Fallout (32 page)

‘This will,’ said Tony. ‘Lou is thinking about it for the Trafalgar. I say
thinking
– he’s madly in love with it. I think you will be, too.’

‘All right,’ said Nina, and she smiled at him, ‘I’ll take a look.’ She turned away.

‘Nina!’

She stopped.

He held the manuscript out across the desk towards her, and when she took it, watched her as she left the room. ‘Good,’ he said.

She sat on the wicker chair in the living room, trembling, steadying her breath, and with weak fingers she turned over the top page.

Characters: Tom, a son (20s)

                      
Peter, a father (40s)

                      
Mary, a girl (20s)

                      
Elsa, her mother (50s) . . .

Through the confusion of her emotions two things presented themselves with clarity: that she had never once asked Luke about the play while he was working on it, and that she wanted – hungrily needed – to know if there was a part that would suit her. Shocked at her own voracious soul, she put down the innocent manuscript and covered her face.

The radio was on in the study, and faintly from across the landing, she heard a male announcer’s voice.
You’re listening to the six o’clock news. In a landmark decision in the United States, the Supreme Court has ruled that abortion is a private matter to be decided by mother and doctor in the first three months
. . .

More loosening of the reins
, she thought dimly. If her own mother had such a choice she never would have been born. Tony switched the radio off.

Nina uncovered her face and looked up at all her new clothes strewn across the chair and sofa-back. She slipped off her shoes, tucked up her feet, picked up Luke’s play and began to read. The Depot was still a building site. Luke went with Maggie and Paul and walked the uneven floors beneath the hanging wires while they met the lighting designer and architect.

The stage was an apron; the steeply raked seating would be on three levels and three sides. Three hundred and fifty fold-down plastic seats; no velvet, no proscenium arch – and yet nothing like the pub theatre it had been born of. It was to be a modern, raw place, not pretending anything; a scaffold for the work it would present. The brick was to be left exposed, or naked plaster. Maggie and Paul were keen not to mask the origins of the building; to hide as little as possible but still have the possibility of ambitious, large-scale productions. It was a vision realised in part – to Paul’s ambivalence and pride – by his father’s engineering company sub-contracted at Paul’s request by the architect.
This is a tiny job for us, we won’t be doing you and this O’Hanlan bird any favours
, his father had said. Financially he was true to his word, but Paul found unaccustomed pleasure in working with his father. And he hadn’t wanted favours.

Luke stood on the sectioned concrete slab that would soon carry the stage and looked into the high dark spaces; as yet no seats, no wings, no lighting rig – and yet it was a theatre. He stood among the ghosts of the future, risking themselves.

‘What’s he doing now?’ said Maggie, picking her way, in her high boots and belted coat, and peering down at him from the top of the grid deck, holding Paul’s arm for security.

‘He’s just waiting for us,’ said Paul.

The builders had gone home, and the architect. Paul had the keys to lock up. He loved this time of day, the spring twilights when he would often come and walk the site, alone or with Maggie, picturing how it would be, trying to put away the day’s dirt and fear, the scrabbling for money.

‘Sweetie,’ said Maggie, teetering on the metal gridwork, gripping Paul’s arm and the low rail that separated them from the hundred-foot drop. ‘
Diversion
?’

‘No. We can’t commit until next week,’ said Paul.

Her heel slipped on the metal and Paul caught her arm to steady her.

‘He’s your friend,’ she said, pulling away, ‘and we
want
it.’

‘I know we do. But yes, he’s my friend. What kind of a contract can we offer him if we don’t know if we can even open this year?’

‘We will. And you’re too honourable.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. But he might give it to someone else,’ she whispered.

‘Luke isn’t like that.’

They both looked down again at Luke, hands in pockets, his expression responding to his thoughts, looking up and around him as if in silent monologue to the empty space.

‘Does he hear voices?’ said Maggie.

Paul looked at her, sharply. ‘He’s all right,’ he said.

In a week they would know if they were opening in May; if the money was there and the building work on schedule. Six months of headaches and administration, pulling strings and squeezing the reluctant udders of Maggie’s alimony cash-cow.
I’m not letting go of my twenty-five per cent of Glitter
, she would say grimly of the show she and her ex-husband had fallen out over, still going strong on Broadway.

