Curtain Call by Anthony Quinn Read Free Book Online Page B

was too busy attending the plays, or reading the books, or writing half a dozen other articles at once to finesse every last word. Deadlines massed overhead each week, like ravens pecking on the roof. His memory, capacious as it was, couldn’t always identify the same amusing
jeu d’esprit
he had essayed six months before.
    He would tot up his aggregate of words published each year and note it in his diary. His total for the previous twelve months had come to 432,000, either written by his own hand or dictated to his secretary. Nearly half a million words . . . He sometimes had the sense of being a stoker, shovelling his words into a furnace whose white-hot maw kept consuming, demanding, consuming. As fast as he wrote them they vanished into the flames. No amount would ever satisfy it. The only escape he could conceive, his only respite from feeding the fire, was death. And he didn’t want to think about that.
    A shadow had fallen across his table. He looked up to find a large lady favouring him with a shy but hopeful simper. Her floral dress was straining across her voluminous bust and backside. Jimmy was already writing a
Punch
caption in his head: ‘A steatopygous matron from the provinces, excited by her night out in London’s fashionable West End, encounters a Renowned Theatrical Personage’ . . . He sighed, and put down his pen.
    â€˜Madam, you’re standing in my light,’ he said, his expression unsmiling.
    The lady took an apologetic step sideways. ‘Ooh, I am sorry. I just wanted to ask . . . if you were enjoying the play?’
Ply
, she pronounced it. Her accent carried the unmistakable flat drone of Brum, sharpening his irritation.
    He took a deep breath. ‘In the theatre I never allow myself to succumb in the smallest degree to the arbitrary and unreliable sensation you are pleased to call “enjoyment”. That is a word to be used strictly in relation to such pleasures as pâté de foie gras, vanilla ices or Scotch whisky – the last of which I
had
been lately enjoying.’
    She blinked her bewilderment at him. ‘So . . . you don’t like it then?’
Loik eet
.
    â€˜For the sake of argument, let us say: it is giving me the pip.’
    She nodded, brightening at the colloquialism. Somewhat emboldened, she leaned towards him again and said, sotto voce, ‘Are you who I think you are?’
    Jimmy capped his pen, pocketed his notebook, and stood up. ‘I most certainly am not,’ he said curtly, and turned on his heel. Behind him he heard her gasp, and felt exhilarated by his rudeness. What a pest, barging in on him without so much as a by-your-leave. The look on her silly face as he crushed her! That would keep him going through the second half. He strolled back into the auditorium, nodding at this or that fellow scribbler – it was press night, so they were all in. He was about to return to his seat when a hearty hand clapped him on the back.
    â€˜Erskine! How are you?’
    He turned to find a tall fellow with a florid face and an unnerving dark gaze fixed upon him. His projecting voice and wide-lapelled chalkstripe suit bespoke a boisterous confidence. Jimmy had absolutely no idea who he was. But he sensed he ought to know him, and muttered a
hullo
.
    â€˜I was talking about you only the other day,’ the man continued, ‘with my old friend Stephen Wyley. I’m organising a dinner to raise funds for the Marquess – we hope to relaunch the place. Your presence would be a tremendous boon to us.’
    Dipping his hand into a breast pocket he took out a business card and handed it to Jimmy. It was embossed with the House of Commons portcullis, beneath which was printed: GERALD CARMODY, MP. So that’s who he was. Jimmy had no memory of meeting him before, though he knew his type: the varsity swagger, the entitlement, the bullying familiarity with men whose acquaintance he had never previously