Distant Music Read online

  She followed him into the taxi too, but as she did so, and they sat down together on the back seat, she immediately regretted it. She did not want to make time for any Aeneas Mayo in her life. As a matter of fact as she stared ahead at nothing in particular Coco realised that she did not want to make time for anyone, and she never had wanted to either. Love, or attraction, all that, she had long ago set aside, settling for emotional crushes on movie stars or older actors she had met once in the company of her guardians, and was not likely ever to meet again, but whom she was happy to think about, as one had romantic thoughts about Clark Gable, or Dirk Bogarde. There was no reality to them. They were just dreams, romantic notions, nothing more or less, although real enough to keep her happy, and they had nothing to do with life as she knew it had to be lived.

  She turned to Aeneas. ‘Look, it’s just coffee, OK? Because, you know, I have an early night, early call, even if you don’t.’

  ‘Of course.’ Aeneas looked at her innocently. Too innocently. ‘I like your gear,’ he told her. ‘Great look that. Tight trousers, the bracelets, the ruffled shirt, terrific.’

  Coco stared out of the window, her heart sinking. Christmas daisies. He felt the same.

  PART TWO

  THE WALTZ BEGINS

  The beauty of it! The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clear, happy call of the distant piping! And the call in it is stronger even than the music is sweet!

  Kenneth Grahame, ‘The Piper at the Gates of Dawn’

  from The Wind in the Willows

  Chapter Seven

  Oliver had made up his mind to ignore the publicity surrounding the casting of a complete ingénue, one Coco Hampton. It was the only possible way not to go mad with jealousy.

  However, the sheer horror of seeing Coco, who had never had any serious intention of becoming an actress, being cast in a film after only a miserable handful of weeks at drama school, drove home to him, as nothing else could, the utterly random, incomprehensible methods of the so-called profession into which he had flung not just himself, but all his ambitions, from far too early an age. The reality of Coco’s amazing good fortune was hideous, and yet it was somehow so like Coco – to launch herself carelessly into the theatrical world as an actress, when all she really wanted to do was design for the theatre, not act in it. And then to see her cast, just like that, in a matter of moments, in a big budget costume film was bitter stuff.

  Of course he had been forced to forgive her for her good luck, because he loved Coco. He always had done. He loved her in a jealous sibling sort of way, in the way that boys and girls love each other when they are growing up together but are not related, and never intend to be. Coco had been what he had so looked forward to in the holidays, not just Coco herself, but her whole world, her awful anarchic sense of humour, her dismissive attitude to him, her you know nothing arrogance; they were something he clung to through dreary schooling and bullying classmates, through hearty sports masters, and even heartier house-masters.

  Naturally, having had asthma badly as a child, he had got off the army, so that was all right. However, his health had never got him off Coco, and he knew now that he had never wanted it to. She had been the one jolly thing in his life, the light that drove him on. Coco – and Cliffie. And now she was gone from the drama school, and actually starring, for heaven’s sake, in a film, and little snippets about her were appearing in the newspapers. Now the film was coming out, and there was even a cover picture of her on the front of two of the glossiest of the glossy magazines, she seemed to be receding from him.

  Oh God, how he hated her – quite as much as he loved her. Here he was at the end of his second term at Ramad landed with Hamlet, and one of the servants in the Scandal, and all the large parts and character parts, everything that he had always thought he wanted, that his heart might desire in his end of term productions, and yet their importance in his life, the singular achievement they represented, all appeared to be wiped out by the knowledge that Coco was already launched into her second film, and swanning about on some set at Shepperton or Pinewood or somewhere. Meanwhile he found himself walking about Ramad, his upper half clothed in a polo-neck jumper and sports jacket, his lower half in tights and ballet shoes, trying not to feel vaguely ridiculous, trying to keep from imagining Coco sitting in make-up, a certain hush surrounding her, fame just around the corner. There would be Coco enjoying all the accoutrements of stardom and about two lines a day to learn, while there was Oliver swotting up some interminable speech written by one William Shakespeare, and having to sit through music and movement class, not to mention mime, and worse.

