‘Well, Olivier managed it,’ observed Stella, ‘and Gielgud managed to combine both.’
Martin groaned. ‘Have a heart, please. I am not in their class. Not yet.’
‘What’s the part that worries you?’ asked Coffin, trying to take his own mind off a dead woman who might not be there.
‘Malvolio, a tricky part at the best and I have to get it across to an audience of schoolchildren.’
Stella explained: It’s an examination text this year – we always try to do a performance of the play if we can. We get a grant from the Schools Theatre Society on condition we do it. Short run and full houses … the kids are conscripted.’ She turned to Martin. ‘Best part in the play, and you know it.’
‘And the most difficult … I’ve always fancied Sir Toby Belch.’
‘You will have to wait a decade or two to do that.’
‘Or Maria … good part, that.’
‘Don’t go bisexual on me.’
Coffin watched them gloomily: they were flirting, it was only a theatrical flirtation, which did not usually mean much, but he found it hard to handle. And you never knew where it could go: to bed quite often, and then best friends for ever, only they might never meet again – that was the theatre world.
I’m afraid, he said to himself, that’s it. I am afraid. I fenced myself in, I built a wall and felt safe inside it. Stella broke down that wall. I can’t risk anything with Stella and nature has not made me a trusting customer.
Nature and his profession. There he was again, thinking about Dick Lavender and his astonishing story. He wondered if he could get away with doing nothing, and telling the old man that there had been nothing to find.
But bodies and bones have a way of outing themselves when least you want them to.
He raised his eyes to Martin, who was saying that in many ways Shakespeare’s tragedies were easier to act than his comedies. ‘We laugh at different things now compared with Tudor England, but we cry at the same. I could manage tragedy.’
No doubt, thought Coffin. Perhaps we all can.
‘Depends on the part,’ said Stella, always willing to enter into a good theatrical discussion. ‘I defy anyone to call Hamlet easy, or Lear.’
‘They support you,’ said Martin with animation, ‘Iago must be a wonderful part to play.’
‘We don’t do Othello much for the school and college audiences,’ said Stella drily.
Augustus sidled up to Stella, opening his mouth and looking at her intently. He gave a little bark.
‘He wants a drink.’ Martin reached out a hand to pat the white head.
‘He’s not having gin or wine.’
The loose sleeve of Martin’s jacket had fallen back; Coffin saw a line of just-healed scratches on his arm. Three ragged, not parallel but haphazard, lines. Gouged out. They didn’t look like loving but overpassionate scratches, more as if delivered with a sharp instrument. Say a knife. To his experienced eye they looked both deep and sore. Fairly new, also.
‘I’ll get a bowl of water,’ Coffin said. A self-mutilator? Or how much did the lad see of his sister of the knife?
The conversation was going on when he got back. Stella was showing Martin a book of her press cuttings; she was unusual among actresses since she kept bad notices as well as good ones. ‘Look at that one’ – she pointed – ‘the stoat … never got a good notice out of that man, I always got the parts his girlfriend wanted. Even when he decided that he wanted a boyfriend and not a girlfriend, he didn’t change to me … Now this one, bit sharp, but not bad. I was a bit facile in those days.’ She frowned. ‘I think I have got over that, life knocks it out of you in the long run.’
Martin picked out a review. ‘You know, I couldn’t do that … keep the bad notices. I’d have to tear them up, pretend they hadn’t happened.’
‘It’s one way,’ said Stella, closing the book.
‘That’s what makes Jaimie so mad with us … my girlfriend,’ he explained. ‘She says I bottle things up. So I do, I suppose.’ He sighed and suddenly looked very young.
‘Jaimie is not usually a girl’s name, is it?’
‘Can be. She’s very strong, is my Jaimie, but we do get across each other,’ he said sadly. ‘I expert we will split up. She says I’m a dreamer, not focused and too repressed.’
‘She does love you.’
‘I daresay it is true … she’s very focused herself.’
‘What does she do?’
‘A writer … freelance journalist … she says I am a table for one permanently reserved.’
‘She has a good turn of phrase.’
‘She’s very clever; she’s on to a good story at the moment.’
‘Oh?’
‘No, she hasn’t said much, probably afraid I’ll talk too loudly. Something from the past is all I know.’ He had seen Coffin notice his arm and he smoothed the sleeve down in a protective way. ‘Never keep a cat,’ he said lightly.
‘We do, but it doesn’t scratch.’ Not quite true because Tiddles not only put out a sharp paw on occasion but had been known to bite as well. Lovingly, Stella always said, but Coffin wondered.
When the telephone rang, Stella, who was nearest, picked up the receiver. Her voice registered surprise. ‘It’s for you, Martin.’ And she handed the telephone over.
‘Jaimie, hello. Yes, I’ll be there … d-down …’ He was stuttering again. He turned to Stella: ‘It’s Jaimie, I asked her to pick me up here.’
Stella nodded. ‘She’s on the way then?’
‘Down below, mobile phone.’
Stella decided to be gracious; she was also curious. ‘Ask her to come up for a drink.’
Martin stood up, a wary look on his face. ‘Thank you, I know she admires you. She would I-love to come.’ Once again he stammered.
They heard him clattering down the stairs, the door open, then silence.
There was a long wait.
‘She doesn’t want to come,’ Coffin said.
‘No, in spite of admiring me so much … Wonder what she’s like.’
‘Tough, I guess.’
‘Wonder if she gave him those cuts on his arm?’
‘You saw them?’
‘Of course, and no cat did them. She did. Love and hate.’
Coffin stood up. ‘I think they are coming.’ He held up a hand. ‘Listen.’ Someone fell up the stairs, then laughed an apology, getting only silence in reply.
Martin was first into the room; he was followed by a tall, young woman with a mane of fair hair, unbrushed, wearing dark jeans and a dark sweater. She had a small, lovely face, but she looked cross.
Proudly, Martin introduced her: ‘This is Jaimie.’
She held out