Stephen Jones (ed) Read online

  And that face. It was wonderfully alive, the features playing the story of her speech with delicate economy.

  She was enchanting.

  "I'm sorry," said Hammersmith, "but there are rules and regulations about this sort of thing. Is she Equity?"

  "No," said Lichfield.

  "Well you see, it's impossible. The union strictly precludes this kind of thing. They'd flay us alive."

  "What's it to you, Hammersmith?" said Calloway. "What the fuck do you care? You'll never need set foot in a theatre again once this place is demolished."

  "My wife has watched the rehearsals. She is word perfect."

  "It could be magic," said Calloway, his enthusiasm firing up with every moment he looked at Constantia.

  "You're risking the Union, Calloway," Hammersmith chided.

  "I'll take that risk."

  "As you say, it's nothing to me. But if a little bird was to tell them, you'd have egg on your face."

  "Hammersmith: give her a chance. Give all of us a chance. If Equity blacks me, that's my look-out." Hammersmith sat down again.

  "Nobody'll come, you know that, don't you? Diane Duvall was a star; they would have sat through your turgid production to see her, Calloway. But an unknown…? Well, it's your funeral. Go ahead and do it, I wash my hands of the whole thing. It's on your head, Calloway, remember that. I hope they flay you for it."

  "Thank you," said Lichfield. "Most kind."

  Hammersmith began to rearrange his desk, to give more prominence to the bottle and the glass. The interview was over: he wasn't interested in these butterflies any longer.

  "Go away," he said. "Just go away."

  "I have one or two requests to make," Lichfield told Calloway as they left the office. "Alterations to the production which would enhance my wife's performance."

  "What are they?"

  "For Constantia's comfort, I would ask that the lighting levels be taken down substantially. She's simply not accustomed to performing under such hot, bright lights."

  "Very well."

  "I'd also request that we install a row of footlights."

  "Footlights?"

  "An odd requirement, I realize, but she feels much happier with footlights."

  "They tend to dazzle the actors," said Calloway. "It becomes difficult to see the audience."

  "Nevertheless… I have to stipulate their installation."

  "OK."

  "Thirdly - I would ask that all scenes involving kissing, embracing or otherwise touching Constantia be re-directed to remove every instance of physical contact whatsoever."

  "Everything?"

  "Everything."

  "For God's sake why?"

  "My wife needs no business to dramatize the working of the heart, Terence."

  That curious intonation on the word "heart". Working of the heart.

  Calloway caught Constantia's eye for the merest of moments. It was like being blessed.

  "Shall we introduce our new Viola to the company?" Lichfield suggested. "Why not?" The trio went into the theatre.

  The re-arranging of the blocking and the business to exclude any physical contact was simple. And though the rest of the cast were initially wary of their new colleague, her unaffected manner and her natural grace soon had them at her feet. Besides, her presence meant that the show would go on.

  At six, Calloway called a break, announcing that they'd begin the Dress at eight, and telling them to go out and enjoy themselves for an hour or so. The company went their ways, buzzing with a new-found enthusiasm for the production. What had looked like a shambles half a day earlier now seemed to be shaping up quite well. There were a thousand things to be sniped at, of course: technical shortcomings, costumes that fitted badly, directorial foibles. All par for the course. In fact, the actors were happier than they'd been in a good while. Even Ed Cunningham was not above passing a compliment or two.

  Lichfield found Tallulah in the Green Room, tidying.

  "Tonight…"

  "Yes, sir."

  "You must not be afraid."

  "I'm not afraid," Tallulah replied. "What a thought. As if- "

  "There may be some pain, which I regret. For you, indeed for all of us."

  "I understand."

  "Of course you do. You love the theatre as I love it: you know the paradox of this profession. To play life… ah, Tallulah, to play life… what a curious thing it is. Sometimes I wonder, you know, how long I can keep up the illusion."

  "It's a wonderful performance," she said.

