Authors: Laura Wilson
‘She’s nice, isn’t she?’ said Monica, as they turned the corner into Lansdowne Road. ‘I mean, terribly posh and cut-glass and every-thing,
but she’s not stand-offish at all. How on earth did you meet her, Dad? I didn’t like to ask in case it was something awful.’
Stratton hesitated. ‘Well … she wasn’t a suspect, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Can’t you talk about it?’
‘Not really, love. Not allowed to.’
‘Oh.’ Monica sounded disappointed. ‘Oh, well …’
Stratton decided to change the subject before he said something he’d regret. ‘Aren’t you going out tonight?’
‘No. I was going to the pictures with Madeleine, but we said we’d help Auntie Doris with the mending instead. I thought I’d keep you company – I haven’t had supper yet – and go round later.’
‘That’s nice of you,’ said Stratton, pushing open the gate of number twenty-seven, ‘but you shouldn’t have waited. What’s Auntie Doris left for supper?’
‘Cheese pie and tomatoes.’
Stratton had tried growing tomatoes for the first time in the summer. The experiment had gone well – a bit too well, in fact, because they’d ended up with a glut, and, having been bottled by Doris, they appeared with monotonous regularity. Stratton stabbed the largest one with a fork, causing a gout of warmish liquid to spurt across the plate. He realised that he couldn’t actually remember the last home-cooked meal – breakfast included – that hadn’t involved the bloody things. Shoving the deflated tomato to the side of the plate so that it wouldn’t turn the cheese pie, which he rather liked, into a soggy mess, he wondered what Diana was doing. Eating, perhaps? Stratton glanced up at the kitchen clock. Half past six. Too early. She’d be having drinks somewhere, or getting dressed up to go out to a party, or even—
‘Dad? I said, I’ve left it on the mantelpiece.’ Monica’s raised voice shattered a wholly inappropriate image of Diana clad in nothing but camiknickers.
‘Left what?’ he asked.
‘Honestly! Pete’s letter, of course.’
‘Oh. When did that come?’
Monica rolled her eyes. ‘This morning. I just told you.’
‘Sorry, love. What’s the news?’
‘Only that he’s fed up and so’s everyone else, and the sergeant can’t even be bothered to sound properly fierce when they do their bayonet drill, whatever that is.’
‘Charging at straw-filled sacks and stabbing them and bawling a lot, like this.’ Stratton lowered his knife and fork, thrust his head forward, and emitted a blood-curdling yell.
‘Blimey, Dad. You’ll give yourself indigestion, doing that.’
‘Your Uncle Reg used to do it up at the football ground with the Home Guard. It wasn’t a pretty sight.’ Stratton winced – not entirely theatrically – at the memory of his brother-in-law, pop-eyed and bulging in khaki, wheezing as he launched himself at a stuffed sack hanging from a gibbet.
‘I can’t imagine Uncle Reg charging at anything.’ Monica giggled.
‘Don’t try, or you’ll be the one with indigestion. What else did Pete say?’
‘Just that when they’re not doing the charging, they’re doing silly things like polishing belt brasses on the insides and that he’s skinned his palms trying to get round the assault course. That’s it, really – except that he’s coming home for Christmas.’
‘That’s good, anyway.’ Stratton pushed his plate away. ‘I’m sorry, love, but I don’t feel very hungry.’
‘It’s the tomatoes, isn’t it?’
‘’Fraid so.’
Monica put her knife and fork together. ‘I’m not that hungry, either. I won’t tell Auntie Doris if you don’t. Can I have a cig? I’ve run out.’
‘If you make me a cup of tea before you go.’ Stratton stood up. ‘I’m going next door to have a look at Pete’s letter.’
After a cursory glance at the letter, which said no more than Monica had reported, Stratton sat down in his armchair to read
the paper. In the five minutes before his tea arrived, he managed to concentrate fairly well on a piece about whether all the money spent on the Festival of Britain wouldn’t be better put towards rehoming people, but as soon as he heard the front door close he let the paper fall and, leaning back, closed his eyes and allowed the image of Diana back into his mind. After a few moments of this, an obscure feeling – he mentally skirted the word ‘guilt’ – that despite being alone he really ought to give the appearance of doing something else, made him get up and turn on the wireless. Returning to his chair, he settled back and let his thoughts take him where they would.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Clutching her notes to her chest, Diana stared down at her shoes. She’d been told that they were days behind schedule, and Anthony Renwick had spent the morning – it was now quarter past eleven – stumbling through take after take, disorientated and constantly forgetting his lines, until nobody could bear to look at him. Now, the unit were avoiding each other’s eyes, too, ashamed at being part of a disaster. Only Carleton kept on staring at Renwick with pinpoint concentration, as if he were trying to force a performance from the actor by sheer willpower.
