Murder in the Title (10 page)

I do want to talk to you, Charles, now more than ever. Nothing has really changed since I last wrote, least of all my state of utter confusion. And though I know that seeing you would only confuse me more, I also know that you are probably the only person I can talk to.

I gather that you spoke to Juliet and have had horrors since that anything she said may have misled you, though I'm not quite clear what she did say and what would constitute misleading information.

Charles, we must not lose touch, now more than ever. Please ring me, or write to me – contact me somehow. I so want to talk to you.

I hope whatever you're doing is going well, wherever you re doing it. And I hope you're more positively and consistently happy than I am.

Love, Frances

The letter threw him into a turmoil. Through his scrambled emotions he could identify individually anger, jealousy, pity, regret and even, infuriatingly, a little hope. Though hope for what he was not sure.

The one clear point that emerged was that he should phone Frances as soon as possible.

But, being Charles Paris, he put it off.

Shove It
had been a
succès de scandale
of 1977. The production, much-praised at the Liverpool Playhouse, had transferred to the West End, where the critics, going through one of their self flagellating phases of gosh-we-must-stop-watching-all-these-light-comedies-and-thrillers-and-really-get-down-to-something-a-bit-searing-and-gritty, also praised it extravagantly. With three changes of cast, it ran for two and a half years, then did a national tour for another year, until finally the rights were available for provincial theatres to mount their own productions.

The play, a searingly accurate and unsentimental evocation of the tough area in which Royston Everett grew up, made him enough money to settle in the South of France, where he continued to make a great deal from writing screenplays of films that never got made, and settled down quietly to drink himself to death.

Nothing dates more quickly than yesterday's sensation, and by the time it reached the Regent Theatre, Rugland Spa,
Shove It
was more dated than the works of Thomas Shadwell and Colley Cibber. Its power to shock had been weakened by imitations on stage and television, the reliance of its original success on a series of charismatic performances was revealed, and all that remained was a rather shapeless piece, full of long ranting monologues, with a lot of apparently gratuitous bad language and nudity.

The performances that it was getting in Rugland Spa were not charismatic. Nor did they seem to be in tune with the mood of the play.

Certainly Kathy Kitson's wasn't. The first morning Charles arrived at rehearsal, she was already arguing with a very patient but pained-looking Tony Wensleigh.

‘I'm sorry, Tony love, but I'm sure the madame of the brothel would wear a beige silk dress with blue flecks.'

‘I honestly think that's unlikely, Kathy. The play is set in a very depressed area and she's meant to be very poor.'

‘I know that, darling, but she's not the sort of woman who would let that sort of thing stop her from taking care of her appearance.'

‘But she couldn't afford a silk dress.'

‘Tony love, all the great courtesans of history have dressed magnificently, it's a well-known fact. I mean, Dubarry, Pompadour . . .'

‘But she isn't Dubarry or Pompadour. She's a broken-down old whore, riddled with syphilis.'

Kathy Kitson extended her long neck. ‘I don't think that sort of language is necessary, Tony.'

‘It's nothing to what's in the play.'

‘No. That's another thing I would like to have a long talk about.'

‘Yes, okay, Kathy. Later. We'd better get on with rehearsal now.'

‘I am quite ready to get on with rehearsal, Tony. I don't want to get sidetracked by all these discussions.'

‘No. Right. Fine. Let's take it from where the two punters come in and you offer the girls to them.'

‘Very well.'

The cast for the scene got into their positions. Charles, who was playing one of the punters, was shown where to stand. He didn't have many actual lines in the scene, just a few lewd grunts and obscene reactions as the prostitutes were pointed out to him and a brief résumé of their special skills given by their keeper. (This scene had been hailed by
Time Out
as ‘a microcosm of English society, where the fat cats of plutocracy casually select which workers they intend to exploit.' Gay Milner, as one of the whores, was finding the part a lot easier to play politically than she did Felicity Kershaw.)

