The Strangling on the Stage

THREE

‘So I said to the director: “Do you want me to do it your way, or do you want me to do it right?”’

This was a cue for sycophantic laughter from the group around Elizaveta Dalrymple. Jude had heard the line before – it had been attributed to various Hollywood stars – but clearly the grand dame of the SADOS was presenting it as her own coining.

Elizaveta Dalrymple must have been a very beautiful young woman and in her seventies she was still striking. She wore a kaftan-style long dress in fig-coloured linen, which disguised her considerable bulk. Her dyed black hair was swept back from her face and fixed by a comb with a large red artificial flower on it, suggesting the image of a flamenco dancer. Her make-up was skilfully done, though it could not cover the lines on her face – bright red lips and lashes far too luxuriant to have grown out of any human eyelid.

The manner in which she had spoken her line suggested that she had spent rather too much time watching Maggie Smith.

Storm took the natural break given by the laugh as an opportunity to introduce Jude.

‘Ah, I didn’t notice you at the read-through.’ Elizaveta Dalrymple gave the impression that there were a lot of people she didn’t regard as worth noticing. ‘Presumably you’re doing something backstage, are you?’

‘No, I’m not involved in the production at all. Just lending my chaise longue for the set.’

‘Ah, chaises longues,’ said Elizaveta in a voice intended to be thrilling. ‘How much fun one has had on chaises longues. A long time ago, of course.’ She chuckled fondly. ‘And a lot of it actually with Freddie.’ She allowed a moment for murmurs of appreciation for SADOS’s late founder. ‘Who was it who said: “Marriage is the longing for the deep, deep peace of the double-bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise longue?”’

Jude said, ‘Mrs Patrick Campbell’, because it was something she happened to know, but the pique in Elizaveta Dalrymple’s face suggested her question had been rhetorical and not one to be answered by mere chaise longue owners.

To reinforce her disapproval, she turned away from Jude to Storm. ‘I thought you did a lovely little reading this afternoon as Judith. And the American accent will come with practice.’

Rather than bridling at being so patronized, Storm smiled meekly, saying, ‘Thank you very much, Elizaveta. And your Mrs Dudgeon was wonderful.’

‘Yes, it’s something when an actor like me ends up playing a grumpy old woman who dies offstage during Act Two.’ The grande dame smiled. ‘I’m thinking of it as a character part.’ That got a laugh from her coterie of admirers. ‘I really wasn’t going to do it. I really do keep intending to give up “the business”.’ You’re just an amateur, Jude wanted to scream, acting is not your profession. ‘But Davina twisted my arm once again.’

Elizaveta Dalrymple turned an expression of mock ruefulness to a dumpy woman with a long blond pigtail, who was dressed in black leggings and a high-collared gold lamé top. This, Jude remembered from the flurry of introductions when she’d joined the group, was Davina Vere Smith.

‘Oh, you were dying to do it, Elizaveta,’ protested the director of The Devil’s Disciple. ‘There was nothing going to keep you away from this production, away from anything that SADOS does.’

‘Don’t you believe it, Davina. I really do think there has to come a time when one has to retire gracefully. And I think I’ve reached that time.’ The coterie protested violently at this suggestion. ‘I’d rather go at a time of my own choosing than get to the point where I can no longer remember the lines and the old acting skills start to dwindle.’

‘That day’ll never come,’ insisted the most toadyish of the coterie, a young man who had been introduced as Olly Pinto. He was nearly very good-looking, but the size of his shield-like jaw gave him a cartoonish quality. ‘Your reading this afternoon showed that you’re still at the height of your powers.’

‘Oh …’ Elizaveta Dalrymple simpered at the compliment. ‘And yours was lovely too, Olly. Your Christy’s going to be great.’

The young man grimaced. ‘It’s not much of a part,’ he said.

‘There are no small parts,’ said Elizaveta magisterially, ‘only small actors.’

Again she made it sound as if the line was her own, though Jude knew it had been around for years, usually attributed to Stanislavsky. Again Elizaveta Dalrymple received a laugh of approbation from her coterie.

‘Well, I think you’re going to show that Mrs Dudgeon is far from a small part,’ said Olly Pinto, still sucking up.

‘I suppose if I can still do something to help out SADOS … it’s what Freddie would have wanted me to do.’ Elizaveta Dalrymple left a silence for a few more respectful grunts. Then she turned to the director. ‘Were you pleased with the way the read-through went this afternoon, Davina?’

