Distant Music Read online

  Again Coco could not tell Bertrand that Oliver had put on his father’s batman cum butler’s accent for the sole reason that he wanted to be accepted at the Academy as a nice working class type, and not get typecast as a public school twit.

  ‘Oh, but he can do the public school officer type. I have heard him, you know.’

  ‘No, no, my dear.’ Bertrand shook his head. ‘I am afraid not. No, you have to be born to it. He has not been here long enough to learn how to speak properly. I mean, I can tell, believe me. He is a Yorkshireman through and through, and nothing wrong with that, but not right for the film, not at all what he is looking for, although he may well be soon. That is why young people come here, among many other reasons, to be taught all that. How to handle their knives and forks correctly, and all that type of thing. No, it is obvious, he is a Yorkshireman through and through, I know. I should do, since I was born in Yorkshire.’

  Coco went to open her mouth and say something, and then closed it instead. What was the use? There was nothing to say.

  ‘You, on the other hand, are, apparently, just what Harold Liskeard is looking for. You are a very lucky girl, Miss Hampton, do you know that? Only a few weeks here, and cast in a film role already. How people will envy you! So much so, in fact, that if I were you I would not bother to come back to the Academy after this.’

  ‘But I want to. I mean, my guardians, they want me to, they will want me to. They have paid for me to come here.’

  ‘Your guardians? I see, and what do they do? Are they in the theatre?’

  ‘No, antique English oak furniture, actually. At least when last heard of.’

  ‘Well, there you are then.’

  ‘Where, exactly? I mean, I don’t understand.’

  ‘If your guardians were in the theatre, they would say exactly what I have just said to you, Miss Hampton. Never darken the doors of this academy again.’

  ‘But why not?’

  ‘Why not? Because, Miss Hampton, no one will speak to you. It will be as if you have measles. Believe me. It will not be worth the agony.’

  Coco stared at him. She could not pretend that she would miss the classes, which she was already finding more tedious even than art school, but she would miss the lunches with Ollie, the gossips in the coffee bars, lining herself up against other hopefuls.

  ‘Do you think the other students might be jelljell? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Jealous? Miss Hampton!’ The ex-actor turned principal paused and then smiled wearily before continuing, ‘Miss Hampton. You are clearly from a privileged background, you have just landed a part in a film – no matter what kind of film, or whether it will be a huge success or never seen or heard of again, it is a film, and you will have a small part that you will undoubtedly register in; you will be quite well paid, not brilliantly, but quite well, and you are asking me if the other students will be jealous of you? Have you left your brains at home, Miss Hampton? They will be ready to kill you. If you care for your life, you leave the Academy now.’

  ‘I see.’ Coco paused for a minute, seeing his point suddenly, and then thinking of actually being paid she quickly became businesslike. ‘I haven’t even got an agent. Could you recommend an agent to me?’

  ‘Of course. My wife. She is an agent, and she will look after you as if you were her very own child, the direct offspring of her loins.’ He produced a card. ‘Go and see her.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now. Straight away. As far as I am concerned you are a back number. And …’ He smiled for the first time. ‘Good luck, Miss Hampton. Not that you will need it.’

  Bertrand shook Coco’s hand, and the expression on his face was one of envy mixed with solemnity. He might have been handing her some select prize for best voice production, or best dramatic performance, so serious was his expression, so grave and sad the look in his eyes.

  ‘I have to tell you, Miss Hampton, that at this particular moment I would do anything to be your age and cast in my first film. That time of my life was taken up with the war. How lucky you post-war students are, to grow up as you did after the war, and how fortunate. May your young years never be snatched away in the same manner as my years were snatched from me, and those of my friends and colleagues too. May that never happen to you, or your friends.’

  Coco tried to look solemn, but only partially succeeded. She hated older people reminding her of the war and how lucky her generation was not to have fought, and all that. After all, try as you might, you could not be them, and feel sorry as you might you could not roll the years back and give them a bit of your luck. It was not after all like sharing a Mars Bar, or a pile of Marmite sandwiches.

