Chapters One to Thirteen

Chapter One

On 1 January 2011, a brown paper package arrived at the offices of MY Production Company, bound with blue nylon string tied in a knot. Our P.O. Box had been transcribed in a big, uneven hand using very dark ink. There was no return address.

The package contained a brown leather notebook made of very thick paper, every page of which was full of the same, wild hand using the same dark ink: lists, bullet points and underscored words punctuated the text.

A series of sketches and letters fell from the back. There was no name, no identifying address, numbers or email. Every page was dated and it was obvious, quickly, that we were holding the diary of someone’s life.

We sat reading for as long as our conscience and the temperature allowed (the office was cold; the heating works but there is no insulation). After the better part of an hour our fingers were pale and we put the diary aside to return to the morning’s work, catching up on correspondence, plotting our pitch for Torches (the play closest to production) and writing an agenda for our next board meeting. By 2:00 we were too cold to keep typing and felt productive enough for one day, a public holiday at that. I put the kettle on while Chris found a pack of chocolate biscuits and some fruit cake, a propitiating gift from a man I’d been seeing who turned out to be married. I opened the thin, wax paper more in sorrow than in anger - and not enough of either to keep me from feeling able to eat most of the loaf myself.

Our next appointment was hours away in Camden, a New Year’s dinner with friends. I put on my jumper, Chris found a scarf and, dragging our chairs close to the radiator we huddled over our tea and studied the battered notebook in our laps. Turning the pages, we decided, for diversion, to take turns reading the entries aloud.

Had we realised then what we know now, would we have started the story? Hand on heart, I cannot say. But it’s a story we have decided to share with the world, as, we suspect, someone knew we would.

Besides. It's bloody good copy for the blog.

***

[Inscribed on the frontispiece:]       

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.

[first page]

5^th January 2010

Cold. Quite windy in south London. I am thirty minutes early for the audition and bought this notebook in the train station. I’m playing Miss Fouquet, a secretary. I’ve decided she carries a notebook everywhere she goes in case her boss says ‘Miss Fouquet, order flowers for my wife’ as he passes her desk.

I don’t know if secretaries still write things down. They probably speak into their voice-activated IPads that flash blinding laser beams into their eyes as a reminder, every five minutes.

I think I have a good shot at this. I can do this job. This is my job. I am this job.

I feel no fear.

I feel no circulation in my thighs either. This converted church obviously wasn’t converted in time for central heating. But I’m fine.  I survived a winter tour of  Scandinavia as Hedda Gabler in 1999.  Schnapps and star jumps in the dressing room.

If my fingertips go white I’ll thrust them into my arm pits. Sadly there are no young men auditioning for this play. Otherwise I’d ask to make use of their arm pits.

THIS IS THE YEAR I RETURN TO THE NATIONAL. On the main stage.  For a season.  This little book can be the Diary of my Comeback in Triumph. 

And it was only 90p and it’s single spaced. It’s good to work out of Zone One.

There are three other women waiting in this draughty hallway. I’ve sized them up and I’m not too worried. One is quite pretty but I think she’s too pretty. I’m wearing my fright make up – pale eye-shadow, slightly orange lippy that looks like Miss Fouquet is trying too hard. I was applying eye-liner in the dark this morning so I wouldn’t wake Malcolm. I hope I don’t look like Boy George.

Boy George. That dates me.

Everything dates me.

I should write in bullet points so when the director glances over at my lap he’ll see a real notebook kept by someone who is prepared to be a real secretary:

TO DO LIST

-        Get a new agent

-        How dare he, how DARE he dump me??? at Christmas?!! I hate him. I HATE my agent. My ex-agent.  John Wood, John Wood, I want to see you -  mangled -  in a defacing industrial accident in front of those pert, 20 year olds you salivate after in the drama schools across the city.

-        I don’t actually hate him but I have no idea what to do with someone you really like when they have plunged a knife into your back.

-        I'm quite ready to play Julius Caesar.

-        I’d be a great Julius Caesar. I’ll suggest that to My Agent John.

-        Oh no I can’t.  My Agent John has been put through an imaginary combine harvester.

-        I will re-create, for posterity, the sad exchange between us, two days before I was leaving for Yorkshire to spend Christmas with my recently bereaved family.

-        Not that I’m bitter.

        Setting:

-     The third floor of a derelict Regency terrace house that he shares with five other agents in central London, the air blue with static electricity from computers, mobiles, copiers, scanners and shredders.  He has the second-best office.  There's a window.

-        Moth eaten burgundy-coloured carpet. Cigarette burns where the ash-trays used to be. Real bashed-up charm, an unpretentious workaday quality.  They are one of the biggest agencies in the business and they always acted small.  Intimate and – oh I mustn’t think of it.

-        Heavy oak chairs rubbed by the well-fed, well-toned or well-shagged posteriors of actors for fifty years. One chair full of my posterior, opposite his huge mahogany desk, his chair full of his chino-wearing posterior.

-        His baggy mohair jumper drags into the eraser shreds from where he has rubbed out the names of all the actors he’s letting go. Just before Christmas. Et tu.

John looks up from under a madly-long fringe, what 40 year old man has a fringe? It’s because it isn’t grey and he still has hair. He thinks long hair Keeps Him Young. He doesn’t realise his personality is in formaldehyde, that’s what keeps him young.

Of course at the time I didn’t realise he was dumping me and I was admiring his fringe.

John:                Constance. Hello.

He’s already lying.

I’m ashamed to say I was pleased I'd worn make up and my skin was quite good. I was probably smirking.

Constance:       John. You’re looking so well.

John:               I wanted to say I really enjoyed you at the Globe. I loved – I loved what you did. In the studio, fantastic. And working with old friends.  Did you chat with Kenneth?

Constance:       Oh yes. He wants tea.

John:                Well you should go.

Constance:       Yes, I will.

John:                Give him my love.

Constance:       Yes, I shall.

I should have guessed here.  Why is he encouraging me to have tea like a nurse telling the old dear to eat her greens? As if for my health?  Suddenly I am on my guard.  John chews on the end of a pencil that he takes out of his mouth and uses to rub out grease marks on his telephone. In retrospect I find this repulsive.

John:                I guess you know – I guess. Well.  You know. You know you are such –a –good – actress.

Constance:       (Panicking.  Has this been in doubt? Isn’t this the one thing anyone could ever say about me? No matter what else?)

John:                This is not about your talent.

Constance:       (blinking)  What isn’t about my talent,  John?

I feel it, I feel it – like the temperature dropping in a room, like the edge of the step you didn’t know was there. I tense up.

There is a long pause as he clears his throat and fiddles with pages in a file that contains clippings, old photos of me at the RSC, the Almeida and, more recently, panto in Theatre Royal, Bath.  You can hear the Irish in him at these moments, no matter what he’s done to his accent. He gets all – Celtic. I’ve always loved it.  

Now it sounds sinister.

John:                You’re very talented. You are a – you can still be a great actress. I’ve seen it. I know that Medea was fringe and no one saw it but you scared the fuck out of me.

I am seething at ‘still’  and don’t mention that every show sold out, but I inhale and  try to smile. I've always found it hugely annoying that I'm a good actor but I'm a horrible liar.  I know he knows I’m anxious.

Constance:       I just felt sorry for her. She’s not a monster.

John:                No. She’s not. She was just   - forced  - into an unfortunate position.

The tone changes . I glance up and see him staring at me. Suddenly I know , beyond a doubt, what he is doing. He’s preparing me to feel sorry for him. I move my chair back and cross my legs.

Constance:       Of course, you don’t ever have to choose to murder your children. It’s usually a mistake but not like getting on the wrong bus is a mistake. Just – don’t plunge that knife!

I smile again. He doesn’t laugh.

John:                Sometimes – sometimes you feel you have something horrible to do and you have no choice.

He taps the phone with the chewed-up pencil and seems to accidentally punch the number of someone in a room next door. A phone rings and a voice comes through his speaker and, simultaneously and weirdly, through the wall:

Voice:      Wood, Graves and Smart.
John:         Wendell, sorry.
Wendell:   John?
John:         Hang up.
Wendell:   Have you finished with Constance?
John:         No.
Wendell:   How did it go? Did she cry?

John disconnects. Now I am suffused with shame because to my horror, my absolute horror I am about to cry. I hate myself.

John gabbles.

John:                I have enjoyed working with you, Constance. And in five or six years’ time, when you look your age –it’s a kind of – strange situation – because you just don’t look 45 – but you are 45 - but I think a whole new world will open up. Head mistresses, police officers. If you don’t have surgery -  the mothers in period drama. Some very, very good stuff.

He doesn’t believe this any more than I do. Not for me. He knows I’ll be dead by then. If I can’t act, I will die. I know this about myself. I am deciding on music for my funeral even as I humiliate myself by dropping my face into my hands and I am more horrified by the next thirty seconds of my life than I have ever been by anything I've done as I hear someone begging and I realise it’s me.

Constance:       Please. Please don’t let me go. I’ll do anything, you know I’ll do anything. I am punctual, I am prepared, I am – I am fucking thorough – don’t they always say? If I get the audition, I get the part. I can be – beautiful. (I am making my own skin crawl, bile is rising in my throat, but I can’t stop. I lean across the desk, my hand gropes for his.) This isn’t a job. This is my life. John.

Even in this state of unmitigated shame I think ‘This is how people talk in a crisis’.  I can feel myself make a note of my posture. Shoulders far forward, while my stomach is held back. Breathing is strangely slow.

John:                Con, please -

John makes a strangled sound, as though he is choking on a fur ball. I can’t see his face, because he’s dropped his head and I’m just staring into fringe, thick dark fringe. For a moment there is just the two of us in this over-lit office, the sun setting at 3 pm, me gripping him with a hand that seems to have grown talons, weeping silently, as he disgorges his lunch. Then he jumps up from the desk and nearly knocks me over as he passes, saying -

John:                You’re the most talented woman I know.

 - before he vaults down the hallway and disappears into the loo. I think I hear the door lock.

He didn’t come out before I left.

It was two days before – 


[end of entry one]

Chapter Two

Chris and I were intrigued but the previous entry was never finished. We did not find out what had taken Constance two days to do. She started a new page, dated only a day later.

6 January 2010

I’m in Starbucks. I’ve been here all evening, they’re going to be sweeping around my feet in a moment. I needed to get out of the house to pretend I wasn’t waiting for the phone to ring. Of course I’ve brought my phone and I’m waiting for it to ring but no one else knows that. I look like a woman enjoying her chai tea latte on a winter evening. Alone. In Starbucks. Knocking her phone regularly on the table to see if it’s still working.

I want to be Miss Fouquet, the tap-dancing secretary in the new off-West End musical about office workers – TYPECAST! -  more than almost any job I’ve ever wanted in my life. I want JohnWoodTheIngrateExAgent to know I don’t need him to get work.

I want to be on stage. It’s been 14 months since my last job. That was an ad, not even national.  I want something to do. I want an answer when people ask ‘What are you up to?’ And. I want the money.

I'm not worried, we don't have a problem, Malcolm isn't gambling, he goes to his meetings. He’s not depressed. We just rely on two incomes.  That’s normal.

It’s not as normal, of course, for one of those incomes to have been very close to the seven figure mark once upon a time and then vanish. Necessitating a new, much smaller house and lots of jobs one wouldn’t ordinarily want to do. Which has never been a problem, I’ve been happy doing the jobs I don’t want to do.

I don’t know what to do if I don’t get even the jobs I don’t want.

I'm not going to think about that. What I am going to think about are the lyrics for Miss Fouquet’s first big number. They’ve been running in my head since the audition and I take this as a good sign.

