Staging Death Read Online Free PDF Page A

‘I had to let Robbie go, Vena. Just remember that.’

CHAPTER THREE
    Meredith Thrale was born to brood, in the manner of the young Richard Burton. Looking decidedly less than his forty-odd summers, he was brooding very thoroughly indeed over a glass of Old Speckled Hen in the Poacher’s Pocket, one of three pubs in Moreton St Jude. When I’d phoned to suggest lunch – we were old mates, after all, and providing a bit of moral support was what mates did – I thought a village pub away from the actors crawling over Stratford would make for a less anguished meal. And Moreton St Jude just happened to be a mile or so from Little Cuffley Court, where I’d shown an entranced Mrs Wimpole around the sunlit, sheltered garden crammed with spring flowers. As to the house, if, as I suggested, you mentally stripped out all the heavy Victorian furniture and replaced it with the Regency equivalent (I tacitly assumed her bankbalance was up to it), then it was irresistible. It was too. I almost frothed with envy. I could have played Iago and his green-eyed monster with the best of them.
    Just as Meredith could have done. His air of latent menace would have been ideal.
    ‘I’m line perfect, Vee,’ he declared as the blood running from his expensive steak congealed. ‘I know all the moves. God knows how often I’ve had to walk Howard through them when he was pissed. Which was every day. I prayed – I’m sorry, but I prayed every day he might just, one lunchtime, have one too many and I could go on. It’s what understudies bloody do, isn’t it? Yes, even a matinee, with the house packed with school kids, would have been something,’ he admitted bitterly. ‘I could have done it. And what happens? Bloody Toby Frensham steps forward and says, “I’ll do that”, and they all clap their hands and jump up and down like so many children at a party. It’s always been their policy to use understudies, for God’s sake.’
    I nodded. ‘I know just how you feel, darling. Been there, done that. I’ve got a drawer positively bulging with T-shirts. Yes, and sweatshirts.’ So that he would have time to eat a few mouthfuls, I listed my disappointments. Not that he’d be interested. No one really got delighted over someone else’s success; equally the only pain ofrejection anyone could truly empathise with was their own.
    Tolstoy made much the same point, didn’t he, about families?
    Oh, dear, how long ago was it that I’d played Anna? The tour had gone on for ever. Now Karenin was dead of AIDS, and Vronsky had just had his civil partnership registered in LA. If I’d been able to rake together the fare, I’d have been Best Woman.
    ‘…could kill him!’ He clenched his fingers so fiercely that the knuckles whitened.
    ‘Sorry, darling? I was away with the fairies. Kill who? Whom?’ I corrected myself.
    ‘Bloody Frensham, of course. God, what a shit that man is.’
    I had to be careful. Rumour had it that Merry had taken up acting during a spell in gaol for manslaughter. Naturally I’d never asked him point-blank if it were true, perhaps because I suspected it might have some origins in truth, at least. Toby was right – he did exude violence. ‘Darling, surely if the director had known how much…’ No, that wasn’t going anywhere. ‘I mean, the director must have asked for him, or his agent wouldn’t have approached him and he couldn’t have said yes. You don’t just stroll up and say, “I want to play Iago”, do you?’
    ‘Frensham does. I tell you straight, Vee, if Icould have got hold of him when the news came out, I’d have killed him with my bare hands. Now I shall try something more subtle.’
    My forkful of poached salmon stopped halfway to my mouth, now unaccountably dry. Off stage I’d never heard a death threat before, and coming on the heels of Brosnic’s latent brutality I found it hard to deal with adequately. ‘Such as?’
    ‘Oh, I don’t know. But I shall do such things…’
    I kept my tone