Dead Room Farce (6 page)

At ten to six, Lisa Wilson gave up the unequal struggle. ‘OK, let's call that a wrap. Well done, Charles. Last bit was very good.'

‘Thanks.' He acknowledged the compliment with a tired grin. But inside him was the lurking fear that the recording wouldn't have been so good without that mid-afternoon injection of alcohol. Had he really reached the stage when he needed a ‘maintenance dose'?

As he went through into the cubicle, he ached all over, but it was a better ache than that brought on by the hangover. This was the tiredness of having achieved something.

‘Only about twenty pages behind where we should be,' said Lisa, with a hint of approbation in her voice. ‘You picked up the pace quite a bit.'

‘Well done,' Mark agreed. ‘I'd say that deserves a drink.'

Charles saw the tiny spasm go through Lisa's face, as she bit back her instinctive response. She had been living with Mark long enough to know that direct confrontation wasn't the best way of dealing with him.

‘You coming, love?' her partner asked, a slight tease in his voice, once again daring her to express disapproval.

‘No,' she replied lightly. ‘Got to do a Sainsbury's run when I finish in here.'

‘OK. Well, if I'm not home when you get back, we'll be in the Queen's Head.'

‘Fine,' said Lisa Wilson, and only someone who, like Charles Paris, had witnessed her relationship with Mark throughout the day, would have known that what she meant was actually far from ‘fine'.

‘Happy coincidence.' Charles raised his glass, took a long swig and felt the warm glow of a second large Bell's irradiate his parched system. ‘I mean, your studio being in Bath and our show opening in Bath.'

‘What is the show? I know you told me, but I can't remember.' Mark Lear was also on the whisky, which he was downing as if the world's supplies were on the verge of exhaustion.

‘Not On Your Wife!'

‘Don't know it.'

‘Well, you wouldn't. It's a new play. By Bill Blunden.'

‘Oh.' The monosyllable contained all that snobbish resistance the playwright's work usually inspired in people with university educations. Bill Blunden may have been an audience-pleaser, but he didn't strike much of a chord among the intelligentsia. When, every now and then, Sunday newspaper reviewers took it into their heads to rehabilitate farce as an acceptable medium of entertainment, they would home in invariably on Feydeau, Pinero or perhaps Ben Travers. Bill Blunden was too ordinary, too mechanical; his plays were mere clockwork toys designed to entrap laughter. He would never attain intellectual respectability; his only comfort would have to remain the huge international royalties which his plays brought in.

‘And you're touring it, Charles, is that right?'

‘Mm, three months. Fortnight in Bath, then single weeks. Bill Blunden always takes his shows on the road, works on them, does lots of rewrites, sharpens them up.'

‘With a view to the West End?'

‘Ultimately, yes. But some'll have three or four tours before he's happy.'

‘So you haven't got a West End option in your contract?'

‘Nothing so grand, no. They did check my availability for three months hence, but that's as far as it went.'

‘Oh, right.' Mark Lear chuckled with sudden recollection. ‘Checked with your agent, eh? I've just remembered, when we last worked together, you were with this incredibly inefficient agent . . . what was his name? Maurice Skellern, that's right. He was a kind of a joke throughout the whole business, the worst agent since records began.' Mark shook his head and chuckled again. ‘Who represents you now?'

‘Maurice Skellern,' Charles Paris replied.

‘Oh.'

‘I hope today was all right . . .?' said Charles tentatively. ‘I mean, the recording.'

‘It was fine.'

‘I felt awful, arriving so hungover and –'

‘Don't worry, we've had many worse through the studio.'

‘I didn't think the studio had been open that long.'

‘Well, no, not through that studio, but when I was at the Beeb . . .' A hazy look came into Mark Lear's eyes. ‘I remember once doing a play with Everard Austick, and he was virtually on an intravenous drip of gin.' The retired producer let out a little melancholy laugh. ‘Good times we had, back in the old days . . .'

