Sicken and So Die Read Online Free Page B

charming of Shakespeare’s comedies, and yet at the same time it is one of the darkest. The treatment meted out to Malvolio alone prevents the play from being the jolly romp which it is sometimes portrayed.. .as,’ he added uneasily, having got a little lost in his syntax. ‘And in my production I have deliberately emphasised the –’
    â€˜Look, if you want to have any photographs, we’re going to have to do them now,’ a harsh voice interrupted from the back of the dining hall. ‘I’m already running late.’
    Since with no visual record the press conference would be even more of a non-event than it was already, the photographer’s bad manners won the day, and the five costumed cast members were trooped out to the formal gardens to strike Elizabethan poses against the statuary.
    They were shepherded by a small, anxious woman who had identified herself earlier as Pauline Monkton, press officer for the Great Wensham Festival. She kept apologising for the lack of press at the conference and, while apologies were certainly in order, the way she went on about it quickly became wearing.
    â€˜I mean, I don’t know what you can do,’ she said plaintively. ‘They all got invited – the nationals and everything. They had their invitations
weeks
ago. And they did say RSVP, but, do you know, hardly any of them have even
bothered
to reply. I mean, once you’ve invited them and given them all the information, well, what else can you
do
?’
    Hire a professional publicist or public relations company, would have been Charles’s answer. He had encountered the fatal touch of the amateur at other arts festivals, and he knew it almost never worked. Publicity is a hard-nosed cut-throat business, there are any number of highly sophisticated organisations out there lobbying for media coverage, and one earnest middle-aged woman sending out invitations – even with RSVP on them – doesn’t stand a chance. Goodwill can only go so far. If you want a job professionally done, you have to pay a professional to do it.
    Local newspaper photographers, as a breed, are not the subtlest of people, and what the one from the
Great Wensham Observer
was really after was a bit of cleavage. He managed to get a meagre ration from Tottie Roundwood, lolling lasciviously on Sir Toby Belch’s lap. He tried to persuade Talya Northcott to take up a provocative pose, but was quickly deterred by a righteous blast of political correctness. And he was disappointed to find Sally Luther (whose tits had once been quite famous) doubleted up to the neck in her male Cesario rather than her female Viola costume. Her face was framed by a pageboy-cut blond wig, identical to the one Russ Lavery would wear as her twin Sebastian.
    Gavin Scholes fussed around, objecting to details like the fact that in the play Fabian would never put his arms round Viola – least of all when she was dressed as a man – but he was ignored. The photographer just pressed on, taking his clichéd shots against the garden features, and constantly looking at his watch. He wasn’t an exemplar of the Cecil Beaton school of photography – his was more the railway station booth approach. After about five minutes he shoved his camera back in its bag, pulled out an old envelope on which he scribbled down the cast’s names – in a way that didn’t inspire confidence he’d got them right – and hurried off to do the Wildfowl Week.
    Sally Luther, had been a bit tight-lipped about the perfunctory nature of the photocall, but then she had plenty of better-orchestrated ones to compare it with. Charles Paris was unworried. In his new, benign mood, little worried him, and he quite enjoyed being photographed – even for the
Great Wensham Observer
. He felt secure in his costume, secure in his role, secure in his life.
    And after the photographs would come the interviews. Yes, he quite relished the