  And there was worse, too. Worse was a man named Putt, proudly taken on by Ramad’s principal, Bertrand, as a witness to his modernity, an ostentatious bow to the East Coast of America school of naturalism, or, as it was thought of by the old guard, the scratch and mumble school of drama.

  It seemed that Putt was keen to bring all the new American ideas to Ramad. Oliver, among many others, was just as keen not to absorb them. He wanted to improve his range and understanding, make his voice more mellifluous, but Putt wanted none of this. He wanted them all to spend days and weeks becoming tables and chairs, dissociating themselves from their minds and bodies, detaching themselves from their personalities. Inevitably, after spending what seemed like forever lying on a dirty floor becoming a coffee table, Oliver found himself wishing that he had signed on for the Arthur Rank Charm School, or the Household Cavalry, rather than Ramad.

  The trouble with becoming a coffee table was that, in reality, it had nothing to do with anything, and they all knew it, but in an embarrassed and somewhat sheep-like way none of the students dared to voice any criticism, outside the coffee bar or the pub.

  Oliver knew just why Putt upset him so much. It was because they all knew – and perhaps even Putt knew, for all Oliver knew – that once they got out there, in the real world, there would be no time for such things in places like twice weekly repertory, or wherever they would be lucky enough to find themselves. Hard enough to learn their roles, and their moves. Managements just would not put up with actors spending hours of valuable rehearsal time lying about becoming pieces of furniture in order to achieve maximum dissociation from their original personalities. It was just a fact. They were all perfectly aware that becoming a table or a chair, even something as select and chic as a coffee table, had as much to do with earning your living as a professional actor as jumping off a roof without a safety harness had to do with film acting. It was a dangerous waste of time. Just as, Oliver was beginning to think, sliding up and down with your back to the wall endlessly repeating phrases like ‘think move speak’ might also be a dangerous waste of time, as might be so much else that he was doing at blasted drama school.

  The terrible truth dawned one day when spring was starting to spread across London, and the bulbs in the parks were beginning to push through the still wet and muddy grass. The thought struck Oliver amidships that his longed-for terms at Ramad just might be one hell of a waste of time.

  When, Oliver suddenly asked himself, seated on a bench opposite a clutch of trees, when did anyone ever learn anything at drama school that was of any use out there?

  ‘End of term productions. That is why you have to stay, old boy. That’s when all the agents come in and gawp at the students and seize the opportunity to sign you up, and the next minute you’re acting your backside off at Clacton on Sea for two pounds a week, and no luncheon vouchers.’

  Oliver had gone for private voice lessons to Arthur Melson, an old actor friend of the family. Not Oliver’s family, Cliffie’s family, but since Cliffie was family, so was Arthur Melson.

  Melson gave a hearty, rumbling laugh that would have done credit to Falstaff. Still, laugh or no laugh, Oliver attended Melson’s voice classes assiduously. Apart from anything else, now that Coco was so busy, it was only in Melson’s company that Oliver was able to be himself, not Oliver Lowell, Yorkshireman, but Oliver Plunkett, the youngest son of landed gentry.r />
  ‘Why do you want to go into the profession?’ Melson had asked the first day Oliver climbed down into his basement flat off the Bayswater Road. And then before Oliver could answer he had answered his own question for him. ‘You want to go into the profession because for you there is no other life, and never will be. Never mind the poor pay, never mind the atrocious conditions; becoming someone else for just a few hours a day, inhabiting another person’s world, whether it be Shakespeare’s or Terry Rattigan’s, is all that matters to you. Next best thing is going into a monastery, really, though, isn’t it?’

  Oliver had started to say something, and then stopped. He had stopped because he had found that it was one of the persecutions of the theatrical profession that everyone in the whole world, including the cleaning lady, knew better than you. However little they had acted, however little their success, the theatre was peopled by know-alls. At least dear old Cliffie, God bless him, had warned him of this.

  ‘Your sainted mother,’ he would say. (Oliver’s mother, once she had run off with Charley the hunt servant, had always, for some reason, been referred to by Cliffie as ‘your sainted mother’.) ‘Your sainted mother always said to me “acting and dressage, Cliffie, are the two activities over which no one can ever agree, and equally where, you will find, no one is ever, ever wrong.”’