Send the memo, type the minutes!

Give the boss his morning tea!

File and phone and meet your deadlines –

Staff the desk e–fic-ient-ly!

Very catchy. Of course I haven’t tapped in years. Not since Trixie True, Teen Detective, where I saved the world by dancing out Morse code on the lid of a Russian submarine.

I just figured out that job paid me exactly ten times what this company is offering.

Not that I'm complaining.

In fact, I gave a creditable performance at the audition. Which is saying something as I can’t remember the last time I needed to audition.  I am usually invited in to read. I am given tea, fed biscuits. I often snog very attractive leading men, laughing as we hold scripts and think how much we love our jobs.

This seems to have stopped happening.

However, I was very pleased with myself, because as soon as the music started I launched into my routine. I was in time, my flap ball changes had – flair.  Perhaps reciting a speech of Desdemona’s simultaneously wasn’t the best accompaniment but I wanted to show my versatility. A tap-dancing tragedian. That’s an actor with breadth.

Sometimes I think I’m losing the thread. Which doesn’t make sense as I’m doing what I’ve always done and it has always worked before. What’s different? It’s a puzzle.

I’ve got a seat by a window, looking out onto the neat residential lanes running off the high street. Every tree in the city is bare. London in winter is a country, not a season.  A wet, dark world. By the end of February I can feel myself evolving out of my eyeballs like one of David Attenborough’s sightless grubs.

Ah! The phone!

**

Well. This was the conversation.

Voice:              Constance Hill, please.

Con:                Speaking.

Voice:              Hello, this is Smita from Hakim Optical returning your call.

Con:                (deflated) Oh yes.

Smita:              You were inquiring about your lenses -

Con:                Yes.

Smita:              - were they ready.

Con:                Yes.

Smita:              I’ll be happy to tell you.

Con:                Thank you.

Smita:              I’ll just need your details. Can you confirm your date of birth?

Con:                13^th March, 1966.

This is where I always expect someone to say ‘You don’t SOUND as though you were born in 1966!’ Instead – a long pause.

Smita:              No, I’m sorry nothing. How do you spell the name?

Con:                H-i-l-l.

Pause. Sound of shuffling and keys clicking.

Smita:              No. No record for Hill under that date.

Con:                Oh.

I have no idea what else to suggest.  Check another name? Just give me the lenses for anyone who was born on that date?

Smita:              Could there have been any other information?

Con:                Such as?

Smita:              We file everyone by date of birth. Is it possible you could have given an alternate date?

I say nothing. I feel a creeping kind of horror make its way up my skin but I am repressing what it means.

Smita:              It could be simply a data-entry error. How long have you been a customer, Mrs Hill?

Con:                Miss Hill. Most of my life.  Over twenty years. 

Smita:              Can you bear with me a moment? I am sorry for this inconvenience.

Con:                Twenty-three years.

Smita:              I’ll be right with you.

There is more typing and some breathing while a strange desire to end the call overtakes me. I don’t want to speak any further to this admittedly helpful employee of Hakim Optical. I don’t want to know whatever it is she is going to tell me and I am about to say it’s fine, I will do without the lenses, I will make some myself out of Blu-tak and cellophane when her bright tones return, triumphant.

Smita:              Ah! Here it is. Just a mis-typing. The date we have is 13^th March 1961. How old are you Miss Hill?

A vague and unwelcome memory shoots to the forefront of my mind, not unlike recalling the plot of ground where you hid the body of your psychologically abusive 6^th form headmaster and I can feel myself trying to disconnect the phone but unable to think how.

Con:                How old am I?

Smita:              Is it 1966?

I am caught within two towering and warring impulses. The impulse not to reveal myself as a humiliatingly incompetent liar and the desire to, well – be 45. Even to a stranger on a phone.

Con:                Is it?

Smita:              Is it?

Con:                I –

Smita:              Or 1961?

Suddenly it unfurls in front of me, a banner of memory.  I am 28 years old and I am getting my first pair of spectacles in London. I’m home from filming in America, being recognised in the street and stopped for autographs in public places. I am tall and curvaceous and beautiful and a classically trained actor – a potent combination the Americans snatched up as the inspiration for Mallory Queen- Girl PI – a crime show that ran seven seasons and bought Malcolm and me our Regency town house and the farm in Dorset.

I am 28 and it’s 1989 and I am asked my age at the optometrist on Tottenham Court Road and in the world before Google, before email, before fan-sites,  before public exposure to every private fact, I hear time’s wing-ed chariot in my mind’s ear, deafening in its speed. I look at the open-faced clerk gazing into my famous face and am gripped, in my oesophagus by a breath-taking panic as I think ‘I’m too old’ – and in that split second I perform an act of time distortion worthy of Einstein and Stephen Hawking and Dr Who – and I become 24.

No one knows this isn’t true. Not even Malcolm.

Now Smita knows.

Smita:              Miss Hill?

Con:                Yes – I’ll, thank you – I’m – I’ll call back.

I push a button and she’s gone and - I’m 45 again. The relief is huge. I don’t stop to think what this means.

Well, it does mean when people say ‘You don’t look 45!’ they are more right than they know.  I don’t look 45 because I’m 49.

I am in much better nick than anyone suspects.

Even John Wood my Ex-Agent. From whom I’ve had two messages asking if I’m okay and grovelling and suggesting we have coffee.

This is really bemusing.  I can’t understand why he would want to re-visit the scene of his crime. A gloating opportunity? I’m ignoring him.

HA! The phone!

***

No. Not them. Fiona. She'd put the kids to bed and was returning my call. I'd rung and left a message after I'd removed my fright make-up and taken off Miss Fouquet’s sensible shoes. She must have understood the tone of my voice because her first words tonight were

Fiona:  Darling, what happened?

Con:    (quiet) I auditioned.

Fiona:  (shocked) Good God.

Con:    I know.

Fiona:  I’m sorry.

Con:    Thank you.

Fiona:  (placating) Just an artistic director who doesn’t know you. A teenager.

Con:    He was 40.

Fiona:  (desperate) New to the business.

Con:    Twenty years ago .

Suddenly she pulls away from the receiver.

Fiona:  Barnaby NO! Get back to bed or you will spend the night away from your brother in another room entirely.

Barnaby: (faintly)There is no other room.

Fiona:  You’ll spend the night in the bath, then. (back to the phone) Sorry Con.

Con:    He was nice. I just – I’m just losing my –

Fiona:  I told you  - .

Barnaby:  I’d get wet.

Fiona:  What?

Barnaby:   I’d get wet when Daddy had a shower.

Fiona:  Well, you’d best consider that the next time you think about getting out of bed.

Distant background wailing.

Fiona:  What? What for God’s sake!

Barnaby:  I don’t want to get wet. Daddy would step on me!

Fiona:  Daddy’s not here. Get to bed or I’LL step on you.  Sorry Con. It’s been diabolical. Colin is in Brussels and they always act up when I’m on my own. I’m out-numbered. They do it on purpose.  And the horrible thing is, I don’t care.  My whole life has revolved around them for thirteen years.  I have nothing more to give. Oliver is old enough to impregnate his classmates and David looks like a creditable drug-pusher, freakishly tall for eleven. My work here is done. I want to escape.

Con:    Oh darling.

Fiona:  I’m turning to straw.

Con:    Sweetheart.

Fiona:  My hair, my – nether regions. I’m like the Sahara desert. No one told me at 50 I’d become Arid Woman. Do you know what it takes to get any intimacy that doesn’t require industrial quantities of lubricant? It’s not worth it. Colin and I think about it and we have to plot our manoeuvres like a military strike. At 2200 hours I will apply the ointment. At 2215, he’ll advance. 2222, further lubricant. He feels dejected and I feel – a mess.

Malcolm and I have been married over 20 years. We are very good friends.  Which means we don’t argue, we travel well together and we haven’t had – mess – for a rather long time.

Con:    Have you tried magazines? Or the internet?

I was giving myself away here.

Fiona:  What? Oh. Ha, no. No. Not that imaginative, I’m afraid. We’re just soldiering on. If I weren’t terrified of cancer I’d be slathering myself in HRT. It’s hateful.  You dry out, then you die. I’m sorry. You didn’t ring for a catalogue of my hormonal ills.

It’s true I hadn’t and it’s also true I felt unable to comment as I’ve been relatively unscathed by it all.  Unlike my mother who went insane with the menopause and couldn’t speak civilly for three years. She slept with a rubber under-sheet because she got tired of sweating through her linen to the mattress. My cycle is slightly irregular but that’s it. Some things even seem better.  

I have less hair on my legs for one. That has to be good.

Fiona:  I’m sure auditioning is an anomaly.  You’re a famous genius, darling.

Con:    Tell me again.

Fiona:  David has your photo on the back of his door.  Mallory Queen, Girl P.I.

Con:    No! Which season?

Fiona:  1987. In the black leather.

Con:    Well, good. That’s how I want my godson to think of me. Bosoms and hair.

Fiona:  If God exists, she made all of you. That includes your – hair.

I love Fiona. I was thinking how much I loved her when I felt buzzing and looked down and saw another call coming through.

And it was them.

Chapter Three

 15^th January 2010

I’VE GOT THE JOB!!! I’ve got the job, I’m Miss Fouquet, head of the steno-pool who tries to tap-dance into the heart of her stuffed-shirt employer and it’s Equity minimum wage and I’m thrilled to death and EX-AGENT JOHN WOOD GETS NONE OF IT.

We’ve just had the first read-through. We are on lunch break and I’m writing on my lap instead of talking to people and it’s fantastic, I wish I’d done it years ago. Week one is agony for me, I am cripplingly shy in front of people I don’t know. This seems like an anomaly in an actor but years ago Malcolm accepted it’s not an affectation.  There’s no script to be me.  I stare, dumbly over the coffee urn and wish there was an auto-cue. I watch people who talk to strangers with a scientific fascination. How do they do it?

Case in point. I am listening to a conversation between the very young and pretty blonde lead, Nicola, and her love interest – a dark, brooding, frighteningly-thin young man. I heard his name but I’ve forgotten. Let’s call him Heathcliff. Heath for short.

Heath:             I told him, mate, I’m not paying that. And he said ‘I can make you pay’ and he stood up and he was fucking huge. HUGE. And I thought Jesus, he could stand me on my head and use me to sweep the car park so I said ‘Of course I’m going to pay you. I was joshing.’ I said ‘joshing’. That threw him. And he was, you could see, completely scrambled, because he didn’t want to seem stupid, he looked at me sideways, and I said ‘I’ve checked my wallet, I will retrieve it now’ and  I gave him the thumb’s up, headed to the coat check and legged it.

Nicola:             (laughs)

Heath:             I can hear him, panting behind me, he’s got asthma or something and then there is a bloody great scream and screech of brakes and I think ‘Don’t turn around, don’t turn around’ but I turn around and the bastard has just been hit by a car. And he’s flat out on the pavement and the driver – scarpered. I spent the rest of the night with him in A&E. Best mates now.

Nicola:             Gosh, that’s amazing.

And I think - it’s a good story but it’s just a story, it’s not a conversation.  And Nicola isn’t stupid. She’s a bloody good actor. She’s just got nothing to add. Unless she’s been trying to cheat her drug dealer too. And spending nights in hospital with him.

I’ll make a point of sitting next to her after lunch. We can have nothing to say together.

Oh. Here comes someone. The designer? He’s smiling and looking friendly, wanting a chat. Fuck.