  And besides, even mention of the war made her feel hugely guilty, as if she had inadvertently been the cause of it. As if her generation, having insisted on being born, had somehow made the previous generation fight, for them, for all those babies they had produced in the war. As if, had her generation not been born, something better might have happened, or someone might have thought of doing something sensible, to save all the bother, like shooting Hitler or poisoning him, or something.

  ‘Goodbye, Mr Bertrand, and thank you very much.’

  ‘You’ve only been here a fortnight.’

  ‘I know, but just think, if I had not been here a fortnight and Mr Liskeard had not been in the army with you, and then at the Shakespeare Memorial in the old days, been one of your friends, you know, I would not have been cast, would I? I mean, it is all due to you, really.’

  Coco was being a creep, and she knew it, trying to make up to Bertrand for the fact that she was young and perhaps going to be successful whereas it was all over for him, he just had his academy, full of people younger and luckier than himself.

  Bertrand sighed, but since he looked as if he was about to remind Coco, yet again, of how terribly lucky her generation was, how grateful they must be to life at all times, she quickly fled the room, snatching up her coat and ramming her outrageous hat on top of her head but still feeling, despite everything, somehow completely to blame for everything that had happened to him, or – perhaps worse – not happened to him.

  Oliver on the other hand was furious, but at least he had the grace to show it.

  ‘Trust you, Coco!’

  ‘Stop saying that, Ollie, really, stop saying “trust you”! It is just so damned irritating.’

  They were back in the coffee bar, and Oliver was looking not just both angry and morose, but even more as if he now had to take the great decision of his life and not only look and be angry, which was after all fashionable, but also grow a beard and become fascinated by tramps and things.

  ‘And I suppose the great Phyllis Brandon has now signed you up to the agency? I suppose Bertrand’s wife, the great Miss Brandon, has signed you on, I suppose, has she?’

  Coco nodded. ‘Yes, Ollie. What do you think? Of course she has. I’ve got a job, haven’t I? Agents always take you on once you’re working, you know that. It’s when you’re out of work and need a job that they don’t want to know, love, savez?’

  ‘Oh God, and you’ve got an agent too! God, how I hate you, I can’t help it, Coco, I really hate you.’

  Oliver leaned forward and banged his head on the coffee table in front of him, narrowly missing his luncheon omelette.

  Coco watched him with her usual detachment. He was such a clodhopper, such a great bungling twitto, such a total lumbering fool, and he always had been, but nevertheless she was in no mind to stop him making a fool of himself with his anger and envy, because it was obviously much healthier for him to carry on as if he was having his toenails pulled out, get it out into the open, let his ill feeling flow all over the coffee bar, than to bottle it all up.

  ‘Why you, Coco? I mean you don’t even like acting! You don’t even want to be an ahctress, dahling? It is just so unfair. So unfair. So unfair that you should be chosen while I who am passionate about acting are – is – completely ignored. It is – are – unfair. And I hate you.�
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  ‘Yes, it is – are – unfair,’ Coco agreed, eating her own omelette as fast as she could, because she knew that in the mood he was in it was perfectly possible that Oliver would suddenly stick his fork into her food and finish it before she could. For a moment she experienced a twinge of guilt as she remembered that it was she who had encouraged Oliver to cultivate his Yorkshire accent, thereby losing the film. ‘But life is unfair,’ she reminded him. ‘If it wasn’t you would have been born ugly, instead of divinely handsome, and so on and so on. You just have to get on with it. I may be cast today, you will probably be cast tomorrow.’

  ‘But you only enrolled at Ramad for a lark. Your heart’s not even in acting.’

  ‘I know, but that is the whole joy of the situation, because if you think about it, I shan’t be doing any acting, Ollie. If you think about it, acting is the last thing I will be doing.’

  Oliver straightened up, his eyes suddenly brightening. ‘You mean you’ve turned it down, you’ve turned the film down?’

  He looked quite excited at the idea.

