Dead Room Farce (2 page)

Not On Your Wife!
was one of those ‘other things'. David J. Girton had worked a lot in television with the show's star, Bernard Walton, and that was the reason for his appointment. Bernard Walton's contract stipulated that he had director approval and, rather than going for a dynamically creative figure, the star had opted for someone who wouldn't interfere too much with the way he intended to play his part.

Because there was no question who was in charge of the production, Bernard Walton dictated the pace and emphasis of rehearsals. He selected which bits should be worked on in depth (the scenes he was in) and which should be hurried through on the nod (the scenes he wasn't in). And the whole schedule was fitted around his commitments. The reason their last London rehearsal was on a Thursday was simply that Bernard Walton had a long-standing commitment to play in a charity Pro-Am golf tournament on the Friday.

As well as having the star's approval, David J. Girton was treated with easy tolerance by the rest of the company. Many of them were comedy actors he already knew from television, though he hadn't worked before with Charles Paris, who Bernard had suggested as a possible Aubrey. Charles had appeared at the end of the first afternoon of auditions, and been extremely flattered when the director had cancelled the second day's calls and offered him the part on the spot, expressing his opinion that the actor demonstrated the requisite quality of ‘seedy gentility'. At the time Charles had seen this as a reflection of his own brilliance, but closer acquaintance with David J. Girton suggested it might have more to do with the director's constitutional indolence.

Because, the longer rehearsals went on, the clearer it became that this production of
not on your wife!
had been entrusted to a seriously lazy man. The business of television sitcom, in which David J. Girton had learnt his comedy skills, was, for an experienced hand, not a particularly onerous one. True, the studio days could be stressful, and there was always the risk of flouncing and door-slamming from the various service departments involved. But, for someone who'd been around such a long time and who always worked with the same tolerant studio team, a long-running sitcom did not present an over-taxing work schedule. Daily rehearsals from ten to two, and a camera script in which only the lines changed from week to week, had left David J. Girton with plenty of time to enjoy the good food and wine which had contributed to his substantial girth.

So, doing theatre rehearsal hours – usually from ten to six with the statutory Equity coffee and lunch breaks – gave him the impression he was working hard. To have actually worked hard during those hours would, to David J. Girton, have seemed like gilding the lily. He was content to block out the play's basic moves, take long lunch hours, lop a bit off the end of the working day, and basically let Bernard Walton get on with it.

This suited most of the actors very well. It certainly suited the star. Bernard Walton reckoned he ‘knew about comedy', and worked tirelessly on his own part, incorporating his familiar repertoire of elaborate takes and reactions, without any reference to the other actors around him.

This behaviour, which in more serious areas of the theatre would have been regarded as appallingly unprofessional and selfish, was accepted amiably by the rest of the cast. They were all old comedy hands, who knew better than to get into competition for laughs with their star. Many of them had been in plays by Bill Blunden before, and were aware that his dramatic structures offered each cast member an unchanging ration of funny moments. So long as those moments were played right, the laughs would come. Only the star was allowed to embroider his part. And any attempts to upstage him would simply throw out the predictable but durable mechanism of Bill Blunden's plotting.

So David J. Girton, as director, was content to be a chubby, bonhomous presence around the rehearsal room, and to punctuate the days with his two catch-phrases, ‘Anyone fancy a little drink?' and ‘Anyone going out for a meal?'

The take-up he got on the second question was smaller than that he got on the first. David J. Girton's eating habits were expensive. Long training with a flexible BBC expense account had provided him with a compendious list of smart restaurants, which were beyond the means of most of his cast. Bernard Walton, and the others who could have afforded it, tended to duck the eating invitation. They were professionals, concentrating on the show. They'd be happy to go out for lavish meals between projects, or to celebrate high points of the current production – first night and so on – but they didn't aspire to them, as their director did, on a daily basis.

