masseur. Every day, my exes are offered millions to tell all.’
‘How d’you cope?’ said Declan.
‘I don’t read press cuttings any more. I just weigh them; if they’re light I start worrying.’
‘By deliberately avoiding publicity, aren’t you actually courting it?’
‘Don’t give me that crap,’ said Johnny lightly.
And they were off, sparring, laughing, fooling about almost like two old friends discussing someone they knew and liked, but frequently disapproved of. Johnny was being absolutely outrageous now about his exploits with his leading ladies, but he drawled out his answers so honestly and engagingly that the press quickly forgave him for his earlier sniping. The lawyers were clutching their heads, but they were laughing and even the ex-Prebendary was looking moderately benign.
It’s going to be all right, thought Cameron. ‘Ten minutes to the commercial break, Declan,’ she said into his earpiece. Following a tip-off from Rupert, Declan then said, ‘And you’re about to face your greatest acting challenge. .’
Johnny raised an eyebrow.
’. . playing Hamlet at Stratford next year,’ said Declan.
Johnny looked startled. Upstairs the board room was in an uproar.
‘No one knows that,’ screamed the lawyers. ‘The god-dammed contracts haven’t been fucking exchanged yet.’
‘I figured I ought to have a crack at it,’ said Johnny. ‘Women don’t get taken seriously as actresses these days until they allow themselves to look ugly and sweaty and get raped on screen. Guys still have to play Hamlet. And I like the guy. I mean he had a stepfather problem. I don’t figure Claudius bumped off Hamlet’s father at all. That was Hamlet’s fantasy; he hated his stepfather. I hated mine.’
‘Why?’
‘He married my mother. I was jealous. He was a bass-tard.’
‘Why?’
Tony drew on his cigar; the lawyers fingered their calculators; even the press were still.
Declan paused, waiting unbearably long. On his pale-blue island in a sea of dark blue, Johnny suddenly seemed terribly vulnerable.
‘He groped my baby sister the whole time,’ he said. ‘So I quit. My stepfather called to say my mother was dying of cancer. I didn’t believe him, so I didn’t go home.’ Johnny put his head in his hands. ‘But she did die the next day. She topped herself. I ain’t never told no one that.’
‘Why did she commit suicide?’ asked Declan quietly.
Johnny looked up, his eyes cavernous. ‘She was jealous because my stepfather preferred my sister. Christ, what a mess.’
‘Out of order,’ screamed the lawyers apoplectically. The Prebendary was looking equally outraged.
‘Are you worried, being American, you won’t be taken seriously as Hamlet?’ asked Declan.
Relieved at a change of subject, Johnny fast recovered his poise. ‘He was a Dane, for Christ’s sake. He didn’t speak like Leslie Howard.’
In the bar James and the lady novelist exchanged caring smiles.
‘It’s the acting that matters,’ went on Johnny. ‘I could play him like JR.’
He launched into ‘To be or not to be’ in broad Texan; it was so funny, the cameramen could hardly keep their cameras still. Halfway through Johnny slid into Prince Charles’s accent, which was even funnier; then for the last ten lines, he played it straight and was so good that Declan felt his hair standing on end. At the end, Johnny said, ‘That’ll be five hundred pounds, please,’ in a camp Cockney accent.
‘You’ll be taken seriously,’ said Declan.
‘I can switch moods, that’s why I’m a good movie actor,’ said Johnny. ‘But to be on stage four hours, that’s something else. But then I’ve always lived dangerously. . ’
Declan took a deep breath. ‘Is that why you went back to America to face trial?’
‘That is definitely out of order,’ screamed the lawyers, positively orgasmic now at the prospect of lucrative litigation. ‘We agreed he wouldn’t talk about that.’
‘I went back because I missed the States,’ said Johnny. He still appeared relaxed, but his knuckles were white points as he gripped the arms of his chair.
‘Have you always fancied very young girls?’
‘Sure, if they’re pretty. Most men do. This one was very pretty.’
‘Did you know she was only fourteen?’
The Prebendary was about to have a seizure.
‘I think you ought to have a word with the control room,’ he spluttered to Tony.
‘Sure, I guess it was wrong, but she was so sweet, I really cared for her. I know I screwed her, but I don’t figure I screwed her up. She’s very happily married with a baby now.’
‘How d’you get on in prison?’
Johnny’s eyes were cavernous again. ‘It’s not a very nice place to be. But if you’re a famous movie star you’re trapped anyway; going to gaol is just exchanging one kind of captivity for another. And I learnt a lot. I could burglarize your place tonight, while you were in it. And I’m shit-hot at insider trading.’
Declan stretched out his legs.
‘Extraordinary coloured socks,’ said the girl from the
‘Did they give you a hard time inside?’ Declan asked Johnny.
‘Not really. One guy who couldn’t count — he thought the girl was four not fourteen — worked me over a bit, but I made some good friends.’
‘Have you never fancied older women?’
Johnny thought for a minute, then he smiled wickedly.
‘No, they have droopy asses. Droopy asses are so cold in bed.’
The telephone rang in the control room.
‘For Christ’s sake, get him off sex,’ yelled Tony. ‘The lawyers are going to take us to the cleaners, and Fergus Penney’s having a coronary. We’ll lose the franchise if you don’t shut him up.’
‘It’s a fucking good programme,’ said Cameron, and hung up.
Then she took the telephone off the hook.
‘Five seconds to the cue dot,’ intoned Daysee. ‘Five, four, three, two, one.’ She flicked the cue switch to warn people all over the network to get ready in sixty seconds to roll in the commercials, which were, after all, the life- blood of the station.
As the End-of-Part-One caption came up, Johnny shot out of the studio, saying he must have a leak.
‘You stay here,’ Cameron screamed at Daysee. ‘Well done, Declan.’
Johnny may not have been able to have Daysee in the break, but he had certainly taken something. In the second half he was even more outrageous, but utterly relaxed. Declan, in his wizard’s chair, had only to prompt him here, jog his memory there, and curb his amazing honesty when he looked like going over the top.
The floor manager thrust the back of his hand with splayed-out fingers towards Declan to indicate five minutes more.
‘I was on location in Texas,’ Johnny was saying as he waved his cigarette around. ‘Staying in my hotel was this glorious German girl. She gave me her room number, told me to come up in half an hour. I must have been looped. When I hotfooted upstairs later and banged on her door, someone let me in, but the room was in darkness.’
‘Oh Christ,’ thought Cameron. ‘What’s he going to say?’
‘Well, I undressed and got into bed, and I reached out, and I felt a boob, like a wrinkled fig. I figured this was odd. Then moving down I found I could play Grieg’s Piano Concerto on her ribs, so I groped for the light, and there were her teeth grinning at me from a glass beside the bed. I don’t know which of us screamed the louder. I mean, she must have been ninety, if she was a day. I mean, under-age girls are one thing, gerontophilia’s quite another.’ Johnny smiled helplessly.
‘Disgusting,’ spluttered the Prebendary and Valerie Jones in unison.
‘Anyway I shot down the bed as the security men broke in, and the old sweetie didn’t give me away. I sent