They had not applied for Arts Council funding. Paul called subsidies hush money –
Big Brother telling us what we can and can’t put on
– but as Maggie was putting up the bulk of their finance she was understandably nervous. There was no turning back. No grant. No help. No council remit. And the Depot was hoping to survive against – compete with – the heavily subsidised National.
We’re not a fringe theatre
, Paul often said,
we’re a West End theatre
. But now, looking about the grim warehouse it was hard to imagine seating, let alone applause and box-office receipts. Neither of them had slept a full night for months.

Luke looked up at them, alight with enthusiasm and love for the endeavour that scared them both so much.

‘Fuck,’ he called up, ‘this is spectacular. This is like the fucking Colosseum.’

‘There’s a thought,’ said Paul. ‘Let’s have lions eating critics on a Saturday night – bring in the punters.’

‘Pub,’ said Maggie. ‘Whisky.’

They went to the pub and crowded on cushioned stools around the tiny table with their drinks, Maggie and Paul smoking as if it were their last meal and Luke pretending he wasn’t thinking about
Diversion
, that it wasn’t what he was there for.

‘Let’s not bugger about,’ said Maggie. ‘We had planned to open with the new Denton as our first production—’

‘What’s it about?’ said Luke, who admired Gerald Denton, and forgot about himself at hearing his name.

‘Revolution,’ said Paul. ‘Totalitarianism.’

‘Again?’ said Luke.

‘It’s different – more human. It’s really interesting. We had Michael Elder to direct but he’s gone off to Broadway with
The Party Leadership
.’

‘Anyway,’ said Maggie, glancing at Paul, ‘we’re bringing in George Bean’s
Hamlet
from Nottingham—’

‘Bloody hell,’ said Luke, impressed. ‘How did you get it?’

‘Long story,’ said Paul.

‘Yes, I only had to shag about sixteen people,’ said Maggie, and Paul choked into his beer. Luke grinned at her.

‘Nice one,’ he said. ‘That
Hamlet
. Fuck me. For once the critics aren’t exaggerating. What George has done with it is—’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Maggie impatiently. ‘But we don’t want to open with it, it’s identified with the Playhouse. We want a new play.’

‘Yeah,’ said Paul, ‘we don’t think it’s risky enough to start up a new theatre, totally unknown, we want something no one’s ever heard of, too.’

Luke laughed.

‘Darling,’ said Maggie, ‘babes.’ Both men looked at her. ‘
Diversion
.’

Luke looked down at the table, fearful even at the name.

‘Luke, man,’ said Paul, ‘let’s get this straight. I don’t want you doing us any favours.’

Hearing himself he thought wryly of the osmosis of inheritance.

‘What are you talking about?’ said Luke, leaning forward. ‘I owe you everything, you know that. Where else would it go?’ He corrected himself, embarrassed: ‘I mean, if you want it.’

There was a pause.

‘Oddball,’ said Maggie, ‘we want it.’

‘Then it’s yours,’ said Luke. ‘Thank you. If you’re sure. Thank you.’

‘We’re sure,’ said Maggie.

Paul nodded. It felt as if they should shake hands – something – but they did not. Nobody said anything. Luke’s new play would have its first performance at Paul’s new theatre. Neither of them needed to say how it felt, or that all the years since they met had lit the way to this moment. The three of them acknowledged the promise silently, the courageous moment flaring like a comet. The glare faded.

‘Oddball?’ said Paul. ‘New nickname?’

‘He’s stuck with it now,’ said Maggie. ‘Right, let’s think about directors.’ And she got out her big pad and a clutch of biros.

Luke was at his flat. His agent was negotiating with Maggie and Paul on the contracts and he had put
Diversion
and the notes for it and earlier drafts in the top cupboard of the kitchen, and sellotaped the doors shut so that he could try to begin thinking about other work.

He had ideas, old and new, on one handwritten page, and blank notebooks waiting for him to find the focus. The phone rang.

‘Christ,’ he said, and only picked it up because it might be Nina.

‘Mr Last?’ said a woman.

Luke always wanted to say ‘wrong number’ when people called him Mr Last.

‘Hello.’

‘It’s Melanie in Lou Farthing’s office, I have Mr Farthing for you, will you hold on?’

