An Amateur Corpse (2 page)

The boy was not really asking his opinion; he was fishing for compliments. Charles didn't know whether to give a vague reassurance as he would to any professional actor after a performance or to do exactly as he had been asked and give professional criticism. It was something he was going to have to sort out before the Critics' Circle on the Tuesday.

He made some trimming remark about the show with an ambiguous comment on Clive's performance. It was a waste of ambiguity; Clive took it as a straight compliment.

The conversation eddied. Clive, unprompted, but assuming its unfailing interest, provided his life story. He was becoming an accountant. The next week he had to go to Melton Mowbray on an audit. All bloody week. He had done a lot of productions with the Breckton Backstagers, mostly leads.

Charles couldn't resist it. ‘Yes, amateur dramatic societies are always hard-up for young men.

But Clive was well armoured with self-opinion. ‘Certainly for ones who can act and are anything like decent-looking.'

Charles didn't bother any more. The conversation was nearly dead, now he had withdrawn. But the boy kept talking. Like Hugo, Clive didn't seem to want to leave this particular corner. They both seemed to be waiting for something. Charles. wondered if it was Charlotte.

A new couple came over and gave the conversation the kiss of life. This time Hugo remembered his social graces. ‘This is Charles Paris. Charles, Denis and Mary Hobbs.'

‘Oh dear,' Mary giggled, ‘you're the one who's going to pass judgment on our performance. Now I do hope you'll treat us just like professionals.'

It took him a minute or two to place her. She looked so different in the turquoise trouser suit, orange silk blouse and rainbow lamé slippers. And the blonded hair and too-young make-up. But when he added a rust-coloured pre-Revolutionary Russian dress and a high-piled black wig . . . ‘Of course. Madame Arkadina. I'm so sorry. I just didn't recognize you.'

Yes, he was full of admiration for her make-up. On her performance he hoped he wouldn't be drawn. That kind of criticism could well wait till the Tuesday. In spite of himself, he found he was forming phrases of his real critical opinion. Such a pity that amateurs are always tempted by classic plays. Just because they're classics, it doesn't mean they're easy to do. In fact, often just the reverse. Arkadina is one of the great roles of the theatre and not to be handed out at random to anyone who happened to have' recited nicely at the Women's Institute Concert. Amateurs should stick to what's within their range – Agatha Christies, frothy West End comedies, nothing that involves too much subtlety of characterization. Leave Chekhov to the professionals.

Good God, there were only two people in that cast tonight who got within a mile of what it was about – Charlotte as Nina and the guy who played Trigorin. The rest should take up something else to fill their evenings – like stamp-collecting.

Even as he framed the thoughts, he knew he was overreacting. It was the irrational but instinctive response of anyone who made his living by acting. The very existence of amateur dramatic societies seemed to cast doubt on the seriousness of his profession.

Mary Hobbs was in full theatrical spate. ‘Oh God, there was a terrible moment in the first act, when we were meant to be watching Konstantin's play and I had ‘this line about there being a smell of sulphur, and I think one of the stage managers had brought some fish and chips into the wings, because suddenly we all got this amazing whiff of vinegar across the stage, and I caught Geoff's eye and I'm afraid I just went. Total, absolute corpse. I turned upstage. I don't know if anyone noticed in the audience . . .'

Charles had noticed. Any experienced actor would have been aware of the tell-tale snort and sudden movement. And how typical of the Backstagers that they should have: all the theatrical slang. A ‘corpse' was a breakdown into laughter on stage.

Mary Hobbs appealed to her husband. ‘Did you notice it, Den?'

‘Blimey, no. Couldn't take my eyes off your missus, Hugo, I didn't see much else, eh?'

He erupted with laughter. Not particularly amused laughter, just the sort that some ‘hearty people use around their speech like quotation marks.

The reactions to his remark were interesting. Hugo grimaced in an irritated way, as if he didn't want to be reminded of Charlotte's existence. Mary Hobbs flashed a look of reproof which quelled her husband. He looked like a schoolboy who had spoken out of turn., gauche as if he shouldn't have said anything in his rough voice while his wife was present to elocute for the two of them.

