‘Oh. Oh well, fine. We’ll send it there then.’ And Jem and Eric wandered off.
It gave Charles an uncomfortable feeling. True, it might be a genuine enquiry, but it could be Nigel Steen relating him to Jacqui for the first time. If so, a new hiding-place must be found quickly. Yes, it was fishy. If a new contract had to be signed urgently, why hadn’t Eric brought it to him there and then, rather than posting it? Still, there was a bit of breathing space. Maurice would never give away the Hereford Road address and very few people knew it. Even friends. Charles hated the place so much he always arranged meetings in pubs, and never took anyone there. But the incident was disquieting.
He soon forgot it as the filming restarted. It was painfully slow. Lady Laetitia had forgotten all she’d been taught in the morning and everything had to be rehearsed again. Charles felt he would scream at another repetition of ‘Not so fast, my proud beauty!’ But progress was made and, shot by shot, Jean-Luc Roussel was satisfied. (‘Not bleeding marvellous, but it’ll have to do if we’re going to get it all in before the bleeding electricians have their bleeding break.’)
Eventually Lady Laetitia and Tick made it to the minstrels’ gallery. Then there was a long break as the cameras were set up for the dramatic shot over Sir Rupert Cartland’s shoulder. Make-up girls fluttered in and out with powder puffs. Electricians looked at their watches and slowly pushed their arc-lights about. Jem handed Sir Rupert his props. Sir Rupert complained that one of the buckles on his shoes was loose (the shot was only going to reveal his right ear and shoulder). Eventually all was ready. ‘The Zombie Walks: Scene 143, Take One’-the clapper- board clapped shut. Tick advanced on his prey cowering constipated against the wall. The doors of the dining-room burst open. Sir Rupert Cartland cried, ‘No, you monster’, and a shot rang out.
Charles Paris felt a searing pain as a bullet ripped into his flesh. He crumpled up in agony.
XV
Charles really thought he was dying when he woke up the next morning. Cold tremors of fear kept shaking his whole body. It wasn’t the wound that worried him, though his arm still ached as though a steam-hammer had landed on it. Head and body felt disconnected and the foul taste in his mouth seemed to his waking mind a symptom of some terrible decay creeping over him from within.
For once it wasn’t alcohol, or at least not just alcohol. The Battle Hospital in Reading had given him a sedative to take if necessary when he was discharged. The wound was clean and dressed; there was no point in keeping him inside with such a shortage of hospital beds. So the film company organised a car to take him from Reading to Pangbourne. Jean-Luc Roussel himself had come to the hospital and fretted and fluttered about like a true Cockney sparrow. Steenway Productions were very anxious about the injury; it is the sort of thing all film companies dread, because it inevitably leads to enormous claims for compensation.
They had tried to find out how the accident had happened. The gun was a genuine late-Victorian revolver (another anachronism in a film so full of them that its period could be any time between 1700 and 1900). How live bullets had got into it no one could imagine. The props people said they hadn’t touched it; it had come like that from the place of hiring. The hiring firm were very affronted when rung up, and assured the film company that they only ever supplied blanks. No doubt a further investigation would follow.
The thought of substantial compensation didn’t comfort Charles much. It was the taste of death in his mouth that preoccupied him. He staggered out of bed and cleaned his teeth, but the taste was still there. He put his hands on the marine blue wash-basin and his body sagged forward. The face in the mirror of the marine blue bathroom cabinet looked terrified and ill. Partly he knew it was last night’s sedative, coupled with a large slug of Miles’ Chivas Regal. Coming after the sleepless night spent with Felicity, it was bound to affect him pretty badly. But more than that it was the shock, a feeling that left his body as cold as ice, and sent these involuntary convulsions through him.
He started to dress, but almost passed out with the pain from his arm. To steady himself he sank down on the side of the bed. At that moment, Juliet came into the bedroom. ‘Daddy, are you all right? I heard you moving and-’
Charles nodded weakly.
‘You look ghastly,’ she said.
‘I feel it. Here, would you help me get dressed? This bloody arm
… I can’t do anything.’
Very gently his daughter started to help him into his clothes. As she bent to pick up his trousers, she looked just like Frances. ‘Daughter and wife whom I’ll leave when I die’-the phrase came into his maudlin thoughts and he started crying convulsively.
‘Daddy, Daddy.’
‘It’s just the shock,’ he managed to get out between sobs.
‘Daddy, calm down.’ But his body had taken control and he couldn’t calm down.
‘Daddy, get back to bed. I’ll call the doctor.’
‘NO… I can’t go back to bed, because I’ve got to get to London. I’ve got to get… to London. I’ve got to get to London.’ Suddenly the repetition seemed very funny and his sobs changed to ripples of high-pitched giggles. The situation became funnier and funnier and he lay back on the bed shaken by deep gasps of laughter.
Juliet talked calmingly to no avail. Suddenly her hand lashed out and slapped his face. Hard. It had the desired effect. The convulsions stopped and Charles lay back exhausted. He still felt ill, but the hysterics seemed to have relaxed him a bit. Juliet helped him back under the bedclothes. ‘I’m going to get the doctor,’ she said, and left the room.
Charles dropped immediately into a deep sleep where lumbering Thurber cartoon figures with guns in their hands chased him through a landscape of pastel green, dotted with red flowers. There was no menace in their attack. He was running hand in hand with a girl who was Juliet or Felicity, but wearing Frances’ old white duffel coat. They stopped at a launderette. The girl, whose face was now Jacqui’s, clasped his arm and said ‘It’s a pity the Battleship Potemkin is booked for Easter.’ She kept hold of his arm and shook it till it became elastic and extended out of its socket like a conjuror’s string of handkerchiefs.
‘Mr Paris.’ Charles opened his eyes warily, disgruntled at being dragged out of his dream. ‘Mr Paris. I am Doctor Lefeuvre.’
‘Hello,’ said Charles sleepily.
‘It’s rather difficult you not being one of my regular patients, but since your daughter is, I’m stretching a point. She’s told me about your accident yesterday, but I gather that’s not what’s troubling you?’ The voice had a slight Australian twang. Charles looked at Doctor Lefeuvre. A man in his mid-thirties with dull auburn hair and a freckled face behind rectangular metal-rimmed glasses. He had very long hands, which were also covered in freckles and sported three gold rings.
‘I don’t know, Doctor. I just feel very weak and ill.’
‘The arm’s all right?’
‘It feels bruised, but that’s all.’
‘Only to be expected. Let’s just have a look at the dressing.’ He cast his eye expertly over the bandage on Charles’ arm. ‘It’s been very well done. When are you due to go back to the hospital?’
‘They’ll change the dressing next Monday.’
‘That seems fine. I won’t meddle with it then. But otherwise you’re feeling run down and ill. It’s probably just shock.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’d better have a look at you.’ And the doctor began the time-honoured ritual of taking temperature and pulses. In fact, Charles felt better now. His body had regained some warmth and the sleep had relaxed him. He just felt as if he’d run full tilt into a brick wall.
Doctor Lefeuvre looked at the temperature. ‘Hmm. That’s strange.’
‘What?’
‘You seem to have a slight temperature. Just over a hundred. That’s not really consistent with shock. Let’s
