About a decade ago I had my first play up in London, it ran for a month. By the third week it was selling very nicely indeed and attracting all kinds of interesting people. We had the usual scene faces in, and legitimate theatrical critics, even a member of S-Club 7, though I can’t remember which one. My director, Fran*, was a real Oxbridge bohemian; fun fur jackets, bootcut jeans, the lot, and as such, knew most of these people from campus drinking societies. Often, usually three minutes before curtain-up, Fran would burst backstage to say, “Darling you’ll never be-lieve who’s in tonight!” This never failed to disorient me.
One evening it was announced that the Earl of Charlton** was in the house. He was a long time chum of Fran’s, and a director at one of the UK big art’s festivals, this much I knew. His name was Charles, he wasn’t in town all that often because he was very involved in conservation. Whether or not he actually was the Earl of wherever was a moot point since I’m not much of a Royalist anyway. What was much more important was Fran’s suggestion that he might invest in the show. Money is money, and we needed it if we were going to tour. Besides, I thought, “the Earl of Charlton” was probably just an old nickname from a game of Never Have I Ever that stuck with him. Given that almost everybody I knew assumed at least one fruity alias this was quite possible. My close friends at the time all called each other Liza, and my sister was known to everyone as the Duchess, because I told them she’d married the Duke of Wesham, and that together they’d set up a charity for young people with obsessive compulsive disorder, called Yo! CD. The Earl of Charlton - it did sound a little phoney.
Onstage that night my co-star slipped in her heels and landed on her arse with a magnificent “Whoops!” which caused me to corspe uncontrollably. I laughed so hard I cried and when I saw our MD hiding behind the piano, convulsing with giggles, I thought we’d surely have to take it from the top, or else issue refunds. I wasn’t exactly surprised then when Charles was nowhere to be seen after the show. “There goes that cheque,” I sighed as I scrubbed my gob clean in the dressing room.
Fran told me not to take it personally, that Charles was both famously shy and frantically busy, he’d had to dash off to the Garrick to talk to some people about some monkeys in Bali.
“He loved it though, darling,” Fran assured me, “Thought you were brilliant. Incandescent was the word, I believe. He’s taken quite a liking to you.”
I did get some very entertaining fan mail at the theatre, and a letter from Sir Ian McKellen to say that he was so sorry not to have been able to contribute to our Go Fund Me, he’d been on a skiing holiday at the time of asking. Nothing from Charles though, so I assumed my lack of decorum had proven fatal for our association.
The reviews had been solid, and the sales very healthy but nobody really knew what to do with the play next. And the end of the run, quite exhausted and barely in the black, I went back to my flat share in Berlin, wondering what it had all been about.
That might’ve been the end of it, only Fran dreamt up a scheme to take the show to Edinburgh that summer, and all we would need was £25k! Since the Arts Council famously didn’t fund the Fringe, and I was good for approximately €75 plus/minus a wrap of speed, I didn’t see how we’d ever meet this outrageous target. Fran said “Well, I’ll put the feelers out,” and I went back to ham-fisted conjugation of German verbs, and weeping over the dative case. I figured that if I brushed up on the lingo I could sign on in the Haupstadt, tiding myself over until I won the Olivier.
Then Charles emailed me out of the blue, I suppose Fran had given him my details. His message was brief and not completely coherent; “Apologise for nor being in touch sooner. Send number for contact. Can we have lunch? xC - sent from my Blackberry wireless device.” His emails were always like that, they read like telegrams, as if he were unaware that there was no longer a charge per word. Why he had a Blackberry I don’t know, he did spend a lot of time in LA, so I chalked it up to that. I wrote back to say that I’d love to have lunch with him but that I wasn’t in London. He didn’t reply, long-distance is always a chore.
Evidently though Fran was really putting in the time (and the booze) with Charles because I woke up one afternoon a few days later to an email with the subject FWD: Your departure BER-LHR. It was accompanied by a note to say, “Been a bit naughty. Hope don’t mind. Fran says must talk shop! Send number for contact xC” My first thought was, “Oh bollocks,” my second, “Can't he see my number is in the bloody email signature?” my third, “Fuck! He’s booked me business class!”
I know it seems ludicrous but this really happened. I had to fly to London for lunch with the Earl of Charlton.
My flight was a week later from Tegel. I had a rather charitable departure time of 9 AM, which is the precise time I arrived at the British Airways check-in desk, having somehow forgotten how airports work. The lady at BA looked at me in blank bewilderment and said, “You do know that you need to be here before the flight departs?” I said, “Yes of course, I have flown before!” and stomped off to the First Class Lounge.