  ‘No, I mean, film acting is not acting. If you ask me all film acting is is just standing still and thinking your feelings. I shall be being, not acting, that is what I shall be. I shall not act at all, not in front of a camera, I shall be.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘No one. I just thought it up.’

  ‘They haven’t even screen tested you yet,’ Oliver moaned. ‘They don’t even know whether you will be any good.’

  ‘I know,’ Coco agreed cheerfully, ‘nor they have. But apparently, Bertrand’s missus told me, when I went to see her yesterday, Harold Liskeard always knows. He has X-ray eyes or something, knows straight away whether someone has It or not, whether they will read on camera, and all that baloney.’

  ‘It’s not baloney! Coco! Wake up! This is you up there on screen, fame, success, everything, it is you.’

  ‘I just hope they offer me a decent fee,’ Coco said, having bolted her omelette and now viewing her empty plate with some satisfaction. ‘I mean, I hope they don’t scrimp on the payment.’

  ‘A bit tricky, isn’t it, I mean if Bertrand’s wife, Liskeard’s friend, is your agent? It doesn’t leave you much room for manoeuvre, does it, dahling?’

  ‘No, apparently she gets good fees for all her people, no matter who her husband is friends with. She is quite, quite ruthless.’ Coco lit a cigarette and because Oliver had not finished eating his double cheese omelette she blew the smoke into the air.

  ‘I just think it’s so unfair! You getting a plum part like that, and the rest of us who really, really want to be actors, don’t get near it. Not even within a half a mile of it, so unfair!’

  Coco wanted to say, ‘Well, if you hadn’t been such a complete twit and swanned about pretending to be Clifton you would have been cast too.’ But since Oliver was carrying on like one o’clock she felt that this was neither the time nor the place. So she smiled instead, even though she did not feel in the least bit sorry for him, or guilty about being cast.

  After all, she had not put herself up for the part. She had been chosen by Liskeard for no better reason than that he thought she would be right. If films and acting people were that superficial, what was it to her? Why should she care? Besides, she needed the money, whatever it was going to be. She wanted to buy herself a car, any car, so she could dash about the countryside, go to auctions, and buy up old costumes and clothes, that kind of thing. As far as she was concerned parts in films were only a way forward to another more interesting, less limited, future.

  Still, since she loved Oliver, although strictly only as a brother, she put out a comforting hand and touched his arm.

  ‘Look, Ollie, I know it’s tough on you, me getting a part and not you, but don’t worry, you’ll get there soon, and I will be out on my ear – sure to be – after the first day’s shoot, because as you say it doesn’t interest me. I shan’t be any good, I’m sure, so don’t worry. I will be a flop, for you.’

  But Oliver’s eyes told Coco that he was refusing to be comforted by her flippancy.

  ‘No, you won’t, Coco,’ he said, the look in his eyes one of complete, if accepting, defeat. ‘You see, Liskeard is right. You have got star quality.’

  Coco stared at him, her large, round eyes quite disbelieving. ‘Get on.’

  ‘No, it’s true, really it is. You have got the most enormous star quality. Why do you think the rest of the girls in your class hate you, dahling? Not because old Liskeard chose you, because they hated you before that. No, it’s because you have It. They may have beauty, you have It. That elusive something that makes you stand out.’

  ‘It’s just my funny clothes—’

  ‘But your funny clothes are all part of it, dahling. All part of the whole great quality thing that sets you apart from all the rest of the boring Brigitte Bardot or Sophia Loren lookalikes that are crowding this place with their spiky eyelashes and beehive hairdos. You are you, Coco, and you always have been, ever since we first met. I could take the you bit of you, and set it out in the middle of Kensington Gardens, or wherever we were – the Classic Cinema, the Comedy Theatre – and say “That girl is going to be a star of some kind.” Even when you were a little girl people always picked you out, always turned round and took a second look when you passed them.’

  ‘No, Ollie dear, that was you they were taking a second peak at, not me, you fool.’

  But for once Oliver would not be diverted from what he wanted to say, not even to talk about himself.

