‘Think we need to splash some water on this one’s face!’
‘Exterminate! Exterminate! Woof woof! Arf Arf!’
Watching them barge their way towards the hall bathroom, a bushy eyebrow raised, Trafalgar grunted peevishly, ‘I know I’m just a simple rags-to-riches cloth merchant Petula…’
‘Oh Landon, please, you’re so much more than that… and always have been…’
‘…But you do have some funny friends. The kind of funny that doesn’t make me laugh my dear. I’m most sorry to say.’
Petula blushed – must she have been mad to think she could invite a blimpish clothing mogul and the new Timelord to the same event? Diversity had always worked in the past – the greater the range of faces the more intense the reflected glory in knowing them all. Creative people enjoyed the company of money as much as money enjoyed the company of genuine talent. And as for the generation gap, wasn’t that meant to be shrinking again with everyone becoming more alike and wearing the same clothes? That last part, at least, was borne out, as Fogle and Trafalgar were both in jet-black smoking jackets, but as for the rest of it, Petula was not hopeful. Whatever force it was that usually allowed her to proceed with assurance in a forwardly direction evidently wanted nothing to do with her today.
‘Not my friends Landon, friends of friends as it happens.’
The old man looked at her pityingly.
‘I’ve sat you in between Cordelia and Daisy, Regan’s class mates… one girl to every bachelor,’ she added unnecessarily, trying to laugh and squinting instead. Trafalgar’s wife of fifty years had died only a few months before and Petula, a close family friend, had been asked to read at the funeral. The silence was tense and heartfelt. Her mouth was stuffed with corpses, could she get nothing right?
‘Boy to girl is what I mean… my seating plan.’
‘It’s hot tonight, too damn hot,’ Trafalgar said loosening his cravat and walking in.
Behind him were Astley and Eager. The years had been honest to both, Eager resembling an archbishop with a twinkle in his eye, Astley a robust parish priest, his hair shaved in a gradeone now, both dressed in black robes and white silk scarves.
‘Ye Gods am I glad to see you now,’ Petula blurted, grabbing Eager’s wrinkled and heavily tanned hand, ‘it’s been a sodding nightmare I tell you, no help, lugging round big tables by myself, a nightmare with this Japanese caterer Regan absolutely insisted on, sushi’s it with these girls at the moment, goldfish food as far as I can tell. Anyway, everything a recipe for total confusion, and then some, and with this seating plan, Regan trying to bloody change everything, why I don’t know, just so these girls can all sit together, I mean, what’s the point, don’t they see enough of each other at school? Chaos. Absolute chaos. And then to cap it all this lot, my God, did you see the state of them?’ Petula beckoned towards the noisy shouts echoing along the long corridor which was now doubling as a dining hall, ‘I don’t know how Tim got them into that condition, all five and Tim too. He had to practically wrestle one to the ground just now. I thought he’d knock my eye out. I’m scared, I admit it! No, okay, not scared, but you know, it’s just not right, this is my home!’
Petula’s choice of a thin black dress was wise, as the effort of the last speech had released enough sweat to glue it to her body, damp patches glistening all over her powerful equipment. Affectionately Eager released her hand, glancing at her nipples with thinly disguised beguilement.
‘Upstarts,’ he muttered with friendly annoyance, ‘cheeky upstarts.’
‘And look at that.’ Petula pointed to Rex Wade, an ex-Blue Peter presenter cast as Will Scarlett in the new series of Robin of Sherwood who, having been carried into the house by the taxi driver, now reappeared with a rose thrust between his teeth, the bush he had plucked it from a rare ‘Alchymist’ imported from North Carolina.
‘You’re going the wrong way,’ she called, ‘it’s inside, the party is inside, okay?’
Wade grinned, losing the rose as he did so, the flower scuffed underfoot as he careered into the wall. From his place on the floor he blew a kiss at a nearby daisy and then, in an apparent change of heart, burst into tears.
‘Well go on, help him,’ Petula barked at Tinwood, who had reappeared from the bathroom, a hastily received scratch scrawled along his cheek and neck.
‘Okay,’ panted Tinwood, ‘okay. Christ. I’m knackered already!’
