Hattie Brings the House Down, page 18
Mark smiled at the memory.
‘Atlanta was playing Estelle, and she was absolutely electric, and great fun to work with. But you know we had to keep a bucket backstage for her. She got such bad stage fright she’d throw up every night at beginners. God, I’m not sure I’ve seen her since. What a character. So what does that mean for the show?’
‘Well, they’ve given her role to the AD. A few people are a bit shaken, but we’re more or less carrying on. I’m sure we’ll be there by press night.’
‘Good, good. I’m sure she’d want you to make a success of it. It’s very sad, but we do have to keep going.’
Hattie nodded, and they stood in silence for a second. Then Mark shifted his weight in his chair and said: ‘Listen, while I have you, I just wanted to check in about what we spoke about last time.’
Hattie frowned, momentarily at a loss.
‘About Rod,’ prompted Mark.
‘Oh!’ replied Hattie. ‘I’m so sorry, I forgot. No, I’m afraid I’ve not seen him since we last spoke. I will make time to talk to him, though.’
‘If you could do it sooner rather than later I’d be grateful. One of the students tried to make a formal complaint about him today, I had to talk her out of taking it to the principal.’
‘Oh no! What happened?’
‘He fell asleep over lunch and didn’t wake up in time for his next class. The students turned up to find him snoring. So one of them complained to me.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘I told her she should have just woken Rod up. Gave her a line about initiative and personal responsibility. Gave a hint that it may have been a deliberate test. But I can’t keep covering for him like this.’
‘I’ll talk to him. I promise.’
‘Thank you,’ smiled Mark. ‘Let me know when you have.’
His eyes started to drift back to his paperwork.
‘Just quickly,’ Hattie said, ‘have any of the other tutors spoken to you about one of the first years? Felix?’
‘Oh yes. Odd lad, isn’t he? I think it’ll take him a while to come out of his shell. He was practically mute at interview, paralysed by shyness, we had to evaluate him almost entirely on the basis of his written submission. Which was excellent, and convinced me he’d thrive here.’
‘I don’t know that he’s thriving,’ she replied cautiously.
‘Oh come now, Hattie,’ said Mark with a dismissive shake of his head. ‘We’ve seen his type before. He’ll never make an SM, but stick him up a ladder with some cables to tape and he’ll be happy as Larry.’
‘I know that he seems like the type,’ persisted Hattie, ‘but I think it might be a little more complicated than that. And I wouldn’t be entirely confident that he didn’t have a little, er, assistance with his written application from his family. I don’t think he really wants to be here… in fact I think he’s sort of hoping to get kicked out.’
Mark’s face fell.
‘God, the last thing I need is drop-outs this early. They’ll use it as an excuse to cut my budget, and there’s always people questioning whether having a technical course at all sullies the “creative brand” of the school. Bugger. Well, I won’t have it. I don’t care if he didn’t want to come here originally, we need to find a way to make him stay. Can I leave this with you?’
‘As you say, I really don’t think stage management is his—’
‘Hattie, this is the sort of thing I’m talking about. I’m looking for you to prove that you can be a team player, if you want to stay on here. You do want to stay on, don’t you?’
Hattie nodded, uncomfortably.
‘Then find a way,’ said Mark firmly. ‘At least make sure he lasts the first year, so we don’t have to worry about fee refunds. OK?’
It wasn’t really OK, and Hattie not at all eager to have this dumped into her lap, but Mark was clearly signalling that her job prospects were in the balance. There wasn’t much else she could say.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she said miserably.
18
On the ride home, Kiki’s rehearsal notes came through on Hattie’s phone. They made for grim reading: as Miguel had warned, all sound effects and soundscapes had now been cut, as had the glowing orbs, and several more of the props they had been working on before. The one small mercy was that the wretched golf clubs were on the list of discarded requirements. In their place were a new list of props, a heap of requests for specific lighting effects, and some urgent costume notes. Much of the production team’s work over the past fortnight had been entirely invalidated by Hashi’s chaotic indecision, and they were now faced with meeting a new series of demands with very little time and almost no budget remaining. It made Hattie long for her touring days. The companies hadn’t been perfect by any means, but they were all old hands, and by God they were disciplined.
As she let herself into her flat, she was mentally working her way through the new props list, categorising each new task according to its achievability, when her phone rang, and she answered it distractedly.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi. This is DI Burakgazi. We spoke last week about Atlanta Greenwell?’
‘Oh… yes. Hello.’
‘I just had a couple more questions I wanted to ask about, if you don’t mind.’
‘Certainly. Yep, now’s fine.’
‘Good. So, first of all… I was talking to some of the bar staff at the Tavistock today, and it sounded like you had been in contact with them recently. Do you want to tell me a little bit about that?’
Hattie began to feel uncomfortable. Of course the same bar staff she’d spoken to about the mask would have been questioned by the police about Atlanta. And, now that she thought about it, of course they’d have mentioned that she’d been asking questions. Did that paint her as suspicious in the police’s eyes?
‘Oh… yes… I was curious about whether anyone else had gone into the theatre over that weekend.’