Charles could see what had happened. In Mark Lear's mind, the BBC, the institution he had spent all the time he worked there berating, had become a golden city in his recollection. Now he wasn't there, it was perfect. For Mark, perfection would always be somewhere he wasn't. Charles suspected that the same pattern obtained in his friend's private life too. While he had been with Vinnie, all his young girls on the side had represented the greener grass of happiness. And now he was with Lisa . . . Charles wondered where Mark's fantasies hovered now.

‘No, but I hope the recording was all right. Lisa didn't seem very happy with what I was doing . . .' Charles ventured.

‘Don't worry about Lisa. She gets very po-faced about the whole business. What she doesn't realise is that the creative process should be
fun
. She's always clock-watching and budget-watching . . . and number-of-drinks-watching. Do you think, if I'd had that kind of attitude, I'd ever have produced any of the great programmes I did when I was at the Beeb?'

Charles Paris was too polite to ask which ‘great programmes', as Mark went on, ‘No, creativity is a wild spirit. It's the untutored, the anarchic, the bohemian. That's what creates art – danger, risks being taken in the white heat of rehearsal – not a bunch of accountants poring over spreadsheets in offices.'

Charles searched for a safe, uncontroversial reaction, and came up with ‘Hm.'

Mark Lear shook himself out of his ‘misunderstood artist' mode. ‘Right, same again, is it?'

‘Maybe I should move on to the wine . . .'

‘Time enough for wine. A couple more large Scotches first.'

Well, Charles comforted himself, it wasn't as if he hadn't worked hard. He'd earned some kind of reward. No, all things considered, his first day of reading an audio book hadn't been too bad. And
Dark Promises
by Madeleine Eglantine was by no means an easy read.

As for the hangover, well . . . that'd probably been mostly nerves. There was a definite pattern to these things. Charles's hangovers always seemed to be at their worst on days when he had something important to do. Days when he was relaxed, when he wasn't stressed, he could wake up feeling fine, however much of a skinful he'd had the night before. He never quite knew whether it was the challenge of a difficult day ahead that exacerbated the hangover, or whether his anxiety pushed him to drink more the night before such difficult days. Either way, he knew he was feeling better now.

It wasn't a bad achievement, actually, fitting in a couple of days' reading in the middle of the rehearsal schedule for a play. That was the kind of thing stars did. ‘Doing a telly on that free Sunday before we open,' actors like Bernard Walton would say airily, while the rest of the cast would sit, shrouded in misery, thinking, ‘There's no justice. The bugger's already being paid twenty times more than me for this show,
and
he's cleaning up with a quick telly as well.'

Charles Paris's current position wasn't quite on that financial scale, but it was still rather heart-warming. Mark Lear had specifically asked for him to do the reading of
Dark Promises
, and had been happy to fit the dates into the brief break in the
Not On Your Wife!
rehearsals when the show transferred from London to Bath. That was quite a novelty in Charles Paris's theatrical career – shoehorning bookings into a busy schedule, rather than planting tiny, distantly spaced oases of work into the arid wastes of his diary.

And he put from his mind the thought – no, the knowledge – that Mark had turned to him only because he was familiar, someone who wouldn't shake the boat, someone who was safe.

The third large Bell's was as welcome as its predecessors. Must watch it tonight, something in the recesses of Charles's mind mumbled, just moderate intake tonight – OK? But who was going to listen to a voice like that, when the alcohol tasted so good?

‘Who's directing this tatty show of yours?'

‘David J. Girton.'

‘David J. Girton? From the Beeb?'

‘Right.'

‘Good Lord. Presumably he's left the old place?'

‘No longer on staff. Gather he still goes back to work on individual projects on contract.'

Mark Lear let out a harsh laugh. “‘Individual projects on contract”? Oh, that's what they all say. It's the equivalent of that movie euphemism, “having a script in development”, or “consulting” in advertising, or “wanting to spend more time with your family” if you're a politician. Means he's out on his ear.'

‘No, David did say he was going back to produce another series of one of his long-running sitcoms next month. I think it's called
Neighbourhood Watch
.'

