The Twist of a Knife

3 First Night

The Vaudeville is such a beautiful theatre. The Victorians really wanted you to enjoy your evening so they went crazy with the gilt and the red plush, the mirrors and the chandeliers, making sure that the sense of drama would begin long before you sat down. It’s strange that they were less concerned about leg room, sight lines and toilets, but I suppose you can’t have everything.

The lobby was already packed with people milling about in different directions: to the stalls, the circles, the bar, the box office to pick up their tickets. It was a tortuous process, making our way through the labyrinth that the foyer had become, but as we continued, step by step, I made out a few familiar faces. There was Ahmet, wearing a black double-fronted jacket with loops instead of buttons. As always, Maureen was with him, weighed down with costume jewellery and with some long-dead animal draped around her neck. Ahmet had never mentioned having a wife or family and I had often wondered if he and Maureen had a relationship that extended beyond the office.

There were a couple of actors I knew but whose names I couldn’t remember: they were presumably friends of the director or the cast. I glimpsed Ewan Lloyd disappearing down the staircase to the stalls. He seemed to be on his own. I continued to look through the crowd and although I wouldn’t have wanted to admit it, I was wondering if Hawthorne might surprise me and turn up after all. He wasn’t there.

We made our way down to the auditorium, where we had seats in the middle of the stalls, and as we squeezed past the people who had arrived before us, I had the strange sensation that I was, briefly, the centre of attention. It wasn’t true, of course. I doubt if many people had recognised me, but at the same time, I felt trapped. The theatre was going to be full tonight: almost seven hundred people on three levels. I could see them all around me, many of them in the shadows, diminished by the distance between us. They were no longer individuals. They were an audience … perhaps even a jury. My stomach was still churning. I felt like the condemned man.

And then I saw them: my real judges.

The critics.

They were scattered across the stalls, easily recognisable by their blank faces and, in some cases, the notebooks they were already balancing on their knees. Michael Billington from the Guardian, Henry Hitchings, the Standard, Libby Purves, The Times, Harriet Throsby, the Sunday Times, Dominic Cavendish, the Telegraph. Many of them were familiar to me from my time at the Old Vic, where I had recently joined the board. They had been deliberately placed apart from each other and seemed to be avoiding each other’s eyes. They weren’t exactly rivals but nor, I thought, were they friends. They sat alone.

Was I afraid of them?

Yes.

I have never worried about the critics who write about books and TV. They can be harsh, but it’s open to question how much influence they have over what people watch or read. And anyway, they can’t hurt me. They’re reviewing something I wrote a long time ago – in the case of a TV drama it could be years – and I’ve signed my next contract. I’m employed on a new project. They can tell the whole world I’m useless, but it’s already too late.

These critics were different. Here they were, some of them in the same row as me. Their reviews could, quite simply, shut us down. Sitting there with the curtain about to rise, I began to have second thoughts about what I’d written. Would they find that joke funny? What would they make of the attack on Nurse Plimpton at the end of the first act? Had it been a mistake, raising the question of Dr Farquhar’s sexuality? A moment ago, I had been worrying about the first-night audience. But they weren’t the ones that mattered, and anyway, they were on my side. Most of them had been given free tickets, for heaven’s sake! It was the critics who held my fate in their hands.

My wife touched my arm. ‘It’s starting late,’ she said.

I looked at my watch and my heart missed a couple of beats. She was right. Seven thirty-five. So what had happened? Had Tirian failed to turn up? Was somebody ill? I looked around me. So far so good. Nobody else seemed to have noticed. I waited, sweatily, for the play to begin.

At last, the house lights dimmed. I took a deep breath. The curtain went up.

ACT I

The action of the play takes place in the office of Dr Alex Farquhar at Fairfields, an experimental hospital for the criminally insane. The office is cosy and old-fashioned. It seems to belong to the sixties, perhaps to the world of Hammer Horror.

A large, cluttered desk dominates the room. A window looks out onto fields, trees and a low wall. On the other side, a door opens into a cupboard. Incongruously, a complete human skeleton stands on a frame in one corner.

Sitting in the chair in front of the desk is Mark Styler, a writer in his early thirties. Casually dressed, his face is pale and his haircut is a little odd … otherwise he’s the archetypal ‘expert’, as seen on TV.

