No Laughing Matter (37 page)

‘Darling! Really! To have learnt it all off by heart. At least you might have fluffed a line here or there out of modesty. And
do
remember
when Willie comes that
some
of the critics haven’t been all that favourable to the
production
.’

‘Some of the critics have been bloody well right. When I think how often I’ve argued, and so have Beatrix and Stella about the pace of Act III. But no, “Act III goes down into smoke and ashes with the fire. It ends on a brown note. Its colour is brown.” We were lucky the whole audience wasn’t browned off. With Beatrix and Stella going down a key or two and piu lento as the last words of the act die away. “That’s only a rumour. We’ll be left quite alone then…. Olia! Well? Olia darling, I do respect the Baron.”’ Rupert’s voice became slower and more suety until it came out a mere trickle of shaky deep notes. ‘Poor Stella! She said once to Willie at rehearsal, “Darling, why do I have to go into the bass register when I agree to marry the Baron? I know she isn’t awfully happy about it, but I don’t see why she had to change her sex.” But you know what Willie is, he just ignored it and at his most schoolmasterly he said, “Very nice, Stella, very nice. Beautifully brown.” Beatrix got the giggles and hiccoughed. “I’m terribly sorry, Willie,” she told him, “I oughtn’t to have had the Brown Windsor Soup for lunch. But I thought it might help.” Oh, there
were
rows!’ he ended, shaking his head like an old gossiping charwoman.

‘Of course there were, darling. There always are. It’s all the rows and bitching that I miss most since I left the theatre to become a loving wife and mother. Anyway no rows today. You deserve an absolutely wonderful Sunday.’

‘What I believe I
do
deserve is pink champagne. What about a glass of bubbly, Aunt Annabel, before the others come?’

‘Well,’ said Aunt Annabel looking at her watch, ‘since it’s after eleven, yes. But who are the others?’

‘Oooh, my dear,’ Rupert in an old pansy pro’s voice, ‘we must ave er in the play. She’s the playwright’s dream. Can’t you imagine. Act I. Everything ready for the exposition, but how to make it natural? Then up speaks Aunt Annabel, “Who
are
the others?” and we’re off.’

‘You’d have made an absolutely enchanting actress, Auntie.’ Debbie bent down and kissed the nape of her aunt’s grey shingle. ‘And as to who the others are – well, there’s Rupert’s producer
Willie Carter who’s got a weekend cottage nearby at Ascot and he’s bringing a party. God knows who
they
may be….’

‘Behold,’ said Rupert’s voice, loud and clear, ‘one black haired trollop of uncertain age and dubious morals. Come in. Don’t bother to knock.’

‘Trollop, darling, yes, and four years older than you. But I’ve got where I am entirely by talent. Not that you haven’t talent too, Rupert. Your wonderful notices, darling,’ she kissed him.’ We’ve been making waxen images of you all morning, And we’ve run
out
of pins. Debbie dear, I’m just taking him down a peg. Actually he deserves every word. How can he be so moving and so absurd at the same time?’

‘It’s the great clown’s art,’ Rupert struck a posture, ‘I had it from Grimaldi’s fancy bit on her death bed. Champagne, Stella darling?’ And he kissed her.

Debbie looked rather worriedly at Willie. ‘Well, we
are
all rather pleased,’ she said.

‘Don’t look at
me
like that, dear,’ Willie answered. ‘I’m not going to contradict you. You thought I was going to bitch Rupert, didn’t you, lovely? Just because he got the plum notices? Well, I’m not. He gives a very nice performance, as the old ladies were saying between chocolates last night in the Upper Circle. “I always say Rupert Matthews gives a very nice performance.” And you thought I was going to bitch, Debbie Matthews. Somebody always thinks I’m going to bitch,’ he told Aunt Annabel. ‘Introduce, dear.’

The blond young man who had come with Willie said, ‘I wonder why.’

‘Carry your spear in Henry Five and you’ll find out,’ Willie gave a little snigger which he seemed to realize cut him off from the others, for he said again to Debbie, ‘Introduce, dear.’

There were introductions all round.

‘Stella played Irena, Auntie. You’re terribly
good
,
Stella. And the bit where you and the baron can’t speak before the duel.
So
touching, darling! I honestly was crying. But then I’m one of Willie’s toothless matinée ladies at heart.’

‘Nonsense, you’re just a loyal wee wifie.’

