destroys you, Charles. You don’t think about it when you’ve got a job, but, God, it tears you up when you find yourself crawling to doormen like some unwanted alien.’

  Charles felt relief. He hadn’t wanted to suspect his friend, but he had had to check it. If Walter really had arrived at nine in the evening, and that could be confirmed, then he could not possibly have been the person whose death threat Sadie Wainwright had treated with such contempt. And since those few overheard words were the only real reason why Charles had any suspicions about the accident, Walter seemed effectively to have left the list of suspects.

  ‘So you saw Sadie after the pilot recording finished at ten?’

  ‘That’s right. I met someone in the bar who told me what she was doing that evening and waylaid her as she came out of the studio. I suggested a drink and got my head bitten off, so I said what I really wanted to ask her and . . .

  ‘Had your other head bitten off?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So you didn’t see her for long?’

  ‘No, she was very short with me. Said she had other fish to fry. And from the tone of her voice I could have believed she meant it literally. I knew the signs well enough to recognise them. She was spoiling for a row with someone.’

  ‘You don’t know who?’

  ‘I know where. She didn’t even stop to talk to me. I had to tag along by her side while she marched ahead to sort out the next poor sod. She just marched into his dressing room and I heard her say before the door closed, “Right, what is all this, you bastard?”’

  ‘Who was in the dressing room?’

  ‘Ah, I don’t know.’

  ‘Which number was it?’

  ‘Number Three.’

  Number Three, the dressing room whose allocation to him had caused such affront to Bernard Walton.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  FILMING DAYS ALWAYS start uncomfortably early. Charles had had a make-up call at seven o’clock. A car had been sent to fetch him, which he might have thought was a flattering recognition of his raised status as an actor if he hadn’t seen the prodigality with which television companies send out cars to deliver scripts, pick up cassettes or collect take-away meals. Needless to say, at six-thirty in the morning the driver’s tattoo on the front door at Hereford Road had failed to wake Charles, but had disturbed the hive of lumpish Swedish girls who occupied the other bedsitters. With their singsong remonstrances and the driver’s belligerent complaints at being kept waiting, he had left the house in some confusion.

  But as he was made up, he relaxed. He always found it a pleasant experience. In the theatre he was used to doing it himself, and to have someone doing it for him was a great luxury. Besides, make-up girls are by tradition extraordinarily attractive. And to sit half-asleep in a comfortable chair while a sweet-smelling girl caresses your face must be the definition of one sort of minor bliss.

  Its only disadvantage is that, like all blisses, it is too short. Only seconds after he had sat down, it seemed, the gentle facial massage stopped, a discreet tap on the shoulder made him open his eyes, he had another second to gaze deeply into the brown eyes of the make-up girl, and then it was time to go and join the rest of the cast in the coach which would take them to the location. Sic transit gloria mundi. (So it is that transport brings us from the glorious to the mundane.)

  On the coach, Charles saw that George Birkitt had an empty seat beside him and made towards it, but the actor indicated a pile of scripts and said, ‘Sorry, old boy, lot of studying to do. I seem to have a damned lot of lines to learn for this bloody filming.’

  So Charles went and sat by Debbi Hartley, the actress who played the Strutters’ au pair. She was a pretty little blonde of about twenty-five, but he had never fancied her. She was the clone of too many other pretty little actresses of twenty-five, and her self-absorption was so great that it was almost impossible to think of her in a sexual context.

  She did not seem to object to his company, and started animatedly into a monologue about the wisdom of having her hair cut short once the Strutters series was over. Whereas her agent thought it would make her look younger, certain of her friends were of the opinion that it might make her look older. This was obviously of enormous relevance because when one went up for an interview (Charles had noticed how the new generation of actors never used the word ‘audition’), first impressions were vital and if the director thought of one as too old, one wouldn’t stand a chance for ingenue roles, or if he thought of one as too young, then one wouldn’t get the sort of femme fatale parts, because no one ever realised how versatile one was and it was so difficult to avoid getting typecast, but she, Debbi, thought she was just at the stage in her career to do something a bit different, so showing she could do other things as well as the little-bit-of-fluff parts, what did Charles think?

