An Amateur Corpse

CHAPTER ONE

The cast party for the Breckton Backstagers’ production of The Seagull was held, like all their cast parties, in the rehearsal room. Drinks were served in the bar (known to the members as the Back Room) and were paid for by a collection made during the run by the Assistant Stage Manager. The choice, displayed on the bar, was cheap Spanish red in two-litre bottles or cheap Spanish white in two-litre bottles.

Charles Paris was the first to arrive in the Back Room after the curtain fell on the Saturday night. His friend Hugo Mecken had stopped off in the Gents on the way from the theatre. The cast were still creaming off their make-up and slipping out of costumes and most of their hangers-on were hanging on in the dressing rooms, spraying out wild congratulations and faint praise. Hugo, Charles noticed without surprise, had not gone backstage to congratulate his wife Charlotte on her performance as Nina.

Charles was conscious of his interloper status. So, judging from his sour expression, was the thin man in a cravat who stood behind the bar. Charles tried, ‘A glass of red, please.’

‘Are you a member?’

It was a perfect example of what Charles remembered being taught about in Latin school — a question expecting the answer no. It got it.

‘Then I’m afraid I can’t give you a drink.’

‘My name is Charles Paris. I was invited down here this evening to see the show because I’m leading the Critics’ Circle discussion on Tuesday.’

‘Ah. Well, in that case, a member will be able to get. you a drink.’

‘But I can’t get one for myself?’

‘Not unless you are a member.’

Charles was beginning to get angry. ‘And how much would it cost me to become a bloody member?’

‘Two pounds a year Social Membership or five pounds Acting Membership. Though for that, of course, you have to pass an audition,

With difficulty Charles didn’t say what he thought of the idea of himself, as a professional actor, having to audition for a tin-pot suburban amateur dramatic society. He channelled his annoyance into slamming two pounds down on the counter. ‘Right, there you are. I’m a Social Member. Now give me a drink.’

‘I’m afraid your application has to be endorsed by a member.’

Hugo appeared slap on cue from the Gents. ‘Right, here’s my endorsing member — Hugo Mecken. I’m Charles Paris, there’s my two pounds, now give me a drink.’

‘What’s the trouble, Charles?’ asked Hugo.

‘I’m joining the bloody society, so that I have a license to breathe in this place.”

‘Oh, you don’t need to — ’

‘I’ve joined. Red wine, please.’

‘And for me too, Reggie.’

Sour Reggie paused for a second, searching for another rule that was being contravened. Failing to find one, he ungraciously half-filled two wine-glasses.

They drank. Charles contemplated Hugo. Olive-coloured skin, his head a bald dome fringed with black hair, dark eyes darting about uneasily. The lips, heavy with indulgence in the good things of life, turned down, registering that the Backstagers’ Spanish plonk wasn’t among them.

Charles was conscious of the ‘silence. He often had difficulty in thinking of what to say to Hugo. It had always been the same, even when they first met at Oxford back in 1947. They had been friends, but conversation had never flowed easily.

And when they had remet a couple of months previously it had been exactly the same. A great warmth, affection for each other, but not a lot to say. A good working-relationship, socially no overt strain. Just a slight tension within Charles from a sense of Hugo’s dependence on him. Hugo was almost too hospitable, inviting Charles down to Breckton all the time, pressing a spare house key on him, telling him to use the place as his own.

But the re-established contact had been a godsend at least from the financial point of view. Hugo seemed likely to put a lot of work his way after what had been a very lean year, even by the modest standards of Charles Paris’s theatrical career.

Hugo Mecken was the Creative’ Director of Mills Brown Mazzini, a small but thriving advertising agency in Paddington, and he had introduced Charles to the lucrative world of commercial voice-over work. It was a strange world to Charles, one that he was still trying to come to terms with, to fit into his picture of what being an actor meant.

The pause had gone on too long for comfort. Charlotte’s very good.’ Charles volunteered.

‘Should be. Professionally trained.’ The shortness of Hugo’s response confirmed his suspicion that all was not well with the marriage.

‘I feel like ‘getting obscenely pissed,’ Hugo continued suddenly, and drained his glass.

It was a familiar cry. The word ‘pissed’ was of the seventies but the intention was one which Charles had often heard from Hugo thirty years before at Oxford. Sometimes it had been a danger signal. A sudden lurch of mood, a lot to drink and then bizarre midnight exploits, wild destruction of college windows or other fierce extravagances until the passion subsided into somnolence and, later, self-abasing recrimination.

