She was a strange woman. She clung to him tightly and he could feel the nervous excitement coursing through her body. In other circumstances, he would have interpreted this as a sexual message and responded in kind, but that somehow didn’t seem appropriate. The excitement had nothing to do with him.
He was being used for some purpose of her own. Certainly she was working to give the appearance of a sexual encounter, but it was for the benefit of the rest of the room, not for her partner.
Charles wondered at first if it was a ploy to make her husband jealous. Geoffrey was across the room, dancing with circumscribed abandon in front of yet another little dolly and Vee was very aware of his presence. But her behaviour did not seem designed to antagonize him; instead Charles received an inexplicable impression of complicity between husband and wife, as if their performances were co-ordinated parts of an overall plan and would later be laughed over when they were alone together.
This annoyed him. Again he was being used as a counter in a game he didn’t understand. The heavy beat of a rock number changed to a soupy ballad and Vee snuggled closer, pressing the contours of her body tightly against his. He realized with surprise that he didn’t find this arousing. Vee Winter was an attractive woman, but he didn’t fancy her. this gave him a perverse sense of righteousness, as if confirming that his randiness was not absolutely indiscriminate.
He commented rather coldly on her forwardness, ‘is this to give food for scandal to the gossip columnist of Backbite?’
‘Backbite?’
‘Your fortnightly magazine.
‘That’s called Backchat.’ She corrected him without humour. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t have a gossip columnist.’
Charles unwisely chose to continue in facetious vein. ‘So there’s no one to chronicle the backslidings of the Backstagers bopping to Burt Bacharach and their bacchanalian orgies?’
‘No.’ Vee’s reply was absolutely straight. Charles wouldn’t have minded if she had said it as a put-down (his attempt at humour had been pretty feeble), but for her not to notice even that the attempt had been made, that he found galling.
‘Do you act much here?’
She laughed with incredulity at his question, rather as if someone had asked the Queen if she had any jewelery. ‘Oh I have done a few things, yes.’
‘But not The Seagull?’
‘No.’ She stiffened slightly. ‘I really’ felt I needed a rest. Also I’ve played so many leads in the past year, I didn’t want it to look as if Geoff and I were monopolizing the entire society. Ought to give some of the newer members a chance. And then Shad, who directed, had this strange notion that Nina ought to have red hair. He’s a rather quirky director, if you know what I mean.’
Through the excuses, Charles knew exactly what she meant.
He took the end of a record as an opportunity to end their clinch. He looked over at the group round Hugo and couldn’t face it yet. He needed just to get out of the place for a moment. The sweet wine was making him feel sick. Pausing only to pick up someone’s full glass off a table, he left the rehearsal room.
The change was as welcome as he had anticipated. In spite of the summery days of that fall, October was nearing its end and the evenings were chilly. The slap of cold air was refreshing. He leaned against the inside of the porch and breathed deeply.
Then he heard the voices. Charlotte Mecken and Clive Steele. Arguing in fierce whispers. First Charlotte’s voice, the veneer of drama school thinned by emotion to reveal its Northern Irish origin. ‘I’m sorry, Clive, you’ve got it completely wrong. I never knew you were thinking that.’
‘Whit was I meant to think, after all those rehearsals, when you suddenly got all emotional and confided in me when I drove you home?’
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have broken down. I just… it was all too much…’
‘Well, I made the perfectly natural assumption that — ’
‘It may have seemed perfectly natural to you, but — ’
‘It bloody well did. Look, if it’s your husband you’re worried about, forget it. It’s bloody obscene you being married to him anyway. Reminds me of all those jokes about young girls on their wedding nights feeling old age creeping all over them — ’
‘Clive. stop it. You’ve got the wrong end of the stick. So completely the wrong end. It’s all much more complicated than you can begin to imagine. Look, I’m sorry if you’ve been hurt, but I can assure you — ’
‘Oh, stuff that! All right, you’ve made your point. I see what’s been happening now. There is a word for women who lead men on you know.’
‘Clive, if I’d had any idea of what was going through you mind — ’
‘Oh shut up. I’m going.’
