Political Death (13 page)

"Who?" demanded Randall.

"Helen Macdonald. Leader of the Labour Party the alliance. Possibly our next Prime Minister." Jemima was right about Randall Birley not being political.

"No, no, of course not. This is show business. Helen Troy. Absurd name but she can get away with it, and anyway it's her real name. The biggest female box-office draw in the US ever since that film, I can't remember its name. Chased? No, Chaste. She's interested in playing Viola in my film. She was trained as a classical actress, you know. It's fantastic!"

"Fantastic for who?" thought Jemima crossly. "Why is he telling me all this?"

But Randall had rattled on, "Now listen, what about tomorrow?"

Before Jemima could reply, Randall Birley had run on yet again. "Oh shit," he said. "No, tomorrow is the Garrick Awards. What a bore these things are. Boring if you win, even more boring if you don't."

So far Jemima's contribution to this late-night conversation had consisted of one piece of fairly obvious political information about Helen Macdonald. Jemima knew that she absolutely had to go to bed, be purred over by Midnight. Anything to stop the world and get off, however momentarily.

"What a happy coincidence! I myself am presenting one of the boring Garrick Awards. So I'll see you there." And Jemima rang off.

But she could not sleep. After a while she got out of bed and put on the tape of her Faber Mystery programme, falling asleep as the final credits rolled. The handsome saturnine face of the young Burgo Smyth haunted her dreams. In her dream one of those odd upside-down dreams which plagued her, especially when Ned was away Burgo Smyth was an actor, and he was receiving some kind of award. Jemima wanted to protest about it, but in her dream could not remember why.

What Price Prizes ?

"I can't think what's happened to Hattie, you know, our Hattie, ASM at the Irving, Hattie Vickers' Charley Baines was peering crossly into the gathering crowds around the vast Trumpet Cinema. Most of them stared back blankly, their eyes shifting onwards when they realised that Charley Baines was not famous. Or rather Charley Baines was not famous enough: his Toby Belch in Randall Birley's Twelfth Night had been nominated for a David Garrick Award in the category of Best Character Actor in a Comic Performance in a Fringe Production (by no means the most obscure category in the long list of awards).

"She was so desperate to come," Charley Baines confided to no one in particular since everyone on the edge of the Trumpet foyer was desperate to move on, either wanting to get out of the limelight or more likely to get into it. Certainly nobody had time to worry about Hattie Vickers. You could not exactly call the Garrick Awards ceremony at the Trumpet Cinema A Hit, since it was for one night only once a year, but it was certainly A Happening.

Up to this point nobody had missed Hattie throughout the whole of Sunday. She was not that kind of person. Arrangements were pretty casual for the inhabitants of the large, shabby house in Earl's Court where she lived, even on weekdays. Not everyone was in work and those that had work did not necessarily work regular hours. After all, Hattie's own hours, including the nights when she stayed late to lock up the theatre, were irregular enough. Hattie was friendly with a couple of middle-aged actors who came and went; one of them was currently working in a theatre in Wales and the other was thought to be in Edinburgh.

As for Sunday, that was when the whole house was sometimes completely silent, as though all the lodgers were under some kind of dusty spell. Hattie regarded Sunday as a day she had to herself. Her adoptive parents her mother whom she had loved and her father whom she had both loved and loathed were both dead. The small cousinage into which she had been introduced by her adoption had by degrees politely distanced themselves from Hattie after her parents' death. In any case, Hattie felt no particular need to impose herself on their Sunday lunches, at best in the country near Guildford, at worst on the outskirts of Woking.

Hattie had always told herself, 'the theatre is my life'. (She had not foreseen that it was also to be her death.) The friends she had chosen to keep up with after university were entirely those who shared this passion. One of these was Charley Baines. Charley felt a genuine affection for Hattie which included playing the role, in so far as she would let him, of brotherly protector. It helped that Charley did not particularly fancy Hattie, and she certainly did not fancy him. Hattie, as Charley had kindly told her on more than one occasion, was a star-fucker; Hattie herself would have preferred to say that she had a capacity for hero-worship. In other words, Randall Birley was by no means the first hero in her particular world to receive the gift of Hattie's devotion. He was, however, Charley thought, the one who presented the most danger to Hattie. He simply did not trust Randall where the vulnerable were concerned. He was a user he would certainly use Hattie if it suited him.