While Hugo outstared sour Reggie into refilling their glasses Charles reviewed his friend’s marital history. First wife, Alice, married straight out of Oxford. Rather swish do in Worcester College Chapel at which Charles had been present. Two children soon after, all set on conventional course.

Then, over twenty years later, news from a mutual friend, Gerald Venables, that Hugo had contacted him in his professional capacity as a solicitor and wanted a divorce. He had upped and left Alice with two teenagers, and moved in with sonic twenty-two-year-old actress with whom he’d done a commercial.

A couple of years later, a scribbled note on Snoopy paper (strong contrast to the heavy die-stamped invitation to Worcester Chapel) asked Charles to a post-registry office piss-up in an expensive Soho trattoria.

Through hazes of alcohol, Charles could recall that riotous meal. Hugo and Charlotte dressed in identical oyster-grey velvet suits, a lot of advertising people, a lot of showbiz. A truly glittering occasion. Charlotte so young, so unbelievably beautiful, her complexion glowing and red hair sparkling in the coloured lights of the restaurant. And’ Hugo boisterous as a schoolboy, his bald dome gleaming, his face alive with the knowledge that every man in the room envied him.

Then it had all seemed possible. That one could start again. It even convinced Charles how right he had been to leave his own wife Frances. Somewhere, round some corner, there was a perfect young girl waiting for him, someone who could make it all happen again.

Mostly it had been the drink thinking for him. But there had been more than that. Hugo, in a good mood, was a fierce romantic and he could infect others with his enthusiasm. He could make everyone believe that the world was perfectible, that it was only a matter of time before paradise was re-established on earth.

Charles remembered acting in a play which Hugo had written at Oxford, a play full of soaring, impossible romanticism. But that had been a long time ago, when Hugo had been going to he the world’s greatest playwright, when he had been in love with Alice, when he’d ‘been on a permanent high.

As he returned with the drinks, Hugo was patently not on a high. He looked ill at ease, vulnerable, potentially petulant.

The rehearsal room was beginning to fill up now, as the stars of the Backstagers emerged in their party finery. Charles was relieved to see they all got the same vinegary reception from Reggie at the bar. (Maybe he had made the mistake of trying the wine.)

Hugo seemed to know many of the people who came in. Though not involved in the acting side, he was a regular of the Back Room, using it as his local, often dropping in for a drink on his way home from work. He dished out some abrupt nods and deterrent smiles to acquaintances, but seemed anxious to stay with Charles. It was reminiscent of parties in their first terms at Oxford, staying together shy against the wall until they had had enough to drink to risk a social foray.

A young man in jeans and a denim shirt came over to them. His face still glowed with the scrubbing it had taken to remove the make-up and there were streaks of greasepaint behind his ears. Charles recognized him from the stage, where less than half an hour before he had gone out to shoot himself in the character of Konstantin. In his own character, he didn’t look suicidal. Cocky would be a better word. A handsome young face, pulled out of true by lines of arrogance around the mouth.

‘Hugo! How’d you like it?’ He must have been nearly thirty years younger, but the tone was patronizing.

‘Fine.’ Hugo was unexpansive.

‘Little lady did well.’

Hugo flicked a one-frame smile across his face.

Konstantin looked speculatively at Charles. Then, deciding that Hugo was not going to introduce them, he reached out a man-of-the-world hand. ‘I’m Clive Steele.’

‘Charles Paris.’

‘Thought you must be. Charlie said the old man was bringing you.’ Charles felt Hugo stiffen. Difficult to tell whether it was at his wife’s nickname or his own designation. The boy continued with a self-deprecating smile. ‘Well, how did it seem to you, Charles? How did the stumbling efforts of the amateurs seem to you as a professional theatre man?’

The boy was not really asking his opinion; he was fishing for compliments. Charles didn’t know whether to give a vague reassurance as he would to any professional actor after a performance or to do exactly as he had been asked and give professional criticism. It was something he was going to have to sort out before the Critics’ Circle on the Tuesday.

He made some trimming remark about the show with an ambiguous comment on Clive’s performance. It was a waste of ambiguity; Clive took it as a straight compliment.

The conversation eddied. Clive, unprompted, but assuming its unfailing interest, provided his life story. He was becoming an accountant. The next week he had to go to Melton Mowbray on an audit. All bloody week. He had done a lot of productions with the Breckton Backstagers, mostly leads.

Charles couldn’t resist it. ‘Yes, amateur dramatic societies are always hard-up for young men.

But Clive was well armoured with self-opinion. ‘Certainly for ones who can act and are anything like decent-looking.’

