Caught in the Act (28 page)

While Carol watched, Gareth stepped up behind her, sword in hand, all poised and ready to take his cue. He dropped a hand onto her shoulder, making her jump.

‘Where did you get to?' he whispered. ‘I was looking for you all over the place. I wanted to explain—'

Carol sshed him and pointed to the players.

Out on stage the witches were fading back into the shadows while King Duncan and his entourage strode manfully out into the limelight to announce their most glorious victory over the scurrilous Norwegians.

When Carol wouldn't answer him, Gareth moved closer so that he was speaking almost directly into her ear. He was so close that she could feel the heat of his body and smell his aftershave. She closed her eyes, trying hard to shut him out.

‘Are you all right?' he said. ‘You look pale. Don't tell me that you're nervous?'

Carol glanced up at him. What could she possibly say to him? Where would she begin? In the end she decided to settle for silence and, pressing a finger to her lips, hoped to quieten
him and make him think that she was wrapped up in the action on stage. He just grinned.

‘Relax, it'll be all right,' he purred. ‘Break a leg.'

‘I hope you do too,' she said, not meeting his gaze.

‘About Fiona—' he began, still smiling.

‘There's re ally no need to explain,' Carol whispered.

‘I knew that you'd understand.' Gareth sounded relieved. ‘You know that she is completely bloody crazy, don't you?'

Carol didn't trust herself to speak.

‘I mean I'm not saying she is making it all up but she has always had this thing for me. It's just a crush. You know how it is, and I'm only human. She practically threw herself at me last night after the disco finished. I think she'd had a bit too much to drink and I was as horny as hell after being with you.'

Carol stared up at him in total amazement, wondering if he re ally believed what he was saying and if he did, if he re ally thought it was any sort of excuse.

‘We could meet up once the play is over. Have a drink, some dinner. Set the record straight. We need to talk, sort this out if we're
going to carry on from here. You know that you're important to me. I'd re ally like to see you again; we've got so much to catch up on. There's no need for you to rush off home, is there?'

Carol, white hot with indignation, opened her mouth to speak just as Miss Haze signalled Gareth's cue, circumstances conspiring to prevent her from having her say. Carol was so angry that she could have screamed; the arrogant bastard—just who the bloody hell did he think he was?

As Gareth stepped out onto the stage to hear his destiny from the three witches, Carol wondered what it was that had ever made her think that they could rekindle the past. Was it a trick of light or perhaps a longing for things past? Was it what Gareth represented rather than who he was? Was the whole thing not about wanting him, but about recapturing what it was like to be seventeen, with your whole life ahead of you? About being young and naïve and just starting out?

As Gareth listened to his fate being meted out, for the first time since arriving at Burbeck House Carol thought she truly saw him for what he was.

Yes, he was still as handsome and as striking as he had ever been, but now she could also see how cruel and thin his mouth was, how self-absorbed, how very greedy Gareth was. He was a user, a cheat and a liar, and she knew now with a horrible sense of certainty that he had been all those things back then too, it was just that she couldn't see them.

As he passed her, making his exit, Carol shivered and the play moved on. The old king, Duncan, came and went and then Miss Haze nodded to Carol and she pulled her cloak tight round her shoulders and stepped out onto the stage with Macbeth's letter in her hand, waiting for him to come home to her—and let the story carry her away.

‘“Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be/What thou art promis'd. Yet do I fear thy nature;/It is too full o' th' milk of human kindness…”' Her voice trembled just a little as Carol looked out into the audience and at the three empty seats, the irony of the lines not lost on her. Gareth wouldn't recognise the milk of human kindness if he was drowning in it.

A few lines later Gareth reappeared, on stage, excited and triumphant and home from the wars. As he embraced her, Carol closed her eyes
tight shut. She didn't re ally want him to touch her at all. She struggled to stop herself from pushing him away. As long as she stayed in character she would be fine, although she tried very hard to avoid looking him in the eye.

She also knew now with total certainty that once the weekend was over she would never see Gareth Howard again, and more than that, she wouldn't want to. It was all over.