  "Do you think so? Do you really think so?" He was encouraged by her favourable review. It was so galling, to have to pretend all the time; to fake the flesh, the breath, the look of life. Grateful for Tallulah's opinion, he reached for her.

  "Would you like to die, Tallulah?"

  "Does it hurt?"

  "Scarcely at all."

  "It would make me very happy."

  "And so it should."

  His mouth covered her mouth, and she was dead in less than a minute, conceding happily to his inquiring tongue. He laid her out on the threadbare couch and locked the door of the Green Room with her own key. She'd cool easily in the chill of the room, and be up and about again by the time the audience arrived.

  At six-fifteen Diane Duvall got out of a taxi at the front of the Elysium. It was well dark, a windy November night, but she felt fine; nothing could depress tonight. Not the dark, not the cold.

  Unseen, she made her way past the posters that bore her face and name, and through the empty auditorium to her dressing room. There, smoking his way through a pack of cigarettes, she found the object of her affection.

  "Terry."

  She posed in the doorway for a moment, letting the fact of her reappearance sink in. He went quite white at the sight of her, so she pouted a little. It wasn't easy to pout. There was a stiffness in the muscles of her face but she carried off the effect to her satisfaction.

  Calloway was lost for words. Diane looked ill, no two ways about it, and if she'd left the hospital to take up her part in the Dress Rehearsal he was going to have to convince her otherwise. She was wearing no make-up, and her ash-blonde hair needed a wash.

  "What are you doing here?" he asked, as she closed the door behind her.

  "Unfinished business," she said.

  "Listen… I've got something to tell you…"

  God, this was going to be messy. "We've found a replacement, in the show." She looked at him blankly. He hurried on, tripping over his own words, "We thought you were out of commission, I mean, not permanently, but, you know, for the opening at least…"

  "Don't worry," she said.

  His jaw dropped a little.

  "Don't worry?"

  "What's it to me?"

  "You said you came back to finish - "

  He stopped. She was unbuttoning the top of her dress. She's not serious, he thought, she can't be serious. Sex? Now?

  "I've done a lot of thinking in the last few hours," she said as she shimmied the crumpled dress over her hips, let it fall, and stepped out of it. She was wearing a white bra, which she tried, unsuccessfully, to unhook. "I've decided I don't care about the theatre. Help me, will you?"

  She turned round and presented her back to him. Automatically he unhooked the bra, not really analysing whether he wanted this or not. It seemed to be a fait accompli. She'd come back to finish what they'd been interrupted doing, simple as that. And despite the bizarre noises she was making in the back of her throat, and the glassy look in her eyes, she was still an attractive woman. She turned again, and Calloway stared at the fullness of her breasts, paler than he'd remembered them, but lovely. His trousers were becoming uncomfortably tight, and her performance was only worsening his situation, the way she was grinding her hips like the rawest of Soho strippers, running her hands between her legs.

  "Don't worry about me," she said. "I've made up my mind. All I really want…"

  She put her hands, so recently at her groin, on his face. They were icy
cold.

  "All I really want is you. I can't have sex and the stage… There comes a time in everyone's life when decisions have to be made."

  She licked her lips. There was no film of moisture left on her mouth when her tongue had passed over it.

  "The accident made me think, made me analyse what it is I really care about. And frankly - " She was unbuckling his belt. "- I don't give a shit - "

  Now the zip.

  "- about this, or any other fucking play."

  His trousers fell down.

  "- I'll show you what I care about."

  She reached into his briefs, and clasped him. Her cold hand somehow made the touch sexier. He laughed, closing his eyes as she pulled his briefs down to the middle of his thigh and knelt at his feet.

  She was as expert as ever, her throat open like a drain. Her mouth was somewhat drier than usual, her tongue scouring him, but the sensations drove him wild. It was so good, he scarcely noticed the ease with which she devoured him, taking him deeper than she'd ever managed previously, using every trick she knew to goad him higher and higher. Slow and deep, then picking up speed until he almost came, then slowing again until the need passed. He was completely at her mercy.

