A Decent Interval (2 page)

Anyway, he didn't like the documentary much. To Charles's mind there was something ridiculous about the 1455 First Battle of St Albans being discussed by a woman walking through a shopping mall in modern St Albans. In what way could the Tesco's, PC World and W.H. Smith she passed be helping to give a historical context to her commentary? Also, the cargo pants and tight cotton shirt she wore gave the mall an impression more of a catwalk than a lecture room. Which was probably the programme-maker's intention.

Charles did keep coming back to the fact that they were very striking breasts, though. And he couldn't help feeling that they must have had something to do with her success on the box. He was sure that British universities boasted plenty of equally knowledgeable academics whose less generous contours kept them out of the nation's sitting rooms.

As he sipped at his glass of Bell's, Charles Paris, not for the first time, pondered mournfully the impossibility of balanced relationships with the opposite sex (though that, he reflected, was probably too adversarial an expression to use – nowadays no doubt you couldn't call women the ‘opposite' sex, you had to call them the ‘complementary' sex).

He must have dozed off. The television was still on when he woke, showing an early hours repeat of some talent show. Called
StarHunt
, the series was apparently searching for an unknown actress (or ‘female actor', as Charles kept reminding himself he had to say nowadays) to play the part of Ophelia in a forthcoming West End production of
Hamlet
. The aspirants were amateurs – that was one of the show's selling points. It was based on the – to Charles's mind completely fallacious – view that anyone can become a star. All of the contestants – girls in their late teens identically over-made-up with heavily mascaraed false eyelashes and unnaturally white teeth – said how big a part of their life
StarHunt
had become, how they were ‘really going to go for it', how much support they were getting from their families (cut to simpering parents in the studio audience), how nervous they were, and how much they respected their fellow contestants and the judges.

Charles was surprised to discover that this panel of D-list celebrities included someone he knew. Ned English, who would be directing the
Hamlet
when it finally got to the stage, was someone he had worked with. A very long time ago – about twenty-seven years – in Hornchurch, Charles had been in Ned's production of
Love's Labour's Lost
playing Costard (‘Charles Paris's Mummerset accent was well-nigh incomprehensible' –
Romford Recorder.
) The director had then been an
enfant terrible
of the English theatre, notorious for stirring controversy by his ‘reimaginings' of classic plays. While still at Cambridge, his
King Lear
, whose action had been transplanted into an aquarium, caused a minor sensation. And his
Doll's House
, in which all the characters were dressed like dolls and moved as if they were string puppets, was still talked about.

The
Love's Labour's Lost
in which Charles Paris had given his Costard had been set (for no very good reason) in the trenches during the First World War. When interviewed about his work, Ned English always said he ‘listened to what the play was telling him'. If that was the case, Charles Paris reckoned that in
Love's Labour's Lost
the director must have been working from a different text of Shakespeare's play than the one he had.

As with most
enfants terribles
, Ned English's star had waned and he settled later in his career into comfortable predictability. A new generation of thrusting young directors hogged the limelight by doing things like setting J.B. Priestley's
An Inspector Calls
in a collapsing doll's house. (Damn, Ned had never thought of that.) Like Ned's, the approach of these new Young Turks demonstrated complete contempt for the text. This play, they seemed to be saying, is so bad that it can only be salvaged by my genius, my own particular brand of visual pyrotechnics.

So, having ceased to be flavour of the month, to get the job directing
Hamlet
must have been a considerable boost for Ned English. Particularly as it involved appearing on television. Charles Paris was constantly surprised by the compulsive attraction of television to people in the theatre. Not the attraction of acting on the box – that was fine, and the money was much better than in the theatre. But so many actors and directors wanted to appear as ‘themselves' (or rather a contrived version of themselves). They wanted to be on chat shows and panel games, showing how nice they were, how jolly they were. And very few of them were any good at it.

The idea of exposing himself in that way was total anathema to Charles. One of the reasons he had gone into the theatre was because the profession offered him opportunities to disguise his own personality under layers of others. He loved acting, but he shrank from revealing the real Charles Paris (or even a sanitized television-friendly version of his persona).

And yet Ned English was clearly glorying in his new-found fame on the box. In all such talent shows the mix of judges is the same. There's an acerbic pragmatist who is very rude to all the contestants. (In
StarHunt
this part was taken by Tony Copeland, a producer famous for his very lucrative touring productions and other wide media interests, who would be guiding the
Hamlet
on its trajectory into the West End.) There's a dishy young woman vaguely attached to show business who is sympathetic to ‘how hard' the contestants have worked to get to this point in the show. And there's a lovable professional who is very encouraging, particularly when a contestant is patently rubbish.

It was this last role that Ned English had been granted. And he wasn't very good at it.

But he clearly thought he was. He played shamelessly to the camera, milked audience reactions and went through a laboured routine of defending the contestants from the cruellest (scripted) barbs of Tony Copeland.

This played perfectly into the producer's hands. So much so that Charles Paris began to wonder whether Ned had been given the job solely to point up the wit of Tony Copeland. The latter treated his fellow judge as an innocent child, who naively could see the good in everyone. A typical exchange between the two of them after an unfortunate aspirant had recited a Shakespeare speech would go:

presenter:
Well, Ned, what did you think of Kelly-Marie's performance of Portia's speech from
The Merchant of Venice?

ned english:
I think the girl has a lot of talent. Clearly a bit of a problem pronouncing her Rs, but with elocution—

tony copeland:
I'd say a bigger risk for her was falling on her Rs.

[Audience laughter. Camera cuts to unfortunate aspirant, fighting back tears.]

ned english:
Now you're being cruel, Tony. As a director, I know that every actor can improve enormously with a little encouragement.

tony copeland:
I personally think it's cruel to encourage someone who has no talent.

ned english:
Are you saying Kelly-Marie has no talent?

tony copeland:
I've seen more talent in a plank of wood.