  ‘To tell you the truth I didn’t really want you to be at the Academy, because I knew it would take away from me! And yet another part of me did, because of, because of – just that. Because of the fact that there is no one else like you, Coco Hampton. You are and always have been totally yourself, whereas the rest of us are nowhere near anything like we should be. We settle for being pale grey and shadowy, too damned afraid to let it shine out, the bit of us that is unique, but you do that, you let it shine out and eclipse the rest of us. And the beauty of it is, you don’t even know it, and if you did, it would probably go.’

  Coco stared at Oliver, and lit another cigarette.

  She was determined to remain completely un-flattered by Oliver’s speech, and disbelieving. What was more, she thought she knew exactly why Oliver had made it – he wanted to put her off. He wanted to compliment her so largely, so unexpectedly, so fulsomely, that once in front of the cameras she would freeze up. Luckily she had known him for so long that she had taken care not to hear him very well, and certainly not to take in what he was saying, so instead of looking moved and pleased she nodded at someone else coming into the coffee bar and muttered, ‘Yorkshire pudding.’

  ‘Thanks, but I hardly need to bother. None of the other actors in this place ever listen to a word anyone else says anyway.’

  Oliver sighed and looked ungrateful at the same time. He was beginning to be fed up with going around being Clifton; it was beginning to get him down.

  ‘So that is you taken care of, going to be a great glamorous film star. What about me? What will I do now that you are going to be a film star and I am going to be lumbered in this place with no Coco to have a laugh with me? I mean to say.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Coco smiled, her eyes half closed, loving the moment. Oliver, the coffee bar, the possibility of money coming in, the lovely warming reality of it was suddenly washing over her. ‘You know that old actor I used to know, Ollie? Percy Howard? You know, the one that was a friend of Gladys?’ As Oliver nodded, looking round the coffee bar, not in the least bit interested, she went on, ‘Well, he told me there were two things that you should never do to an actor. One was give him an intonation, and the other was compliment him. Yes, that was what he said. Two of the most cruel things you could do, he said.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Oliver had caught sight of himself in the mirror once more and was wondering if he really should grow a beard, or just sideboards. He was sure that he needed something to ‘rou
gh’ up his image.

  ‘Yes,’ Coco persisted. ‘Yes, that was what he said. You must never compliment another player, you know, like saying I love that thing you do with the pipe in the second act, darling, that kind of thing, because then, whatever they were doing with the pipe that might or might not be terribly clever, well, it goes away, and never, ever comes back.’

  Oliver stared at her. ‘What do you mean?’

  Coco smiled again, but this time it was a sphinx-like smile.

  ‘Just that,’ she told him, her face at its most innocent. ‘Thought it might help you. Little bits of wisdom from older members of the profession, passed down through the ages, treasured traditions of how to go on.’

  ‘I just can’t believe you getting a part in a film after only a fortnight at drama school. I should really hate you, I feel that most strongly, that I should really hate you, but I am damned if I do.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Ollie, I expect you soon will!’

  Coco laughed and Oliver smiled back wanly, stroking his chin, thinking to himself that, yes, really, he might grow a beard after all.

  Chapter Five

  Dottie was crying. It was the most miserable sound that Elsie had ever heard. It was not like stage crying at all, no great wailing and snivelling, just a quiet, controlled, sad sound, the kind of sound that could be passed by and not noticed, if you were not related to it, or did not think yourself in some way the architect of it, a crumpling of tissue paper sort of a sound, seeming not to last long, but held in the air in some way, just as the sighing of the wind through an old house can stay in the consciousness of the listener long after it has ceased.

  Elsie tiptoed back to her bedroom, horrified. She had never known Dottie less than irritated; she was nearly always furious. Certainly Elsie had never seen her more than momentarily buffeted, and now she was crying. Elsie closed her door as quietly as she had ever closed it, facing the ghastly truth of that sound. It was, it had to be, because Donald Bourton had finally done the dirty deed: taken Dottie out to dinner and sacked her.