MASQUES OF SATAN (24 page)

Now, I know what’s going through your mind. I’m not quite the drink-sodden old idiot you think I am, you see. You’ve got the neat psychological explanation all lined up, haven’t you? You think he despised these girlfriends of his, and, as he hated cats, he called them ‘puss-cat’ out of some subconscious urge to put them down. But it’s rather more complicated than that. You see Roddy had three passions in life: the theatre, women, and sailing. He had an absolute mania for messing about in boats and when he became rich and famous he bought this yacht which was his pride and joy. It was a catamaran, and do you know what he called it? Yes.
Puss-Cat
. So you see it wasn’t that simple. Roddy, too, did a lot for his girls, one way and another: he brought them on professionally; encouraged them. Some of them have had very good careers, thanks to him. No, I’m not going to tell all you their names — you’ll have to find that out for yourself — but I’ll mention a couple of them, perhaps, because they’re relevant to what you came to me for. I assume it was the last months of Roddy’s life that you wanted me to tell you about?

Thank you. Just another double Bell’s with soda and that’s my lot. I’ve always known my limit: key to success, knowing your limits, believe me. By the way, I’ll say it just once: this is my version of what happened. Others will tell you different, and it’s up to you to decide what the truth of the matter is, because at the end of the day your guess is as good as mine. Probably better actually. After all, you’re the writer, aren’t you?

Well, the year after Roddy got his ‘K’ and became Sir Roderick, he took out a tour of Pinero’s
The Magistrate
and, of course, I was in it. I understudied him, and played the nice little role of Wormington. Gets some good laughs in the third act, but you don’t want to hear about that, do you? Well naturally Roddy plays the title role of the Magistrate, Posket, and he was superb, believe me.

Do you know
The Magistrate
? It’s a good old-fashioned farce. No smut. Never fails: except with the critics who think it’s a bit dusty and dated. That’s why we didn’t come into the West-End with it, I’m convinced. Well, anyway, in this play there’s a rather nice part for a young music teacher called Beatie, and for it Roddy hired a young, unknown actress, name of Yolande Carey. You’ve heard about her? Well, hold your horses, because believe me, you don’t know the half.

Yolande was a sweet little thing, just Roddy’s type as it happens. His type? Well, she was slender — ‘petite’, I suppose is the word — blonde with delicate features and a little turned up nose. Looked as if she’d blow away in a light gale. That was Roddy’s type. Attraction of opposites, I suppose, because Roddy, as you know, was a big man with one hell of a physique. He was sixty-three at the time I’m talking about, but if it wasn’t for the grey hair he could have passed for forty-five, and a fit forty-five at that. Don’t get the idea, though, that Roddy picked Yolande just because he fancied her. He wasn’t like that. Yolande had talent, believe me: a bit raw, perhaps, and underpowered in the vocal department, but definitely there, and Roddy had spotted it at the audition.

I knew Roddy, and I could tell from the start of rehearsals that he fancied her, because he gave her such a hard time. Incidentally, Roddy was directing as well as playing the lead. That was not the usual practice, rather archaic, but still done, like the soloist conducting a piano concerto from the keyboard. But, dammit, Gielgud did it, Olivier did it, why not Roddy? He could be a bit of a bully, but, on the other hand, he always bullied the ones he cared about most, because he knew they had it in them to give more. Sometimes younger actors found that hard to understand; just as
he
failed to understand that some people just don’t respond well to bullying, Yolande being one of them. He kept on at her to project more, throw herself more into the role, until once or twice I could see she was close to tears.

I did my best to reassure Yolande, but she thought I was just taking pity on her. When I tried a quiet word with Roddy about it he was very sharp with me, told me to mind my own something something business. I got the impression that he suspected me of being sweet on Yolande, but this wasn’t the case. Just to make things clear at the start, I’m gay: not a word I like terribly, but the only one available these days. It was a fact about my life that Roddy always chose to ignore. You see, though I don’t deny it, I’m not open or obvious about it, and I was actually once married. She left me for a dentist: I won’t bore you with the details. Cheers!

