It was Constantia, the radiant Constantia, who was looping her arm through Lichfield’s and nodding gravely at Tallulah in greeting.
Dear, dead Constantia.
The rehearsal was called for nine-thirty the following morning. Diane Duvall made an entrance her customary half hour late. She looked as though she hadn’t slept all night.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said, her open vowels oozing down the aisle towards the stage.
Galloway was in no mood for foot-kissing.
‘We’ve got an opening tomorrow,’ he snapped, ‘and everybody’s been kept waiting by you.’
‘Oh really?’ she fluttered, trying to be devastating. It was too early in the morning, and the effect fell on stony ground.
‘OK, we’re going from the top,’ Galloway announced, ‘and everybody please have your copies and a pen. I’ve got a list of cuts here and I want them rehearsed in by lunchtime. Ryan, have you got the prompt copy?’
There was a hurried exchange with the ASM and an apologetic negative from Ryan.
‘Well get it. And I don’t want any complaints from anyone, it’s too late in the day. Last night’s run was a wake, not a performance. The cues took forever; the business was ragged. I’m going to cut, and it’s not going to be very palatable.’
It wasn’t. The complaints came, warning or no, the arguments, the compromises, the sour faces and muttered insults. Galloway would have rather been hanging by his toes from a trapeze than manoeuvring fourteen highly-strung people through a play two-thirds of them scarcely understood, and the other third couldn’t give a monkey’s about. It was nerve-wracking.
It was made worse because all the time he had the prickly sense of being watched, though the auditorium was empty from Gods to front stalls. Maybe Lichfield had a spy hole somewhere, he thought, then condemned the idea as the first signs of budding paranoia.
At last, lunch.
Galloway knew where he’d find Diane, and he was prepared for the scene he had to play with her. Accusations, tears, reassurance, tears again, reconciliation. Standard format.
He knocked on the Star’s door.
‘Who is it?’
Was she crying already, or talking through a glass of something comforting.
‘It’s me.’
‘Oh.’
‘Can I come in?’
‘Yes.’
She had a bottle of vodka, good vodka, and a glass. No tears as yet.
‘I’m useless, aren’t I?’ she said, almost as soon as he’d closed the door. Her eyes begged for contradiction.
‘Don’t be silly,’ he hedged.
‘I could never get the hang of Shakespeare,’ she pouted, as though it were the Bard’s fault. ‘All those bloody words.’ The squall was on the horizon, he could see it mustering.
‘It’s all right,’ he lied, putting his arm around her. ‘You just need a little time.’
Her face clouded.
‘We open tomorrow,’ she said flatly. The point was difficult to refute.
‘They’ll tear me apart, won’t they?’
He wanted to say no, but his tongue had a fit of honesty. ‘Yes. Unless —, ‘I’ll never work again, will I? Harry talked me into this, that damn half-witted Jew: good for my reputation, he said. Bound to give me a bit more clout, he said. What does he know? Takes his ten bloody per cent and leaves me holding the baby. I’m the one who looks the damn fool aren’t I?’
At the thought of looking a fool, the storm broke. No light shower this: it was a cloudburst or nothing. He did what he could, but it was difficult. She was sobbing so loudly his pearls of wisdom were drowned out. So he kissed her a little, as any decent director was bound to do, and (miracle upon miracle) that seemed to do the trick. He applied the technique with a little more gusto, his hands straying to her breasts, ferreting under her blouse for her nipples and teasing them between thumb and forefinger.
It worked wonders. There were hints of sun between the clouds now; she sniffed and unbuckled his belt, letting his heat dry out the last of the rain. His fingers were finding the lacy edge of her panties, and she was sighing as he investigated her, gently but not too gently, insistent but never too insistent. Somewhere along the line she knocked over the vodka bottle but neither of them cared to stop and right it, so it sloshed on to the floor off the edge of the table, counter pointing her instructions, his gasps.