Charles didn’t bother any more. The conversation was nearly dead, now he had withdrawn. But the boy kept talking. Like Hugo, Clive didn’t seem to want to leave this particular corner. They both seemed to be waiting for something. Charles. wondered if it was Charlotte.

A new couple came over and gave the conversation the kiss of life. This time Hugo remembered his social graces. ‘This is Charles Paris. Charles, Denis and Mary Hobbs.’

‘Oh dear,’ Mary giggled, ‘you’re the one who’s going to pass judgment on our performance. Now I do hope you’ll treat us just like professionals.’

It took him a minute or two to place her. She looked so different in the turquoise trouser suit, orange silk blouse and rainbow lame slippers. And the blonded hair and too-young make-up. But when he added a rust-coloured pre-Revolutionary Russian dress and a high-piled black wig… ‘Of course. Madame Arkadina. I’m so sorry. I just didn’t recognize you.’

Yes, he was full of admiration for her make-up. On her performance he hoped he wouldn’t be drawn. That kind of criticism could well wait till the Tuesday. In spite of himself, he found he was forming phrases of his real critical opinion. Such a pity that amateurs are always tempted by classic plays. Just because they’re classics, it doesn’t mean they’re easy to do. In fact, often just the reverse. Arkadina is one of the great roles of the theatre and not to be handed out at random to anyone who happened to have’ recited nicely at the Women’s Institute Concert. Amateurs should stick to what’s within their range — Agatha Christies, frothy West End comedies, nothing that involves too much subtlety of characterization. Leave Chekhov to the professionals.

Good God, there were only two people in that cast tonight who got within a mile of what it was about — Charlotte as Nina and the guy who played Trigorin. The rest should take up something else to fill their evenings — like stamp-collecting.

Even as he framed the thoughts, he knew he was overreacting. It was the irrational but instinctive response of anyone who made his living by acting. The very existence of amateur dramatic societies seemed to cast doubt on the seriousness of his profession.

Mary Hobbs was in full theatrical spate. ‘Oh God, there was a terrible moment in the first act, when we were meant to be watching Konstantin’s play and I had ‘this line about there being a smell of sulphur, and I think one of the stage managers had brought some fish and chips into the wings, because suddenly we all got this amazing whiff of vinegar across the stage, and I caught Geoff’s eye and I’m afraid I just went. Total, absolute corpse. I turned upstage. I don’t know if anyone noticed in the audience…’

Charles had noticed. Any experienced actor would have been aware of the tell-tale snort and sudden movement. And how typical of the Backstagers that they should have: all the theatrical slang. A ‘corpse’ was a breakdown into laughter on stage.

Mary Hobbs appealed to her husband. ‘Did you notice it, Den?’

‘Blimey, no. Couldn’t take my eyes off your missus, Hugo, I didn’t see much else, eh?’

He erupted with laughter. Not particularly amused laughter, just the sort that some ‘hearty people use around their speech like quotation marks.

The reactions to his remark were interesting. Hugo grimaced in an irritated way, as if he didn’t want to be reminded of Charlotte’s existence. Mary Hobbs flashed a look of reproof which quelled her husband. He looked like a schoolboy who had spoken out of turn., gauche as if he shouldn’t have said anything in his rough voice while his wife was present to elocute for the two of them.

Mary’s admonition was over in a second and she resumed her theatrical reminiscence. ‘Of course, Geoffrey didn’t break up. He is marvellous. Didn’t you think he was marvellous, Charles? Geoffrey Winter, our Trigorin. He’s so clever. We really all think he ought to go on the stage professionally. He’s so much better than most professional actors you see on the telly-box.’

Charles didn’t know whether this was meant to be deliberately rude, but let it pass. Mary Hobbs didn’t seem to need reaction to impel her dialogue. She sighed dramatically, ‘Oh, It’s all over. Quelle tristesse.’

‘Till the next one.’ Denis supplied her cue promptly, as if to make up for his earlier faux pas.

‘Till the next one. Winter’s Tale. Dear old Shakespeare. Start rehearsing next week.’

There was a moment of silence and Hugo seemed to wake up to some sort of social duty. But his question showed he had not been listening to the conversation. ‘Now the show’s over, Denis, will you be able to get some weekends down at the cottage?’

Denis gave his punctuation of laughter. ‘Yes, not before time. I must say we’ve been living Chekhov this last couple of months. And what with all the Sunday afternoon rehearsals, we only got away one weekend since August.’

‘Still we are going away this weekend.’ Again the edge of reproof in his wife’s voice.

Denis compensated quickly. ‘Oh yes. It’s just one of the penalties of marrying talent, eh?’ Another unmotivated eruption. Mary smiled and he reckoned he could risk a little joke. ‘She’s spent so much time here recently I kept saying why didn’t she move in? After all, we’re only next door.’ This too was apparently very funny.

