1982 Janine (28 page)

The truculent man covered his face with his hands and said in a muffled voice, “I will not let you turn my play into a vehicle for your national inferiority complex and your London West End ambitions. Give the part to Rory. He knows how to act it.”

The director smiled and said brightly, “I wish you were dead. Do you know why I wish you were dead? If you were dead I could turn this script into a great piece of theatre. It has a good plot, meaty parts, some very funny lines and only one defect – an author who has no practical theatrical experience and is hideously alive. Do me a favour. Go away and die.”

The author, his face very white, left the room with no dignity at all for he stumbled going through the door and made two efforts before slamming it behind him. I had never heard adult people being so deliberately nasty to each other before. The two girls stared at the director with something like awe. Diana said hopefully, “Perhaps he won't come back.”

“We need him,” said the director wearily, “we need his
name on the programme. Roddy. Rory. He's gone to drown his sorrows in the Red Lion. Follow him there and buy him pints and tell him what a great writer he is and what a bastard I am and how everybody else is on his side. He makes these scenes because he wants to be flattered, so lay it on thick. Take Jock with you. The girls and I will get down to some real work together and join you in the pub in forty minutes.”

When Roddy and Rory and I got to the nearest pub the playwright was not there but we bought pints all the same.

Roddy said, “What do you think of us, Jock?”

I said, “You are interesting people.”

Rory said, “What do you think of our director?”

I said, “Is he queer?”

“Oh no. Roddy and I are the queers in this company.”

My insides turned to nearly total panic. I could not have been more embarrassed if they had told me they were Catholics. They were watching me closely so I managed not to react. Roddy said, “You haven't batted an eyelid. Do you think Rory is joking, Jock?”

After a silence I said, “Not necessarily.”

They chuckled as if this was a joke and my insides started to relax. Roddy said, “A friend of poor Helen, are you?”

I said, “I'm a friend of Alan who is a friend of Helen.”

Roddy said, “Ah! Alan! I could go for him.”

Rory said, “I couldn't. Mind you, if he asked me nicely I would probably submit.”

I said, “Why did you say ‘poor' Helen?”

They told me about Helen and the director and Diana. I then asked if the production had any chance of doing well. Rory said, “There is a chance, yes, there is a slim chance.”

Roddy said, “It would have a very good chance if Brian gave the lead part to Rory.”

I said, “Then you are in agreement with what the author said?”

“Oh yes. Even Helen and Diana say privately that Brian is hopeless in the lead.”

“Why don't all of you tell him that?”

“If we all tell him that he's perfectly capable of cracking up, then the whole production will fall apart. We're hanging on
in the hope that he sees the light for himself. He might. He's not a fool.”

I wanted no part in a company which depended on the whims of a raving egoist. I decided that when Helen arrived I would take her aside, quietly tell her this, then apologise and leave.

The director arrived arm-in-arm with his women. All three were as hectically elated as if they had been drinking and I had no chance to talk quietly with Helen. Her gaiety had a wild, defiant note, she almost reminded me of Jane Russell. I don't often notice the inside feelings of people but I sensed that Helen would soon be wanting an alternative to that director, an alternative who was completely unlike him. Suddenly I was also elated, so elated that I disguised it by consulting my watch and saying abruptly, “I must go.” “Listen, I'm sorry this evening has been such a shambles,” said the director escorting me to the pub door. “Next week we'll have that tête-à-tête I promised you, we'll hammer out a lighting script and arrange to get what you need. The thing to remember is, we're performing on a bare platform with no curtains or backdrops or any kind of scenery, just desks and chairs and things, so all the transitions and the mood of the setting depend on you. I know you won't let us down.”

When making love later that night I was also caressing and entering an image of the desperately elated Helen, so I kept being surprised by the shortness of Denny's legs.

Some time in the following week I visited the warehouse of a theatrical hiring agency and after half an hour's discussion of the available equipment I had identified the main sorts of stage lighting and learned that it came in floods (which can be faded in or out more or less rapidly) and spots (which can be widened into quite big pools). I never had a tête-à-tête with the director, who was always too busy to attend to practical details, but I worked out a lighting script in discussions with Roddy, who was in charge of properties, and Diana, who was the production manager. When I asked them the colour of the clothes and the furniture they did not think it was my business. I explained that some colours
would look vivid or dull, depending on the colour of the light. Roddy said, “I think you're being too subtle, Jock. A production like ours doesn't need coloured lighting.”

Diana said, “Wait a minute! Could you make a telephone glow in the dark?”

I said, “Given an ultra-violet bulb and a telephone coated with the right enamel, certainly I could. Or I could mould a telephone in acetate and put a small bulb inside. But if total darkness is not essential I can make the right colour of phone glow bright in a dimly lit area by putting the right spot on it.”

Diana said to Roddy, “You see, that might solve the main problem.”

The play had scenes in which people who were supposed to be in different buildings telephoned each other from opposite sides of the stage. Everyone but the author thought these would be hard to dramatise. Roddy turned quickly to a page in the script and said, “Of course! End of scene five. Harbinger starts his final monologue extreme right, then the lights start to fade, then he shoots himself, slumps over the desk and we cut the floods to a small spot on him which also lights the telephone. Miss Soames enters, picks up the phone, speaks the number, then at the very moment when the other phone starts ringing we see it shining in the dark extreme left! You're a genius, Jock.”

They seemed to believe I had given them an idea, though I had only asked what they wanted and told them what could be done. Diana said, “I'll break it to Brian.”

Roddy said, “Would it not be easier if we treated it as a technical matter and let Jock just go ahead and do it?”

