Fallout (26 page)

Then, with days to opening night, the laughs drained out of it. Luke fiddled with the scenes and dialogue while Scott-Mathieson kept his cool, not always showing the changes to the actors; sometimes surrendering to Luke’s late-night panics, sometimes letting the phone in his room ring. Once, memorably, with three days until they opened, Luke turned up at his hotel out of a rainstorm at midnight, an entire page-one rewrite in his head and ready to burn the script and start over. Scott came down to the lobby in his dressing gown and told him to shut up, have a whisky and go to bed – or back to London. When he had gone, Luke sat in the hotel bar and cried – really cried – into his cheap and useless whisky.

‘It’s not any good and it’s not funny,’ he said to Scott the next morning, trying not to look crazed. ‘It’s in the structure of it – the foundations are poor.’

‘Don’t be such a fucking old queen,’ said Scott. ‘It’s not
funny
any more because there’s only so many times you can laugh at the Christmas fairy giving marvellous head – only the vanity of a writer would expect a joke to be laughed at three hundred times. The actors are crapping-it, you’re crapping-it. Just don’t be so bloody wet.’

He was a public schoolboy to his core, smooth hair combed back and thick sideburns. Luke suspected he had been an officer during his National Service and absorbed the persona permanently.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right.’

‘Good,’ said Scott-Mathieson. ‘Now shut up and bugger off.’

After that Luke sat in the corner of the rehearsal room, hid his face and tried to smile at the actors if they looked at him, which they did less and less.

Over that weekend they moved into the theatre, vacated late on Saturday night by the last show. The old set was struck immediately and the new one, moved in overnight and put up early on Sunday morning, took all day, with hasty carpentry and a succession of unforeseen practical failures. On Monday the actors drifted in and made homes of their dressing rooms as best they could with photographs of children, cushions, bottles of booze, and in the afternoon was the tech run, a grindingly boring, tense event that ran four times the length of the play, late into the night, studded with explosions of rage or terror from everyone. Everyone except Luke, who for some reason had descend upon him a mood of extreme bliss, like a drug, wrapping him in the pleasure of his play being produced and taking from him all fear.

Throughout rehearsals Paul had come and gone on Archery business, or his own; a couple of days in Oxford, then meetings in London, not always saying where he was going or when he would return. Relying on Paul’s constancy as he did, Luke registered something had altered between them, but respecting his privacy he kept quiet, waiting for the return of their mutual sympathy. Then, on the day they opened, he saw that Paul was setting off for the station.

‘I’ll see you at the theatre tonight, then?’ he asked, unable to hide his wounded surprise.

‘Yeah, I’ll see you before the show. Around half six.’

‘Leigh should be here,’ said Luke. ‘I wish she was.’

‘What?’ said Paul abruptly, pausing in the doorway.

‘Leigh should be here,’ said Luke again.

‘Do you? She would if she could,’ said Paul with a tight smile and left.

They hadn’t finished the tech until midnight the night before and were powered by nerves and coffee for the dress rehearsal; everything as it would be, but no audience. The mock performance played like a silent film with stone-cold gaps where the jokes landed in emptiness; a monotonous dumb-show too mediocre to be called disastrous. They finished at half past four, and then the strange lull before the evening, the first public performance; paying audience, the press and all of Archery – with wives and girlfriends along for the ride.

They were meeting in the bar beforehand; Scott and Luke, John Wisdom and one or two of the others.

At six Luke went to the theatre and paced the silent foyer. He checked the box office, searching the front-of-house manager’s face for clues or omens, finding none. The house would be almost two-thirds full. It could be worse.

Time had stopped; it would never be half past seven. He went to the empty bar, just opening, and had a drink looking at the framed pictures of past shows – Taylor and Burton in
Dr Faustus
, Gielgud, Ian McKellen. Fear weighed on him as though he walked through thicker air. He went up to the lobby. It was the emptiest thing he had ever seen. He thought of the actors in their dressing rooms, the activity even now behind the silent front of house.

He went out into the street, looking for Paul. Unused to terror he didn’t know what to do with it. He checked his watch, twenty-five past six.

