‘A repeat? God help us all if it happens a second time. Do you blame Basil, then?
‘I don’t blame anyone. It was unfortunate, that’s all.’
‘It was bloody unfortunate in performance, I can tell you. I’m pretty experienced at covering up when other actors miss their lines, but that was impossible. If you ask me, there was something dodgy with the make-up. The rest of us used our own and we were all right.’
‘Did Clarion say anything about it before you went on?’
‘I didn’t see her. I’m on stage when the play opens, as you know. The first I knew there was anything wrong was when she came on and missed her cue and started grimacing. I gave her the line again and she screamed in my face. How is she now?’
‘Progressing, I understand, but we ought to assume she won’t be back this week. Are you okay playing opposite Gisella?’
Barnes gave a shrug. ‘She was adequate last night. Better than Clarion has ever been in rehearsal. Between you and me, we were saved from being savaged by the critics. But the play won’t transfer now. We’ll all be looking for work after Saturday night.’
‘You’ll be snapped up,’ Shearman said.
‘Do you think so?’ Barnes enjoyed that. The vanity of actors is legendary, and he was a prime example. ‘I’ll be glad to get a normal haircut. This silly Isherwood look is too much. I can’t think why he persisted with it for so long.’
‘You look the part, that’s for sure,’ Shearman said, eyeing him.
‘It doesn’t come without years of experience. Character is the actor’s overarching responsibility. I inhabit the role I’m playing and the resemblance is created in the process.’
‘Like one of those TV impressionists?’
Barnes winced at the suggestion. ‘I was thinking of the late Sir Alec Guinness. It’s from inside, you know. It isn’t the hairstyle or the make-up. It’s the self-belief. Speaking of which, I must get to my dressing room and begin my preparation.’
He’d spoken before of his preparation. He arrived early and spent at least an hour in contemplation ‘connecting emotively with the role’, as he put it. His door was closed to everyone.
‘When you arrived last night, was anyone about?’ Shear-man asked.
‘Who do you mean?’
‘Denise, for example.’
‘The dresser? I’ve no idea. She doesn’t look after me. I’m perfectly capable of dressing myself. I wear that grubby sports coat and revolting blue shirt and all I have to think about is changing my tie.’
‘I know that. I was wondering if you remembered seeing anybody.’
‘I expect there were technical people. It was a first night, for God’s sake. I wasn’t registering who was here. I went straight to my room to prepare.’
‘That would have been early?’
‘Five thirty or thereabouts.’
‘Your dressing room is close to Clarion’s.’
Barnes frowned. ‘Does that make me a suspect?’
‘Not at all. You’ve no reason to harm her. Quite the reverse. I was wondering if you heard anyone visiting her.’
‘Certainly not. The walls in this old building are two feet thick. Anyway, I was concentrating on my role and, if you don’t mind me saying so, you should do the same. I don’t think you should play detective. It’s a job for an expert. Let’s hope we don’t have need of one.’
5
Lately, instead of meeting for pub meals, Diamond and Paloma Kean had taken to going for walks. The suggestion had come from Paloma after Diamond boasted that he hadn’t needed to buy a new belt for some years. She’d pointed out that it wasn’t the size of belt that mattered, but the bulge above it. They still had the pub meals, but now they walked first, on the understanding that they finished at a recommended watering hole. He hadn’t yet given up pies and chips and she was tactful enough not to suggest it.
That evening found them on the Widcombe Flight, which has nothing to do with aircraft. They were walking the towpath of the Kennet and Avon Canal, tracking the seven locks built in the early eighteen hundreds to drive the waterway uphill, out of central Bath and eventually all the way to Reading. Their objective was not so far off: the George Inn at Bathampton.
His friendship with Paloma was still just that. Neither of them wanted to co-habit. They slept together sometimes, finding joy, support and consolation in each other’s company. You could have taken them for man and wife, but you would have been wrong. Diamond’s marriage to Steph had been written in the stars and her sudden, violent death had made a void in his life that no one could fill. He would go to his grave loving her still.
Paloma’s situation couldn’t have been more different: she’d gone through a disastrous marriage to a man in the grip of a gambling compulsion. She had tried all ways to reform him and not succeeded. Through her own efforts at building up a business they had stayed afloat financially and raised a son, but ultimately Gordon had dumped her for an older, richer woman willing to fund his bets. Her son, too, was irreparably lost to her. After the divorce she had immersed herself in her career, amassing a unique archive of fashion illustrations used by film and television companies around the world. The business had become the source of her self-esteem. She trusted it, identified with it. She couldn’t imagine marrying another man.