The blond young man said: ‘Perhaps everyone thinks you’re going to bitch, Willie, because you bark so much before you bite.’

Rupert, perhaps to ward off any scene, asked the blond in a specially loud, man to man voice: ‘What’s your college?’

But Willie replied for the boy: ‘He’s doing PPE. Whatever that may be. It sounds very un-housetrained.’

The young man disregarded him: ‘I’m at Merton, actually.’

Rupert appeared to have nothing to say to this. But Willie
explained
to Deborah the backgrounds of his young men:

‘Mr Garner,’ he said indicating the blond, ‘and Mr Peploe,’ he indicated a speechless dark young man in a blue suit and horn rimmed spectacles, ‘are respectively President and Secretary of the OUDS. They’ve come over from Oxford because I might, if they’re very good, produce Henry the Fifth for them.’

‘You
will
be producing Henry the Fifth for us,’ said the blond, ‘and it’d better be good.’

‘He’s the privileged one, dear. He’s been at it all morning. It’s chronic,’ Stella whispered loudly to Debbie.

Willie glared at her. ‘When all you pampered players were tucked into bed at Oxford, I had to go to the young men’s smoking concert. The loo lewdery! The lavatorial levity! My dear, I nearly died of boredom. But these two were some compensation. They did a
completely
splendid Jack and Cis together. Do,’ he said to the young men, ‘the jealous lady doesn’t believe.’

To oblige, the blond stuck out his upper teeth and waved his arm soldier wise in a Courtneidge gesture; the dark young man did no more than remove his spectacles and stick out his lower jaw. Although Willie clapped his hands, none of the professionals seemed very
entertained
. But Aunt Annabel found it very amusing. She laughed loudly.

‘What a marvellous imitation of Jack Hulbert,’ she said.

The blond young man was ready to sulk, but luckily at that moment some business neighbours arrived – Mr Packer all Savile Row tweeds, Mrs Packer all tweeds, Jacqmar scarves and diamond rings.

‘Rupert,
we
thought you were marvellous. Honestly I can hardly bear to look at you. I keep seeing that poor little man pushing the pram. And yet one laughed.’

Rupert, introducing, explained that the excellencies belonged to Willie, the producer.

‘Ah, so you’re the producer!’ Mr Packer cried, ‘Congratulations! Though I must say that, as with conductors, I rather wonder what it is the producer does.’

‘Willie would love to tell you,’ Debbie said, but Mr Packer had walked over to Rupert.

‘You were very good, you know, you blighter! It’s not the sort of thing I’d have gone to in the ordinary way. Too much talk. Strictly between the two of us I found all that Russian gloom very irritating. But you did something with it all as soon as you came on. Especially pushing that pram. Useless, wet sort of fellow,’ he lowered his voice, ‘Wanted kicking up the arse. But you made me feel sorry for the chap, though I wouldn’t have employed him as an office boy. That’s what I call great acting.’

Rupert was about to answer this praise, but Mr Packer changed the subject, or rather, as so often, he resumed his analysis of their last game of golf.

‘I ought never to have risked the brassie. If I’d have used the spoon I’d have had the ball clear away down through the gulley and on to the apron. But …’

Rupert caught Debbie’s eye. They exchanged their social look. All Sunningdale golf and weekend host, he settled down to listen to Packer, while Debbie, re-filling everyone’s glass, assembled the rest of the party at Willie’s feet – almost a class in production, she thought.

Yet, for Rupert work was always more magnetic than play. Again and again his attention strayed to
The
Three
Sisters
conversation. At last he gave up listening to his neighbour with anything more than his eyes.

‘The most difficult part in tempo
and
in colour,’ Willie was telling them, ‘is Anfisa. It’s a perfect Tchekov paradox that the only positive value in the play should be embodied in an eighty year old peasant woman. And even
she
isn’t positive in the first two acts, just old. Then …’

‘Oh, the old servant,’ Mrs Packer said, ‘I
did
think she was well acted.’

‘Mmmm. She wasn’t as bad as the critics made out, but…’

‘I feel a bit guilty about that,’ Rupert joined in, ‘Maybe Alma
could
have done it, but …’

‘Alma Grayson! Of course she couldn’t. She’d have been terrible. She’d have given it a sort of false spiritual thing,’ Stella said.

‘Well that’s what I felt and what I told Willie, but all the same I do feel a bit guilty.’

‘Very touching and proper, Rupert, but unnecessary. I make my own casting decisions. She’s played in rubbish far too long. She’d have patronized Anfisa. And that would have been fatal.’

