Stagestruck

‘You’re asking me?’ Jean said. ‘You didn’t discuss your peculiarities with me. You wanted me and everyone else to see you as a tough little tyke – and you were, believe me, except for this one chink in the armour. I don’t think Mum and Dad ever worked out why you were like that. In those days nobody bothered with counselling or child psychology.’

‘I was hoping you might throw some light.’

‘One thing I can tell you is that you weren’t born like it. When you were a little kid you really enjoyed all that stuff, strutting around on a stage. You were Joseph in the nativity play and you volunteered to help the conjurer in a magic show. It made me squirm with embarrassment. Proper little show-off, you were.’

‘Now you mention it, I remember. I would have been five or six, then.’

‘And you did some acting.’

‘Me? Get away!’

‘In that one-act play at Surbiton.’

Another memory came back. His art teacher at junior school had recruited him for a costume piece about Richard

III. He’d played one of the boy princes murdered by the king in the Tower of London. ‘You’re right, except I wouldn’t call it acting. All I had to do was pretend to die. Fancy you remembering that.’

‘It got up my nose, that’s why. Mum and Dad had booked that holiday in North Wales, a week on a farm to coincide with my eleventh birthday, and we were supposed to be leaving home on the Friday and driving through the night, but thanks to you and your play we lost two days and finally did the journey on the Sunday.’

‘And it rained. I remember that.’

‘Did it rain! Every day. The whole holiday was a washout. We didn’t even get much sleep through that cow making pathetic sounds all night because the farmer had separated it from its calf.’

‘That’s coming back to me now.’

‘And to cap it all, on the day of my birthday for a treat they took us to the Arcadia theatre at Llandudno to see a variety show and that was when you came over all peculiar and absolutely refused to stay in there. The show hadn’t even started. You were fighting with Dad to get out. We had to leave. Oh yes, that was a birthday to remember.’

‘I wasn’t allowed to forget it,’ he said. ‘I can only think something upsetting must have happened in the play the weekend before, but I can’t work out what. I remember it as a bit of a laugh. There were two of us. I wish I could recall the other boy’s name. What age would I have been at the time?’

‘Easy. It was my eleventh birthday, so you were eight.’

‘I wonder if the actor playing the king scared me. They were only amateurs.’

‘You wouldn’t know this, Pete, not having had kids of your own,’ she said, ‘but young boys of that age don’t show their fears. They have this shell of bravado or just plain cheek, but under it are all sorts of insecurities.’

She’d touched a raw nerve, speaking of parenthood. ‘It doesn’t take a parent to know that,’ he said. ‘I was a boy myself.’

‘Why have you called me then, if you know it all?’

‘Calm down, big sister.’

‘I must admit it still irks me,’ Jean said. ‘Llandudno wasn’t the only place it happened.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘Julius Caesar at the Old Vic when I was fifteen. I was in real trouble for ducking out of that.’

‘And some other shows we might have gone to as a family. It’s a shame, but there’s no point now in making an issue of it.’

Even so, he’d heard the resentment coming down the phone. ‘We did get to one Christmas show.’

‘Treasure Island at the Mermaid Theatre with Bernard Miles as Long John Silver,’ Jean said at once.

‘Your memory is phenomenal.’

‘It was a rare treat. How did you get up the courage for that?’

‘The theatre hadn’t long been opened and we were taken on a tour as part of a school trip, so I knew what to expect, I suppose.’

‘We all wondered if you’d make a dash for the exit, but you were fine.’

‘I enjoyed it.’

‘You see? It’s all in the mind.’

He didn’t need telling. ‘You’ve been helpful.’

‘Ring me again if you ever get to the bottom of this,’ she said. ‘I’m rather curious.’

Rather curious? It’s not a crossword clue, he thought.

The call to Jean had stirred some memories, but it made no difference to the mounting tension as he walked from his car to the theatre that evening. The only consolation was that he and Ingeborg were going backstage and not into the auditorium. A notice on the stage door said Autographs Wait Here Please and he would have been happy to do so… indefinitely. He swallowed hard and followed his assistant up the steps. The security man, Charlie Binns, gave Ingeborg’s warrant card a longer look than Diamond’s, and passed no comment. The eyes registered much, however, not least that he wouldn’t, after all, be gracing the Independent colour section this week or in the foreseeable future.