Sicken and So Die (15 page)

He got dressed and tried to drink some coffee, but gagged on it. Savagely, he took a long swig straight from the Bell's bottle, recognising as he did it – and almost revelling in – his self-destructive stupidity.

Then he went to the phone and rang Gavin Scholes.

When he reached the neat terraced house in Dulwich, Charles was surprised to discover that Gavin had developed a new wife. The former one had walked out after many years in Warminster because, although he only lived a mile from his work, her husband was never home. Gavin was so obsessed with the Pinero Theatre that he gave little sign of having noticed his first wife's departure.

The new one was on the verge of walking out too when Charles arrived. Only temporarily, though her tone of voice implied a more permanent separation was not out of the question.

‘Sorry to appear inhospitable,' she said, ‘but I have so few opportunities to get out at the moment that I have to snatch every one that comes along.'

‘You mean Gavin's too ill to be left on his own?'

‘No. I mean that Gavin
thinks
he's too ill to be left on his own – which, in terms of how much freedom it gives me, comes to the same thing.'

‘Ah.'

‘He's in the sitting room – through there. I'm going for a walk in the park. Can you stay for an hour? I won't be longer than that, I promise. But please don't leave him till I come back.'

Through her brusqueness, a genuine anxiety showed. However much she tried to dismiss Gavin's illness as hypochondria, deep down she was worried about him.

The director was certainly doing the full invalid performance. Dressed in pyjamas and dressing gown, he sat in an armchair facing french windows which opened on to a punctiliously regimented garden. (That must be the new wife's doing; Charles couldn't imagine Gavin Scholes showing an interest in any activity outside the theatre.)

Beside the patient, Sunday papers lay unopened on a table, which also bore a bottle of Lucozade and a basket of grapes. The attention to detail was maintained, in spite of the summer weather, by a rug over Gavin's knees. The room even contrived to carry a hint of hospital disinfectant.

‘How're you doing?' asked Charles.

It was an incautious – though probably unavoidable – question. Whatever the reality of Gavin Scholes' illness, he was certainly obsessed by it, and Charles did not escape the blow-by-blow – or perhaps twinge-by-twinge – account of every last bowel movement.

Gavin finally drew breath long enough for Charles to ask, ‘And what does your doctor reckon it is?'

The director shrugged. ‘Bloody hopeless, doctors these days. You never catch one committing himself to an actual opinion. It could be this, it could be that, better have some more tests . . . Never get a straight answer out of them.'

‘So you've had tests, have you?'

‘Oh yes.' Gavin spoke as a connoisseur of tests. Clearly his health was the one subject which could threaten the exclusivity of his obsession with theatre.

‘And have they found anything?'

He shook his head. ‘Nothing definite as yet. They can see I'm ill, but none of them has a clue what it is. My GP even had the nerve to suggest the whole thing was psychosomatic.'

‘Well, you have always been a bit prone to that sort of thing, haven't you?'

‘What do you mean?' Gavin was incensed by Charles casting doubt on the authenticity of his precious symptoms.

‘I mean you have suffered from irritable bowel syndrome in the past, you know, when you've been stressed or –'

‘Irritable bowel syndrome is not a psychosomatic disorder,' said Gavin, still offended by the suggestion. ‘It's a genuine illness – and absolutely crippling for those who have it. I've been a sufferer for years.' Then, to compound his martyrdom, he added, ‘Mind you, what I've got now is considerably more serious than that.'

‘Hmm.' Time to move the conversation away from Gavin's cherished symptoms and get on with a bit of investigation.

‘There hasn't at any point been a suggestion that it might have been something you ate?'

‘Something I ate?'

‘Yes. That caused you to be ill?'

‘What, just food poisoning?' Gavin's tone dismissed the unworthy idea. ‘No, what I've got is much more serious than that. Anyway, if it was food poisoning, I'd have recovered by now.'

‘It depends what you'd been poisoned with.'