  He opened his eyes to watch her at work. She was skewering herself upon him, face in rapture.

  "God," he gasped, 'that is so good. Oh yes, oh yes."

  Her face didn't even flicker in response to his words, she just continued to work at him soundlessly. She wasn't making her usual noises, the small grunts of satisfaction, the heavy breathing through the nose. She just ate his flesh in absolute silence.

  He held his breath a moment, while an idea was born in his belly. The bobbing head bobbed on, eyes closed, lips clamped around his member, utterly engrossed. Half a minute passed; a minute; a minute and a half. And now his belly was full of terrors.

  She wasn't breathing. She was giving this matchless blow-job because she wasn't stopping, even for a moment, to inhale or exhale.

  Calloway felt his body go rigid, while his erection wilted in her throat. She didn't falter in her labour; the relentless pumping continued at his groin even as his mind formed the unthinkable thought:

  She's dead.

  She has me in her mouth, in her cold mouth, and she's dead. That's why she'd come back, got up off her mortuary slab and come back. She was eager to finish what she'd started, no longer caring about the play, or her usurper. It was this act she valued, this act alone. She'd chosen to perform it for eternity.

  Calloway could do nothing with the realization but stare down like a damn fool while this corpse gave him head.

  Then it seemed she sensed his horror. She opened her eyes and looked up at him. How could he ever have mistaken that dead stare for life? Gently, she withdrew his shrunken manhood from between her lips.

  "What is it?" she asked, her fluting voice still affecting life.

  "You… you're not… breathing."

  Her face fell. She let him go.

  "Oh darling," she said, letting all pretence to life disappear, "I'm not so good at playing the part, am I?"

  Her voice was a ghost's voice: thin, forlorn. Her skin, which he had thought so flatteringly pale was, on second view, a waxen white.

  "You are dead?" he said.

  "I'm afraid so. Two hours ago: in my sleep. But I had to come, Terry; so much unfinished business. I made my choice. You should be flattered. You are flattered, aren't you?"

  She stood up and reached into her handbag, which she'd left beside the mirror. Calloway looked at the door, trying to make his limbs work, but they were inert. Besides, he had his trousers round his ankles. Two steps and he'd fall flat on his face.

  She turned back on him, with something silver and sharp in her hand. Try as he might, he couldn't get a focus on it. But whatever it was, she meant it for him.

  * * *

  Since the building of the new Crematorium in 1934, one humiliation had come after another for the cemetery. The tombs had been raided for lead coffin linings, the stones overturned and smashed; it was fouled by dogs and graffiti. Very few mourners now came to tend the graves. The generations had dwindled, and the small number of people who might still have had a loved one buried there were too infirm to risk the throttled walkways, or too tender to bear looking at such vandalism.

  It had not always been so. There were illustrious and influential families interred behind the marble facades of the Victorian mausoleums. Founder fathers, local industrialists and dignitaries, any and all who had done the town proud by their efforts. The body of the actress Constantia Lichfield had been buried here ('Until the Day Break and the Shadows Flee Away'), though her grave was almost unique in the attention some secret admirer still paid to it.

  Nobody was watching that night, it was too bitter for lovers. Nobody saw Charlotte Hancock open the door of her sepulchre, with the beating wings of pigeons applauding her vigour as she shambled out to meet the moon. Her husband Gerard was with her, he less fresh than she, having been dead thirteen years longer. Joseph Jardine, en famille, was not far behind the Hancocks, as was Marriott Fletcher, and Anne Snell, and the Peacock Brothers; the list went on and on. In one corner, Alfred Crawshaw (Captain in the 17th Lancers), was helping his lovely wife Emma from the rot of their bed. Everywhere faces pressed at the cracks of the tomblids - was that not Kezia Reynolds with her child, who'd lived just a day, in her arms? and Martin van de Linde (the Memory of the Just is Blessed) whose wife had never been found; Rosa and Selina Goldfinch: upstanding women both; and Thomas Jerrey, and -

  Too many names to mention. Too many states of decay to describe. Sufficient to say they rose: their burial finery flyborn, their faces stripped of all but the foundation of beauty. Still they came, swinging open the back gate of the cemetery and threading their way across the wasteland towards the Elysium. In the distance, the sound of traffic. Above, a jet roared in to land. One of the Peacock brothers, staring up at the winking giant as it passed over, missed his footing and fell on his face, shattering his jaw. They picked him up fondly, and escorted him on his way. There was no harm done; and what would a Resurrection be without a few laughs?