‘Action!’
Diana glanced up in time to see a look of consternation momentarily animate Renwick’s otherwise immobile features. A second later, he let out a long, wailing fart.
‘Cut! Cut!’ Carleton jumped up and strode towards him. ‘For Christ’s sake, Tony …’
The crescendo of laughter – a release of tension, if not actual merriment – stopped abruptly when Renwick burst into noisy, gulping tears. Carleton put an arm round his shoulders – ‘Break, everybody! Ten minutes!’ – and escorted him outside, motioning Diana to follow. She’d been working at Ashwood for two weeks now, and while she felt she’d never be on top of the myriad jobs involved in assisting Marita Neill, the continuity girl – it turned out that Mr Carleton had a perfectly good secretary already – she was at least beginning to understand how things worked. And,
when she wasn’t worrying about missing something or getting it wrong, which was still quite a lot of the time, she was enjoying herself a great deal. The other good thing was that, although his attraction was undeniable, she was managing not to be openly stupid about Mr Carleton (as Lally – who’d guessed immediately, much to her chagrin, from the way she spoke about him – had put it).
Anthony Renwick stood in the feeble winter sunlight, shoulders heaving, with Carleton wiping his nose for him as if he were a baby. As Diana approached Carleton broke away and took her by the arm. He seemed so supercharged with tension that it was like being inside an electric force field. ‘Get him a drink.’
‘But he’s not supposed to—’
‘For Christ’s sake, Diana,
look at him
!’
‘You’ll kill him. His doctor—’
‘His doctor hasn’t got the studio breathing down his neck. Just go across to the bar and get him a bloody drink,’ Carleton hissed. ‘You can get one for me, too, while you’re at it.’
Seeing that it was useless to argue, Diana said, ‘What would you like?’
‘Anything! Just make sure it’s strong.’
Renwick, who’d been staring into the middle distance somewhere over Diana’s left shoulder during this exchange, suddenly said, with more firmness and clarity than he’d managed all week, ‘Brandy. I want brandy.’
‘There you are,’ said Carleton. ‘He wants brandy, and I’ll have the same. Now go!’
Dismissing her, he returned to Renwick and steered him back towards the studio. ‘Come on, Tony,’ she heard him say. ‘Pull yourself together. You’ll be all right now.’
As she walked down the causeway, Diana felt very doubtful that Renwick would ever be ‘all right’. Certainly, judging from the way in which Mr Vernon had harangued Carleton the previous evening – she and Marita had been in Carleton’s office when he took the
telephone call, and his feelings, if not his actual words, had been excruciatingly obvious – Renwick wouldn’t be working for Ashwood again. Whether Carleton himself would, having told Mr Vernon in no uncertain terms that he hadn’t wanted Renwick in the first place, also seemed open to question.
As she entered the old house, Diana was nearly knocked off her feet by a young lad with an armful of paperchains and a grin so wide that it threatened to meet itself at the back of his head. There were people up ladders tacking coloured streamers to the gallery and the whole place had an atmosphere of bustling, anticipatory festivity.
The restaurant, in contrast, was deserted, except for a few waitresses laying tables and the old barman who, on seeing Diana, raised his eyebrows so high that they all but disappeared beneath his toupee. ‘You’re on G Stage, aren’t you, miss? I thought it couldn’t last.’
‘It’s just the one,’ said Diana, defensively, taken aback by the man’s familiarity and instant summing-up of the situation. ‘Well, just the two, anyway. Brandy.’
The barman picked up two balloons, and looked pointedly from the one in his left hand to the one in his right. ‘For Mr Carleton, is it?’
‘Mr Renwick,’ said Diana, assuming that he must know about the actor’s problem.
‘
Both
of them?’
‘Well, no. The other one’s for Mr Carleton.’ Diana wondered why she was explaining this – after all, what business was it of his?
‘Is it indeed?’ The barman’s tone was arch, but he turned away too quickly for Diana to read his expression, busying himself with the optics. ‘Can’t say I’m surprised.’ He turned and slid a tray across the polished surface. ‘Would you like a siphon?’