Although it was getting late, one or two major stars were still arriving at the Trumpet, a progress indicated by the flash bulbs of the paparazzi. Was that or was it not Joan Collins? A little bunch of protesters, all women, all holding placards, took a chance that it was Joan Collins. They started their chant again, the chant with which they had been periodically enlivening the proceedings. The words that Charley could hear most clearly were, "Garrick Pigs! Garrick Pigs!" So far as Charley Baines was concerned, the organisers of the David Garrick Awards would certainly turn out to be pigs if his bete noir Su Waggoner, also on the short-list in his own category, won a Garrick for her atrocious Mistress Touchstone in the all-woman As You Like It. Otherwise he could not quite see the connection.

"Where on earth is Hattie? She's generally so reliable." The crowd shifted and Charley found himself standing beside Millie Swain, who was also waiting for someone. Like Charley, Millie had been nominated for a Garrick Award (as had Randall Birley, but he, unlike his colleagues, had been nominated in no fewer than seven categories, including his role as a director and his appearances on television in the latest remakes of Rebecca and Wuthering Heights).

Millie Swain looked magnificent, more Cleopatra than Viola, with her glossy hair cascading down in snake-like ringlets worthy of the Egyptian queen. She was wearing an extremely short white beaded dress in twenties style, suspended becomingly low over the bosom by thin silver straps. In spite of the cold spring, Millie Swain had no wrap. Charley Baines realised that he had never before seen Millie in such a revealing dress, showing not only her decolletage but her legs. Everyone knew that Millie Swain had wonderful long legs in trousers or tights; she now made it clear to the world that she had wonderful shapely legs and ankles in pale stockings and satin shoes.

Charley Baines admired Millie's talent enormously. "I hope she wins and he doesn't," was roughly his point of view about the Garrick Awards, Randall Birley and Millie Swain. "But I bet it'll be exactly the other way round. He'll win everything, including an award for Twelfth Night, and she'll miss out."

Talented as Millie might be, Charley had never before thought of her as sexy. There was something daunting about her, he found. It could be a question of her height (Charley himself being short and stocky, not to say short and tubby), but Charley thought that was not the point since he much enjoyed wrapping himself around willowy beauties in so far as they permitted it. No, there was an odd air of austerity about Millie Swain which had put Charley off. Tonight was different: she looked adventurous, appealing.

"Have you seen Hattie?"

"Have you seen Randall?" Millie countered. Her large heavy-lidded eyes, unusually adorned with shimmering eyeshadow and eyeliner, roved over the crowds. Charley stared at her appreciatively. Millie Swain caught the direction of his gaze and grinned.

"You like it? I borrowed it. A leftover from some ghastly parody of a Coward production. As for the make-up' she mentioned the name of a celebrated make-up artist' we did that ghastly television series about Malta together, friends for life."

The David Garrick Awards were sponsored by the Sunday Opinion; you could not be in much doubt of that if you gazed up at the huge banners which decorated the auditorium of the Trumpet. On the other hand, for Cy Fredericks, whose company, Megalith, was televising the Awards, giving the Sunday Op due credit for its sponsorship came low on his list of priorities.

"Lose the banners!" he cried imperiously to a young woman passing, whom he imagined by some flight of fancy was a member of the Megalith staff. She was in fact that Su Waggoner whose success in the category of Best Comic Character Actor was dreaded by Charley Baines. Despite being a modern young woman, Su Waggoner gave Cy Fredericks an extremely old-fashioned look, in which astonishment and indignation were mixed in roughly equal parts.

"Of course we've absolutely no intention of giving them the oxygen of publicity, as it's now known." Guthrie Carlyle, the Megalith producer responsible for the programme, moved smoothly to his chairman's elbow.

Cy Fredericks gazed at him respectfully. He was prepared to deal with the Sunday Ojb's claims in the most Machiavellian manner which would leave Megalith triumphant but deny Mack McGee the opportunity for a legitimate grievance. But even Cy had not contemplated denying the Op any publicity whatsoever. He felt a new admiration for Guthrie Carlyle, whom he had always privately held to be something of a liberal wimp.