‘Oh?' The news clearly pained Mark. It was all right so long as all his former colleagues were in the same boat, so long as they'd all been unceremoniously dumped, as he had. But he didn't like the idea that one of them was still reckoned to be of value to his former employer. The thought brought a new viciousness into his tone. ‘He's a lucky bugger, that David J. Girton.'

‘Oh?' Charles prompted innocently.

‘Yes, a few years back he was extremely fortunate not to lose his job.'

‘What happened?'

‘Bit of financial fiddling.'

‘But surely that was always common practice in the Beeb? I thought doing your expenses was one of the most purely creative parts of the job.'

‘David's fiddling was on a rather bigger scale than that.' In response to Charles's interrogative expression, Mark was about to say more, but changed his mind. ‘Let's just say, he was lucky to keep his job.'

‘Ooh, you do know how to tease,' said Charles in the voice he'd used as the outrageously camp Gorringe in
Black Comedy
in Ipswich (‘One of the best arguments for heterosexuality I've seen in a long time' –
Eastern Daily Press)
.

‘Who's in the cast then, apart from you?'

Mark Lear raised an eyebrow at the mention of Bernard Walton. ‘He's quite a big name. They must have hopes for the West End if he's involved.'

‘Oh yes, I should think Bernard's secure, but the rest of the company might change a bit on the way. Bill Blunden's shows have a reputation for touring with a cheapish cast, which gets more upmarket when the show “goes in”.'

‘So you think you might not stay the course?'

‘I'd like to, obviously, but . . .'

‘Hm.' Mark Lear nodded his head thoughtfully. ‘Well, of course, Charles, you always have been a cheapish actor . . .' He seemed unaware that he might have said anything mildly offensive. ‘And if Maurice Skellern's still your agent . . .' His grimace completed the sentence more effectively than any words could have done. ‘Bernard Walton, though,' he went on. ‘Well, you should be all right. He's definitely bums on seats, isn't he?'

‘That's the idea. Though apparently the box office advance isn't as good as they were hoping for.'

‘Probably pick up by word of mouth.'

‘Maybe. You ever work with Bernard, Mark? I'm sure he did radio back in the early days.'

Mark Lear shook his head. ‘No. I was first aware of him on the telly. That ITV sitcom . . . forget the name . . .

‘What'll the Neighbours Say?'

‘That's the one. So who else have you got in the cast?'

Charles continued his run through the dramatis personae of
Not On Your Wife!
His friend reacted to the mention of Pippa Trewin.

‘Do you know her, Mark? Have you worked with her?'

Mark shook his head in puzzlement.

‘It's pretty unlikely you would have done, actually. She only finished drama school last year.'

‘Hmm . . . No, I know the name in some connection, can't remember where.'

Charles pointed to Mark's whisky glass. ‘That rotting the old brain, is it?'

But his friend didn't respond to the jocularity in the question. ‘Perhaps it is,' he replied slowly. ‘Certainly there's a lot of stuff I don't remember these days. Not that it matters much. I'm not doing much these days that's
worth
remembering.' With an effort, he shook himself out of this melancholy downward spiral. ‘You have that problem, Charles? The old memory? Can you still remember your lines?'

‘Pretty well.' It was true. Memorising lines was simply a matter of practice, and Charles hadn't lost the knack. When that facility went, then it really would be time to cut down on the booze.

Strange, he contemplated, how many of his thoughts these days finished with the phrase, ‘then it really would be time to cut down on the booze'. If he ever actually screwed up a job because he was too drunk or too hungover to do it, then it really would be time to cut down on the booze. If he ever woke up somewhere and genuinely couldn't remember how he'd got there, then it really would be time to cut down on the booze. If he found he was consistently impotent, then it really would be time to cut down on the booze.

And yet he'd been close to all of those situations. A harsh critic might say he'd been
in
all of those situations. The prospect of having to cut down on the booze was stalking Charles Paris, a looming, distant shadow on the horizon, but a shadow that was drawing closer all the time.

This sequence of reasoning always prompted the same two thoughts in Charles. First – but if I gave up the booze, it'd ruin my social life; everything I do in my leisure time involves drinking.