Staging Death

‘This is BBC Midlands Today. Welcome to the news for the West Midlands this Wednesday lunchtime.

‘Distinguished actress Vena Burford, well known for her stage and TV work, is seriously ill in hospital after a fire at her Stratford-
upon-Avon
house last night. The fire, believed to be caused by an electrical fault in a piece of kitchen equipment, gutted the house. Ms Burford was rescued by an off-duty policeman. She was taken to Warwick Hospital, where she is now in the intensive care unit. A hospital spokesman said that her condition was critical. Foul play is not suspected.’

You may not know my face, darling, not anymore, or even my name – Vena Burford – but I’d bet my next Botox that you know my voice from the TV adverts. I’m the one whose sultry tones persuaded you to buy those expensive chocolates, and – though I hate to admit it – encouraged you to use a certain intimate product we needn’t talk about here. Needs must, after all, and the devil is certainly driving me now. Where are all the parts for ladies
d’un certain âge?
Caddie Minton, my agent, tells me that there’s a positive recruiting drive for men with grey temples, even if the poor dears are still having to have the most obvious laughter lines dealt with. But the few good roles that exist for women are snapped up by one of the wonderful theatrical Dames.

Though I was once lady-in-waiting to Dame Judy’s queen, I’m between roles at the moment.
The correct term is ‘resting’, of course. It is not to be taken literally. A resting thesp is likely to be waiting at tables, pulling pints or doing any damn thing to make a crust. The voice-overs are more lucrative, but there aren’t enough to go round, so I have to do something else. I prefer to record talking books – I’m told I make a particularly good serial killer – but in my time, waiting for Caddie to call, I have ironed other people’s laundry and cleaned other people’s loos. Now, however, thanks to my rich estate agent brother, Gregory, I have another line to pursue. I show potential buyers round the houses on Greg’s books.

Greg’s a self-made man who got into the property market early enough to cash in on the spiralling house prices of the last decade or so, and who’s wealthy enough to ride the current plunge in the market. He was just too late to broker some of the eye-watering deals with A-list celebs in the Cotswolds, but he found Warwickshire – Shakespeare Country, as they call it on the motorway signs – pretty profitable. And what could be more Shakespearean than Stratford-upon-Avon itself, where Greg has his head office? There are satellite – and equally profitable – offices in Kenilworth, home of the famous castle, and another in Henley-in-Arden, home of the obscenely moreish ice cream. They
all deal with niche properties, from medieval manors to Edwardian status palaces. Whatever the property, he specialises in separating the rich from their money.

The youngest in the family, Greg never quite shed the Black Country accent which marked us all as kids. At one time he did have elocution lessons, but they made him sound like some Fifties Tory grandee – we started to refer to him as Harold, after Mr Macmillan. Anything, we said, was better than that, so he lapsed into his original Blackheath, which was fine for when rich Brummies were his main customers. However, folk from London and abroad, where the real money now lies, always claimed to find Midland accents comic, and he feared he was losing customers. Which is where I came in.

My accent, unlike Greg’s, simply melted, and by the time I graduated from RADA my consonants and vowels were so pure I was offered a job at the BBC doing continuity work. Sometimes, when audio work was short and cleaning frankly humiliating, I lay in bed and wondered what would have happened if I’d taken the safe option and abandoned my then infant stage career. I’d have fewer lows, perhaps, but almost certainly fewer highs. Think of my Major Barbara, my Emilia, and my Mrs Malaprop.

But you must always look forward, not back.
Which was another reason for working for Greg. What you may not realise is that there is an art to selling a house. The owners are rarely the best people to do it – they emphasise the points of the house that mean something to them, but which might actually deter a punter. A good estate agent employs someone who is dedicated to discovering the selling points of a house, and glossing over the awful bits.

