Mrs Midnight and Other Stories (11 page)

Sir Roger had been tight-lipped about Billie from the beginning, but now I could see that even Cudworth was beginning to lose patience. On the Thursday of that week I came back to the rehearsal room after the lunch break rather sooner than usual and overheard a conversation between Talbot, Cudworth and Sir Roger. I was out of their line of sight; they did not know I was there, and I could only catch fragments of what they were saying.

‘Adela’s a very quick study. . . . Oh, yes! Doesn’t touch a drop these days. . . . We could put the understudy on for the preview nights, I suppose, to give her more time. . . . Of course, we’re all sorry about it. Billie’s a darling. We all love Billie. . . . I’ll talk to Duncan at Majestic . . . I’m not going behind anyone’s back . . . No, no . . . I’d never do that. . . . But the show must come first. . . . The show must come before everything, and Billie would be the first to agree with you. . . . She would, bless her. . . . Absolutely.’

I banged the door of the rehearsal room to announce my entrance and came into view. Talbot and Cudworth looked round furtively; Sir Roger could not disguise his irritation.

‘Would you mind?’ he said imperiously. ‘We are having a private conversation here!’

‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.’

Billie did not come into rehearsals on the Friday and I told Sophie what I had heard.

‘She’s for the chop. I knew it!’ she said.

‘Do you think we should tell her?’

‘She knows, Allan. Billie’s no fool. This whole thing makes me want to vomit. I’m keeping out of it.’

On the Monday morning, a week before the previews began at the Prince Regent, Adela Bennett, Talbot Wemyss’s wife appeared at rehearsals. Billie was absent. By this time we had moved down from the rehearsal rooms to the stage and some of the furniture for the production was already in place. Sophie and I exchanged glances as Pussy Cudworth gathered the company together. In the dimness of the auditorium I could see Sir Roger sitting alone in the middle of the fourth row and watching.

Cudworth announced that unfortunately Billie was too ill to continue but that we had been very fortunate in that Adela Bennett was prepared to step in at short notice. He made much of her ‘incredible courage and generosity’. Talbot Wemyss wore a look of undisguised triumph and glee; his wife listened to Cudworth’s encomium with a faint smile and a distant look as if she was merely receiving her due.

Adela was a handsome woman in her sixties, tall, thin, with a slightly leathery face and predatory eyes. When we began rehearsing it was clear that she was very familiar with her part. She was, as Billie had remarked, a ‘clever little actress’. She played all the lines cleanly; she made all the points that were there to be made; she listened and responded well to others. She was impeccable, but there was an element missing in Adela’s performance that Billie, for all her failures, had given us: authentic glamour, a kind of reality, the thing that makes certain performances great which has really nothing to do with acting ability at all.

All the same, the fact that the part was now in apparently safe hands made everyone else, in particular Cudworth and Sir Roger, feel easier. Rehearsals went smoothly and we were allowed to leave early.

That evening after rehearsals I rang Billie Beverley. The phone was answered by Bridie who seemed reluctant to hand me over to her mistress. I heard Billie in the background calling: ‘Who is that?’ When Bridie had explained I heard Billie insist that I be put onto her.

‘You’ll want to know what happened, darling,’ she said immediately. ‘Well, on Friday evening Roger and Pussy came round here. At first I didn’t know what they were talking about, darling. They kept on about my health. Well, my health is fine. Incidentally Roger really must do something about that breath of his. I can’t think how Mrs T. puts up with him. Eventually after a lot of humming and hawing, they came out with it. Apparently I can’t do Lady Ashbrook; I’m not up to snuff. I mean I know there’s a teeny problem with the lines, but am I really not up to snuff, darling?’

I tried to make my assertion that she was as sincere as possible.

‘Well, the long and the short of it was, apparently, I had to go. I asked who would they get to replace me at such short notice, but they wouldn’t tell. I think I could have accepted it all, if only they hadn’t threatened me.’

‘They what!’

‘Roger and Pussy said that if I and my agent kicked up a fuss about money or anything, they would let the papers know that I was a gaga useless old woman who couldn’t remember her lines. It would be everywhere, my dear. By the way who
is
replacing me?’

I told her.

