And it was strange how in all those shows, all those performances, a whole season’s worth, you hardly stopped to think—she never thought about it as she looked at her face in the mirror and placed the tiara, like a regular coronation, in her hair: The sea is right beneath us now. Right beneath us now the waves are swishing and swirling, the fish are darting, the seaweed is swaying this way and that. If the stage were to open up we’d all go tumbling through into the water.
• • •
Jack Robbins was ‘Jack Robinson’ then. In his time he would play too many roles to count or remember. Some would slip over him and be gone like mere tryings-on—the cameo parts in films—but some would stick and the problem would be how to get rid of them. How to convince the punters who recognised him on the street (it would happen) that he and they were not the same person.
Or rather, sometimes, how not. How to inwardly grit the teeth while outwardly grinning, and take that little invisible step—they wouldn’t see it—and give them the catchphrases, the lines, the gestures and faces that they wanted. Amazing! Like that chancer-cum-clown-cum-hard-pressed-family-man, Terry Treadwell in Such is Life, the show that put him, according to George Cohen, ‘before the nation’. And Evie didn’t disagree.
If Evie was there—with the punters and pesterers, the autograph-seekers—he might feel her little prod, her squeeze of his elbow, but even if she wasn’t he would hear her whisper in his ear. ‘Go on, Jack. Do it. One more time. Be Terry Treadwell.’
The show that put quite a lot of dosh in the bank, and quite a lot of it in George’s. And made his name. Jack Robbins. Or Terry Treadwell. Which bloody one was he?
But one day, finally, he somehow got out of ‘being’ Terry Treadwell, or Terry Treadwell, poor man, just ceased to ‘be’ himself. He wouldn’t like to put a date on when Terry Treadwell expired. He’d had his time, poor fool, then just slipped into memory. Wasn’t Jack Robbins in that sitcom thing, years ago? What was the name of it, what was that character again? Tommy somebody, Teddy somebody?
Other roles would come and some of them he would just enter like a dream, he would just float in them as if they’d always been waiting for him. Like his first big Shakespearean role, Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Speaking of dreams. Puck. No jokes please. He was a ‘brilliant Puck’. A revelation. Was this the same man, they asked, who’d been Terry Treadwell? Well yes, it was.
But that too would pass into memory. Wasn’t he Puck once, at Stratford, a great Puck (or, as he’d liked pedantically to point out, Robin Goodfellow).
And no smutty jokes please. My wife always thought I could be a great Puck, if I really tried. Like, before her, too many girls to remember. But none after. Seriously.
So who was ever going to remember Jack Robinson? Especially as that summer, that September, Jack Robinson simply ceased to be too, simply sidled away, his time was up, never to return. Who was going to remember? Except himself of course, publicly but cryptically, every time he said, ‘Oh just an old song-and-dance man.’
‘I was brought up on variety, you know. Spice of life. All a long time ago. Acting? You must be joking.’
• • •
But there he’d been, standing in the wings, and there was no other role for him. And this wasn’t just some part written by someone else like those he’d be offered in the future, of which George might say—but there was no George then—‘This might interest you, sunshine.’ He had invented Jack Robinson himself. How the hell had that happened? His own stupid fault. And now he had to be him. Every bloody show. It wasn’t acting? And by now, of course, they all believed he was him. And he loved and he hated the poor strutting bastard.
Now some of them were even starting to shout, ‘Where’s Jack?! Where’s Jack?!’ Well it was his own name, so which one did they mean? ‘Where’s Jack?!’ What a fucking rabble.
Some people, stage hands, seeing him standing there frozen in the wings, would think he was just milking it. There he goes again. They couldn’t see that it was one of those nights when it wasn’t just a step, it was a cliff edge, and he was sick with confusion and terror. And there was no one to push him. Except himself of course. Or once upon a time his mother, who’d hopped it long ago with a garage owner. A garage owner! I ask you, folks. His mother who’d once done music hall, who’d once been known among other names (shy little dairymaid as she’d been) as Betty Butter. ‘I’m Betty Butter and I’m all of aflutter . . .’ So she had sung once.
And there was no Evie to give him the shove. Not yet, not yet. How did you push yourself in the back?
‘Where’s Jack?! Where’s Jack?!’ They would turn it into a chant soon, and of course everyone thought it was wonderful—even he thought it was wonderful—he was milking it, creaming it, lapping it up. ‘Where’s Jack?!’
And then it would happen. How did it happen? He stepped off the edge, but was still there. Not plummeting. There was the bath of the stage lights and then, just for doing it, just for walking on, it seemed, the sea of applause. And then, before you could say—
‘Here I am! Here I am! Well I never! Well I thought I could hear someone calling. Well, are you all having a good time?’
‘Ye-es!!’
‘Well in that case I’ll be off then!’
• • •
He was Jack Robinson. Who else? And what would the show have been without him? Some people would have said he was
