Stage Fright (2 page)

‘But that was such an extraordinary one-off event,' I said.

‘But the pressures and strains that triggered it all off – they were typical enough, weren't they?'

I was saved from answering by the sound of a car horn. I went over to the window and looked down.

‘The taxi's here.'

Stephen put Grace back on the bed and stood up. He looked around the room.

‘Oh God, have I got everything?'

‘Bathroom things? Razor, toothbrush?'

‘Yep.'

‘Passport, money, tickets?'

He patted his pockets and nodded. ‘And I've left the hotel details on the table by the phone.'

He came round the bed to kiss me. We hugged each other tightly, then pulled back to look into each other's eyes. I really didn't want him to go.

‘I'll ring you as soon as I get there. And I won't be away long.'

‘How long exactly? You didn't say.'

He looked away.

‘Stephen? How long?'

‘I won't be sure until I see how much there is to do.' He tried to gather me into his arms again.

I stepped back and held him at arm's length. ‘But you will be back by the end of the week? For when the play opens?'

‘I'll do my best, of course I will. But I can't leave until the contracts are signed. Look, I'm doing it for us, for you and Grace, and we'll need the money even more if…' He broke off.

‘If what?'

My raised voice disturbed Grace. She looked up at me and frowned. Stephen opened his mouth to speak and closed it again.

‘If what?' I repeated.

‘Well, if – oh, look, Cass, this really isn't the moment, I've got to go. I'll miss the flight.' He picked up his case.

I grabbed his arm. ‘If what, Stephen?'

‘Well, if we … what if we…' Stephen said. I hated the way he did that, the pedantic way he had of hesitating while he looked for the right words before he spoke. I felt a surge of irritation so intense that I wanted to slap him.

‘Tell me!'

Grace started to whimper. Outside the car horn sounded again. That seemed to make Stephen's mind up. ‘All right then. If we have another baby, we'll need the money. And if we're going to have another baby, we'll have to do it soon, won't we? I mean, you'll be forty in December.'

Grace let out a yell. I lifted her up to comfort her. But it was too late. Her eyes bulged, her mouth opened wide, and she let out howl after howl of misery and protest. I had to raise my voice to be heard over her screams.

If I hadn't been so unnerved by the accident I'd nearly had, I'd probably have kept my mouth shut. I knew it was a mistake even before I'd finished speaking.

‘It's about time you got your priorities right. Stuff the money! If you want me to even consider having another baby, you'd bloody well better be back in time for the opening!'

Chapter Two

‘H
E'S
not going to die, is he?' Lady Isabel asked.

Her voice faltered and her face was pitifully white in the dim light of the cavernous room. Archibald was sitting beside her on the sofa. He hesitated, and before he could reply there was a sound somewhere behind them.

Isabel gave a start and put her hand on his arm.

‘What was that? I thought I heard a noise.'

‘There's something flapping at the window!'

They turned and peered into the gloom.

‘A bat. I think that's all it is,' Archibald said. ‘It must have mistaken its way. There it is again.' He sprang to his feet and moved towards the window.

‘I've never seen anything like it,' he said. ‘There are hundreds of them!'

Isabel followed him and put her hand on his arm.

‘What does it mean?' she cried. ‘Perhaps it's an ill omen. Oh, Mr Carlyle. I'm so afraid … my dear father. He's all I have in the whole world.'

He took her hands in his. ‘It's all right. Look, they're leaving now.'

They stood together in silence. There was the sound of footsteps approaching. A stout middle-aged woman appeared.

‘Mrs Mason!' Isabel's face lit up. ‘How is he? Can I go to him now?'

The woman didn't speak. Her eyes sought Archihald's and a look passed between them.

‘Oh, no!' Isabel took a step hack. She stretched out her hands imploringly. Her eyes turned up, the whites glistening in the dim light. Archibald caught her as she fainted and lowered her to the sofa.

‘Go and get her maid,' he told the housekeeper.

The woman didn't move. She simply stood there staring at him.

‘What are you waiting for?' he said sharply.

