Ollie Pinkerton was feeling good. The gym was buzzing today and his pre-breakfast workout had gone well. He zipped up his jeans, checked his gelled hair in the changing-room mirror and hefted his sports bag onto his shoulder.
Out in the members’ lounge he queued for a skinny mochaccino.
‘Hi, Ollie. What can I get you?’ asked the smiling woman behind the counter.
‘The usual, please, Lou. You still on for tonight’s show?’
It was Lou’s silver wedding anniversary and he had given her a couple of complimentary tickets for The Merry Wives of Windsor at Stratford’s RSC.
‘Oooh, yes. Graeme and I are really looking forward to it. You sure it’s OK?’ Ever so kind of you. We couldn’t afford those prices.’
‘My pleasure.’ Ollie gave her his winning beam of a smile. He hadn’t bothered to tell her that the tickets were comps. ‘We’ll be nicely warmed up for you after this afternoon’s matinee,’ he said, opening his wallet to pay for the coffee.
‘No, no, Ollie. On the house.’
He trousered the five-pound note speedily and thanked her. Just because he was an actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company didn’t mean he was minted.
Collecting his coffee he threaded his way through clusters of tables and chairs to an empty two-seater brown leather sofa in front of a huge television screen showing highlights of a tennis tournament.
On the seat next to him was a copy of the Daily Mail. He flicked through it, only half engaged, until he saw a large photo of himself with a girl who wasn’t his girlfriend. Shit. The headline blared ‘Still Seeing Red, Ollie?’ Shit shit shit.
His phone began to vibrate in his back pocket. He pulled it out, wincing when he saw the caller ID, his pocket rocket rock star girlfriend, ‘Red’.
‘Hi, babe,’ he said, trying to keep his voice neutral. ‘Didn’t expect to hear from you this early. How’s Sydney? How’s the show?’
‘How am I supposed to do a show when my boyfriend is shagging around?’ was Red’s blisteringly chilly response.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Henrik just showed me the Mail Online.’
Ollie resisted the urge to swear. Red’s smarmy PA seemed to think the best way to ingratiate himself with Red and worm his way into her good books was to make her suspicious of everyone else. Unfortunately, he’d succeeded; Red wouldn’t hear a word against the little creep. When Ollie had been unwise enough to joke that Henrik was more PITA than PA, she’d turned on him, demanding, ‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You know, Pain In The Arse – PITA. It’s a joke.’
‘Another of your stupid public schoolboy jokes, eh? Well, forgive me and my Wolverhampton comprehensive school denseness. Oh no, hang on – I’m not that dense, am I? I’m sixty-seventh on the Sunday Times Rich List, I’m number one in fourteen countries and I have an entourage of eight, including Henrik my PA.’
As a result, Ollie kept his opinion of Henrik’s latest helpful gesture to himself and instead tried to explain, but Red wasn’t listening.
‘I’m going to have to cancel the show tonight,’ she wailed. ‘I can’t go on stage knowing what an unfaithful shit you are.’ She was so loud, he held the phone away from his ear. Noticing people on nearby tables casting curious glances in his direction, he tried to muffle the sounds coming from the earpiece while holding the phone close to his mouth.
‘Red, honey, I love you. It’s just a picture of some girl who saw the show last night and was waiting at the stage door for an autograph. She was with her fiancée. He took the photo.’
‘Oh yeah? Then how come it got into the papers?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe he uploaded it to Twitter or … maybe he sold it. I don’t know, honey. You have to believe me – I don’t even know her name. An autograph, a photo and then it was home to bed, on my own, dreaming of you.’
‘Yeah?’ she snivelled.
‘Yeah.’
‘So, you’d be pleased to see me if I jumped on a plane tonight and came home?’
He felt a tap on his shoulder and looked round. One of the young actresses in the cast of The Merry Wives of Windsor, damp from a swim, was miming a cup of coffee. He shook his head, pointed to the phone and raised his eyebrows in despair. She nodded, pulling the corners of her mouth down comically, and went to the bar.
‘Ollie, are you still there?’ Red’s shrill voice boomed from the earpiece.
‘Yeah, yeah, sorry, there must have been some dropout on the satellite … I missed what you said.’ He hoped she’d forgotten what she had said.
There was a pause while she smothered the mouthpiece and spoke to someone at the other end. He couldn’t catch what she was saying, and was straining to make out the words when her voice suddenly came back loud and clear: ‘You don’t know the pressure I’m under here. There’s thirty-two thousand people out there, and just because they’ve had to wait a bit they’re booing. They don’t know how you’re breaking my heart.’
