In they go-in jackets, and cloaks,
Plumes, and bonnets, turbans and toques,
As if to a Congress of Nations:
Greeks and Malays, with daggers and dirks,
Spaniards, Jews, Chinese, and Turks Some like original foreign works,
But mostly like bad translations.
By Sunday 18th AugustEdinburgh was beginning to feel the Festival. Over-night the city was full of tourists-tweedy music-lovers on leisurely promenades, earnest Americans decked with rucksacks and guide-books, French and Japanese drawn by the twin attractions of culture and Marks and Spencer pullovers. The residents who had not escaped on holiday wore expressions of resignation, hardened to the idea of their streets clogged with ambling foreigners, their early nights troubled by returning revue audiences and the distant massed pipes and drums of the Military Tattoo.
Because that Sunday was the day when it all started officially. In the words of the Festival brochure, ‘The twenty-eighth Edinburgh Festival will be opened with a Service of Praise and Thanksgiving in St Giles’ Cathedral on Sunday 18th August at 3 p.m. Later, starting from the Castle Esplanade at 9.45 p.m., relays of torch-bearing runners will light a bonfire on Arthur’s Seat.’
And in the little halls of Edinburgh on that Sunday morning would-be cultural torch-bearers blew earnestly at the smoulderings of what was in many cases incombustible material. Experimental and university groups realised that their rehearsal time was running out and put on a spurt to justify the extravagant claims of their publicity. There were dress rehearsals for at least a dozen ‘funniest revues on the Fringe’, some twenty ‘revolutionary new plays’, and three or four ‘new artistic concepts which would flatten the accepted barriers of culture’. If all these ambitions were realised, British theatre would never be the same again.
In the Masonic Hall in Lauriston Street Charles Paris was trying to realise more humble ambitions and finding it hard work. The lighting technician he had been allocated was a fat and contemptuous youth, whose blue denim had faded and dirtied to the colour of sludge. He was known as Plug, and Charles found it difficult to call anyone ‘Plug’.
It had been made clear that, considering the exacting demands of creative amateur theatre, there was not going to be much time or effort left for him, a mere professional. ‘Um… Plug?’ he said exploratively, ‘I wonder about the chances of moving the back-projector round. If it stays there, I’m going to be masking the slides.’
‘That’d mean moving the screen too,’ Plug grunted accusingly.
‘Yes, it will.’
‘Can’t be done. Haven’t got the extension leads.’
‘Can’t you get them?’
‘Shouldn’t think so.’
Charles bit back his anger. It was difficult dealing with amateurs. In a professional context, no problem; he could have bawled the guy out, justified because a service that was being paid for was not being provided. But the amateur relies on goodwill and there did not seem to be much of it in evidence.
So he gritted his teeth and played stupid, apparently bowing to Plug’s technical expertise and working the youth round till he did what was required as a demonstration of his abilities. It was important, Charles had gone to considerable trouble to have slides made of Hood’s woodcuts. They had originally been printed with the poems and the crude humour of the pictures extended the range of the verse. In a one-man show it is important to give the audience as much varied stimulus as possible.
By application of simple child psychology he got the back-projector and screen moved and started a run. It was not easy. With only two stage areas in use, the lighting plot was simple. But Plug refused to rehearse the cues on their own, saying that he would pick them up on a full run. Then, in spite of the carefully marked-up script that Charles had given him, he proceeded to get every single effect wrong.
The one benefit of the run was that it tested Charles’ knowledge of his words, because whether he moved to the table or the lectern, there was a guarantee of total darkness on that area. And whenever he turned to the back-projection screen, he was confronted either by a blank or the wrong slide.
It was also a useful concentration exercise. In the darkness beyond the stage people kept wandering in and out. Plug greeted them all loudly and conducted irrelevant conversations at the top of his voice. Charles was ignored like a television in the corner of the room.
The show limped to its close. As he stood at the lectern to read the final Stanzas, ‘Farewell, Life! My senses swim…’, he was amazed to find the light was actually where it should be. It had taken the whole show to get one cue right, but at least it offered hope. Encouraged, he put more emotion into the poem. It approached its end with the dying fall he had intended.
‘O’er the earth there comes a bloom Sunny light for sullen gloom,
Warm perfume for vapour cold-’ then, before ‘I smell the Rose above the Mould’, the pause held long and dramatic.
Too long. Too dramatic. Plug snapped the lights out before the line was delivered.