‘Adela! Good God! Adela! Anyone but her! No wonder they wouldn’t tell me. It’s fatal, darling. She’ll fall off the wagon. She’s bound to. Don’t worry, darling. I’ll be back. It’s my play. Roger wrote it for me. He told me. It’s my play and I’ll be back.’

But she wasn’t. On the Friday night Billie had ventured out from her flat in her best mink coat with Winkie for his evening walk. Somehow the dog had got off his leash and went darting across the road towards the private garden in the centre of Belgrave Square. Billie followed him recklessly and was hit by a Porsche driven far too fast by a city trader high on champagne and financial ebullience. Billie sustained severe head and spinal injuries. She survived for several days in hospital in a coma but died on the Tuesday, the night of the first preview of
The Last of Lady Ashbrook
.

As I was going up to change for the performance I overheard Talbot talking to the Theatre manager. He was saying how providential, given the circumstances, had been Adela’s replacement of Billie. ‘Of course, Adela will walk away with the notices, bless her. She always does.’

The first performances went well. However, I sensed that we were playing to audiences that wanted what we had to give them, and that when the ticket prices went up after the first night they might not be so friendly. Then there were the reviews. Many of them made much of the fact that Sir Roger was Mrs Thatcher’s speech writer and implied that the play was a right-wing tract which, for all its faults, it was not. This false impression was compounded by the fact that the Prime Minister came to the play two days after the first night as a mark of favour to her favourite scribe.

At that time she was still in her pomp after victory over the Argentinians. I met her briefly at the reception which followed the show in the main bar of the Prin. She asked me whether I, who was playing a guards officer, had ever been in the army. When I said I hadn’t she seemed to lose interest: her mind still revolving on military matters, I suppose. I had rather more of a conversation with her husband Denis. He sidled up to me looking rather lost and wielding a large gin and tonic.

‘Damned good show,’ he said. ‘Used to go a lot to the theatre in the old days. Musicals, revues were my thing. Plenty of pretty girls, you know, but the Boss was never all that keen, bless her. Anyway, thoroughly enjoyed it tonight. Amazing. Beats me how you actor johnnies learn all those lines.’

‘Well, sir, I didn’t have that much to say.’

‘Beats me all the same,’ said Mr Thatcher, downing his drink enthusiastically. ‘Jolly good show.’ He was about to turn away, when he stopped abruptly. He was looking at someone or something in the far corner of the crowded room. ‘I say, isn’t that—? You know the gal—lady I should say—who was going to be in your show? What’s her name?
Dancer in the Dark
, you remember? We were all mad about her at one time. She was my pinup girl at Mill-Hill School before the war.’

‘Billie Beverley? But she died last week.’

‘I know! I know! Saw it in the
Telegraph
. That’s what bothers me. Look: there! No. She’s gone. The old eyesight must be playing up, and the booze. I’m beginning to see things. Have to cut down on the old Gin and Ton, eh? That’ll be a tragedy. Well, I see the Boss is beckoning. My marching orders. Toodle pip!’ And he sidled off.

IV

Nothing much occurred during our short West End run at the Prince Regent. The play received lukewarm reviews and poor houses, and so it did not transfer to another theatre, but went on tour, as expected, where it might recoup its London losses. It was then that things started to happen.

The first week of our tour was at the Theatre Royal Brighton and the Company Manager had arranged a special rate for the cast at one of the hotels, the Davenant on the front. I might have preferred a Bed and Breakfast to myself, but I thought it would be churlish to spurn the Company Manager’s efforts. The Davenant, besides being near the theatre, was a quiet, respectable, faded establishment which rather suited my mood at the time.

What first hinted to me that something very strange was going on? Is it only retrospect that makes me think it was the toupée?

On the Monday afternoon the cast assembled in the theatre for a technical run of the show, it being the first night of the tour. Pussy Cudworth arrived late and he was wearing a blonde toupée. It was not even a very good toupée and the remains of Cudworth’s curly white-blonde hair seeped out from under it. He wore pink suede shoes too.

Nobody said anything about it and we got on with our rehearsal, which turned out to be a fractious affair. There was trouble with the lights and the sound. At one point
The Emperor Waltz
, which was heard throughout the play like a kind of leitmotif, came over the loudspeakers at twice its normal speed. Adela Bennett became enraged with Rebecca, the assistant stage manager, because she said the girl had been ‘darting about’ in the wings in her ‘line of sight’ while she was trying to act on stage. Rebecca angrily denied this, but Cudworth sided with his leading lady, so the subordinate was duly crushed. Rebecca began to weep. Sophie put her arms about her; I felt like doing the same, but didn’t.