He’s been kept waiting. He looks at his watch, then takes out a digital recorder and switches it on. He records.

STYLER: Recording. Six fifteen. Thursday. July twenty-second.

And so it began.

I’m not sure I breathed during Styler’s opening monologue, watching him walk around the office, recording his thoughts as he had done a hundred times before. I knew what I was waiting for. Mindgame is, at least in part, a comedy. It had to sell itself as such to the audience and my experience on the road had taught me that the first laugh was crucial. After that, everyone could relax.

It came when Styler moved away from the window and examined the bookshelves.

STYLER: Dr Farquhar arranges his books in alphabetical order. I wonder if I can trust him?

It wasn’t a particularly funny line but for some reason it had always hit the spot with the audience and it did the same now. I heard the ripple of laughter spread through the darkness and something pricked at the back of my neck. I thought, for the first time that evening, that it was going to be all right.

The next hour sped past and it seemed to me that the play went as well as it possibly could. Nobody fluffed their lines. The set worked. The laughs arrived more frequently, and as the action became darker, I could feel the tension in the house. Nurse Plimpton was attacked. Mark Styler was tricked into putting on a straitjacket. Dr Farquhar walked towards him with a scalpel. Curtain. Applause. Interval.

I went outside once the house lights had come up. There was no point hanging around in the bar as, this being a first night, people would largely be keeping their opinions to themselves, so there would be nothing to overhear. And if anyone did say anything memorable, my family would pick it up and report back to me. After the tension of the opening moments, I needed some fresh air. It was an unpleasant night. Although this was April, a wintery breeze was blowing down the Strand and there was a sheen of rain making the pavements gleam. I noticed Ewan Lloyd had come out too. He was standing at the corner of the theatre, dressed in a black astrakhan coat buttoned up to the neck, and I went over to him.

‘How do you think it’s going?’ I asked him.

He grimaced. ‘Tirian missed out two lines in the first scene,’ he said. ‘And the bloody projector got stuck again.’

The projector was used to make the picture on the wall change from one image to another during the performance, but it had to happen slowly so the audience didn’t notice. It had seemed fine to me, and I hadn’t noticed the missing lines. It struck me that Ewan was even more nervous than I was, but then this was his first London production for some time.

‘Otherwise it’s OK,’ he went on. ‘I think they’re enjoying it.’

‘The critics?’

‘I mean the audience. You can never tell with the critics, sitting there, making notes. Did you see that Harriet Throsby from the Sunday Times is in the house?’ I was surprised by the hatred in his voice.

‘Is that so surprising?’

‘I’d have thought she’d have sent an assistant rather than coming herself. We’re an out-of-town production.’

‘Maybe that’s a good thing.’ I was thinking we might get a more prominent review if she wrote it herself.

‘Nothing about that woman is good. Nothing! She’s a complete bitch, and you might as well know that I’ve never had a good review from her.’ Ewan hadn’t raised his voice. His anger was all the more striking for being expressed in such a subdued way. He stared out at the rain, which was falling harder now. ‘Some of the stuff she writes is pure vitriol,’ he went on. ‘She chooses her words carefully, rancid opinions carefully laced with deeply personal insults. They say she started life as a journalist but wanted more power. That’s what it’s all about. I don’t think she even likes theatre.’

‘Well, there are plenty of other critics.’

‘She’s the most influential. People read her because she’s so vile. It’s like watching a car crash.’

‘She might be enjoying the play.’

He sniffed. ‘What she thinks is one thing. What she writes is another.’

I remembered this conversation as the second act began and as a result, I wasn’t able to enjoy even a minute of it. All the doubts and misgivings that had been at the back of my mind suddenly came rushing to the fore and I remembered that audiences in the provinces and audiences in the capital are noticeably different. Expectations are considerably higher in London. So are the seat prices. Outside London, people tend to be more forgiving, more determined to enjoy themselves. Could we pass muster as a West End show? It suddenly struck me that the set was looking shabby and fragile after months on the road followed by several weeks stacked up in a warehouse in Slough. The second half was too long. I couldn’t stop myself glancing at Harriet Throsby, her face in the light reflected from the stage. She was wearing glasses that hid her eyes, but I could see that she wasn’t smiling. She wasn’t showing any emotion at all. Was she my enemy? She certainly seemed to be Ewan’s.