‘How long have they been waiting?’
‘Not long. Maybe two hours.’
‘You’ve kept them waiting two hours?’
‘No. You’ve kept them waiting two hours by being such a shit to me.’ Someone was calling to her in the background. She muted the phone for a moment, then came back on the line. ‘OK, OK, I have to go. I’ll skype you later. We need to talk.’
‘Yeah, honey.’ He groaned inwardly. ‘I love talking. Now go get ’em, tiger!’
Gemma, his actress friend, thumped down next to him, licking a splash of coffee from her wrist.
‘“Go get ’em, tiger”?’ She arched a sardonic eyebrow. ‘Sooo rock’n’roll.’
‘Oh, Gem, this long-distance, high-profile relationship stuff is not for cissies.’
Gemma took a sip of her cappuccino and wiped the froth from her lips with the tiny paper napkin. ‘Any kind of relationship would do me at the moment.’
‘Look at this.’ He handed her the newspaper.
‘Ah.’ She read the text. ‘Nice photo.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Not you. The mystery girl. She’s very pretty.’
He snatched the paper from her and dropped it on the floor by his feet. ‘You’re not being very helpful.’ They sat and watched the tennis players on the screen for a few moments, then Ollie asked. ‘Are you a jealous person, Gemma?’
‘I haven’t had enough boyfriends to find out. Maybe I haven’t loved anyone enough to care. Don’t you get jealous of Red? All those male groupies hanging outside her hotels and following her around the world?’
‘No.’
‘You don’t love her enough then.’
‘It’s not that. I’m just not the jealous type. She wouldn’t do anything. She doesn’t get the opportunity on tour, anyway. She’s surrounded by her hangers-on and hustled from airport to hotel to stadium to hotel to airport. I’ve seen it. Our first date was at the O2. I went to watch her from the wings.’
‘Great date. Intimate.’
‘Shut up.’
‘Just saying.’
‘Yeah, well anyway, I watched her give her heart and soul to the audience. The way she worked with the band and her dancers, she blew me away. Then the minute she’s sung her last note she takes her bow and runs off stage. Her dresser is waiting with a big warm dressing gown to wrap her in. Her assistant dresser is waiting with a huge towel to wrap round her sweaty hair and then she’s just like, whoosh, straight through a path made for her by Security, past all the backstage crew and out into a blacked-out limo. The band will still be playing. The crowd will still be chanting. The police will have closed the exit roads for a five-minute window to get her out, and in ten minutes she’ll be in her hotel room watching a late-night movie, all on her own.’
‘No wonder she’s bonkers.’
‘It’s tough on her. She’s only twenty-four. She’s been a star for three years, since she blew the world away on the X Factor. The world wants to know everything about her.’
‘And you.’
Ollie’s face clouded over. ‘I hate it.’
‘Lots of actors would give anything to get their profile as high as yours. Why not go with the flow and enjoy the ride?’
‘I don’t want to be famous as a “celebrity boyfriend”. I want my work as an actor to speak for me.’
‘Get over yourself! We’re all a bunch of children dancing in front of our parents: Look at me, Mummy. Look at me!’
Ollie couldn’t help but laugh. ‘OK, perhaps there’s a bit of that. But I still want a private life and a private relationship with my girlfriend, but that’s not likely to happen when there’s a fortune to be made selling photos of us. The irony of it is, while the paps are cashing in, I’m skint.’ Gemma nodded with understanding. You worked for the RSC for kudos, not cash. ‘Red expects me to fly out and join her whenever I have a break, but the transatlantic flights and hotels are cleaning me out.’
‘Have you told her that?’
‘I can’t – she’d offer to pick up the bill, and I don’t want that. I could never be a freeloader.’
Gemma patted his knee. ‘You’re too noble for your own good, that’s your trouble. Want to walk with me back to the theatre?’
‘No, I’ve got some stuff to do.’
‘OK see you later.’
Ollie watched as Gemma made her way to the exit. The ‘stuff’ he had to do – calling in at the dry cleaners for his shirts, stopping by the cashpoint to draw some money – wouldn’t have prevented him walking back to the theatre with her. The real problem was that he couldn’t risk being photographed with Gemma; that would only lead to another row with Red.