  Oliver’s thoughts returned to the overheated room with its seemingly endless prints of long-forgotten shows and actors in frozen stances posing in classical roles. Melson was still lecturing Oliver on the benefits of staying at Ramad.

  ‘It is the cut and thrust of your future life in microcosm, it is the long and the short of the theatre in two years. It may seem futile at times, it may seem inane, but it has its purpose. Most of all it is a time when you can try things which will not be open to you once you turn professional, believe me.’

  Oliver stared at Melson. His white beard made him typecasting for a silent Lear, but he had a terrible voice, light, thin and sliced through with a suburban whine, which was passing strange for a voice coach. Nevertheless he was actually a brilliant teacher, because he cared so deeply. He saw himself, and possibly himself alone, as handing on the precious torch of Garrick and Irving.

  ‘Humma, humma, humma!’

  Once again.

  And again.

  And again. Oliver intoned the newer voice exercises, thinking how senseless they were, finding that his mind kept returning to his imagined world, a world where Coco was swanning about in beautiful dresses, the kinds of dresses which she had always said that she wanted to design but was in all probability now wearing, posing as, of all things, a film star.

  He hated her.

  ‘Humma, humma, humma!’

  Warm up for yet more voice exercises.

  Relax.

  Oliver thought of Putt. Maybe he was right, in some strange way. Maybe that weird man was right, and while Oliver was doing these tedious exercises he should imagine that he was, not a coffee table exactly, but perhaps – a cello? And maybe by taking the humanity out of his psyche he would, as Putt maintained, improve his attitude? And maybe, by an act of dissociation, take the nerves out too? But what would be left? Would there be anything left in the locker after that? He could not, personally, say, but it might be interesting to try, just for a few minutes.

  ‘Why the dead expression, Oliver, dear boy? The last few minutes the look in your eye has reminded me of nothing less and nothing more than a dead cod. Is this something new we are trying? Or is Ramad changing to some new dead cod method of acting?’

  Oliver looked at Arthur Melson. Typical. Just as he was becoming a cello the old boy had to home in and make an ill-timed jest in poor taste as Cliffie always called it.

  ‘Just trying something.’

  ‘Well, don’t. At least, not while I’m teaching you.’

  ‘But Maestro – you just said – now was the time we should try things.’

  ‘So I did. But not in my classes, please.’

  As soon as Elsie found out just what there was to know about Portly Cosgrove and Donald Bourton, her heart sank. She had heard about managements from all sides, and from every one of the lodgers. She knew all about the floating of false cheques, about phoney names and even phonier bank accounts. She knew about actors who had been foolish enough to pay for their own wigs, or sometimes even costumes, and about scenery that had to stay in storage because no one could afford to get it out. She knew about getting stuck in Scotland with only five shillings in your pocket, and about being stranded in Barnstaple with fifteen pounds owed to you. She knew about managements who had taken off for the States with all the profits, about bank accounts in the Isle of Man where producers lodged money for all sorts of reasons, and other accounts elsewhere opened under false names for all sorts of yet other reasons. And now she knew about Cosgrove and Bourton, too.

  It was only a rumour, of course. That was what Mervyn Castle had been all too anxious to say, and to prevent a run on the bank, as it were, it seemed that they, Mervyn and herself, had to keep completely quiet about his suspicions. Still, true or untrue, it made for an underlying uneasiness. Mervyn had said that he would not have said anything, except that he knew that Elsie was carrying the show, and since she was, and he knew that it meant so much to her, it was just as well to be on the lookout for anything suspicious.

  ‘It might just be a rumour,’ Mervyn had kept saying as the train hurtled into the darkest of black darknesses in the tunnels and out again into what then seemed like the brightest of bright lights, so that they were only able to see each other intermittently, each thinking solely of their own much needed cheques, of the real need to survive. ‘Just a rumour – but if it is not, we could be in for a bad time.’

  ‘Do you think Portly knows?’