‘Be careful.’
‘Don’t worry, I will. I’m not like Konstantin — I’m not going to go off and shoot myself because some tart’s let me down. If I were to do anything, I can assure you it would be something a lot more practical. Goodbye!’
Charles heard a few brisk footsteps across the gravel, a car door open and slam, then a powerful sports car engine starting and tires screeching off down the road.
He assumed Charlotte was still there. He gave her two minutes, then, not being an actor for nothing, did his impression of someone coming noisily out of the rehearsal room.
He was aware of her perfume before he saw her. It was very expensive, very distinctive. Whatever Hugo’s relationship with his wife, he didn’t stint her expenses. Her clothes were also of the best. She was a trendy fashion plate amidst the pervading dowdiness of the Backstagers.
She was leaning against the bonnet of a Volvo in the car park and didn’t look as if she had moved for some time. Her face was infinitely miserable.
‘Hello, Charlotte. What’s up?’
‘I don’t know. Last night blues,’ she lied. ‘You should understand about that.’
‘Yes. What I usually do is get wildly pissed. Then I don’t notice. And the next morning I feel so bad physically that I forget about any emotional upset.’
‘Hmm. I’m rather off alcohol at the moment.’
Silence. She looked sensational in the bluish light shed from the rehearsal room. The pain of her expression increased rather than diminished her beauty. The face framed in red hair looked pale and peaky in the thin light. Very young, very vulnerable, a child being brave.
Charles found being with her a relief. She seemed more like a real person than the lot in the rehearsal room. He felt protective towards her. And that made him feel better. He didn’t like the boorish bloody-mindedness which the massed Backstagers kindled in him.
‘You know, your Nina was very good.’
‘Thank you. What are you going to say — I ought to take it up professionally?’
‘That’s what you were trained for.’
‘Yes. A bit pathetic, isn’t it really — fully trained actress mucking about with amateur’ dramatics.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I’m sure, if you pass your Juvenile Lead Audition and are approved by the Big Parts Selection Sub-Committee, you’ll get some very juicy roles here.’
Charlotte laughed. ‘You seem to have caught on to the atmosphere of the place very quickly. God, what a load of creeps they all seem when you think of them objectively. All with their oversize egos and silly stage names — all those abbreviations and hyphens and extra middle names — it makes me sick when I think about it. I make a point of using their proper names just to annoy them.’
‘Do you think you’ll do more here?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know. What’s the alternative? I can’t see Hugo being keen on my having a real acting career. Anyway, I’ve lost all the few contacts I ever had in the theatre. Just a housewife with dreams, I suppose.’
‘I’m sure you could make it in the real theatre.’
‘“You should go on the stage,’ says Arkadina. ‘Yes, that is my one dream,’ replies Nina. ‘But it’ll never come true.”’
‘Could do.’
But Charlotte’s temporary serenity was broken by some memory. ‘No, it’ll never — oh, everything’s such a mess. God knows what’s in store for me anyway.’
‘Anything you can talk about?’
She hesitated for a moment, on the verge of sharing her burden. But decided against it. ‘No. Thanks for the offer, but I’m rather against shoulders to cry on at the moment. It’s my own mess and I must sort it out somehow.’ She moved resolutely away from the Volvo.
‘Are you coming back in, Charlotte?’
‘No, I can’t face that lot right now. I’m just going to… don’t know… have a bit of a walk, try to clear my head or… I don’t know, Charles. Tell Hugo I’ll be back later. You’re staying with us tonight, aren’t you?’
‘If that’s okay.’
‘Sure. I’ll see you in the morning.’ She walked off into the night, pulling her long Aran cardigan round her against the cold.
Hugo had been hard at the Spanish red when Charles got back into the. rehearsal room. But the mood that was settling in was one of catatonic gloom rather than manic violence.
They both continued to drink, resolutely and more or less silently. The party was livening up, with more and more couples clinched on the dance-floor. There were still plenty of spare women, but Charles had lost interest. The intensity of Vee Winter and Charlotte’s troubled words had changed his mood. He and Hugo drank as they might have done thirty years earlier at an Oxford party where all the women had been bagged before they arrived.