‘And I'm sure some of the tests would have picked it up if that's all it was.'

‘That may not have been what the tests were looking for.'

‘I don't know why you're harping on about this, Charles.'

‘I was just thinking . . . The day before you were taken ill, we'd done the photocall and press conference at Chailey Ferrars.'

‘Yes. So?'

‘Well, I was just wondering whether you might have been poisoned by something you ate from the buffet.'

‘Why? Did other people who were there get ill?'

‘No.'

‘Then why should I have done? What am I supposed to have eaten that caused this, anyway?'

‘I did notice you have a mushroom tartlet.' As he said them, Charles realised how stupid his words sounded.

‘Yes, I remember it. Why should that have made me ill?'

‘Well, suppose the tart had not been made with mushrooms, but with some form of poisonous fungi . . .'

Gavin Scholes looked at Charles in blank amazement. ‘Why? Why on earth should it have been?'

‘I've just been thinking . . . The timing was odd. You get ill, you can't continue directing
Twelfth Night . . .
'

‘Yes.' Suddenly Gavin understood what Charles was hinting at. ‘Are you suggesting that I was deliberately poisoned to get me out of the way?'

‘That's exactly what I'm suggesting.'

‘Well, it's absolute, total rubbish.' The invalid was very offended now. An insinuation of foul play was the ultimate insult to his precious symptoms. ‘I am genuinely ill, Charles, not the victim of some crazed poisoner. Honestly, you really mustn't let your imagination run away with you like this.'

‘No. No. Sorry,' said Charles.

Asking Gavin Scholes the questions he had come to Dulwich to ask did not prove easy. The director had become highly skilled at finding in any unrelated sentence a cue for further medical reminiscence. If Charles mentioned Sir Toby Belch, Gavin was prompted to details of his wind problem. Talk of the rehearsal room unearthed the coincidence that the laboratory to which his stool sample had been sent was also in Willesden. And even the word ‘production' was picked up when Gavin said, ‘Goodness, you've no idea the production they made of giving me my barium enema.'

Charles noted that Gavin had developed the true hypochondriac's possessiveness. Everything was ‘
my
'. Not just ‘
my
barium enema', but also ‘
my
consultant', ‘
my
enterologist',
my
proctologist', and so on. Charles got the feeling Gavin would only be truly happy when he was qualified to talk about ‘
my
operation'. He began to see why the new wife seized every opportunity to get out of the house and away from the unending litany of medical minutiae.

What was striking, though, was that Gavin Scholes showed absolutely no interest in how
Twelfth Night
was going. While he had been in charge, the play had consumed his every waking thought; now it was out of his hands, he might never have had anything to do with the show. He did not even express regret at the illness which had taken him away from the production. Why should he? That illness had provided him with a subject of much more consuming interest than anything the theatre could offer.

Gavin's medical monologue ensured that Charles had no problem staying an hour; indeed the promised time was almost up before he managed to shoehorn in the other questions he'd taken the trip to ask. And the only way he finally succeeded was by interrupting an account of catheterisation with the words: ‘Vasile Bogdan!'

The surprise was sufficient for Gavin Scholes to stop in his tracks and say, ‘What?'

‘I wanted to ask you something about Vasile Bogdan.'

‘Oh. Why?'

‘I just wondered how he came to be in the company.'

‘Well, he's a good actor, isn't he?'

‘Yes, but you hadn't worked with him before, had you?'

‘No. I don't only work with people I've worked with before, you know, Charles.' Gavin sounded aggrieved, though the implied criticism had been justified. He only employed actors he had worked with before or actors recommended by actors he had worked with before.

Which was why Charles next asked, ‘So who recommended Vasile to you?'

‘He auditioned for me,' Gavin replied, still a bit huffy at having his casting methods questioned.

‘But someone must've suggested his name for you to audition him.'

‘I'd heard good reports of him. I looked him up in
Spotlight
, thought he had an interesting face, so I asked him to come along for an interview.'

