Fallout (35 page)

‘You? Why?’

‘I don’t know, it’s my fault, I should have – done something differently.’

She shook her head. ‘That’s crap, Paul.’

They didn’t discuss it further. After a moment she said, ‘Right.’ She pushed Marigold away and swivelled her chair back to her desk. ‘I’ll call Gerald Denton’s agent, shall I? I had a drink with David Aukin the other day and he said he and Denton might be putting something together – some co-operative – so we’d better move fast.’

Paul, not for the first time, marvelled at her strength.

‘I’ll do it if you like,’ he said.

He thought he saw her quiver. She did not look up, but bit her lip, then sat straighter than ever.

‘No. I’m fucking fine,’ she said and picking up the phone began to flick through her index cards with the tip of her biro.

At home that night Paul sat and applied himself to getting very drunk. He stayed immobile on the sofa with a bottle, getting determinedly and uncomfortably pissed while Leigh stormed and ranted about the flat, slamming things down and shouting.

‘Why aren’t you angry?’ she yelled at him once.

‘I am,’ he said and knew he should be, or would be, but couldn’t feel it.

Misery pushed all the anger out of him. Maggie’s straightforward rage was easier, and even Leigh’s, for all that it was complicated by history. He knew he was at the beginning of a fight; Maggie would call her lawyer and letters would be written, agents would threaten and bellow, but they would lose the play; he had already lost the play, and he had lost his closest friend. He surveyed the years of loyalty and unquantifiable debt, and couldn’t explain it to Leigh. He had no words for it. He hated the stupid blunt pain. He had lost his friend.

Leigh went off into the other room, still shouting, and then came back in and picked up the phone.

‘I’m calling him,’ she said, ‘the
fucking bastard
.’

‘No, don’t. Leave it,’ said Paul. ‘We’ll sort something out. The Denton—’

‘The
Denton
? What does it matter about the fucking Denton?’

‘It matters. It’s a good play. It’s not
Diversion
—’

‘What is
wrong
with you? He should know what he’s done!’ she railed. ‘He should
know
what he’s done – and that it’s over.’

‘He does,’ said Paul.

The next day he was forced to leave Maggie in the office to break the news the play had fallen through, and to cancel rehearsals alone, while he spent the morning on site at an emergency meeting with the contractor and engineer. Paul’s father had, unusually, left his office to join the meeting; it was insulting, as if he couldn’t manage without him. For two hours they tried to restrict the costs, limit the time wasted; pored over damp, unrolled blueprints in the dim light.

‘You didn’t need to be here,’ said Paul when the others had gone.

He and his father were standing in the dripping guts of the backstage area; no play, no plan, no guarantee of anything.

‘I know that, Paul, your mother told me to.’

‘Great, right, thanks,’ said Paul, reaching into his pockets for tobacco and Rizla papers and thinking he should get back to the office and help Maggie.

‘She sent these for you.’

He held out a tartan bag, plastic-coated canvas, that Paul recognised from long service to his mother – shopping trips in the Morris Minor to the high street in his childhood.

‘What’s that?’

‘Fish paste sandwiches and,’ he peered inside, ‘a Granny Smith.’

Paul smiled, but grudgingly, because he was exhausted and felt powerless.

‘Dad, how old is that bloody bag?’

‘About your age.’

Paul took it from him; he wasn’t hungry. He looked around them both at what felt like a shipwreck, not a theatre, and waited for his father to leave so he could throw it away. Above them on ladders the electricians worked – no whistling, no chat, just dogged work.

But his father didn’t leave, he stood with him.

‘This was always a risk,’ he said, as if Paul didn’t know. ‘Paul?’

Paul looked at his neat grey hair, the success written in every line of his face.

‘Yes. Thanks, Dad.’

‘You’re not the only one.’

‘What?’

‘Every project I’ve ever worked on went like this, at some point. What you’re doing, Paul, is
admirable
.’

Paul had armoured himself against criticism not kindness.

‘You think theatre’s for pansies,’ he said.

His father didn’t laugh. ‘What’s that got to do with it?’ Then, with ironic awe, he intoned, ‘
The Post Office Tower
. . . It looks impressive now it’s all over and went well. At the time it were nothing grand, just terrifying. the Depot is to you what that was to me.’