I hunkered down at the breakfast buffet and drank a lot of coffee and wondered how on Earth I would explain this to Fran. As far as they were concerned our lives depended on my lunch date with Charles. I messaged from the lounge, jittery with caffeine, sweating the slowness of the wi-Fi and confessed my newest mess. Fran wrote back prompt, tart, “Go home - I’ll sort it out!” So I did, not that I had much choice, the lounge attendant was hovering over me with a rictus grin and a gesture towards the door.
That afternoon they emailed me another ticket, for the next day. Things were looking very promising according to Fran’s accompanying email. It was as good as set that Charles’d put up a big chunk of the money we needed, Fran said, then instructed me not to fuck it up again, on pain of death. I bought a falafel from the stand at the end of my street and went back to bed.
I woke up after dark with the unmistakable sensation that I was about to puke, and puke I did, for hours. I vomited all night, all the granola and fruit juice from the British Airways lounge, along with the falafel and hot sauce, which I believe to have been the main culprit. At dawn I was still horribly unwell, still throwing up, but I had no choice but to get back on the bus to the airport. I puked all the way to Tegel, into a Dunkin’ Donuts carrier bag, in fact. Given that it was seven AM and I looked as I did, I received zero sympathy but a lot of side-eye, since I suppose everyone on the bus presumed I’d been on the lash all night.
When I arrived in London I was on my last legs, but that was fine. Charles had sent Fran on to tell me that he’d been held up in St. Ives, but that he’d meet us for drinks that evening. I was delirious with relief, and dropped like a stone on to the floor of Fran’s office, unconscious again ‘til twilight. All through my tossing and turning I heard Fran talking on the phone to various clients and would-be backers and couldn’t help but feel just a little like Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby.
It was after nine when Fran woke me up, having plucked from my suitcase something for me to wear, and given the ensemble the once over with a handheld steamer.
“Well, he’s here,” Fran said, “We should go over before he thinks we’re giving him the run around.”
Charles’ club was somewhere off Charing Cross, it was the first real member’s club I’d ever been to. Obviously I’d partied at the Groucho and Annabelle’s before but those places hardly count, do they? This one though was the real deal, slightly dilapidated and decorated with framed cartoons of former members taken from ancient issues of Punch. Charles was already drunk when we got there, in fact he was drunk every time I met him, besides the last time, maybe. He was gregarious and actually very handsome, even if he was dressed like Jeremy Clarkson. Blue eyes and that foppish haircut, parted at the centre falling into waves either side of the temples, beloved of hooray henrys and 00s boyband singers alike. There was something terribly sad about him too, I don’t mean pathetic, I mean sorrowful. He carried an obvious pain.
All the same he was a delightful host and he ordered plates of cheese and bottles of white wine for us with a in-bred grace, which made you feel as though you were doing him a favour by accepting his generosity. And we never spoke about the money.
Soon we were all quite drunk. Charles stood up and excused himself to make a phone call outside. A movie he had recently produced was opening that week and so he wanted to call the LA office as soon as they got in. Once he was out of earshot Fran said, “So, right. Here’s the thing. Charlie likes the show. He likes you and he wants to help us out. So he’s offered to put in ten thousand. It’s not the full figure but it’s a good start.”
I choked on my Sancerre, “Ten thousand pounds?” I asked.
Fran said, “No darling, pesetas! What do you think? Yes pounds! Pounds sterling. But it’s on the proviso that we have a three-way with him. What do you think?”
Charles came back before I could answer. He ordered another bottle of wine and Fran asked for something sweet then noticed someone waving to them from across the room. “Give me a minute. That’s Bertie, I think. What’s he doing here?” Fran scarpered off.
When we were alone for the first time, Charles said, “You know I really did like your play. I really would like to help.” Whether it was the effect of all that fancy plonk or the wafts of Blenheim Bouquet suffusing the bar I can’t say, all the same I leant in and said, “And would you like to kiss me?” Charles blushed and said, “Very much.” I thought, Well now, this doesn’t seem all that difficult, does it?
He had a lot of life in him that’s for sure, and had apparently knocked back enough to see off that debiliating shyness of his. We kissed for quite sometime and with very little discretion, though thankfully the lights had been lowered as befitted the hour. He was tender, his fingers were very long. When we broke off I asked him, “Are you really the Earl of Charlton?” Immediately I felt ashamed at my lack of good manners.
