‘Ah yes. You wrote Liberty Hall.’
‘In a previous existence, I think.’ His voice had the rough blur of a hangover and there was a large Scotch on a table beside the fruit machine. Having registered his protest, he seemed to lose interest in the two actors and, with an air of self-mortification, pressed another ten pence into the slot. Or maybe he turned away as a deliberate snub to the man entering the bar. ‘Morning, everyone. Hello, Griff. Charles Paris, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Delighted you’re with us on the show.’
Charles took the offered firm handshake and looked into the clear, honest face. ‘My name’s Christopher Milton.’
CHAPTER FOUR
The next few weeks were an education for Charles. The sort of theatre he had always concentrated on had not depended on stars. Christopher Milton was a star.
At their initial meeting he was charming. There was only a short break in rehearsal, but he devoted it all to the new member of the company. And he had done his homework. He referred to incidents in Charles’ career which he could not have guessed at, but which showed genuine interest or research. He spoke flatteringly about the one successful play Charles had written, The Ratepayer. In fact all the right things were said and Charles was impressed. He saw once again the distorting mirror of showbiz rumour at work. Reputations get inflated and diminished by gossip and scandal. One bitchy remark by a jealous actor can give the permanent stigma of being ‘difficult’ to another. Time and again Charles had encountered supposedly ‘lovely’ people who were absolute monsters and been charmed by supposed monsters. And he found Christopher Milton charming.
As rehearsals developed and he began to feel part of the company, it was increasingly difficult to take Gerald’s fears of sabotage seriously. There was an air of tension about the production, but no more than one would expect from any show at that stage of development. Charles’ role was not an onerous one, and Griff’s ever-open bar was an ideal place to toast Gerald’s excessive anxiety which had got him the job.
He had a slight twinge of misgiving as the Tuesday approached. Gerald had made such an issue of the fact that the two accidents had taken place exactly a week apart. If there were a psychopathic wrecker about, determined to ruin the show, then he would strike again on the Tuesday.
Charles went to rehearsal that morning with some trepidation but the day passed and there wasn’t so much as a cold among the cast. He decided that he had just landed on his feet in an acting job. Eighty pounds a week and sucks to the taxman.
He had not seen much of the show except for the scenes which involved him, but on the Wednesday he decided to stay on after he’d finished. They were rehearsing the Chase Scene at the end.
Now Goldsmith did not write a Chase Scene. In his play Tony Lumpkin meets Hastings and describes how he has just led Mrs Hardcastle and Miss Neville on a circular wild goose chase until, ‘with a circumbendibus, I fairly lodged them in the horse-pond at the bottom of the garden’. But description is not the stuff of West End musicals. Kevin McMahon had written a small chase into Liberty Hall and had been persuaded to expand it for Lumpkin! The result was a massive production number with song and dance, as Tony Lumpkin actually led the two ladies in their coach through mire and thicket. The dancers, playing a series of misdirecting yokels, buxom country wenches and a full-scale fox hunt which would have amazed Goldsmith, were rehearsing elsewhere on their own, and the special effects of fog, rain and snow were not yet available. Nor was it possible to simulate the moving trees and revolving cottages which were to add visual excitement to the scene. But it was already a complicated sequence and an interesting one to watch.
It also gave Charles his first opportunity to see Christopher Milton in action, building a part. The result was impressive. Tony Lumpkin was emerging as a complete comic character, totally different from Lionel Wilkins. The London whine of the television con-man had been replaced by a rich West Country accent and instead of sentimental incompetence, there was a roguishly knowing confidence. Charles began to feel that Dickie Peck’s claims for his client’s talent were not so ridiculous.
David Meldrum had by now been nicknamed David Humdrum and it fitted. He ordered people round the acting space like a suburban gardener laying a patio. Everything had to be exactly in place, every move exactly matching the neat plans in his script. But it was not the perfectionism of genius; it was the predictability of a man who had worked out his blocking with pins on a stage model long before rehearsals had started.
Still, it was professional and efficient. The production advanced. And for a complex commercial show it’s probably better to have a good journeyman than a genius.
Anyway, David Meldrum was only providing the skeleton; the flesh was the performances. And Christopher Milton was fleshing up nicely. He had a song called Lead ’em Astray, for which Micky Gorton had written some most ungoldsmithian lyrics.
‘Get them going
The wrong way.
There’s no knowing
What they’ll say.
Hey, hey, hey,
Lead ’em astray.’
If Gorton’s lyrics did have a fault it was a tendency to the non-specific. They had been written not to advance the plot, but to be taken out of the show and recorded by pop stars. However, Carl Anthony’s tunes were good and Lead ’em Astray, in spite of its anachronism, captured the excitement and mischief of Tony Lumpkin. In Christopher Milton’s performance, even with just the rehearsal piano, it was a potential show-stopper.
It was also very funny. His movements were beautiful. They showed the clodhopping clumsiness of the character and yet they were very precise. He darted round the two chairs which represented Mrs Hardcastle’s coach and wove his way through the other chairs which were trees. On the chorus of the song he froze for a moment, then jerked forward like a car left in gear, then stopped and flashed a look of sheer devilment at the audience. The timing made the gesture hilarious; even the cast who had seen it many times before laughed spontaneously. He seemed encouraged by the reaction and in the next verse his movements became more grotesque and jerky. He bounced up to the coach and pecked forward like a chicken with a head that suddenly seemed disconnected from his body. There was a splutter from Miss Neville, the unmistakable sound of someone ‘corpsing’. Christopher Milton rose to it and varied the steps of his dance into a strange little jig. This struck Miss Neville as even funnier and soon she was gaping, incapable with laughter, while tears flowed down her cheeks.
The laughter spread. Mrs Hardcastle started, then one by one, the watching actors caught it. Charles found himself giggling uncontrollably. It was one of those moments of communal hysteria which cannot be explained, but where everything suddenly gets funnier and funnier.
Only Christopher Milton stayed in control. The pianist was laughing too much to continue playing, but the star sang and danced on to the end of the number. His movements got faster and stranger and funnier until suddenly at the end he dropped flat on his back.
The timing was immaculate. It was the perfect end to the sequence. And it was impossible not to applaud. Charles, who was almost in pain from laughing, joined the others clapping.
As the noise subsided into scattered gasps and deep breaths, a strange stillness came over the room. Christopher Milton was still the focus of attention, but the mood had changed. Everyone watched him as he sat up, but he did not seem to be aware of them. He rose pensively to his feet, and moved slowly forward. ‘I think we can do more with that,’ he said.
The remark did not seem to be addressed to anyone in particular, but David Meldrum, as director, felt that he should pick it up. ‘What do you mean, Christopher?’
‘I mean there’s not enough happening on stage in that number.’
‘Well, of course, we haven’t got the dancers yet, and the — ’
‘Shut up. I’m thinking.’ He said it dismissively, as if he were swatting a fly. Then slowly: ‘We need more movement from me, bobbing up all over the place… Yes, we need doubles.’
‘Doubles?’