Tony Wensleigh clapped his hands, a gesture of authority which didn't suit him. ‘Okay, Kathy, you begin with “If you're looking for a really good . . . ” erm . . . etcetera . . .'

‘Right you are, love.'

The whores posed, according to their middle-class views of how whores might pose. The punters tried to look like lecherous old men (no great effort of character acting in at least one case). Kathy Kitson gave her eternally graceful impression of a shopwalker at Harrods.

‘If you're looking for a really enjoyable evening,' she elocuted, ‘perhaps one of these young ladies might prove a friendly companion for you. Sharon here has a great deal of charm –'

‘Kathy, Kathy. Sorry, got to stop you.'

‘I was just getting into my flow, Tony.'

‘I know, I know. But those are not the lines in the script.'

‘You can't expect me to be word-perfect at this stage in rehearsal.'

‘That's not what I'm saying, Kathy. You are remarkably fluent for this stage in rehearsal. But what you are fluent in is not what Royston Everett wrote.'

‘He wrote that she offers the girls – I'm offering the girls.' Kathy Kitson shrugged silk-clad shoulders.

‘Yes, but he didn't write it in the words that you used.'

‘I'm sure the audience will understand what I mean.'

‘I'm sure they will. But that's not the point. The author's lines matter. I mean, how would you feel if Hamlet came on for his big soliloquy and said, “I can't decide whether to do myself in or not”?'

‘This Everett person is hardly Shakespeare.'

‘No, I agree. But we are doing his play, that's what we are paying him royalties for, that's what the audience will come to the theatre expecting to see, and so that is the text that we should be presenting.'

‘I think what I am saying is much more tasteful.'

‘I don't question that, Kathy. But Royston Everett is not trying to be tasteful. He is painting a picture of life as it really is, in the language which people really use.'

‘Oh, I don't think life is really like this. This is all so impossibly sordid. I mean, Tony love, is your life like this? Do you move amongst prostitutes all the time? I mean, when did you last meet a prostitute here in Rugland Spa? Go on, tell me.'

‘That is not –'

‘Certainly, my life is nothing like this, I'm glad to say. My life's much more like a Noel Coward play than this sort of rubbish.'

‘Kathy, all I'm saying is that we should perform the play as written. I'm not saying that your life is like the life depicted here, but then you can't expect to be playing yourself all the time. You have to play other characters as well – that's what acting's about.'

‘Don't tell me what acting's about!'

‘No, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. I just mean that, okay, Royston Everett's language is not the sort of language you might use.'

‘Certainly not.'

‘No. It's bold, and it's frank, and it's designed to shock. But we mustn't be pussy-footed about it. We must just say the words, not be ashamed of them. When the script says, “If you're looking for a really good . . . ” erm . . . then we mustn't shy away from it. We must say the word, we must say, “If you're looking for a really good . . . ” erm . . . and so on . . . Okay, let's take it from the same place.'

They continued the rehearsal. Seeing the play acted did not raise the opinion Charles had formed from reading it. The cast seemed to be lost in a morass of vituperation, and Tony Wensleigh showed no signs of being able to lead them out of it. He looked puzzled and was vaguer than ever. Scenes got plotted and intonations corrected, but he had no overall vision of the play.
Shove It
needed a strong directorial hand to camouflage its deficiencies, and it wasn't getting it. The cast needed the inspiration that could only be given by directorial enthusiasm, real or faked (theatre directors have to rival prostitutes in faking enthusiasm). But Tony Wensleigh seemed distracted, preoccupied, anxious even.

He certainly showed no aptitude for directing that sort of play. He was workmanlike, the show would actually go on, but it was alien to the director's nature. He excelled at the subtleties of his craft, teasing performances out of small casts, and was lost amidst the strident brashness of Royston Everett's work.

Not for the first time, Charles wondered how the season's plays actually got selected. To choose one absolute stinker might be regarded as a misfortune: to choose two in a row looked like deliberate perversity.