Diana said, “No, I'll break it to Brian. Since the idea comes from Jock he won't feel threatened.”

Diana was a very thin girl with irregular features and a lot of common sense. Though not pretty she was attractive, and I could not understand why she and Helen let themselves be loved and bullied by a pretentious idiot like Brian. They treated his rottenest behaviour with motherly protectiveness. Now I come to think of it, so did Roddy and Rory. Brian was very mean with money. He would lead us into the Red Lion after a rehearsal, fling himself dramatically
on to a bench, lean back with closed eyes and softly whine, “Get me a drink, somebody.”

Whoever was nearest the bar, Helen or Diana or Roddy or Rory or me (why me?) would buy and bring him a pint, he would swallow a quarter of it in one dramatic gulp, then lie back again with the closed eyes and murmur, “Thanks. I deserved that.”

Around him the company would nudge and grin at each other, taking care that he did not see them do it. Then I noticed that when he lay back like that his narrow eyes were not always completely shut, and he was actually watching the others nudging and grinning. I understood nobody in that company except the author, a simple soul. The others did not speak to him so I felt obliged to explain the script and the lighting cues. He attended closely then said in a relieved voice, “Yes, that won't interfere with it.”

He believed his play would be a success if only the actors followed all his instructions and distinctly pronounced his words. He had no interest apart from that in the direction and lighting of the play, and mainly attended the rehearsals to prevent, as far as he could, the director altering his words.

The author was not the only one to flee from the rehearsal rooms after an exchange of cruel language. Everyone but myself did it some time. Even the director did it, after Helen disagreed with him over a point, and appealed to the rest of the cast, and they agreed with her. The wounded parties usually rushed to the pub and since I was often free at this stage in the production I was usually asked to follow them and soothe them. This was easily done. I listened to their complaints with great attention and said as little as possible. I allowed myself to show a certain amount of surprise, for the causes of the quarrel were usually different from the argument which expressed it. Helen told me her suspicions about Diana; Diana told me how guilty she felt about Helen; the director told me never to get entangled with women because it was HELL, Jock, sheer sheer sheer bloody unmitigated Hell; Roddy told me how afraid he was of losing Rory; Rory told me how stiflingly possessive Roddy had become. When they had taught themselves cheerful or tranquil
again they would pay me a wee compliment, like “We're all less tense since you joined us, Jock,” or “You're very sympathetic toward people who are different from you.”

I was not sympathetic, I was just interested in them. Only I was not sympathetic, I was just interested in them. Only Helen seemed ashamed of talking without restraint. She said afterward, “I was silly to go on like that. I'm sorry, I find it hard to be reasonable.”

Only Diana was interested in me. She once interrupted her babble about Brian and Helen to say, “How is your own love life? You have one, haven't you?”

I told her I did not like talking about it. She said, “No wonder I feel safe with you.”

I stared thoughtfully into my glass to avoid looking at her speculatively. I did not know if her remark was an insult or a compliment but it excited me. I wondered if she would tire of the director at the same time as Helen did. I wanted Helen, I had no intention of giving up Denny, and if a selfish noisy childish man like Brian could enjoy two women simultaneously why should not a kindly discreet intelligent man like myself enjoy three?

For I did not neglect Denny in those days, I did not, I did not. I liked her more than ever. The actors fascinated me but it was good to go home to supper with someone who did not feel that all the world was a stage and everyone else a good or bad audience. I became nicer to Denny because I was plotting to be unfaithful to her. I stopped being unpunctual. I bought her presents of chocolate, and cartoon-strip love-stories which she read with great concentration. So when I remarked casually one Friday night that I was going to Edinburgh next day and might have to stay till Sunday she looked worried, but not more worried than if I had told her I was going to visit Alan. That was before we went to bed. I was woken later on by a queer muffled squeaking noise. We were not entwined as usual. She had slid down under the bedclothes as far as she could and pressed her face into the mattress to hide her sobbing from me. Her head was beside my hip. I stroked it and said, “What's wrong?”

I could not hear her words till I had crawled down beside her. She was saying, “You're goantae leave me you're
goantae leave me and you won't come back, won't ever come back.”

I tried to cuddle her. I said, “Don't worry, I love you! You're all right because I love you!”

I had never spoken the word
love
seriously before and have never used it since, but when I heard it leave my lips I knew I meant it. Yet she still said, “No no no never, you'll never you'll never come back”, and I noticed that apart from me she had nothing much to hold on to, nothing but a wage which could not support her, relations she distrusted and a forbidding public charity. Beside such weakness I felt gigantically strong, as strong as the whole world put together and I was delighted to discover my strength, because now that I loved her she had no cause to weep. No matter how many other women I loved (a man as big as the world cannot be confined to one woman) she would always be perfectly safe because I loved her first and best. I said, “Listen, Denny, you've nothing to worry about because one day I'll probably marry you, Denny, yes, I'll probably marry you because I like, no, I really love you, Denny!”

Words meant nothing to Denny when she got depressed. Eventually she let me cuddle her but the sobs shook her body like incurable hiccoughs till they no longer distressed but bored me, then I got sick and tired of them and fell asleep.

She was very quiet over breakfast next morning though I had made scrambled eggs on toast, which she greatly liked. I said to her, almost pleadingly, “Don't worry, Denny! I'm not angry with you.”

She said nothing. I said, “No couple should expect to sleep together every single night of their lives. And Edinburgh isnae at the other end of Scotland, it's less than an hour away by train. And you're perfectly safe here, the landlord likes you.”

“Well I don't like him.”

“Why not?”

“He looks at me in a funny way when you're no' here.”