I felt a surge of relief when the curtain fell and then rose again for the cast to take their bows. I noticed Jordan Williams point in my direction and smile. He had spotted me in the audience and I was grateful for the gesture. The applause was loud and sustained but was it sincere? It was impossible to tell on a first night. The audience was on our side. They wanted us to succeed. But they might be acting too.

I made my way out into the street, shaking hands with people I’d never met, surrounded by smiles and congratulations. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the critics slipping away and tried to put them out of my mind. It was over. It had gone well. Now it was time for the first-night party and I was determined to enjoy myself. I would drink too much. This was my moment.

The Vaudeville Theatre was almost opposite the Savoy Hotel with its gorgeous cocktail bars and Grill Room, but Ahmet hadn’t been able to stretch quite that far. Instead, he had taken over a Turkish restaurant called Topkapi, on the edge of Covent Garden, which happened to be owned by his cousin. It was a small place, just off the piazza, with a wooden front decorated to look vaguely Byzantine and an outstretched canopy that was catching the rain. There was a bar as you entered and tables beyond, lots of mirrors, and lights that were a little too bright. As I walked in, I heard music playing and saw a three-man band in traditional costumes, sitting cross-legged on a square of carpet: lute, violin and drums. Waiters in tight-fitting black trousers and waistcoats were circulating with glasses of sparkling wine. The food – dolmas, borek and koftas – was spread out on the bar.

Ahmet, standing beside the door, greeted me with an embrace. ‘My dear friend! I am bursting with happiness. You heard the applause? One minute, thirty-two seconds. I timed it on my watch.’ He pointed to what was, I suspected, a fake Rolex. ‘We have a success. I know it.’

Standing beside him, Maureen looked less convinced.

Ahmet snapped his fingers at one of the waiters. ‘A glass of Yaşasin for the author!’ He beamed at me. ‘Or maybe you would prefer the Çalkarasi rosé? It’s excellent. The best.’

There were about a hundred people in the room, their numbers doubled by the floor-to-ceiling mirrors. The cast hadn’t arrived yet – it was a tradition that they would come in late – but the entire production team was here, along with the actors I had noticed at the theatre. They were chatting to my sister, who seemed to know them well.

Meanwhile, Ahmet and Maureen had moved further into the room and were talking to a nervous-looking man – tall and slender, wearing a suit. I wasn’t sure why he was nervous. Perhaps he was one of our backers. I remembered him because he had been sitting exactly behind me during the play and I’d noticed him as I sat down. He hadn’t been looking too happy then either. I took a sip of the sparkling wine I had been given. It was too sweet for my taste, but at least it was cold. I was beginning to think that maybe I wouldn’t stay here long. I was walking distance from my flat in Clerkenwell. I’d go home with my family and celebrate there.

But then the cast arrived: Tirian, Jordan and Sky, all three of them smartly dressed, smiling and confident, Sky in a pink puffball dress, Tirian wearing what looked like a very expensive black leather bomber jacket. Their appearance brought the party to life. Suddenly the crowd became more relaxed and cheerful. The music rose in volume and everyone had to talk more loudly to make themselves heard. More silver platters of food came out of the kitchen. Even the waiters picked up their pace.

And that was when I saw something so extraordinary that I had to look twice, and even then I didn’t quite believe it and had to look again.

The Sunday Times critic, Harriet Throsby, had come through the front door of the restaurant, accompanied by a younger woman who might have been her assistant or perhaps her daughter. What was going on? Had she decided to go for a Turkish meal after the play and wandered in without realising that this was where the party was taking place? No. As I watched, she helped herself to a glass of wine, sniffing the contents disapprovingly. The younger woman didn’t look happy to be here and Harriet muttered a few words into her ear. Ahmet had seen them both. He went over to them and bowed, gesturing towards the food. They were expected. They had been invited.

But that was impossible, wasn’t it? Critics never attended first-night parties. It was completely inappropriate and might even be seen as unethical. I couldn’t imagine what she was thinking, coming here. Could it be that she was a friend of one of the actors? That was extremely unlikely, given what Ewan had told me, and anyway, it would still have been wrong. Her job was to go home and write whatever she was going to write. She wasn’t part of the production and for all Ahmet’s smiles, she couldn’t be welcome here – particularly if she hadn’t liked the play.