Charles’ reserves cracked. ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake!’
‘What’s up?’ Plug grunted from the darkness.
‘That’s not the cue. There’s another line.’
Plug did not seem unduly concerned. He brought up the house lights. ‘Never mind.’
‘And then, after the last line, there’s supposed to be a three-second pause and a five-second fade down to black.’
‘Oh.’
‘It’s clearly marked in the script.’
‘Yes.’
Charles decided there was little point in concealing his feelings. ‘That was pretty abysmal.’
Plug nodded sympathetically, unaware that the comment referred to him. ‘Hmm. Perhaps you need more rehearsal.’
‘I think it’s you who needs more rehearsal. None of the cues were right.’
Plug’s silence indicated that this was an unworthy attack on his life work. Charles continued, ‘So let’s have one run-through of just the cues and then do the whole show again.’
‘There’s not much point.’
‘Why not? The show opens tomorrow.’
‘Yes, but I won’t be doing the lights then. I’m only here for the rehearsal.’
Charles tried to find out what would be happening about his lights in the actual show from the Company Manager, and Brian Cassells was confident that everything would be all right. Charles, who found Brian’s confidence increasingly unnerving, was not convinced.
‘Oh, incidentally, Charles, will you be going down to the Fringe reception?’
‘What’s that?’
‘At five o’clock. Royal Mile Centre. It’s sort of to launch everything. You know, Press’ll be there and all that.’
‘Then I’ll certainly come.’ Any chance of publicity must be taken. He was not too optimistic of the ‘DUDS of the Fringe’ poster bringing audiences flocking to see him.
Since the pubs were not open on Sunday, he had cabbage lunch with the rest of the group. The conversation was all of the coming shows. Willy Mariello’s death had been almost forgotten. Charles looked round the table. Anna was not there. He suddenly wished she was, or wished that he was with her somewhere keeping the blues at bay.
The loud T-shirted crowd joked and attitudinised. He felt old and envious. Their values were so simple. What they were doing on the Fringe was the most important thing that had ever happened; that was all there was to it. Their shows consumed all their thoughts and energies.
Except for the thoughts of one person-the murderer. He or she must be feeling regret or anxiety or something. But the lunch time crowd showed no signs of guilty conscience. They all seemed interchangeably brash and cheerful. Pam Northcliffe was up the far end of the table as nervously bright and giggly as the rest. Communal excitement had replaced the short tempers of earlier in the week.
Martin Warburton was not there. Charles wondered if he would be sharing in the group gaiety if he were. There was still a lot to be found out about Martin Warburton. That afternoon might be a good opportunity to read Who Now? — a Disturbing New Play.
It was disturbing. The language was good, there was some sense of structure, but the content was frightening. As the title implied, questions of identity figured large. None of the characters seemed to have a fixed personality; they were chameleons who took on the colour of different forms of violence. There was a woolly Leftish political message coming through the monologues that made up the play. Its main tenet seemed to be that, come the Revolution, the bourgeois would be destroyed. But it was the way in which they were going to be destroyed that was disturbing. Images of bombings, secret beatings and firing squads abounded. Continually blood welled, bones cracked, corpses twitched and entrails spilled. So much blood.
Under normal circumstances, Charles would have put it down to overwriting. Some of the extended metaphors even reminded him of his own adolescent literary excesses. But even so, and even given a young person’s insensitive ignorance of the real facts of death, there was something obsessive about the play. A morbid preoccupation with violence unbalanced the writer’s considerable natural talent.
And became uncomfortably relevant in the light of Willy Mariello’s death.
About half past four Martin Warburton suddenly appeared in the men’s dormitory. He seemed in a hurry and had dropped in to collect something from his suitcase. Charles was lying on his camp-bed checking through So Much Comic…
‘Oh, Martin, I’ve read your play.’
‘Ah.’ He seemed embarrassed.
‘I’d like to talk about it.’
‘Ah.’
‘Now? If you’re walking down to this reception, we could chat on the way.’
‘I’m not going to the reception.’ Martin hesitated. He was improvising. ‘I’m going to meet someone down at… er… Dean Village.’
‘Oh. O.K. Well, some other time.’
‘Yes.’
Charles started off with some of the Mary cast to walk to the Royal Mile Centre. Just as they were about to cross Princes Street to go up the Mound, he realised that he had not brought any of his hand-outs. Even a playbill offering one of the DUDS of the Fringe was better than no publicity. Brian Cassells would not have thought to take any. With some annoyance, because it was a warm afternoon, he started back along Princes Street.