Where was I? Yes, well, the Yolande–Roddy situation was resolved in a rather odd way. We were rehearsing for the tour in a run-down old Church Hall in Lambeth. It was a gruesome place, but it was cheap to hire. Roddy, like nearly all theatrical managements I’ve worked with, could be both very mean and very extravagant in the most unexpected directions, and the church hall was one of his false economies. It had Biblical texts on the walls; its windows were dirty; it got us down. It also had a resident cat, an ancient ginger Tom, called Charlie — God knows why I remember that, but I do! — the mangiest old bruiser you ever saw. Charlie had a habit of trotting into rehearsals at odd moments, and standing or sitting very still while he stared at proceedings; then he would start to howl. I think Charlie just wanted to be fed, but we all called him ‘The Critic’, because he did sometimes seem to be commenting on our attempts at comedy.

Needless to say, Roddy loathed Charlie, and one afternoon the animal started howling at a particularly tense moment in rehearsals. Roddy, who was trying to remember lines, lost his temper completely, rushed at Charlie and gave him the most almighty kick. Charlie let out an awful screech and Yolande, who was standing nearby, ran to pick him up. She was the only one of us who had shown any sort of a soft spot for Charlie, the Critic. She cuddled the wretched old beast in her arms and absolutely tore a strip off Roddy for what he had done. Roddy stared at her in amazement. He said nothing, and I could see his mind working. Once I saw his mouth twitch into a smile, but he controlled himself. Having heard her out in silence he simply and graciously apologised to her. He said that what he had done was ‘unpardonable’. Yolande released Charlie, who had been clawing and struggling in her arms in the most ungrateful way. He dashed off and was never seen again.

That incident marked a turning point in relations between Roddy and Yolande. Her acting became bolder and more confident; Roddy’s criticisms became more muted. They ceased to be boss and junior employee and became colleagues. It was a great relief all round.

I don’t exactly know when their affair started, but I think it was fairly early on in the tour, and I suspect it was our second week which was the Theatre Royal, Newcastle. Do you know it? Lovely old theatre.

On the Tuesday morning Yolande and I happened to meet Roddy at the stage door.  We had just been in to see if there was any mail for us and, as it was a fine April day, we were standing outside talking about nothing in particular when Roddy appeared. I could see he was in one of his restless moods, and on the spur of the moment he proposed to take us out on a jaunt. He was going to show us Hadrian’s Wall, an idea which seemed to thrill Yolande, me less so. I’d been. However, I went, because it was clear from Roddy’s look that he wanted me there. I wasn’t quite sure why, but, you know, Roddy was a compulsive performer and liked an audience for practically everything he did, even seduction.

We drove out of Newcastle and followed the wall. It was one of those soft, mild days of spring, full of haze and new bird song when the pale green of the hills blended with the grey ribs and ridges of Roman wall and fortress. Yolande listened to Roddy with the rapt wonder of a schoolgirl as he explained the wall to her. We got out at Housesteads, the best preserved fort on the wall, and wandered about, almost the only people there. At one point Yolande asked about Hadrian himself: what sort of man was he? Roddy who, outside military history and dates was less well informed, hesitated. So I gave them an account of the only thing I knew about Hadrian, his passion for the glamorous youth Antinous whose mysterious death blighted the Emperor’s later years. Yolande was puzzled.

‘I didn’t know they had gays in those days,’ she said. Roddy, who was standing behind her, looked at me and winked. I ignored him and went into some rubbish about the Greeks and Plato and Socrates. For the rest of the time we were out I felt very uneasy. Roddy was flirting with Yolande and completely ignoring me, while she was laughing at everything he said in that way people do when they meet Royalty, or fall in love.