‘Did you have any reason to believe that someone else would have?’
Burakgazi’s tone sounded just a little bit sharp now.
‘Um…’ Hattie stuttered. This bloody mask. Now that it was off her plate, should she tell Burakgazi about it? Or would that be the final nail in the coffin of any hopes she had of being hired by Keith ever again?
‘The reason I’m interested,’ Burakgazi continued, ‘is that I’ve been asking the same question. Because there were, as you may remember, two glasses in the dressing room where you found Ms Greenwell, both of which had had alcohol in them on Sunday night. Which would suggest that she was there with someone, doesn’t it?’
Oh yes. Of course. Hattie had been so shocked on discovering Atlanta’s body that she had completely forgotten about, and never registered the significance of, the second glass.
‘Yes, I suppose it does.’
‘So if you had some suspicions about who that someone might be, you can understand how I’d be curious to hear them, can’t you?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know of anyone who was there on the Saturday evening,’ said Hattie, feeling defensive. ‘I actually… I actually only ended up asking about the Sunday evening, and drew a complete blank.’
‘I see,’ came the disappointed reply. ‘Well, I don’t blame you for being curious.’
‘Do you know any more about how she died yet?’ tried Hattie.
There was a pause, and then Burakgazi let out a sigh.
‘No. Or rather, yes, in a medical sense: we discovered a bruise on the side of her scalp above her ear, which suggests she hit her head, fell unconscious, and asphyxiated. She was chock full of brandy, and wearing impractical shoes. So if she was by herself, it’s a pretty straightforward verdict of misadventure in the form of a trip and fall, and a sobering lesson on the dangers of alcohol abuse. It’s just that if that second glass means that someone else was there with her when she received the impact to her head… well, that changes things, doesn’t it?’
Hattie stayed silent.
‘Which brings me,’ Burakgazi continued after a pause, ‘on to my second question. I was talking to some of Atlanta’s castmates earlier today, and was astonished to learn about a threatening note that appeared in the rehearsal room soon after Atlanta died. Astonished in particular that I only heard about it through a chance mention. It seemed to me quite incredible that no one had thought to pass it on to me before. The actors told me they had been assured that the production team had dealt with it. When I then spoke to Katherine Bennett – sorry, that’s Kiki, isn’t it? – she confirmed that the note was indeed discussed in a meeting by the production team, wherein someone successfully argued that the note should be actively suppressed. That someone being you. Why was that?’
Because I don’t trust you lot not to bugger up my show, thought Hattie, but she simply muttered, ‘I didn’t think it was important.’
Burakgazi took a breath.
‘Hattie, you’re an intelligent woman, aren’t you? Intelligent enough that you couldn’t possibly not realise how important a note like that could be. And you’re also intelligent enough to know that I couldn’t possibly believe you wouldn’t realise it. So please don’t insult me by suggesting otherwise.’
Hattie once again chose to remain silent.
‘What are you up to, Hattie? Questioning the bar staff, hiding things from the police… I’d hate to think that you were deliberately not cooperating with us. Because I’m going to be honest with you, if we don’t find out what happened pretty quickly I’m going to have to widen my circle of investigation. I might have to talk to your employer, for example, since it sounds like half of the production has been operating out of the ACDA premises. I’m guessing your bosses don’t know everything that I do about you. And if I wasn’t finding any answers from elsewhere, I might feel compelled to have an open and honest talk with them, see if that brought forth any more salient information. Do you see what I’m saying?’
Hattie’s blood ran cold. With help from Rod she’d managed to avoid being subjected to an enhanced DBS criminal background check earlier in the year. Burakgazi was now out-and-out threatening to reveal what she had so far managed to conceal, rightly guessing it would mean curtains for Hattie’s tutoring career. She had found Hattie’s weak spot, and she was squeezing.
‘I understand,’ Hattie mumbled.
‘Well,’ said Burakgazi. ‘With that in mind, if anything comes to light, do please let me know.’
Burakgazi hung up, leaving Hattie deeply shaken. The audacity of it, to bring up things that had happened a lifetime ago, and use them now to squeeze Hattie – no, to blackmail her – into docile obedience.
Everyone makes mistakes, she thought to herself. Why should mine have to hang over my head forever?
It wasn’t as though she was actively doing anything to hinder the police. It wasn’t her fault that they were so dim they couldn’t work out what had happened to Atlanta. What did they want? For her to solve it all for them?
Mind you, she could see why they were having difficulties. That second glass of brandy showed there was someone else in the room with Atlanta that night, which made it harder to rule out foul play. But who on earth would want to murder Atlanta? She’d rubbed a couple of people the wrong way at the start of rehearsals, but no more so than actors always did. She had mentioned that Joan Haygarth had hated her, but Joan was long since dead herself.
Was there any way this could have been to do with the mask? Had the thief arranged to meet Atlanta on the Saturday night, had a drink with her, killed her… and then returned the next night to break into the cupboard? No, surely that was absurd.
