and I shot off to phone for an ambulance. But just before I went, I heard her say something to Willy, or at least I think I did.’
Charles felt the excitement prickling over his shoulders and neck. ‘What did she say?’
‘She said, “Willy, you pushed me.”’
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Be thou my park, and I will be thy dear,”
(So he began at least to speak or quote;)
“Be thou my bark, and I thy gondolier,”
(For passion takes this figurative note;)
“Be thou my light, and I thy chandelier;
Be thou my dove, and I will be thy cote;
My lily be, and I will be thy river;
Be thou my life-and I will be thy liver.”
The show biz razzmatazz of first nights was invented before the development of lunch time theatre. There is something incongruous about flowers and telegrams for a first lunch. Charles did not get any, anyway. There was no one to send them. Maurice Skellem was the only person outside Edinburgh who knew the show was happening and he was not the sort to spend his client’s money on fulsome gestures. Charles deliberately had not told his ex- wife Frances that he was going up to the Festival as another hack at the fraying but resilient umbilical cord that joined him to her.
But the first night excitement was there. He walked from Coates Gardens to the Masonic Hall with a jumpy step, a little gurgling void of anticipation in his stomach. To his relief, the odious Plug had been replaced by an amiable young man called Vernon, who was not only efficient in the rehearsal but was also staying for the show. It made Charles feel more confident. And more scared. With the technical side under control, no excuses were possible; it was his responsibility entirely.
He calmed himself by hard work. One run of the show for Vernon’s benefit, to get the cues right; then a quick double-check through all the slides; finally an as-per performance run which was depressingly pedestrian. As it should be. Charles believed in the old theatrical adage about bad dress rehearsals leading to good first nights.
A few more details checked, then down to the pub about twelve-thirty for a quick one. Just one; mustn’t risk slurring. Vernon was quiet and reassuring, a good companion for last-minute anxieties. Yes, he would hold the last fade. Yes, he would anticipate the slide of The Last Man sitting on the gallows. No, he didn’t think there was too much serious stuff in the programme. No, he didn’t think the dark suit was too anonymous.
Back at the hall Brian Cassells was in charge as Front of House Manager. Apparently he felt that evening dress was obligatory for this role, though he looked a little out of place penguined up at lunch time. He admitted to Charles that advance sales were not that good (three seats), but he had great hopes for casual trade during the next twenty minutes.
Sharp on one fifteen the show started. Charles had felt on the edge of nausea as he waited to enter in the blackout, but as usual actually being onstage gave him a sense of calm and control.
The imperfect masking of the hall’s windows meant that the audience was visible, but he did not dare to look until he had received some reaction. The watershed was Faithless Nellie Gray; nothing expected on I Remember, I Remember and the rest of the preamble. But the first Pathetic Ballad should get something.
Ben Battle was a soldier bold,
And used to war’s alarms;
But a cannon-ball took off his legs,
So he laid down his arms.
Yes, a distinct laugh. And the laughs built through the ensuing stanzas. Not a big sound, but warming.
Emboldened, he inspected the audience as he recited. About twenty, which, on the first day of the Festival, with negative publicity, was not bad. On a second glance he realised that a lot of it was paper, members of D.U.D.S. who had been allowed in free. There was a little knot of revue cast, dark figures grouped around Anna’s shining head. James Milne leant forward in his seat with intense concentration. There were only about eight faces Charles did not recognise. And some of those might be complimentaries for the critics. Maurice Skellern was not going to be over-impressed by ten per cent of fifty per cent of that lot.
But it was an audience. And they were responding. Charles enjoyed himself.
The Laird insisted on taking him out to lunch. They went to an Indian restaurant on Forrest Place and managed to persuade the waiter it was still early enough for them to have a bottle of wine. After a couple of glasses Charles felt better. The immediate reaction after a show was always emptiness, even depression, and the ability to remember only the things that went wrong. Gradually it passed; alcohol always speeded the process.
So did enthusiastic response to the show. And James Milne was very enthusiastic. He had only known the familiar poems of Hood, the ones which have become cliches by repetition, November, A Retrospective Review, The Song of the Shirt and the inevitable I Remember, I Remember. The broadening of the picture which Charles’ show had given obviously excited him. The punning and other verbal tricks appealed to his crossword mind. ‘I had no idea there was so much variety, Charles. I really must get hold of a Complete Works. Is there a good edition?’
‘There’s an Oxford one, but I don’t know if it’s in print.’ You might be able to pick up a second-hand one somewhere. Or there are some fairly good selections. But look, if you want to borrow mine, do. I should know my words by now.’ He held the copy across the table.
The Laird was touched. By his values, lending a book was the highest form of friendship. ‘That’s very kind. I’ll look after it.’
‘I know you will.’
‘And I’ll make it a priority to find one for myself. Oh, you know I envy that kind of facility with words. Not just the facility-we all happen on puns occasionally-but the ability to create something out of it. It must be wonderful to be a writer.’
‘I don’t know. It was hard graft for Hood. If he hadn’t had to work so hard, he might have lived longer.’
‘Yes, but at least it’s congenial graft. I mean, writing, you’re on your own, you get on with it, you don’t have to keep getting involved with other people. You just write and send your stuff off and that’s it. A sort of remote control way of making a living.’
Charles laughed out loud. ‘James, you’ve got it all wrong. Hood would disagree with you totally. He didn’t just sit at a desk toying with his muse and packing the products off in envelopes to editors. All his life was spent scurrying round, selling his own work, sub-editing other people’s, setting up magazines. No question of remote control, his Liveli-Hood, as he kept calling it, was very much involved with other people.’
‘But some writers don’t have to do all that, Charles.’
‘Very few. In my own experience of writing plays, about ten per cent of the time is spent actually writing; ninety per cent is traipsing round like a peddler, hawking the results to managements or television companies.’
‘Oh dear. So what you are saying is that a writer’s life is just as sordid and ordinary as everyone else’s?’
‘If not more so. Hood himself, in his Copyright and Copywrong, said of writers, “We are on a par with quack doctors, street preachers, strollers, ballad-singers, hawkers of last dying speeches, Punch and Judies, conjurers, tumblers and other diverting vagabonds.”’
‘How very disappointing. I think I’d rather forget you told me that and keep my illusions of ivory towers and groves of Academe.’
They talked further about writing. James Milne admitted that he would have liked to produce something himself, but never got around to it. ‘Which means perhaps that I haven’t really got anything to say.’
‘Maybe. Though writing doesn’t have to say anything. It can just be there to entertain,’ said Charles,