"This whole thing about the Garrick is more than usually ridiculous," went on Guthrie. Immediately Cy Fredericks's expression changed from that of new-found respect to one of deep habitual unease. His membership of the Garrick Club was of long standing but it continued to be something that he treasured which was not always true where Cy was concerned, the oxygen of novelty being his particular fix. Every now and then he had an anxiety dream about finding himself in the Garrick Club dressed only in one half of his pyjamas, not the sort of dream that he would ever have about other places allegedly more crucial to him, say the boardroom of Megalith. Cy Fredericks did not like the conjunction of the words "Garrick' and 'ridiculous'. Who or what was ridiculous? Since it could hardly be the club (that was unthinkable) it must inevitably be him, Cy Fredericks... It took Guthrie Carlyle some time to explain that he was referring to the protesters' placards rather than the banners of the Sunday Op. Nor could Guthrie altogether blame his chairman for not being able to grasp the point at issue. The protesters were demonstrating about the failure of the Garrick, an all-male club having absolutely no connection with the ceremony, to admit women members as a result of a recent vote. The coincidental use of the name of the great actor by the organisers of the Awards, had, in the protesters' opinion, given them their chance.

"It's a photo-opportunity, that's what," said one of the protesters cheerfully to Guthrie as he entered. Guthrie knew her: Cynnie, a pretty red-headed young woman who worked for another TV company. Beside her stood Margaret Rose, that marvellously beautiful black woman who had worked at Megalith for Jemima Shore; Guthrie nourished an unrequited passion for her.

"Isn't that what Award ceremonies are all about?" shouted Cynnie. "Seeing and being seen."

"It seems not quite fair to the David Garrick Awards, which are totally separate..."

"Since when were prizes fair? We're just part of the general unfairness, we're drawing attention to it, that's all." Cynnie looked even more cheerful as she threw in a special "Garrick Pigs!" more or less in Guthrie's face.

"Garrick Pigs!" drawled Margaret Rose. Guthrie looked yearningly in her direction. Unlike Groucho Marx, he wished to join any club of which she was a member, even if it were as alien to his needs as the Garrick.

Outside, Charley Baines had decided that something must have happened to Hattie Vickers (there were still some hours left before he would discover just how right he was: the Irving Theatre, locked after the second Saturday performance, normally remained unvisited until the cleaners arrived early on the Monday morning). But before he could move inside, the rush and glitter of the photographers intensified into an exploding galaxy of light and sound. Millie Swain, still beside him, looked stunned and disbelieving. Charley Baines witnessed the phenomenon of her new radiance being extinguished as if some plug had been pulled. A moment later she had vanished into the auditorium.

Framed in the halo of lights including Megalith's television lights stood a tiny figure in a black felt hat and a man's check suit much too big for it. Who on earth? Some Charlie Chaplin lookalike? Charley looked again. The figure revealed itself as female, and the features under the hat resolved themselves into that combination of features so beloved of the camera the high Slavic cheek bones, small neat nose, pouting mouth and huge slightly protuberant eyes which photographed flat. In short, this was the famous Hollywood star, Helen Troy. Her escort, however, Charley had no difficulty in recognising: for he was Randall Birley.

It was Jemima Shore, not Charley Baines, who was the unwilling witness to the subsequent colloquy between Randall Birley and Millie Swain. Like Helen Troy, but with a good deal less ballyhoo, Jemima was expected to present a Garrick Award. Cy Fredericks had taken a personal interest in this aspect of the Awards, although it was not, strictly speaking, any part of Megalith's remit to do so. Such arrangements were theoretically handled by the organisers; Megalith's responsibility was simply to televise what took place. But Cy Fredericks had announced that Jemima would present an award, and she had found herself seated close to the various short-listed actors.

It was true that this year there was an additional responsibility for Megalith. Parts of the ceremony the actual presentations were to be shown live, after recorded scenes of the arriving celebrities, and a panel of luminaries also live discussing the general theme, "What Price Prizes?".

The live ceremony meant, for example, that the Carter-Fox family, all three of them, were able to settle in front of the television on Sunday night, to watch, as Olga told Elfi, 'your aunt Millie win one of her lovely prizes'.