Paul nodded.

‘You’re going to have setbacks,’ said his father. ‘Not to worry. Well done.’

Paul nodded again, but couldn’t speak.

‘Your mother sends her love.’

He patted Paul’s shoulder, and left. Paul watched him stepping with practised, middle-aged caution over the cables and at the door he turned.

‘See you at the opening night – the fourteenth, isn’t it? Save me a seat.’

‘Hope so,’ said Paul, and raised the hand that wasn’t holding the tartan bag.

‘What do they call them?’ said his father.

‘Call what?’

‘The special seats.’

‘House seats,’ said Paul. ‘They’re house seats.’

‘Well, save me one.’

‘I will,’ said Paul.

Paul went back to the office and sat on the battered armchair in the corner. Marigold came and lay at his feet, sighing and smelling of gutters. Maggie was bashing out a letter with two fingers. Her typing always sounded angry. He had a headache. The inked metal letters hitting the paper hurt his brain; the bell, the zip of the cylinder turning as she checked back. Paul just sat, knowing he had to get on with it, unable to do so. She stopped typing.

‘Dear Leonard Cubitt, c/o
The Times
,’ she pretended to read. ‘As you will no doubt be carrying out a hatchet job on the Depot, I
urge
you to consider burying your axe in the head of Luke Last—’

‘And his agent,’ said Paul, not looking up.

‘And his agent, Ben Greene.’ She paused, and leaned back in her chair. ‘You are so different from my ex-husband,’ she said.

‘I hope so.’

‘You’re a man, for starters.’

‘Funny.’

‘It wasn’t.’

‘How’d it go? Ringing round.’

‘Oh – you know. I’ve delayed the rehearsal rooms – we won’t lose too much money, then—’ She stopped.

She got up, abruptly, and went to the window.

Paul realised with surprise that she was upset and tried to reconcile it with the Maggie who made New York lawyers quake. He imagined her morning: making call after call, having to tell people what Luke had done to them, and admit they had got as far as casting the whole play before the contracts were even signed. Amateurish, naïve trust.

Maggie had her back to him, looking out. He got up and went to stand a few inches behind her.

‘Never mind, eh?’ he said.

He couldn’t see her face but he had a horrible feeling she was crying. Medusa to Little Bo Peep.

He wanted to comfort her, the urge to make her feel better was strong. Then she turned to him and tucked her face into his chest. He was surprised, but instinctively put his arms round her. He hadn’t realised how small she was, how much shorter than Leigh. He thought of her always wearing high heels, even to visit their building site, presenting as big a version of herself as she could. Confused, he held her – and suddenly wondered if he ought not.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘You’re all right.’

‘I’m sorry. It’s just too much,’ she said. ‘All of this, and Helen’s not happy at school.’

Paul had no idea who Helen was. Then he remembered, the daughter, of course, with the boy’s hair.

‘I never say the right thing to her,’ said Maggie.

Her head stayed resting on his chest, her grown-woman’s problems laid out for him to mend.

‘She’ll be fine. And we’ll sort this out.’ He thought of his father. ‘Nothing big ever went smoothly. You wait and see.’

He couldn’t believe how easy it was. He may as well have said abracadabra and produced a dove from his sleeve – Maggie looked up, grateful and admiring.

‘Do you know how nice you are?’ she said.

He shook his head. ‘I’m not.’

‘. . . Does Leigh?’

She looked down when she said the name, so he could only see her lashes.

Leigh. Who never got at him, never criticised him, never cut him down. Whose love was like someone completing a task they had set themselves.

Maggie looked up again and he couldn’t get over the strangeness of it; thinking about Leigh but Maggie’s face so close.

‘You are, Paul, you’re a really –
wonderful
man. Don’t make me say it, it’s embarrassing.’

‘I’m not. Don’t,’ said Paul, relishing this unaccustomed vision of himself.

‘Please just kiss me,’ said Maggie, so he did – thinking oddly that it would be rude not to. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

Her kiss was surrendering and sweet. There was the first touch of her lips, then the feeling of it; weakening. Then wanting more – and he stopped, guilt hitting him hard and leaving him cold. He didn’t step away from her, he just stopped kissing her and she rested against his chest again.