***

Home now. Malcolm is in his study. We had soup for dinner, very companionable. We haven’t had a cross word between us in almost twenty years.  Of course we have no interest in each other’s worlds, I have no idea what he does at the bank all day. And he hated stage management so theatre talk just makes him edgy. We give each other cups of tea and foot rubs and watch DVDs.

I don’t do drama for free, I’ve always said. You have to pay me for that. Home is no place for tragedies.

It’s not that it hasn’t been difficult. After six months of unemployment I stopped talking, stayed awake watching bad television, slept all day. The worst moment was staring out the window in the sitting room, hearing a distant alarm, looking up and seeing Malcolm come downstairs. Going to work.

I hadn’t been to bed.

That seems over, thank god for Miss Fouquet! But maybe it’s never really over.  Maybe unemployment is like malaria – once you’ve had it, it could come back at any time. I ask myself this, but only when I’m alone. Malcolm doesn’t need to see that look on my face.

This afternoon, however, I was considering very different questions and had, I suspect a very different look on my face.

QUESTION NUMBER ONE: Why did Ex Agent John Wood call again, today – the fifth time this week – inviting me for drinks, insisting I have a drink, saying he would hunt me down and force me to have a drink?

NUMBER TWO:       Why did I agree?

We are rehearsing TYPECAST! in a working man’s club off the Seven Sisters Road. Six months ago I would have spent the day weeping in the loo at how far I’ve sunk – from the polished, sprung floor boards of the Royal Shakespeare Company rehearsing at Jerwood Studios, to cracking linoleum stained with weak coffee and a hallway smelling of cheap beer wafting in from the pub. After fourteen months of no work, however – I’ll tour Pinocchio for schools. As the Whale.

We'd finished for the day – we’re going to do music tomorrow, thank God. Everyone is so stressed by having to sing that no one is chatty now and I’ll be able to work right through lunch. I love singing and I haven’t even got much of a voice. People seldom realise that.

I checked my phone as soon as I got out on the pavement. There were two more messages from JohnWood.

It’s tantamount to harassment.

Just to be rid of him, I called back.

Voice:              Wood, Graves and Smart.

Con:                John Wood, please.

Voice:              Constance?

Con:                Yes.

Voice:              It’s Wendell.

Con:                Wendell, why do they have you answering the phones?

Wendell:         Hard times, Constance. Spirit of the Blitz. I’m licking the carpets clean later this afternoon. You’re well shot of us.

Con:                Goodness. Well, lick but don’t swallow.

Wendell:         Always sound advice. Are you ringing for John? I’ll put you through.

I felt an exquisite pang, an unbearable sense of loss – what refugees must feel when they think of their abandoned homes. I had a cartoon heart, elastic and stretched out of my body towards Bloomsbury and the offices in that derelict Regency house. I hadn’t cried in this whole horrible year but I had to sit on a bollard and swallow what felt like my tonsils before I could speak when John answered the phone.

John:                Oh thank god.

Con:                What?

John:                How are you? Where have you been? Why haven’t you answered my calls?

I laughed. Relief, hysteria, disbelief. I didn’t know what to say. I haven’t answered your calls because I hate your guts, oh no, of course, I quite like you, but you’ve stabbed me in the back and now I’m ready to play Julius Caesar.

He thought I was amused. I could feel him expand.

John:                Oh good. Good, good, good. Let’s have a drink.

I was sluiced with feeling. Huge desire to see him, to be with the witness to all my greatest achievements, the audience to my best work – a kind of partner that even Malcolm could never be. Part girl-friend, part-priest. It’s rare for an artist to be as supported, as seen, as accompanied as I have been by John Wood.

I wanted to say yes, have a drink, look at me as the success I was.

After which I will kick you in the stomach.

I didn’t say it of course. And by the end of the evening, I didn’t want to.       

**

Malcolm has just come in and asked what I’m doing. I lied and said prep for the show. Why did I do that? I don’t care if he knows I’m keeping a diary. I’ll make sure I tell him when we get to bed. Ridiculous.

***

[Chris was reading aloud and pointed out the writing changes at this point, becoming smaller and more controlled. Constance also seemed to have changed pens.]

Ex-AgentJohnWood volunteered to meet me near the club but I am proud enough not to want him to see me rehearsing in such an insalubrious postal district.  I felt ashamed and then was ashamed of my shame so distracted myself by quickly suggesting The Lamb, one of our old haunts, even as the nostalgia nearly choked me. Nostalgia!  I haven’t seen him for five weeks. He agreed and forty-five minutes later I was looking back into his green eyes, past his fringe.

Or past where his fringe used to be. He’d cut his hair. It was stiffer and styled, although still thick as a shoe-brush.  While he was buying me a gin and tonic I added up my change to see if I could possibly afford to buy a round.  Me not working means we've fallen behind on the debts and I've hated that. Even though they aren't my debts. As such. But gambling is a sickness and I think of it as Paying for Malcolm's Private Health Care.  For better or worse, after all.

Today I had enough money for John's beer but not enough for another gin so I drank slowly. I would be able to say ‘Oh no, not for me’ when the time came.

John came back with our drinks and sat down. We cleared our throats and clinked our glasses. We said nothing. Moments passed. I smiled, probably weirdly. I was resisting the impulse to throw my arms around him and weep and had very little energy left to be normal.  And I don’t even know what I wanted to weep about. Lost  glory. Lost fame.

Lost income.

He seemed just as distracted, studying the 19^th century etched glass around the bar and reading the small print on the beermats. I felt suddenly nervous as well as tearful and groped around every file in the cabinet of my brain for something to say, anything, when he spoke up, smiling.

John:              You look well.

Con:                Oh.

I was wrong-footed. I’m sure he’d said I looked well before. I don’t know why it felt like the first time.  I blurted out

Con:                You cut your hair.

He was gentlemanly.

John:              Yes. I thought it was time to move into this century.

Con:                I liked it long.

I wasn’t even sure this was true. Had I liked it long? Did I not like it now? I was disoriented.

John:              Oh.

Con:                This is nice, too.

He seemed relieved.  I felt sorry but didn’t know what for.  This was turning into a disaster. Talking to each other was like trying to negotiate Oxford Street during the Christmas rush – collision after collision.  I stole a glance at his new shorn self, was he dressing differently as well? and with a sudden clarity, I understood the problem and felt foolish for not having seen it before.

In fifteen years we had never met outside of business. In fifteen years of lunches, teas, late night meals, opening nights, award ceremonies and movie premieres he had been with me, earning money.  Fifteen years of contracts, negotiations, billing-haggles and producer-wrangling he had been earning his fifteen per cent and I had been happy to pay up.

I had no idea who JohnWood was when he wasn’t working for me.

I didn't like this.  Now he was just -  a man.  With hair cuts and clothes and probably a private life. For fifteen  years he had been that perfect mix of intimacy and discretion - which meant I could tell him anything and he told me very little.  Now I felt as I did with strangers over the coffee urn. I wanted my script. 

Suddenly meeting up seemed like a very bad idea. 

I eyed the door and he saw my glance.

John:              Plotting an escape?

Con:                Ha!

John:              (defensive) Do you want to go?

Con:                (lying) No. Do you?

John:              (unconvincing) No.

Con:                Well then, what did you want?

John;              What do you mean?

Con:                Why have you been calling me and leaving messages and insisting we drink together?

John:              I haven’t insisted.

Con:                Five calls.

John:              You didn’t call back. If you’d called back I would have called once. That’s not insistent.

Pause.

Con:                Well?

Long pause. He inhaled sharply and seemed to be steeling himself. Finally, with the air of someone about to plunge from an aeroplane at 10,000 feet he shouted –

John:              I’ve written a play!

Beat.

If he’d confessed to torturing and killing a gymnasium-full of children he could not have looked more ashamed or guilty. I had to ask him to repeat himself, I was so thrown by his face. He looked down.

John:              I’ve written a play.

Beat.

Con:                Well. That’s good. Isn’t it?

John:              I have no idea. It might be shit.

Con:                Well, yes, it might, but I mean writing it. That’s good.

John:              (sulky) If you say so.

He was suddenly thirteen years old. If I hadn’t been so frustrated I would have been amused.

For him, however, this was deadly serious. He seemed to sink into the green leather banquette and looked very small, which is an accomplishment for a 6' tall man. I dug about for a scrap of useful encouragement.

Con.                For - instance. (Still digging) Going to stab one's self as Juliet, missing, and taking out most of Romeo's eye, which bled all through the climax and denouement of the play so that for the curtain call he looked less like a youth of Verona and more like Oedipus Rex is bad - winning an Olivier award for Juliet is good!

I felt pleased with my analogy. Having had experiences of a very similar nature – well, exactly those experiences of that nature, actually -  I knew of whence I spoke. And as John took Romeo to hospital where he got seven stitches and an eyepatch he wore for the rest of the run - he knew I knew.

He fiddled with his beermat.

John:              This play might be the literary equivalent of gouging out someone's eye.

I shrugged. Art is something you have to allow. I have nothing to say to someone who doesn’t. And I don’t mind that they don’t allow it. I just have nothing to say.  I think this makes me quite a bad teacher. But it probably makes me quite a good actor.

I looked at him, waiting. I was staring into his new trendy non-fringe. I realised in moments of high feeling he doesn’t look up.

John:              God, I feel like a right idiot. A colossal idiot. I’m sorry. What an idiot. Forget it. Forget it. Have another drink, can I buy you another drink? We shouldn’t have come here. I shouldn’t have called. Stupid! I just – I just thought, because we weren’t colleagues any more I could finally, finally – I could tell you. I’ve imagined this conversation for years.

He stared at me as a man stares at a woman he loves. It was my turn to look down and I wished I had a beer mat. There was a cloud of electricity between us, almost visible.  Bewilderingly, I felt myself blush and in the depths of my being, for the very first time in twenty years, I felt unfaithful to my husband. I was confused and breathing with difficulty. We sat there, not speaking  - and then it dawned on me what was happening.

Oh. Malcolm’s coming. I have to go.  

Damn.

Chapter Four

Chris and I took a break from our marathon read of the diary to search on line for an actress who fit the description of  its author. There was no evidence of anyone in this century of any public importance by that name, only a lay historian who wrote an illustrated guide to Jane Austen, Her Homes and Friends, published 1923.  We admitted defeat and half and hour later returned, armed with more tea -  and the option of brandy -  to what we were now calling The Story of Constance (over the) Hill.

The next entry began in blue ink and the writing was even, almost decorative:

Saturday, 23 January 2010

I love rehearsal. I looovvvvveee rehearsal.  God, I love rehearsal. It’s the joy of the seaside with your best mates in the middle of the summer when you all have ice lollies, that’s rehearsal. And thrilling. Why is making things up so thrilling? I stand on the edge of Miss Fouquet, making her up. It’s erotic, the energy is the same.

We had a great morning. TYPECAST! is a sweet little play, I don’t imagine it will win a Pulitzer Prize but it has heart and it’s snappy and the actors are top drawer.

I burst into tears of joy over tea in the kitchen of the White Star Labour Club and was interrupted by the music director who stopped in the doorway, waiting and watching to see if she should hand me a towel or tip-toe out. I managed to look up and smile.

Con:    I’m sorry. I’m just so happy.

She nodded and made a sympathetic noise. She took the kettle out of my hand, probably saving me a nasty stint in a burn unit, made us both cups of tea and offered me a biscuit. We leaned against the counter, looking into a poster advertising holidays in France, circa 1998.

We ate our HobNobs. Someone somewhere must have published a thesis on the life-enhancing properties of milk chocolate HobNobs. I was in danger of crying again.

She didn’t say anything for a long time.

MD:    We’re bloody lucky to have you, you know.

