The Word Is Murder(87)

‘Cornwallis and Sons. That’s what I was born into. My father was an undertaker. My grandfather was an undertaker. His father was an undertaker. My uncles and aunts were undertakers. When I was a boy, everybody I knew was dressed in black. I was taken out to see the horses pulling the hearse along the street. That was a treat for me. I’d watch my father eating his dinner and I’d think to myself that he’d spent the whole day with dead people and that those hands of his, the same hands that had embraced me, had touched dead flesh. Death had followed him into the room. The whole family was infected by it. Death was our life! And the worst of it was that one day I would be exactly the same because that was what they had planned for me. There was never any question about it. Because we were Cornwallis and Sons – and I was the son.

‘They used to tease me about it at school. Everyone knew the name, Cornwallis. They’d pass the shop on the way to get the bus and it wasn’t as if it was Jones or Smith or something forgettable. They called me “funeral boy” … “dead boy”. They asked me if my dad got off on corpses … if I did. They wanted to know what dead people looked like with no clothes on. Did they get hard-ons? Did their nails still grow? Half the teachers thought I was creepy – not because of who I was but because of what my family did. Other kids talked about university, about careers. They had dreams. They had a future. Not me. My future was, quite literally, dead.

‘Except – and this is the funny thing – I did have a dream. It’s strange how things happen, isn’t it? One year, they gave me a part in the school play. It wasn’t a big part. I was Hortensio in The Taming of the Shrew. But the thing is, I loved it. I loved Shakespeare. The richness of the language, the way he created a whole world. I felt so excited standing there in costume, with the lights on me. Maybe it was just that I had discovered the joy of being someone else. I was fifteen years old when I realised that I wanted to be an actor and from that moment the thought consumed me. I wouldn’t just be an actor. I would be a famous actor. I wouldn’t be Robert Cornwallis. I’d be someone else. It was what I had been born for.

‘My parents weren’t happy when I told them I wanted to audition for RADA – but do you know what? They let me go ahead because they didn’t think I had a hope in hell of getting in. Secretly, they were laughing at me but they decided that if they let me get it out of my system I’d forget about it and slip back into the family tradition. I applied for RADA and without telling them I applied for Webber Douglas and the Central School of Drama and the Bristol Old Vic too and I’d have applied for a dozen more until I got in. But I didn’t need to. Because the fact of the matter was that I was good. I was really good. I came alive when I was acting. I breezed into RADA. I knew, the moment I auditioned, they were never going to turn me down.’

I said something. It came out as an inarticulate noise because by now the drug had gone to work on my vocal cords and it was difficult to speak. I think I was going to plead with him to let me go but it was a waste of time anyway. Cornwallis frowned, went over to the table and picked up one of the scalpels. As I stared at him, he walked over to me. I saw the light of the neon shimmering in the silver blade. Then, without hesitating, he plunged it into me.

I stared in complete amazement at the handle jutting out of my chest. The strange thing is that it didn’t hurt very much. Nor was there a lot of blood. I just couldn’t believe he’d done it.

‘I told you I didn’t want to hear from you!’ Cornwallis explained, his voice once again rising into a whine. ‘There’s nothing you can say to me that I want to hear. So shut up! Do you understand? Shut up!’

He composed himself, then continued as if nothing had happened.

‘From the first day I entered RADA, I was accepted for what I was and what I had to offer. I didn’t use the name Robert Cornwallis and I never talked about my family. I called myself Dan Roberts … no-one cared about things like that. It was going to be my stage name anyway. And I wasn’t “funeral boy” any more. I was Anthony Hopkins. I was Kenneth Branagh. I was Derek Jacobi. I was Ian Holm. All those names were up there on the boards and I was going to be one of them, just like them. Every time I went into the building I had this sense that I had found myself. I’m telling you now, those were the happiest three years of my life. They were the only happy three years of my life!

‘Damian Cowper was there too. You were right about that – and don’t get me wrong. I liked him. To begin with, I admired him. But that was because I didn’t know him. I thought he was my friend – my best friend – and I didn’t see him for the cold, ambitious, manipulative swine that he was.’

I glanced down at the scalpel, still jutting obscenely out of me. There was a pool of red spreading around it, no bigger than the palm of my hand. The wound was throbbing now. I felt sick.

‘It all came to a head in the third year. Everything was more competitive by then. We all pretended to be each other’s friends. We all pretended to support each other. But let me tell you, when it came to the showcases and the final play, that’s when the gloves came off. There wasn’t a single person in that building who wouldn’t have pushed their best friend off the fire escape if they thought it would help them get an agent. And of course, everyone was sucking up to the staff. Damian was good at that. He’d smile and he’d say the right things and all the time he had his eye on the main prize and in the end, guess what he did?’