Sicken and So Die (7 page)

‘Gavin Scholes rang me direct and offered me that, Maurice. I told you about it.'

‘Ah, maybe, but I was the one who sorted out the deal.'

‘You accepted the first offer they made.'

‘Charles, Charles, when will you realise? What I do is a very finely tuned business. Involves a lot of very delicate decisions. Sometimes you have to push like mad, scrabble for more and more money from them. Other times you have to be subtle – sit back, hold your fire, live to fight another day.'

‘Funny it's always other clients you do the scrabbling for. When it comes to me, on the other hand, you always seem to be holding your fire.'

‘Charles, that's very cruel. If I didn't know you so well, I'd find that extremely hurtful. You've no idea how much I do behind the scenes on your behalf.'

‘I've a nasty feeling I have, Maurice.'

‘Charles, trust me . . .' How many times must Maurice have said that over the years. And every time Charles'd heard the words, they had prompted the identical reaction. ‘I assume you're joking.' And yet, in all their long associations, he'd never once vocalised the thought.

‘If I didn't know what I was doing,' Maurice went on, ‘ask yourself – would you still be one of my clients after all these years?'

Yes, thought Charles Paris, savage with self-contempt, I would.

“‘Approach, Sir Andrew. Not to be abed after midnight, is to be up betimes, and diluculo surgere, thou knowest –”'

“‘Nay, by my troth, I know not; but I know that to be up late is to be up late.”'

“‘A false conclusion!”' Charles bellowed, wishing he hadn't been up quite so late the night before. It had been stupid to engage Frances in conversation about how she'd spent her evening. The sensible course would have been to take the hint of her closed bedroom door and go off to sleep in the spare room. And that's what he would have done if he hadn't drunk so much. Still, he told himself with the wounded logic of someone who knows he's in the wrong, it was her fault. If she turfs me out and I'm not allowed back in till after midnight, how does she imagine I'm going to spend the evening?

“‘I hate it as an unfilled can,”' Charles continued, thinking how much he'd welcome a filled can to irrigate his desiccated brain. He felt a bit gutty too; that really meant he'd had too much the night before. “‘To be up after midnight and to go to bed then is early; so that to go to bed after midnight is to go to bed betimes. Does not our life consist of the four elements?”'

“‘Faith, so they say,”' John B. Murgatroyd's Sir Andrew Aguecheek weedily agreed, “‘but, I think, it rather consists of eating and drinking.'”

And sex, thought Charles wistfully. He shouldn't have put his hand on Frances's shoulder the night before. He should have respected her privacy rather than trying it on. His behaviour had been juvenile and crass and she'd been absolutely right to tell him to leave her alone. Oh God. He hoped he hadn't cast a permanent blight over his prospects of making love to Frances again. Why was he capable of such total idiocy?

“‘Thou art a scholar,”' Sir Toby Belch went on. ‘“Let us therefore eat and drink. Marian, I say! A stoup of wine!”'

The assistant director stopped them there. He was still in charge of the first part of the morning's rehearsal. Alexandru Radulescu had a meeting at the National Theatre and wouldn't be with them till about twelve.

‘Just like to take it from the top again . . .' the assistant director suggested nervously.

‘Anything specific wrong?' asked Charles, hoping that the hangover wasn't spoiling his performance.

‘No, not really. Just need a bit more contrast between you, I think. Sir Andrew really is knackered. All he wants to do is go to bed. So we need more of Sir Toby jollying him along. Be more of a party animal, Charles.'

‘Right, OK.' It was a good point. In fact, the assistant director's ideas were all good; he just didn't have the personality to put them across with sufficient definition.

Even through his hangover, Charles knew that the double act with John B. was going well. They looked good together. A long willowy Sir Andrew Aguecheek and a more substantial – thanks to the padding, Charles kept reassuring himself – Sir Toby Belch. A kind of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in reverse. Then of course Charles would have his ruddied face, and John B. would make his as pale as milk. Yes, they'd look great.