‘But who –?'

‘It's not as if he was completely unknown, Charles. He'd got quite a track record for good work. Even West End . . . Well, that is to say, the Old Vic.'

‘What'd he done at the Old Vic?'

‘Oh, nothing very big, but apparently he was good.'

‘You didn't see him?'

‘No.' A defensive look came into Gavin's eyes. ‘When you're busy directing, it's difficult to get to see every show that opens, you know.'

‘Sure.' The director was notorious for never going to see any productions other than his own. ‘So what was the play Vasile was in?'

‘
She Stoops to Conquer
. Just played one of Tony Lumpkin's drinking cronies, I think, but, as I said, supposed to be very good.'

‘That was the production Alexandru Radulescu did, wasn't it? Another of his “revisualisation” jobs.'

Gavin shrugged. ‘Don't know. As I said, I didn't see it.'

‘So who was it who recommended you should audition Vasile? Was it someone who you'd already cast in
Twelfth Night
?'

‘Yes. And I thought he sounded an interesting actor, so I saw him. I'm always on the lookout for new talent,' Gavin lied.

Charles patiently repeated his question yet again. ‘So who was it who first mentioned Vasile's name to you?'

‘Russ Lavery,' the director replied. ‘You know, Russ told me he'd once been taken ill with abdominal pains. Only an appendix in his case, obviously not as serious as what I've got. In fact, my consultant was just saying to me a couple of days ago, “If only we were dealing with something as straightforward as an appendix, we'd know where we stood. As it is, Mr Scholes, your case has got me completely baffled. I wouldn't be surprised if you get written up in
The Lancet,
you know. You have an extraordinarily interesting . . .'

And Gavin Scholes was back on track. Charles extricated himself with difficulty once the new wife had returned. And as he left, he felt more than a little sympathy for the look of resigned panic he saw in her eyes

THE GREAT WENSHAM Festival had been started ten years previously, on a great wave of local enthusiasm. Like many such enterprises, it had been the brainchild of one determined and charismatic individual, a local woman, who, having brought up a family, was looking for something different to consume her inexhaustible energy. The complexity of setting up an arts festival was exactly the sort of challenge she relished. By a mixture of charm, bullying, cajolery and sheer bloody-mindedness, she set up the whole thing from a standing start within a year.

And local people still talked back to the first Great Wensham Festival. There had been a raw excitement about it, the novelty of multifarious plays, concerts and exhibitions all being crammed into one week, a sense of danger. For seven days Great Wensham had ceased to be another boring little Hertfordshire town and had come to life. Local people were caught up in the communal fervour. Many volunteered to help make the festival happen; many more flocked to the scattered venues, and almost all of the artistic events were sold out.

Buoyed up by that success, the second year's festival was even more exciting. The one week was extended to two. The programme was larger and more varied; more local buildings were commandeered as venues; the recruitment of volunteers grew ever wider. Famous names were engaged to appear; national reviewers came to write about the shows. The town filled with cultural tourists; business boomed. The summer festival became established as a high spot in the Great Wensham social calendar.

That was in the early eighties, when the idea of a local arts festival was original. But over the years every tinpot town in the country started to develop its own comparable event. Artistes and agents grew cannier; the network of festivals became just another booking circuit. As it had been in the days of music hall, the same performers took the same performances round the country, often unaware that their appearance was as part of a ‘festival'. It all became predictable and not a little dull.

For Great Wensham, the rot set in when the prime mover behind the early successes left the area. Her marriage broke up – due in no small measure to the pressures of running the festival – and she moved away. Recognising that the initial thrill of that kind of festival had gone forever, she developed a new and successful career as a concert agent.

Without her dynamism, the Great Wensham Festival might have been expected to shrivel away to nothing. But by then the committees had taken over. The Great Wensham Festival Society had been born, representing the great and the good of the area. They rather liked the idea of their town continuing to host a nice, safe, contained, one-week festival. The shopkeepers were particularly keen.