Corpsing (13 page)

Perhaps it was this that made me act so stupidly when I dialled the mobile Lily had called twice on her last day. No-one had answered the five times I’d tried it before. This time, though, a rough voice answered.

‘Who’s this?’ it said. ‘Where’d you get this number?’

In my confusion, I completely forgot my pseudonym and said, ‘This is Conrad Redman from Direct Telesales International –’

‘What do you want?’

‘I’m sorry. It must be a bad time. I’ll call back later.’

I put the phone down.

Something about the voice made me very afraid.

This wasn’t helped by the fact that mistakenly I’d given out my real name.

The play itself was much as I’d expected. All in graffitoed concrete, the stage set was intended to re-create the reccie on a Glasgow council estate. The Scottish thanes were kitted out in garish tartan sportswear and last year’s trainers. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth wore too much gold jewellery and wiped their noses on their acrylic sleeves. The Drunken Porter was an incoherent street-person who knew the combination lock numbers to every building. Videocameras on tall posts made a statement about surveillance – watching the actors and the audience from all four corners of the stage. On large television screens we could see
ourselves – rows of heads in the reflected stage lights. The director, Sub Overdale, had obviously had a problem with updating the Shakespearean swordplay – so everyone on the estate was armed with machetes. (‘MacBetty with a Machete’, one of the reviews had been headed.) All in all, as is usual with the Royal Shakespeare Company, there was far far too much acting going on. The actors attempted to liven up ‘the boring bits’ by unnecessary pieces of business – acting out and literalizing every figure of speech. Their accents wandered all around the highlands and lowlands, occasionally taking a short holiday in Brooklyn or Bavaria. Every one of the usual RSC trademarks was on display: the men doing their stamping-stomping big-balled walks, the women about as feminine as drag queens, the overfussy crowd scenes (each crowd member trying to catch the audience’s eye with some little bit of business), the far-past-pensionable actors who think verse speaking means e-nun-ci-ay-TTT, the young actors who think it means treat it all like slangy prose and the messianic middle-agers who, whenever a line comes through as if written in modern English, plant it in the audience like a flagpole: this is why Shakespeare is still relevant, why he still speaks to
you,
why we need more funding.

If I hadn’t had ulterior motives for staying, I’d have wheeled my way out of there before the end of the first act.

All that remained, finally, was the ultimate ordeal: the curtain call. How many hours – not in actual physical rehearsal, but in mental anticipation – do the actors secretly spend on this minute or two? How many times have they envisaged themselves stepping back to applaud a co-actor, smiling in admiration – behaviour which only says to the audience, ‘Wasn’t she
marvellous?
And doesn’t she just know it?’? Or how often stood in front of the mirror perfecting that businesslike dip, upper body still curtly to obedience, which says, ‘I’m a down-to-earth fellow, just like you – I have no airs. (But I
was
good, wasn’t I?) Or how frequently practised that exhausted flop, hands dangling, which says, ‘To you, my audience, in this my bravura performance, I have given my absolute all’?

I coped in the only way I could think of, by closing my eyes, listening to the clapping. I tried to imagine that it was an inhuman sound – a distant waterfall or a motorway heard across flat fields.

I’d never been behind-the-scenes at the Barbican before, though I’d endured many thesp anecdotes about its legendary unpleasantness. Every cast that ever worked here became ill, through the lack of natural light and the constantly recycled air. They had a name for it: Barbicanitis.

I got into the lift and pushed the button for the dressing rooms, conveniently placed six floors above the stage.

The backstage décor was a curious mixture of office block and primary school – yellow walls and fuchsia trim.

And this was where these people wanted to spend their time, apart from the time they spent doing the atrocious things they’d just done to Shakespeare, the English language, my patience and over a thousand pairs of buttocks?

I only had to ask one passing person (the Drunken Porter, as it happened) where the star dressing-room was. Alun and Dorothy were famous for sharing, despite their exalted and senior status. Here it was that they were always photographed when interviewed as a couple – sitting side-by-side in front of a mirror with bulbs
around it. (Dorothy, solo, specialized in looking winsome whilst leaning on trees; Alun, left to his own, did the far-gazing windswept-hilltop thing). These were proper actors, the Sunday supplement readers were meant to think: surrounded by make-up, costumes and cards from well-wishers.

It was Alun who said, after I knocked, ‘Who’s there i’ the name of Beelzebub?’ I went in anyway.

As I had taken my time wheeling round, they were both of them out of their costumes, showered and ready for home.

They had no other visitors – and the lines on their faces relaxed as they saw my wheelchair. (Though they cannot have been delighted to see the unlucky-coloured green shirt I was wearing. I knew it would discomfort them: Alun had once put his name to a ghost-written book about theatre superstitions.) They instantly expected me to deliver some banality of thanks, on behalf of the Variety Club, for the much-needed new minibus.