During the break that followed I found myself alone with Adela in the Green Room. There was nothing I wished to say to her, so I sipped my tea and concentrated on my crossword. I was conscious, though, that Adela was anxious to break the silence.

‘I suppose you think I’m the most frightful bitch,’ she said eventually.

‘I think you overreacted just now. That’s all.’

‘No. I’m not talking about that. That stupid, dumpy little girl needed a good smack on her fat botty anyway. No, you’ve resented me ever since I took over from
darling
Billie.’

‘Why should I? I took over from someone myself.’

‘Oh, yes! Don’t deny it! I heard all about your greasing up to her, and going back to her flat and everything. What did she say about me? Did she give you the full spiel about Noël and Gertie and dear Ivor and the rest of it? The full “I was a big star once” bit?’

Adela’s handsome, lean face was a mask. Behind it her eyes glittered with malice. She had ceased to worry about the effect she was having on me, and was enjoying the tirade for its own sake.

‘And I suppose you heard all her stuff about Darling Harry. Her husband. The love of her life. The dead hero. It was all a sham, my dear. For your information,
darling
Harry spent his last leave with me, mostly in bed, as I remember.’

‘Did Billie know?’

‘Of course she knew, darling. There were no flies on Billie. To be honest, I don’t think she minded that much. Billie was never a one-man girl.’

‘He was shot down over Dresden, I understand.’

‘Shot down? Harry? Good God, no! Is that what she told you? He was run over, darling. He had some sort of desk job for the R.A.F. at a supply depot. Used to put away the sauce quite a bit. Well, we all did in those days. One night he was staggering back to his billet in the dark and got knocked flat by one of his own trucks on its way to Biggin Hill. No, darling. Harry was rather a dear, but he did
not
die a hero. Christ, it’s cold in here! What’s the matter with this bloody theatre? By the way, have you fucked Sophie yet?’

I felt the blood rise to my face and I left the room.

The performance that night was rather frayed and jittery, but we got through it. I was exhausted after the show and decided to go to bed fairly early after a solitary curry in an Indian restaurant. After what Adela had said I felt compelled to avoid Sophie. It was an irrational compulsion, of course, but like most irrational urges, strong. It was past eleven by the time I got back to the hotel. As I came into the Davenant, I saw Talbot, Cudworth and Adela sitting in the little hotel bar. They were talking and laughing loudly. Cudworth’s toupée was slightly askew. Adela appeared to be drinking orange juice, so she hadn’t ‘fallen off the wagon’ yet. I heard their laughter all the way up to my room; it was raucous, almost hysterical, it seemed to me.

As I came down to breakfast the following morning I saw Adela and Talbot at the reception desk. Adela was complaining loudly to the girl behind it; Talbot was listlessly in attendance.

‘I tell you,’ she was saying, ‘there was someone in the room above us, and they were—well, all I can say is, they were bouncing about. Running up and down, or something. Making a hell of a racket. All bloody night! My husband and I hardly got a wink of sleep.’

‘I can assure you, Mrs Wemyss. There was no-one in the room above you. It was unoccupied.’

‘Are you calling me a liar, young lady?’

I moved into the dining room and had barely taken possession of a table by the window when Cudworth sat himself down in the empty place opposite me. He seemed in a cheerful mood, but there were bags under his eyes. The toupée was in place, but a little dishevelled.

‘Hoo! Mind if I join, young man? Have to park the bum gently this morning. Oof! Had a waiter last night. Spanish. Couldn’t understand a word he said, but meatily endowed. A whopper, my dear. Don’t know what came over me. Well, I do, as a matter of fact. His name was Felipe. Ha! But you know what I mean. Hi, waitress, when you’ve done staring, I’ll have some eggs and bacon. And toast! Thank you so much.’ Then turning to me: ‘Do you think she heard what I was saying just now?’

‘I’m quite sure she did.’

‘Hmm. It’s funny.’ He looked troubled for a moment. ‘I don’t know what’s got into me all of a sudden.’