It was so good to be working on a classic. The relationship between Sir Toby and Sir Andrew had a kind of mythic quality. The crafty drunkard and the ineffectual dupe. The parts Shakespeare wrote were so solid, almost tactile, and yet with infinite nuances to be explored. Even the lines were easy to learn because they felt so right. Charles was really going to enjoy Sir Toby Belch – or at least he was as soon as he'd got rid of his hangover. His guts felt distinctly squittery. He had a nasty feeling he was going to have to rush to the Gents before too long.

They pressed on through Act Two, Scene Three. Chad Pearson joined them and his rendering of another of Feste's songs again reduced the rehearsal room to silence.

They worked through to the end of the scene, though the cement-mixer rumbling of Charles's stomach was getting louder and louder. He felt sure everyone could hear it. Thank God I'm not doing a radio, he thought.

He just made it to the end. “‘Come, come, I'll go burn some sack; 'tis too late to go to bed now. Come, knight; come, knight.”'

‘Very nice,' said the assistant director. ‘Very nice indeed. Erm, I'd just like to –'

‘Sorry, must dash,' panted Charles Paris.

It was a close call getting to the Gents in time and, as he squatted back exhausted on the lavatory, he swore he'd never touch another drop of alcohol. It was insane, putting his body through this kind of punishment.

Charles was pulling up his trousers when he heard the sound of two men coming in to use the urinals. Instinctively, as everyone does in that situation, he froze, embarrassed to give away his presence in the cubicle.

The men were talking, but in a language Charles had never heard before. One of the voices was familiar, though. Yes, in spite of the words, the deep tones were recognizable as those of Vasile Bogdan.

It seemed reasonable to assume that he was talking Romanian; and that the man he was talking to was Alexandru Radulescu.

Charles couldn't be sure, but in amongst the strange words, he thought he heard the director mention Gavin Scholes. There was a sound of zipping-up, then the footsteps and voices moved away.

Vasile Bogdan let out a harsh laugh as the door was opened. Then, in English, he said, ‘I told you it would be all right, Alex. Gavin's out of the way, and you've got the job.'

‘OK.' ALEXANDRU Radulescu moved his spread hands outwards in a that's-enough-of-that gesture. ‘
Twelfth Night
is a play about sex.'

Well, only partly, thought Charles. It's more a play about romance, romantic ideals and how they frequently mismatch with reality.

‘
All
plays are about sex,' the director continued in his heavily accented voice. ‘All life is about sex, if you like, and so of course Shakespeare, who reflected life, writes only about sex . . .'

Now just a minute, hang on there. In Charles's view, Shakespeare wrote about everything. That included sex, sure, but to call sex his overriding obsession seemed an unnecessarily simplistic and Freudian interpretation.

‘. . . and nowhere is that more true than in
Twelfth Night
. When I first read the play . . .'

Which was probably last night, was Charles's instant reaction. He was having no difficulty being uncharitable to this small, wiry, dark-eyed Romanian. It wasn't just from suspicion raised by what he'd overheard in the Gents. Alexandru Radulescu had a deliberately provocative manner. He seemed to enjoy putting people's backs up. As yet none of the company had raised any objections to what he was saying, but when that did happen, Charles felt the director would enjoy slapping them down.

‘When I first read the play, I thought, sex, sex, sex – that's what's happening here. Exciting young sex with Sebastian.' He flashed a smile at Russ Lavery, who grinned back knowingly. ‘Sebastian and Olivia, yes, but also Sebastian and Antonio.'

Charles groaned inwardly. He hated productions that imposed twentieth-century values on the society of Shakespeare's time. In the sixteenth century there had been a strong tradition of masculine friendship and loyalty. A line like Antonio's to Sebastian, ‘If you will not murder me for my love, let me be your servant', did not imply a full-blown homosexual affair, though Charles had a nasty feeling that's how a director like Alexandru Radulescu would interpret it – no doubt with lots of gratuitous male kissing and mime of sexual congress. The good burghers of Great Wensham weren't going to like that.