When the man Greg originally employed to escort would-be buyers got a job as a vet on
Emmerdale
– with a quite different accent, of course – his eyes turned to me. And why shouldn’t I accept, I asked Caddie. Wearing a smart suit and assuming a cut-glass accent to welcome rich people into their potential dream homes was a distinct improvement on scrubbing floors for rich people in their existing ones. The downside was that people could be extremely rude to someone they considered a mere minion. In those circumstances my accent became increasingly posh, moving if necessary into the far reaches of snooty.
Height-wise
, I never made it above five foot two, so it was hard for me literally to look down my nose at anyone, but if anyone could beat me at doing it metaphorically I had yet to meet her. Although the job brought in only a niggardly retainer, if I made a sale I got commission. Greg’s reasoning was that the hungrier I got, the harder I worked.

Today he barely glanced up as I pushed open the office door, and I was treated to a view of the top of his head. After what he referred to in his mealy-mouthed way as his
treatment
, his hair now grew in unlikely tufts in the spaces either side of his widow’s peak, though thanks to my hairdresser his locks were again as dusky as mine. With the frown lines deepening everywhere, any moment now he’d be asking for the name of my cosmetic surgeon too.

‘Don’t bank on the Wimpoles,’ I said, plonking my bag on his desk.

‘Temper, temper. I suppose they didn’t recognise you.’

‘They didn’t recognise the qualities of Hampton Fenny Hall, either.’

‘Oh.’ He tapped his mouse as if idly, but I knew he was just hiding a FreeCell game.

‘They strode through as if it were the ticket hall at New Street Station, and gave it that much attention.’ I snapped my fingers. The sound had been known to fill a vast auditorium; now it ricocheted off Greg’s walls.

He frowned.

‘You shouldn’t get so involved, Vee. It’s just a house. And I think the owners are about to pull it. They don’t want us to book any more visits till the summer, anyway. Did you mention The Zephyrs to the Wimpoles?’ For Greg potential
sales were more interesting than the houses involved.

‘Of course I did. And Little Cuffley Court. I gave them details, in fact.’ To my surprise, the file that Mrs Wimpole had stuffed all the particulars into was an orange card one, just the sort of thing I kept my receipts in. Oh, yes – I screwed every last penny of expenses out of him.

‘OK. I’ll let you know when I need you again,’ he said, pressing the mouse again to dismiss me.

‘I shall be busy tomorrow, remember. At Aldred House. Toby Frensham and the Size Zero Wife are choosing curtains.’

‘Toby Frensham?’ He actually looked up.

Usually he was only interested in my other freelance work when it meant I couldn’t drop everything to take out a client. That suited me. If I was obviously doing well he’d have expected me to jet out to his Portuguese golfing pad or his new holiday home in Serbia to organise the decor there. And though I’d bill him he’d haggle about a discount and then forget to pay me. As it was, the only time I stepped inside his Kenilworth abode was when he wanted it house-sat and an eye kept on his cleaner and gardener.

‘Yes.’

‘You’re working for
Toby Frensham?
’

‘Yes.’

‘Wow.’ The exclamation didn’t just
acknowledge Toby’s money bags. ‘You want to watch yourself there. He’s a real bad lad, isn’t he?’

Indeed, Toby Frensham, he of the saturnine good looks, bad-boy reputation and sexy pelvic thrusts, was known to
Daily Mail
readers like Greg as the
enfant terrible
of theatre. He’d made a mint in Hollywood but liked to come over to England every so often, doing a season at the Donmar or here in Stratford. He liked to think he was an English gentleman, and years ago invested in a rambling manor, Aldred House, just outside Barford. Mostly he’d let it out, so it was in desperate need of TLC – which was where I’d come in. The kitchen was already transformed, and a team of decorators was working through the rooms he and his family occupied, including the new en suites to die for.

‘Greg, he’s as old as you are.’ Which meant nothing, of course.

He nodded sagely. ‘True. And you’re no spring chicken either.’

Which meant even less.

‘Didn’t you have the hots for him once? Or was it him fancying you? It was in all the papers.’