That afternoon the cast was honoured by a visit from Herbie Inchbald. His entrance disrupted the rehearsal completely, though for the first time in the day some kind of flow had been established. With elaborate gestures and hushings he explained that he didn't want to disrupt anything, just slip into the back of the Drill Hall and watch a bit of the rehearsal. They were to ignore him and just continue as if he weren't there.

This was difficult. The presence of the Chairman of the Theatre Board – particularly his unexplained presence – was not easily ignored. But they did their best, and at least his being there inhibited Kathy Kitson's meandering from the text a little (though there were certain favourite words of Royston Everett which she refused to utter).

After about ten minutes, the scene which they were running came to an end, and Herbie Inchbald interrupted, ‘Er, sorry, Tony, don't want to interrupt but if I could just say a couple of words . . .'

‘Of course, Herbie.'

‘Erm, okay. If you could all gather round, team . . .'

Ugh. Charles didn't like people who called the company ‘team'. It seemed to him to fit in with people who called the theatre the ‘thee-ettah'.

‘Now, the reason I've come along today, team, is not anything that need worry you. Fact is, you probably don't need telling that this little show of yours is causing a bit of controversy in Rugland Spa. Its reputation has gone before it and, let's face it, it's got a few of the local biddies a bit upset.

‘Now this doesn't worry me. The history of the thee-ettah has been the history of ruffling public sensibilities – that's the only way new ideas get an airing, and the thee-ettah is a very important medium for spreading new ideas.'

Gay Milner, slightly surprised at the source of this remark, still nodded agreement.

‘No, it's my belief that, so long as what you're doing is artistically justified and is tastefully done, then it should be done. Our policy at the Regent – and particularly since Donald, our new General Manager, took over – has always been to provide varied fare. Okay, we do the standards, we do the panto, we do the Shakespeare, we do the Ayckbourn, we do a grand little thriller like
The Message Is Murder
. But we also have to be experimental – and that's why we're doing
Shove It
.

‘You may wonder why I'm telling you all this. After all, you know it. But I wanted to come along in person and tell you that this little show has the full support of the Board – as well, of course, as that of the Artistic Director and General Manager. Don't worry about the opposition, don't worry about anything you read in the local paper. This is the sort of show the Regent ought to be doing.'

Charles' respect for Herbie Inchbald rose. His arrival at rehearsal had been a good psychological move, to revive a doubting cast by assurances of management support. But he couldn't remove a niggling doubt about the artistic judgement of someone who liked
Shove It,
who could describe
The Message Is Murder
as ‘a grand little thriller' (and someone who pronounced theatre ‘thee-ettah').

Herbie Inchbald had not yet finished his team-talk. ‘You know, a few weeks back, I was talking to Michael Timson – you know, the M.P . . .'

They knew. The name had been all over the newspapers three months earlier when he had resigned on an issue of principle over defence spending.

‘We're members of the same club in London . . . Blake's . . .'

The name was dropped very casually, but still had the desired effect of surprise. Blake's was one of the most exclusive clubs in the country. Obviously there was more to Herbie Inchbald than met the eye. He was, Charles had discovered, Managing Director of a local haulage company, fairly prosperous and socially acceptable in Rugland Spa, but not Charles' idea of a clubman. Still, the deceptiveness of appearances was a continuing source of amazement.

‘And Michael and I got talking about his resignation, and, you know, he said something to me which I thought was very relevant to us here. He said, if you know you're right, do what you have to do, and all will turn out for the best.'

Usual politician's vacuous rhetoric, thought Charles with reflex cynicism.

‘So let's all have the courage of our convictions, eh? The Regent Theeettah has weathered a few storms in its time, and I'm sure it'll weather this one. It's been closed down, it's been bankrupt, it's nearly been brought up for development I don't know how many times. But it's always survived and it always will, so long as we stick to our policy of choosing the best plays and putting them on according to the highest artistic standards of the British thee-ettah.'

Experience of many council meetings had taught Herbie Inchbald to bring a speech to a climax demanding applause (a device known in eighteenth-century theatre as a ‘claptrap'), and he didn't fail this time. The company clapped dutifully.