A Dark Coffin

St Luke’s was a grey stone building, solidly constructed by its Victorian builder, who had been his own architect, with plenty of marble and decorative fretwork; it was not beautiful but it had charm. It had been built upon an older church, which had itself rested upon an Anglo-Saxon foundation. People said that a Roman temple had been the original holy spot whose dangerous powers had been exorcized by the planting of a church there by the early fathers of the English Church.

It was a workmanlike building, sitting upon the ground with some heaviness.

‘It has such a comfortable, good feel, hasn’t it?’ enthused Stella. ‘You feel so safe here.’ She looked happily towards the stage which stretched out towards the audience with no sub-barrier. Stella belonged to the theatrical generation which had found the abolition of the proscenium arch exciting, so inevitably, when she had a theatre to plan, it had had to have a great apron stage stretching out into the audience which camped out all round it. Owing to the architecture of the church, two great pillars stood one each side or the roof would have fallen in, so there were created two boxes looking curiously royal. They were dark, and not much used as the sight lines were bad, and represented a problem. No one liked them. But Stella had seen to it that the seats in them were comfortable and were protected behind by a fretted screen. She called one the Royal Box, although no Queen had so far sat in it. The other box she called the Author’s Box and there was a bust of Shakespeare in it, to prove it.

There was something about an empty stage which always excited Stella. ‘Theatres can be spiritual places, can’t they? We mustn’t forget the origin of drama in religion. And this place was a church, after all. No wonder I feel St Luke’s is good.’

If places could be good.

She was standing in the middle of the auditorium with her husband, John Coffin, beside her, and the theatre’s general manager, Alfreda Boxer, on her right hand.

Stella looked taller and thinner since her recent session at a health farm where she had dieted and exercised. A film contract for a tall, thin lady with reddish hair was under discussion and Stella meant to have the part. Her husband found himself getting thinner out of sympathy; he was a tall, slender man in any case with bright blue eyes and hair now greying in a neat way. He was a neat man altogether who managed to make his clothes look good on him.

‘Are places spiritual?’ he asked now. ‘A church must lay claim to it. I suppose.’

Alfreda looked thoughtful and said nothing. She thought St Luke’s was hard work and might be a good place and might not. On that subject she was neutral. She thought places were neutral too, they were what you made them. This one paid her wages.

‘That’s why it’s got no ghosts,’ Stella went on.

‘I don’t believe in ghosts,’ said Alfreda. ‘Are you sure you do. Miss Pinero?’ She always called her employer Miss Pinero, this being her stage name, although Alfreda well knew she was Mrs Coffin. She could have called her Stella, since the actress was not stuffy about that sort of thing and the theatre was more and more informal, but Alfreda herself felt more at ease with a bit of formality. It protected you somehow.

She kept her distance from John Coffin, because to her own alarm, she found him attractive. That way lay trouble.

Not that the Chief Commander had ever given any indication that he fancied her, or that his affections had wandered from his wife. But they did say … but that was all in the past. Before Stella.

‘How’s the boy shaping?’ he now asked in a jovial voice. He was finding that he dropped into a kind of false joviality with Alfreda which alarmed him. Why was he doing this? What was there about her? She was very attractive, certainly, and he was susceptible, but he had Stella now whom he loved.

‘Fine, he’s very happy.’ Alfreda’s son had graduated from drama school and was now an assistant stage manager at St Luke’s. He was one of the reasons that Alfreda had taken the job of general manager for which she was, in some ways, overqualified. But keeping an eye on her offspring was a way of life with her. ‘Well, I love him,’ she used to say defensively, if she picked up any criticism on the lines of mother’s apron strings, ‘and I don’t hang on to him.’

Coffin hesitated, as if he had forgotten the lad’s name.

‘Barney, plain Barney,’ she said.

There it was again, that jesting, jousting tone, as if inviting battle. Inviting something, anyway.

‘I don’t think he’ll ever make an actor but he might produce, or even write. He’s dead keen on the theatre.’

Stella stopped admiring the stage (which she felt was her own creation), and turned her attention to Alfreda. ‘Rubbish, don’t downgrade him, I think he might make a very good character actor, he’ll grow into it. Perhaps not do anything much until he’s over thirty and then find his feet.’

‘May I live to see it,’ said his mother.