He was waiting for the lights to cross Charlotte Street when he saw Martin over the other side striding purposefully along Lothian Road. In the opposite direction from Dean Village.
Charles was not aware of making the decision, but it seemed natural to cross over Princes Street and follow. He was some fifty yards behind his quarry and there were enough meandering tourists about to make the pursuit look casual. He kept his eyes fixed on the blue denim back ahead.
Martin turned left along Castle Terrace which skirts the great Castle rock, then crossed over Spittal Street and climbed up towards Lauriston Place. Maybe going to the Masonic Hall. The scene of the crime. There were no rehearsals that afternoon. Everyone was going down to the reception. Or perhaps Martin was aiming for the Mariello’s house in Meadow Lane. Charles felt a spurt of excitement.
There were less people about in this part of the old town, so he dawdled. He did not want to be noticed if Martin stopped suddenly.
But the boy did not stop. The blue denim back continued its progress. Past the Masonic Hall, no hesitation. Past the Meadow Lane turning. On past the Infirmary, looking neither left nor right. Charles began to feel it was a long walk.
And it continued. On past the University Union with its cloth banner advertising Russell Hunter in Knox. On to Nicholson Square and then suddenly right, along the broad pavement of Nicholson Street. Martin still kept up his even, preoccupied pace, with Charles alternately lingering and hurrying along behind.
The whole thing seemed pointless. Charles could not really think what he was doing, playing this elaborate game of cops and robbers when he should be snatching much-needed publicity at the reception. Perhaps Martin was just going out for a walk. Something innocuous. Something Martin had disappeared. The fact jerked Charles out of his reverie. One moment the denim back had been moving smoothly along, the next it was gone. In the middle of a parade of shops. No chance of having turned up a side street.
Cautiously Charles moved forward to where he had last seen Martin. All the shops were Sunday shut. Their fronts were separated by doors which served the flats above. Gently Charles pushed the one nearest to where he had last seen Martin.
It was a heavy door, but it gave. The stone hall was dark and suddenly cool. A pram. A bicycle. Stone stairs, a metal rail. And attached to the top of the door a heavy chain that was part of some antiquated system to open it from the flats above.
Just an ordinary hall of an ordinary tenement block. Silence. He could not start barging into private flats at high tea time on an Edinburgh Sunday afternoon. Anyway, what was he looking for? He went out into the street again.
The names on the old-fashioned bell-pushes told him nothing. McHarg, Stewart, Grant, Wilson. He waited for about five minutes, apparently intrigued by a display of dusty Pyrex in an adjacent shop. Martin did not reemerge. It was after half past five. Charles set off for the Royal Mile Centre.
At the entrance he was asked to identify himself.
‘Charles Paris.’
‘Not your name. Who are you with?’
‘Oh, Derby University Dramatic Society.’
The result was that he entered the upstairs assembly room with a red card badge bearing the legend ‘D.U.D.S.’. It did not seem very positive advertising.
Entering the room was difficult; it was so full that he had to ease one shoulder in as a wedge and wriggle the rest of his body in after it. Some people had glasses of drink. Infallible instinct tracked its source and he slid and sidled over to a long table.
The drink was a pink wine-cup of minimal alcoholic content. Charles looked out across the throng. A swarm of cultural locusts was buzzing loudly and milling round the red badges which bore the names of newspapers, radio or television companies.
Everyone had a badge. Radio Clyde bounced on the forceful breasts of a young reporter. Bradford clung to chain mail worn to publicise their play The Quest. B.B.C. flopped on well-cut mohair. Nottingham sagged on a dirty T-shirt.
And everyone forced literature on everyone else. Charles had only to stand there to become a litter-bin for hand-outs and programmes. He kicked himself for wasting time following Martin and not getting his own publicity.
A glance at the cultural treats the literature offered revealed that there was not much he would want to see, but it was at least varied. There was Problem 32 by Framework Theatre- ‘ten young designers creating an hour’s theatre in their own terms’. The World Premiere of ScotsWha Hae, a new Scots comedy from the group that brought you The De’il’s Awa’ and Cambusdonald Royal. Paris Pandemonium Projects offered Chaos, Un Collage de Comedie. Under the intriguing title Charlotte Bronte and her Scotsmen, Accolade were presenting ‘psychological deduction of her relations with men in her last years (reduced prices for students and Old Age Pensioners)’. Or there was Birkenhead Dada with We Call for the Decease of Salvador Dali‘Shocks, poems and perversions; indefensible personal attacks; new levels of tastelessness.’