I watched Ahmet leaning towards her, speaking earnestly. It was impossible to hear what he was saying with all the noise. For her part, Harriet was already bored and looking past him. I saw her eyes settle on the man Ahmet had just been talking to – the thin man in the suit. Brushing past Ahmet, she went over to him, smiling as if he was an old friend. The thin man stared at her, appalled. Harriet said something and he replied. Again, the words were lost in the crowd.

As the two of them continued their conversation, I pushed my way through about a dozen people and found Ewan, who was standing next to Tirian Kirke and Sky Palmer. ‘Have you seen?’ I asked.

‘What?’

‘Harriet Throsby!’

Ewan grimaced. ‘Didn’t Ahmet warn you she’d be here?’ he said. ‘She always comes to first-night parties. She expects to be invited … in fact, she insists upon it. Whatever you do, don’t ask her about the play – and I mean the writing, the performances, the scenery … anything. Just don’t go there. She won’t tell you what she thinks. She never does.’

‘Then why is she here?’ Tirian asked. He was as surprised as I was.

‘God knows. It doesn’t make any difference to what she’s going to write, but I think it gives her a sense of power. She knows we’re all scared of her.’

‘I’m not scared of her,’ Tirian said.

‘Then she’s probably never given you a bad review.’

Tirian thought for a moment. ‘I haven’t done much theatre – and I don’t care what she thinks. I’ve already got my next job and there’s nothing she can say that can change that.’

‘Tenet,’ Sky said.

‘Yes. We’re going to be shooting in Paris. I’ve never been to France, so I can’t wait. And we might be going to Denmark and Italy too.’

‘Who are you playing?’ I asked.

‘A spy. The character doesn’t have a name. In fact, he doesn’t even have a character. They sent me the script last week and the truth is, it’s completely insane. There are bullets that travel backwards in time, something called the Algorithm that’s going to either destroy the world or save it – I don’t know – and doors between dimensions. It’s total nonsense. Christopher Nolan may be a big-shot director, but he’s got his head right up his arse. Not that I care. Eleven weeks shooting. A ton of money. And I go to France.’

‘Shh … !’ Sky warned.

It was too late. Harriet Throsby had made her way over to us and had heard what he was saying. It certainly wasn’t the best way Tirian could have described his big breakthrough, and he was startled when he saw her standing behind him. She glanced at him and I saw a spark of malevolence in her eyes. Tirian twisted away awkwardly.

‘Good evening, Harriet,’ Ewan said, with no enthusiasm.

The Sunday Times critic stopped and examined us, measuring us up as if she was intending to review the party as well as the play. For the first time, I was able to examine her properly.

She was not large but she certainly had presence, expensively dressed in a cut-off jacket with a faux-fur collar and pearls. She was wearing horn-rimmed glasses that might have been deliberately chosen to make her look antagonistic, and she had a bulky black leather handbag – big enough to hold a laptop – looped over her arm. Her hair was obviously dyed, which was odd because it was an unpleasant colour, somewhere between brown and ginger. She had cut it short with a fringe, like a flapper girl from the twenties, which was exactly what she wasn’t. It didn’t suit her at all. I guessed she was about fifty. Her skin was pale and her make-up – the rouge, the lipstick, the eyeshadow – was so pronounced that it concealed her face rather than highlighted it. She could have been wearing a mask.

The girl who had arrived with her had followed her across and I decided that I was right and that she must be Harriet’s daughter. She also had short hair, the same eyes and turned-up nose, although in almost every other respect the two women could not have been more different. She looked downtrodden, miserable. She had deliberately chosen to dress down for the occasion with a denim jacket and a loose-fitting T-shirt printed with a photograph of Kristen Stewart in her role as the star of Twilight. Nor did she make any attempt to connect with the people in the room. Everything about her appearance and her manner suggested an archetypal stroppy teenager, dominated by a mother she didn’t like. The trouble was, she was actually quite a bit older, probably in her early twenties.