A good few of the cast, however, were happy to take up David J. Girton's invitation to ‘a little drink' – particularly because he hadn't yet broken his old BBC habit of hurrying to the bar and buying the first round. So that was what happened on the day of the last London rehearsal for
Not On Your Wife!
The director, keen to top up his own alcohol level, issued the customary ‘Anyone fancy a little drink?', and most of the company were happy to take up his offer.

Bernard Walton was one of the exceptions. ‘S-sorry,' he said, with the familiar and studied stutter which had been the dynamo of his comedy career. ‘Got to get into the dickie bow for this AIDS charity do at the Shaftesbury.'

‘I can't make it either, I'm afraid, David,' apologised the youngest member of the cast, Pippa Trewin, who played Louise. She was a pretty enough and perfectly competent young actress, though Charles had been surprised that she'd got a substantial part in such a major tour straight out of drama school.

He was even more surprised at that moment to see Bernard Walton give Pippa a discreet little wave and mouth, ‘See you later, love.'

Maybe her casting wasn't such a surprise then, after all. Charles had known Bernard Walton for a very long time – he'd directed the young actor in his first major role, as Young Marlowe in
She Stoops to Conquer
– and in all that time Charles'd never heard the faintest whiff of sexual gossip about him. In the relationship maelstrom that is the theatre, Bernard was one of the minority who had stayed locked into his original marriage. Indeed, it was a subject on which he frequently waxed boring in television chat-shows and magazine interviews.

Charles's view had always been that Bernard was not that interested in sex. The all-consuming passions of the star's life were his career and, more recently, his desire to get a knighthood for ‘charitable work and services to the theatre'. Any woman who could put up with his whingeing and worrying on all the time about those two subjects would have no difficulty in staying married to him.

But, thought Charles wryly, Bernard Walton wouldn't be the first star to have maintained a front of devoted domesticity and had a vibrantly active alternative sex-life going on. Nonetheless, the whispered words to Pippa Trewin did still seem out of character. Apart from anything else, dalliances with young actresses weren't recommended for an actor with his sights set on a knighthood.

Still, the conjectural infidelity of Bernard Walton wasn't Charles Paris's problem, and, besides, he was in no position to contemplate first-stone-casting. Charles's own sex-life was currently moribund, and he was at that worrying stage of a man's life, his late fifties, when ‘moribund' could easily become ‘over'. Maybe he never would make love to a woman again. The current frostiness of his relationship with Frances, the woman to whom he was still technically married, offered little hope of a rapprochement, and there weren't currently any other contenders for the role of Charles Paris's bed-mate.

The only detail about the whole sad subject that gave him the occasional flicker of optimism was that, although nothing was actually happening, he hadn't lost the desire for something to happen. He still woke up randy in the mornings, and the flash of a leg, an image on the television, the glimpse of a woman on a poster, could still work their old, predictable, frustrating magic.

These were his thoughts as Charles Paris made his way through to the cloakroom at the end of rehearsal. The coat that he lifted off its hook felt lopsidedly heavy, and Charles remembered with relief that he'd got a half-bottle of Bell's whisky in the pocket. Not a full half-bottle, probably a half-full half-bottle, but it was still a reassuring presence. He had a sudden urge to feel the slight resistance of the metal cap turning in his hand, the touch of upturned glass against his lips, the burn of the liquor in his throat.

He looked around. He was alone in the cloakroom. Just a quick sip . . .? But no. Someone might walk in, and there are certain reputations no actor wants to get in a company – particularly at the beginning of a three-month tour.

It wasn't as if he didn't need a pee, anyway. Charles slipped on his coat and went through into the Gents'. Once there, although the pressure was only on his bladder, he ignored the urinals in favour of a cubicle. He went in and locked the door.

Just one quick swig. To make him more relaxed when he joined the rest of the company.

Mm, God, it was good. He felt the whisky trickle down, performing its Midas touch, sending a golden glow right through his body. Mm, just one more. Lovely.

And a third. But that was it. Charles Paris knew when to stop. He firmly screwed down the cap on the bottle, thrust it deep into his coat pocket, and went off to join the rest of the company in the pub.