Mary's admonition was over in a second and she resumed her theatrical reminiscence. ‘Of course, Geoffrey didn't break up. He is marvellous. Didn't you think he was marvellous, Charles? Geoffrey Winter, our Trigorin. He's so clever. We really all think he ought to go on the stage professionally. He's so much better than most professional actors you see on the telly-box.'

Charles didn't know whether this was meant to be deliberately rude, but let it pass. Mary Hobbs didn't seem to need reaction to impel her dialogue. She sighed dramatically, ‘Oh, It's all over.
Quelle tristesse
.'

‘Till the next one.' Denis supplied her cue promptly, as if to make up for his earlier faux pas.

‘Till the next one.
Winter's Tale
. Dear old Shakespeare. Start rehearsing next week.'

There was a moment of silence and Hugo seemed to wake up to some sort of social duty. But his question showed he had not been listening to the conversation. ‘Now the show's over, Denis, will you be able to get some weekends down at the cottage?'

Denis gave his punctuation of laughter. ‘Yes, not before time. I must say we've been living Chekhov this last couple of months. And what with all the Sunday afternoon rehearsals, we only got away one weekend since August.'

‘Still we are going away this weekend.' Again the edge of reproof in his wife's voice.

Denis compensated quickly. ‘Oh yes. It's just one of the penalties of marrying talent, eh?' Another unmotivated eruption. Mary smiled and he reckoned he could risk a little joke. ‘She's spent so much time here recently I kept saying why didn't she move in? After all, we're only next door.' This too was apparently very funny.

Mary graciously allowed him this little indulgence and then felt it was time to draw attention to her magnanimity. ‘Still, this weekend I'm going to make it all up to you, aren't I?' She took her husband's hand and patted it with a coquettishness which Charles found unattractive in a woman in her fifties. ‘First thing in the morning, when all the rest of the naughty Backstagers are sleeping off their hangovers; we'll be in the new Rover sweeping off down to the cottage for a little delayed weekend. All tomorrow, and all Monday – well, till nine or so when we'll drive back. Just the two of us. A second honeymoon – or is it a third?'

‘Three hundredth,' said Denis, which was the cue for another explosion of merriment.

Charles escaped to get more drinks. Soon the wine would cease to taste of anything and his bad temper would begin to dissipate.

While he queued at sour Reggie's bar, he looked around at the kindling party. There was music now, music rather younger than the average age of those present. But the pounding beat was infectious.

As the room filled, he was increasingly aware of the common complaint of amateur dramatic societies – that there are always more women than men. And some of them were rather nice. He felt a little glow of excitement. No one knew him down in Breckton. It was like being given a whole new copybook to blot.

Some couples were dancing already. Charlotte Mecken was out there, with her arms around Clive Steele. They were moving together sensuously to the slow pounding of the music. But what they were doing was paradoxically not sexy. It had the air of a performance, as if they were still on stage, as if their closeness was for the benefit of the audience, not because it expressed any real mutual attraction.

The same could be said of the Trigorin, Geoffrey Winter. He was dancing with a pretty young girl, whose paint-spattered jeans suggested she was one of the stage staff. They were not dancing close, but in a jerky slow motion pantomime. Geoffrey moved well, his body flicking in time to the music, like a puppet out of control. But again it was a performance of a body out of control, not genuine abandon. Each movement was carefully timed; it was well-done, but calculated.

Charles had noticed the same quality in the man's stage performance. It had been enormously skillful and shown more technique than the rest of the cast put together, but it had been mannered and ultimately artificial, a performance from the head rather than the heart.

The man was good-looking in an angular way. Very thin, with grey hair and pale eyes. He wore a black shirt, black cord jeans and desert boots. There was something commanding about him, attractive in not just the physical sense of the word.

As Charles watched he saw the man change partners and start a new dance with another little totty. ‘Enjoying himself, isn't he?”

He turned to the owner of the voice which had spoken beside him. A young woman of about thirty. Short mousy hair, wide green eyes. Attractive. She was following Charles's gaze towards the dancing Trigorin. ‘My husband.'

