What Bloody Man Is That (19 page)

This is the day for private rituals, for walking to the theatre by special routes, for avoiding certain totems and seeking out others, for touching long-treasured mascots. For many, it is also the day of vowing to leave the profession, swearing that it's an inhuman strain, that it's ridiculous to put oneself under such intolerable emotional pressure.

And, finally, all of that is forgotten in the release of actual performance. Good or bad, however many reputations have been made or lost, however much work is still needed, at least the bloody thing has happened.

All of these changes, all of these swings of mood, all of these alternating images of triumph and disaster, were experienced by the Pinero company in the run-up to the opening of their production of
Macbeth
.

For Charles Paris, the most daunting moment of the third week of rehearsal came when his dressing room door was pushed open to admit a huge bundle of clothes, which advanced panting towards him.

‘Um, can I help you?' he asked uncertain of the appropriate way to address a bundle of clothes.

He heard the muffled word, ‘Wardrobe,' which suggested that the bundle of clothes had a voice. When he looked towards the floor, he saw that it also had feet wearing grubby tennis shoes.

‘I'll just put them down on the table.'

The bundle of clothes heaved up in the air for a moment, then flopped down on to the dressing room table to reveal a gormless-looking girl with orange-streaked hair and a designer-torn black T-shirt.

‘Those are all mine, are they?' asked Charles.

‘Yes.' The girl picked up each of the garments as she itemised them in an impassively nasal voice. ‘Right, Bleeding Sergeant.'

A leather jerkin, irregularly decorated with metal rings, and a pair of rough hopsack trousers. Those're going to tickle, thought Charles gloomily.

‘What about the blood? Do you mind if this lot gets covered in Kensington Gore?' he asked.

‘Kensington who?'

‘Stage blood.'

‘Oh, nobody said anything about that. I don't think they'll want blood on the costumes.'

‘He is a Bleeding Sergeant. Shakespeare did specify that in the stage directions.'

‘I don't care what anyone else said. I take my orders from the Wardrobe Mistress.'

Charles did not bother to argue. ‘All right. I'll try to keep the blood just on my face and forearms. A few nice gashes, I think.' He relished the challenge of doing the gashes. Like being back in the old days of really elaborate make-up. That was the trouble with all this modern lighting, you hardly needed any slap, no matter what part you were doing. Still, a gash could be fun. Build up something gruesome with nose-putty. Even latex, yes. Then discolour the jagged edges with a touch of Lake, slap on the old Leichner's Arterial Blood and –

Oh no, sod it. That would only work for someone who wasn't about to enter in Act One Scene Seven as a Sewer. Shakespeare just didn't think ahead, did he? If only he'd written, ‘Enter a Bleeding Sewer', as well. As it was, Charles would have to settle for less elaborate wounds.

The girl with the orange-streaked hair held up a long dark-blue velvet garment that looked like a mangy housecoat. ‘For the Sewer.'

‘Looks a bit grubby. The Macbeths aren't on the breadline, you know.'

‘Be all right under the lights.'

‘Oh yes?'

But she wasn't going to be diverted. ‘I've checked with Gavin. Very low lighting for that scene.'

Before Charles could pursue his objection, she raised a stained crimson jerkin and a pair of stained crimson slashed breeches from the pile. ‘That's the Porter.'

‘But I'll never be able to do up that jacket.'

‘You're not meant to. If you have it undone and stick your stomach out, you'll look fat and debauched.'

Charles flicked at his eyebrow in mock-affectation. ‘Oh dear, love, another character part.'

But the girl from Wardrobe seemed to have been inoculated against jokes. She lifted up a full-length russet-coloured brocade gown. ‘Old Man who talks to Ross in Act Two Scene Four.'

‘What do I wear under it?'

‘You can put it on over your Porter costume. It won't show.'

‘But the shoes will.'

‘Audience won't notice shoes.'

‘I'm not thinking of the audience.' He dropped into his best theatrical knight voice. ‘I'm thinking of me. You know, a lot of actors say, Get the shoes right and then you get the characterization right.'

Once again the attempt at humour was ignored. ‘As the Third Murderer you wear this.'

