A Double Coffin

‘Perhaps this is his joke,’ said Coffin, gloomily again.

‘He may not be kind,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘I don’t think I would count on him to do the kind thing. It might not be a kind joke.’

‘It wouldn’t be, but unkind to whom to rig this up? Apart from me, of course. He’d have to hate the old man to manipulate him in that way. He could do it, I suppose, he’s writing his life. Perhaps old Lavender is senile.’

‘Does he look it?’

‘No, but it might need a trained observer.’

‘Aren’t you one?’

‘In a way, yes … This conversation isn’t getting anywhere. Give me a new start.’

‘Does he live alone? Is there anyone else?’

‘He may have more of a circle than I know. I could find out, and there is the niece. Great-niece, but she is just a domestic character.’

Stella shook her head. Women are never just domestic characters. Inside they are plotting another world like everyone else. Probably even animals did it in their own way. Cats certainly did, she thought, looking down at her own cat, former lost cat, ex-warrior of the streets, now an aged domestic retainer in a livery of tabby.

‘Do you think he is mad?’

‘He could be. With the sort of madness that can come sometimes with extreme old age … Not exactly madness, really, just too many memories, too many dreams remembered.’

‘It seems to be the memories that are the trouble.’

Coffin went to the window to look down on what he could see of the former church below, now part of the St Luke’s Theatre Complex, and then beyond to what had been the old churchyard, with the aged tombstones ranged around it like dead teeth.

The church was a solid Victorian building which had survived two world wars, much bombing, only to fall victim to the decline in churchgoing. The church had been deconsecrated, and converted into a dwelling in the tower, into which Coffin had moved, while the church itself had been turned into a theatre, and a theatre workshop and an experimental theatre.

‘It was a different world outside there then, when he was a boy. The London of his childhood was rougher and nastier and poorer in so many ways. Dark streets, and cramped, crowded living places.’

‘Oh come on. Dickens was dead, you know.’

But Coffin would not be stopped. ‘As a boy, he must have heard all about the murdered women, read about them in news sheets. Talked about it. Perhaps he buried it in his memory through the years as he became rich and successful. Now he has let the memory out, and he has taken on the guilt.’

Stella said: ‘I must think about that … perhaps there was something in those days that he had guilt about and he has transferred it … Make a good play.’

‘Jack the Ripper was not so far off in the past. Still a terrible name to conjure with. Talked about at the time … People would have been reminded of him. It would have been in his mind.’

‘Perhaps his father was Jack the Ripper,’ said Stella lightly. ‘Come back for a second go.’

‘That would be something, to identify the Ripper after all this time,’ said Coffin, ‘and to have him father a Prime Minister.’

It was not quite a joke.

As he looked out of the window, he saw a tall figure going into the old churchyard; Coffin watched as the young man threw himself full length under a tree and buried his face in his hands.

An actor, of course. Only an actor walked with that air of ease and elegance, and then behaved with so much emotion. Unless he was a duke.

‘Who is that beautiful young man who crossed the road with such consummate grace and then fell on his face?’

Stella got up to look. ‘Oh, that’s Martin. Martin Marlowe. He’s just joined the company. He is lovely, isn’t he?’ There was frank appreciation in her voice: no one liked a beautiful young man more than Stella. Usually it went no further than detached admiration, but possibly not always.

Coffin looked at her and shook his head. ‘Not for you, darling.’

‘I wouldn’t think of it.’

‘You may think. Look but don’t touch.’

Stella laughed. ‘You are a pig. Or you can be. But bless you, I promise you that boy has enough emotion in his life without me joining in.’

‘I thought that from the way he fell upon the grass. Hamlet himself.’

‘Oh, do you think so?’ Stella was appraising. ‘I see him more as Romeo. Romeo after he’s lost Juliet.’

‘Has he lost his Juliet?’

‘Not yet, but he’s well on the way. He’s had a noisy row with his girlfriend, everyone heard, he was most articulate. So was she, come to that.’ She didn’t sound too miserable at the thought. ‘It will give depth to his acting, of course.’

Coffin was still looking out of the window. ‘That must be why he is beating the grass with his fist. Is that sorrow? I am bound to say it looks more like anger.’

Stella came to look. ‘I expect he is just rehearsing his part.’

‘What did you say his name was?’

‘Martin Marlowe.’

Coffin was thoughtful. ‘Real name or just for acting?’

Stella said slowly, ‘His real name.’

‘Ah.’

There was a pause, then she said: ‘You know who he is?’

Coffin said slowly but without emphasis: ‘I know.’

‘I suppose you usually get to know things like that.’

‘It’s part of the job. As you say, I get told that sort of thing.’

‘He doesn’t talk about it a lot, but he understands that people know and do. He doesn’t hide it, I call that brave.’

‘I didn’t know he was in a cast here.’

‘He’s only just joined. I went down to Bristol to see him act there, liked what I saw and offered him a part. He’s very young still …’

‘I could see that.’ It had been a very young man who had flung himself on the grass, and then to hammer it with his fists. An emotional young man. He did not accept Stella’s comment that he was rehearsing his part.