The Twist of a Knife

Ewan looked at his watch. ‘I’ll go and get Jordan. Let’s meet there in ten …’

I shouldn’t have gone. I wish I’d listened to my earlier instincts and gone home with my family. Everything would have been so different. But, of course, you never know these things at the time. That’s why life is so different to fiction. Every day is a single page and you have no chance to thumb forward and see what lies ahead.

4 The First Review

Going backstage at the theatre is always a bizarre experience. It’s like stepping into a secret world.

All the comforts that the audience enjoys and expects disappear the moment you step through the stage door. Backstage, everything is relentlessly old-fashioned and utilitarian, as if the architects have deliberately set out to remind the actors and the crew that they are only the servants and matter less than the paying guests. The Vaudeville was built in the Romanesque style back in the late nineteenth century. Henry Irving had his first noticeable success there. I’ve described the luxuriousness of the lobby and the auditorium. But the corridors and dressing rooms on the other side of the mirror were quite another matter. Here, the flooring was covered by linoleum. Pipes and cables snaked willy-nilly along the walls, twisting between fire extinguishers, alarm boxes and overbright, naked light bulbs. I was fascinated by the pieces of defunct machinery that had been screwed into place a century ago and then forgotten. Even the noticeboard with its tatty cards and clippings could have come from a police station or a failing secondary school. I found it all rather alluring. The backstage area of any London theatre would make a great set. One glance and you’d know exactly where you were.

It was pelting with rain when I made my way back to Maiden Lane, the little backstreet in which the stage door of the Vaudeville was located. Normally, the theatre would have closed by ten o’clock, but Keith, the deputy stage-door manager, had agreed we could hang out there until midnight. Sky Palmer had arrived ahead of me and was shaking water out of a Gucci umbrella. It had the trademark diamond-shaped pattern and logo and, unlike Ahmet’s watch, I didn’t think it was fake. I was quite surprised she had agreed to come. She didn’t often socialise with the rest of the company, but perhaps, on the first night, she felt she couldn’t let the others down.

I had barely spoken to her at the party and congratulated her on her performance. ‘I thought you were great tonight.’

‘Did you? I don’t know …’

Why did she have to be so unenthusiastic? ‘I think the audience enjoyed it.’

‘Maybe.’ She didn’t sound convinced.

Fortunately, we were rescued by Keith, who stepped out of his cramped, awkwardly shaped office carrying a white box. ‘This came for you,’ he said. He handed it to me.

It was a first-night present with a label wishing me good luck, signed by Ahmet. Sky was looking at it dubiously but I have to say I was rather touched. I opened and took out an object tightly wrapped in tissue paper. I tore off the paper to reveal, of all things, an ornamental dagger, about twenty centimetres long, in a black leather sheath. The blade was silver and very sharp. The handle was wooden, embossed with a circular, metallic medallion decorated with what might have been Celtic knotwork. It looked like an old Scottish dirk, although it was obviously a reproduction and not very well made. The medallion wobbled when I touched it.

‘Oh … look at that,’ I said, showing it to Sky. At the same time, I couldn’t help thinking that it was also rather odd. ‘I don’t know what it’s got to do with the play,’ I added. It was true. Mindgame is violent, but nobody is killed – and certainly not with a dirk.

‘You have to look at the blade,’ Sky said.

I did as she suggested and saw four words engraved in the metal: Is this a dagger …?

‘He did Macbeth last year,’ she went on in a matter-of-fact way. I was surprised that, unlike most actors, she wasn’t superstitious about naming what most of them would call ‘the Scottish play’. It reinforced my impression that she wasn’t completely committed to the acting world. ‘He put it on in the ruins of a castle in Yorkshire, but it didn’t last very long. It poured with rain for the first three performances, Banquo slipped over in the mud, and it closed at the end of the week. He had these made for the cast.’

‘And he’s giving the ones that were left over to us?’

‘That’s right. I’ve got mine in my dressing room. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it.’

‘Well,’ I tried, ‘I suppose it’s the thought that counts.’

‘Yes. He thought we wouldn’t notice he’s a complete cheapskate.’

We signed our names and added the time in the register that was kept in the corridor, then went through the swing doors and past the first dressing room. Jordan Williams came out and laughed when he saw me with water trickling down my face. Unlike Sky, I hadn’t had an umbrella.