He decided to walk to the corner and come back. On the pavement he saw a group of four people approaching the theatre and ducked out of the way as they went up the steps.

‘Let’s get a drink, we’ve got ages,’ said one of the two women.

Have large ones
, thought Luke.
Have three.

He turned away – and saw Nina.

She had just got out of a taxi.

As it drove away she looked straight at him. He thought it couldn’t be her, that he had arranged some stranger’s features into hers. He did that every day. But she came towards him.

‘. . . there you are.’ Her words were carried on a trembling exhalation, as if at the end of a long sentence inside her head.

‘Yes, of course,’ he said. She looked desperate. ‘What?’

She’s left him
, he thought. She went into his arms and he held her very tightly.

‘You came.’ He thought he might crush the life out of her with his gratitude.

‘Can you take me somewhere?’ she said.

He kissed the side of her head. She was shaking. ‘What’s happened?’

‘I just had to see you. Do you mind?’

‘Mind?’ He wanted to pick her up, spin her round, cover her with kisses and laugh like a madman, but he just kept smiling at her. ‘You look gorgeous.’

‘Where can we go?’ she asked.

‘Go? We’re here.’ He looked up at the theatre,
Paper Pieces
in bright orange and black across the top, the silhouetted characters of the ensemble and
Luke Last
beneath. In darker, brown-orange it said,
Directed by Richard Scott-Mathieson
, Scott’s name larger than Luke’s.
A new play
, proclaimed writing below the posters, on a banner. A new play.

Nina looked around her vaguely and up at the theatre.

‘Your play . . .’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘First night,’ she stated, recalling it.

‘Yep,’ he said and felt his throat constrict.

‘Oh my God. I’d forgotten,’ she said flatly, not in false apology but realising it and sad. ‘I was just going in to ask them where I might find you.’

Luke’s brain tipped in adjustment that not everybody’s world contained only this moment, and then again, because the curtain went up in less than an hour.

‘Christ, I’m a cow,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I just had to get away.’

He noticed more people stopping outside the theatre, going in. It had started. Time was not frozen now but rushing away, and his feelings were quickening too, assaulting him.

‘Everything’s all right,’ he said calmly. ‘I’ll get you a drink. Will you watch it with me?’

‘Of course.’ She was subdued.

He took her hand and led her away, calculating the time it would take to get to the pub, get served, get back, and be in his seat in the stalls with the others when the curtain rose. Nina nestled into his shoulder, seemed almost blind as they walked.

‘Luke!’ He heard a shout behind him and turned. Paul.

‘What’s going on?’ He was in the centre of the pavement, out of breath and legs planted apart.

‘Hello,’ he said to Nina, shortly.

‘This is Nina,’ said Luke.

‘I know,’ said Paul. ‘Luke, it’s almost seven.’

‘We’re going for a drink, we’ll be back in a minute.’

Paul didn’t say anything, then some people crossed the pavement between them, and when they had passed he was gone.

They went into the nearest pub. Luke counted out the exact change for her drink to save time, hands shaking with haste. She had a vodka and soda with ice. He didn’t want anything but handed it to her and looked for a quiet place to take her. She stood in the corner and sipped her drink. Luke tried to take in everything about her – what was wrong and what she needed; tried to suppress his joy and subjugate his nerves, and he lost himself in the examination of her face; numbed by her presence.

‘Every day I see you about fifty times,’ he said.

She finished her drink and put it down on a table.

‘That’s better,’ she said. She looked up and into his face. ‘Hello,’ she said, and smiled. ‘Are you nervous?’

‘Not any more,’ said Luke. ‘But we should get back.’

‘Of course. I’m so sorry. Let’s run.’

They did run, all the way back up to the theatre, and laughing, and when they got there the two-minute bell was ringing. Paul was nowhere to be seen.

‘He must have gone in,’ said Luke.

They went past the ushers – spotty teenagers in striped waistcoats too big for them. One of them – who Luke had got talking to a few times about how he had escaped Eastbourne to come to Oxford – winked at Luke and said, ‘Good luck, mate.’

Luke nodded his thanks and they went inside.