‘Sorry, old boy. Didn't have time to get to the cash machine and it's my round. Don't suppose you could sub me a tenner?'

‘Of course.' Charles opened his wallet expansively. It was Thursday; he'd just been paid. ‘Help yourself.'

‘Well, I'll take twenty, just to be sure. But you'll have it back tomorrow, promise. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's being in debt to anyone.'

‘No problem.' Charles was feeling in a generous mood. His Bell's level had been topped up by a double from David J. Girton's first round, and then a couple more. Now, ever the one to know how to moderate his drinking, Charles Paris was on the red wine. And that seemed to be slipping down a treat too. He was feeling really bloody good.

The beneficiary of his bountiful mood had taken the two ten-pound notes, folded them and stuck them firmly in his inside pocket, before handing the wallet back.

‘You're a saint, Charles,' said Ransome George. He was one of those actors, of indeterminate age, who was never out of work. Though he was not the most intelligent or subtlest interpreter of a part, Ransome George's face was, quite literally, his fortune. It was a funny face, in repose a melancholy boxer dog, in animation an affronted bullfrog. He had only to appear on stage, or on a television screen, for the audience to start feeling indulgent, for them to experience the little tug of a smile at the corner of their lips.

He was also blessed with intuitive comic timing. Whatever the situation, some internal clock told him exactly how long to hold a pause, when to slam in quickly with his next line, when to extend the silence almost unbearably. And he never failed to catch the reward of a laugh.

That was all Ransome George could do. Whatever the part, whatever the play, the performance was identical. Whether the lines were spoken in Yorkshire, Cornish, Welsh, Scottish, Transylvanian – or an approximation to these, because he wasn't very good at accents – they would be delivered in exactly the same way. And they'd always get the laughs. That guarantee he carried with him made Ransome George – or ‘Ran', as he was known to everyone in the business – an invaluable character to have in comedy sketches.

In a full-length play his value was less certain. Though a good comedy performer, Ran was not in truth much of an actor. He was good at individual moments, but couldn't lose his own personality in a character throughout the length of a play. This deficiency perhaps mattered less in farce than it would have done in more serious areas of the theatre, but Charles Paris was still quite surprised at Ransome George's casting in
not on your wife!
Still, Ran seemed to have worked a lot with Bernard Walton over the years. Maybe the old pals' act, a phenomenon all too common in the theatre, had been once again in operation.

In
not on your wife!
Ransome George was playing the part of Willie, the flamboyant (for ‘flamboyant' in British farce scripts, always read ‘gay stereotype') interior designer. He wasn't playing the part particularly gay – indeed he was delivering the Standard Mark One Ransome George performance – but the laughs were inevitably going to be there.

Whether Ran was in reality gay or not, Charles Paris did not know. But from the way the actor, boosted by the loan of twenty pounds, homed back in on the dishy young assistant stage manager, it seemed unlikely. Charles did notice, though, that the girl had just placed two full glasses on their table. It wasn't Ran's round yet.

Somewhere in the back of his mind came a recollection: he'd heard somewhere that Ransome George was surprisingly successful with women. In spite of his cartoon face and shapeless body, he could always make them laugh. And rumour had it he'd laughed his way into a good few beds over the years.

The thought threw a pale cast of melancholy over Charles, as he compared his own current sexless state. His eyes glazed over, looking out at, but not taking in, the bustle of the busy pub.

‘Come on, it's not that bad,' a husky voice murmured in his ear.

‘Sorry?' He turned to face Cookie Stone, the actress playing Gilly, who'd just moved across to sit beside him. Though not as cartoon-like as Ran's, Cookie's face too was perfect for comedy. A pert snub nose had difficulty separating two mischievous dark brown eyes, and her broad mouth seemed to contain more than the standard ration of teeth. But her body, Charles couldn't help noticing as she leant her pointed breasts towards him, was firm and trim.