Simon Brett - An Amateur Corpse

‘Oh shut up. I’m going.’

‘Be careful.’

‘Don’t worry, I will. I’m not like Konstantin — I’m not going to go off and shoot myself because some tart’s let me down. If I were to do anything, I can assure you it would be something a lot more practical. Goodbye!’

Charles heard a few brisk footsteps across the gravel, a car door open and slam, then a powerful sports car engine starting and tires screeching off down the road.

He assumed Charlotte was still there. He gave her two minutes, then, not being an actor for nothing, did his impression of someone coming noisily out of the rehearsal room.

He was aware of her perfume before he saw her. It was very expensive, very distinctive. Whatever Hugo’s relationship with his wife, he didn’t stint her expenses. Her clothes were also of the best. She was a trendy fashion plate amidst the pervading dowdiness of the Backstagers.

She was leaning against the bonnet of a Volvo in the car park and didn’t look as if she had moved for some time. Her face was infinitely miserable.

‘Hello, Charlotte. What’s up?’

‘I don’t know. Last night blues,’ she lied. ‘You should understand about that.’

‘Yes. What I usually do is get wildly pissed. Then I don’t notice. And the next morning I feel so bad physically that I forget about any emotional upset.’

‘Hmm. I’m rather off alcohol at the moment.’

Silence. She looked sensational in the bluish light shed from the rehearsal room. The pain of her expression increased rather than diminished her beauty. The face framed in red hair looked pale and peaky in the thin light. Very young, very vulnerable, a child being brave.

Charles found being with her a relief. She seemed more like a real person than the lot in the rehearsal room. He felt protective towards her. And that made him feel better. He didn’t like the boorish bloody-mindedness which the massed Backstagers kindled in him.

‘You know, your Nina was very good.’

‘Thank you. What are you going to say — I ought to take it up professionally?’

‘That’s what you were trained for.’

‘Yes. A bit pathetic, isn’t it really — fully trained actress mucking about with amateur’ dramatics.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. I’m sure, if you pass your Juvenile Lead Audition and are approved by the Big Parts Selection Sub-Committee, you’ll get some very juicy roles here.’

Charlotte laughed. ‘You seem to have caught on to the atmosphere of the place very quickly. God, what a load of creeps they all seem when you think of them objectively. All with their oversize egos and silly stage names — all those abbreviations and hyphens and extra middle names — it makes me sick when I think about it. I make a point of using their proper names just to annoy them.’

‘Do you think you’ll do more here?’

‘Maybe. I don’t know. What’s the alternative? I can’t see Hugo being keen on my having a real acting career. Anyway, I’ve lost all the few contacts I ever had in the theatre. Just a housewife with dreams, I suppose.’

‘I’m sure you could make it in the real theatre.’

‘“You should go on the stage,’ says Arkadina. ‘Yes, that is my one dream,’ replies Nina. ‘But it’ll never come true.”’

‘Could do.’

But Charlotte’s temporary serenity was broken by some memory. ‘No, it’ll never — oh, everything’s such a mess. God knows what’s in store for me anyway.’

‘Anything you can talk about?’

She hesitated for a moment, on the verge of sharing her burden. But decided against it. ‘No. Thanks for the offer, but I’m rather against shoulders to cry on at the moment. It’s my own mess and I must sort it out somehow.’ She moved resolutely away from the Volvo.

‘Are you coming back in, Charlotte?’

‘No, I can’t face that lot right now. I’m just going to… don’t know… have a bit of a walk, try to clear my head or… I don’t know, Charles. Tell Hugo I’ll be back later. You’re staying with us tonight, aren’t you?’

‘If that’s okay.’

‘Sure. I’ll see you in the morning.’ She walked off into the night, pulling her long Aran cardigan round her against the cold.

Hugo had been hard at the Spanish red when Charles got back into the. rehearsal room. But the mood that was settling in was one of catatonic gloom rather than manic violence.

They both continued to drink, resolutely and more or less silently. The party was livening up, with more and more couples clinched on the dance-floor. There were still plenty of spare women, but Charles had lost interest. The intensity of Vee Winter and Charlotte’s troubled words had changed his mood. He and Hugo drank as they might have done thirty years earlier at an Oxford party where all the women had been bagged before they arrived.

It was about three when they left. Charles murmured something about Charlotte making her own way home, but Hugo didn’t react. He drove them back to his house with the punctilious concentration of the very drunk.

As the Alfa-Romeo saloon crunched to a halt on the gravel in front of the house, he said determinedly. ‘Come in and have a nightcap.’

Charles didn’t want to. He was tired and drunk and he had a potentially difficult day ahead of him. Also he had a premonition that Hugo wanted to confide in him. Ignobly, he didn’t feel up to it.

But Hugo took his silence for assent and they went into the sitting room. Charles stood with his back to the empty fireplace, trying to think of a good line to get him quickly up to bed, while Hugo went over to the drinks cupboard. ‘What’s it to be?’

He opened the door to reveal a neat parade of whisky bottles. There were up to a dozen brands. Hugo always rationalized the size of the display on the grounds that everyone has a favourite Scotch, but it was really just the potential alcoholic’s insurance policy.

Charles missed the opportunity to refuse and weakly chose a Glenmorangie malt. Hugo poured a generous two inches into a tumbler and helped himself to a Johnnie Walker Black Label.

Then they just stood facing each other and drank. Hugo kept the Johnnie Walker bottle dangling in his free hand. The silence became oppressive. Charles downed his drink in a few long swallows and opened his mouth for thank you and goodnight.

Hugo spoke first. ‘Charles,’ he said in a voice of uneven pitch, ‘I think I’m cracking up,’

‘What do you mean?’”

‘Cracking up, going round the bend, losing control.’ The last two words came out in a fascinated whisper.

‘Oh come on, you’re pissed.’

‘That’s part of it. I drink too much and I just don’t notice it. It doesn’t make me drunk, it doesn’t calm me down, I just feel the same thing — I’m… losing control.’

‘Control of what? What do you think you are going to do?’

‘I don’t know. Something terrible. I’m going to say something awful, hit somebody or… All the constraints I’ve built up over the years, they’re just breaking down…’ He mouthed incoherently.

‘Oh come on. You’ve just had too much to drink. It’s nothing.’

‘Don’t tell me it’s nothing!’ Hugo suddenly screamed. As he did so, he hurled the whisky bottle at the stone mantelpiece to the right of Charles. It shattered. Glass fell into the fireplace and spirit dripped down on to it.

Charles thought the outburst contained more than a dash of histrionics. If his friend wasn’t going to believe him, then Hugo was damned well going to give a demonstration of his lack of control. ‘Like that, you mean?’ asked Charles. ‘Out of control like that?’

Hugo looked at him defiantly, then sheepishly, then with a hint of a smile, seeing that his bluff had been called. He sank exhausted into a chair. ‘No, not like that. That was just for effect. I mean worse than that. 1 get to a flashpoint and I feel I’m going to lash out — I don’t know, to kill someone.’