‘Yes, pretty good, really. Obviously a few absentees. Three of my soldiers have got flu and my Major Swindon is still off skiing. I suppose, like most amateur productions, I’ll be lucky if I get the full company on the first night.’

Elizaveta Dalrymple clearly thought she had been silent for too long. ‘I’m determined to have fun playing Mrs Dudgeon. And it’ll be nice to give my old American accent a little run for its money.’

‘It’s very good,’ said her toady. ‘Did you ever live in the States?’

‘Good heavens, no,’ said Elizaveta on a self-deprecating laugh. ‘But I always have had a very good ear. I’m just one of those lucky people who can pick up accents … like that.’ Her eye lingered pityingly on Storm Lavelle. ‘Of course, there was a time when I’d have been natural casting for Judith Anderson, but those days are gone …’

Jude couldn’t understand why her friend didn’t knock the malevolent old woman’s block off, but Storm was still listening intently, as though at the feet of a guru. And when Elizaveta said she would invite Storm to one of her ‘drinkies things’, Jude’s friend looked as if she’d just been made a Dame.

‘Of course,’ Elizaveta Dalrymple went on, ‘my American accent was really given a workout when Freddie and I did On Golden Pond. I remember there was someone from Boston in the audience, and he couldn’t believe that I hadn’t been brought up in the States. He said he’d never heard—’

But her reminiscences were interrupted by the appearance of Len, the Cricketers’ landlord, at the edge of their group. ‘Department of Lost Property,’ he said, and he held out a star-shaped silver pendant on a silver chain. ‘I think it got left here during the pantomime. Someone must’ve dropped it. So I thought I’d wait till you all came back and see if anyone claims it. Somebody said it might be yours, Elizaveta.’

‘Well, yes, I do have one that looks very like that. May I have a look?’ The barman handed the necklace across. Elizaveta Dalrymple turned it over to look at the back. ‘Yes, this must be mine. It’s funny, I hadn’t noticed …’ She reached up to her neck to find a silver chain around it. She pulled at it and out of the top of her kaftan dress came a silver star, similar in size to the other one. ‘Oh no, I’ve got mine.’

She offered Len’s pendant round to her group. ‘Anyone claim this? It’s not yours, is it, Davina?’

‘No,’ said the director. ‘I don’t wear jewellery like that.’

Elizaveta Dalrymple made an elaborate shrug and handed the unclaimed pendant back to Len. ‘Be worth asking round the other SADOS members.’

‘Yes. And could you mention it at rehearsal?’

‘Certainly.’

‘I’ll keep it behind the bar till someone claims it.’ And the landlord drifted away, ready to offer the necklace to other groups.

‘Let me know if anyone does claim it,’ Elizaveta called after him. Then she turned back to her coterie. ‘A rather amusing story about jewellery came out of the production of When We Are Married that Freddie and I did. You see, there was someone in the cast who—’

But she was cut off in mid-anecdote by the appearance in their little group of a tall, balding man dressed in black jeans, black shirt and a black leather blouson. In his wake came a pretty but nervous-looking red-haired woman in her forties wearing grey leggings under a heavy off-white jumper.

‘Elizaveta,’ said the man. ‘Lovely reading, as ever. You too, Storm, great stuff.’

‘I am duly honoured.’ Freddie Dalrymple’s widow made a little mock-curtsey. ‘To have a compliment from the great George Bernard Shaw expert.’

Jude had recognized the man from Storm’s description before introductions were made, and he did indeed prove to be Neville Prideaux.

The woman identified herself as ‘Hester Winstone’. She had a glass of orange juice, Neville was drinking red wine.

‘And what part are you playing in The Devil’s Disciple?’ asked Jude.

‘Oh, nothing,’ the woman replied dismissively. ‘I’m not important. I’m just the prompter.’

‘I’ve seen amateur productions where the prompter has been extremely important. In fact, sometimes I’ve heard more of the prompter than I have of the actors.’

‘Well, that’s not the kind of production you’ll ever see from SADOS,’ said Elizaveta cuttingly.

Jude felt suitably reprimanded. She grinned at Hester Winstone and was rewarded by a little flicker of a smile. But the prompter seemed ill at ease, not quite included in the circle of thespians, but still for some reason needing to be there.

At the arrival of the newcomers, Jude noted that Ritchie Good had detached himself from the circle around Elizaveta Dalrymple and drifted off to chat to another group. She wondered if she was witnessing some masculine territorial ritual. Had Neville Prideaux’s appearance threatened Ritchie Good’s position as alpha male?

‘Well,’ Neville said, ‘I hope this afternoon’s reading has convinced everyone I was right to champion The Devil’s Disciple … against considerable opposition.’