Mary graciously allowed him this little indulgence and then felt it was time to draw attention to her magnanimity. ‘Still, this weekend I’m going to make it all up to you, aren’t I?’ She took her husband’s hand and patted it with a coquettishness which Charles found unattractive in a woman in her fifties. ‘First thing in the morning, when all the rest of the naughty Backstagers are sleeping off their hangovers; we’ll be in the new Rover sweeping off down to the cottage for a little delayed weekend. All tomorrow, and all Monday — well, till nine or so when we’ll drive back. Just the two of us. A second honeymoon — or is it a third?’

‘Three hundredth,’ said Denis, which was the cue for another explosion of merriment.

Charles escaped to get more drinks. Soon the wine would cease to taste of anything and his bad temper would begin to dissipate.

While he queued at sour Reggie’s bar, he looked around at the kindling party. There was music now, music rather younger than the average age of those present. But the pounding beat was infectious.

As the room filled, he was increasingly aware of the common complaint of amateur dramatic societies — that there are always more women than men. And some of them were rather nice. He felt a little glow of excitement. No one knew him down in Breckton. It was like being given a whole new copybook to blot.

Some couples were dancing already. Charlotte Mecken was out there, with her arms around Clive Steele. They were moving together sensuously to the slow pounding of the music. But what they were doing was paradoxically not sexy. It had the air of a performance, as if they were still on stage, as if their closeness was for the benefit of the audience, not because it expressed any real mutual attraction.

The same could be said of the Trigorin, Geoffrey Winter. He was dancing with a pretty young girl, whose paint-spattered jeans suggested she was one of the stage staff. They were not dancing close, but in a jerky slow motion pantomime. Geoffrey moved well, his body flicking in time to the music, like a puppet out of control. But again it was a performance of a body out of control, not genuine abandon. Each movement was carefully timed; it was well-done, but calculated.

Charles had noticed the same quality in the man’s stage performance. It had been enormously skillful and shown more technique than the rest of the cast put together, but it had been mannered and ultimately artificial, a performance from the head rather than the heart.

The man was good-looking in an angular way. Very thin, with grey hair and pale eyes. He wore a black shirt, black cord jeans and desert boots. There was something commanding about him, attractive in not just the physical sense of the word.

As Charles watched he saw the man change partners and start a new dance with another little totty. ‘Enjoying himself, isn’t he?”

He turned to the owner of the voice which had spoken beside him. A young woman of about thirty. Short mousy hair, wide green eyes. Attractive. She was following Charles’s gaze towards the dancing Trigorin. ‘My husband.’

She said it wryly. Not bitterly or critically, but just as if it were a fact that ought to be established.

‘Ah. I’m Charles Paris.’

‘Thought, you must be.’ Charles felt the’ inevitable actor’s excitement that she was going to say she recognized him from the television. But no. ‘You’re the only person down here I didn’t recognize. And I knew you’d be in tonight because you’re doing the crit on Tuesday, so, by a process of elimination…’

‘I’m Vee Winter, by the way. Though I act here under my maiden name, Vee le Carpentier. I always think if people see in programmes that the leads are played by people with the same surname, they get to think the Backstagers are awfully cliquey.’ Before Charles had time to take in this statement, she went on, ‘Have you met Geoffrey?’

‘No, just seen him on stage. He’s very talented.’ Charles didn’t volunteer whether he thought the talent was being appropriately used.

‘Yes, he’s talented.’ She changed the subject abruptly.

‘Since you’re coming down to do this thing on Tuesday, why not have a meal with us beforehand?’

‘That’s very kind,’ said Charles, wondering if he ought to check whether Hugo and Charlotte were expecting him.

Vee took it as assent. ‘About half-past seven. The Critics’ Circle isn’t till eight-thirty. I’ll give you our phone number in case you have problems.’

‘Fine.’ Charles made a note of the number. Then he added, because he was beginning to understand suburban timetables, ‘Seven-thirty then. After the children are asleep.’

‘We don’t have any children,’ said Vee Winter.

Sour Reggie dispensed Charles’s order for drinks as if the country were threatened by imminent drought. Vee helped carry the glasses back to the group.

She seemed to know them all. She made some insincere compliment to Mary Hobbs about her Arkadina.