‘Oh, sir, I hardly know how to tell you. Lord Mount Severn's dead, but that's not the worst of it, sir. There's two men, coarse-looking brutes, they tricked the kitchen-maid to letting them into the house.…'

‘Bailiffs, I suppose,' he said with a sigh. He sat back on the sofa, took one of Isabel's hands in his and gently rubbed it. ‘Poor child. They might at least have waited until after the funeral. I'll come and deal with them presently.'

Still she stood staring at him with huge eyes.

‘What's the matter, woman?'

‘Oh, sir, they say they've … there isn't going to be a funeral!'

Archibald stared at her. ‘No funeral?'

‘No, sir.'

‘But why ever not?'

‘Oh, sir, they've come to arrest the corpse!'

Tring, tring!
There was a sharp, tinny sound which resolved itself into a jaunty rendition of the first lines of
Für Elise.

Archibald froze. A moment later, Isabel sat up. Only they weren't Archibald and Isabel any more. It was like one of those trick drawings which you can see as an old crone or a beautiful young woman. One moment the figure on the stage was handsome Archibald Carlyle, mid-Victorian sex symbol, the next he was Clive Ashton, slightly creased middle-aged actor. He was wearing jeans and a black frock-coat so old that it was almost green. Isabel, who was now Melissa Meadow, also seemed to have got suddenly older, though she remained slender and blonde. She was wearing a white T-shirt over which a corset was laced and black cotton trousers. Slung around her waist was a rehearsal crinoline, a contraption like a kind of flexible bird cage, made of a series of metal hoops attached to each other by tapes. Mrs Mason had changed, too. She had become the dear old character actress Celia Durant, familiar from dozens of TV costume dramas. All three of them were staring at me.

I was still so caught up in the drama of the scene that for a moment I couldn't understand what was happening. As soon as I did, the blood rushed to my face. A mobile phone was ringing. My mobile phone.

‘Cass!' Stan hissed. She was the deputy stage-manager and was sitting next to me in the stalls with the script open on her lap. Kevin, the director, who in real life was married to Lady Isabel, or rather, Melissa, was sitting next to her. He got to his feet.

‘Just what the fuck is going on, Cassandra?' he said pleasantly.

I groaned aloud. ‘Sorry, sorry.'

I rummaged around in my bag. Where the hell was it? The maddening sound trilled on and on. In desperation, I tipped everything out on to my lap. I grabbed the phone and cut off the ringing without answering the call.

‘You know the rule, Cassandra. No mobile phones at rehearsals,' Kevin said.

‘I know, I know. I'm so sorry. Stephen's got stuck at the airport. That's why I had it on and then I forgot to switch it off…' After all the rush the day before Stephen had rung me from the airport to tell me that there was a problem with air traffic control and the flight had been cancelled. He had spent the night at an airport hotel.

‘OK, OK, it was virtually the end of the scene anyway,' Kevin said. He turned to the actors. ‘Pretty good, you guys. Just one or two points.' He ran up the temporary steps to the stage two at a time. He was one of those men with a low centre of gravity: a longish body but short legs so that he didn't look as tall as you expected when he stood up. He certainly made the most of what he did have. He was thickset and muscular, good-looking in a piratical way with that heavy black hair which goes straight from being glossy to oily. The old-fashioned swept-back hairstyle and the sideburns had been adopted for the role of the villainous Captain Levison, but they suited him.

Clive and Melissa came forwards and the three of them conferred.

Stan tapped me on the arm. ‘So, have you decided?'

‘Decided what?'

‘What you're going to wear, of course. You can't arrive at the first-night party looking like something the cat brought in. You are The Writer, after all.'

‘Well … adapter rather than writer.'

‘Whatever.' She waved her hand impatiently. ‘You've got to look the part.'

I groaned. ‘I've gone through everything in my wardrobe. Nothing's really right. And nothing really fits, either, since I had Grace.'

‘Nothing for it, you'll have to have something new.'

‘I hate shopping.'

‘That's abundantly clear, if you don't mind me saying so.'