“No,” he said, calmly with a slight shake of his head, “But I will be, once my father dies.” We kissed again and I felt those slim fingers running up along my thigh.
Fran returned and was immediately infuriated. “I see you two are getting along famously! Oh no, don't mind me.”
“But Fran,” I said.
“Yes, Fran,” Charles echoed, “Have a drink.”
“What?” said Fran, “And play gooseberry? No thank you.”
Snatching up their bag and coat, almost tumbling arse over tit as they did so, Fran could not be persuaded to stay, and left in an almighty huff, telling the room that this was typical, absolutely typical of us. It didn't seem to deter Charles any. I imagine he’d seen it all before, they’d been together at Cambridge or Oxford, I forget which, he probably understood Fran better than I ever did. We made out some more and gradually the room emptied around us.
At a certain point he said, “It’s getting a little late.” He never had to say what he meant in order to express it. Aristocrats are all subtext, that’s one reason why they’re so infuriating. He rose and I followed and we left, the doorman hailed us a cab and it wasn't until we were inside that I realised we hadn’t been presented with a bill.
Charles directed the driver to to go north, we pulled away from the kerb and I asked him were we were going. He said, “Oh that’s a thing. It’s a bit late to go up to Charlton now, isn’t it?”
We were both pretty blotto.
I said, “Don't you have a place here?”
He said, “Well, yes. But mother is staying in South Ken. And I have renovations going on in St. John’s Wood. It’ll have to be a hotel.”
I was delighted, I love hotels. I told the driver, “Claridges, please.”
Charles exclaimed, “No, no, no. They know me there.”
The driver’s eyes in the rear view mirror expressed pure exasperation.
Charles said, “Head towards Waterloo, would you? Ufford Street.”
The city looked divine that evening because the rain had smudged away all the details and so all I could see from my window were dazzling clusters of lights against an incorruptible black night sky. Charles had his hand on my knee. I wondered if I knew what I was getting into, wondered if I really cared, led his hand up my thigh and let it rest between my legs. Prostitution can look wildly romantic from the back of a black cab.
I was enraptured by the whole journey, right up until the very sobering moment when we pulled up outside a Travelodge. I must’ve looked as aghast as I felt because Charles said, “What? They’ve very discrete. And breakfast’s rather good value.”
That was when I knew - I couldn't go through with it. Not even for ten thousand promised pounds sterling. It wasn’t the morality of the matter, you understand. If I were going to become a high class call girl to the aristocracy well, that was one thing, but doing it in a Travelodge at the back of Waterloo train station was just too demeaning. I had flashes of tawdry newspaper headlines, of sting operations, Peer caught pants down with he-she hooker at sleazy hotel. I couldn’t.
I told Charles I wasn’t feeling well and said I wanted to get an early night and crash at my friend Gina’s in Hackney. I told him I’d call. He blushed and said, “Of course. Of course. Let me get the cab. How much will that be?”
The driver sighed, “What Hackney? This time of night? You’re looking at eighty-ninety quid, mate.”
Charles took out his wallet without hesitation, and handed me the cash. I almost changed my mind, he looked so sad as he kissed me good night. The taxi pulled away again, Charles disappeared inside the Travelodge, and the driver put the radio on a little louder.
I asked him, “Is it really going to cost that much to get to Hackney?”
“Nah,” he said, “It’ll cost ya about twenty-five, I reckon. But you look like you could do with the money yourself.”
I said, “Oh, thanks.”
The next morning I woke up with an unjustified hangover to a string of texts from Fran, charting a journey from drunken rage to dried-out calm.
“You treacherous bitch. I cannot believe you abandoned me like that!”
and
“How did it go?”
and
“Well????”
and
“Do I have the pleasure of addressing the future Lady Charlton?”
Bleary-eyed I replied, “He’s a lot of fun Fran, and he’s a very good kisser. But I don't think you need book Westminster Abbey just yet.”
As it transpired the movie Charles had backed bombed, and so he had to withdraw his offer of financial support. We stayed in touch though, and Fran and I even managed to get the show to Edinburgh, only with a much reduced budget. Our team of six had to share a two-bedroom flat in Leith for the summer, a situation which rapidly descended into a scenario worthy of Pasolini himself. But, well, that’s a story I’ll maybe tell you some other time.
*In retrospect I wasn’t that close to the throne really
**Not their real name
***Not his real title