‘Yes, please,’ said Diana, briskly.
‘Right you are.’
‘Thank you.’
As Diana picked up the tray and turned to leave, the barman said, ‘I’ll see you later, miss.’
‘Naturally,’ said Diana, with hauteur. ‘I shall return the tray.’
‘Of course, miss.’ To her astonishment, the barman closed one eye in a deliberate, conspiratorial wink.
She returned to G Stage to find Carleton and Renwick huddled at the side of the building, smoking in silence. Ignoring the soda, Carleton picked both balloons off the tray and held one up to Renwick, whose eyes followed it with a precision of focus Diana hadn’t seen from him before. If he were a dog, she thought, he’d be slobbering. ‘There you are,’ said Carleton. ‘Just what the doctor didn’t order.’
As they clinked their glasses, Diana saw a look pass between them, a strange mix of solemnity and devilment, as of a secret shared. Obviously, Carleton had supplied Renwick with illicit drinks before. But surely, she thought, he can’t really believe that everyone inside hasn’t guessed what Renwick’s doing out here? And even if they don’t, they’re bound to smell it the moment the two of them walk back in.
Renwick drank greedily and returned the glass to the tray with a flourish. ‘Bless you, my child,’ he said, giving her a mock bow.
‘That,’ said Carleton, tossing back the remains of his own brandy, ‘should get us through till lunch, at any rate.’
Two hours and three scenes later, Diana was forced to admit that the brandy – and the second helpings she’d fetched an hour later, to the unconcealed amusement of the barman – had done the trick. Renwick was a changed man and the alteration infused the unit with new energy. As he seemed almost to blaze before her, Diana felt herself lit up by the presence and the vitality that had made him a star. Now, everyone was looking at him. He didn’t draw your attention so much as actually drag it to him, so that you barely noticed any of the other actors. But we’re watching him die, she thought, remembering what Alex had told her about the
doctor’s warning. If he carries on with it, then he really
will
die. And she’d got him the brandy, hadn’t she? And, she thought ruefully, she would again if Carleton requested it. She not only needed the job, especially as Hambeyn House was still on the market and she was looking for a flat – despite their protests to the contrary, she felt she’d imposed herself on Jock and Lally for quite long enough – but she loved working at the studio.
Only obeying orders, she mocked herself, that’s what I’m doing. Would Renwick, she wondered, have cracked if Carleton hadn’t suggested the brandy? He could have refused it, of course, if he’d had the mental strength, but anyone could see how weak he was.
As if he could read her thoughts, Carleton beckoned her over during a pause for set-dressing and said, ‘There’s no option, Diana. It’s him or the picture.’
When they finally broke for lunch, and Carleton and Renwick strolled off towards the restaurant, arms round one another’s shoulders, Diana, too disturbed to be hungry, decided to take herself off for a walk. It was a desire to be elsewhere, rather than a conscious decision, that led her in the direction of Make-up, where, peering through a half-open door, she caught sight of Monica Stratton. Kneeling on the floor beside a supine and almost naked actress, who was unconcernedly smoking a cigarette, the policeman’s daughter was occupied in painting a delicate lacework of what was obviously meant to be blood across the young woman’s legs.
‘We’ve got company,’ said the actress, raising her head fractionally from its cushion. ‘Can I get up now?’
‘No, you’ve got to dry … Oh!’ Monica half-turned and, catching sight of Diana, blushed.
Hoping the girl hadn’t thought she was eavesdropping – she certainly hadn’t overhead anything – Diana felt uncomfortable. ‘I didn’t mean to disturb you,’ she said, lamely.
‘Can I help you?’ asked Monica, getting to her feet.
Diana, having only talked to her briefly on the previous occasion they’d met, now had the chance for a proper look at her. Despite the severe hairstyle and unbecoming overall, her fresh complexion and bright green eyes made the languid sophisticate who sprawled before them on the floor in her
maquillage
and silk underwear seem tawdry and stale.
‘I was just getting a breath of air,’ she said. ‘Wandering about, really.’
‘Oh …’ Monica, too, seemed at a loss for what to say. ‘Well, it’s a nice day, for a change.’
‘I am sorry if I disturbed you.’
‘Oh, no. I wouldn’t mind some fresh air myself. We’re starting again in ten minutes, and I’ve missed lunch, so …’
‘Do you fancy a quick walk?’ Honestly, thought Diana, anyone would think they were a boy and a girl at their first dance, tongue-tied by proximity and etiquette.