‘There is also old sex: disgusting geriatric groping between Sir Toby Belch and Maria.'

Now just a minute . . . Charles had always thought there was something rather heartwarming in the relationship between Sir Toby and Maria. He tried to assess how old Alexandru Radulescu was. Early thirties, perhaps. Certainly of the age that reckoned sex was turned off like a bathtap at the age of fifty. Huh, he's got a thing or two to learn. But that thought brought a pang of unease, reminding Charles of the previous evening's scene with Frances.

‘But there is also – and most important of all – an uncertainty about sexual identity. This is at the centre of the play: Viola searching for her own sexuality by the experiment of cross-dressing . . .'

No, no, no, that isn't at the centre of the play.

‘. . . Orsino being brought face to face with his homosexuality through his infatuation with Cesario . . .'

No.

‘. . . Malvolio's obsession with Olivia, which is fetishistic and can only find expression through bondage in the form of yellow cross-garters. This is what Shakespeare meant us to take from
Twelfth Night
.'

No, it isn't. That's just what you want to impose on
Twelfth Night
.

‘Right, so bear all this in mind as we work on the play. Sex, sex, sex.' Alexandru Radulescu looked across to the assistant director. ‘OK, maybe we should start.'

‘Yes, well, we've just rehearsed Act Two, Scene Three. Would you like us to run through that, and maybe we can see places where, you know . . . the sexual element can be emphasized a bit . . .?'

‘What!' Alexandru Radulescu stared at the young man, appalled. ‘You think I am just going to pick up the left-overs of someone else's production?'

‘Well, it's all been blocked. The cast know their moves and lines. I mean, we do only have three weeks before we open and –'

The director drew himself up to his full – not very great – height. ‘Alexandru Radulescu does not collaborate! When Alexandru Radulescu directs a production, he does it his way. And, anyway, Alexandru Radulescu does not just direct, he
reinterprets
a play.'

It'll end in tears, thought Charles Paris. It'll end in tears.

‘It could have meant anything,' said John B. Murgatroyd. They were sitting over drinks at the end of that day's rehearsal. John B. had a pint of bitter; Charles was on the large Bell's. For him beer spelt relaxation, and an afternoon in the company of Alexandru Radulescu had rendered him desperate for whisky.

“‘I told you it would be all right,”' John B. quoted again. ‘Vasile probably just meant that Alexandru had cracked the British system – made himself the natural candidate to take over when Gavin got ill.'

‘Equally it could have meant that their plan to
make
Gavin ill had worked.'

‘Oh, for heaven's sake, Charles. You're the last person I'd have expected to be a conspiracy theorist. What, so you've also got proof that Kennedy was assassinated by Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe because he threatened to tell Martin Luther King about their love-child – is that right? You're being paranoid.'

‘Don't you think this afternoon's events justify a little paranoia?'

‘Hmm . . .' John B. Murgatroyd took a thoughtful swallow of his beer. ‘It'll probably be all right. Look, he hasn't got time to make too many changes. I'm sure he's mostly talk – that sort always are. What we'll end up with is a straight telling of
Twelfth Night
with a couple of trendy flourishes.'

‘You have the sound of someone trying very hard to convince himself – and failing. I've worked with Directors like this before,' said Charles darkly.

Various unpleasant memories bubbled to the surface of his mind. Charles Paris liked the words a playwright wrote to be the mainspring of a production; he couldn't stand Directors who regarded the text as an obstacle that had to be negotiated on the way to their personal glorification.

Wincing, he remembered a production of
Richard III,
in which Richard alone remained handsome and upright, while all the other characters had been played with various disabilities. The Director's point, that deformity is in the eye of the beholder, might have had some validity in another context, but it sure as hell made nonsense of Shakespeare's play. Charles rather treasured the notice the
Wigan Gazette
had given of his one-legged Duke of Clarence (Jesus, he'd been grateful to be killed off so early – the strapping was agony): ‘Charles Paris's resolute swimming in the malmsey-butt suggests a promising nautical future for him as Long John Silver.'