The play moved on around her like an unstoppable river, Macbeth had Banquo murdered and his ghost limped, bloodied and beaten, through the grand dinner staged to celebrate Macbeth's coronation.

When his guests had all left, Macbeth announced to Lady Macbeth that he intended to find out why Macduff hadn't shown up—little knowing that Macduff had already deserted and was heading south to join the army of Duncan's sons, who were marching north to fight him.

The curtains closed at the end of the first half just as Macbeth decided he would go back to talk to the witches again and find out what else fate had in store for him.

As Macbeth exited stage left, Carol smiled thinly; if only he knew.

Adie, a pale and limping Macduff, had struggled manfully through his scenes. In the interval Carol hurried over to see how he was faring, part of the reason being because she wanted to avoid Gareth, who was crowing and jubilant.

‘God, that went re ally well, didn't it?' he said, hugging Banquo on the way down the steps at the back of the stage. ‘Well done. That was great.'

Banquo—white-faced and all gore—clapped him on the back. Gareth was right; it was going brilliantly and the audience were with them every step of the way.

On the far side of the stage Carol hunkered down beside Adie, who hadn't made it as far as the dressing room. ‘Are you all set for the second half?' Carol asked him anxiously; he was crouched on a chair, sweating; his face had gone an interesting shade of grey. ‘I could go and get Mr Bearman, put your understudy on early.'

He grinned. ‘Bugger off. No chance, and will you stop fretting, between you I've never been so fussed over in all my life. I've taken enough painkillers to sedate a horse and Mike is going to drive me to casualty as soon as the show is over. I'll be just fine.'

‘Oh, he made it then?' said Carol. ‘That's great.'

Adie nodded. ‘Even better, he's brought a crate of champagne with him, which should add a little fizz to our post-production strawberry tea.'

‘Brilliant,' Carol said, and then added more quietly, ‘have you talked to him about you know what?'

‘Uh-huh, and I've also been talking to Netty and Diana, and Raf. Complicated, ain't it? Thank God you had the good sense to keep your hand on your ha'penny.'

Carol reddened furiously.

Adie touched her arm. ‘It's all right. Don't fret about Gareth, it's not your fault that the man is a complete shit. You shouldn't feel bad about something you're not responsible for.'

Carol sighed. ‘Well, in this particular case I do. God, you'd think by the time we got to our age we'd have got all this stuff sorted out, wouldn't you? Trouble is, I don't seem to be any better at it now than I was when I was eighteen. I almost made the most stupid mistake of my life.'

Adie grinned. ‘Are there any other kind?'

‘I nearly threw away the best man I've ever known for Gareth.'

‘Yes, but you didn't. Stop beating yourself up; it's not your fault and what's more, you're helping to put it right,' said Adie gently.

Carol shook her head. ‘No, I'm not. None of this can put it right, it won't mend anything at all, will it? We're just trying to make him know how it feels to be cheated and lied to.'

Adie smiled. ‘Raf's livid.'

Carol laughed. ‘Don't be silly. Raf? You're joking. Raf's re ally easy going. He never gets angry about anything.'

Adie shrugged. ‘If you say so.'

The second half of the production began quietly enough; Carol waited in the wings, aware that very soon things would change. The seats at the front of the hall were still empty, still marked as reserved. Before the curtains opened Mr Bearman got up and explained that because Macduff had sprained his ankle in rehearsals the final fight scene would be understudied by a volunteer while Adie read the lines in over the action.

It seemed to Carol that the play, which until then had appeared to zip along, now slowed
to a snail's pace, the words and the actions as thick as treacle.

The second half of the story began with the three witches talking to the goddess Hecate and explaining that Macbeth would be coming back to see them and how they planned to show him magic that would mislead and trick him and because of it Macbeth would bring about his own destruction.

How very true, Carol thought. She watched Diana, Netty and Jan and Gareth hunched around the cauldron. She watched the witches tricking him and persuading him that everything was going to be all right. He came off the stage looking triumphant, thinking that he was invincible. Carol daren't even look at him.