I’d decided to go all out for shock value, and their smug faces only encouraged me in this.

‘Alun,’ I said. ‘Don’t you remember me?’

He was used to this, but not as used to it from cripples – cripples are meant to be unforgettable. Like hospital visits to girls in comas and whispered chats with autistic boys who really understand Shakespeare better than all the critics, don’t they?

‘Ah,’ he said, buying for…

‘Conrad,’ I said. ‘I used to go out with Lily.’

The effect was so startling that (if I could) I would have repeated it straight away. Alun jumped out of his seat, at first as if he wanted to shy away from me and then – checking, as I thought, his first impulse – stepping up to the side of my chair and putting his huge hand on mine.

‘Conrad, forgive me. How could I not recognize you?’ he said.

Dorothy now joined him, bending down over my other side, touching my other hand. Not a situation I wanted to stay in very long – they both smelt rankly of animal exertion, and of expensive
fragrances trying to refute animal exertion. I jerked the wheelchair into a wheelie and did one of those double pirouettes that pedestrians find so impressive.

‘Quite simple, I’d’ve thought,’ I said as I touched down. ‘Last time we met I didn’t have this.’

Alun looked at Dorothy, his contracted brow telegraphing her the message
Possibly disturbed.

Dorothy knelt at my side and put her arms around me – this wasn’t so much a hug as a black hole of perfume and female flesh felt through fabric.

‘Oh, Conrad,’ she said, going straight into a copeable-with recognition scene. ‘How are you – after that terrible, terrible –’

The hug continued. I tried speaking, but my voice was muffled by muliebrity, baffled by breasts.

I felt Dorothy’s body jerk slightly to one side – she had moved her head. While I was blinded, messages were passing between her and Alun – I wondered what they could be, apart from guilty.

My strongest desire was to bite one of Dorothy’s nipples (they wouldn’t have been hard to locate, dangling as they were) and force her to give me slightly less ‘love’ and slightly more room. But I compromised, and began faking a monster coughing-fit.

On cue, she stood up and stepped back.

‘I’m sorry,’ I gasped – cough, cough. ‘Allergies.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Dorothy, and looked down at herself as if it were her very flesh that I was allergic to.

‘A glass of water?’ asked Alun, who (while I was engulfed) had moved over to stand by the mirror – rather further away than seemed truthful, particularly after the kneeling and the touching.

The mirror was plastered with photographs, mostly of Laurence, their son. In the early shots he was posed on beaches or in parks, holding some prop (a primary-coloured ball, a tennis racket) and smiling widely; in the later snaps he’d been caught, scowling and black-wearing, either at his computer or on his bed.

‘I’ll be fine,’ I said.

Dorothy seemed to have something to say, but thought the better of it and retreated to her interview chair.

I did a final few pantomime coughs – not without enjoying the irony of putting on such a bacon-rind performance for two such monstrously huge Harrods hams.

Alun joined his wife in front of the mirror.

When I next looked at them, through cough-misted eyes, Alun and Dorothy were sitting, holding hands and waiting patiently – impregnably back in Sunday-supplement mode. For all their emotional involvement with me, I might have been a first-time interviewer fiddling with the batteries of my Dictaphone.

‘How did you enjoy the production?’ asked Dorothy.

‘Oh,’ I said – enjoying this scene much more than anything I’d seen on the stage – ‘it was just the usual RSC crap, wasn’t it? I expect the Japanese enjoyed it.’

Dorothy looked mortified. Alun maintained a stoic deadpan.

‘But I thought the central performances…’ Oh, how I love a dramatic pause ‘… towering.’

They glanced at each other, unable to resist dipping into even such a pathetically small goodie-bag of superlatives as I’d brought with me.

As in Inferno, I thought.

‘Thank you,’ said Dorothy, in a manner that said,
I have been much praised before, of course, but I accept with genuine pleasure all genuine praise.

‘You should have come on Saturday,’ said Alun.

Dorothy looked at him, going slightly misty with the memory of Saturday.

This was getting too much: I was being dragged into some grotesque RSC production called
Backstage.

‘Tell me, Alun, when I was shot I was sitting at a table that had been booked under your name. Why?’

Alun sat deadpan still, but one of his hands did a Parkinson’s-type twitch.

‘Why don’t we go and have a drink?’ said Dorothy.

‘Please tell me,’ I said. ‘As you’ll understand, I’m quite interested in finding out.’

Still Alun didn’t speak.

‘You booked the table,’ I said. ‘I checked at Le Corbusier. You were meant to be sitting where I sat.’

‘Yes,’ said Alun. ‘Shall we have a drink?’

