out loud at times. Christopher Milton’s face in repose was unremarkable, but in the character it seemed capable of infinite comic variation. It was easy to see why the show had become a cult.
And, like many cult shows, it had a catch-phrase. As the worst reversal hit him, Lionel Wilkins paused in horror, the audience laughed in anticipation, and then, with perfect timing, he said, ‘I beg yours?’ As Charles heard it, he recognised it, recognised it from shouting schoolboys in the street, giggling secretaries in the tube and half- heard impressionists on the radio. ‘I beg yours?’ was Christopher Milton; he said it and the entire nation followed him.
When Jim and Susie returned, Charles and the baby were still watching television, and between them they’d got through half the bottle of Bell’s.
CHAPTER THREE
The Welsh Dragon Club near the Elephant and Castle had been built in more elegant times as a meeting- place for expatriate Welshmen of the upper and middle classes. It then boasted four tennis courts (grass), fielded six rugby teams and held very proper dances on Saturdays. The members tended to wear blazers or tweed, they had strong religious principles and, when drunk, broke into mournful song.
The club was now lost in a forest of concrete blocks. Two of the tennis courts had been sold for development and the others were now pink shale stained with moss. The only rugby discussed in the bar was what was seen on the television and the Saturday dances had been replaced by intermittent bookings for disco-parties (which were rarely profitable because of the number of broken windows). The members had gone down in class and numbers. They tended to lounge around in jeans and patterned pullovers, propped against the moth-eaten baize of the old notice-boards, occasionally throwing a desultory dart or pulling without hope at the arm of the one fruit machine. When they got drunk, they still broke into mournful song.
The club had one paid employee, who doubled the roles of caretaker and barman. His name was Griff and he spent whole days propped over the bar reading an apparently inexhaustible copy of the Sun.
The club activities could not possibly make any profit, but the Welsh Dragon stayed open. All its revenue came from hiring out rehearsal rooms. There were two — one where old cue-racks and brass score-boards against treacle-coloured panels accentuated the absence of the long-sold billiard tables, and the other, grandly called the ‘Ballroom’, a long expanse of bare boards with a tiny stage at one end and a wall of French windows which in the old days were left open for dances after summer tournaments. Many of the window panes had been broken and covered with asymmetrical offcuts of hardboard.
Charles was directed to the Ballroom, where a flotsam of chairs and upturned benches represented the expensive set of Lumpkin! (The designs, by Derbyshire Wilkes, were elaborate and featured considerable use of revolves and flown pieces.) The scene was like any morning in any rehearsal room. Actors and actresses sat on chairs round the edges of the room like the sad wallflowers who had once moped there after missing vital backhand returns in the mixed doubles. Little clusters formed round crosswords or gossip. Bleary bodies shuffled slowly out of the cocoons of their coats. A member of the stage management moved purposefully around the room, following some logic of her own. Hangovers and television were discussed, knitting was unwound.
The director, David Meldrum, was poring over the script at a small table isolated in the middle of the room. He was balding, with rimless glasses and somehow managed the pinched look of a clerk from a Dickens serial. Charles knew him by sight and introduced himself.
‘Ah, Charles, hello. I gathered your name was being mentioned for the part. Nice to see you.’ He did not seem particularly interested in the addition to his cast. ‘Gwyneth will give you a rehearsal schedule.’
At the mention of her name, the stage management girl homed in and handed Charles a cyclostyled sheet of times and scenes. Instinctively he assessed her. Old habits die hard and one of the first moves on joining any company is to examine the available crumpet. He decided that Gwyneth looked too dauntingly efficient for his taste. Not a high cuddlability rating.
As he sat down to study the schedule, Charles reflected that it was rather pathetic for him still to be studying the crumpet. He was nearly forty-nine years old and his emotional track record was not spectacular. There was a nice wife, Frances, in Muswell Hill, with whom he hadn’t lived for fourteen years (in spite of occasional reconciliations) and who was now reputed to have a boy friend. Apart from her, it was a history of intense casual affairs, which were either too intense or too casual. Thinking about it depressed him, so he channelled his thoughts in another direction.
It was strange that David Meldrum had accepted his appearance so casually. Indeed, it was strange that the director had had no part in his selection for the role. ‘I gathered your name was being mentioned for the part.’ As if it had nothing to do with him. Charles racked his brains for any stray comments he had heard about the director and from some source he couldn’t identify he remembered the words, ‘A good technician, love, but about as much imagination as a bread-board. Ought really to be in local government. Approaches a production like planning a car park.’ That made sense. David Meldrum was a director who would see that the show got on the stage. He might not have many ideas of his own, but at least he wouldn’t argue with anyone else’s. Charles felt certain that Christopher Milton’s contract also included an Approval of Director clause.
He looked round for the star, but there was no sign of him. Five to ten. Perhaps he was one of those actors who makes a point of arriving just at the moment of the call.
As the room filled up, there were one or two familiar faces from a long time ago. He saw Michael Peyton, with whom he’d worked on his own production of She Stoops to Conquer in Cardiff. They grinned at each other across the room. A couple of other actors smiled vaguely, as unable to remember Charles’ name as he was to remember theirs.
There were few actresses. Thinking of the original play, Charles could only remember three female characters — Mrs Hardcastle, Kate Hardcastle and Miss Neville. He identified them easily. The middle-aged lady in a tweed trouser-suit and a scallop of blue-grey hair he recognised as Winifred Tuke. Good workmanlike actress. He remembered once overhearing her saying, ‘Been a feature player all my life and very happy at it — I’ve never wanted to be a star.’ She must be playing Mrs Hardcastle. The thin girl with aquiline nose and straight blonde hair must be Miss Neville and the shorter one whose mouth and teeth were attractively too large looked absolutely right for Kate Hardcastle.
Michael Peyton came over to chat and confirmed the identification. The girl playing Kate was called Lizzie Dark, apparently only a year out of Sussex University and generally believed to have a glowing future.
‘Nice looking kid, isn’t she?’ Charles observed.
‘Yes. Fairly regular boy friend. Often comes and picks her up after rehearsals.’
‘Oh, I wasn’t thinking…’
‘Of course you were.’
‘Well…’
‘There’s always the tour.’
‘Hmm.’
‘And the dancers.’
‘When do they join us?’
‘Next week. They’re rehearsing separately.’
‘How the hell do dancers fit into She Stoops to Conquer?’
‘If you think this show bears any relation to the play as we did it in Cardiff, you can’t have read the script.’
‘True. I’ve only read my scenes.’
‘There’s an actor for you. I hope you didn’t count your lines.’
‘No,’ he lied.
David Meldrum stood up and moved to the centre of the set in a rather apologetic way. ‘Um, perhaps we ought to start.’
He was interrupted by the entry of a man in a donkey-jacket, who whispered something to him and sat down on a chair adjacent to the table. He had brown curly hair and a boyish face with a snub nose, but his skin belied the impression of youth. It had that papier-mache quality which is the legacy of bad acne.