I glanced down at what I was wearing. My black T-shirt had a small but unmistakable milk-stain on the shoulder and it had been washed so many times that it wasn't really black any more. My skirt had been smart five years ago. I looked at what Stan was wearing. She was about the same age as me, fortyish, with a tribe of children and an understanding husband somewhere in the background. Her real name was Constantia. She'd explained to me that she'd had to choose between Stan and Connie as a nickname and ‘I ask you, do I look like a Connie?' Today she was wearing cropped black trousers and a black T-shirt that made no concessions to her spare tyre. Her dark hair was hennaed an improbable red and piled up on top of her head. She always wore scarlet lipstick and when she leaned back and stretched out her legs I saw that she had nail varnish on her toes to match. She looked great.

‘Less than a week to go,' she said. ‘You don't seem to be looking forward to it very much.'

‘Oh, I am really, it's just – oh, well, Stephen's buggered off to LA on business and I don't think he's going to be back in time.'

‘Oh dear dear, you're not going to let that cramp your style, are you? Come on,' she said, taking pity on me, ‘I'll come shopping with you at lunch-time and help you choose something.'

‘You shall go to the ball, Cinders…'

She grinned. ‘Damn right. Are we on?'

‘I won't have all that long. I've got to pick Grace up from the nursery at two o'clock. Oh, well, go on, then. Let's do it.'

The conclave on the stage was breaking up. Kevin was nodding in satisfaction.

‘OK,' I heard him say. ‘We'll leave the proposal scene for now. We'll go on to the scene where the first cloud appears on the horizon. Celia, I won't need you any more this morning.' He ran down the steps into the auditorium and took a seat on the end of the third row.

I yawned and stretched. As I settled back in my seat, a curious sensation came over me, a kind of pressure between the shoulder blades. It was the conviction that someone was watching me. I turned and looked back. The light from the stage where the rehearsal was in progress accentuated the dimness. Rows of seats covered in dustsheets stretched back like frozen waves and darkness gathered under the overhang of the dress-circle. The only faces discernible in the gloom belonged to the cherubs and caryatids that were part of the exuberant Edwardian decoration. Had I heard some sound without consciously registering it? Or was it simply that I just wasn't used to having so much empty space at my back? This was the first time we'd been able to use the theatre for rehearsals, and the chemical smell of paint and new carpets still hung in the air.

I turned my attention back to the stage.

‘Isabel, you must believe me,' Archibald was saying,' You are my own dear wife and you have as much cause to be jealous of my sister as of Barbara Hare. I have never loved her, I swear to you, either before I married you or after.'

‘I will believe you, Archibald, it was just a foolish thought.'

Archibald stood looking down at her, his face full of tenderness. Isabel lifted her arms to him. He moved closer, he bent his face towards her. The slightly hooded eyelids drooped, his lips parted.

‘My darling,' he murmured, and then, ‘Hang on. This isn't quite right.' He turned to face the auditorium. ‘It's the crinoline. I can't get close enough.'

‘It doesn't seem to be properly attached to my corset,' Melissa said.

Kevin turned to Stan. ‘Give me a hand, would you?'

‘Sure.'

They went up on to the stage together and fiddled about with the laces of Melissa's corset.

‘Look,' Kevin said to Clive. ‘You take her by the waist? Like this. OK?' He demonstrated. ‘You pull her towards you, and Melissa, darling, you lean forward…'

The hoops swung back so that the bottom one touched the ground in front.

‘You've been married long enough to have three children and you're both perfectly used to this contraption, this crinoline,' Kevin said, ‘so you do it quite naturally, but Clive, I don't want you to look too much at your ease, OK? Remember that you do have a secret, even though it's not the one that Isabel thinks it is.'

Clive nodded.

‘Let's run through that a few times.'

On stage Clive gathered Melissa into his arms again and again while Kevin and Stan looked on. There was another pause, a further readjustment of the crinoline.

The play was shaping up well. There had been doubts about the choice of an old-fashioned Victorian melodrama like
East Lynne.
But it was the first play that had been performed when the Everyman had opened a hundred years ago, and it seemed a fitting choice for its reopening. More than that: to me it still seemed astonishingly contemporary: murder, adultery, divorce, a dysfunctional stepfamily, a decadent aristocracy, even a train crash. What could be more up to the moment than that?