And he mentioned Elizaveta and Freddie Dalrymple and their ‘drinkies things’ significantly less often. Now he’d got the part that he reckoned had always been his due, he didn’t need the imprimatur of their distinguished names. Olly Pinto was now unquestionably the star of The Devil’s Disciple.
At one point, in the course of that Sunday rehearsal, Jude, returning from the Ladies during a coffee break and passing the Green Room, overheard a snatch of conversation.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t start that,’ said a peevish voice she identified as Janie Trotman’s.
‘Come on, I’m not doing any harm. It’s just that I do find you stunningly attractive.’ It was Olly Pinto’s voice, steeped in sincerity.
‘Even if that were true, it doesn’t give you an excuse to come on to me.’
‘Janie, I’m just—’
‘Oh, I get it. Now you’ve got Ritchie’s part, you reckon you can take on his personality too, do you?’
‘It’s not like that.’
‘Chat up everything in sight, eh? Get them interested and then drop them like hot cakes? Well, you’re not going to succeed with that, Olly. Certainly not with me. For one simple reason. Ritchie could get women interested because he was attractive. You can’t because you aren’t.’
‘There’s no need to be offensive.’ The note of petulance that she’d heard at rehearsal was back in Olly Pinto’s voice.
Also he was using that as an exit line. Jude hurried back to the main hall to avoid being caught eavesdropping.
What she had heard was very interesting, though.
Carole had now attended four rehearsals of The Devil’s Disciple, but she hadn’t joined the mass exodus to the Cricketers after any of them. When her neighbour raised the subject, Carole insisted that she was ‘not a pub person’. But Jude remembered the very same words being used about the Crown and Anchor in Fethering when they first met. Carole had fairly quickly become something of a ‘pub person’ there, and Jude reckoned it was only a matter of time before she also became a post-rehearsal regular at the Cricketers. Her natural nosiness would ensure that.
The first Sunday she attended rehearsal Carole had given Jude a lift in her Renault. Now they were both involved, that seemed to make more sense than having Storm Lavelle go out of her way to pick Jude up. Anyway, there wouldn’t be room for three of them in the Smart car. That Sunday Jude had dutifully gone back to Fethering in the Renault immediately after the end of rehearsal, foregoing a drink at the Cricketers. She had wanted to go there, though, not only for the convivial atmosphere, but also in hopes of reactivating the investigation into Ritchie Good’s death.
So on the following Tuesday and Thursday Jude travelled from Fethering in the Renault, went to the pub when Carole left and got a lift back home with Storm. Storm was such a chatterbox, particularly when she’d got a few drinks inside her, that she was more than ready to join in conjectures about Ritchie’s hanging.
After overhearing the conversation between Janie Trotman and Olly Pinto, there was no way Jude wasn’t going to the Cricketers after that Sunday’s rehearsal. She hadn’t had the chance, with all the Devil’s Disciple company around, to tell Carole what she had heard, but she was more insistent that her neighbour should come to the pub that evening. Carole once again demurred, though with less conviction than before. Jude reckoned her friend would be a ‘pub person’ at the Cricketers by the end of the week. But Carole was not to be swayed that evening, so Jude said she’d get a lift back with Storm.
Though the post-rehearsal SADOS company noisily took over the pub and formed into large groups, it was still possible to have a relatively private conversation with someone at one of the side tables. By good fortune Jude found herself at the bar at the same time as Janie Trotman, and an offer to buy the girl a drink assured her attention. The nearest group of actors centred on Olly Pinto, and Janie seemed unwilling to join them, so Jude had no problem in steering her to a table beside the open fire.
They clinked their glasses, Janie’s a vodka and coke, Jude’s predictably enough a Chilean Chardonnay. ‘Olly seems to be stepping fairly effortlessly into Ritchie’s shoes, doesn’t he?’
Janie agreed. ‘Mind you, he’ll never be as good as Ritchie. He hasn’t got the same amount of talent. Not nearly.’
‘No, but I think he’ll be all right.’
‘He may be, if he learns his bloody lines.’ Janie giggled. ‘Mind you, Carole the Dominatrix is keeping him up to his work, isn’t she?’
Jude giggled in turn, wondering how Carole would react to the nickname.
‘She’s quite a hard taskmaster, isn’t she?’ Janie went on.
‘Something of a perfectionist, yes.’
‘Where on earth did she come from? I’ve never seen her round any other SADOS shows.’
‘I brought her in.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, she’s a friend of mine. My next-door neighbour, actually. Why’re you looking so surprised?’
‘I’m sorry, it’s just … I wouldn’t have put you two down as friends. You seem so different. You’re so laid back and, well, Carole …’
‘Opposites attract,’ suggested Jude.
‘Maybe.’ But Janie didn’t sound convinced.
‘Hm. Anyway, the surface of the water seems to have closed over Ritchie Good, doesn’t it? Like he never existed.’
‘I think in some ways that’s quite appropriate.’
‘How do you mean?’ asked Jude.
‘Well, there always was something slightly unreal about him.’
Jude found that a very interesting observation; it chimed in with the feeling she had got about Ritchie when they’d met in the Crown and Anchor, that he was going through the motions of life rather than actually living it. She asked Janie to expand on what she had meant.
‘The way he used to come on to every woman he met, it never felt spontaneous. It was more like … I don’t know what you’d call it. Learned behaviour, perhaps? Certainly not innate.’
Jude grinned. ‘You know the jargon.’
‘I’ve got a degree in psychology,’ said Janie.
‘And do you use that in your work?’
‘Sadly not at the moment. I haven’t had a proper job since I left uni. And that was nearly three years ago.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘There’s nothing I could get round here that’d actually use my qualifications. Unless you reckon that stacking shelves in Lidl gives a unique opportunity to study the patterns of human behaviour.’
‘Couldn’t you look for something further afield?’
Janie Trotman shook her head ruefully. ‘Can’t really at the moment. My mother’s got Alzheimer’s. And my father’s desperate that she shouldn’t have to go into a home or a hospital. But looking after her is too much for him on his own. So …’ She spread her hands wide in a gesture that seemed to encompass the limited possibilities of her life.
‘Obviously it won’t always be like this. My mother will presumably die at some point. I just hope to God she goes before my father. Otherwise I’ll be lumbered full time.’ There was no bitterness in her words, just a resignation. What she had described was her current lot in life, and that was all there was to it.
‘It’s why I keep doing the amateur dramatics,’ she explained. ‘I enjoy it and it gets me out of the house at least three times a week.’
Jude said again that she was sorry.
‘It’s all right,’ said Janie. ‘I’m not after sympathy. My parents looked after me when I couldn’t help myself …’ She shrugged. ‘Some kind of payback seems logical.’
‘Are you an only child?’
The girl nodded. ‘And I love both my parents … or perhaps in my mother’s case I should say I love what she used to be.’ Determined not to succumb to a moment of emotion, she went on briskly, ‘Anyway, I’ve told you about my life. What about you, Jude? What do you do?’