‘Phew, it’s a bad crowd Tim’s been knocking about with, bad news all round Petula, I told you that when you first asked “who’s new?”,’ said Astley. ‘You ought to have taken heed. Sorry to say I told you so, it’s such a bore to be right about such things. I take absolutely no such pleasure in being so.’
‘But they all look so nice on the telly,’ Petula protested, ‘how was I to know they’d be such bastards in real life? I mean that bloke laid flat out looked after the garden in that kids’ programme, Blue Peter, that must count for something character-wise, right?’
‘Crap,’ drawled Eager, ‘he did whatever Tim dug up for him, they’re a bunch of cocky young pricks, dancers and rent boys, not serious. Malleable and disposable automatons. All pulled off those dreadful soap operas or kids’ TV for their fifteen minutes. Not actors at all.’
‘Well they took me in, just as well that I adjust quickly to shocks,’ gurgled Petula, ‘I had half a mind to call the police, really, when I saw them roll up.’
‘Shocks is all it is, Tim’s way of showing us all how young and with-it he still is. Give them ten minutes of the cold shoulder and they’ll be eating out of your hand. Ahhh, here she is, the girl herself. Regan, what does it feel like to be the centre of all this attention?’ smiled Astley, and gave Petula’s daughter an affectionate hug.
Regan, following the black theme that had been suggested without being insisted upon by herself for the want of any other idea, was dressed in a cat suit a couple of sizes too large for her. Rather than show off her slim physique, it hung off her like an astronauts overalls draped over an ironing board, offering little hint of what lay underneath.
‘Am I?’
‘Of course you are! So how does it feel?’
‘Terrifying, I’m not sure I like it. I can’t believe how nervous I was earlier. Silly, because it’s only a party, I mean I know I shouldn’t be so scared. Am I supposed to be so unrelaxed that it’s impossible to enjoy myself?’
‘Nonsense’ said Astley kindly, ‘to be the object of any gathering induces nerves, whatever the occasion. It’s as close as most people get to going on stage. Just so long as the nerves are kept under control. Once it starts everything is usually okay, and anyway, worrying should be your mother’s job, you just revel in it all.’
Regan smiled as warmly as was sensible in the heat and turned to Petula with something like impatience. ‘Mum, I think you’d better come inside for a minute, I can say hello to people out here, one of the actors, the one who used to be on Grange Hill that’s meant to be sat next to me, he’s just been sick everywhere. No one really knows what to do about it, I’ve asked Mrs Hardfield to clear it but I mean him. No one knows what to do with him, he’s just sat down in it and refuses to move. So I thought that perhaps Diamanda could sit next to me instead because he looks like he could do it again…’
Petula was already on her way, she had noticed Regan’s tendency, inherited from her, to shout loudest at what she desired the most, puking actors were probably her cup of tea, she just wouldn’t bring herself to admit it yet. As for the vomiting thespian himself, a jug or two of water and a cup of coffee ought to sort him out. If it didn’t she would take it upon herself to personally batter him to death in the pantry with her new chrome saucepan stand.
Entering the landing area Petula barged straight in to Chips Hall. At one point she had designs on Chips for herself, then as a possible suitor for Regan, but like a lone centre-forward unfortunate enough to come of age between two brilliant striking partnerships, he had never enjoyed his run in the team and had to be content
to fill in wherever he could. Now in his late thirties, still single, a successful property developer but explicably bitter, his face lewd and eel-thin, Hall had resorted to ever-more-sycophantic ruses to hook his hostess’s attention, which on this particular evening could not have been further away from her priorities.
‘Petula, this is really, really lovely. I love, I really love, the black drapes. Really, really, gothic and, I dunno, creepy, but in a good way, yah?’ Hall’s features were mildly intriguing until he came to use them whereupon his narrow head and slick-back hair resembled a sculpture that had lost too much clay, less a matinee idol than shifty police informer. ‘I just wonder where you got all these drapes from, India or a local market? Really, really plush, you know, profound and plush.’
‘Not now Chips!’
‘Oh, is something the matter?’
‘For God’s sake, in case you’ve been on another planet; the Vandals are sacking Rome…’
‘Oh what? Those noisy plonkers who came barging in? Who the deuce are they, I don’t recognise any of them, I thought they had something to do with Regan to be honest with you. Snotty arrivistes, one of them’s just thrown up actually. Can I do anything to help?’