It all felt wrong. Theatres were places of drama, both onstage and off, but at the end of the day you could always walk away, and reassure yourself that it wasn’t real, it didn’t really matter. The performer tantrums, the backstage trysts, the endless near-disasters that threatened each successive performance, they were all contained in their own microcosm, and didn’t impinge on the real world. An honest-to-goodness death on the other hand…
Eventually, with the aid of a few fortifying glasses of wine, Hattie managed to put most of those thoughts from her head long enough to settle down in bed and crawl towards the reassuring oblivion of sleep. Sod mysteries, sod masks, sod Keith, sod cryptic notes, and sod Burakgazi more than anyone. She would do her job, get the show up and running, and everyone else could go to hell.
Over the next few days Hattie was kept thoroughly occupied by the play as she and Davina laboured to get Hashi the props he now insisted he needed. To his credit (and to the crew’s despair), he succeeded in completely reimagining everything physical, visible and practical about the show in the final week of rehearsals, all the while insisting that the ‘heart’ of the piece was unaltered. Now there were no wooden blocks, there were no soundscapes, there were no glowing orbs, just a table, a couple of chairs, the enormous bin, and a series of small hand props. But, small though the props may have been, the stage managers still had a struggle on their hands to get everything together in time. They scoured charity shops, they borrowed from friends, they made with clay and paper and glue, and assembled a huge mass of teapots, blankets, mirrors, briefcases and more, all with the last £100 or so of their budget. Come Friday lunchtime, at the third and final production meeting, Hattie was quietly pleased that Davina was able to announce that everything was in hand, and that all the required props had been sourced and received at least grudging approval from Hashi and Raven.
Unfortunately, no one else was even remotely pleased with how things were going.
‘I don’t know, do I?’ replied Laura truculently, in response to a request for an update on her preparations. ‘I don’t have a lighting design to work with, so I don’t know if we’ve got the right lanterns, gels, cabling…’
‘Now that’s not entirely true,’ Carrie complained. ‘I’ve told you several times that we’ll work with the kit specified in the design I gave you last week, we just might need to be flexible on the placement of the lanterns and the specific gels.’
‘But we don’t have a bunch of spare gels kicking around. I’ve got the colours you asked for before, we’ve got a small number of spare sheets, not cut to size, but if you don’t tell me what you want I can’t just have every possible colour ready to go in case you change your mind at the focus session.’
‘It’s not the focus session that’s the problem, it’s going to be in the tech rehearsal, because that’s when Hashi is going to see it and hopefully start making some actual, you know, creative decisions.’
‘That’s even worse!’ cried Laura. ‘How are we supposed to do a focus session if we don’t even know what lights we’re supposed to be focusing?’
‘But we do know—’ Carrie started to insist, before Hashi cut her off.
‘Ladies, ladies, can I say something? Can I?’ he asked, prissily. ‘Given that you’re all determined to pin all this on me? Can I just… can I make one of these “creative decisions” you’re so determined that I’m incapable of? Look, what I’ve been trying to say, and I’m sorry that it seems to have got lost in communication, is that I don’t want any complicated lighting. I don’t need fancy follow-spots, or rotating leaf patterns projected onto the stage, I just want some basic lights to give me a little bit of delineation between areas onstage at different points in the show, and a few different options, not of colour, just of, you know, tone, for different scenes, so we can be flexible. Is that really so hard to put together on the day?’
‘YES,’ replied Carrie and Laura in unison, who both then tried simultaneously to impress on Hashi how limited their resources were, and how things like delineation between areas and different colour tones were things that needed to be planned in advance.
‘Hold up, my loves,’ interjected Hattie. ‘Now look, this isn’t getting us anywhere. We are where we are. How about you rig and focus what you can tomorrow, and then just work with what we’ve got. I know it’s not ideal, but, with no offence intended, this show doesn’t stand or fall on the lighting, does it? So let’s be pragmatic.’
‘Well excuse me for trying to do my job properly,’ muttered Laura. ‘A professional lighting department shouldn’t be—’
‘A professional lighting team should know when complaining is counter-productive, and work together to deal with whatever situation arises,’ Hattie said firmly. She was doing her best to sound confident and calm, but internally she was deeply alarmed. Yes, tempers often got frayed among production teams in the run-up to opening, but that tended to happen a little bit later, during the fit-up and tech, when everyone was treading on everyone else’s toes in the auditorium. If people were barely being civil before that even started… well, it didn’t bode well for the weekend.
And what the hell was Steve up to? His job was to herd all the techies and keep these meetings in order, and yet he seemed barely to be paying attention. Why was Hattie having to step in? Steve was simply staring at his phone, frowning, ignoring the squabbling around him. That wasn’t like him at all.
Still, they got to the end of the meeting without anyone actually coming to blows. Moira assured everyone that the costumes were all under control, but refused to be drawn on which, if any, of Hashi’s last-minute requests she’d actually fulfilled.
‘You’ll see where we are on Sunday,’ was all she’d say.
And Kiki was at least polite about how things had been going in the rehearsal room.
‘We were hoping to do a full run this afternoon, as it’s our last official day of rehearsals, but we’re not quite ready for that yet,’ she said. ‘We’re still trying to nail down the last of the blocking.’
