A Decent Interval (14 page)

‘I mean, God,' Dennis Demetriades went on, ‘that business about the dressing rooms …'

‘Yes, I remember her going on to Ned about that at rehearsal. Though, for once, he seemed to assert himself and shut her up quite effectively.'

‘You'd have thought so, wouldn't you? Most people would have said to themselves, “Look, you're not going to win on this one, ducky. You may think you're the most important person in this show, but the show in question is
Hamlet
, and if anyone has a right to the star dressing room in that play, then it has to be Hamlet.” No argument. As I say, that's how most people would have seen it … but not our Katrina. Oh no.'

‘Why, what did she do?' asked Charles.

‘She waited till the First Night and staged a takeover.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Like Hitler annexing the Sudetenland, Katrina just marched in and took over the star dressing room.'

‘While Sam was onstage?'

‘Yes. You know Ophelia has quite a big gap between Act II Scene i with Polonius, while Hamlet has all that stuff with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and the Player King …'

‘Till she has to come back on for the “Get thee to a nunnery” scene?'

‘Exactly, Charles. Well, during that gap Katrina picked up the stuff from her dressing room and plonked it all in Sam's.'

‘How do you know?'

‘I saw her.' The young man realized he had said too much and looked suddenly evasive. ‘I mean, I just happened to be passing along the corridor and I saw her carrying her things from her dressing room to Sam's.'

‘Wow! She'd got some nerve, hadn't she?'

‘Yes. I think she'd have been pretty safe, actually. Sam's not the sort to have made waves about something like that. Katrina knew she could have stood up to Ned English, and would Tony Copeland really have cared about a detail like who was in which dressing room?'

‘Probably not.'

‘Except, of course,' said Dennis Demetriades, his voice appropriately sombre, ‘Katrina didn't get a chance to enjoy her triumph, did she?'

‘No,' Charles agreed. ‘Incidentally, one thing you said intrigued me …'

‘Oh?'

‘That image of Hitler annexing the Sudetenland.'

‘Ah.' The young man reddened, anxious about having his credentials as a serious actor diminished. There were still a lot of people in the profession who regarded university graduates with suspicion. ‘I trained at Rose Bruford. But before that,' he admitted sheepishly, ‘I read History at Cambridge.'

Milly Henryson's performance as Ophelia was good. Charles, of course, had seen her in the role before, in the upstairs room of a Battersea pub, but she fitted well into the Grand Theatre show. Though she wasn't in any of his scenes (except in a coffin for the Gravediggers' – it was characteristic of a Ned English production that he insisted on an open coffin), the enforced idleness of the Friday meant that he sat in the auditorium and watched some of her rehearsals.

He reckoned Milly was better than Katrina Selsey had been in the role. She had a greater instinctive sense of stagecraft, she understood Shakespeare's language and spoke the verse more naturally. What's more, she didn't make suggestions like replacing the songs in the Mad Scene with ones off her latest album.

The basic difference lay in the fact that Milly Henryson was a professional actress (oh damn – actor). Katrina Selsey had had a deal of raw talent, but had her career developed, she would have moved more towards performing rather than acting – and Charles knew there was a big difference between the two. Winning the part of Ophelia in
StarHunt
might have kick-started Katrina's career, but her long-term future would have been in television presenting, being a ‘personality', rather than in the theatre.

Milly Henryson, of course, looked absolutely wonderful on stage. Somehow her black hair and blue eyes suited a Jacobean setting. She was not very different in shape from Katrina Selsey, so the Ophelia costumes had needed the minimum of adjustment. And she looked particularly wonderful onstage with Sam Newton-Reid. The contrast between her dark colouring and his blondness brought something extra to their scenes together. The pair looked even more beautiful onstage than off.

From his vantage point in the stalls, Charles Paris quickly came to the conclusion, though, that their talents were not equally matched. The star quality that Sam Newton-Reid had was something which his girlfriend would never share. Though Milly Henryson might have a successful career in the theatre – given her looks, probably a very successful one – she would never be as remarkable as Sam.

