The Colonel's Daughter (26 page)

Well, I'm not that young, as I've told you (my bags were brutal that day, what with the wind and the early starts), but I am a very over-sensitive man. There's a lot of the child in me. I've never quite got over my love of excitement and fame. And although you'll be thinking I should have known better at my age, I can only tell you that then and there, in the fly-blown Palladium, with a battery of zKs masquerading as sunlight and Eyelids Mordecai staring at me like an anorexic iguana, in the mingled smells of the Robin starch on Will's ruff and his Pour la Vie aftershave on his bearded neck, I was caught with my rib cage down and my unprotected heart fell suddenly and hopelessly in love.

I went back to Wardrobe quaking and shaking from the triumph of our scene. It's all turned, I thought. From now on, the film will start to work. In fact it will be a good movie. And the high spots will be my scenes with Will. I longed for the rest of these scenes now. Playing opposite Will, I knew I could be superb. There might even be a ‘Best Supporting' Oscar in it, or at least a BAFTA nomination, who could say? I took off my costume with trembling hands, felt my lips quiver as my wig was hung on its friendly buff wigstand. So, out into the night, I thought! Have a shower, then on with the white seersucker blouson and down to the taverna to start the hot night's revels with Will!

Well, I sat in the taverna for two hours. I toyed with the goatsmeat kebabs, swished down a couple of carafes of red. Jimmie Henraes came and sat with me and we talked about England and Mary Powell. The
meltimi
dropped and the lovely evening quiet came on. At the next table, Nettlefold and some of the crew were talking excitedly (for a camera squad) about the day. But Will didn't show. At ten thirty, I went back to the Eleusis. Will was in his room, but his light was out. Someone said he'd gone to bed straight after we'd finished shooting. I went to my room and tried to sleep. I tried to stop it, but under the thin covers, I knew my whole body was shaking.

*

One of the instructions in the Eric Neasdale Writing Course is ‘Always write about what you know. Unless you actually are a blind philatelist, do not try to write about this.' Well I disagree on two counts with this instruction. Firstly, I think, if you're going to bother to be a writer, which isn't exactly a laugh-a-minute kind of life, you might as well also bother to see how far your putrid imagination can travel – even (sorry, E.N.) into blindness or philately or both, because why not? Secondly, the question of what one
knows
is much more complex than what is suggested here. I think so, anyway. For instance, do I, through my recent experience, actually
know
a jot more about the following: James I, George Villiers, Will Nichols, the psyche of actors, the price of success, seventeenth-century English civilisation, twentieth-century Greek civilisation, love, infatuation, envy, childhood, Welsh miners and so on? I'm not sure. But all these are vital ingredients in the
knowing
of something I can only fully understand by writing about it. (This last sentence is very confused. I know what I mean, however!)

*

Will had complained, since arriving in Greece, that his Mogadon had stopped working and that sleep was a fiasco, hardly worth bothering with. On previous nights, he'd kept me up till two or three, talking and talking, yet on this night – when I felt we at last had something to say to each other – he'd gone to sleep at eight and stuck his ne déranger svp sign on his door. I felt, and I admit this is childish, cheated. I mean, willingly that night would I have stayed carousing with Will. I can be terribly charming when I want and I felt pretty sure of my terrain that extraordinary evening. Instead, I went miserably to bed and shivered and shook till I heard the bloody wind get up, and in the mournfulness of the
meltimi
cried myself to brief sleep.

Because by then I'd understood. It's not complex. I'd read all the signs right and a more intelligent man than me would have understood right away, but it took me most of the night. In the run up to his first big scene (with me, as it happened, but this is neither here nor there) Will had used me, as I've already explained, to help him conquer fear. And today? When the first big scene was safely over? Well, quite simply, I'd done too good a job. I'd played nurse to Will's terror for five weeks and, through me, he had managed to stumble through self-loathing, alcoholic fog and sheer funk out into a mood reminiscent of his younger self, when he was sober, energetic, imaginative and as an actor extremely fine. Today, as he'd held me against his hot, tear-stained face, he knew he'd done it. The king is himself again! Let the resurrection of Will Nichols begin! Really, it's terribly simple. I'm just the ninny who didn't see what was happening till it was too late. (‘Write about what you
know
', says Neasdale. If only I'd
known
what Will was doing to me!)

I expect I sound dreadfully self-pitying, don't I? I mustn't whinge, because life goes on, as they say, and actually, now that I'm getting over all my feelings about Will and settling back into what I call ‘my little Fulham routine' – my plants, the odd dance to Berlioz on the roof, civilised meals with old friends, visits to the NT and the Barbican (Jimmie Henraes, who married Mary Powell, is currently doing a lovely Benedick in
Much Ado
) and of course sessions at the VO Clinic to pay the housekeeping etc – now that I'm becoming myself again (I've decided I
will
do Buffi-pads), I can at least laugh about my own gullibility, and I know this is a sign there's been no permanent damage.

The bloody old film, now entitled
The Wisest Fool
, comes out next spring and there's rumour of a Royal Gala Performance. If forced to go (and Dougie will force me, because I'm one of his ‘SS' clients, the
senza soldi
boys, the ones who haven't quite got there and who need to be ‘seen' therefore), I think I'll dress my Pearl Barley up in quivering sequins and take her along on my arm. She, at least, will know where to stick such a piece of artifice.