‘Save yourself Chips, I’m equal to it.’
‘Just say if there is…’
The scene that greeted Petula as she strove along the corridor was about as bad as it could be while remaining within the bounds of possibility. The actors were assembled in a rugby huddle, mid-song, the puking one of their party still on all fours and attempting to scale Diamanda’s leg, mercifully out of his own vomit, but showing every sign that his repertoire was on its way to encompassing sexual assault. Petula issued her warning shot, ‘Mr Wade, there’s an important phone call for you, could you not come into the kitchen and take it?’
The other guests were milling round the tables doing their best to regard the disruption as normal and even entertaining, with the exception of Landon Trafalgar, who with his hands behind his back and head down, was patrolling the room like a police Alsatian. Though the tables were all laid for dinner, a directionless ennui had infected those who would normally take a lead, bringing home to Petula her pivotal importance on that most misleadingly simple of operations; making things happen.
‘Mr Wade, I must insist… you’re holding everything and everyone up…’
Jenny Hardfield, having stood to attention with a mop and bucket, quietly went to work with the professionalism of a council worker falling on bubblegum stuck to a park bench. Wiping her hands on her apron she looked at Petula and confided in a hoarse stage-whisper, ‘I don’t think he can hear you, they’re singing too loudly. And such a horrible song, don’t you know.’
‘Of course I don’t know, I’m not a bloody rugby-playing medical student, how would I know about their beastly songs!’
‘Well nor are they, medical students, they’re actors Petula.’
‘Oh for crying out loud! When Jazzy gets here ask him to report to me, I think I really may need him for once. Thanks for your help with the sick. I would be able to do nothing without you.’
‘We love blowing our own trumpets, they make such a beautiful sound…’
Petula tightened her fist and felt a volley of battle-hardened indignation proceed up her spine. Just as she was about to pull Wade off an admittedly unresisting Diamanda, thus crossing all lines of civility and as good as confessing the evening had got off to a disaster, she felt a spongy poke on the shoulder; the soft finger that she had been sure of on impact seemingly dissolving into her skin like a warm icicle as she turned to face its owner.
It was a young man, or at least she thought so, of delicate composition, considerably shorter than herself, and deeply pink of face. Glaring up at her triumphantly with an expression of flustered expectancy on his rouged lips, he poked her again, this time in the chest, and raised a mascara-smothered eyebrow theatrically. Despite the many conflicting dramas vying for her attention, none of which were remotely comedic, the youth’s appearance was such an affront to the laws of geometry and proportion, that Petula smothered a giggle under a gasp. Her first thought was how could he have possibly reached her shoulder, his arms were stubby and starchy, the sleeveless silver lame vest he had chosen for the occasion a poor advert for his flappy biceps and potbelly.
‘I suppose I’m to be sat next to you,’ he announced pompously, ‘they always call for Tackleberry you know! Tackleberry! Wherever I am, they ask for me, by name. Tackleberry they say! Where are you, where is Tackleberry? I’m the one they always ask for. You see I don’t just act! I play and sing on records too, that’s why I’m in such demand. For parties and social gatherings, like,’ he made a circle in the air with his fat index finger, ‘this one, whatever it’s supposed to be. Tackleberry, you see! Even you asked for me, so I must be right.’
‘What?’
‘Tackleberry, I’m the one they always want.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Tackleberry you nincompoop! The name on everybody’s lips, the one they all want to be.’
‘My God, you’re the actor, aren’t you, who’s going to play Darcy… you can’t be. No…’
‘Just played. We finished shooting on the first of last month. Near a dour little market town in Hampshire if you must know, the weather, oh the weather!’
‘Shooting? No, that’s impossible. Tim said that… told me you’d be shooting in Yorkshire later in the year. You can’t even have started yet, I mean, you’ve got to choose a location for the house first, and you haven’t even done that yet… have you?’
‘I assure you we have, if you don’t believe me then consider this: I wouldn’t come to Yorkshire more than once a year at most, no matter who asked for Tackleberry!’
