more afraid.
‘Doing?’ He laughed throatily and she relaxed a little. ‘Isn’t that obvious? Earning a few quid. A very few, I should say, thanks to your friend Francis. One has to live, and I do have a wife to support.’
‘You’re married?’
The laugh again. ‘Of course I’m married. I’m fifty-four years old, and one would have to be very clever, or very determined to escape the net, to survive as a bachelor for this long.’
Mattie thought back over the grinding weeks that had just passed. Her own time was fully occupied, but John Douglas was hardly less busy. How did he fit in a wife, unless he glimpsed her on Sundays when he drove off in his Standard Vanguard?
‘Where does she live?’
‘You’re an inquisitive little girl, aren’t you? Helen lives in our house, an attractive if chilly Cotswold stone edifice outside Burford, in Oxfordshire. To forestall your next question, she loathes and despises everything to do with the theatre, and prefers to live her own life while I pursue my spectacular career. It is a perfectly agreeable and amicable arrangement, and I return to Burford and to my wife whenever I can.’
If Mattie had had time to analyse it, she would have realised that the vaguely unhappy feeling that took hold of her now was disappointment. But John turned sharply to her.
‘And what are you doing here?’
‘I want to be an actress.’
She said it automatically, and she regretted it at once. His shout of laughter was hurtful, but it made her angry too. John Douglas saw both reactions.
‘Of course you do. Of course you do. Do you have any experience?’
‘Only amateur. But I’m good.’ She was stiff and red-faced now, like an offended child.
He nodded. ‘Tell me, did you think your big chance was coming tonight? With Sheila’s broken heart and whats-her-name’s laryngitis? I bet you know all the lines.’
Mattie shrugged. She felt too angry to give him the satisfaction of an answer. He waited for a moment, and then he drawled, ‘Well, then. Thank you.’
Both whisky glasses were empty. John glanced at the half-bottle on the table, and then snapped at her, ‘Haven’t you got work to do?’
Mattie swung round to the door, but he called after her. ‘Mattie?’
It was the first time she could remember that he had called her anything except You.
‘Yes?’
‘You’re not quite the worst stage manager I’ve ever had.’
She had to content herself with that.
The company moved on again. Two weeks before the Christmas of 1955 they were in Great Yarmouth. There was a sudden spell of clear, mild weather and through the usual smells of chips and sweaty costumes and smoke, Mattie caught the fresh salt tang of the sea. Early one morning she went for a walk along the beach. The world was an empty expanse of grey water and grey, glittering pebbles and sand. There wasn’t a sound except the sucking water, and the shingle crunching under her unsuitable shoes. The air tore at Mattie’s lungs.
She remembered that day, afterwards, and the scrubbed grey light of winter seascapes always brought the after-memories flooding back.
It was an ordinary evening, to begin with. It was a Shaw night, and Mattie noticed that John Douglas was hovering in the wings, watching the performance more closely than he usually did. Sheila was suffering an emotional relapse, and at the end of the first act she rushed offstage and flung herself against John.
‘I can’t,’ she whispered, loudly enough for everyone backstage to hear her. ‘I can’t do it. Why is it so hard? What have I done to be made to suffer like this?’
It was obvious to everyone except Sheila that the manager was only just keeping his temper. The edges of his nostrils went white with the effort.
‘You can’t? But your performance is only a little bit worse than fucking well usual.’
Sheila’s head tilted sideways, and her eyelashes made a dark crescent on her Leichner-pink skin. John looked down at her, and hoisted himself with the support of his stick. He took a deep breath that clearly hurt, and tried again.
‘My darling. Do it for me, if you can’t do it for yourself. It’s important for me, tonight.’
‘Is it?’ she breathed. ‘If it’s for you, John. I need to know that.’ She went on again for the second act, but watching her from the wings Mattie thought that the performance could hardly have been any more terrible without her. Sheila fluffed almost every line, and Lenny struggled to help her from the box. Hugh’s Bluntschli turned sulky and then perfunctory, while Fergus and Alan as Petkoff and Saranoff battled on with weary determination.
The final curtain came as a release for everyone. The applause was no more than a dry patter, extinguished by the banging of seats. John Douglas limped away without saying a word, and Sheila fled to her dressing room with her handkerchief pressed to her face.
I’ve seen worse performances, Mattie thought philosophically. Why the fuss? I wonder. She did her clearing up with the mechanical ease of familiarity, then went round the dressing rooms for the last time to turn off the lights. She was on her way down to the stage door, imagining she was the last person in the building, when she saw threads of light framing the closed door of the office. She tapped on the door, and when no answer came she opened it.
John was there, alone, although there were two other glasses on the table beside his.
‘I’m sorry,’ Mattie mumbled. ‘I was just doing the lights.’
He waved his arms at her, beckoning her in with a big, ironically florid gesture. The knuckles of his hand cracked against the wall of the poky room, but he didn’t seem to notice.
‘Come in, come in. I’m drowning. Oh, don’t look so fucking nervous. Just my sorrows. Nothing more dramatic than that. Oh, shit. Dramatic’s not the best bloody word this evening, is it? Here, come and join me.’ He held up one of the two empty glasses. ‘Don’t mind a dirty one, do you? That stupid bloody bastard had it first, but I don’t suppose that’s catching. Here.’ He pushed the drink across to Mattie and turned back to his own. He drank the three fingers of it in one gulp.
‘What’s the matter?’ Mattie asked. ‘Not Sheila, surely?’
‘Silly pre-menstrual bitch.’ He chuckled sourly. ‘If I could personally ensure that she never works again, I’d do it with the greatest pleasure. No, not Sheila specifically although she contributed in her special way.’ He poured himself another measure and drank again. ‘We both have our ridiculous ambitions, Mattie, you see. No, I don’t mean that. Yours is less risible than mine. After all, we have Miss Firth as our leading lady, don’t we? Why not Miss … ah, Miss …?’
‘Banner.’
‘Exactly. Well, since you asked what’s wrong, I’ll tell you. My little dream is to start up a company of my own. No more Welcome Home. No more pig-ignorant Willoughby. To this magnificent end I have been saving up my hard-won wages, and looking around for some financial backing. Tonight, two dear old theatre cronies of mine, who have been more successful in lining their pockets than I, travelled all the way up here from Town to see my show. My Shaw. Miss Firth’s shitty Shaw show, ha ha. I’m sure you can guess the rest?’
There have been worse performances, Mattie thought again. But not very many.
‘No money?’
‘Quite right. And not only no money, but suddenly no time either. Not even for an hour or so of food and wine and conversation. A pressing need to drive back to Town developed after just one small whisky apiece. As if I smelled bad. But nothing stinks quite like failure, does it? What am I doing here, to take your own question from you?’
Mattie