‘But I do feel responsible …’

‘What I think Rupert means is that he feels a natural responsibility towards the play and that he may have let his personal feelings … But I’m sure you haven’t, darling. All prejudice apart, Alma just isn’t made for a Tchekov servant. It isn’t in her. But, of course,
whatever
Willie may say, every actor should feel responsible for what happens to the play he’s in.’

Willie said: ‘Dangerous egalitarian rubbish, Debbie dear.’

‘And,’ said Aunt Annabel to them all, ‘when you’ve given such a lot of fun and beauty as you obviously have to everyone.’

‘I know she’s a silly old cow. And you’re right, she’s played in rubbish for years because the audience flatters her. And she’s lazy. But what she
can
do! I know. I worked with her all those years. And she
wanted
so much to do this.’

‘My dear,’ Willie said, ‘For Heaven’s sake! That’s life. It’s bloody for some people all the time. For poor old Alma it’s only getting bloody now. But that’s it. That’s what it’s all about. And thank God for it. Without light and shade we shouldn’t have any art.’

Rupert put his handsome head on one side. He smiled a kind of
all-purpose
smile that included everybody equally benignly. He made a mellow humming sound. Then, as suddenly, he drew himself up, drank off a glass of champagne, kicked a log in the fire.

‘No. That’s not good enough. That’s the sort of stuff my father used to give us.
I
feel bad towards
Alma
.
That’s the point. Nothing to do with loyalty to the play. However much the play might have suffered from her. She started me off. It’s true she was silly and a bitch at times, and when I met Debbie in the Acland play she was like all hell let loose. But she taught me a great deal and we had a lot of fun together. And she’s a very good actress. I
ought
to feel guilty and I do.’

The party feeling was destroyed by his outburst. It drifted on for a while in desultory conversation, and then the Packers left. Soon after, Willie, looking at his watch, said:

‘Din-din, all. I’m famished.’

As they, too, were leaving, the dark young undergraduate in spectacles came up to Rupert. When he spoke he had a very bad stammer.

‘I just wanted to say,’ he pronounced with great difficulty, ‘that you were marvellous. You’ve taken in all these people and the critics. You’ve made them think that that filthy parasite Andrey, that fat
white slug, is pathetic and loveable. Which is just what he obviously made his sisters believe. And the wonderful oily slyness and cunning with which you do it …’

Emotion and his stammer made further words impossible.

When they had gone Rupert stood brooding over the fire. Then he said quite sharply to Aunt Annabel:

‘I haven’t really begun to stoop, you know, but when one acts a part with any degree of intensity a lot of the characteristics follow you around. Certainly for the length of the run.’

*

Before dinner at the Trocadero, of course, they were to have their usual tête-à-tête drink at the Monico, the scene of some of their clandestine meetings in the old days before Doris – so much more of an invalid now it seemed – had accepted the situation. They knew all the barmen there and had long agreed that it was the most friendly place to wait for each other in. Gladys had in fact to wait half an hour this evening; well, not just this evening, if you love someone very much it insults them not to admit their minor faults and Alfred lived on the end of a telephone nowadays. Indeed, when he did arrive, the soigné effect of his Anthony Eden double breasted charcoal
pinstripe
suit, poor old boy, was a little spoiled by his breathlessness.

‘Sorry, girlie,’ he said, ‘What are you having?’

But she had it there before her – a Gin and It. He ordered a double dry Martini from Victor, and then excused himself to her.

‘I must put a call through to Bratsby,’ he said, ‘Old Evans has agreed to sell, but only after delivering us a lecture on changing
conditions
in the City. As he was probably the original negotiator for Dizzie in buying the Suez Canal it took rather a long time. That’s why I’m late. Bastard, aren’t I? But I’ve got some good news when I come back.’

‘It’d better be short news, Alfred,’ she called after him as he made for the telephone, ‘We’re due at the Troc in ten minutes.’

‘He’s a shocker for time, isn’t he?’ Victor said, ‘You didn’t train him properly, Madam.’

‘You can’t curb the faults of great men.’

They both laughed. When Alfred came back, she told him: ‘Victor’s noticed the shocking way you keep me waiting. I’ve excused you on the ground that you’re a Napoleon of finance.’

‘Napoleon! Didn’t he march on his stomach? I don’t fancy that. By the way, your tip for the 3.30 was lousy, Victor.’