Free The Weeping Women Hotel by Alexei Sayle Page B

day.
    In
front of the couple, capering in the entrance to the cinema, was someone they
knew, an actor called Roland Malone who had co-starred in the early nineties
with Lulu in her one hit, a TV detective series called Bold As Bacon about
a father and son team who ran a bacon stall round the markets of the northwest
and also solved crimes. The photographers called out to him, ‘Roland! Roland!
This way, Roland!’ and he pranced and cavorted for them.
    Toby
and Helen, skirting Roland’s flailing arms, mounted the stairs and entering the
auditorium were shown to their seats; in the arm of each there was a free bag
of popcorn and a bottle of flavoured mineral water of a new kind — carrot or
something. The Odeon was separated into two halves by a long curving aisle that
ran the width of the cinema. In front of this aisle towards the screen was the
place where local radio competition winners and office staff from the companies
who supplied bottled water and sticky labels to the film’s producers were
seated, overdressed in their ballgowns and rented tuxedos with red bow ties; a
cloud of excitement and anticipation hung over this southern hemisphere of the
cinema.
    In the
uphill part where Helen and Toby sat were the film’s producers themselves, its
distributors, various low-grade stars of television and radio and the senior
executives of Warbird: there was no excitement here. Inside her head Helen
explained all this to Julio Spuciek.
    The
couple had invited their friends Oscar and Katya to the premiere and they were
waiting for them in the four-seater box that fronted the aisle. Oscar had once
worked with Toby at the Percussionists Licensing Society, while Katya was a
food writer and critic: at the moment she was working on a book of recipes for
meals that were mentioned in the Bible; she reckoned this would be a huge hit
with fundamentalist Christians who wished to eat only holy food.
    Roland
Malone, having been told by the photographers that they had enough shots of him
now, thank you very much, had wandered into the auditorium; spying Toby and
Helen he waved energetically and came over to stand in front of their seats in
the aisle.
    ‘Hi,
Roland,’ said Toby. ‘How’s it going?’
    ‘Great,’
the actor replied. ‘I’ve just been speaking to my agent, he’s got something
really exciting for me.’
    ‘What,
the National job?’
    ‘No,
it’s a memorial service at the actors’ church for Tony Walker, big-time drama
producer. Rumour is he died of a heart attack in the arms of a very
good-looking Labrador .’
    ‘I didn’t
know he was a big mate of yours,’ Helen said.
    ‘Me? I
hated the bastard.’
    ‘So why
are you doing it?’
    He
looked at her like she was retarded. ‘I’m top of the bill! If you do a telly or
a play only the public see-it, but if you give a good performance at a memorial
service for somebody really important then every bastard in the business is
there to watch you breaking down in tears at the power of your own acting;
can’t fail.’
    Helen
said to Julio Spuciek in her mind, ‘Roland! What a self-involved arse. Of
course, Julio, you remember he was exactly the type I would have once fallen
for, before I married Toby — handsome, creative, highly strung and a complete
prick.’
    ‘Pajero is the Argentinian slang for prick,’ Julio said.
    ‘Really,
and isn’t a Pajero a type of four-wheel-drive car?’
    ‘Exactly,
all these pricks are driving around with “prick” written on their car.’
    ‘Oh,
Julio,’ she said, ‘you’re so funny.’
    ‘And
you are looking particularly beautiful tonight.’
     
    Just about completing the
fashion course, Harriet left college with an indifferent degree and none of her
tutors, unsurprisingly, seemed willing to recommend an overweight girl who
didn’t look after herself as an intern at any fashion house. So, more or less
at random, she took a job as a dresser on Miss Saigon at the Theatre
Royal, Drury Lane . With her
meagre wages she was