She didn’t look up from her tea. She seemed shy. I wanted to make a speech, I felt a wild stirring in my chest and if I’d been able I would have turned, taken her by the shoulders and said

“Do you realise what this job has given me? I was mad with doubt and I have been helped out of the morass of my own mind, I love your music, you’re so talented. What colour are your eyes? Green? Brown? You  are adorable, you must have a thousand lovers. Let me embrace you, sister in art, as we sing something uplifting and suitably expressive, maybe Puccini?”

Instead I managed to put my hand on top of her knuckles and squeeze. She made another noise.

It was full of biscuit. And compassion.

**

I didn’t realise I must be doing quite a good job until the day was ending.  I was alone with the director, working on Miss Fouquet’s big confession of love but wasn’t alone as the rest of the cast were all lingering at the edge of the room, watching.

The director is called Peter and is very clever because Miss Fouquet is heart-broken but we’re making her smile and love singing about how heart-broken she is. This is always an excellent choice as an actor. Play tragedy as comedy. Vice versa. I was trying to think of who Miss Fouquet reminded me of.  Gillian, my new friend the music director, had stopped playing piano to make note of an entrance cue and I stood in the middle of the scrubbed and well-worn floor and remembered. I looked at Peter.

Con:    Judy Garland.

Peter:  What’s that?

He is young and fashionably scruffy and although he’s very clever, I wasn’t sure he’d heard of Judy Garland so I explained.

Con:    From the Wizard of Oz and Meet Me In St Louis. A singer. In the 40s.

Peter:  I know who she is, Constance Hill. What about her?

He calls me by both names.  It’s adorable. As though I am an entity.  Or a ship.  

I told him she sings ‘The Man that Got Away’ - the torchiest torch song ever - on the verge of grinning. Full of joy.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his iPadPhoneTunePod, a machine that does everything but rise at Easter it seems and found the clip.   We all gathered around his shoulder for a moment and there she was, overdone, over the top, hopelessly old-fashioned in her manner but completely, undeniably compelling in the sheer juggernaut energy of her performance.

[Chris went on line and found the excerpt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h3SjisivsA

‘Very revealing’ she said, cryptically.]

Peter agreed entirely, we found all the places where Miss Fouquet would enjoy how unhappy she was and I did the scene and the song -  and I felt my ribs try to exit my chest in ecstacy as everyone clapped at the end. Even the stage manager.

Malcolm hugged me tonight and told me what a genius I was.  He knows stage managers never applaud.

**

I forgot to say I’ve finished JohnWood’s script.

I took it home with me the night of our drink at the Lamb, a night that finished fifteen minutes after I interpreted his hot, molten gaze as having nothing to do with sex or love but simply about art: he wants to be an artist and he wants my help – a gushing fountain of relief, I can assure you. As soon as that was clear,  I took the script, said goodbye and went home, told Malcolm I was working late, ran upstairs to my cupboard-sized study at the front of the house and read the thing in one sitting.

It’s not bad, it’s got promise, if he can stop saying everything more than once. You know ‘I hate it. I can’t abide it. It’s unbearable.’ ‘I love her. She moves me. I want her.’ Rookie mistake. Easy to fix.

What I am having trouble accommodating is the central character- a woman in her mid-40s whose husband gambled away her fortune, who can no longer find work as a supermodel and who is struggling to make sense of her life.

If you amend the rather shaky premise that a 45-year old model would be surprised to find she’s not being used to sell lip gloss and lingerie, it's an interesting exploration into what it means to age as a woman in 21st century Britain.

That’s not my problem.

This is my problem. From the ‘Cast of Characters’ page:

Dramatis personae

Catherine Dale – 45. Tall and pale as a willow, with dark hair that foams in waves and fingers that are well-manicured but strong. She carries herself with an unmistakable quiet authority of which she has no awareness and that others find intimidating. Her silences are born of shyness but are seen as inscrutable and even, sometimes, cold and unkind. This could not be further from the truth as she is fuelled by a passion for life and a commitment to her work that inspires all those who know her. Women fear her, men want her. She is oblivious to both, only driven to be the best in her field.

I am fascinated to know how one strives to be the best in one’s field as the face of Tesco. Showing up on time would probably be the apex of professionalism. And the dialogue is better than the prose but do you think, dear diary, I am mistaken in believing John Wood has modelled his character on someone we both know and love? Although someone I obviously don't know well enough, unfeeling bee-atch everyone Takes Me To Be.

There’s a scene where Catherine and her assistant, Gregory – Irish, living in London – discuss the morning’s shoot, she despairs about working again and he rubs the back of her neck. It’s virtually wordless, just detailed description of her reaction to his hand on the back of her neck and him pulling her hair away from her face. It’s well done, tense and full of sexual longing.

I don’t think I can look JohnWood in the face again.

Even if I’m wrong, and of course it’s likely I AM wrong and it has nothing to do with how he, an Irishman living in London, feels about me, a married woman looking for work – I don’t THINK I’m wrong. And that will be smeared all over my face the next time we meet.

That may not happen for a

I was reading and showed Chris that the writing changed from its regular, handsome style to a very small, cramped, almost spidery script – one line only in a whole page.

Malcolm is leaving me.

There was no entry for two months.

 

Chapter Five

The next entry in the diary was a series of words:

Padangusthasana

Utkatasana

Garudasana

Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana

I thought perhaps Constance was planning a trip to India and these were the stops en route but Chris disabused me and said they were poses in yoga. There were half a dozen more including  – for the yoga-initiated amongst you -

Astavakrasana

Tittibhasana

Parsva Bakasana

We did a bit of research and found that the first poses were not uncommon, fairly garden-variety postures, but the latter ones were practically impossible, involving gravity-defying leg-extensions, poising on your elbows as your head cranes up at a neck-breaking angle.

If these were contortions Constance Hill was capable of, she’d been spending a lot of time at the gym. Or on the ashram.

Clippings of newspaper reviews were pasted on the heels of the Sanskrit words, names carefully excised, as though protecting an identity:

‘TYPECAST a tapping good time’

‘Tragedian gives musical-comedy star turn’

‘...as Miss Fouquet she stopped the audience in the middle of its rollicking night-out to force us into reflection on the vagaries of love and the unexpected dignity of simply caring for another person..’

‘.. Another Olivier winging her way.’

Four months after the announcement of her husband’s departure, she wrote again.  She used a fountain pen and the hand was alternately orderly and sprawling:

3 May 2010

Well, it hasn’t been as bad as I thought.

I don’t mean that finding out your husband is in love with a woman he met in a pub three years ago and has been corresponding with regularly ever since and has decided to move in with her and her four children is a good  thing. I just mean it’s not as bad as I thought.

And the only explanation that occurs to me, in between the spasms of hysterical sobbing – because, obviously, that has happened – and dreams of flying, deliriously joyful and free – which I’m sure a therapist would find either fascinating or deeply disturbing-  is that I love Malcolm. And I want him to be happy.

I can hardly account for my own maturity. I have never thought of myself as wise. I have wanted to maim and injure producers, writers – this year I spent many happy hours imagining torture for ExAgentJohnWood.  I am hugely impatient with people I care for most - my own mother, wonderful example – I put the phone down on her, screaming. Then need a stiff drink. My mother.  But I have found every moment of trying to act the woman Malcolm wrong’d doesn’t work. It’s as though it’s a role I was just not born to play. I have no other explanation.

I was wildly confused at first and full of questions. I can look back now, four months later, to the night he confessed and realise he was distraught. He sat up with me all night, crying himself. I’d never seen that before.

He’d been unhappy for years.

If anything I feel ashamed. How could I not have seen?

Because I’ve been Constance Hill Famous Actress, that’s how. Then Famous Actress Too Old to Work.

I don’t like to think about it, of course – or, the opposite,  I want to think about it too much. I am filled with an insatiable curiosity to know who she is, what she looks like. I am astonished at the number of progeny she has and Malcolm’s willingness, eagerness, to care for them. This has humbled me as well.

He always wanted children. I never took that seriously.

It’s not serious with men, is it?

Money, power, status. Not important for women. They say.

I’ve been sexist.

He said she’s helped him keep away from gambling. She’s also offered to pay off all his debts, which I’m reeling about. That’s my job.

My month in the country with Fiona was life-saving. Did nothing but yoga and sleep. She fed me and got the children to teach me computer games. Hours of answering the Call of Duty, hundreds of bullets fired into my virtual body. The little blighters beat me every single time.

But they couldn’t do Parsva Bakasana. They took movies on their phones and invited their friends to watch. I’m probably on YouTube.

And now I’m back, rattling round the house that Malcolm has said I can have – he wants nothing, that hurts almost more than anything else - cleaning curtains and bleaching sinks, going through old files, letters, photos. Spring-cleaning my life, looking for clues. How did I get here? Almost 50, single. And in spite of my undoubted triumph and the good fun of Miss Fouquet – unemployed. Again.

But when I’m asleep - full of delirious joy.

As though I’ve been planning this for years.

**

Malcolm and I had lunch today. Our first time alone since he moved out.  I hadn’t been ready. I wanted to be sure I knew what to do with my face.

He walked in and smiled and  I felt watery, porous – as though my insides were melting from one world into another. It wasn’t a bad feeling, it was just disorienting. The last time we had eaten together without being married, I was nineteen.

This felt weirdly like a date.

He came towards me, stood at the table and looked down, an unusual perspective at any time, as I’m four inches taller than he is.

He took my hand and kissed it.

I felt myself starting to cry, I was so moved and he misunderstood, sitting down swiftly and saying

Malcolm:       Connie, Connie, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.

I shook my head, spraying tears over the empty wine glasses. He held my fingers as I fought the lump in my throat and groped for the menu with my other hand.

Con:                Let’s order.

We were neither of us hungry.  Our meal sat picked at, much as it had when we were dating, desperate to get into the back of a cab and kiss until our lips chapped. I watched myself, noting my posture, my tone. ‘This is how one speaks to one’s estranged husband.’ Struggling with huge love as though it were an over-sized suitcase in a small train carriage. Where do you put it?

He shared stories about work. He was precise and intense in detail, not generalising but telling me the reasons for the mergers and who was taking over whom.  As though what he was saying was important. 

He spoke like someone who was used to being listened to.

I never had.

She obviously does.

He sweetly congratulated me on Miss Fouquet, saying he’d read all the reviews. I made him laugh, describing my tap -dancing hysteria, the night of whacking my head against a cast-iron lamp bolted on stage and singing the rest of the scene with blood trickling down my forehead and into my cleavage.

We spent the meal re-writing the show as a Hammer Horror spectacular where Miss Fouquet appears as a zombie intent on eating the boss she loves.

I glanced at him across the table, small and wiry, but looking stronger than when I’d seen him last. Beefier even. I stopped in mid-sentence and blurted

Con:    Are you working out?

He blushed. He shrugged.

Malcolm:       I’ve ignored the gym for 52 years.  It’s back-payment.

We kissed cheeks on the pavement under the restaurant’s green awning, smiling and slightly relieved.   I watched the taxis and cycles swimming by in traffic or stopped at the lights. Malcolm followed my gaze. He made a clicking sound with his tongue against his teeth. He nodded.

Malcolm:       It will be easier next time.

I imagined meeting her.

It was an image too far.

I kissed him again and turned to leave. He reached out, grabbed me and held me to him, fiercely. He felt unfamiliar under my arms, new thickness and breadth to his shoulders.  He pulled away.

Malcolm:       You’re the best wife I’ve ever had.

And in that moment the marriage ended and something else began. A new shelf for the love.