They went along the back row sideways, holding their coats close to their bodies and trying not to be noticed by the people in front. John Wisdom lifted a hand in greeting, holding a half-smoked extinguished cigar.

‘Not a bad turnout from the press,’ he said, gimlet eyed. ‘Bastards could have let it bed in a bit. Cubitt. Kurtz, Jesus – He’s not here. He may as well be.’

John looked away. There was nothing to say. At the end of the row Luke could see others from Archery, John’s partner, a financier, two more. He couldn’t look at them. He was solely responsible for all of it. He wanted to stop it and send everyone home. Sitting in between the producers and John Wisdom was Scott-Mathieson, immaculate hair curling over the collar of his loud pinstripe and wearing a broad tie and an expression of rigid coolness. He barely acknowledged them.

‘I know him,’ hissed Nina in Luke’s ear. She ducked behind his shoulder and pulled him into a seat before they reached the others.

They eased down the squeaky red velvet seats, holding their breath.

People were still coming in, checking their tickets, talking. There were empty seats on the ends of the rows, most of the front, and even a few, terrifyingly, in the middle. Luke knew the back five rows of the circle were empty too. The spaces in the audience made it gap-toothed, there was no sureness – wobbly.

‘Are you all right?’ whispered Nina.

Luke nodded, nauseous, and saw Paul come in just as the house-lights dimmed.

‘I waited for you in the bar,’ he hissed, sitting next to Nina, on the corner of her coat, which she pulled out from under him, but before Luke could answer the curtain went up.

For the first ten minutes of the play Nina didn’t look at Luke, but when she did she saw that he was covering his face with his hands, not watching, even through his fingers. She looked back at the stage and for a while did nothing but wonder at the fact of seeing his work, which she had not considered a reality until that moment. The set was a collapsing works-yard or factory; non-existent walls and irregular perspective. The three men revealed as the curtain opened were arguing as they waited for somebody to arrive. She knew all three actors; had been at drama school with one and worked with another. Two were playing long-haired anti-establishment characters with no sense of humour, and the third a disgruntled private soldier fresh from an unspecified conflict. They were involved in a vicious argument and blaming one another for past mistakes and misdemeanours. Their words fell into an abyss. The actors were looking for their lines, helping one another out and the audience was completely silent. For fifteen minutes, longer, with Luke at her side vibrating with horror, it was as if there was nobody watching the actors at all, as if they were playing to an empty theatre. She glanced down the row of house seats. Everyone had the same expression of rigid waiting. The play was like nothing she had ever seen. Perhaps that accounted for the silence. There was something of Beckett in it, something of Nicholls, but a fresh, bizarre reality that was all Luke. And then the first laugh; a scattered, surprised sort of laugh, moving from the front of the audience to the back as if it were asking permission, and not quite reaching them. She looked at Luke again. He had dug his face further into his hands, hunched down in his seat. Then there was another laugh – this one quick and shocked – quite loud and from the whole theatre together.

It was as if the audience had decided as one how they felt, from then on there was a batting back and forth between the actors and the watchers, like percussion: beat, line, laugh, line, line, laugh, beat – and the play came to life. Nina’s body relaxed. She settled into her seat. Until now she had no re action to the performance, only its reception. She was present now, even forgetting Luke beside her. The next time she remembered him she saw he was looking about the audience, wondering and tentative; up to the people at the sides of the balcony, and ahead, trying to catch the expression of their profiles. She took his hand. He squeezed hers tightly.
It’s all right
, she sent him the thought.
It’s good. They like it
.

In the brief pause between the first and second piece, under cover of hesitant applause, the back row whispered to one another; reassurances and relief, urgent criticism. Luke turned to her, self-doubt put aside for a smile that was for her.

‘You’re brilliant,’ she said, and realised just then that it was true.

In the interval, before the curtain had finished falling, Luke, Scott and John got up for the bar, hurrying.

Nina said, ‘I’ll go to the loo. See you back here.’

She slipped out past Paul without speaking to him and locked herself into a cubicle for the whole fifteen minutes, terrified of seeing someone she knew. She sat and read the
now wash your hands
sign over and over.