Petula tried to flatten the shock – it was one thing to be lied to and used by Tinwood; however the revelation that this was Maurice Tackleberry, the next Mr Darcy (what kind of adaption could he have been cast in, a Muppet Show special?) was as cruel as reading the tag upside-down and grabbing a present meant for someone else; the memory of confusing her elder sister’s golden slippers with her own plain pair one Christmas was still an outstanding piece of childhood debris she had failed to dispose of. Tackleberry reminded her of those slippers.
‘I must say, since we wrapped, I have rather let myself go,’ said Tackleberry squeezing the fold of his belly, ‘you don’t know what a pain it is to be put on horses and stuck in corsets. They forced me to eat nothing but greens and lentils for a month before production. Forced Tackleberry! It completely did my bonce in. I had terrible headaches, there was a day when I couldn’t even get up. Never again! From now on Tackleberry chooses his parts, never again will a part choose Tackleberry!’
Tackleberry, his bleached triangular quiff extenuating the broad dome that supported it, untucked his skin-tight vest, which helped disguise the stomach he no longer bothered to hold in, and drained his glass of champagne. Stamping his heavy motorcycle boot onto the floor suddenly to muffle the unmistakable thud of a fart that had caught the seat of his leather trousers, Tackleberry helped himself to a handful of passing venison cocktail sausages, and repeated, as if to mollify any lingering doubt, ‘Tackleberry! That’s who they always ask for!’
‘I’m surprised they get the chance to, or even a word in edgeways, you talk too quickly.’
‘I find my own voice and manner reassuring, it reminds me of who you all think I am.’
‘Yes, the great Tackleberry, I’m surprised you don’t remember.’
‘When you act it’s easy to forget who you’re meant to be. Here, give me your glass, I want you to have mine.’
‘What on earth for?’
‘You’ll see. What on earth are those morsels, going there on their sweet little way?’
‘Crepes Jambon Fromage: posh pancakes with ham and cheese.’
‘Meaty cheese! I want to make them mine, the sloppiness and crumbliness appeals.’
Petula now remembered Tinwood’s cautionary remark
about Tackleberry, another of ‘his boys’, discovered at a roller disco in a suburb of Coventry or Solihull (Tim was never fussy about where he had to dig for the muckiest of his human putty), waiting, no doubt, like the others for opportunity to knock. Despite being, in Tinwood’s words, a genius and the next Jason Connery, Tackleberry was ‘prone to sudden fluctuations in weight’ which meant, in plain English, that he would have been handsome had he been three stone lighter, or at least, might then have borne some resemblance to the beefcake in tights Petula saw on the resume she was sent. The other actors, horribly loaded as they were, at least had the virtue of resembling small aspects of their photographed selves. How Tackleberry had become Darcy without life-endangering surgery, involving entire strips of his body being sliced away in time for shooting, flummoxed her. Though not as much as how this pastry-shaped blob had been offered the part in the first place. Petula had noticed him loafing about earlier in the day, making a nuisance of himself round the food, and hoped he had something to do with the lighting or catering, a disc jockey at the very worst, but this? No one deserved Tackleberry on the same day as Wade, Fogle and Tinwood’s other thespian discoveries.
‘Is there any reason why I should be sat next to you, why you asked for me, why I might not be put to better usage elsewhere?’ Tackleberry inquired, pulling a bit of skin as lustrous as sundried dog excreta off his crusty forehead. He was close up to Petula’s face now and looked like he had blown his nose over a container of talcum powder, fine specks of cocaine dotted about his nostrils and chin, his pupils pulsating dangerously. ‘I’m half-Belgian by the way, it’s why my voice is so high, and my diction so damned good. No one would know where I’m from, not even the Belgians. Are there any others here? I hope not. I hate them. But why am I sat next to you? I thought I might be placed next to one of those pretty little foxes. I thought that was why you might have sent for Tackleberry.’
He pointed at Diamanda who was leading Wade by the tie in the direction of the hall lavatory, Landon Trafalgar a few steps behind apparently unsure of whether to intervene or not. Elsewhere, to Petula’s surprise, if not alarm, several guests appeared to be following an ‘if-you-can’t-beat-them-join-them’ policy, empty wine and champagne bottles being changed for fresh ones at a worrying rate of exchange. Even Astley and Eager, standing protectively at Regan’s side, seemed to have managed their objections to the next generation and were hurling the fizz down as fast as Fogle and company.
Nature and Necessity Page 26