**

I haven’t been answering the phone. Outside of Fiona, there’s no one I want to speak to and she knows better than to call. This afternoon I had the strength to look and noticed that John Wood had left three messages. 

I was sure it was about his play and I haven’t had the heart to say I didn’t think I could do it. Even if he cut all the repetition.

I don’t know if I can ever act again. I don’t know who I am, and you have to know you are an actor, least of all, if you’re going to act.

After three different versions of ‘It’s John, call me’ he said:

John:              Constance, hello, god I fear the worst, you must hate my play, it’s been – well, not that I’m counting but thirteen weeks, and I’m sorry to keep harassing you.

A great lorry heaved by at that point and I couldn’t hear a word but it passed and his voice came through clearly enough for me to understand. And I screamed loudly and listened three times just in case I was imagining or daydreaming or hallucinating but I didn’t seem to be fantasising, he actually said

John:              And they want you. The National Theatre.  It’s Ibsen. (pause) We’re back, sweetheart.

And he cheered.

I don’t know what’s thrilled me more. The National or the sweetheart.

Chapter Six

18 May 2010

I’ve had a strange encounter with a fan. Someone who loves me, loves my work and was sitting outside my house with a video camera.

I’d walked to the café down the end of my street after a night of missing Malcolm terribly.  This was  before I listened to my messages from JohnWood, before I heard about  The National  Theatre  (I am meeting them to read next week – NO AUDITION!), I was unemployed and afraid of looking old – I’d slathered on enough make up for a red carpet interview – felt wildly jealous of Malcolm’s new girlfriend, deeply sorry for myself, and was looking forward to my take-away soya caffeine-free double espresso, when I remembered I hadn’t brought the pen I like to use in this journal, so even before I got to the door I turned around, admittedly rather quickly,  and nearly broke my neck because My Fan was cemented to the spot on the step outside.

I apologised, she apologised and as we spoke I looked into her face and I felt- familiar. She felt familiar. In fact, I thought I knew her.

She did know me. She beamed.

‘Hello Constance Hill! Hello best Elizabeth Bennet, best Hedda Gabler. Best actress in Othello, ever.’

She said this in an odd, slightly presentational tone, but when you’re famous you get used to people sounding body-snatched when they talk.

And my dehydrated ego soaked it up.

She walked with me towards my house and hoisted up a video camera, saying she was filming the neighbourhood, her neighbourhood, because she was moving in next door.

This was a surprise, Adrienne and Warren had said nothing about leaving.

We chatted and she quoted magazine articles about me and I told her I sometimes felt hypocritical, liking fame but hating attention and she seemed to understand and I was thinking ‘Thank you thank you thank you’  for just warming me up out of my deep freeze of self- hate and then she asked me to do Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana so she could film it for her family. The Famous Actress Constance Hill, her neighbour, doing yoga. In the street.

At this point I thought ‘This isn’t normal’ but because by now I felt closer to her than I did – well - certainly to Malcolm, I stood in front of my house listening to her tell me how talented I was, how beautiful I was, how competent I was and I, transported somehow to her reality where I was the centre of the universe and that universe was full of love and affirmation and praise,  I listened, smiled  - and lifted my leg up over my head.

I know that sounds like the strangest moment of my relationship with the woman who later introduced herself as Jennifer McIntyre.

It wasn’t.

***

20^th May 2010

I am in in my kitchen. It is my kitchen now. I can do whatever I want in this kitchen, I can do whatever I want to this kitchen. This freedom is wasted on me, however, as all I want to do in a kitchen is boil the kettle and listen to the radio. A kitchen, to me,  is a giant reverberating teasmade.

I am about to ring John Wood and ask him if my upcoming job with the National Theatre warrants me being re-instated in his books. My palms are wet, I am hyperventilating with nerves.  If I were asking him out on a date I could not be more nervous.

Pray for me.

**

He said yes. I’m crying. He said Yes and he called the agency a bunch of fuckers, and said ‘You’ve shown them, haven’t you?’ as though he had been as furious and disappointed and let down as I’d felt when he let me go.  As though it hadn’t been his idea.

Until now that had never occurred to me. Or I hadn’t believed it if it had.

And he thanked me for my understanding and my willingness to share my good fortune with him, he apologised for ‘the other fuckers’. Then I remembered.

Con:                But your play –

John:              Never mind.

Con:                I like your play.

John:              Well, some other time.

Con:                No, no. There’s no conflict of interest.  I read your play while we were on a break.

John:              Like Ross and Rachel.

Con:                Who?

John:              Never mind.

I could tell he was moved. I told him he should find a good agent.  I was about to become melodramatic and stopped myself just in time from saying ‘They can be the prop to your heart’.

But I realised when we hung up that’s how I felt.

That’s not a good sign.  

Maybe I should buy a cat.

May 24 2010

WELL. I’ve met with the National.  I stormed out the stage door like a wolf on the fold, John Wood being the fold. I knew I had approximately ten minutes, striding at a brisk clip along the South Bank before I got to the Hungerford Bridge, another three before arriving at the Embankment tube where the signal would cut out.

Con:    (over the sound of breeze off the Thames and chattering spring crowds) What was that all about?

John:   Hello Constance. Thank you for asking, I’m very well.

Con:    Courtesy is for your happy clients. I am not happy.

John:   You sound as though you’re in an oil barrel, can you speak up?

Con:    Understudy! They want me to understudy!

I was negotiating the crowds around the book stalls under Waterloo Bridge.  Someone looked up and nudged his companion, obviously saying ‘Isn’t that Mallory Queen, PI in hysterics?’ I pushed my sunglasses further up my nose and ducked my head into my phone.

Con:    Why didn’t you tell me?

John:   I didn’t know.

Con:    Why didn’t you know??

John:   (sighing) I – I didn’t ask.  I know. I know. ‘Why didn’t I ask.’ Can we argue about this in person?

I stopped to lean against the railing along the embankment. Tide was high and river boats were cruising in the almost-Mediterranean sunshine. I took a deep breath.

Con:    I’m sorry. I suppose I’m feeling - 

I struggled. I felt a new desire, unfamiliar and disorienting. There is something about this year that is forcing me, refining me into honesty. Not that I ever knew I was being dishonest. But I want to live – transparently. I followed the unfamiliar trail and found the words, groping for crumbs in the dark.

Con:    - I feel - embarrassed. I’m embarrassed.

He apologised and asked me to stop in for a cup of tea while he’d call the theatre if I wanted and re-negotiate terms. I said I’d meet him and told him not to call.

On the bridge I stopped to listen to a trio of Chilean buskers playing accordions and plastic tubs, serenading the office workers and tourists gazing up the Thames towards St Paul’s. There was a knot of fear in my chest.

I didn’t want him to call. I didn’t want to complain.

Understudy might be as good as it gets.

 

 

Chapter Seven

 

 

Chris and I had to consume substantial calories to replenish those we'd lost shivering in the January chill of the office. We toasted more fruitcake, boiled more tea and took the opportunity to debate whether Constance should accept the job as an understudy at the National Theatre or hold out for something more prestigious.

I said she needed to eat. Chris said she had to maintain standards. I said standards don’t do you much good if you’re unconscious in the gutter, dying of starvation. Chris said Constance would develop humility and compassion taking on this subsidiary role. I said compassion didn’t do you much good if you were unconscious in a gutter. Chris said Constance would make excellent contacts that could lead to further work at the NT. I wanted to say contacts couldn’t do you much good if you were lying in a gutter until I realised that Chris had actually been arguing for my point and, as you can hear, doing a better job.

Warmer - on the inside at least - and fed, we returned to the diary. The hand was neat and even, breaking into enthusiastic capitals at regular intervals.

3^rd June 2010

First rehearsal of Nora. There are eight of us. Five actors, three understudies BUT! There has been an exciting development. ALL of us are in the production, ALL of us are going to be creating this story together. I will be on stage every night.

The thrill and the deliciousness of this fact has restored every loss. I’m the most grateful understudy in the world.

It’s a great script. This is Ingmar Bergman’s version of Ibsen and he cuts to the chase. Nintey-five minutes. No interval which theatres don’t like, of course, as it limits the drinking considerably. Audience and actors love it.

The actress playing Nora is extreeeeeeeeeeeeemely young. Beautiful and damn good. I think she’s been on the telly.

Her old friend is Mrs Linde ‘childless and a widow’.  In another world this is, obviously, the part I should be playing but I don’t invite this thought. I will have some role, as yet undecided, and it pays beautifully, compared with the FRINGE and I’ve woken up happy every day for a week.

It is glorious to be back on the South Bank. I am my usual socially retarded self and have only grunted ‘hello’ at the tea table. Someone saw TYPECAST! and congratulated me, which was very sweet.

10^th June

Still just listening and learning my lines, watching the director with the actors. He is a large man with unconvincing facial hair – very grey and floppy, his hair and him, generally – with spectacles. He seems very nice, he isn’t a torturer anyway. I’ve been with torturers – directors who shout at actors, who ignore actors.  Some directors humiliate actors, calling them names in front of the rest of the cast. Hell.

Derek listens to the actors, but almost too much. I don’t mean actors shouldn’t be listened to but they seem to sway him. He won’t raise high the blood-red flag which they will follow to their death.

Lots of talking.

12^th June

I forgot what a bloody good story this is. I love Nora. She’s brave and wild and hard as nails and no one knows. She perjures herself to borrow money to cure her terminally ill husband and has been paying off this illegal loan for years. And then she’s blackmailed by this dodgy lawyer and she’s afraid if her husband finds out he’ll do himself harm trying to protect her reputation.

But does he? Ha! He finds out and accuses her of ruining him and says she is an unfit mother and their marriage is over. Except they’ll keep living together. What a treat.

But then, and this is where Ibsen is a genius, the blackmailer relents. And Mr Nora is hugely relieved and loves Mrs Nora even more because she is so helpless and dependent and he enjoys forgiving her.

And she says ‘Sod this for a game of soldiers’ and leaves.

I wept in the first run through today.

I thought how lovely Malcolm was that he would never do something like this.

He did chuck me over for another woman he met in a pub, of course. But let’s face it – he never called me ‘his little squirrel’. I think that is a divorceable offence.

(I’ve invited him to the show. It’s a small part but he’ll have to walk past the bust of Laurence Olivier in the foyer to see me and that’s got to be good.)

13^rd June 2010

We’ve been told that tomorrow Derek and the designer, Lane, are going to share what the understudies will do onstage.  I have hopes for a sort of tableau-vivant, where I wear a very satisfying hoop skirt (this is 1879 after all) and droop my head in an attitude of female oppression while the two other understudies (both very handsome men btw) lift me up by the waist. And then put me down. And spin me.

 All right. It’s turning into GREASE. But I’m excited to hear what they have in store.

14^th June

We’ve got the set in rehearsal now, which is useful.  Five high-backed chairs arranged in a semi-circle. All the actors are on stage all the time, in these chairs, like judges  - watching Nora squirm or dance or beg, unless they are in a scene with her.

It’s very effective and sinister. Simple, which I like.

Derek and Lane are whispering amongst themselves and not letting ‘as cast’  see designs. It’s like Christmas! After lunch our costumes are revealed.

**

I don’t know if my descriptive powers can do justice to what just happened in this rehearsal room. But I’m fucking well going to try.

Afternoon. Light streams into the airy and comfortable space that has been taped out and is sporting five high-backed chairs. Cast and crew assemble around the director’s table as finally the costumes and roles for the understudies are revealed.

Derek:                        What I have wanted to convey, and have been speaking with Lane about how to realise, is the societal force imposing on Nora. She is a victim and we have the actors on stage, all the time as this kind of malevolent force, watching, waiting to see what she is going to do. In this vice, she’s in a vice.