It was a ragged garment of greenish net, like the sort of stuff used to camouflage aircraft in the jungle in B-movies.

‘Just that?'

‘Yes. Gavin says the lighting's very dim.'

Not just the lighting, thought Charles.

The girl held up an object which at a Fancy Dress party might have passed for a coal-scuttle.

‘Um. Let me guess . . .' said Charles. ‘Scottish Doctor carries that, in case Lady Macbeth's sick in the Sleepwalking Scene . . .'

‘No, it's what you wear as an Apparition of an Armed Head.'

‘Just that? But I'm going to be seen from the waist up.'

‘It said ‘Armed Head' in the notes Gavin gave me. Nothing about the rest of the body. Anyway, I thought you were in the cauldron.'

‘The cauldron only comes up to my waist.'

‘Then you'll have to crouch. This one . . .' she produced a long white nightshirt ‘. . . is what you wear as the English Doctor. And this . . .' She produced an identical garment in black ‘. . . is what you wear as the Scottish Doctor.'

Finally, she indicated a mass of silver-painted dishcloth chain-mail, a noisome sleeveless sheepskin jerkin and a horned helmet. ‘And that lot's for when you're a soldier.'

‘But I have to be two soldiers,' Charles objected.

‘What?'

‘I have to be on Malcolm's side, and then on Macbeth's side.'

‘Oh.' The girl was momentarily stumped, but then saw a solution. ‘You can turn the jerkin inside out.'

‘Oh, what?' said Charles. ‘You mean really be a turncoat?'

She didn't get that one either.

Oh, the pain of the first night party!

God alone knew how many first night parties he had attended, but Charles Paris was certain this was the first one he had attended without benefit of alcohol.

He felt sacrilegious, as if he were offending some basic tenet of his professional faith, sitting there in the bar watching the ice melt in his Perrier, while around him wine and beer glasses were tipped and emptied.

John B. Murgatroyd leant close over him, breathing out tantalising fumes of bitter. ‘I felt, Charles Paris, that I had to say I thought your Drunken Porter this evening was masterly.'

‘Thank you.'

‘You had me remarkably convinced that you were smashed out of your skull.'

‘Acting, mere acting,' Charles confessed modestly.

George Birkitt was sitting near by, knocking back the red wine. ‘Of course,' he said, appropriating a line that had been said of Lee Marvin's drunken performance in
Cat Ballou
, ‘it's the part you have been rehearsing for the last forty years.'

‘But such a remarkable performance,' John B. continued in a tone of theatrical preciousness, ‘from a teetotaller.'

‘Oh, shut up,' said Charles.

‘What I fail to understand . . .' John B. had now dropped into a surprisingly accurate pastiche of Felicia Chatterton's earnest huskiness, ‘. . . is how you could give a performance of such
truth
without being the role. I mean, in other words, how you could
appear
so pissed without actually
being
pissed.'

Charles took the opportunity to redirect the conversation. ‘A propos of nothing, how is the get-Felicia-into-bed campaign going?'

John B. touched a finger against the side of his nose knowingly. ‘Slowly, but surely. At my current rate of progress, I am not unhopeful of achieving my end – or should I say ‘getting my end away' – within the next three millennia.'

Charles chuckled. ‘Rather what I found.'

‘Did you, you dirty devil?' John B. slipped back into Felicia's voice for the next line. ‘Of course, one could only do it if it were
right for the part
.'

‘Of course. And that being the case, the only one who's in with any chance of scoring is dear old George.'

‘Oh, really?' said George Birkitt, misunderstanding, and preening back his hair as if about to open another supermarket. ‘Whole thing seemed to go rather damned well tonight, I thought. Never expected to get a round on my first entrance.'

This had been the work of a little claque of television sit com fans, who had greeted their hero's appearance with unruly ecstasy. Once he started speaking Shakespeare, they had grown noticeably quieter.

‘No, went well for all of us,' said George, remembering the magnanimity which distinguishes great stars. ‘Damned clever little actress, that Felicia, isn't she?'

Yes, way out of your league, Charles thought. He had been deeply impressed by Felicia that night. Given the stimulus of an audience, her performance had gone up several notches. Her talent was awesome. Felicia Chatterton would go far.