‘I’ve seen it happen. And there’s money in it.’

Coffin stirred with a touch of restlessness, unusual in him, but he had a lot on his mind, some problems, and he had been reluctant to take this tour round the theatre.

Stella picked up his mood. Understood it and sympathized, but he really must not brood. ‘Let’s take a walk.’ They had been redecorating St Luke’s and she wanted to see it. ‘Decorators out?’

‘Just.’

‘They promised the end of last week.’

‘Oh, you know how it goes. But they are good workmen.’

‘Glad to hear it.’ Stella was striding forward into the passage that led backstage. It was gleaming with new white paint. ‘For what they charged.’

‘We had a little bit of a flood where one of them left a tap running, no one admitted to it, but it must have been one of the painters.’ There had been several little accidents lately, but she did not dwell on them. Accidents happen.

‘They can pay,’ said Stella firmly. ‘No fire, or anything like that?’

‘No fire. You’d have been told.’

‘I think we would have smelt it,’ said Coffin in a mild voice. His worry was eating inside him but he didn’t want to show it. ‘I sometimes think we can smell the greasepaint up in our tower.’

‘No one uses greasepaint now … not much slap at all, it’s all meant to look so natural.’ Stella touched the paint. ‘Not quite dry. Better be dry by the time we open.’

Alfreda followed Stella at a distance, letting Coffin get ahead of her. She had her own thoughts. In spite of Stella’s words about this safe and comfortable old building, one or two of the girls had started to say things about not wanting to go through the corridors on their own, and not liking all the dark corners. There were a lot of dark comers. Getting darker by the day, some of them; the lights seemed to malfunction more than usual.

Coffin followed his wife in a dutiful fashion. Yesterday afternoon, a girl of eight had been knocked down and badly injured by a police car which was chasing a stolen van. Swinehouse was always a volatile and irritable district, so no one was surprised that a crowd had gathered quickly outside the Swinehouse police station. The mood had looked nasty, but a shower of rain had dispersed them before they got beyond shouts and threats. But he knew that the medical reports on the girl were bad, she might be permanently crippled if she survived at all. Since she was a popular little girl and her father was a local footballer, there would be more trouble when this got out. He had heard before coming out with Stella that the signs of trouble on the streets were there already in Swinehouse and could spread to other districts.

It was how the mood went, the report said.

In addition, the girl was reported to have a sweet singing voice which made her a local star. She might now have no voice at all.

He also had a slight problem with his wife. But he hoped he was more aware of that than she was. Imagination came into it. And there was one other ulcer gnawing away at his vitals.

Alfreda, striding by the side of Stella, decided that it would be better not to say anything about nervous actresses to her. Anyway, it was entirely possible she had picked up the stories too, she usually knew everything, and this was just her way of calming things down.

This is your day to be anxious and miserable, Alfreda told herself, take it, and cherish it and perhaps good will come of it. That was her philosophy of life at the moment, and it served.

She took a deep breath and walked on behind Stella. She wanted to be in a good mood because Barney would be home for supper tonight and her cooking depended on her mood, as she had discovered to her cost. Bad mood, burnt steak. Barney liked his food. Not a natural mother, she thought sadly, a natural mother would always cook well, no matter what her mood.

Behind them, in the Royal Box, the electrician was at work, testing the lighting in there. The bulbs in what he called ‘that fucking box’ seemed to burn out more than they should. Lately it always seemed to be darkness in that box.

He couldn’t find anything wrong, so once again he replaced the light bulb.

Stella was on the stage itself now, where she always felt at home, and her husband was standing on the floor below, looking up at her.

‘All right?’ he said. ‘Looks good to me.’

‘Yes, I am really pleased with all the redecoration. It was generous of Letty to finance it.’

Letty was her sister-in-law. Coffin’s half-sister, daughter of their much-married, mysterious, long-dead (one hoped) mother with a taste for moving on and finding different spouses. Although whether she married them all no one knew. Coffin hoped not, because if so bigamy must have come into it somewhere.

Letty Bingham, also much married, was younger and richer than her half-brother. Very much richer at the moment (her capital wealth did vary from time to time, and crisis to crisis), having climbed back after a time of disaster during which Coffin had feared the worst.

‘Least she could do.’

Letty had invested in the theatre and was a member of the Theatre Trust over which Stella presided.