But they clearly loved working together. Seeing them in rehearsal, teasing out the meanings of lines, adjusting to each other's performances, Charles could see that they were enjoying the reality of a long-held dream.

And Milly, of course, was a much less disruptive figure in the company than her deceased predecessor had been. From the point of view of the Tony Copeland Productions'
Hamlet
, both pieces of recasting had been bonuses.

Milly Henryson was ecstatic to be playing Ophelia. There was a buzz about her right through the Friday's rehearsals. Some of it was just sheer euphoria, but Charles Paris could detect another quality in her behaviour. Could it be an air of triumph?

T
he scenes featuring Ophelia in the Saturday matinee of
Hamlet
at the Grand Theatre Marlborough were a little tentative, but by the evening Milly Henryson had overcome her nerves and the general view among all the cast was that they had given their best performance yet. So a large number of the company (though not, Charles noticed with regret, Geraldine Romelle) adjourned to the nearest pub to celebrate. Again the landlord's relaxed approach to the licensing hours allowed them to fit in an hour's drinking.

When time was finally called, Charles Paris floated from the pub to the bottle of Bell's in his digs. As he sat in front of the television, cradling a glass and watching yet another catch-up on the progress of the current
Top Pop
series, he started to feel maudlin. Plaintive words formed in his mind.
Where have you gone, Geraldine? Where is it you go after every rehearsal, every performance? Why don't you join me here? We'd really get on, you know.

He woke cold and cramped at a quarter to four, staggered to his bed and managed a few more sweaty, restless hours of sleep.

He didn't feel good when he woke at quarter to nine. Thank God, he thought, that the place where he was staying was self-catering. The idea of facing a landlady over breakfast was more than he could bring himself to contemplate.

On the other hand, ‘self-catering' did carry with it the implication that he should cater for himself. And he hadn't got in much in the way of supplies. Except for the bottle of Bell's … which bizarrely seemed overnight to have emptied itself.

Charles Paris felt grouchy and self-pitying. Eating something, he knew, would help, and he was sure Marlborough must boast cafés that would be open on a Sunday morning – indeed, he'd seen a plethora of them along the High Street. And yet the thought of sitting in public and …

The pubs would be open at twelve, no doubt offering deals on Sunday Roasts. And after a few drinks he'd be able to eat more easily. But twelve o'clock seemed an awfully long way away.

A shower would help. Stop him feeling so sweaty, at least; get rid of the sense of dampness around the collar of the shirt he'd slept in.

But no. First he needed to ring Frances.

Yes, of course. Once he'd had the idea, he couldn't think why he hadn't had it earlier.

Frances would cheer him up. She was still his wife, after all. And she'd be free, no school on a Sunday. Charles knew there hadn't been a railway station in Marlborough since the Lord Beeching cuts of the 1960s. But he could get a cab to Swindon, then the train from there to London only took about an hour. He and Frances could meet for lunch. Or maybe she'd cook for him. Wow, Sunday lunch with his wife – how nostalgic would that be?

Alternatively, she might offer to drive down to join him for lunch in Marlborough. They'd find a nice pub – there were plenty of those, they weren't all like The Pessimist's Arms – then, boozed-up and randy, they'd come back to his digs.

Her number was in the memory of his mobile. Some silly psychological block – or perhaps his natural innumeracy exacerbated by age – prevented him from remembering what he still thought of as her ‘new' number. Though it was many years since Frances had moved from the house they'd shared into a flat.

He pressed the relevant keys to call her. The ringing tone went on. And on. She must be out. He was about to ring off when the call was picked up. ‘Hello?' Frances's voice was muzzy and a bit resentful. Oh shit, he'd woken her up.

‘Um, it's … er, Charles.'

‘Why?'

‘What do you mean – why?'

‘Why are you ringing me now?'

‘Well, er …'

‘You know how knackered I get during the week. I thought you might have remembered how much I count on my lie-in on a Sunday.'

