by Simon Brett
Charles Paris found himself shuffling through the main door in a group which included Sam Noakes and Ted Faraday. Outside he encountered a phenomenon he hadn’t expected for what was basically a documentary series – autograph hunters. The overlap between police work and showbiz was becoming total.
The current focus of their attention was Chloe Earnshaw. She was being fittingly modest, saying ‘Oh, you don’t want my autograph’, but clearly they did. She looked interrogatively at one of her police minders, who shrugged and said, ‘Don’t want to antagonise them.’ So, with a show of reluctance, Chloe Earnshaw signed the few books and bus tickets that were proffered, before being whisked away by her minders to ‘a secret location’. (The threats that had been made to her husband and the public way in which she attacked their perpetrators ensured that she was under twenty-four-hour police protection.)
The autograph hunters turned next to the emerging group and there was no doubt who they were after in that lot. However much she dismissed the possibility, in the public imagination DI Sam Noakes had become a star. Hers was the name they wanted in their collections.
One of them asked Ted Faraday for an autograph. He refused, firmly but without rudeness. ‘Sorry, in my business you sign as few things as possible.’
‘Afraid someone might track you down through your handwriting?’ Sam Noakes asked teasingly.
‘Maybe.’
‘Or – even more worrying – find out your real character through it?’
‘Always a risk,’ he responded with a lazy grin. There was definitely some undercurrent beneath their banter, though its precise nature Charles could not define.
‘Did they organise a car for you, Ted?’ Sam asked.
‘Offered one. I told them not to bother. Never like being committed to where I’m going to be at the end of an evening.’
Some transient message flashed between their eyes. ‘They’ve done a car for me,’ she said casually. ‘Fancy a lift?’
Matching her casualness, the private investigator accepted the offer. Charles was aware of a sound behind him and turned to see Superintendent Roscoe and Greg who had just come out of W.E.T. House. They had both heard the last exchange and neither looked particularly pleased about it.
‘Good night, Superintendent. Good night, Greg,’ Sam called over her shoulder, as she moved elegantly towards the hire car.
Superintendent Roscoe waved an acknowledgement, but the other policeman said nothing. Nor did Ted Faraday, as he nonchalantly followed the female star of Public Enemies into her car.
The autograph hunters lingered, hoping to catch Bob Garston when he came out. They’d have a long wait. The presenter had dragged Roger Parkes and Geoffrey Ramage straight down to an editing suite, to watch and make notes on a playback of that evening’s Public Enemies.
The autograph hunters didn’t ask for autographs from Superintendent Roscoe or the man called Greg.
Nor, it goes without saying, from Charles Paris.
Chapter Four
GOT TO BE masochism, hasn’t it, thought Charles as he dialled Maurice Skellern’s number. I mean, why else would anyone go on ringing someone whose news was always depressing? He tried to think of a single occasion when an unsolicited call to his agent had left him feeling better, but his memory drew a blank. There had been instances – rare instances – when he had rung back after a message from Maurice and received good news, but a call out of the blue had never prompted more than gloomy reflections on the current ‘quietness’ of the business and on Charles’s failure to ‘make anything happen for himself’ in his chosen career.
He was therefore surprised when he got through to hear his agent in a state of considerable excitement.
‘You’ve no idea, Charles,’ Maurice bubbled on, ‘how gratifying it is for someone in my profession when all your efforts finally pay off.’
‘What?’
‘When a talent which you have been nurturing for years – nurturing – finally gets the recognition it so richly deserves. I mean, it makes it all worthwhile – all the anguish, all the hours you spend on the phone trying to make producers aware of your client’s skills, all the afternoons when the phone doesn’t ring once, all the occasions when you despair that the client’s ever going to take any initiative . . . well, let me tell you – when there’s a really big breakthrough, you forget all that.’
‘And has there been a really big breakthrough?’ asked Charles, trying to sound cool, almost uninterested.