He drove us back to the theatre. At the stage door I noticed that the theatre cat, a black, green-eyed streak of feline cunning, had stretched out its lean body on the door step to catch the weak Newcastle sun. When he saw it, Roddy did a thing I’d never seen him do before. He crouched down and tentatively tickled the animal’s stomach.

‘Hello, puss-cat,’ he said with a rather unconvincing show of bonhomie. The cat ignored him, and Roddy looked up at Yolande.

He said: ‘I wonder, old thing. I’m going back to my hotel. I’ve got to look over that bit in the third act where I got in such a tangle last night. Remember? You wouldn’t be an absolute brick and come back with me for a cuppa and test me on my lines, would you?’

There was a little pause, just long enough for it to be made obvious that she knew what he meant and he knew that she knew, and, well, you know the rest. I thought for a moment she was going to turn him down rather huffily, but she didn’t; she simply said, ‘Okay,’ and off they went.

I’m pretty sure that was the beginning of things, because after that one would often see them together in the wings or in the dressing room corridors, just talking. They weren’t touching, or anything obvious like that, and I’m sure they thought they were being incredibly discreet, but very soon the rumours were flying around. You know how these things are picked up amazingly quickly by a company on tour with nothing much to do except gossip about each other.

One thing that one of the other actresses in the company said stuck in my mind. She said: ‘I wonder what would happen if Bel knew.’ Bel of course was Belinda Courteney. Yes,
the
Belinda Courteney. Yes, she was one of Roddy’s girls at one time, but don’t tell her I told you. I’m up for an interview for the National next week, and you know how her writ runs there. As a matter of fact I thought the Bel Courteney affair was over, but apparently others knew better.

Yolande occasionally confided in me. I suppose I was a safe pair of hands, and she knew I knew, so to speak. I tried to sound kindly and wise: you know how one slips into these roles, especially if one is an actor. I was dear old Uncle Godfrey to her, and, I’m afraid, to me too in those moments. Yolande was a sweet thing, but such a child. She had become obsessed by Roddy, and used to ask me about every detail of his career, the books he liked, the food he preferred, everything. I honestly think she thought he was going to leave Lady Margery for her. She said: ‘You know he hasn’t slept with her for eight years.’ I refrained from saying that that was what he told all the girls, because it was only a guess, but perhaps I should have done.

Well, the tour wound up fairly successfully in October at the Theatre Royal, Richmond, traditionally one of those ‘last date before the West End’ venues, but it was not to be. There had been talk of  a West End theatre several times in the tour, but it came to nothing. With such a huge cast we needed a thousand-seater plus just to break even, and all the big houses were stubbornly full of American musicals that year.

So the company disbanded, but Yolande and I kept in touch, partly because I sensed she needed someone to talk to about Roddy. Most of her other friends wouldn’t have understood. They were non-theatrical and, frankly, just a bit odd. They tended to call themselves ‘aromatherapists’, ‘Feng Shui consultants’, ‘musicians’, ‘spiritual healers’: all those euphemisms by which the barely employable salve the wound of their uselessness. Forgive me, my prejudice is showing; it must be the Bell’s.

She had a little flat above a
patisserie
in the St John’s Wood High Street. She’d ask me round at odd times of the day for a cup of herb tea and, if I was lucky, a slice of carrot cake, but the subject of conversation was always the same: Roddy. They were still seeing each other, and he used occasionally to take her away for weekends in Paris or Torquay — his boat was down at Torquay, you see — but after one or two visits he wouldn’t come to her flat any more. The excuse he gave was that he was allergic to her cat, and one can’t altogether blame him. I’m not myself averse to cats, but this one of Yolande’s, a rescued stray, was not a notably attractive specimen. It was an elderly neutered tom, brindled, with a sagging belly and a passion for tinned sardines. Yolande, you see, was one of those people who are instantly drawn to anything even more defenceless than themselves.

 Rather unwisely, I think, Yolande called the cat Roddy. I don’t know whether she actually addressed the cat as such in the other Roddy’s presence, but it would explain his allergy if she had.