‘You’ve got things to do here as well. I had to drag you in yesterday.’
‘Piss off.’ Willy collapsed into a chair in the front row, ungainly as a stick insect.
‘Look, do you want to be in this show or not? You’ve got to rehearse.’
‘I don’t mind rehearsing, but I don’t see why I should waste time poncing about with relaxation and pretending I’m a pineapple and all that. I’m only meant to be doing the music.’
‘You’re playing Rizzio in the show, and you’re meant to be part of an ensemble.’
Willy gave a peculiarly Scottish dismissive snort. ‘All right, all right. What do you want me to do?’
‘I want you to shout, all of you. Scream your heads off. Really uninhibited screams. Let everything go. Right. When I clap.’
The noise was appalling. Charles sunk into his chair with hands over his ears. It was going to be a long time before he got the stage to himself.
When the baying mouths onstage had finally closed, he uncovered his ears and heard another sound close behind him. A sniff. He turned to see the ship-wrecked face of Stella Galpin-Lord, who had just slipped into the hall. She saw him and blew her nose.
At that moment Pam Northcliffe bustled in, her arms as ever full of parcels and packages. ‘Hello, Charles,’ she hissed loudly. He grinned at her.
‘Just brought down the props for the Mary photo-call.’
‘All O.K.?’ he whispered.
‘Oh Lord, I suppose so. Just about. I was up till two last night doing the daggers.’
‘Work all right?’
‘Yes.’ She showed him her artefacts proudly. Charles picked up one of the knives. Its metal blade had been replaced by silver-painted plastic which slid neatly back into the handle. He pressed it into his hand. ‘Very good.’
‘Oh. I’m afraid the paint’s not quite dry.’
Charles looked down at the silver smudge on his palm. ‘Never mind.’
‘What’s Mike up to now?’
‘God knows.’
‘All right. Now we’re relaxed, all uninhibited. Now an ensemble is people who know each other. Love each other, hate each other. We try hate. Right, as we’ve done it before. Somebody stands in the middle and the others shout hatred at him. Doesn’t matter what you say, any lies, anything. Hate, hate. We purge the emotions.
‘O.K., Willy, you first. Stand in the middle. We form a circle round. And we shout. Ah, hello, Stella, you join our workshop?’
‘Might learn something,’ she said patronisingly.
‘You might, you might. Hey, Charles Paris. You want to learn something too?’
Charles choked back his first instinctive rejoinder and meekly said, ‘Yes, O.K.’ Enter into the spirit of the thing. Don’t be a middle-aged fuddy-duddy.
The large circle around Willy Mariello waited for the signal. Michael clapped his hands and they shouted. Abuse poured out. Young faces swelled with obscenities. Stella Galpin-Lord screamed, ‘Bastard! Bastard!’ her mouth twisting and pulling a whole map of new lines on her face. Anna s expression was cold and white. Martin Warburton almost gibbered with excitement. And Charles himself found it distressingly easy to succumb, to scream with them. It was frightening.
Another clap. They subsided, panting. ‘Good. Catharsis. Good. O.K. Now someone else. Charles.’
It was not pleasant. As the mob howled, he concentrated on Sydney Carton, borne on his tumbril to the scaffold. ‘It is a far, far better thing that I do now…’ It still was not pleasant.
But a clap ended it and another victim was chosen. Then another and another. The repetition took the edge off the discomfort of being abused. Just an exercise. They finished, breathless.
‘O.K. Another concentration exercise. Truth Game. You sit on the ground in pairs and ask each other questions. You have to answer with the truth instantly. If you hesitate, you start asking the questions. And don’t cheat. It’s more difficult than you think.’
They started forming pairs. Charles saw Willy Mariello speak to Anna. She turned away and sat down opposite a colourless girl in faded denim. Willy and Charles were the only ones left standing. They squatted opposite each other.
The Scotsman sat awkwardly, his long legs bent under him like pipe-cleaners. Stuck to his denim shirt was a purple badge with white lettering: It’s Scotland’s Oil. The long messianic hair was full of white powder and the hands were flecked with white paint. His expression was aggressive and he had the hard mouth of a spoilt child. But the brown eyes were troubled.
Charles tried to think of something to ask. ‘What do you make of all these exercises?’
‘I think they’re a bloody waste of time.’ The answer was instant, no question about the truth there. Voices started up around and made concentration difficult.
‘Um. Are you happy?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘A lot of hassles.’
‘Anything specific?’
‘Yes.’
The concentration of talking and listening over the other voices was intense. Everything seemed focused in this one conversation. Charles pressed further. ‘What’s worrying you?’
Willy hesitated. Then, ‘I’ve found out something I’d rather not know, something that might be dangerous.’
‘Something about a person?’
‘Yes.’
‘Someone connected with this group?’
A slight pause. ‘Yes.’ There was fear in the brown eyes.
Charles pushed on, mesmerised by the direction of the conversation. ‘Who?’
Willy opened his mouth, but paused for a moment. Stella Galpin-Lord’s piercing voice was suddenly isolated. ‘… and lost my virginity when I was fourteen…’ The spell was broken. ‘No, I didn’t come in quick enough,’ said Willy. ‘I ask. How old are you?’
The exercise continued, but Charles felt a vague unease.
The Truth Game was followed by a Contact Game. ‘O.K.? We close our eyes and move around. When you touch somebody, you make contact. Feel, explore, encounter. Get to know them with your hands. This will increase your perceptions. O.K.?’
Perhaps it was by chance that the first person Charles touched was Anna. In accord with his director’s instructions, he made contact, felt, explored, encountered and got to know her with his hands. Her eyes opened to a slit of navy blue. He smiled. She smiled.
‘Are you rehearsing tonight?’
‘No.’
‘Fancy dinner?’
‘O.K.’
Charles moved away to feel, explore and encounter someone else. His probing hand felt the arm of a tweed jacket, then up, over a chest criss-crossed with leather straps to the bristly wool of a beard.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doin’?’ The voice had the broken-bottle edge of Glasgow in it. ‘I’m the photographer. Who’s Michael Vanderzee?’
Getting people into costume took some time. The photographer fretted and cursed. Then Michael announced he did not want posed shots; he wanted natural action shots. That involved rehearsing whole chunks of the play. The photographer cursed more.
‘Right, come on. Let’s do the scene of Rizzio’s murder. O.K.? You’ll get some good shots from this. Action stuff. Violence.’
‘How long’s the bloody scene?’
‘We’ll only do the end. Three, four minutes.’
‘Why you can’t just pose them… I’ve got some fashion pictures to do later this afternoon.’
‘I don’t want them to look like amateur theatricals.’
‘Why not? That’s what they bloody are.’
The scene started and Charles sat under a light at the back of the hall to watch. Mary, Queen of Sots was written in a blank verse that was meant to sound archaic but only sounded twee. Since Willy needed a prompt every other line, it was heavy going.
‘Willy, for God’s sake!’
‘Shut up, Michael!’ The tall figure looked incongruous in doublet and hose.
‘Look, for Christ’s sake, can’t we get these bloody photos taken? My time’s expensive and these models are waiting.’
‘I say, we haven’t got the daggers,’ said Martin Warburton suddenly from the recesses of a dramatic conspirator’s cloak.
‘Oh, Pam, where the hell are they? Here, quick. Look, the blades retract on the spring like this. O.K.? Now come on, let’s get it right first time.’ Charles started to scan his So much Comic… script.