‘Oh, I heard some rumour. Must have got it wrong.’ Obviously to the ordinary member of the company there was nothing bizarre going on. There was no general feeling of doom, of a ‘bad luck’ show. Gerald’s imagination had been overstimulated by thoughts of the size of his financial investment. For Charles, it was just an acting job. He raised his glass to his lips and reflected on the differences between unemployed drinking and drinking with a nine-month contract. A warm glow filled him.
‘Griff love, can you do me a port.’ The new voice belonged to a good-looking young man in a smart blazer and check trousers. ‘I’ve got the most frightful throat coming on and David’s just sent me to go through my songs with Alec up in the billiard room.’
‘Port, eh?’
‘It’s the only thing for a throat, Griff.’
‘Huh.’
‘Mark, have you met Charles Paris?’
‘No, Mike, I haven’t. Hello, I’m Mark Spelthorne.’ He left an infinitesimal pause for Charles to say, ‘Yes, of course, I recognise your face from the television,’ but Charles didn’t, so he continued. ‘You’re taking over from poor old Everard?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, don’t drink too much of that, or you’ll go the same way.’
‘I’ll be careful.’ It wasn’t worth objecting to the young man’s patronising tone.
‘Do you know, Mike,’ said Mark Spelthorne, though he was addressing the world in general rather than anyone in particular, ‘my agent is a bloody fool. He had a call yesterday from Yorath Knightley — do you know him?’
‘No.’
‘BBC. Telly. Drama. Wanted me for a play, super part. Rehearsals the week after this opens. Lovely, just what I need. But my damn fool agent says, oh no, out of the question, they may have some rerehearsal and what have you on Lumpkin! Honestly. I said, well, surely, love, we can get a few days off, sort round the contract, organise the filming round the schedule for this show. Oh no, he says, you’re under contract. No bloody imagination. I think I must get another agent.’
‘Sorry it took so long. Had to open a bottle. Don’t get much call for port here. One or two of the ladies has it with lemon, but most of the gents drink beer or spirits.’
‘Never mind, Griff. Bless you,’ said Mark Spelthorne bountifully. He took a sip of the drink and gargled it gently, then swallowed. ‘Better.’ He repeated the process. Charles and Mike watched in silence as the glass slowly emptied. ‘Ah well, better test out the old singing voice.’
‘If you want to hear real singing,’ said Griff morosely, ‘you want to listen to a Welsh male voice choir.’
‘Ah.’ Mark was nonplussed, not certain what his reaction should be.
‘We used to have a choir here at the Welsh Dragon. Lovely singing. Better than anything I’ve heard since you lot’ve been here.’
‘That’s a matter of opinion.’ Mark hesitated, uncertain whether or not that was a good enough exit line. Failing to come up with a better one, he exited to the billiard room.
‘Should I know him, Mike? He behaved as if I should.’
‘Not unless you’re a fan of The Fighter Pilots, Charles.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You’re obviously not. It’s an ITV series. Another cashing in on the nostalgia boom. Mark Spelthorne plays Flying Officer Falconer, whose daring missions and dreary love life fill up most of each episode.’
‘Oh. I’ve never heard of him in the theatre.’
‘I don’t think he’s done much. Presumably he did his forty weeks round the provinces to get the Equity card, but I think that’s it. He’s one of the media mushrooms who has sprung up overnight as a fully developed television star.’
‘Then why is he in this?’
‘Publicity, Charles. So that he can be billed on the poster as Mark Spelthorne of The Fighter Pilots. That’s to mop up the one per cent of the population who haven’t come to see Christopher Milton of Straight Up, Guv.’
‘The television take-over is complete.’
‘Yes.’
‘He seemed to have a fairly inflated opinion of himself.’
‘Ah, he would like to be a big star, Charles.’
‘And will he make it?’
‘I don’t know. Somehow I don’t think so. Don’t think he’s got what it takes.’
‘What’s he playing?’
‘Your son, Young Marlow.’
‘That’s the best part in the play.’
‘Was, Charles, was. Maybe that’s what Goldsmith intended, but that was before Christopher Milton got his hands on the script.’
‘Yes,’ the gloomy man at the fruit machine chipped in suddenly and savagely. ‘Before Christopher Milton got his bloody hands on the script.’
There was a moment’s pause before Michael Peyton recovered himself sufficiently to make the introduction. ‘Charles Paris-Kevin McMahon.’
‘Ah yes. You wrote Liberty Hall.’
‘In a previous existence, I think.’ His voice had the rough blur of a hangover and there was a large Scotch on a table beside the fruit machine. Having registered his protest, he seemed to lose interest in the two actors and, with an air of self-mortification, pressed another ten pence into the slot. Or maybe he turned away as a deliberate snub to the man entering the bar. ‘Morning, everyone. Hello, Griff. Charles Paris, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Delighted you’re with us on the show.’
Charles took the offered firm handshake and looked into the clear, honest face. ‘My name’s Christopher Milton.’
CHAPTER FOUR
The next few weeks were an education for Charles. The sort of theatre he had always concentrated on had not depended on stars. Christopher Milton was a star.
At their initial meeting he was charming. There was only a short break in rehearsal, but he devoted it all to the new member of the company. And he had done his homework. He referred to incidents in Charles’ career which he could not have guessed at, but which showed genuine interest or research. He spoke flatteringly about the one successful play Charles had written, The Ratepayer. In fact all the right things were said and Charles was impressed. He saw once again the distorting mirror of showbiz rumour at work. Reputations get inflated and diminished by gossip and scandal. One bitchy remark by a jealous actor can give the permanent stigma of being ‘difficult’ to another. Time and again Charles had encountered supposedly ‘lovely’ people who were absolute monsters and been charmed by supposed monsters. And he found Christopher Milton charming.
As rehearsals developed and he began to feel part of the company, it was increasingly difficult to take Gerald’s fears of sabotage seriously. There was an air of tension about the production, but no more than one would expect from any show at that stage of development. Charles’ role was not an onerous one, and Griff’s ever-open bar was an ideal place to toast Gerald’s excessive anxiety which had got him the job.
He had a slight twinge of misgiving as the Tuesday approached. Gerald had made such an issue of the fact that the two accidents had taken place exactly a week apart. If there were a psychopathic wrecker about, determined to ruin the show, then he would strike again on the Tuesday.
Charles went to rehearsal that morning with some trepidation but the day passed and there wasn’t so much as a cold among the cast. He decided that he had just landed on his feet in an acting job. Eighty pounds a week and sucks to the taxman.
He had not seen much of the show except for the scenes which involved him, but on the Wednesday he decided to stay on after he’d finished. They were rehearsing the Chase Scene at the end.
Now Goldsmith did not write a Chase Scene. In his play Tony Lumpkin meets Hastings and describes how he has just led Mrs Hardcastle and Miss Neville on a circular wild goose chase until, ‘with a circumbendibus, I fairly lodged them in the horse-pond at the bottom of the garden’. But description is not the stuff of West End musicals. Kevin McMahon had written a small chase into Liberty Hall and had been persuaded to expand it for Lumpkin! The result was a massive production number with song and dance, as Tony Lumpkin actually led the two ladies in their coach through mire and thicket. The dancers, playing a series of misdirecting yokels, buxom country wenches and a full-scale fox hunt which would have amazed Goldsmith, were rehearsing elsewhere on their own, and the special effects of fog, rain and snow were not yet available. Nor was it possible to simulate the moving trees and revolving cottages which were to add visual excitement to the scene. But it was already a complicated sequence and an interesting one to watch.