‘Oh, that’s sweet of you to say so, darling. Actually. The voice dropped with the subtlety of a double declutch on a worn gear-box. ‘I still think you would have made a better Nina, but, you know, Shad gets these ideas…

The circle had enlarged in Charles’s absence to include an elderly man with a white goatee beard. And Hugo’s mood had shifted into something more expansive. ‘Charles, I don’t think you’ve met Robert Chubb. Bob, this is Charles Paris. Bob’s the founder of the whole set-up. Started the Backstagers back in… ooh…’

‘Nineteen hundred and mind-your-own-business,’ supplied Robert Chubb jovially. ‘First productions in the Church Hall, mind you. Come some way since then. Started the fund for this complex in 1960… and ten years later it was all finished.’ He gestured to the rehearsal room and theatre.

It was an impressive achievement. Charles bit back his cynical views on the subject of amateur theatre and said so.

Robert Chubb seemed to have been waiting for this cue to launch into the next instalment of his monologue. ‘Well, I thought, I and a few like-minded cronies, that there should be some decent theatre in Breckton. I mean, it’s so easy for people in the suburbs to completely lose sight of culture.

‘So we damned well worked to set up something good — not just your average amateur dramatic society, performing your Agatha Christies and your frothy West End comedies, but a society with high professional standards, which kept in touch with what was happening in the theatre at large. And that’s how the Backstagers started.’

Charles felt he was being addressed like a television interviewer who had actually asked for this potted history. And his interviewee continued. ‘And now it’s grown like this. Enormous membership, great waiting list of people from all over South London keen to join in the fun. Lots of Press coverage — particularly for our World Premieres Festival.

‘It just keeps getting bigger. Now we run our own fort-nightly newsletter to keep people informed of what we’re up to — called Backchat, don’t know if you’ve seen it?’

‘No.’

‘Then of course this bar’s called the Back Room.’

‘I see, everything’s Back-something-or-other?’

‘Yes, Rather nice, isn’t it?’

Charles’s mind began seething with new permutations of Back-, most of them obscene. It was perhaps as well that Hugo spoke before he launched into any of them. ‘We must get Charles down here to do a production, eh, Bob?’

It was Charles’s turn to be self-deprecating. ‘Oh, come on, Hugo, I’m a professional actor. Much as I’d like to do it, I’m likely to be off touring or something at a moment’s notice.’

‘Nonsense. This voice-over campaign’s really going to take off. You’ll be stuck in London with more work than you can cope with.’

‘When that happens — ’ Charles joked, ‘and I won’t believe it until it does — I’ll be prepared to do a production for the Backstagers.’ That seemed to get him safely off the hook.

But a new voice joined the circle and qualified his remark. ‘If,’ of course, you do a successful One-Act Productions Audition and your choice of play is ‘approved by the Directorial Selection Sub-Committee.’ Charles was not surprised to find that the voice came from sour Reggie, the walking rule-book.

‘Oh, Charles has had rather a lot of experience as a director.’ It was Hugo coming to his rescue. Charles didn’t’ want rescuing. He thought doing a production for the Breckton Backstagers was a consummation devoutly to be avoided. The atmosphere was getting claustrophobic.

But Hugo’s defence was quite impassioned. Again Charles was conscious of the other man’s need for him. He was being paraded for the benefit of Hugo’s local crowd. In a strange way, it seemed to tie in with Charlotte’s behaviour, as if Hugo’s ignoring his wife was justified by the fact that he had a genuine professional actor to show off.

Charles was being used and he didn’t like it, but Hugo continued with his sales campaign. ‘Charles is, a bit of a playwright too. You should get him to write something for the World Premieres Festival.’

Charles made some suitably modest response, but Robert Chubb seized on the cue. ‘Oh really, if you’ve got something that hasn’t been performed tucked away in a cupboard, do let us see it. We’re getting the next Festival sorted out at the moment and one of our expected scripts has just fallen through, so we’d be very interested.’

Charles was tempted. There was in fact an unperformed play sitting in a drawer in his room in Hereford Road. He’d written it after his one successful play, The Ratepayer. A light comedy, called How’s Your Father? It would be quite gratifying to have it done under any circumstances.

But the patronizing tone in which Robert Chubb continued changed his mind. ‘It could do you a lot of good,

Charles. Lots of plays we’ve premiered here have gone on to do awfully well. It’s a real chance for an unknown playwright. I don’t know if you know George Walsh’s Doomwomb?’

Charles shook his head. Robert Chubb smiled indulgently at his ignorance. ‘That started here.’

‘Really?’ Suddenly he wanted to scream, wanted to do something appalling, be very rude to someone, break something, get the hell away from all these pretentious idiots.

Rescue came from an unexpected source. He felt an arm round his waist and a female body pressed close to his. ‘Dance with me.’

It was Vee Winter.