Dead Room Farce Read Free Page A

mood had taken the two ten-pound notes, folded them and stuck them firmly in his inside pocket, before handing the wallet back.
    â€˜You’re a saint, Charles,’ said Ransome George. He was one of those actors, of indeterminate age, who was never out of work. Though he was not the most intelligent or subtlest interpreter of a part, Ransome George’s face was, quite literally, his fortune. It was a funny face, in repose a melancholy boxer dog, in animation an affronted bullfrog. He had only to appear on stage, or on a television screen, for the audience to start feeling indulgent, for them to experience the little tug of a smile at the corner of their lips.
    He was also blessed with intuitive comic timing. Whatever the situation, some internal clock told him exactly how long to hold a pause, when to slam in quickly with his next line, when to extend the silence almost unbearably. And he never failed to catch the reward of a laugh.
    That was all Ransome George could do. Whatever the part, whatever the play, the performance was identical. Whether the lines were spoken in Yorkshire, Cornish, Welsh, Scottish, Transylvanian – or an approximation to these, because he wasn’t very good at accents – they would be delivered in exactly the same way. And they’d always get the laughs. That guarantee he carried with him made Ransome George – or ‘Ran’, as he was known to everyone in the business – an invaluable character to have in comedy sketches.
    In a full-length play his value was less certain. Though a good comedy performer, Ran was not in truth much of an actor. He was good at individual moments, but couldn’t lose his own personality in a character throughout the length of a play. This deficiency perhaps mattered less in farce than it would have done in more serious areas of the theatre, but Charles Paris was still quite surprised at Ransome George’s casting in
not on your wife!
Still, Ran seemed to have worked a lot with Bernard Walton over the years. Maybe the old pals’ act, a phenomenon all too common in the theatre, had been once again in operation.
    In
not on your wife!
Ransome George was playing the part of Willie, the flamboyant (for ‘flamboyant’ in British farce scripts, always read ‘gay stereotype’) interior designer. He wasn’t playing the part particularly gay – indeed he was delivering the Standard Mark One Ransome George performance – but the laughs were inevitably going to be there.
    Whether Ran was in reality gay or not, Charles Paris did not know. But from the way the actor, boosted by the loan of twenty pounds, homed back in on the dishy young assistant stage manager, it seemed unlikely. Charles did notice, though, that the girl had just placed two full glasses on their table. It wasn’t Ran’s round yet.
    Somewhere in the back of his mind came a recollection: he’d heard somewhere that Ransome George was surprisingly successful with women. In spite of his cartoon face and shapeless body, he could always make them laugh. And rumour had it he’d laughed his way into a good few beds over the years.
    The thought threw a pale cast of melancholy over Charles, as he compared his own current sexless state. His eyes glazed over, looking out at, but not taking in, the bustle of the busy pub.
    â€˜Come on, it’s not that bad,’ a husky voice murmured in his ear.
    â€˜Sorry?’ He turned to face Cookie Stone, the actress playing Gilly, who’d just moved across to sit beside him. Though not as cartoon-like as Ran’s, Cookie’s face too was perfect for comedy. A pert snub nose had difficulty separating two mischievous dark brown eyes, and her broad mouth seemed to contain more than the standard ration of teeth. But her body, Charles couldn’t help noticing as she leant her pointed breasts towards him, was firm and trim.
    He reckoned Cookie must be late thirties now, maybe a bit more,