‘God. I’ve hoped you would do that for so long,’ she said.

Diversion
went straight into rehearsals at the American Church. It had lost James Bridge, whose loyalty and another job – that wouldn’t cost him friends and allies in the business – prevented him from accompanying it to its new home. Tony hired Malcolm Dewberry who had directed Nina in
Custody
, and they cast from scratch. After Luke’s initial work with Malcolm on the script Nina kept him away.

‘Please don’t come in,’ she begged him; ‘it makes it so much worse.’

The dynamic in the cast was uncomfortable; the producer’s wife in the show, and bringing it down, as well as the gossip she was also sleeping with the writer.

Luke wasn’t working on anything new. His inner landscape was only
Diversion
’s arid, absent progression towards opening.
Paper Pieces
had been rehearsed at the American Church too, before going to Oxford, but Luke tried not to look back at that time that was so different to this, that had been so pure.

The two actors playing the father and son were good, and their chemistry right for the roles, but Nina, as Luke had known – as Maggie, Paul and Bridge had known – was wrong. Very soon she realised it too. The fault was beyond technique; it was elemental. Mary was earthed; Nina was of the air. Her attempts at strength seemed brittle; her passion insincere and Malcolm Dewberry, powerless and already resentful of the fait accompli of her presence, abandoned her to her struggles. Nina, increasingly isolated, suffered.

She became even thinner – her costume had to be taken in because of the weight she had lost since the first fitting – and Luke couldn’t help thinking, with unwelcome detachment, that it made her less Mary even than before.

At his flat, during their scattered afternoons alone, he ran lines with her, discussed the part, comforted her and felt less and less connected to the work, more and more exclusively connected only to her.

‘Mary feels so confident,’ she said, ‘so sure. It doesn’t feel right to me to say that line to Tom.’ And so Luke offered to rewrite, betraying the truth that had presented itself to him as if it were worthless, and seeking only Nina’s truth instead.

‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘I’ll change it.’

Nina took Malcolm aside.

‘Luke mentioned perhaps Mary might be a little less sure of herself in this scene – that it might work to have her more vulnerable,’ she suggested.

Malcolm gave her an appraising look – appraisal tinged with contempt.

‘This isn’t Am-Dram, Nina; we’re not a collective in some basement somewhere. If Luke has something to discuss with me he knows he only has to call.’

Tony insisted on dropping her off for rehearsal and collecting her at the end of each day. She stopped lunching with the rest of the cast because she felt uncomfortable in their presence. They were part of something she was not. Sometimes she asked her mother to come and take her for lunch, just for the company, or if not, it would be Tony and the two of them would sit in virtual silence until she went back to work.

In the second week Tony started to watch her rehearse, too, his new role at the Trafalgar giving him a legitimate pretext. He would offer criticism in an undertone in her ear in the breaks between her scenes, but had nothing but praise for the others.

‘What did you expect?’ he said, as they drove home one afternoon. ‘You want everything your own way, like a child. You wanted your special friend, I overlooked it – rather generously, I thought. You wanted his play; I got it for you. You’re a big girl. You’ve made your bed, my darling – we’re all lying in it. Crowded and uncomfortable it may be, but there we are.’ And he patted her knee.

He refused to allow her to stay at home when he went to parties, to La Terrazza or the Café Royal after shows to meet friends, where she was sharply aware of the gossip surrounding them and imagined – felt she knew – everyone was talking about her not managing the part she had caused such scandal to acquire. Tony seemed to lap it all up with brittle pleasure. He wanted sex from her more often – the proper way, straightforward, looking at her eyes. He would whisper that he loved her. She, less and less able to absent herself, strained harder and faster against the confines that surrounded her.

There was only one other woman in the cast, playing her mother. She was a character actress called Joan Meeks, who prided herself on turning up, doing the job, and knitting for various babies in the waiting hours in between. Their main scene together was key to the second act. It was one of Nina’s happier dialogues, the scenes with the son, Tom, being more challenging. This afternoon, though, she was exhausted from not having eaten and Tony watching from the back and the other actors grouped together, Malcolm barely looking up from his notes and an early summer heatwave stifling them all. She stumbled over the lines. Her mind kept blanking out. Joan was considerate but bored, Malcolm increasingly irritated.