Outside, the sun was surprisingly warm and tourists were wandering happily along the Stratford-upon-Avon high street, stopping, with little or no warning, whenever something in a shop window took their fancy. Ollie cursed under his breath as he employed all his navigational skills to avoid tripping over them.
His call with Red had annoyed him. Lately, all his calls with Red annoyed him. She was a great girl. Funny, pretty, great body, talented, never there. It was the never there bit that messed things up. They’d met when she’d come to see him in a fringe production of Joe Orton’s Loot. He’d had the best reviews of his life and it was a game-changer for him. The production was the hottest ticket in town. He’d heard backstage that Red was in the audience; she was already huge in the UK but hadn’t quite gone global. Back then it had just been a matter of dodging the paparazzi, which meant she was still able to enjoy the odd night out.
After the performance, he’d received a sweet handwritten note in red ink on the back of a fag packet:
Fancy dodging the paps with me after the show? Rx
They’d slipped out of a side entrance, just the two of them, and managed to hole up in a tiny bar, blissfully unrecognised, while her minders parked up nearby. She made him laugh, she seemed kind, genuine, in touch with her roots. The connection was instant. She told him about her upbringing in the Midlands, how hard it had been on her family, enduring the constant attention after X Factor. He told her about his father walking out when he was just a kid, how he’d never really fitted in at public school, and how much he wanted to become a good actor. Their lives were different but something really clicked between them that night.
But no sooner had they got together than her star had gone stratospheric.
Ollie was twenty-eight. He loved life. Fifteen months ago he’d had a great social life, but all that had closed down for him. Thanks to Red and her fame. A big fat problem. Did he love her enough to accept it? Was she The One? He knew that she was the most exciting woman he’d ever known … so far … But in the time that he’d known her, she’d changed. The stress of her lifestyle had taken its toll. And the initial excitement of their relationship had been replaced by a kind of prison … That was it, he had lost his freedom … and she was losing herself.
He stopped walking and stared at the swans floating elegantly on the river by the theatre. They were free. Free and wild. One of them got out of the water and waggled up to him, hoping for food.
‘Sorry, mate. Nothing for you.’
He stood still while the large bird pecked fruitlessly at the chewing gum stains on the path, then stood tall, looking at him in disappointment, before giving a shake of its feathers and wandering off forlornly. Ollie saw the tag round one slender black ankle.
‘Not wild after all, boy, eh? Tagged, same as me.’ He shook his head. ‘Oh, to be free again.’
*
The matinee went well. The audience of GCSE students were attentive and seemed to enjoy the story. At the curtain calls one young female voice called out, ‘Ollie, I love you’ as he took his bow. He smiled and gave a wave, which provoked another shout: ‘Send my love to Red!’ One of the grander old actors sighed with utter disdain and walked off before the curtain came down.
*
Back in his dressing room, Ollie was sitting with his head in his hands, wondering how he’d got into such a mess, when there was a knock at the door.
‘Ah, Ollie – may I have a word?’ Nigel the company manager licked his wispy moustache.
‘Yeah, Nige. Come in.’ Ollie leaned over and took his costume off the spare chair. ‘Sit down.’
Nigel carried on standing.
‘This is a bit awkward, but … your young fans. We appreciate you can’t, we can’t, stop them from calling out, but could you not acknowledge them?’
Ollie slumped back in his chair. ‘Who’s complained?’
‘Er, it’s not a complaint as such. More a request for some respect towards your fellow artistes.’
‘Sir Terry? Is that why he walked off before the tabs came in?’
‘I’m not going to name names, that would be too sordid. The fact is you’re a young actor sharing the stage with colleagues who deserve your respect and that of the audience.’
‘Sir Terry it is then.’
‘Possibly.’
‘The Knight’, as he was nicknamed, was a grand old gay actor; charming, knowledgeable and with a seemingly bottomless fund of outrageous stories. He’d first joined the RSC in the early fifties, working with Olivier, Gielgud and Richardson. He was theatrical royalty and if he found a company member to be upsetting, that company member would never work with him again. Sir Terry had been considered the box office draw of the season, but as the weeks went by it was becoming clear that young Ollie Pinkerton, hitherto unknown jobbing actor but now a celebrity as a result of his relationship with rock star Red, was the one pulling in the punters.
Ollie took a deep breath and stood up. ‘Nigel, I quite understand. And, as a matter of courtesy, I shall apologise to The Knight right away.’
‘Thank you, Ollie. You will make my life, and indeed your own life, much happier if you do so.’