During the ensuing week, The Hooded Owl seemed to be gaining momentum. The audiences were growing almost imperceptibly, and the word-of-mouth was good. One or two of the national papers, feeling guilty about the show’s first night, sent second-string critics along for a second look, and their reports were, on the whole, favourable.
The performances gained in strength. On the Thursday, Lesley-Jane Decker came back into the cast. After the abortion and her mother’s arrest, she seemed to have matured. She approached her work with a new single-mindedness, and acted better than ever.
Charles Paris got better, too. On the Tuesday night, as an experiment, without telling anyone (least of all Wallas Ward), he had a word with the A.S.M. before the show, and asked him not to feed the lines until absolutely necessary. To Charles’s amazement, he managed to get through the whole show without a single prompt. The constant repetition had fixed the lines indelibly in his mind.
The loss of this crutch did not, as he had feared, diminish his confidence. Instead, it made him feel more relaxed, stronger, more in control. And he knew this improvement was reflected in his acting.
He also came to rely less on drink. He had proved he could give a performance without it, and, though it frightened him to remove another support, he dared another night without his customary stimulus. To his surprise, he found his head was clearer, his concentration better, and his nerves no worse. He repeated the experiment on subsequent nights, and felt better for it. He’d still wind down with a couple of large Bell’s, but he got out of the habit of drinking before the show.
He also spoke to his agent, and the company Equity representative, and finally to Paul Lexington direct, about his unsatisfactory status in the play, acting the part regularly and being paid only as an understudy. The producer, probably already under pressure from Equity, and unwilling to take on the expense of another star, agreed that he would regularise the position as soon as possible.
So, for a couple of weeks, The Hooded Owl soldiered on in the West End. Everyone knew the early weeks would be tense. Like a sick baby, a show has to be carefully nursed until it can build up its own strength.
But The Hooded Owl seemed to be winning the fight for survival. The audiences in the second week after Valerie Cass’s arrest were definitely getting bigger, and their reaction more positively approving. At this rate the production should soon reach the break-even point its budget required.
A few coach parties started to come. Soon the show would be an established signpost in the Entertainments columns of the newspapers, and begin to run on its own momentum.
When the company was summoned to a meeting on stage at the ‘half’ on the Friday of that week, they expected some sort of announcement of how near they were to their break-even. The signs were good. They had been running for nearly a month and were gaining strength daily.
They were in for a disappointment.
Wallas Ward clapped his limp hands for silence, and began without Paul Lexington’s ambivalent opening.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I am afraid I have some bad news.
‘As you know, today is the day you should be paid. Since the money goes to your agents in most cases, you won’t yet have noticed anything wrong. But I’m afraid I have to tell you that no money has been sent to your agents.’
He raised his hands again to still the outcry which this provoked.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry, but it appears that there is no money anywhere in this show. The production company has gone bankrupt.’
The screams of fury which greeted this finally resolved themselves into one question: Where was Paul Lexington?
‘I am sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but I cannot answer that. Not for any reason of discretion or protecting him; the fact is, I do not know where Paul Lexington is. He hasn’t been seen round the theatre for two days and, when I spoke to his landlord this afternoon, I discovered that he had left his flat yesterday, taking all his belongings and owing three months’ rent.’
In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, Paul Lexington had done a bunk. Living up to another stereotype of the theatrical producer, though not usually the sort of producer who reached the heights of the West End.
So that was it.
‘As a result, ladies and gentlemen,’ the Company Manager concluded unctuously, ‘I regret to inform you that the notices will go up tonight. We will do the two performances tomorrow, because of advance bookings, but I’m afraid otherwise, that is the end.’
So it was that, after three and a half weeks at the Variety Theatre, The Hooded Owl by Malcolm Harris closed.
‘Could I speak to Gerald Venables, please? It’s Charles Paris speaking.’
‘I’ll put you through.’
‘Charles! Sorry to hear about the show. I’m afraid that Paul Lexington was a bad lot.’
‘To put it mildly.’
‘Indeed. As you know, I’m trying to sort out Bobby Anscombe’s end, and it’s only now I’m beginning to see the full extent of the mess. Lexington owed money everywhere. God knows how he got as far as he did. So far as I can see, once Bobby was out, he was running the production on sheer cheek.’
‘That was one thing he didn’t lack.’
‘No. He seems to have kept going for a while by constantly starting up new companies and borrowing on them, but quite honestly it’s going to be some time before everything’s crawled out of the woodwork and I can get a clear picture.’
