Distant Music Read online

  Elsie walked, as carefully as she had ever walked on stage, out of the office and down the stairs, and it was only when she reached the bottom that the realisation hit her. She was quite alone. Only half an hour before, Mervyn had said that he, and some others of the cast, would meet her in the office, but they had been nowhere, and she had been landed with the confrontation, opening proceedings in a way that she thought quite harmless, always expecting the others to be arriving. She closed her eyes when she reached the bottom of the stairs. She had been done. Such a know-all as she had been, such a clever clogs, and now she had been done just like some sort of ingénue who knew no better – so unlike her, really. Never had done that kind of thing before, but now, thanks to her own impetuosity, and to Mervyn Castle’s doubtless entirely untrue rumour, she was out. Kicked out, and likely to be replaced by the end of the week.

  She sat herself down in a coffee bar and stared around her, not really believing what she had just been told. They would go back on it. Donald would revoke what he had just said. Portly would talk him round. They could not replace her by the end of the week. The rehearsal time, all that … it would be impossible to replace her.

  But of course it was not impossible, it was horrendously easy. The telephone wires sang, telegrams were sent in all directions, and because the tour was already such a success a replacement, a new unknown, was found for Elsie’s role: one Jane Buskin, Elsie’s old rival from Tippy Toes days. And, no surprise to Elsie, she turned out be Mervyn Castle’s niece.

  The bitterness that Elsie felt following her dismissal was compounded by the fact that she had only herself to blame. That and the added fact that every hour of every day, and every night, she did not think that she could hear Dottie’s mocking laughter – she knew that she could hear it. After all it was Dottie who had managed to negotiate a contract for Elsie that had a hole in it the size of the Atlantic Ocean, so that Elsie had no comeback against Cosgrove and Bourton, or anyone else for that matter. She was sure Jane Buskin would be doing the role for much less money, saving the management more than she personally cared to think of, because the Buskins were famous for their grovelling. Dottie had always said that the Buskins did not start with the Equity minimum for a salary, since they could not care less what they were offered: the Equity minimum was where they ended up.

  ‘They’re all the same, those Buskins – don’t care what they’re paid, just so long as they’re working,’ was what Dottie had used to say as her iron crashed down on the old wooden ironing board. ‘They spoil it for the rest of us, people like that, grateful to be working, always grateful to be working, which means they’ll do anything for a ha’pence three-farthings, and do.’

  The show duly left town, but Elsie stayed on.

  She stayed on for two very good reasons. She had nowhere else to go, and she had found herself a job, working for Fullers, as a waitress. The little money that she had saved for a rainy day now looked terminally small, and she dare not touch it, not for anything, except to pay her lodgings. Fullers gave their staff food, so she was not as badly off as she could have been, and she knew it. It was just the bitterness of it all that was eating at the insides of her, and no amount of delicious cake could block out the reality of that bitterness.

  There is nothing so instantly maturing, so character building as the self-induced, brought-about-entirely-by-yourself, form of regret, and the bitter taste it brings with it lasts not for months, not for years, but for a lifetime.

  No point in Elsie’s asking herself why she had been tricked by Mervyn Castle, no point in trying to turn away from the utterly real sound of Dottie’s laughter, no point in hating Portly Cosgrove for not standing up for her, not forcing Donald Bourton to change his mind; the truth was as it had always been and always would be when it came to her career. It was Elsie’s fault, and she knew it.

  Donald was the producer, so he obviously had to have his say. Portly was new on the scene, or so Mervyn Castle had said, so he would, in his naivety, probably think that he had to play by the rules. She could not imagine that Portly would ever have negotiated a contract to Elsie’s detriment, or anyone else’s for that matter, Portly just did not seem to be that kind of person.

  But, nevertheless, as the days and eventually the weeks crawled by, and Elsie tried to come to terms with her future, ringing round in her lunch hour after theatrical jobs which all seemed to come to nothing, she finally found herself facing the fact that it was not impossible that Portly had not only colluded with Bourton, but had also agreed to dismiss Elsie.

  Politics in the theatre, as Elsie well knew, were always a jumble of motivations, entirely and ever governed by the money in the bank. No money in the bank meant that everyone fell out. Plenty of money in the bank and people fell in love with each other, sometimes, unbelievably, for ever and ever, sending each other Christmas cards and remembering birthdays well into old age, never, ever forgetting the glorious time when they were all, for a short time, happy and secure in a glorious hit.

  At last an advertisement in The Stage sounded desperate enough to accept her, and, when she rang, proved to be just that – desperate. Could she come at once? They knew of her success. They wanted her at once.

  Saying goodbye to her friends at Fullers was much harder than Elsie had imagined it was going to be. As she did so, it came to her that the Marys and the Jeans, the Deborahs and the Janets, had become more than just her friends, they had become her supporters, sensing perhaps that Elsie was not destined, as they were, to be for ever pouring tea and slicing cake, waiting on tables and wiping them, smiling at people, hoping for tips, and seldom receiving them.