  Mervyn shook his head. No, he was quite sure that Portly knew nothing, but he was equally sure that neither he nor Elsie should say anything. Simply because it would do no good, and it was only a rumour that he had heard from a friend of a friend who had known Donald Bourton long before he met Portly Cosgrove. He might have changed, after all, but, more than that, Portly might be up to him. He might know, and be prepared to deal with him.

  Elsie frowned. Portly was much younger than Donald. Portly might be one of those men who believed in the goodness of people, could see no evil in anyone. Certainly he had been dreadfully shocked when he had read what Elsie had written in her little black book. He had not understood how she felt at all. Had not had a clue why someone who had been frighted should seek to revenge themselves on the person who had done the frighting.

  Finally, as the train journey drew to a close, Mervyn and Elsie had made a pact, and in the event a quite admirably simple one. The moment their money was late, or postponed, for whatever reason, they would down tools. If the moment did arrive, they avowed, they, and the rest of the cast, would say, ‘That is it, no money, no performance.’

  And now the moment had arrived, and Elsie was facing an outraged Donald and a deeply hurt Portly with just those agreed words, the only difference being that Mervyn Castle and the rest of the cast were, for some reason, nowhere to be seen. Only Elsie was there making their case.

  As soon as she had asked for her money, there and then, doing a good imitation of how she knew Dottie would ask for it, Donald managed to look both shocked and disgusted, as if he had found Elsie hanging around the stage door soliciting. At the same time he shrugged his shoulders and demanded why she could not wait for her money like everyone else.

  ‘No, as a matter of fact, I can’t wait for my money, Donald.’ Elsie looked neither mulish nor angry. She looked calm. ‘As a matter of fact if you look at the date’ – Elsie glanced down at the calendar on the office desk, which proclaimed ‘Fairburn’s Baby Food’ to be the best and most nutritious, for infants and toddlers, and carefully turned it towards Donald – ‘if you look at the date,’ she repeated, ‘all our wages are actually more than a week late now. They are a fortnight late, and that really won’t do. It
causes hardship, especially for the married ones. They have to send their money home, you know. That’s hard on the wives and the babies.’ Elsie was of a sudden enjoying her role as a modern day Saint Joan, most unusual casting for her. She was taking a stand, and loving it. ‘No, I am afraid it is pay up, Donald, or I leave.’

  ‘Well, old love, in that case,’ Donald said, glancing briefly at Portly, ‘in that case, old love,’ he repeated, his normally good-natured voice quite different in its tone, ‘you had better leave. If I were you, I should leave.’

  The words had been spoken. They were there. Incredible, indelible, filling the whole space between Elsie and Donald Bourton with a sea of incredulity.

  ‘You don’t really mean that. He doesn’t really mean that.’ Portly had stepped forward, standing between Donald and Elsie and saying the very words that Elsie had thought but was too proud to utter.

  ‘Of course I mean it!’ Donald laughed. ‘What is this girl, Elsie Lancaster? Who was she, Portly, until we cast her? No one. Never heard of her! Now here she is threatening us. Ridiculous. There are another dozen of her I can call up at any time. You think anyone will notice in York, or in Blackpool, in Torquay, or in Manchester, who the hell is playing the lead in this? Not at all, they’ll be too busy booking their seats to get out of the rain, to sit somewhere warm on a cold summer evening and fall asleep after too many beers, that is what they will be doing. No, Elsie Lancaster, you can go, and quite frankly, good riddance. We can get someone cheaper than you, and better. We are all replaceable, most of all you.’

  ‘I have a contract. You can’t do this to me—’

  ‘Yes, and I have a beer belly. But I can. Just watch me.’ Donald laughed. Portly stared. Elsie stood her ground.

  ‘You pay me up to the end of the week, in cash, or I will—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Go to the papers!’

  ‘Ooh, will you now? Hark at you! You, Elsie Lancaster of no fixed address with no agent, who is now care of Spotlight, you will go to the papers? I say, they will be interested, won’t they? Go to the papers? Elsie Lancaster, sometime star of an out of town tour, complains about Cosgrove and Bourton paying her a week late? Get out of our office, and be sure that if I have anything to do with it, you will never find work with us again.’