She said it wryly. Not bitterly or critically, but just as if it were a fact that ought to be established.

‘Ah. I'm Charles Paris.'

‘Thought, you must be.' Charles felt the' inevitable actor's excitement that she was going to say she recognized him from the television. But no. ‘You're the only person down here I didn't recognize. And I knew you'd be in tonight because you're doing the crit on Tuesday, so, by a process of elimination . . .'

‘I'm Vee Winter, by the way. Though I act here under my maiden name, Vee le Carpentier. I always think if people see in programmes that the leads are played by people with the same surname, they get to think the Backstagers are awfully cliquey.' Before Charles had time to take in this statement, she went on, ‘Have you met Geoffrey?'

‘No, just seen him on stage. He's very talented.' Charles didn't volunteer whether he thought the talent was being appropriately used.

‘Yes, he's talented.' She changed the subject abruptly.

‘Since you're coming down to do this thing on Tuesday, why not have a meal with us beforehand?'

‘That's very kind,' said Charles, wondering if he ought to check whether Hugo and Charlotte were expecting him.

Vee took it as assent. ‘About half-past seven. The Critics' Circle isn't till eight-thirty. I'll give you our phone number in case you have problems.'

‘Fine.' Charles made a note of the number. Then he added, because he was beginning to understand suburban timetables, ‘Seven-thirty then. After the children are asleep.'

‘We don't have any children,' said Vee Winter.

Sour Reggie dispensed Charles's order for drinks as if the country were threatened by imminent drought. Vee helped carry the glasses back to the group.

She seemed to know them all. She made some insincere compliment to Mary Hobbs about her Arkadina.

‘Oh, that's sweet of you to say so, darling. Actually. The voice dropped with the subtlety of a double declutch on a worn gear-box. ‘I still think you would have made a better Nina, but, you know, Shad gets these ideas. . . .

The circle had enlarged in Charles's absence to include an elderly man with a white goatee beard. And Hugo's mood had shifted into something more expansive. ‘Charles, I don't think you've met Robert Chubb. Bob, this is Charles Paris. Bob's the founder of the whole set-up. Started the Backstagers back in. . . . ooh . . .'

‘Nineteen hundred and mind-your-own-business,' supplied Robert Chubb jovially. ‘First productions in the Church Hall, mind you. Come some way since then. Started the fund for this complex in 1960 . . . and ten years later it was all finished.' He gestured to the rehearsal room and theatre.

It was an impressive achievement. Charles bit back his cynical views on the subject of amateur theatre and said so.

Robert Chubb seemed to have been waiting for this cue to launch into the next instalment of his monologue. ‘Well, I thought, I and a few like-minded cronies, that there should be some decent theatre in Breckton. I mean, it's so easy for people in the suburbs to completely lose sight of culture.

‘So we damned well worked to set up something good – not just your average amateur dramatic society, performing your Agatha Christies and your frothy West End comedies, but a society with high professional standards, which kept in touch with what was happening in the theatre at large. And that's how the Backstagers started.'

Charles felt he was being addressed like a television interviewer who had actually asked for this potted history. And his interviewee continued. ‘And now it's grown like this. Enormous membership,. great waiting list of people from all over South London keen to join in the fun. Lots of Press coverage – particularly for our World Premieres Festival.

‘It just keeps getting bigger. Now we run our own fort-nightly newsletter to keep people informed of what we're up to – called
Backchat
, don't know if you've seen it?'

‘No.'

‘Then of course this bar's called the Back Room.'

‘I see, everything's Back-something-or-other?'

‘Yes, Rather nice, isn't it?'

Charles's mind began seething with new permutations of Back-, most of them obscene. It was perhaps as well that Hugo spoke before he launched into any of them. ‘We must get Charles down here to do a production, eh, Bob?'

It was Charles's turn to be self-deprecating. ‘Oh, come on, Hugo, I'm a professional actor. Much as I'd like to do it, I'm likely to be off touring or something at a moment's notice.'