Star Trap

by Simon Brett

  ‘Enjoy it?’

  She spread open her hands in a gesture which showed up the pointlessness of the question.

  ‘And socially?’

  ‘Socially life here is okay if you’re a teenybopper going down the discos or an elegant blue-rinse who likes bridge and golf. I’m neither.’

  ‘No.’ The little gusts of interest which had been propelling the conversation along died down to silence. Charles was morbidly aware of the outline of Ruth’s nipples through the cotton of her patterned blouse.

  She broke the silence. ‘This show you’re doing, is it the one at the Palace?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘With Christopher Milton in it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s good,’ she said with more enthusiasm than usual. What’s he like?’

  The classic question, as asked by every member of the public about every star. And virtually unanswerable. No reply can possibly satisfy the questioner, who usually has only thought as far as the question. Charles tried. ‘Well, he’s . . .’ And then realised he could not even answer to his own satisfaction. ‘I don’t know.’

  He was glad of the seven o’clock call at the Palace Theatre, as it temporarily took off the pressure of Ruth’s presence.

  After David Meldrum’s tentative notes on the Saturday run-through (interrupted by less tentative ones from Christopher Milton), Charles sorted out a later call with the stage management and set off to investigate the adjacent pub.

  It was small and dingy, one of the few old buildings which had survived the extensive modernization of Leeds city centre. A few regulars sat around in despairing huddles while a younger group played silent, grim darts. Charles ordered a large Bell’s, which they didn’t have, and got a large Haig. As he turned to find a space on one of the railway waiting-room benches, he recognised a figure in a blue donkey jacket hunched against the bar. ‘Hello, Kevin.’

  The bleary eyes showed that the writer had been there since opening time. Charles received an indifferent drunken greeting.

  ‘Not a bad theatre, is it?’

  ‘Not a bad theatre? Huh. Are you telling me about the Palace Theatre? That’s good. I’ve been seeing shows at the Palace since I was six. Pantomimes, all sorts. I was brought up here. Meanwood. Went to the grammar school. We were always brought on outings to the Palace, when there was anything cultural on, touring companies, all that. Always came to the Palace. It was my ambition, when I was in my teens, to have something of mine done, performed at the Palace. That and losing my virginity.’

  ‘And now I assume you’ve managed both.’

  ‘One happened, near as dammit, in the back row of the Cottage Road Cinema.’ He let out an abrupt, dirty laugh. Then his face darkened. ‘But the other . . .’

  ‘The other you achieve tomorrow. First night.’

  Kevin looked him straight in the eyes for a moment before he spoke. ‘Oh yes. Tomorrow. First night. But first night of what? Do you think I’ll feel any pride in that?’

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s going to be a good show. It’s inevitable that everyone’s a bit jumpy just before it starts.’ Charles had not decided yet what he really thought of the show, but he thought reassurance was required.

  As it turned out, he was wrong. ‘That’s not what I mean. I mean that what’ll go on at that theatre tomorrow will have nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Oh, I know it’s changed a bit from the original production, but that’s inevitable when –’

  ‘Changed a bit – huh! There’s almost nothing in that show that I put there.’

  ‘I’m sure a lot of it’s still quite close to the original.’

  ‘Balls. I should never have agreed. If I’d known what a total cock-up they were going to make of it . . . okay, they wanted to get in somebody else to do the music . . . all right, maybe Joe Coatley’s music wasn’t that commercial, but I thought at least they’d leave my text alone. I felt bad about dropping Joe at the time, but now I bloody envy him. I’d give anything to be out of it.’

  Deliberately crude, Charles mentioned the money.

  ‘Oh yes, there’ll be plenty of money. Run forever, a show like this, or at least until his Lordship gets bored with it. You know, I used to think I’d do anything for money – that was when I hadn’t got any – thought I’d write anything, pornography, all sorts. I did, I wrote a real hard-core porn book – filth, all about whips and Alsatians, real muck. I got a hundred pounds for that, but I tell you, I’m more proud of that than I will be when this load of shit’s running in the West End and bringing me in my so many per cent a week.’ He was in full flow, spurred on by the drink. ‘Look, I’m a writer, a writer. If I didn’t want to be a writer, I’d be some other bloody thing, an accountant, a clerk in the Town Hall, I don’t care what. But that’s not what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a writer. And why does someone want to be a writer?’

