Honeymoon Suite by Wendy Holden

Author:Wendy Holden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2016-06-16T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 32

Caradoc Turner sat in his dressing room at the Woking Hippodrome. He was manically pressing and re-pressing the redial on his mobile. His wife, however, was not picking up.

What was she doing? When he had spoken to Juliet earlier that morning, she had not said she was going out. So far as he was aware, she rarely left their home, Birch Hall. What was there to go out for, in Chestlock?

Caradoc breathed deeply in the manner he had been taught at theatre school to combat stage fright. But it had been months since he had feared walking out of the wings; he knew his part so well he could perform it in his sleep. On at least one occasion he had. It was not stage fright that was exercising Caradoc now.

It was Juliet.

For some reason, the gnawing anxiety Caradoc felt whenever he thought of his young, attractive wife had worsened as the tour’s end drew nearer. He had longed for her every day for the past six months, as the Backstabbers Theatre Company moved from Gaiety to Hippodrome to Palace to Civic Theatre in towns he had never even known existed and would have been happy to remain ignorant of. But now he was finally coming home, and the very last performance loomed. It was on Saturday, a mere three days from today. A mere six performances left, three matinees and three evening.

Caradoc felt a palpitating excitement. The moment he had been looking forward to for six months was almost upon him. Soon, hopefully, Juliet would be upon him too. Would his wife, after the long absence, finally agree to have sex with him?

When his agent had first called to offer a six months’ stint in a touring provincial production of Murderous Death, Caradoc had laughed in his face. He, who had once played Hamlet at the National (admittedly, as understudy to the understudy; his actual part had been Guildenstern)! He, playing a character called Hercules Pierrot in an Agatha Christie-style mystery with a washed-up bunch of old soap-stars!

True, his career was some way past its zenith. But it had not, or at least so Caradoc thought, yet reached the nadir that sent actors out into the wild to be shot, stabbed or poisoned in dusty provincial theatres in front of ancient audiences sucking Mintoes.

His agent’s response had been frank and crushing. His view was that not only was Caradoc’s career at just such a nadir, but that he was lucky to have even this opportunity. As he absorbed this it had occurred to Caradoc that Murderous Death might be the break he and Juliet needed to reinvigorate their marriage. Or simply invigorate it, full stop.

In fact, their marriage had started pretty well. Full-bloodedly, quite literally. Juliet had been a set designer when Caradoc met her. She was in charge of painting gore all over the stage in a production of Titus Andronicus which was sanguinous even by Globe standards.

Her very black hair and very white face had beautifully set off the bright red she was professionally concerned with.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.