‘What’ll happen to him?’
‘I don’t know. I doubt if he’ll get prosecuted unless one of his creditors decides to make the effort. He hasn’t got any assets — apart from the fact that he’s vanished off the face of the earth — so there’s not a lot of point in suing him. That’s what I’m going to advise Bobby.’
‘He seemed so plausible.’
‘Of course he did. To all of you in the company. He always said what you wanted to hear. He painted in your dreams for you.’
‘Yes.’
‘Trouble is, he was really out of his league. Trying to tangle with the big boys like Bobby. And Denis Thornton was ripping him off, too.’
‘Was he?’
‘Oh yes. Lanthorn Productions only took on the show because they didn’t want the Variety Theatre dark.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. They just wanted a show in there, because they’d acquired the lease and wanted to demonstrate that it could still work as a theatre.’
‘But I thought The Hooded Owl was going to be their big opening.’
‘No, no. That’s going to be a revival of Flower Drum Song in March. Been planned for months.’
‘But if The Hooded Owl had run, we’d still have been there in March.’
‘Denis Thornton knew it wouldn’t run. He’s a wily old bird. Best thing that happened for him when Paul agreed to let Show-Off do the publicity. Since they’re part of Lanthorn, Denis could control how much coverage your show got.’
‘You mean he deliberately limited our publicity?’
‘Ooh, mustn’t say that. Might be slander. Let’s just say that most of Show-Off’s energies during the week of your opening went into Lanthorn Productions’ new musical at the King’s.’
‘But surely that’s criminal?’
‘Tut, tut, you mustn’t use words like that, Charles. When you’ve been dealing with theatre managements as long as I have, you come to realise that there’s a very thin dividing line between skilful dealing and what you choose to call crime. Paul Lexington wasn’t sufficiently experienced, so he ended up the wrong side of that line.’
‘Hmm. I wonder what’ll happen to him.’
‘Well, I think it’ll be a long time before he surfaces in the West End again. The Society of West End Theatre Managers’ll see to that.’
‘Yes, but I’ve somehow a feeling he’ll pop up again somewhere. That sort always finds someone new to believe them.’
‘True. Incidentally, Charles, Kate was saying the other day what a long time it is since we’ve seen you, and wouldn’t it be nice if you could come over for dinner one of these evenings. I said it’d be difficult because you d got the show, but now of course. .’
‘Yes. Sounds great.’
‘With Frances, of course. I mean, I gathered at that first night that you were back together again. You are, aren’t you?’
‘Well. . er. . not exactly.’
So what happened to them all in the weeks running up to Christmas?
Valerie Cass was convicted of killing Michael Banks, but the charge, to which she readily confessed, was manslaughter, and she was sentenced to three years in prison.
Lesley-Jane Decker landed a very good part in a television series about the Bloomsbury Group, which guaranteed her six months’ work and national recognition when the show hit the screens. She also, in her mother’s absence, got to know her father for the first time, and found she got on with him very well.
Alex Household spent two weeks in hospital and, when he came out. decided to give up acting and join a monastery dedicated to a pantheistic view of the universe.
Peter Hickton kept his cast up most nights rehearsing for the Prince’s Theatre, Taunton’s, annual pantomime, Babes in the Wood, in which Salome Search played a somewhat gnarled principal boy.
Paul Lexington, from his new base in Hull, set up a company called Pierre Productions, whose aim was to put Northern club comics into end-of-the-pier summer seasons.
Malcolm Harris, who had received no money from the production of The Hooded Owl except for the pittance of the long-lapsed option, went back to his school teaching. In his evenings he worked on a play about Mary, Queen of Scots, because his wife’s mother had read somewhere that costume drama was coming back.
Dottie Banks continued to entertain a stream of men in Hans Crescent. Then, to everyone’s surprise, she died of a drug overdose on Christmas Eve. She must have missed her husband more than she showed.
George Birkitt received the first scripts for a new series of Fly-Buttons and sent them back to the producer, complaining that his character hadn’t got enough lines. He also opened two supermarkets, which pleased him greatly. suggesting as it did that people were starting to think of him as a star.
Wallas Ward met a very nice black dancer at a party and settled down with him in Pimlico.
Frances Paris had an offer on the house in Muswell Hill. It was two thousand less than the asking price, but, because the housing market was depressed, and on the advice of her son-in-law, she accepted it.
And Charles Paris? He got drunk.