‘How nice to see you, Ewan,’ Harriet said brightly and even in that greeting and the cold smile that accompanied it, I got a sense of the game she was playing. She was enjoying herself, watching us squirm. I thought there was an American twang to her voice, but maybe it was just her extreme self-confidence, the way she targeted her words. ‘How have you been keeping?’

‘I’m very well, thank you, Harriet,’ Ewan said, his eyes blinking more rapidly than ever.

‘What a delightful idea to have a party in a Turkish restaurant, although I have to say I’m not a big fan of foreign food. Olivia and I had half an hour in the Savoy. Excellent cocktails, although those big hotels don’t exactly light my fire. And they’re shockingly expensive too.’ She changed the subject without pausing. ‘I hear Sheffield have their new artistic director. I thought you might have been in the running.’

‘No. I wasn’t interested.’

‘Really? You do surprise me. So, you’re trying your hand at comedy thrillers. Very hard to get right. I saw … who was it? … in Deathtrap a few years ago. Simon Russell Beale, of course! I never forget a face! I thought he was excellent, although the play had rather dated. Ira Levin. I used to like his novels. As a matter of fact, I recently read one of yours.’ It took me a moment to realise that Harriet was now addressing me. She had a strange way of avoiding my eye while she spoke, looking over my shoulder as if hoping someone more interesting had come into the room.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘I’ve always been a fan of crime fiction. I used to write about crime. Non-fiction. I didn’t find it entirely satisfying, though. Criminals are so boring. Not all of them – but most of them. What was the one I read? I can’t remember now. But Olivia used to read your books too. Didn’t you, dear!’

‘Alex Rider.’ The girl looked embarrassed.

‘You used to like them. They were stories about a young assassin.’

‘He’s not really an assassin,’ I said. ‘He’s a spy.’

‘He did kill people,’ Olivia contradicted me.

Her mother leered at me. ‘And now you’re writing for the theatre.’

‘Yes.’ I couldn’t stop myself. ‘Did you enjoy the play?’ Ewan glared at me. Tirian and Sky looked embarrassed. It was the one thing I’d been told not to do but I’d gone ahead and done it.

Harriet ignored me. It was as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘So, you’ve been cast in a big film,’ she said. Now she was talking to Tirian. ‘Personally, I have to say that I think it’s a shame, all our young talent going over the Atlantic.’

‘I’m only crossing the Channel,’ Tirian replied. ‘We’re shooting in Paris.’

‘You know what I mean, dear. I suppose the Americans pay so much better, but what does that do for our own theatre and television?’ Again, that malicious gleam.

There was an uncomfortable silence. None of us wanted to talk to Harriet Throsby. I think we were all hoping she’d go away.

Sky broke the silence. ‘It’s nice to see you, Olivia,’ she said.

‘Oh. Hello, Sky.’

‘Do you two know each other?’ Harriet asked.

Olivia said nothing, so Sky explained. ‘We met at the first-night party for The Crucible at the Barbican. I played Mercy Lewis.’

‘Yes. I remember you.’

‘You didn’t like the production.’

Harriet shrugged. ‘It had its moments. Unfortunately, as I recall, they were too few and far between.’ She turned back to me, although once again her eyes refused to meet mine, as if she was trying to remind me that I meant nothing to her. ‘I’m glad I spotted you. What a lovely party! So unusual to have it Turkish-themed. Come on, Olivia. Our car’s waiting for us …’

And then the two of them were gone, crossing the restaurant to the exit and disappearing into the rain. I watched the door swing shut. The four of us were left trying to work out what had just occurred.

‘I need a large whisky,’ Ewan said. He put down his glass. ‘This Turkish wine tastes like cat’s piss.’

‘I’ve got a bottle of vodka in my dressing room,’ Sky said.

‘I’ve got some Scotch,’ Tirian added.

‘Then why don’t we go back?’ Ewan suggested.

None of us wanted to be at the party any more. Harriet Throsby hadn’t said anything mean or vindictive about the play but she had nonetheless spoiled it for all of us, which was exactly what she had intended.

Ewan looked at his watch. ‘I’ll go and get Jordan. Let’s meet there in ten …’

I shouldn’t have gone. I wish I’d listened to my earlier instincts and gone home with my family. Everything would have been so different. But, of course, you never know these things at the time. That’s why life is so different to fiction. Every day is a single page and you have no chance to thumb forward and see what lies ahead.