The way he looked at Elizaveta Dalrymple as he said this suggested that at least some of that opposition had come from her.

‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘I think SADOS will probably get away with it.’

‘We’ll do more than get away with it. It’s a very fine play.’

Elizaveta twisted her mouth into a little moue of disagreement. ‘I can’t help remembering that Freddie always described Shaw as “a left-wing windbag”.’ Her coterie awarded this a little titter.

‘But,’ Neville objected, ‘we agreed at the Play Selection Committee Meeting that SADOS ought to be doing more challenging work.’

‘I’m not arguing with that, Neville love. When Freddie founded the Society, he was determined that we should present material that was “at the forefront of contemporary theatre”.’

‘And yet it ended up, like every other amdram in the country, doing the usual round of light West End comedies and Agatha Christies.’

‘No, I don’t think that’s fair, Neville.’ Clearly nothing that contained the mildest criticism of the hallowed Freddie Dalrymple was fair. Jude also got the impression that Neville and Elizaveta were reanimating an argument which they had visited many times before. ‘We have done some very contemporary material,’ Elizaveta went on. ‘When we did Shirley Valentine, that was quite ground-breaking for Smalting – I mean, doing a play based in Liverpool.’

And also one with a socking great part for you in it, thought Jude. The idea of Elizaveta Dalrymple using her ‘very good ear’ for accents to tackle Scouse was engagingly incongruous.

‘I also still think,’ the grande dame continued, ‘that this time round we should have done Driving Miss Daisy.’

And who might have played Miss Daisy? Jude asked herself.

‘I mean, that’s a play that really tackles serious issues.’

‘So does The Devil’s Disciple,’ insisted Neville Prideaux.

‘But Driving Miss Daisy’s about racial prejudice – anti-Semitism, colour prejudice.’

‘Whereas The Devil’s Disciple is about nothing less than the conflict between Good and Evil. It’s also about honour and honesty and bravery and religion and the entire business of being a human being. Anyway, Elizaveta, the other big argument against doing Driving Miss Daisy is: where on earth are you going to find a black man in Smalting to play the chauffeur?’

Jude had been aware for a while that Hester Winstone had been trying to attract Neville’s attention, and at this moment she interrupted the argument. Looking at her watch, she said, ‘Sorry, Neville, I’ve got to be going.’

‘Fine,’ he said, without even looking at her. ‘See you at the next rehearsal.’

The prompter detached herself from the group. She still looked nervous and unhappy. The next time Jude looked, Hester Winstone was no longer in the pub.

‘Well, anyway,’ said Elizaveta Dalrymple, as if putting an end to the topic, ‘The Devil’s Disciple is the play we’re doing and I’m sure the production will be well up to SADOS’s high standards.’ She vouchsafed a smile to Davina Vere Smith, as if bestowing her blessing on the enterprise. ‘I just wonder, though, how many people in Smalting will want to buy tickets …?’

‘… and, you see,’ Gordon Blaine was still going on to Carole, ‘I’ve worked out a rather cunning way of doing the gallows at the end of the play.’

She looked in desperation around the bar, but saw no prospects of imminent rescue. Jude was still in the middle of the group around the melodramatic old woman with dyed black hair. Ritchie Good, the tall man who had chatted up Jude, was by the pub door in whispered conversation with a red-haired woman who looked as if she was about to leave.

There was no escape as Gordon continued, ‘It’s important that it looks authentic, but it’s also important that the structure would pass a Health and Safety inspection. And Dick Dudgeon has to have the noose actually around his neck so it looks like he’s really about to be hanged, so what I’m going to do is to have a break in the noose where the two ends are only joined by Velcro and then the—’

‘Oh God,’ said a languid approaching voice, ‘is Gordon boring you with his technical wizardry?’

The words so exactly mirrored Carole Seddon’s thoughts that she couldn’t help smiling at their speaker. Even though it was Ritchie Good.

‘Carole was actually very interested in what I was saying,’ said Gordon Blaine defensively.

‘Yes, yes, it was fascinating,’ she lied.

‘Anyway, I’ve got things to get on with.’ And with that huffy farewell, Gordon moved away from them.

‘Looked like you needed rescuing,’ said Ritchie.

‘Thank you very much.’

‘And sorry, in all those introductions I didn’t get your name …?’

‘Carole.’

‘Ah. Right.’ It never occurred to him that she hadn’t taken in his name. ‘So …’ He took Carole’s hand in both of his and said, ‘Where have you been hiding all my life?’