‘Oh, I would say so. Yes, I most certainly would say so. No two ways about that.’
‘How big?’
‘Only internationally big. Only globally big. Only – and I breathe the word with appropriate respect – only Hollywood big.’
‘Really?’ Charles murmured, hardly daring to believe his ears.
‘Columbia Pictures . . .’ Maurice Skellem continued in a deliberately matter-of-fact tone, ‘Columbia Pictures, no less, are doing a remake of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – you remember the movie?’
‘Of course. Richard Burton.’
‘Exactly, Charles. Exactly. Richard Burton as the fiftyish, over-the-hill, crumpled, down-at-heel, unsuccessful spy. Only one small problem – Richard Burton’s dead.’
‘Yes. I did hear that.’
‘So Columbia wants the new Richard Burton. But not a Richard Burton who’s already an established star. They want to create the new Richard Burton – find the right person and rocket him to stardom. So their casting people get working and they start looking for someone who can play fiftyish, over-the-hill, crumpled, down-at-heel, unsuccessful. And – inevitably, because of the way he puts himself about in the business – they end up ringing Maurice Skellern. Hello, they say, have you got anyone on your books who can play fiftyish, over-the-hill, crumpled, down-at-heel, unsuccessful? Well, yes, I reply, as it happens I do have on my books the perfect person to play, fiftyish over-the-hill, crumpled, down-at-heel, unsuccessful. And the rest, as they say, will be history.’
Charles could hardly find enough breath in his lungs to murmur, ‘So what’s the next step?’
‘I’ve shown the Columbia people over here the photograph – they’re happy. I’ve sent them the showreels of work by the actor in question – they’re happy. The next step will be to fly him over to Hollywood for final interviews.’
‘When?’ asked Charles, thinking of the infinite void that was his engagements diary.
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Oh, my God. It’s wonderful news, Maurice, isn’t it? I mean, sensational news. Best news I’ve ever heard in my life.’
‘That’s very sweet of you to say so, Charles. I’ll pass it on to Malcolm. He’ll appreciate it.’
‘Malcolm?’
‘Malcolm Tonbridge. You remember. You met him once at my office.’
‘Malcolm Tonbridge? But he’s hardly forty, is he?’
‘Thirty-eight.’
‘And he’s not crumpled. I mean, he’s quite good-looking.’
‘Very good-looking. Positively dishy. That’ll stand him in good stead in Hollywood, you know.’
‘Yes, but I mean, the part surely demands –’
‘Hollywood knows what it wants, Charles. Good heavens, you can’t have a character who’s meant to be fiftyish, over-the-hill, crumpled, down-at-heel, unsuccessful played by someone who actually is fiftyish, over-the-hill, crumpled, down-at-heel, unsuccessful, can you?’ Maurice Skellern let out a wheezing laugh. ‘Otherwise, well . . . otherwise even you’d be in with a chance, eh, Charles?’
The wheezing laugh continued. Maurice was tickled pink by his little fantasy. It was the best joke he’d thought of for a very long time.
Indulge the masochistic mood while it lasts, thought Charles, as he dialled the number of his wife Frances. ‘Ex-wife’ would perhaps be more accurate. Though there was still no official divorce, the ‘ex’-ness seemed to be hardening increasingly into permanence.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s me. Charles.’
‘Oh yes?’ Long experience of such phone calls had brought her response to the point where it had no intonation of any kind. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Just rang for a chat.’
‘Ah.’ There was a silence. ‘A chat about anything in particular?’
‘No. Just . . . you know . . .’
‘I don’t know unless you tell me, Charles.’
‘No. Well, I . . . Just to see how you are and . . .’
‘Fine. I’m fine.’
‘Good.’
‘You?’
‘Oh, fine, yes. Yes, fine, thank you.’
‘Any work?’
‘I have actually just done a job.’
‘Well, there’s a novelty.’
‘One of those Public Enemies programmes.’
‘When’s it going to be on?’
‘It was on. Last night.’