In other words the Fringe was much as usual. But with decreasing conviction. Charles remembered the heady days of the late fifties and early sixties when Edinburgh was the only outlet for experimental drama in Britain. The recent spread of little theatres in London and other major cities had eroded that unique position. And the Edinburgh Fringe seemed less important. Less truly experimental. Too many of the university groups were doing end-of-term productions of classics rather than looking for new ideas.
‘Not a lot, is there, Charles?’
He looked up and recognised one of the Guardian critics. ‘Just thinking the same. How long are you up?’
‘A week. A week of sifting dirty sand looking for diamonds. Which probably don’t exist.’
‘Sounds fun.’
‘But what are you doing up here?’
‘My one-man show on Thomas Hood. So Much Comic, So Much Blood.’
‘Oh, I’d like to see that. Did it at York, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hmm. I missed it there. Haven’t seen much publicity.’
‘No, it’s been a bit thin on the ground. Last-minute booking.’
‘Ah. Well, give me the details.’ The critic wrote them down on the back of a Theatre Wagon of Virginia, U.S.A. handout that looked depressingly disposable. ‘Right, I’ll be along.’
‘And spread the word among your colleagues. Or rivals.’
‘Will do, Charles.’ The critic edged off into the throng.
It might be worth something. But he should have brought the handouts. His own printed sheet stood more chance of survival than jottings on the back of someone else’s.
The crush got worse rather than better. Over on the far side of the room Anna’s cropped head was instantly recognisable. She was talking enthusiastically, surrounded by a crowd of journalists. He felt a momentary pang of jealousy, a desire to go over and claim her. But no, she was right. Better to keep it quiet. Later they’d be together. The thought warmed him.
‘Hello.’ Pam Northcliffe wormed her way between a green velvet suit and a coat of dishcloth chain mail. She looked flushed and breathless. There was an empty glass in her hand which Charles filled from a jug on the table. ‘Oh Lord.’ She took a sip at it. ‘A few people, aren’t there?’
‘Just a few. How are you?’
‘Oh. Pissed, I think.’ She giggled at the audacity of her vocabulary. He was surprised. He felt he could have poured that pink fluid into himself for a year and not registered on the most sensitive breathalyser. Still, Pam claimed to be pissed and certainly she was much more relaxed and forthcoming on what she thought of her fellow-students. A wicked humour flashed into her observations and at times she even looked attractive.
Charles decided that this confidential mood was too good to waste from the point of view of his investigations. The crowd was beginning to thin out, but he did not want to lose her. ‘You rehearsing now?’
‘No, they’re doing the Dream at seven thirty-a run as-per performance. I’ll be doing props for the revue at eleven-if I’m sober enough.’
‘Come and have another drink. That’ll sober you up.
She giggled. ‘Everywhere’s closed on a Sunday.’
‘No. We can go up to the Traverse.’
The Traverse Theatre Club had moved since Charles had last been there doing a strange Durrenmatt play in 1968. But he found the new premises and managed to re-establish his membership. (The girl on the box-office was distrustful until he explained his credentials as a genuine actor and culture-lover. Too many people tried to join for the club’s relaxed drinking hours rather than its theatrical milestones.)
The media contingent from the Royal Mile Centre seemed to have been transplanted bodily to the Traverse bar. But the crush was less and Charles and Pam found a round wooden table to sit on. He fought to the counter and brought back two glasses of red wine as trophies. ‘Cheers, Pam.’
‘Cheers.’ She took a long swallow. Then she looked at him. ‘Thank you.’
‘What for?’
‘Bringing me here.’
‘It’s nothing.’
‘No, it’s kind of you. I know it’s only because you feel sorry for me.’
‘Well, I…’ He was embarrassed. He had not done it for that reason, but his real motive was not much more defensible. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re just being kind. Taking me out of myself. And I appreciate it.’ She spoke without rancour. ‘I know I’m not very attractive.’
He laughed uneasily. ‘Oh, come on. What’s that got to do with it? I mean, not that you aren’t attractive, but I mean… Can’t I just ask you for a drink because I like your company? Do you take me for a dirty old man? I’m old enough to be your father.’ (And, incidentally, old enough to be Anna’s father.)