He dipped his hand under the dressing table, reached into a cardboard box and came up holding a large bottle of Absolut vodka, blue label.

‘I have no idea what you’re trying to suggest,’ he said.

‘You’ve already spoken about this to the police. What did you tell them?’

Dorothy stood up.

‘We’ve already told them everything we know.’

‘Then tell me,’ I said.

‘It’s very difficult for Alun,’ Dorothy said, taking over. ‘I’ve forgiven him, but he had a short affair with Lily. When I found out about it, I told him not to see her any more. He had to cancel at the restaurant. I have no way of knowing but I expect Lily phoned you as a last-minute replacement.’

‘That’s right,’ said Alun. ‘That’s what we told the police.’

Dorothy stood to one side, ready to intervene in defence of her husband if I gave her a chance.

‘Could I speak to you on your own?’ I asked Alun.

Dorothy said, ‘Really –’

‘I have some private questions – about Lily.’

‘Dorothy can stay,’ said Alun. ‘She knows all about it, anyway.’

I waited.

‘Please go,’ I said to Dorothy.

‘No,’ she said – the first honest syllable she’d uttered all evening.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘How long had you been seeing Lily?’

Alun glanced guiltily up at his wife.

‘A couple of months.’

‘Two months?’ I asked.

‘Three-ish.’

‘You realize I was still living with her?’

‘She told me she was going to finish with you, and – in the event – she did. I’m sorry –’

‘You had sex with her.’

‘I did.’

‘Right from the beginning?’

‘Yes.’ He nodded.

‘Unprotected sex?’

‘Why does he have to answer that?’ shrieked Dorothy.

‘Because,’ I said, calmly, ‘Lily was pregnant when she died.’

‘Oh-my-god,’ said Dorothy.

‘Christ Jesus,’ said Alun.

Were they acting? I couldn’t tell.

I turned to Alun.

‘I take it that means it could have been yours.’

Alun turned pleadingly to Dorothy. ‘I didn’t know – really, I didn’t. Why didn’t the police tell me?’ Then to me: ‘Haven’t they done any tests? Can’t they tell whose it was?’

‘Why were you meeting Lily that evening?’

‘It was just… just dinner,’ Alun said.

‘Who wanted to meet up, you or her?’

‘I think she suggested it. I can’t remember.’

‘And when did you decide not to go? When did Dorothy make you cancel?’

‘Dorothy and I talked about it a couple of nights before. Wednesday. It was the best thing all round – that’s what we decided. We are really very happily married, you know. We have a lovely son.’

Dorothy said, ‘Alun was being foolish. He knows now.’

‘So, how did you cancel? Did you phone? Or did you go and
see her at home? Or up in town? I take it you were breaking up at the same time, not just blowing her off over one date.’

Alun tried to sneak a sideways glance at Dorothy.

‘I phoned from home late that evening. Thursday. We’d both been in rehearsal all day. I was in
Titus Andronicus.
Dorothy was in – what were you in?’

‘Three Sisters.’

‘Oh, yes. Anyway, it was late when I called – say, eleven-fifteen.’

‘Were you with him when he phoned?’

Dorothy gave me a single nod – tight-mouthed. The very follicles of her hair seemed to pull tighter, about to go ping.

‘And you said that you couldn’t ever see her again – that your wife had found out – that you were sorry.’

‘I think she understood. It wasn’t spelt out. I told her it was over, for reasons that she –’

‘Was she in love with you?’

Alun was now sitting with his feet apart, his elbows on his knees, his fingers in his hair, talking directly into the carpet, beginning to cry.

‘I hope not,’ he said.

‘When I saw her on Friday, she seemed perfectly okay,’ I said, remembering even as I spoke the special-occasion frock, the new perfume, the unusual calmness.

At what point, exactly, had Lily become attracted to this huge sobbing creature?

‘Did you sleep with her during the Strindberg tour?’

‘Surely that’s enough,’ said Dorothy.

‘No,’ said Alun. ‘But the possibility was there. It seemed to hover between us, like –’

I didn’t need his rehearsal-room similes.

‘Last question: did
you
love
her?’

‘No, he did not,’ intervened Dorothy once more. ‘He was besotted for a time – even I saw that – but that was all.’

Alun drew himself up.

‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘I think I probably was.’

Dorothy flounced over to him and slapped him, hard. Alun seemed to take this as a matter of course.

‘What’s the point in lying?’ he said. ‘The girl’s dead.’

‘I am not dead,’ sobbed Dorothy, finally in tears. ‘Not yet, anyway.’

‘How about that drink?’ I suggested.

They ignored me, slowly beginning to work their way towards touch, apology, reconciliation.

Not bothering with goodbye, I opened the door and backed the chair out of the room.