‘Oh. Well, sorry. I missed it.’
‘There you go.’
‘Charles, if you don’t tell me things’re coming up, how am I expected to know –?’
‘Sure, sure. Sorry, I should have told you, but . . . the filming kept me very busy,’ he lied.
‘Hm. What were you doing in the show?’
‘I was in one of the reconstructions,’ he admitted shamefacedly.
‘Charles . . . After all the things you’ve said about people who get involved in that kind of stuff . . . Last time the subject came up, I seem to remember you talking about “actors whose only previous work has been in dandruff commercials”.’
‘Yes, well, you know . . . No one’d ever offered me a reconstruction before.’
‘Hm. So now I just have to wait and I’ll see you in a dandruff commercial, is that it?’
‘No one’s ever offered me one of those either,’ he said, with an attempt at humour.
‘But if they did, you would instantly say yes – as you do to everything else.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I’d like to think . . . Yes, I probably would,’ he conceded lamely.
‘Really, Charles. Why you can’t get a hold on your career and . . .’
She gave up. What was the point of going through all the old arguments again? Raking over old embers. It seemed a long time since those embers had contained even the smallest spark.
Charles could sense her thoughts. Or perhaps he was just transferring his own on to her. Either way, they made him feel achingly empty.
‘What were you playing in the reconstruction?’ she asked.
‘Murder victim. Well, to be accurate, probable murder victim. Martin Earnshaw.’
‘Oh.’ Frances sounded touched. ‘Husband of that poor girl who . . .?’
Charles was surprised that Frances too was under the spell of Chloe Earnshaw. He could understand the male population of the country, but he’d always had great respect for his wife’s bullshit-detecting antennae. Probably he was just being over-cynical again. God, why couldn’t he take anything at face value? Why couldn’t he trust or believe in anything?
‘How’s work for you?’ he asked, trying to shift his developing mood.
‘Do you really want to know?’
‘Well . . .’
‘It’s OK. The school is still standing. I’m still its headmistress. I could provide more detail, but I know you’re not really interested.’
‘Well, now, I wouldn’t say . . .’
It was another sentence not worth finishing. Frances was right. He wasn’t really interested in the minutiae of staff-room politics.
‘So . . .?’ She made the word sound like a sigh.
‘So,’ he echoed. He had had thoughts of fixing a time to meet, asking her out somewhere, but the sterility of the conversation sapped his will. What was the point? They really had grown apart now. Separate people. With separate lives. Linked only by a few ambivalent memories. Even those were fading.
And a daughter, of course. Yes, they were linked by a daughter. He was on the verge of asking about her, but again what was the point? He knew Frances would only remind him that he had Juliet’s phone number and was quite capable of ringing her himself. The emptiness ballooned inside him.
‘Well, anyway, Frances . . . As I say, I just rang to see that you’re OK.’
‘And, as I say, I’m fine.’
‘Yes. Well . . . I’ll be in touch.’
‘Fine.’
‘Goodbye then, Frances.’
‘Goodbye, Charles.’
Was he being hypersensitive, or had she put the phone down more abruptly than was strictly necessary?
Charles mooched disconsolately along the landing towards the door of his bedsitter. There was the remains of a half-bottle of Bell’s in there. At least he thought there was. On those days when he started sipping early, it was always difficult to remember how much there was left.
He was stopped by the sound of the phone ringing. To his amazement, it was Maurice.
The agent’s mood had changed totally, its previous euphoria supplanted by a dull gloom.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Charles.
‘Malcolm Tonbridge. Bloody Malcolm Tonbridge.’
‘What about him?’ A churlishly appealing thought insinuated itself into Charles’s mind. ‘Columbia haven’t gone off the idea, have they?’
‘Oh no, Hollywood are as keen as ever. Keener if anything.’
‘So?’
‘Malcolm just rang me. Said now his career’s taking off, he needs to be with a bigger agency.’
‘Oh.’