‘Hello, Melanie. Yes, thanks.’

After a pause, Lou’s voice: ‘Luke, my boy, glad to find you in.’

Where else would he be? ‘How are you?’

‘I’ve booked us a table at the Garrick this afternoon. Let me buy you lunch.’

‘Today?’ Luke looked down at his desk, and the notebooks waiting.

‘Around two?’

‘I’d like to, but I’m working.’

‘I want to talk to you about
Diversion
.’

‘Oh.’ Luke had forgotten all about sending it to him and was wrong-footed, not knowing how to tell him he had already given it to Paul.

‘Hello, Luke? Is this a bad line?’

‘No.’ He thought for a second.

Part of him was relieved not to have to face the blank page. He should tell Lou in person he had already found a home for
Diversion
, it was only good manners. He would probably have to pay the bill at the Garrick to appease him.

‘Yes, fine, good,’ he said. ‘Two o’clock.’

‘Marvellous. See you later.’ And the line went dead.

The doorman at the Garrick had to lend Luke a tie. With the stained, striped, borrowed absurdity around his neck he followed another ancient, liveried man through the silent panelled ante-room, past the paintings and funereal flower arrangements, the leather armchairs of old men, staring at him as he walked towards the muffled clink of china and cutlery in the dining room.

At a table by the window, laid for three, were Lou Farthing and Tony Moore. Luke stopped.

Both men stood up: the round, oiled figure of Lou; the slender, stylish lines of Tony, with his gleaming side-parting and narrow-cut jacket.

‘Welcome,’ said Lou.

Luke took a step back, gesturing the exit as if he would leave.

‘I was—’

Tony smiled. ‘We must stop meeting like this, Luke,’ he said. ‘Or start.’

The old man who had accompanied Luke into the dining room stepped forward and pulled out his chair for him.

‘Sir?’

And Luke did not leave, he sat – across the table from Nina’s husband, a place he never wanted – his mind scrabbling to find an exit, failing.

‘Are you all right?’ said Tony, not taking his eyes from his face.

‘Yes,’ said Luke clearly. ‘Are you?’

Lou waved for the wine list and the lunch began.

Compliments and small talk; assurances of quality and taste.

The conversation moved from the shocked whispers of Peter Hall’s regicidal usurping of Olivier at the National and declining audiences at the Old Vic, to Shaffer’s divisive
Equus
; from the technical crews threatening to strike and leave the West End dark to the money, the critics, the work, and all the time Luke felt Tony’s eyes examining him, and battled too familiar revulsion at his role of thief and liar.
It would be better to be the cuckold than the coward
, he thought, wanting to speak out, but honesty was denied him. Nothing could be said in Lou’s company; no duelling pistols produced; no gauntlet thrown down.

They were not stupid, these successful men, they were not crass. It was too easy, when struggling to find a place in the tight hard world, to assume those at the top knew nothing. Luke saw that they loved theatre, and cared for the plays and helpless as he was in his hatred of Tony as Nina’s jailor he could not help but admire his incisive mind. He had a talent; he knew what worked.

There were no women at the Garrick; they were safe to play soldiers in the no man’s land of ideas beyond full humanity’s reach, but it was no kind of relaxation. Lucasz Kanowski; foreign, unentitled, unsettled and groundless, he muddled through the cutlery as he did the conversation – not intellectually threatened but floundering still; impressed by the money despite himself, and fighting to retain his balance in this rarefied atmosphere of invisible forces. This world of power.

Then –

‘Luke,’ said Lou with a wave of his cigar, ‘L. M. Farthing Productions and Tony Moore would be honoured to produce your play at the Trafalgar.’

He said it as if he were whipping a large, wrapped present from beneath the table and bestowing it upon Luke just as the waiter brought the coffee and brandies. Tony leaned forward and smiled, waiting for his reaction. Luke looked from one to the other.

‘You and Tony?’ he asked.

‘You’ve probably heard whispers, it’s an open secret now; Tony is joining the Trafalgar as our new Artistic Director. I’m taking a step back. Other commitments.’ He smiled his Lord Olivier smile. ‘Tony is committed to good work, I have tremendous faith in you, and we would all see to it that you’re involved in every decision.’