The Friday performance was scrappy. The cuts had been only partly assimilated and the show was full of sudden pauses, glazed expressions and untidy musical passages where some of the band remembered the cut and some didn’t. With that perversity which makes it impossible for actors ever to know what will or won’t work onstage, the audience loved it…
Charles was taking his make-up off at speed — even with the cuts, it was still a close call to the pub — when there was a discreet knock on his door. Assuming that someone must have got the wrong dressing-room, he opened it and was amazed to be confronted by his daughter Juliet and her husband Miles. What amazed him more was that Juliet, who had a trim figure and was not in the ordinary way prone to smocks, was obviously pregnant.
‘Good heavens. Come. Sit down,’ he added hastily, over-conscious of Juliet’s condition. It confused him. He knew that everything about having children is a continual process of growing apart and could remember, when Frances first brought the tiny baby home, the shock of its separateness, but seeing his daughter pregnant seemed to double the already considerable gulf between them.
‘Enjoyed the show very much,’ Juliet volunteered.
‘Oh good,’ Charles replied, feeling that he should have kissed her on her arrival, but that he’d been too surprised and now he had missed the opportunity (and that the whole history of his relationship with his daughter had been missed opportunities to show affection and draw close to her). ‘I didn’t know you were coming. You should have let me know. I could have organised tickets,’ he concluded feebly, as if free seats could compensate for a life-time of non-communication.
‘I didn’t know I was coming till today. Miles had to come to a dinner in Bristol and then I was talking to Mummy yesterday and she said you were in this show and I thought I’d come and see it.’
That gave him a frisson too. He had not told Frances about Lumpkin! How had she found out? At least that meant she was still interested in his activities. He couldn’t work out whether the thought elated or depressed him.
‘I didn’t see the show, of course,’ Miles stated in the plonking, consciously-mature manner he had. ‘I had to attend this dinner of my professional body.’
Charles nodded. He could never begin to relate to his son-in-law. Miles Taylerson did very well in insurance, which was a conversation-stopper for Charles before they started. Miles was only about twenty-five, but had obviously sprung middle-aged from his mother’s womb (though, when Charles reflected on Miles’ mother, it was unlikely that she had a womb — she must have devised some other more hygienic and socially acceptable method of producing children). Miles and Juliet lived in a neat circumscribed executive estate in Pangbourne and did everything right. They bought every possession (including the right opinions) that the young executive should have and their lives were organised with a degree of foresight that made the average Soviet Five-Year-Plan look impetuous.
When Miles spoke, Charles took him in properly for the first time. He was dressed exactly as a young executive should be for a dinner of his professional body. Dinner jacket, but not the old double-breasted or now-dated rolled-lapel style. It was cut like an ordinary suit, in very dark blue rather than black, with a discreet braiding of silk ribbon. Conventional enough not to offend any senior members of the professional body, but sufficiently modern to imply that here was a potential pace-setter for that professional body. The bow tie was velvet, large enough to maintain the image of restrained panache, but not so large as to invite disturbing comparisons with anything flamboyant or artistic. The shirt was discreetly frilled, like the paper decoration on a leg of lamb. In fact, as he thought of the image, Charles realised that that was exactly what Miles looked like — a well-dressed joint of meat.
Recalling a conversation that Miles and he had had two years previously on the subject of breeding intentions, he could not resist a dig. ‘When’s the baby due?’ he asked ingenuously.
‘Mid-April.’ Juliet supplied the information.
‘You’ve changed your plans, Miles. I thought you were going to wait a couple more years until you were more established financially.’
‘Well, yes…’ Miles launched into his prepared arguments. ‘When we discussed it, I was thinking that we would need Juliet’s income to keep going comfortably, but of course, I’ve had one or two rises since then and a recent promotion, so the mortgage isn’t taking such a big bite as it was, and I think the general recession picture may be clearing a little with the Government’s anti-inflation package really beginning to work and so we decided that we could advance our plans a little.’
He paused for breath and Juliet said, ‘Actually it was a mistake.’ Charles could have hugged her. He spoke quickly to stop himself laughing. ‘I’m sorry I can’t offer you anything to drink… I don’t keep anything here.’ With a last act entrance and an adjacent pub, there didn’t seem any need.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not drinking much, because of the baby.’
‘And I had up to my limit at the dinner. Don’t want to get nabbed on the M4.’ The image came of Miles sitting at the dinner of his professional body, measuring out his drinks drop by drop (and no doubt working out their alcoholic content with his pocket calculator).
‘You say you heard from your mother yesterday,’ said Charles, with what attempted (and failed) to be the insouciance of a practitioner of modem marriage, unmoved by considerations of fidelity and jealousy.
‘Yes.’
‘How was she?’
‘Fine.’
‘How’s the new boy friend?’ He brought in the question with the subtlety of a sledge-hammer.
‘Oh, what do you…?’ Juliet was flustered. ‘Oh, Alec. Well, I don’t know that you’d quite call him a boy friend. I mean, he just teaches at the same school as Mummy and, you know, they see each other. But Alec’s very busy, doesn’t have much time. He’s a scout-master and tends to be off camping or climbing or doing arduous training most weekends.’
Good God. A scout-master. Frances must have changed if she’d found a scout-master to console her. Perhaps she’d deliberately looked for someone as different as possible from her husband.
Juliet tactfully redirected the conversation, a skill no doubt refined by many Pangbourne coffee mornings. ‘It must be marvellous working in a show with Christopher Milton.’
‘In what way marvellous?’
‘Well, he must be such fun. I mean, he comes across as so… nice. Is he just the same off stage?’
‘Not exactly.’ Charles could also be tactful.
But apparently Christopher Milton united the Taylersons in admiration. Miles thought the television show was ‘damn funny’ and he was also glad, ‘that you’re getting into this sort of theatre, Pop. I mean, it must be quite a fillip, career-wise.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, being in proper commercial theatre, you know, West End, chance of a good long run, that sort of thing. I mean, it’s almost like having a regular job.’
‘Miles, I have done quite a few shows in the West End before, and if I have spent a lot of my life going round the reps, it’s at least partly because I have found more variety of work there, more interest.’
‘But the West End must be the top.’
‘Not necessarily. If you want to be a star, I suppose it might be, but if you want to be an actor, it certainly isn’t.’
‘Oh, come on, surely everyone in acting wants to be a star.’
‘No, actors are different. Some want to open supermarkets, some just want to act.’
‘But they must want to be stars. I mean, it’s the only way up. Just as everyone in a company wants to be managing director.’
‘That principle is certainly not true in acting, and I doubt if it’s true in the average company.’
‘Of course it is. Oh, people cover up and pretend they haven’t got ambitions just because they see them dashed or realise they haven’t got a chance, but that’s what everyone wants. And it must be the same in the theatre, except that the West End stars are the managing directors.’