‘People who specialise in movies. People who’ve got “representation on the West Coast”. He said he was grateful to me for all I’d done for him, but he’s moving into a very specialised area and he needs to be looked after by specialists.’
‘I see.’
‘God, Charles, I feel a complete failure.’
‘Well, I’m sorry, Maurice. But why on earth did you ring to tell me about it?’
‘Because, of everyone I know, you’re the one person who I thought’d really understand.’
‘Oh,’ said Charles Paris, ‘thank you very much.’
Chapter Five
ONCE, IN A moment of eloquence assisted by Arthur Bell’s distillery, Charles Paris had defined the life of an actor as like that of a child’s glove puppet, spending most of its life crumpled and forgotten in the corner of a toy cupboard, and only fully alive when a warm hand was inserted into it. At the time the references to inserting warm hands into things had triggered a burst of crude innuendo, but Charles still thought there was something in the image. The hand of course, which animated the actor’s personality, was work. Give an actor a job, and suddenly he exists.
Pursuing this image through, it could be said that Charles Paris spent the four days after the first Public Enemies programme crumpled up and forgotten in the corner of a toy cupboard. He had made the necessary – or perhaps unnecessary – phone calls, to Maurice and Frances, on the morning after, and didn’t feel inclined to ring either of them again. From his agent he would only get more unwittingly dismissive references to his own career and reproachful catalogues of the perfidies of Malcolm Tonbridge.
And from his wife he would get . . . He didn’t quite know what he would get, but he didn’t relish it. Something basic seemed to have changed in his relationship with Frances. Ever since he’d walked out – and indeed for much of the twelve years before – the marriage had been an on-off affair, but in the past he had always felt confident that any ‘off’ would eventually give way to an ‘on’. That core of certainty had now gone. The relationship had descended to a new bleakness, and the cold prospect that they might permanently lose contact had become increasingly feasible. Maybe Frances, finally and irrevocably, had had enough of him. Ringing her again would only increase the pain.
He could have telephoned other friends, suppressed his envy to those who had work, indulged in mutual moaning with those who hadn’t. He could even have arranged to meet some of the unsuccessful ones, and continued the moaning over too m
any drinks somewhere. But it all seemed a lot of effort.
So it was the crumpled glove puppet in the corner of the toy cupboard. He was not completely inert. He made it to the overpriced corner shop to buy the basic necessities for his solitary menu, in which toast, baked beans and breakfast slices figured more prominently than most chefs de cuisine would recommend. He also stocked up on the necessary bottles of Bell’s.
Once or twice, driven by some childhood Calvinist conviction that drinking on one’s own was a bad thing, he adjourned to the pub. But the one he always went to, in Westbourne Grove, was, like the Black Feathers, ‘local’ only in geography. The bar staff, Australians who had always started the job that day, had a religious objection to recognising anyone over thirty.
And the older customers, some of whose faces Charles had seen before, evidently came to the pub for a mystic private communion with their drinks. After twenty minutes sitting shrink-wrapped in his own isolation amidst the music and shouts of the young, drinking alone appeared an infinitely more sociable option.
How long this torpor might have continued was impossible to know, because it was interrupted on the Tuesday morning by a dictatorial phone call from Louise Denning. Charles was commanded to attend a briefing meeting at W.E.T. House that afternoon. As usual in the medium, it was assumed that no one would have any more pressing calls on their time than the demands of a television programme. Charles, who of course had no more pressing calls on his time than the demands of a television programme, would nonetheless have preferred the summons be couched as a question rather than an order.
‘Well, I am free as it happens,’ he conceded after some invisibly mimed diary-consulting, ‘but I thought I’d finished my bit.’
‘There has been a new development in the case,’ Louise Denning announced mysteriously.
‘Am I allowed to know what it is?’
‘No. You’ll be given all necessary information at the briefing meeting.’
‘Oh. Does this mean that I’m going to be involved in more filming? That I’m being booked for this week’s show too?’