He was floundering. Fortunately Pam did not seem to notice; she wanted to talk about her predicament. ‘I never realised how important being pretty was. When I lived at home, my parents kept saying I was all right and I suppose I believed them. Then, when I went to Derby, all that was taken away. What you looked like was the only thing that mattered and I was ugly.’ Charles could not think of anything helpful to say. She seemed quite rational, not self-pitying, glad of an audience. She continued, ‘You had to have a man.’
‘Or at least fancy one?’
‘Yes. A frustrated romance was better than nothing. You had to assert yourself sort of… sexually. You know what I mean?’
Charles nodded. ‘Yes. Have a sexual identity. At best a lover, at worst an idol.’ He played his bait out gently. ‘A public figure, maybe
… A symbol… Perhaps just a poster…’
Pam flushed suddenly and he knew he had a bite. ‘I found the poster torn up in the dustbin.’
‘Ah.’ She looked down shamefaced.
‘Did you love Willy Mariello?’
‘No. It was just… I don’t know. All this pressure, and then Puce came to play at the Union and I met him. And, you know, he was a rock star…’
‘Potent symbol.’
‘Yes. And lots of the other girls in the hail of residence thought he was marvellous and bought posters and…’ She looked up defiantly. ‘It’s terrible emotional immaturity, I know. But I am emotionally immature. Thanks to a middle-class upbringing. It was just a schoolgirl crush.’
‘Did you know him well?’
‘No, that’s what makes it so pathetic. I mean, I knew him to say hello to, but nothing more. He didn’t notice me.’
‘You never slept with him?’
Her eyes opened wide. ‘Oh Lord, no.’
‘So why the rush to get rid of the poster?’
‘I don’t know. That was daft. I was just so confused-what with the death, and the police asking all those questions…, and then you asking questions… I don’t know. I got paranoid. I thought somehow if my things were searched and they found the poster that I’d be incriminated or… I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking straight.’
It rang true. The brief mystery of the poster was explained. But there must be more to be found out from Pam. ‘What did you feel about Willy when he was dead?’
‘Shock. I mean, I hadn’t seen a dead body before.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘No sense of loss?’
‘Not really. I mean, it wasn’t real love, just something I’d built up in my mind. In a way his death got it out of my system, made me realise that I didn’t really feel a thing for him. Anyway, it had been fading ever since we came up here.’
‘As you saw more of him?’
‘Yes.’ She grinned ruefully. ‘He became more real. Just an ordinary man. And perhaps not a very nice one. Anyway, I didn’t really feel the same about him after that business with Lesley…’ Charles picked up the last few words as if they were the ash of a vital document in a murderer’s fireplace. ‘Business with Lesley?’
‘Yes, I…’ well, I haven’t mentioned it to anyone, but… it may be nothing, just the way it seemed…’
‘What?’
‘It was after we’d been up here about a week. Willy suddenly started to take an interest in Lesley-that’s Lesley Petter who-’
‘I know about her. Go on.’
‘I think he was probably after her, fancied her, I don’t know. Anyway, one evening, after we’d been rehearsing, we were all having coffee back at Coates Gardens and Willy said he was going for a walk up to the Castle and did anyone want to come with him. Well, I said yes sort of straight off, because, you know, I thought he was marvellous and… But then I realised that he’d only said that as a sort of prearranged signal to Lesley. It was meant to be just the two of them.
‘I was awfully embarrassed, but I couldn’t say I wouldn’t go when I realised. So the three of us set off and I dawdled or went ahead or
… wishing like anything I wasn’t there.
‘We went up to the Castle Esplanade and wandered around, and I, feeling more and more of a gooseberry, went on ahead on the way back. I started off down the steps that go down to Johnstone Terrace.’
‘Castle Wynd South.’
‘Is that what it’s called, yes. Anyway, I was nearly at the bottom, and suddenly I heard this scream. I turned round and saw Lesley, with her arms and legs flailing, falling down the steps.’
‘And that was how she broke her leg?’
‘Yes. I rushed up to where she’d managed to stop herself, and Willy rushed down. She was in terrible pain and I shot off to phone for an ambulance. But just before I went, I heard her say something to Willy, or at least I think I did.’
Charles felt the excitement prickling over his shoulders and neck. ‘What did she say?’
‘She said, “Willy, you pushed me.”’