He did remember now. He also remembered sharing those lie-ins with. Waking slowly to lazy, unhurried fondling and …

‘What do you want, Charles?'

‘I just … I just wanted to hear your voice.' As he said the words, he knew how corny they sounded.

‘Don't be trite. Look, if there's something you want to say, say it quickly and then there's a chance I might be able to get back to sleep. I got to bed very late last night.'

Why? What were you doing? And with whom?
But fortunately Charles managed not to vocalise the questions.

‘Well, Frances, I just … wondered what you were doing today?'

‘I cannot begin to imagine why it's of any interest to you, but I have a lunch date. And if that's all you wanted to ask me—'

‘No, I was just thinking it'd be nice if—'

‘Goodbye, Charles.'

God, what an idiot he was. Why on earth had he rung her? He had hoped for reassurance from the call, but all it had done was to unsettle him. Also to make him jealous. Who had Frances been with last night, the person who had kept her up so late? And who was her ‘lunch date' with? He knew the younger generation used the word ‘date' in any number of contexts – ‘play date', ‘spa date' and so on. But when someone of Frances's generation said ‘lunch date' surely there was some overtone of a romantic assignation …?

The knowledge that he had long ago forfeited any rights to know anything about his wife's love-life didn't make him feel any better.

Miserably, grabbing a grubby towel, Charles Paris made his way towards the shower.

The weekend didn't improve. Many of the
Hamlet
company had taken the opportunity of a day and a half free to visit friends and lovers in London, where no doubt they would gossip with more speculation than information about Katrina Selsey's death. But there were probably a few still around Marlborough. Charles had the contact sheet the stage management had given to all the cast; he could easily call someone to see if they were free for lunch. What might Geraldine Romelle be doing, he wondered wistfully.

But he didn't make any calls. His loneliness was too deep to want company. Instead, to chime in with his mood, on the dot of twelve he pitched up at The Pessimist's Arms. After a couple of pints by way of rehydration, he ordered a glass of red wine to accompany his gristly beef and leathery Yorkshire Pudding. When he went up to order his third red wine, the barman told him unhelpfully that it would have been cheaper to buy a bottle.

More solitary drinking took place on the Sunday evening and Monday lunchtime. At that evening's performance of
Hamlet
, the Ghost of Hamlet's Father and the First Gravedigger both stumbled over a few of their lines.

Charles Paris was woken on the Tuesday morning by a call on his mobile. The move he made to sit up and answer it was far too sudden. His head felt as though steel knitting needles were being pushed into it from a variety of angles.

‘Good morning, is that Mr Paris?'

‘Er, yes.'

‘This is Detective Constable Whittam.' A female voice. So the surname he didn't catch during his Good Cop/Bad Cop interview in his dressing room was ‘Whittam'.

‘Oh, good morning. How can I help you?' He knew his voice sounded unnatural, overeager to please. Why was it that he always felt guilty in the face of authority figures?

‘I just wanted to check something about the evening of Katrina Selsey's death.'

‘Fine. Check away,' said Charles, clumsily insouciant.

‘You remember we talked about your visit to what you called “the star dressing room”?'

‘Yes.'

‘And you said that you weren't expecting to find Katrina Selsey in there?'

‘That's right.'

‘Well, from what we've heard from Mr Newton-Reid, it seems that she only moved into the dressing room during the performance that evening, just before her death.'

‘Really?' Confirming what Dennis Demetriades had told him. But Charles didn't volunteer that information. He'd wait to see which way the questioning was leading.

‘I just wondered whether you knew that, Mr Paris?'

‘I've already told you I didn't. But you say that Sam Newton-Reid did?'

‘Well, he kind of deduced it. He had been using it as his dressing room at the beginning of the performance … you know, he had changed into his costume there, then left it when the play started and wouldn't have got back there till the interval.'

‘No, Hamlet's one of those parts that doesn't give you much opportunity to loll about in your dressing room.'

‘And, of course, he never did get back to the dressing room because by then you'd discovered Katrina Selsey's body …'