  So the show went on.

  "If music be the food of love, play on,

  Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting,

  The appetite may sicken and so die - "

  Calloway could not be found at Curtain; but Ryan had instructions from Hammersmith (through the ubiquitous Mr Lichfield) to take the show up with or without the Director.

  "He'll be upstairs, in the Gods," said Lichfield. "In fact, I think I can see him from here."

  "Is he smiling?" asked Eddie.

  "Grinning from ear to ear."

  "Then he's pissed."

  The actors laughed. There was a good deal of laughter that night. The show was running smoothly, and though they couldn't see the audience over the glare of the newly-installed footlights they could feel the waves of love and delight pouring out of the auditorium. The actors were coming offstage elated.

  "They're all sitting in the Gods," said Eddie, "but your friends, Mr Lichfield, do an old ham good. They're quiet of course, but such big smiles on their faces."

  Act I, Scene II; and the first entrance of Constantia Lichfield as Viola was met with spontaneous applause. Such applause. Like the hollow roll of snare drums, like the brittle beating of a thousand sticks on a thousand stretched skins. Lavish, wanton applause.

  And, my God, she rose to the occasion. She began the play as she meant to go on, giving her whole heart to the role, not needing physicality to communicate the depth of her feelings, but speaking the poetry with such intelligence and passion the merest flutter of her hand was worth more than a hundred grander gestures. After that first scene her every entrance was met with the same applause from the audience, followed by almost reverential silence.

  Backstage, a kind of buoyant confidence had set in. The whole company sniffed the success; a success which had been snatched miraculously from the jaws of
disaster.

  There again! Applause! Applause!

  In his office, Hammersmith dimly registered the brittle din of adulation through a haze of booze.

  He was in the act of pouring his eighth drink when the door opened. He glanced up for a moment and registered that the visitor was that upstart Calloway. Come to gloat I daresay, Hammersmith thought, come to tell me how wrong I was.

  "What do you want?"

  The punk didn't answer. From the corner of his eye Hammersmith had an impression of a broad, bright smile on Calloway's face. Self-satisfied half-wit, coming in here when a man was in mourning.

  "I suppose you've heard?"

  The other grunted.

  "She died," said Hammersmith, beginning to cry. "She died a few hours ago, without regaining consciousness. I haven't told the actors. Didn't seem worth it."

  Calloway said nothing in reply to this news. Didn't the bastard care? Couldn't he see that this was the end of the world? The woman was dead. She'd died in the bowels of the Elysium. There'd be official enquiries made, the insurance would be examined, a post-mortem, an inquest: it would reveal too much.

  He drank deeply from his glass, not bothering to look at Calloway again.

  "Your career'll take a dive after this, son. It won't just be me: oh dear no."

  Still Calloway kept his silence.

  "Don't you care?" Hammersmith demanded.

  There was silence for a moment, then Calloway responded. "I don't give a shit."

  "Jumped up little stage-manager, that's all you are. That's all any of you fucking directors are! One good review and you're God's gift to art. Well let me set you straight about that - "

  He looked at Calloway, his eyes, swimming in alcohol, having difficulty focussing. But he got there eventually.

  Calloway, the dirty bugger, was naked from the waist down. He was wearing his shoes and his socks, but no trousers or briefs. His self-exposure would have been comical, but for the expression on his face. The man had gone mad: his eyes were rolling around uncontrollably, saliva and snot ran from mouth and nose, his tongue hung out like the tongue of a panting dog.