It had been. And from time to time some hack would dig it up and trot it out again, even though, or especially because, Toby had married a Hollywood star and brought her back here.

‘You don’t believe the papers, do you, darling? They’d say Gordon Brown was a transsexual pole dancer if they thought it would sell more copies. Now, any other viewings coming up?’

Sucking his teeth, he shook his head. ‘The market’s very slow, Vena. I mean, look at Hampton Fenny Hall. I may have to close one of the offices if things go on like this.’

I froze. Did this mean redundancy for us all? But then I remembered how much commission Greg had pulled in on one sale alone from the Kenilworth office last week. In any case, the office itself occupied a prime site, visible from the best rooms of the Holiday Inn. No, he wouldn’t close that, lest another agent snap it up. And as for the Henley branch, it was situated between a very classy antiques shop and an excellent gastropub, the car park of which overflowed with Mercs. Would he leave there? A brief glance out of the window told me that no pigs were circling overhead.

I took myself off without further ado. At last the early spring sun was breaking through the gloom – would the Wimpoles have been more receptive if the day hadn’t been so cold and misty? – and I just had time to nip out to Alcester, to the dress exchange there. There were ones nearer home – here in Stratford itself, of course, and in Kenilworth – but there was
someone living near the Alcester one who might have been my twin. We had identical figures and identical colouring, and were, according to Helen, who ran the exchange, much the same age. The only difference was that my non-twin was probably as wealthy as my brother, and like him was fond of her money. Instead of taking her designer outfits to a charity shop when she’d tired of them, she couldn’t resist getting a little cash back. Helen had got into the generous habit of phoning me every time my doppelgänger brought in a new selection. I couldn’t buy everything, it went without saying, but she had promised me a trouser suit to take me through into summer. Nicole Farhi. OK, it was last spring’s Nicole Farhi, but who was going to argue? And there was a dream of a bag I might be tempted by.

The only thing I drew the line at was buying someone else’s shoes. Those I wore were always sale items, and often seconds. They were poor things, but my own.

I had to eschew the wonderful huge Gucci bag, and I knew, even as I fished out the plastic to pay for it, that I really needed a bonus to justify the trouser suit. On the other hand, I couldn’t turn up to viewings – or, better still, auditions – looking like a refugee from a charity shop. Some of Toby Frensham’s fee would help, so I would make sure
I was on the top of my game when I saw him the next day. I would be as professional as if we hadn’t been friends for nearly forty years.

I did my homework, as it were, that evening, after a light supper watching
University
Challenge
. I would have won, as usual, had it not been for an excess of maths and science questions. But at least I did better than Sheffield Hallam. And then – remember that arithmetic is not the same as mathematics – I got out my calculator and pad. Next winter, if a part hadn’t turned up, I promised myself I’d take an evening course on computer spreadsheets, to make myself look even more professional. At least I did my best. After working out all the amounts and costs the hard way, I transferred everything to the computer, so at least it was beautifully printed. I double-checked for typos and other errors, made sure all the pages were in the correct order and finally slipped them into one of my very tasteful folders.

It didn’t worry me that I didn’t finish till well after midnight. Like all the actors I knew, I was a night owl. Consider the stage actor’s day. Rehearsals (or a matinee) in the afternoon; performance in the evening; supper and unwind after the show; bed well after midnight or even later. So the next day doesn’t start till ten or eleven or thereabouts. Once one’s body gets into
that rhythm it’s hard to get out of it.

In any case, even if I had turned into a skylark, there was no point in presenting myself at Aldred House before eleven, because Toby, having given his all in what the critics said was a very physical version of
Coriolanus
at the Courtyard Theatre, had forbidden even his housekeeper to come in before ten, and no one else was to be admitted till at least an hour later. Even then they would have the prospect of kicking their heels in the (unrefurbished) morning room should he have overslept.

My new suit pressed, my old shoes polished and the file beside the front door, I headed for bed.

Just to be on the safe side, I set the alarm clock for half an hour earlier than usual.