  Since he didn’t really think anything, he didn’t say anything, but his lack of response did not deflect Debbi from the course of her debate.

  Charles looked round. The coach was filling up. Mort Verdon stood at the front, checking names against a clipboard. Janie Lewis entered importantly, carrying piles of bits of paper. He contemplated joining her and exchanging discussion of hair length for that of the relative merits of film and mobile VTR recording, quoted directly from Ernie Franklyn Junior or some other guru of the W.E.T. canteen. There wasn’t much to choose in conversation; the only difference was that he did fancy Janie, whereas he didn’t fancy Debbi.

  On the other hand . . . By the time the coach was on Westway, his eyes had closed. Beside him, Debbi Hartley continued to enumerate her virtues as an actress. It was half an hour before she noticed he was asleep.

  Bernard Walton lived in a large house, set on a hill between Cookham and Bourne End. Charles woke up as the coach turned off the main road into his drive. The house was at this point invisible because of the steepness of the incline, but the approach was impressive. A gravel drive zigzagged up through immaculately planted gardens. Neat stone walls bordered it and on these, at intervals, stood tall terracotta urns from which variegated displays of flowers spilled.

  As the coach groaned and protested through its lowest gears on the hairpin turns, its occupants could see the view the house commanded. At the foot of the hill, green, flat water-meadows spread to the broad gleam of the Thames. Beyond, woods obscured most signs of human habitation.

  Round one last corner and they saw the house itself. It was Thirties Tudor, black and white, not scoring many aesthetic marks, but impressive just for its bulk and position. A tennis court and a service cottage brought right angles to the landscaped curves of the garden. Beyond a neat privet hedge could be seen the polite undulations of a golf course. If the whole location had a manufactured air, it was very fitting for the character of its owner.

  Bernard Walton stood in front of the
large oak door waving welcome. More than welcome, he was waving possession and condescension. By allowing The Strutters to use his home, he had given the series his seal of approval. But he had also diminished it, as if it existed only by his mandate.

  Charles caught George Birkitt’s eye. ‘Ostentatious bugger,’ murmured the star of The Strutters.

  ‘All part of the image,’ said Charles lightly.

  ‘Yes. God, if I had his money, I hope I’d show a little bit more reticence.’ But there was a note of wistfulness in George Birkitt’s voice. Bernard Walton’s house had struck a psychological blow against him. He might be the star of The Strutters and he might be about to make a great deal of money. But he hadn’t made it yet. Whatever his fantasies, he had still a long way to go to catch up with a real, established star.

  Bernard Walton greeted them effusively. ‘Do make yourselves at home. I’m just pottering around today, so ask if there’s anything you need. The Sun’s coming down to do an interview this morning and I’m recording a few links for some radio show this afternoon, but otherwise I’m completely at your disposal. Do remember you’re my guests.’

  This was pure Bernard Walton and Charles couldn’t help admiring it. He felt sure the star had deliberately set up the newspaper and radio bits to coincide with the filming day, so that no one should forget his importance. The pose of the self-denying host was also typical, and it was a gesture that was very easy to make. The usual filming back-up services, location caterers, make-up caravans and so on, already had their transport drawn up on the gravel. Even lavatories were available in the various vehicles, so the demands on Bernard Walton’s hospitality would be minimal. And he would certainly have arranged a suitable fee with the Location Manager to cover any mild disruption which the filming might occasion.

  Already there were a few signs of activity around the location. Men in blue nylon anoraks moved cables and huge lights on wheeled tripods. Make-up girls checked for any deterioration in their handiwork that the coach trip might have caused. Dressers inspected costumes for invisible flecks. Mort Verdon flounced around checking props. The men whose only function seemed to be to wear lumberjack checked shirts wore their lumberjack checked shirts and discussed overtime rates ominously. Midge Trumper (yes, the Midge Trumper), the cameraman, inspected his camera. Janie Lewis, her neck festooned like a Hawaiian princess s with pens on thongs and stopwatches on thongs, moved about, aimlessly purposeful.