  Charles had his own views on the subject, but didn’t volunteer them. Anyway, Kevin’s question turned out to be rhetorical. ‘I’ll tell you why someone wants to be a writer. Because what he writes is his own, it may be rubbish, but it’s his own rubbish. No one can take that away from him. He wrote it.’ He seemed to realise he was becoming almost incoherently repetitive and paused to collect his thoughts before continuing. He swayed slightly.

  ‘And that is why I don’t like my work being destroyed by some jumped-up idiot of an actor, who couldn’t even write his own name.’

  Charles found himself (not for the first time) taking up a position of boring middle-aged reasonableness. ‘Kevin, one has to face it that there are some things which work on the page that don’t work in performance.’

  ‘I accept that. Good God, I’ve worked on plays before. I’m used to doing rewrites and changing things and cutting things down, but in the past it’s always been a matter of discussing it, not just some prima donna ballsing up whole scenes so that he gets all the lines.’

  Charles smarted at the remembrance of his own suffering from Christopher Milton on a line-hunt, but continued his defence. ‘Look, I know he’s got an unfortunate manner, but he does have a real genius for the theatre. He knows what’s going to work and what –’

  ‘He knows what’s going to work for him, yes, but he doesn’t give a bugger about the rest of the show. He’s already made nonsense of the plot by cutting down the Young Marlow scenes to nothing. The show’ll be a great shapeless mess.’

  ‘The audience will love it.’

  ‘Audience, huh. What the hell do they know? The audience that comes to this show will be so force-fed with television they won’t notice what it’s about. They’ll spend all their time waiting for the commercials. They’d come and see him if he was peeling potatoes on stage. They’d come and see anything that they saw on their screen. A jug of water, as featured on the Nine O’Clock News, that’s what they’d come to see.’

  He paused for breath. Charles took the opportunity to buy more drinks, hoping to break the monologue. But when he’d handed Kevin a large whisky, raised his own and said ‘Cheers’, it was instantly resumed. ‘There’s a lot of good stuff in that show which has just been dumped. Dumped and replaced by corny rubbish. I know. I’m not saying I’m the greatest writer there ever was, but I know when I’ve written a good line, and I don’t write them so that some idiot can just come along and . . .’ He lost his thread and when he came back his voice was cold with concentration. ‘If he takes anything else out of this show, I’ll kill the bastard. I’ve warned him, I’ve warned him that I can get nasty, and I will. Do you know, last Friday he was even saying he didn’t know whether Liberty Hall was a good number or not. Liberty Hall, I mean that’s the best number in the show. It’s the only one they kept from the original. They had to, they’d never get a better number than that, would they? Go on, you say what you think of it. Of that song.’

  Charles, who hated being button-holed for opinions, murmured something about it being a very good number.

  ‘Too right it is. A bloody good number. I
tell you, if he tries to get rid of that song, I will kill him.’

  Kevin became more violent and unintelligible as the drink seeped in and Charles was relieved when it was time for him to return to the theatre.

  As he travelled back to Headingley in the 33 bus, he thought about Kevin. Most of it he put down to the drink, but it was another example of the violent reactions Christopher Milton inspired. Kevin had plenty of motive for wishing ill to the show, if he was really as disgusted with it as he claimed. And he had said something about having warned Christopher Milton, which could be a reference to the previous crimes. And, Charles suddenly remembered, the writer had been onstage at the King’s Theatre when the flats fell. A new thought came into his mind. Suppose the first two accidents were genuine and the campaign of persecution only began with the falling flats. And suppose the object of the persecution was not the show, but just Christopher Milton. Someone hated the star so much that he wanted to kill him.

  Back at the semi in Headingley Ruth had gone to bed, but her door was ajar and the light on. Charles knocked softly and went in.