[Shocked audience laughter. Camera cuts to unfortunate aspirant, having even more difficulty in fighting back the tears.]

ned english:
Oh, that's just unfair, Tony.

tony copeland:
I agree. Yes, I apologize for what I said.

ned english:
I'm glad to hear it.

tony copeland:
Comparing Kelly-Marie to a plank of wood is definitely unfair … to planks of wood!

[Riotous audience laughter and applause. Camera cuts to unfortunate aspirant, now in floods of tears, being led away by a hostess in a sparkly dress.]

And so
StarHunt
went on, like all so-called ‘reality shows', humiliating members of the public, an activity rather easier than shooting fish in a barrel.

Charles Paris noted that Ned English also looked different. Even back in Hornchurch days he had been completely grey, and yet for television he sported a glossy mane of chestnut hair. And his dark brown eyes now peered through round comedy tortoiseshell glasses.

Watching the repeat of
StarHunt
made Charles extremely cross. Is this what the theatre's come to? he fulminated into his whisky glass. Can't a production of one of Shakespeare's greatest plays get into the West End without this ridiculous publicity circus? And, even more pertinent, can't Ophelia be cast by the normal auditioning process, to reward some genuinely talented young person who has worked her way through drama school and the early dispiriting uncertainties of a professional career in the theatre? Rather than some jumped-up teenager from Essex whose Mum produced fond footage of her singing and dancing to the video camera at the age of two?

The thought brought Charles back to one of the enduring qualities of his profession – its unfairness. Like most actors, he reckoned that if talent were all, the hierarchy at the top of the theatrical tree would take a very different form. But it wasn't the most skilled actors who tended to get the breaks. It was often the ones who came with some publicity story attached, some special detail that brought them to the notice of the public. It didn't have to be much. Good looks were sometimes enough. Being in a relationship with someone more famous never hurt. And, of course, being born into a theatrical dynasty made you a shoo-in.

Charles Paris had lost count of the number of actors he had encountered who were more talented than the ones he'd seen become stars. And though he'd never admit it to anyone for fear of sounding as if he'd overdosed on sour grapes, he did actually include himself in that number. If only he'd had the breaks, Charles Paris's career could have been … But no, he must stop thinking like that. It wasn't helpful and was unlikely to improve his mood.

He thought back to a production of
Hamlet
he'd seen with his wife Frances not that long before. He couldn't remember exactly how long, and he wondered whether it was actually the last time they'd met. Must ring Frances, he reminded himself. Though they didn't cohabit, Charles liked to feel that there was a lot of warmth still between them.

The reason they had seen the production was that the actor playing Hamlet was the boyfriend of one of his wife's former pupils. (Frances was headmistress of a girls' school.) The girl – whatever her name was, he'd forgotten – was playing Ophelia. But what Charles remembered was being blown away by the young man's raw talent and the intelligence of his interpretation of one of the best parts in world theatre. What was his name? Something hyphenated … Oh yes, Sam Newton-Reid.

Charles remembered talking to the boy with his girlfriend in the bar afterwards. The venue wasn't a particularly prestigious one, just an upstairs room in a pub in Battersea. And despite the enthusiasm of the tiny audience, no newspaper reviewers had seen the show. Sam and his girlfriend had tried to get various influential people along … Charles seemed to remember Tony Copeland's name being mentioned … but he got the impression none of them had turned up.

So, despite having given one of the best performances of Hamlet that Charles or Frances had seen for a long time, Sam Newton-Reid looked to be going nowhere as a result of the production. He hadn't got another acting job to go to and was talking of a return to the job he'd had since leaving university – working in telesales.

To Charles Paris that was just one more dispiriting story of many in his profession. A talent like Sam Newton-Reid's would probably shrivel up in disappointment while some primped-up little madam from Essex would tread the West End stage as Ophelia.

The grumpiness that
StarHunt
engendered in Charles was another reason to hit the Bell's hard. So hard that he hadn't even made it to bed and had been crumpled in an armchair when the doorbell woke him at four in the morning.

C
harles Paris hadn't had time to change his clothes. A quick brush through his hair and a toothpaste scrub at his teeth (which did little to diminish the arid metallic foulness inside his mouth), and he was on his way. He hoped the part Tibor Pincus had for him wasn't a clean-shaven one … though the girls in make-up usually had a razor around for such eventualities.

The journey out through the South London suburbs didn't do much to relieve the dry pounding in Charles's head, and when they turned off the A3, through some wiggly country roads, he began to feel distinctly sick.

But there was still a little wisp of excitement in him about the fact of being on location. There was something that got to an actor about working away from rehearsal room and theatre. Though all it often meant, particularly in the film industry, was hours of waiting around, the word ‘location' still had a magic to it. Charles Paris even recalled a few romantic escapades which he had enjoyed in out-of-the-way hotels during filming. Illicit, of course, but then he'd been technically married to Frances for so long that almost all of his romantic escapades had been illicit. Besides, there's a casuistic expression current among married actors prone to straying. D.C.O.L. Which, of course, stands for ‘Doesn't Count On Location'.

So, through his hangover, Charles was looking forward to the day. To dream of a sexual encounter was perhaps optimistic, but at least there was always location catering to look forward to. Again his memory brought back recollections of far too many bacon sandwiches consumed, still leaving room for lavish lunches, frequently eaten in converted double-decker buses. He looked out eagerly for the distinctive small village of trucks and trailers that indicated a shoot was in progress.

He was thus considerably disappointed when his minicab stopped in the deserted car park by the Newlands Corner Visitors' Centre alongside a single rented white van. ‘Are you sure this is the right place?'