He looked across at her. Talking earnestly to Russ. Oh well, that was nice. No doubt, having been let down so badly by her substitute confidant's having gone to sleep, Felicia was returning to what she knew would be a ready audience. They could soon get over the embarrassment of their previous misunderstanding.

And, who could say, now the play had actually opened, maybe Russ would be in with a chance . . .? Charles doubted it, though. A role as demanding as Lady Macbeth was going to take all her concentration. He rather suspected that the only way to have an affair with Felicia Chatterton would be to book it with her agent six months in advance.

‘Smashing, all of you. All the hard work's paid off. I can't thank you enough.' Gavin Scholes had joined them, full of relief and bonhomie.

Also more than a little drunk. A lot of quick alcohol, after two days of eating only the odd sandwich, combined with the relief of actually having opened the play, had left him cheerfully glazed and indiscreet.

‘No, you all came up trumps. Terrific. Can't thank you enough. Because God knows I needed this show to be a success.'

‘Oh?' asked Charles diffidently.

‘Having a bit of trouble with the Board. Money, you know. Not getting enough bums on seats. To be quite frank, my job was on the line. If this show hadn't worked, I could have been out on my ear.'

If that were the case, thought Charles, Warnock Belvedere's disruptive presence must have been even more of a threat. His file of motivation for Gavin Scholes grew.

The mutual congratulation continued for a while, and then George Birkitt and John B. Murgatroyd drifted away to chat up the prettier two Witches.

When they were alone, Gavin looked at Charles and his eyes seemed slowly to find their focus. ‘Charles, that policeman was round the office again today.'

‘Detective Inspector Dowling?' The Director nodded. ‘Wants to have another talk with you.'

‘Oh yes?' was all he said, but the news gave Charles an unpleasant
frisson
. ‘When?'

‘He'll be around tomorrow afternoon. Four-thirty or so. Wondered if you'd mind having a chat between the Schools Matinée and the evening show.'

‘No problem,' said Charles with an insouciance that didn't go very deep.

‘I wonder what he wants . . .'

Charles shrugged.

‘Presumably he's still investigating Warnock's death,' Gavin mused. ‘I thought they'd had the inquest.'

‘They have, but it was adjourned pending police enquiries.'

‘What does that mean?'

‘Well, I assume it means that the police haven't yet worked out what they think about the case.'

Gavin's fuddled mind was having difficulty grasping simple ideas. ‘Why, what could they think?'

‘Well, they could think it was an accident . . .'

‘Yes.'

‘Or they could think it was murder.'

Gavin's jaw sagged. ‘You don't believe that they really think that, do you?'

‘I don't know what they think. Presumably I will find that out tomorrow.'

‘But why you? What can you tell them?'

‘I was there, wasn't I? I'm their only possible witness.'

‘Yes, but you were dead drunk all the time, weren't you?'

‘Suppose the police thought I wasn't telling the truth . . .? Suppose they thought I just pretended to be out cold . . .'

The conclusion to Charles's unfinished sentences was, in his mind, that he might then become the police's number one murder suspect. But Gavin's shocked face suggested the director hadn't reached the same conclusion, and his words confirmed it. ‘You mean you could have actually seen anything that did go on?'

‘If I'd been awake, yes, I could have done,' said Charles, unnerved by the look in Gavin's eyes and trying to lighten the conversation. ‘But I was dead to the world. Really.'

‘Dead to the world,' the director echoed. His eyes narrowed as he said, ‘I hope you really were. For your sake.'

HIS IMPERSONATION of Felicia Chatterton was now becoming one of John B. Murgatroyd's party pieces. ‘But it's just so
difficult
,' he complained huskily in the dressing room on the Wednesday afternoon, ‘to try and give a full performance at this time of day. I mean, one's
body-clock
is tuned to peak round eight in the evening, not straight after lunch.'

Charles chuckled, but he could see that Felicia, whom John B. was quoting verbatim, had a point. Matinées are welcomed by few actors. They make for a very long, hard day's work. And they always leave that awkward gap between afternoon and evening performance, not long enough to do anything properly, not long enough to wind down fully before winding oneself up again.