The director speaks with earnest conviction, occasionally looking to the principal members of the company. Who nod.

Derek:                        Now Lane and I have been in consultation for days, how best to make use of the non-speaking roles and I wanted to physicalize the plight of Nora, somehow. So – Lane – hold up the sketches – and we’ll show you.

Lane, a well-built man with no hair, holds up a large sketch. The company leans forward.

Derek:                        What Lane has captured is the anonymity of, well, evil, really – if you like. Dark, constant. Faceless.

I lean further forward, straining my eyes. I make out what seems to be an exalted sort of jumpsuit of the kind worn by fencing enthusiasts, complete with hood and face shield.  I assume this to be an undergarment and the shield – well. It cannot possibly be a shield. I wait for further sketches.

Derek:            We have quite literally created a faceless force, imposing on Nora. We haven’t decided if the actors will black up – that is the first option – or if we’ll use what Lane has drawn. That’s a balaclava, isn’t it, Lane?

A gasp gurgles in my larynx. It isn't credible that someone under 87 and not a member of the BNP has used the expression 'black up'. I remain upright and I focus, with effort.

Lane:              Yes, yes. Exactly. The three non-speaking actors would wear these identical body suits, black lycra and these identical hoods – you look a bit like the Baader Meinhoff gang!   - and black boots. You should not be able to tell who is who.

Derek:            In the wings you’ll have to wear reflective tape!

Lane:              Keep stage management from treading on you!

Derek:            And the idea is, and I’m thrilled with this, that in between scenes the Forces of Fate, as we are calling you, will move the set. Around Nora.

Silence descends, only broken with a courteous ‘Ahhh…?’ from Nora and a ‘Goodness’ from her husband. They are, obviously, struggling to imagine how they will possibly maintain a semblance of dignity as tables and props rise, seemingly of their own will, up and off stage.

Derek:            If you three as-cast do a good job, no one will know you are there.

Lane:              I think it’s inspired. And is certainly more comfortable than a corset, Constance.

The two handsome understudies and I cannot look at each other. The shame we would see reflected in our eyes is too much to bear.

We are on stage at the National Theatre.

Dressed as ninjas.  Moving furniture.  In the dark.

I am taking a contract out on John Wood.

(As the meeting finishes I receive a text from my ex-husband.  'We've booked tickets. The whole family's coming! Can't wait to show you off. xxMal.')

Chapter Eight

Chris showed me that, before the next entry, Constance had written a series of times and dates with cryptic words beside them  ‘9:00 – episode one – gets dumped’ ‘1:30 –episode one part two, auditions’. It was as though she was making notes on a favourite television series. ‘5:00 – episode two, left bereft’.

We discussed the similarity of these words with what Constance herself had written in this diary and argued at length over what they could mean. We thumbed the pages and put yellow-post-its next to life events that could correspond to this list. We scanned the Radio Times for that week in 2010, looking for clues on line, on television. Nothing was conclusive. We were about to give up when Chris suggested we read on. Maybe Constance would tell us herself.

(I think the word you are looking for at this point in the narrative is ‘Doh’.)

15 June 2010

I’m making a movie.

We’re making a movie. I’m making a movie with Jennifer McIntyre, the fan with the video camera who nearly landed me in hospital when I tripped over her in the high street.

[Chris said ‘It’s Chapter six!’ – we flipped back to see:

http://myproductioncompany-stephanie.blogspot.com/2011/04/chapter-six.html]

She’s not really a fan. But I’ve only recently found that out.

I don’t know what it will say about me if she actually becomes a friend. Because I think it’s suspect to enlarge your social circle with strangers who get you to do yoga in the street. Which she did.

And filmed it.

She’s an odd woman, I think. She’s American, no no – Canadian  - with a strange accent because she’s been here a long time. She is very vague about where she lives – ‘somewhere near King’s Cross’ – and insists that all she wants in her life at the moment is a job in an office so that her mother will stop worrying about her.

You would think this an easy goal to achieve but there’s more to Jennifer McIntyre than meets the eye. Not least because the most important thing about this job for her is that she wants to film it. She wants to film herself, having this job. And film herself living in a nice neighbourhood and film herself knowing (once) famous movie stars.

She’ll send this home to Mummy. So Mummy will die happy.

Or, even better, live happy. Knowing Jennifer is FINE.

I was tempted to send her away with the number of a good therapist but I felt a bit sorry for her and she’s actually quite nice. And she has a camera. And she knows how to use it. Suddenly, as in one of those cartoons when the great light bulb goes on over the head of the rabbit, I had an idea.

If she could fictionalise her life, why not fictionalise mine?

That’s all writers do anyway, isn’t it?  They’re making up SOMEBODY’s life, even if it’s Anna Karenina’s or Jane Eyre’s. We could film our own lives – or versions of our own lives -  and cut out the middleperson. Stop hoping someone will create a role where I’m more than the eccentric auntie who wears funny spectacles and lives in the attic. Or a headmistress.  Or a police officer.

I invited Jennifer McIntyre back for tea. We found we could be of mutual service. We film a fake life for her to send home to her mother - that is actually a real movie for me. A movie  - or a 12-part telly series, I’m not picky - about an actress. It’s based on me without being me, and of course we would cast me to play me.

Jennifer McIntyre will be in the series, as herself. Except better.

Her mother will think it’s a documentary.

As I consider the faces of all the casting agents who haven’t rung me in almost two years watching me collect my BAFTA for this brave and hilarious piece of screen history, I have decided I am making a ‘Fuck-U-mentary’. But I won’t mention that to the press. We will comfort her mother and re-establish my career with one bit of celluloid.

Or whatever they use these days.

I don’t like to say that it’s desperation that binds me to Jennifer McIntyre, although in my quiet moments, lying in bed, making room for Malcolm that he no longer takes, this project seems like one of the more insane choices I’ve made in my life that looks increasingly insane (I have been rehearsing in my Ninja Nora costume and, as the only ‘as cast’ who can see in the dark, am the only one who hasn’t been given bed rest for shin injuries). But there is some fuel, like vengeance, powering me. You can’t keep a woman over 40 off the screens any longer.

She can get to the screens ALL ON HER OWN.

But I had to get Jennifer McIntyre a job.

(I’m not convinced her name is Jennifer McIntyre but I’ve signed up for fiction so – I’m going with it.)

***

In fact, Agent JohnWood (reinstated), has given Jennifer McIntyre a job. I hadn’t realised his office was in such a bad way, they’ve lost two senior agents who have gone back to property development and law school, respectively.

You would have thought if they could have been in either profession at any point in their lives they’d have jumped the agent ship long ago. But I think some agents must love their jobs.

I think John Wood does.  Well, John Wood loves his job when he’s working for me. Because we are a very good team with a fine, working relationship.  We are happy colleagues.

He is doing me a huge favour by giving Jennifer a job, so she can earn money while she helps me make this film – or this series - because god knows I can’t pay her -  and I respect him for that.

Yes, there is some admiration, perhaps, but that is to be expected in people who have known each other for fifteen years.

Nothing else is going on.

I don’t even know why I’m talking about this. I think – I think it’s because I’m grateful.

That’s it.  I brought Jennifer to see him, to take the job he was offering.  And seeing the state of his business – well. I don’t love him, obviously, but I do feel - grateful.

He was waiting on the landing when we arrived. He leapt up and ushered us into the front room of the Regency town house, the main office with huge ceilings that looks out over the square. It used to be deafening with calls and pagers and faxes and the sound of actors laughing. I’ve sat on many a desk and commiserated with Judi about foundation garments (costume drama acquaints you with the finer points of painful lingerie). Now every desk looked like an empty life boat on a quiet sea, survivors gone. My absence was brief, but damaging. I told myself.

‘See? Serves you right for letting me go!’ I wanted to shout, but in my heart I knew I’d been part of the problem. I felt new resolve to re-create myself as an ‘A’ list attraction. I want John Wood to be proud. And solvent.

He led us to a door that opened onto what looked like an unlit cupboard with a desk squished into it. He said Jennifer could take calls here. It evoked a cell in a Victorian prison. John was embarrassed. He fumbled with a non-existent piece of fluff on his chinos.

John:                It’s temporary.

To her credit, Jennifer said ‘It’s perfect.’

I wasn’t having it.

Con:                It’s perfect for interrogating. (to John) Why can’t she be out front?

John:                Wendell wants someone – slightly  -

Jennifer:          Taller?

John:                No.

Con:                Blonder?

John:                No.

Jennifer:          Thinner?

John:                Younger.        

We were all embarrassed now.

John:                (quietly) He’s a dick.

Con:                But your name is on that door.  You tell him.

He was very uncomfortable now. His ears started to blush.

John:                Everyone knows the name, so they’re keeping the name. But it’s just – my name.

He looked up, full of consciousness, trying to smile.

John:                I’m – freelance now. Like you.

I stared at him and all the pennies dropped. His own company had fired him. Things were that bad.

And from this place of not having, he was giving to us. I felt a lump rise in my throat, the way it does at Andrex ads when the puppy plays with the toilet roll. I had to look away.

John:                But – they let me use the phones.

Jennifer nodded in a ‘That’s good’ way. And we all stared at the lump of wood squeezed between walls in an airless room, sans light, sans art, sans heat – sans everything. I heard Jennifer inhale deeply.

Jennnifer:                    Well. Hitler survived a bunker. I’ve got to have more moral fibre than Hitler.

We left the closet and headed back across the vast and empty expanse of headquarters for the once mighty Wood, Graves and Smart, the ghosts of agents past - wheeling, dealing, seducing, lying - vibrant around us.  But heading where? Did John still get to sit in his corner office? He glanced at Jennifer over his shoulder.

John:                            Remember Hitler shot himself.

She shrugged.

Jennifer:                      Well, okay but – probably not because of the bunker.

I wanted to tell her to get out her camera and film the reunion of the formerly-famous actress with the formerly-potent agent.  To record me grabbing his hands and saying we would overcome, we would feel this rock bottom beneath our feet and launch ourselves back up into the stratosphere, better, deeper, wiser people.

I did spend almost ten formative years in California but I’m not an American.

I had a Kit-Kat in my bag. So I split it in three and we ate it.

Chapter Nine

23 June 2010

John Wood came to see the show. I met him afterwards in the bar at the back of the BFI, not wanting to run into anyone else I might know in the foyer of the National. The worst thing that could possibly happen would be for Kenneth B. or Ian M. to see me, ask what I’m doing and have to tell them.

John was gazing intently at the programme when I arrived. He whipped his head up and he wore an expression I found impossible to read as I sat slowly on one of the trendily-retro-but-comfortable sofas. He’d bought me a drink and smiled, bashful, as he handed it over.

John:    Presumptuous.

I shook my head.

Con:    Courteous.

I smiled. We clinked. He looked back down at the programme. Apparently, we weren’t going to speak. This suited me fine. What is there to say about one of your former A-list clients now working as a stage hand at the National in blackouts between scenes? ‘That was you I didn’t see moving the ottoman, wasn’t it darling? Such stage -  absence.’

Music was playing; couples perched, laughing at the bar, and I stared at the top of his head.

I hadn’t noticed before but from here I could see his hair was thinning.  The rest of his head is full, all dark and stiff, and not skimpy but, quite undeniably, a bald pattern was emerging.

I felt something stir in me, just above my hips. It arose before I could stop it - a small surge towards him, a kind of melting tenderness at the thought of him passing his physical prime, his clean lines blurring.