  She looked up without surprise. ‘So you’ve finished.’ Her voice could imbue the simplest sentence with criticism.

  ‘Yes.’ He sat heavily on the bed.

  ‘Drunk, I suppose.’

  ‘Moderately.’

  ‘You’re a wreck, Charles.’ She said it hard, without affection. Then she reached forward and touched his hand. The scent of talcum powder rose to his nostrils. He looked at her. And then he kissed her.

  She responded, as he knew she would. As he had known when he had first heard he was going to Leeds. From that moment a guilty fascination had led him to this. His unwillingness, his positive knowledge that it was idiotic to restart the affair, was swamped by animal urgency. His right hand scrabbled roughly at her nightdress, pulling it up.

  ‘I know what you want.’ Even as her hands reached down hungrily to fight with the clasp of his trousers, she made it sound like an accusation.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  IN THE AUDIENCE at Lumpkin!’s first public performance on Monday, October 27th 1975 were some people with a special interest in the show. There were the Friends of the Palace Theatre who spent the performance preparing witty things to say at the discussion with the cast which their secretary, Miss Thompson, had arranged to take place on stage after the final curtain. There were Kevin McMahon’s parents whom he hadn’t been able to dissuade from coming. There was Dickie Peck, just arrived from London to see that everyone was doing exactly what his protégé wanted. And there was Gerald Venables, up in theory in his legal capacity to extort money from a wealthy mill-owner, and in fact to keep an eye on his investment and get a progress report from Charles Paris.

  The performance they watched was unusual, in that it started with one central character and ended with another. Charles saw it all from the fly gallery. It was strictly against theatre discipline for him to be up there, but he had asked Spike, who didn’t seem to mind. Spike was easy-going about most things. He had that equable technician’s temperament that never failed to amaze Charles. The ability to continue hard physical work up to seventy-two hours without ever losing his resource and surly good humour. And all without any sort of public recognition. The extrovert actor part of Charles could not understand that. What made people like Spike tick? Where did they come from?

  He looked across at the intent acne-ridden face as the stage manager pulled on a thick rope and delicately eased a huge piece of scenery up between two metal bars with their heavy load of lights. Charles instantly remembered stories of flying disasters, of cumbersome pieces plummeting down on actors below, of faulty counterweighting snatching technicians up from the stage to dash them against the chipping machine of the grid in the roof. But the sight of Spike’s strength and control put away such thoughts. The eternal stage manager. As the name implied, he could always manage. There was no point in thinking what Spike might have done before; it was impossible to imagine him in any other world.

  As the show progressed, Charles’ attention soon moved from speculations about the stage staff to the strange transformation which was taking place onstage, the transformation of the character of Tony Lumpkin. Christopher Milton’s performance started as it had been in rehearsal. The knowing yokel dominated the stage, his voice deeply rustic and his movements capturing the clumsy grace of the farm-boy. Charles settled down to enjoy it.

  The change, when it came, was quite abrupt. Audience reaction was a bit slow, but no slower than one would expect from a Monday night house of stuffed shirts from the clothing industry and a few stray television fans, awestruck by the unaccustomed space of a theatre. Charles had been in many shows which had got worse reaction at this tender stage of their lives.

  But Christopher Milton was worried. His anxiety was not apparent to the audience, but to Charles, who knew the performance well, the fear showed. There was a hesitancy in delivery, a certain stiffness in dancing that betrayed the inward unrest. It came to a head in the Liberty Hall number. This involved a parodic country dance for Tony Lumpkin and the dancers. It was a well-choreographed routine, which started with heavy deliberation and speeded up until Christopher Milton was spinning giddily on a rostrum centre stage, from which he did a final jump to a kneeling position, an inevitable cue for applause.

  He’d done it perfectly in rehearsal, but on the first night he mis-timed it. He came out of the spin into the jump and landed untidily on one leg. It was not a serious error and certainly did not hurt him, but it was messy. The audience realised it had gone wrong, lost their own natural timing and did not come in with instantaneous applause.