Finally Carol had a sense that they were almost there—they were on the home straight now. Once Lady Macbeth had gone nicely mad trying to clean her hands of Duncan's blood at the end of act five, scene one, Carol slipped off from the stage and crept round into the auditorium, knowing that a roadie would have a ball with her death scream. Easing off her cloak and crown, she tiptoed to take up one of the reserved front seats, under cover of a troop of
soldiers entering stage left, heading to join the army mustering against Macbeth.

She watched as Macbeth, increasingly distraught, waited to take on Duncan's sons in battle.

It was astonishing; Gareth was giving the most brilliant performance as the crazed, increasingly obsessed king. Carol could feel the tension building in the hall and wondered how much of it was her imagination. The audience were totally absorbed. Safe in her seat, Carol could see other people moving quietly into the aisle and took a deep breath. From off stage came the sounds of the approaching army and then Duncan's sons made their entrance to the sound of a beating drum and the swirl of the pipes. Mr Bearman had staged it so that the main body of the army marched in from the back of the hall, down the aisles, and every man who could be mustered from the crew and cast was there. Amongst the royal party were the limping Macduff and his Gaelic understudy Mr Rafael O'Connell, dressed in matching cloaks and both carrying swords.

Raf looked the part; it had been good of him to volunteer and give up his lunch to come back to the hall and learn Adie's moves. Carol could
feel her heart tighten as they moved closer. As they and a rabble of supporters made their way up onto the stage, Leonora and Jasmine, carrying Patrick and baby Maisie, made their way from the aisle into the remaining front seats.

Carol caught hold of Leonora's hand as she passed and gave it a squeeze, and then did the same to Jasmine. Leonora smiled grimly, Jasmine's face was unmoving, tight with tears and tension.

Macbeth's servants raised banners to show their defiance and then, at long last, Macbeth stepped forward, made his way to the edge of the stage and looked out towards his destiny—in theory the woods of Dunsinane—creeping slowly, inexorably towards his castle. There was a dramatic hush.

At first, Gareth's sight line was high, focused on the far horizon as if he was looking at a distant hillside. Deep in character, he didn't even look at the faces of the people in the auditorium. In the front row Carol held her breath and waited, wondering at what point he would notice them, wondering if by some terrible stroke of fate he might not notice them at all.

‘Daddy,' said a little voice, high and excited and warm with recognition, the sound filling the long and expectant silence. There was a little flurry of laughter from the audience, breaking the tension in the play but adding to the real-life drama that was unfolding. For a split second Carol saw Gareth falter. Falter and grow pale. As part of the performance of a king faced with the fulfilment of a prophecy it was perfect. He looked down very slowly into the faces of those people seated in the front row. Carol, Leonora and Jasmine all in a line, with the children on their laps.

Carol was so close that she could see the shock register on Gareth's features, saw him suck in a breath, saw him stop dead in his tracks as his gaze moved slowly along the row. The three women all looked up at him, defiantly, not one of them afraid to meet his cheating eyes.

Carol did wonder for a moment if Gareth would lose it totally. Instead, he let the words from the play catch in his throat, used the emotion to lift the speech to something incredibly heart-rending and extraordinary, though it was impossible to work out whether the effect was deliberate or purely accidental.

And then he picked up his sword and shield, and, turning his back to the three of them, marched out on to the battlefield, to meet Duncan's sons and Macduff. Over the scene's shifting came the sound of a drum roll; or perhaps, Carol thought, it was the sound of her heart beating.

Outside the castle walls Macbeth strode across the field to kill another of Malcolm's courtiers and as he said the lines Gareth's eyes didn't flicker, didn't lift, didn't for one moment roam back to the front row.

And then at last Adie, dressed as Macduff strode on, flanked not just by Raf, dressed in an identical outfit, conjured up by Diana from the props box, but also, by some stroke of improvised directorial genius, the three witches, Diana, Netty, and Jan, all carrying swords and quarterstaves. It seemed to Carol as if the fates had come out to meet him.