When the fuck had I noticed that John Wood had lines, clean or otherwise? I licked an ice cube out of my lime and soda and began to eat it. John looked up and frowned.

John:    That’s bad for your teeth.

I shrugged. He returned to reading.

Thank god. I took a deep mental breath and back-pedalled from the melting. This – feeling -  was a natural result of our reunion. Our wonderful professional relationship, tended and seasoned over fifteen years, recently severed, and then re-formed, more solid than ever. He was my dear colleague and, well, even friend you could say.

Why hadn’t I noticed that irresistible slope of his shoulder before? The shoulder that led to the back of his neck, strong-looking and very slightly dusky – that Irish thing going on in his skin.

Shoulder? Neck? I was losing control. I was beginning to eat John Wood alive in this public watering hole on the South Bank.

I choked. Violently.  He started, dropped the programme between his feet and whacked me between my shoulder blades.

John:    See?

Con:    (between hackings) What?

John:    Bad for you. Don’t eat ice. If you’re hungry, I’ll buy you a sandwich.

I regained my breath and my composure. My lipstick was all over the rim of the glass. I reached into my bag for a compact to address what must be a Bozo-The-Clown look smearing up my mouth. I groped, found nothing but a tissue and some pencils. I scowled.

John:   What?

Con:    I want to fix my face.

John:   You have a surgeon in that bag?

Con;    Ha hadee ha ha.

John:    Here. Come here.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief.  He dipped it in my lime and soda at which I said

Con:    Gross!

but that didn’t keep him from holding my chin, staring at my mouth and expertly dabbing away whatever red had strayed from the line of my lips. He was focussed, intense and frowning, like a mechanic cleaning an engine. He finished, smiled and looked at me, still holding my face.

John:   That’s the best I can do without steel wool.

Con:    Thanks.

John:   Just hover in corners. No one will notice.

Con:   I should have brought the balaclava.

He wanted to laugh loudly but somehow, his fingers cupping my chin, there wasn’t room between our faces for such a big sound, so he made a noise, deep in his throat. A laugh crossed with a purr.

He didn’t let go.

I didn’t want him to.

And I think it was because, having just been on stage in front of 1,080 people for over an hour and a half, he was the first person to look at me all day.

***

[Chris glanced at the time and suggested we were going to be late for our New Year’s dinner in Camden. I urged her to read a bit further. I think we both suspected then what neither of us was willing to say: there would be no dinner before we finished this diary.

 The next entry was brief.]

***

24 June – from the green room

One of the actors in the cast is a rabid football fan. There is some huge tournament he is following and, as he is on stage all the time – in one of those five, dimly-lit, high-backed judge’s chairs, gazing at and condemning Nora - he has secreted his Iphone/pad/pod in the pocket of his 19^th century frock coat and listens to the match when he’s not in the action.

Just before he makes an entrance he quietly removes the ear piece and hides it. He plays the scene – he is Torvald, the well-meaning but terrified husband – either condescending to Nora, perving or berating her. When he’s done he takes several dignified steps back to his chair, lifts the tails of his coat, sits and, back safe in the gloom, raises the ear piece and keeps listening.

I watch him instead of the play now. I can tell how his team is doing.

One night last week he’d run out batteries or couldn’t get reception and approached me in the wings before our entrance. He was almost pale.

Joseph:            I’m sorry, I have the most cheeky request.

We hadn’t spoken much during rehearsal or the run. He was polite, almost deferential. My hands were on the edge of my balaclava about to pull it down for my entrance. I looked at him, waiting.

Joseph:            Chelsea is playing tonight. It’s the final and the series is tied.

I made a guess as to his loyalties.

Con:                Go Blues.

Joseph:            Yes, exactly. And just before Nora reveals to Mrs Linde that she has forged a signature to save Torvald’s life, the match will start. And as the curtain comes down, all will be decided. I will have missed probably the most important event in the history of my team.

I could see the assistant stage manager taking her post at the edge of the proscenium arch just inside the wings. She put on her head set and glanced about for the As Cast and Nora. We were all ‘pre-set’ discovered on stage as the audience entered – the invisible forces of fate moving objects about Nora as she sits in a daze on her sitting room divan.

Not a bad image, as I suspect that’s how most housewives must feel at one time or another.

Joseph spoke again, more urgent and more apologetic.

Joseph:            Can you do me a huge favour? Can you get me the scores? When we cross onstage, can you just whisper what’s happening? And when you hand me the floating letter, would you mind – just – just lean forward, I’ll put my ear down – and tell me what’s going on?

I looked at him in disbelief but with a certain respect. If he were a bad actor this would not have been a pleasant commission. But I liked him and liked his work and admired the intensity of his passion. I am a sucker for obsessives.

Also, and let’s be honest, this was the chief attraction: I liked the attention.

I shook my head smiling, pulled my mask on over my eyes and entered on cue with the stricken and whey-faced Nora.

That night, the forces of fate in Mrs Helmer’s life moved chairs, raised tables, threw lamps, and stole fountain pens, between which poltergeist-ings one of them slipped quietly, unseen, between the backstage radio and the scowling Torvald Helmer to let him know, 90 minutes after scene two had begun, Chelsea had progressed to the next round.

He hugged me in the wings.

I can see why it’s called the beautiful game.

Chapter Ten

19 June 2010

Nora opened last week to acceptable reviews. Nothing that has challenged the vocabulary of critics as they seek new expressions of praise, but acceptable. This means The National should break even and the mood in the green room is sanguine.

I watch the leads chatting with each other before curtain; some of them read notices, some of them refuse. I happen to know that Nora herself was singled out as the strongest and most compelling aspect of the production and I agree. She is effortlessly real. And she’s slightly scary. You don’t know what she is going to do next.

I am impressed and slightly jealous. I was always lauded for my ‘animal presence.’ Now if anyone noticed my animal presence they’d try to shoot me - creeping around on stage in the dark, running into furniture, grunting in my balaclava. I might bite. 

I’d shoot me.

I remember seeing Judi make an entrance in 1995 on the huge revolving Olivier stage in this very theatre. She and I had made plans to have a birthday tea in the canteen after the matinee (I’d bought her a needlework kit – every moment she wasn’t on stage she was cross-stitching; she was bloody good, too) and she’d got me a prime seat.  Lights went down, music came up and she appeared, upstage, and began her cross down. She was dressed circa 1895 and carried a parasol, wore a spectacular hat. Lights began to fill the stage as she made her purposeful way towards us and with every step I felt an increasing sense of sitting in the presence of something I could not describe but that my soul recognised. The hair on my forearms rose, the skin on my lower back tingled, my body began to lift to meet the sheer irresistible power of her presence. 

She kept walking – the stage is 45 feet deep – her skirts sashaying, her parasol swinging and with every step she grew more terrifying and more irresistible. Here, on an ordinary afternoon, on a rainy autumn day in a very familiar place, something wild emerged.  It was like meeting a tiger in your garden.

I’d been a professional actress for almost twenty years and could not say then – and can barely describe now – the effect of her charisma.  I was weeping by the time she reached the lip of the stage. Her character surveyed us -  amused, erotic, hopelessly sad -  and we were her happy slaves.

This is why we’re here, I thought.  On earth. We’re here to be as alive as possible.

Judi is just more alive than most.

And in Nora I pride myself on being as un-alive as I can. If I am meant to be invisible, I am going to be the best bloody invisible character in the London theatre today.

(And as I wasn't mentioned in the reviews, I Am Obviously Succeeding Nobly.) 

Chapter Eleven

25 June 2010

I need a drink. Whisky. That's what people drink. Do we have whisky? Where would we keep whisky?

Why do I say we?

**

It was in the lower kitchen cupboard, behind a faulty salad spinner and a macramé plant-hanger my Auntie Betty had given Malcolm when he was on parole. We called it his Better Homes and Gardens period. He was improving everything, not just his relationship with roulette. All the spider plants died, nicely suspended, in our kitchen window.

Funnily enough, it’s because of Malcolm I need the drink. I am writing while holding the glass in my other hand. Like Hemingway. I assume.

I was driving home from the gym in Cricklewood – now that I’m working I can afford yoga again, thank god – and stopped on a side-street to get a paper from a news agent. I haven’t been in before but I’ve always clocked the shop and thought ‘Ah, if I remember I can park on that street, jump out and get the paper’ and felt it was testimony to my new-found clarity, the self-reliant and organised life that doesn’t depend on agents or managers to buy things like papers and – food.

I found a space just outside the shop. I leapt out, feeling more like Mallory Queen, Girl P.I. than I had in twenty years. I liked the sound my boots made as I strode across the pavement. A woman in control.

I picked up the weekend Guardian from the display just inside the door and peered about, recklessly, to see if there was anything else that caught my eye. Now that I’m working again, I impulse shop. Which usually means an extra packet of biscuits to go with my pint of milk.

There were fig bars on sale, two for one, and I grabbed them both, anticipating the pleasure of the Weekend Magazine with my tea, made my confident way to the counter and looked into my bag for change as I heard a familiar voice say

‘Connie.’

I looked up. It was Malcolm. I recognised him immediately. And why wouldn’t I? We were married for over twenty years, companions, lovers, friends. I’d seen him only seven weeks ago, there had been no drastic change in his appearance since then.

This did not keep me from staring at him as though he were an envoy from another planet with purple skin and a round, hairless head.

He was in the shop. Obviously. As I was in the shop. But with one significant difference.

He was working. In the shop.

It was no mistake. He wore a name tag and a green polo shirt like the pale-faced, black-haired girl behind him pricing stock. She didn’t ask him to return to the other side of the counter and stand in the queue with the other customers – well, customer, I was it - as she would undoubtedly have done if he wasn’t an employee.

Our eyes locked. I lost the power of speech. He seemed to colour slightly but recovered, grabbed my fig bars and lit them up with the sensor. Then the Guardian. Then the milk. The total flashed up on the cash register. He put everything into a bag and I handed him a five pound note.

‘Hello, Malcolm’ I gargled, eventually.

‘Here’s your change,’ he said smiling. Rather unpleasantly.

‘What – what are you doing?’ I said.

He put his hands square in front of him on the counter. He looked like a cowboy ordering a double bourbon in a dodgy saloon.

‘I’m work-ing.’

He said it in two syllables. As to a child. And I reacted like a child. I think I batted my eyes.

‘But why?’

‘Why do most people work, Constance? Bit of dosh, kids need food.’

He was speaking through gritted teeth. His colleague glanced up at what felt like a sudden scrum of customers behind me.  I kept my eyes glued to Malcolm. In case he vanished.

‘But – but you work at the bank.’

‘No. I did work at a bank. Then I embezzled funds, remember?’

The crowd behind us became quiet.

‘For the gambling. You remember. The gambling.’

‘Malcolm, don’t – I’m sorry – let’s  – ‘

But he was warming to the topic. It was as though he’d prepared the speech and had been waiting for his audience, who turned out to be me, an elderly couple with a bag of white bread, a young man in shorts clutching a bottle of Lucozade and a Jack Russell at the back of the shop that had wandered in off the street.

Malcolm’s voice was clear. He was projecting to the dog.

‘Someone caught embezzling funds is never able to work in the financial industry again.’

He reached for the couple’s loaf of bread.

‘Having a criminal record bars you from any position of responsibility or role that requires regulatory sanction.’

The woman hung onto her Kingsmill. Malcolm waited, leaning one elbow on the counter.

 ‘In addition, regulators have a high standard of permissible conduct that extends far beyond being found guilty of such charges. They perform background checks and investigate people very conscientiously.’

He extended his hand to the couple again and it was obvious she didn’t want to release even the food she hadn’t bought to someone confessing a criminal past.