  The pause was tiny, the audience goodwill to clap was there, but the mistake had thrown them. Christopher Milton felt the hiatus and came in quickly with the line, ‘Ooh, I done it all wrong.’

  This time the reaction was enormous. An instant laugh, the loudest of the evening, which melted naturally into vigorous clapping, as if the audience wanted to make up for missing their first cue.

  As a professional Charles could recognise Christopher Milton’s immaculate timing of the line, but it was not that which struck him most about it. It was the voice in which it had been delivered. The star had not used his own voice, nor that of Tony Lumpkin. The line had been spoken by Lionel Wilkins of the television series Straight up, Guv.

  And from that point on, Lionel Wilkins took over. For the next ten minutes or so, Tony Lumpkin fought a desultory rearguard action, but he was defeated before he started. The rustic burr was replaced by a London whine. The brown frock coat was thrown into the wings and the part was played in timeless shirtsleeves. Oliver Goldsmith, who had probably done a few gyrations in his grave over the previous weeks, must by now have been turning fast enough to power the National Grid. One of the central themes of his play, the contrast between Town and Country, had just vanished. The plot lost yet another of its tenuous links with sense.

  And the audience loved it. Familiarity gave them the confidence they needed to express their enthusiasm. It may have been a bit difficult to follow the twists and exposition of an old-fashioned story, but to be presented with an instantly recognisable character from their television screens, that made it all simple. Charles watched from the fly gallery in amazement. ‘What the hell is he doing?’ he murmured to Spike, who was leaning on the rail beside him.

  ‘His own thing,’ Spike grunted. ‘Never does anything else.’

  ‘What will David Humdrum say?’

  Charles knew the answer to his question, but Spike supplied it ‘He’ll say, “Fine”.’

  And he did. Charles saw the encounter between star and director in the green room at the interval. ‘Christ, this needs a lot more work,’ said the star.

  ‘It’s going fine, Christopher, just fine,’ soothed the director.

  ‘That Liberty Hall number will have to come out for a start. I always thought it was a load of crap.’

  ‘I’m sure, with a bit more rehearsal –’

>   ‘Shut up! It’s coming out.’ Christopher Milton went up to his dressing-room.

  Charles decided that it was in his interests as the show’s secret watchdog to keep his eyes on the movements of Kevin McMahon. If the writer lived up to half of his drunken threats, there was going to be trouble.

  The trouble started as soon as the curtain had come down on the final call. Kevin McMahon was in the green room to greet the cast as they came offstage. He went straight up to Christopher Milton and shouted, ‘What the hell do you mean by performing my stuff like that? This isn’t one of your tatty TV comedies!’

  The star seemed to look through him and greeted a man with greasy swept-back hair and a cheap suede zip-up jacket. ‘Hello, Wally. What did you think?’

  ‘Good bits, bad bits,’ said Wally Wilson in broad Cockney.

  ‘Never mind. Nothing that can’t be changed.’

  ‘Too right. Soon be up to the Straight Up, Guv standard!’

  ‘Now you bloody listen to me, Mr Christopher Bloody Milton . . . .’ Kevin began belligerently.

  The response came back like a whip-lash. ‘Shut up, I’m talking to a writer.’

  The implication was too much for Kevin McMahon. With a cry of fury, he drew his fist back for a blow.

  Christopher Milton moved fast. He side-stepped with a dancer’s ease. Kevin swung himself off balance and at that moment Dickie Peck, who had moved from the doorway at amazing speed when the fracas started, flicked up Kevin’s head with his left forearm and smashed a hard right knuckle into the writer’s mouth. The knees gave, the body crumpled and blood welled from a cut lip. ‘Don’t you ever dare lay a finger on him,’ Dickie Peck hissed.

  The action had all been so quick that it left behind a shocked silence. The unexpectedness of the fight paled into insignificance compared to the transformation of Dickie Peck, suddenly converted from a middle-aged joke figure to a bruiser. Charles recollected a distant rumour that the agent had started his career as a boxer.