The Word Is Murder(88)

Cornwallis paused but I was too afraid to speak. He stared at me, then snatched up a second scalpel and, even as I cried out, stabbed it into me, this time into my shoulder, leaving it there. ‘Guess what he did!’ he screamed.

‘He cheated you!’ I somehow managed to force out the words. I didn’t know what I was saying. I just had to say something.

‘He did more than that. When I was cast as Hamlet, he was furious. He thought he was entitled to the part. He’d already performed it as part of his Tree. He wanted everyone to see how good he was. But it was my turn. The part was mine. That last production was my opportunity to show the world what I could do and he and that bitch girlfriend of his tricked me. They did it together. They deliberately made me sick so that I couldn’t come to rehearsals and they had to recast.’

I didn’t understand quite what he was talking about but right then nor did I care. I was sitting there like a bull in the ring with two scalpels sticking out of me, both hurting more and more. I was certain I was going to be killed. He seemed to be waiting for me to speak. Fearful that my silence would only enrage him more, I muttered: ‘Amanda Leigh …’

‘Amanda Leigh. That’s the one. He used her to get at me but I caught up with her in the end and made her pay.’ He giggled to himself. It was the most convincing portrayal of a lunatic I’d ever seen. ‘I made her suffer and then she disappeared. Do you know where she is? I can tell you if you like – but if you want to find her, you’ll need to dig up seven graves.’

‘You killed Damian,’ I rasped. It took every effort to form the words. My heart felt as if it was going to explode.

‘Yes.’ He brought his hands together and bowed his head as if he was praying and even then I got the sense that there was something mannered about what he was doing. This was a performance for an audience of one. ‘People said I was great in the run-up to Hamlet,’ he continued. ‘I should have been Hamlet. But I couldn’t do that because I was ill, so I ended up as Laertes and I was great as Laertes too. But the problem is, Laertes only has half a dozen scenes. He spends most of the play off-stage. I had about sixty lines. That’s all. And at the end of it I didn’t get the agent I wanted and when I left RADA I didn’t get the career I wanted either. I tried. I kept myself in shape. I went to acting classes. I went to auditions. But it never clicked.

‘There was a season playing Feste in Twelfth Night at the Bristol Old Vic and I thought that was going to be the beginning of everything. But after that, nothing happened for me. I came so close! I had three call-backs for The Pirates of the Caribbean before they gave the part to someone else. There were TV shows, new plays … and I was always thinking it was going to happen for me but for some reason it never did and all the time I was getting older and the money was running out and as the months became years I had to accept that there was something broken inside me and that something had been broken by Amanda and by Damian. When you’re an actor, unemployment is like cancer. The longer you have it, the less chance there is of finding a cure. And all the time my fucking family was watching from the sidelines, waiting for me to fail, to come back into the fold. They were almost willing it to happen.

‘Well, one thing after another: my agent decides to drop me. I’m drinking too much. I wake up in a filthy room with no money in my pocket and I realise I’m not having any sort of life. And finally the penny drops. I’m not Dan Roberts any more. I’m Robert Cornwallis. I put on a dark suit and I join my cousin Irene in South Kensington – and that’s it. Game over.’

He paused and I flinched, wondering if he was going to pick up another scalpel. The first two were burning into me. But he was too absorbed in his own story to hurt me any more.

‘I was actually very good at the job. I suppose you could say it was in my blood. I hated every single minute of it but then is there such a thing as a cheerful undertaker? The fact that I was miserable probably made me more suited to the role. In the words of the song, I lived the life I was given. I met Barbara at her uncle’s funeral – isn’t that romantic? – and we got married! I never really loved her. It was just something I had to do. We had three sons and I’ve tried to be a good father but the truth is they’re foreign objects to me. I never wanted them. I never wanted any of it.’ He half smiled. ‘It amused me when Andrew said he wanted to be an actor. Where do you think he got that from? I’ll never let it happen, of course. I’d do anything to protect him from that particular circle of hell.

‘Hell pretty much describes my life for the last twelve years. I managed to catch up with Amanda in the end. One day, when I couldn’t bear it any more, I tracked her down and invited her out to dinner. She was the first one I killed and doing that gave me a real sense of gratification, I’ll admit it. You probably think I’m crazy but you don’t understand what she did to me, she and Damian. He was the one I really wanted to deal with: Damian Cowper, who was winning awards and getting more and more famous and making films in America. But I knew it was just a dream, that he was out of my reach. How could I get anywhere near him?

‘So you can imagine how I felt when, one day, his mother walked into the funeral parlour. Come into the parlour, said the spider to the fly! I recognised her at once. She had come to RADA quite a few times and she’d been there for Hamlet. She’d even complimented me on my performance. And here she was, sitting in front of me, arranging her own funeral! She didn’t recognise me but then why should she have? I’ve changed a lot in the time since I left drama school. I’ve lost my hair and then there is the beard and the glasses. And at the end of the day who looks at an undertaker anyway? We’re a type. People who deal with the dead live in the shadows and nobody really wants to acknowledge that we’re there. So she chatted to me and chose her willow coffin and her music and her prayers and she didn’t notice that I was sitting there quite stunned.