‘Luckily, they are not so discriminating at You Go Mart.’ He wrestled the bread from the woman, beamed its price into the cash register and finished his oration with ‘That’s £1.25’, holding out his hand for the change.

‘For a bloody loaf of bread,’ her husband muttered. ‘Talk about embezzling, we’re being embezzled.’

Malcolm took the money and handed the bread to the couple who seemed rooted to the spot, watching him as though he were a good episode of reality television. He asked ‘Is there anything else you want to know?’

There were a thousand things I wanted to know. How long had he been doing this? Had he never gone to the bank when I had thought he was leaving every morning to go to the bank for the past two years? Was this enough to support him in his new way of life? Had he started gambling again?

Instead I said ‘Do you have the Radio Times?’ he said ‘No’ and I left the shop.

Chapter Twelve

Chris and I felt hugely sorry for Constance, running into her ex-husband in an off-licence.

‘Working there,’  Chris said, her eyes wide. ‘He’s the guy you ask for cigarettes or a Thunderball ticket.’ She thought again. ‘Although she’d always know where he was.’

I’d run into ex-boyfriends in the street, lost the use of my legs, needed to be sat down and poured a stiff drink before I could speak coherently. We were impressed with her sang-froid in being able to ask for a Radio Times.

We then spent twenty minutes talking about who still buys the Radio Times, will radio factories all close down, are there radio factories? If so, where are they? before we realised Constance made for much better conversation.

The next entry was made two days after running into Malcolm.

27 June 2010

I write overlooking fields and sheep and listening to someone play Mozart, quite well, on a piano two floors down. I am in my darling, huge-hearted, easily-manipulated best-friend Fiona’s second best spare room, Jennifer McIntyre is in the best room across the hall and we are here, filming for our series.

I have two nights off from Nora. I feel like I’m on day release.

I know it’s mad and will probably go nowhere but I’m actually very excited. Fiona has kept wardrobes of costumes from her decades of designing and building. The workmanship is exquisite and I marvel at how even the lure of children and country life could keep her from exercising her gift. Her costumes are works of art.

She threw a pile of brocade and satin on the futon in the attic. Jennifer, arms draped with three other hermetically-sealed wardrobe bags, gasped. Fiona unzipped a cocoon and revealed two decades of 19^th century fashion: corsets, panniers, bustles. Fiona treated them casually but with affection. Like dogs.

‘This one, look at this, industrial support. Our heroine was very well-endowed. We had to keep her assets from escaping during the ‘Song of Revolutionary Fervour’. Ah, this. This was Jane Bennet’s cloak, for getting sick on her way to Netherfield.  Look at the seaming on the bottom edge.  Fabric is a half-circle, we wanted it full; very full cloak.’

She peered intently down at the neat row of perfect stitches. I saw Jennifer drool.

I looked about the converted loft, at the half-dozen wardrobes stuffed with garment bags, all labeled like specimens in a laboratory.

‘Isn’t this illegal? Have you stolen these?’

Fiona laughed.

‘They get left behind. Some I bought back. They are always more value to me than the company. They move onto Pinter. No corsets in Pinter. Right, here we are. 18^th century. That’s what we want.’

She relieved Jennifer of the third and heaviest bag. The zip undid slowly, liberating a pearly-pink gown, ruffled and petticoat-ed and, beneath it, a deep red riding coat-dress. I fingered the cloth. Fiona put on her glasses.

‘There’s a light gown underneath, you can see the boning, lovely work, I had marvelous help and - ah, yes, she spilled her coffee, just here. She was very talented but clumsy as a mule.’

Jennifer had taken the riding coat over to a mirror. I could see her reflection. Her face softened and I noticed for the first time that she might be seen as attractive. Her eyes are a bit close together and she has the hair of a stenographer but her face has quite a good shape and her smile is lovely. Beautiful, even, if she’s in the right mood. Which she was now.

‘My mom will just - die,’ she said with difficulty.

Fiona turned, beaming, pleased to see the effects of her artistry.

‘Well let’s get you in it,’ she said.

 ‘And knock her dead’ I said, standing up and clapping Jennifer on the back.

Sometimes it’s good to have an inner-American to channel.

 ***

I hadn’t thought that Jennifer was taking time off from being an abused secretary to help costume and film me but when I saw a call coming through from Agent John Wood I remembered that we were both working for him now. Or supposed to be.

I was being laced up into the pink froth by Calla, Fiona’s eldest, when I answered, and was deafened by the sound of John shouting at 180 decibels ‘Where the fuck are you?’

I excused myself from Calla, pulled up my panniers, and shuffled into the hallway.

‘I’m in Wiltshire,’ I said, glancing out at the sheep, spreading across the grass, forming and re-forming like flocks of birds. Or  - roaches, actually.  I’ve spent some time in New York and I once saw a wall go black with stampeding cockroaches. That’s when I decided never to live on the east coast. I was wondering if there was some universal force that shaped the wild kingdom into predictable stampeding patterns when I was yanked back into the present by John yelling  -

‘What the fuck are you doing in Wiltshire? You have an interview.’

I panicked.

‘With whom? When?’

‘With me, now.’

I swallowed. John had mentioned he wanted me to do some promotion on his web site but it was – just his web site. It wasn’t real promotion. It wasn’t Friday Night with You Know Whom. Which I’ve done. Half a dozen times. At least. I was thinking of You Know Who, how he is completely, wholly and utterly charming  and adores his children when John bellowed

‘Are you listening??’

‘Yes,’ I lied.

‘With me, now so that I can post it tomorrow morning when I have said I will post it. An exclusive interview with Constance Hill, live at JohnWood dot com. People have signed up. There are members waiting. You are not going to let me, or them, down.’

I felt tears rise up and I don’t know if it was the fact that, like Desdemona, I am a child to chiding or that there were actually people, wonderful, lovable, glorious people who wanted to hear me and whom I didn’t want to let down so I said ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, what can I do?’ and didn’t even mind when John Wood said he was driving up to see me that very minute and we’d interview this evening.

 

Chapter Thirteen

Chris and I were thrilled to think that Constance was in a huge country house re-starting her film career as a costume drama heroine. Even a fake costume drama heroine. As long as she got to wear those clothes - we didn't care.

Chris looked up from reading and gasped.

'Do you think she's going to fall in love?'

'I have no idea. Keep reading.'

'I'll bet she is. What do you bet? Everyone in costume drama falls in love.'

'Everyone not in costume drama falls in love.'

'Not everyone in DieHard 7.'

'All right. No. I don't think she's going to fall in love.'

'I do!'

'I know. I've said I don't so you can be right. Keep reading.'

She did. Smirking. (I think she'd read ahead.)

Constance was still in what we think was Wiltshire, waiting for Agent John Wood to show up. 

27 June 2010

We’ve finished our first bout of filming. Jennifer has gone crazy and costumed everyone in the household. Sheer lunacy. It was that attic of clothes. Fiona is deliriously happy to be on set again, even if it is just her own front garden. She has enough breeches and stomachers and fichus to put her three children and herself as well as Jennifer and me in full 18^th century regalia.

I don’t know what we're doing or if it looks good. We’ve shoved pins in our hair and slapped foundation on our cleavage as Jennifer runs around with her little video camera filming everything. I had to force her into a chair in the library to ask exactly what the point of it all was. She frowned.

'You know the point, it’s your career. Your comeback.'

‘Yes, but what exactly am I coming back as? Someone in fancy-dress at a badly-attended house party?'

‘You’re in a costume drama. This is a film set, it’s perfect, the house is perfect.’

She looked gleefully around at the unrestored library, corners of which, it is true, are completely accurate to the late 18^thcentury. And look just as grimy, cobwebby and decayed as you’d expect.

‘I still don’t understand,’ I said, persevering. ‘What will people see? what am I supposed to be doing?’

She sighed and put her camera down. She spoke quietly as though we might be overheard. And as though anyone cared.

‘We are pretending that this is the set of a film. A new but fictitious costume drama starring Constance Hill. I am getting footage for ‘the making of’ and we will see you in the corners of the house, in the gardens, in this glorious costume and agents and producers will think “Oo, she’s still got it!” and hire you.'

I was becoming less and less convinced. Maybe there is something about Jennifer McIntyre’s enthusiasm that I mistrust on principal. Which is pretty ungenerous when you think about it – but maybe she just has some really bad ideas.

‘Aren’t they going to be suspicious when there is no actual film?’ I continued.

She shrugged.

‘It’s been delayed. Films are delayed all the time.’

‘Shouldn’t we have something that looks a bit like a film going on?’

‘What? Why?’

‘When you have a ‘making of’ it is usually attached to an‘of’. It can’t just be me smoking in the garden between imaginary takes, it’s naff.’

She took in a long breath and gazed down at her lap. She was, it has to be said, glorious-looking in the corseted red riding dress, cinched at her waist and extending, with the panniers, beyond her knees to the floor. She fingered the petticoat.

‘Is it? Is it naff?’

‘I think so, yes. I’ve been on film sets, I have to say usually some sort of film is going on. And I think, if this little project is going to have any credibility, we’re going to have to have at least the semblance of a script.’

She looked up, a new light of hope in her eyes.

‘Do you know anyone who writes scripts?'

I thought of John Wood, barrelling down the M3 even as we spoke.

I obviously did.

28 June 2010

Hilarious! Hilarious! John Wood arrived and was thrust into the costume of a naval hero (had to admit he looked very fetching) but only after he spent the afternoon making up cod-period-speeches for me to deliver to him, his back to the camera, as Jennifer films.

It is too, too divine. And ridiculous. But we are all loving it.

**

Very impressed that John is game for this. He’s even offered to put the footage on his web site. I think it’s tantamount to perjury but he says ‘I’ve just written scenes for a costume drama, we are filming those scenes, you’re in a costume drama’.

Desperation makes us all very willing.

**

Here is a bit of the scene between my character and John’s. I am playing Philadelphia Deane, isn’t that splendid? I am about to fall in love with Lancelot East. No one could accuse John of timidity.

We emptied the library, used candles in the sconces, all very Dogma-filmic. I was in that perfect pink confection of a dress, the character ‘glowing a bit’ from a dance. John pivoted, keeping his back to the camera as Jennifer moved around us, doing a serviceable job. I memorised the lines, they were that good.

You must imagine that Philadelphia and Lancelot have escaped from the ball room to the library. She looks up at him, coyly but - confident - and says

PHIL:You are an enthusiastic dancer, Mr East.
LANCE:I am an enthusiastic man.What I do, I do with my whole heart.

John Wood had learned his lines too and shrugged. As Lancelot. Philadephia smiled.

PHIL: Do you never fear excess might lead to ruin?
LANCE: (smiling back) Excess of what? Happiness?
PHIL: Unbridled feeling does not lead to happiness.
LANCE: I cannot think myself into behaving. I behave and grope my way through consequence.

Lancelot sat himself, easily, into a chair and stared up at Philadelphia. In her pink gown.

PHIL: And spend many hours confessing your apologies to offended sensibilities.
LANCE: I had not looked for censure from you. Even risking your good regard, I say it is better to attempt and fail then never attempt at all.
PHIL: (laughing) I have never met anyone like you.
LANCE: And I have never seen anyone like you.

At which point he stared at me with a gaze that I’m sure burnt holes through the wall behind my head.

He wrote this in the kitchen with a scabbard on his knee, inhaling two packs of Jammy Dodgers and half-a-cup of Fiona’s bad instant coffee.

Philadelphia is falling in love with John Wood. I mean Lancelot. Lancelot. Did I say John Wood? Good God.

**

Fuck.

Malcolm is here.