It was about three when they left. Charles murmured something about Charlotte making her own way home, but Hugo didn’t react. He drove them back to his house with the punctilious concentration of the very drunk.
As the Alfa-Romeo saloon crunched to a halt on the gravel in front of the house, he said determinedly. ‘Come in and have a nightcap.’
Charles didn’t want to. He was tired and drunk and he had a potentially difficult day ahead of him. Also he had a premonition that Hugo wanted to confide in him. Ignobly, he didn’t feel up to it.
But Hugo took his silence for assent and they went into the sitting room. Charles stood with his back to the empty fireplace, trying to think of a good line to get him quickly up to bed, while Hugo went over to the drinks cupboard. ‘What’s it to be?’
He opened the door to reveal a neat parade of whisky bottles. There were up to a dozen brands. Hugo always rationalized the size of the display on the grounds that everyone has a favourite Scotch, but it was really just the potential alcoholic’s insurance policy.
Charles missed the opportunity to refuse and weakly chose a Glenmorangie malt. Hugo poured a generous two inches into a tumbler and helped himself to a Johnnie Walker Black Label.
Then they just stood facing each other and drank. Hugo kept the Johnnie Walker bottle dangling in his free hand. The silence became oppressive. Charles downed his drink in a few long swallows and opened his mouth for thank you and goodnight.
Hugo spoke first. ‘Charles,’ he said in a voice of uneven pitch, ‘I think I’m cracking up,’
‘What do you mean?’”
‘Cracking up, going round the bend, losing control.’ The last two words came out in a fascinated whisper.
‘Oh come on, you’re pissed.’
‘That’s part of it. I drink too much and I just don’t notice it. It doesn’t make me drunk, it doesn’t calm me down, I just feel the same thing — I’m… losing control.’
‘Control of what? What do you think you are going to do?’
‘I don’t know. Something terrible. I’m going to say something awful, hit somebody or… All the constraints I’ve built up over the years, they’re just breaking down…’ He mouthed incoherently.
‘Oh come on. You’ve just had too much to drink. It’s nothing.’
‘Don’t tell me it’s nothing!’ Hugo suddenly screamed. As he did so, he hurled the whisky bottle at the stone mantelpiece to the right of Charles. It shattered. Glass fell into the fireplace and spirit dripped down on to it.
Charles thought the outburst contained more than a dash of histrionics. If his friend wasn’t going to believe him, then Hugo was damned well going to give a demonstration of his lack of control. ‘Like that, you mean?’ asked Charles. ‘Out of control like that?’
Hugo looked at him defiantly, then sheepishly, then with a hint of a smile, seeing that his bluff had been called. He sank exhausted into a chair. ‘No, not like that. That was just for effect. I mean worse than that. 1 get to a flashpoint and I feel I’m going to lash out — I don’t know, to kill someone.’
Charles looked straight at him and Hugo looked away, again slightly sheepish, admitting that the homicidal threat was also for effect.
‘Who are you going to kill?’ Charles teased. ‘Charlotte?’ Hugo was instantly serious. ‘No, not Charlotte. I wouldn’t touch Charlotte. Whatever she did, I wouldn’t touch her.’
‘Then who?’
Hugo looked at Charles vaguely, distantly, as if piecing together something that had only just occurred to him. Then he said slowly, as if he didn’t believe it, ‘Friends of Charlotte’.
Charles took a risk and laughed. Hugo looked at him suspiciously for a moment and then laughed too. Soon after they went to bed.
Charles didn’t think too much about what Hugo had said. Obviously his friend was under pressure and all wasn’t well with his marriage, but most of the trouble was the drink. Anyway, Charles had domestic problems of his own to worry about. His last thought, before he dropped into the alcohol-anaesthetized sleep which was becoming too much of a habit, was the next day he had to see his wife for the first time in five months. At the christening of their twin grandsons. Grandsons, for God’s sake.