  ‘You are going to be a big star one day, Elsie, we all know that, and we will come and see you and cheer you, and you will sign our autographs, and it will be so lovely,’ one of the Jeans and Janets told her.

  Then they all kissed her, again and again, in between laughing and giggling and drinking strong cups of tea, bringing a lump to Elsie’s throat because a part of her wanted so much to be what they all were, settled and accepting, yet she knew that she could not be. Why, she would never really know. Partly, perhaps, because of Dottie and her ambitions for her granddaughter, partly because of her own feelings. She had to keep on trying to become a big star, not for Dottie now, but for herself. It did not matter if she failed, only that she had tried.

  Elsie looked back longingly as she waved to the other waitresses, and they waved back from the door of the restaurant cum café. Working at Fullers for the previous months had proved to be a far cosier existence than any she had previously enjoyed. Nice landlady, regular wages that got you by, no one carping. Perhaps she should have stayed on, she told herself. And then she remembered. She had to go on, for a very good reason, or rather, a very bad reason. She had to continue with her career as an actress not just to fulfil some hazy feeling of destiny, but also to revenge herself on those two Ds – Dottie and Donald.

  Vengeance was once more in the forefront of her mind and locked into her heart as she climbed aboard the Green Line coach. Opening her new little black book, she stared in satisfaction at their names. Added now to those of Dottie and Donald was that of poor old Portly.

  Poor old Portly her fat foot!

  He, Portly, must have been as much a party to her sacking as all the rest of them. Saving pennies, saving his skin; as bad as any of them. Elsie closed her little black book again, and opened her new copy of The Stage, always and ever the bringer of both bad and good tidings. Unable to read for very long in either a car or a coach before she started to feel sick, she did not find the relevant item, the item that would make her heart not only pound with joy, but sing with it, until she had checked into her new digs and was preparing to find the rehearsal venue for that good old theatrical warhorse Rookery Nook.

  COSGROVE AND BOURTON UNABLE TO MEET THEIR OBLIGATIONS.

  It seemed that far from filling every theatre and stopping at all the big tour dates about which Donald Bourton had been so happy to boast, the pl
ay, without its popular young star, had collected poor reviews for Miss Buskin, and had not filled anywhere. As a consequence the tour had eventually fizzled to a stop.

  All alone in her bedsit Elsie started to dance around the room, laughing and hugging her copy of the paper to her.

  ‘Serve them right for putting in Jane Buskin. Can’t act her way out of a paper bag,’ she told all the pre-Raphaelite prints that decorated the walls. ‘Serve them a hundred times right!’

  After which she went off to her rehearsals with a song on her lips, and murder in her heart.

  She would show them all, she would show the lot of them, she would show them what she was made of. Not only that, but one day she would employ them all. No, better than that, she would turn them all away. That was how big she was going to be, big enough to turn them all down. Now that was big.

  Meanwhile to her great regret, and very possibly even to his, the delightful Aeneas Mayo had disappeared from Coco’s life, as is so often the way with enchanting people. It was inevitable. They had both known it. Why would it not be inevitable when, as everyone in their world knew, work had to come first?

  So, when they had enjoyed an hilarious night out together at a new, totally tiled – more tiles than food, Aeneas had said – Italian restaurant, or Terrazza, and just as Coco was beginning to fear that she might be falling in love with him, to both their mutual relief and their mutual disappointment Aeneas flew off to Australia, of all places, and for no better reason than that someone had spotted him playing an Australian in a flop revue earlier in the year. Having mistaken him for the real thing, the film company had then decided that he must play the real thing in a small but crucial film role to be shot in and around Sydney Harbour.

  ‘Bye-bye Aeneas,’ Coco now always called, every time she saw an aeroplane flying over where she was filming.

  ‘Who is this lucky Aeneas person you keep calling to?’ asked Victor Martin, Coco’s leading man on her second film in as many months.

  ‘Oh, no one. Just a joke really. An old friend. Only I promised I would call to him every time I saw an aeroplane flying overhead, until he came safely back to England.’

  ‘You could still be calling to him when you’re a hundred. Time to forget about him, and think about someone else.’

  Victor Martin was tall and thin, with a pair of startling blue eyes which were almost too beautifully set off by his thick richly dark hair. His dark good looks were quite enough to get him cast as a juvenile lead in the particularly juvenile remake of a so-called classic silent, The Snow Maiden, upon which they were all now embarked.

  As was now becoming a little too usual, Coco had nothing much to do in the script except sit about looking ladylike and be kissed, passionately, on the chin when the plot required it.

  Not that she could have cared less. She was far too interested in saving up for her Austin Healey, now that she had found herself a new and entirely chic flat just off the King’s Road in Chelsea.

  ‘Any more films and I shall have to go on a diet.’

  Coco stared down at her plate, which was now empty of the paella that had once crowded it. She sipped at her sugary coffee and smiled across at Victor. He was not tall and handsome for nothing. She had briefly thought Aeneas was just about the best friend anyone could make, but even his looks, which, despite wearing glasses, were considerable, paled beside this epitome of a dynamic young leading actor.

  Added to which Victor had that much spoken about, often rumoured, but seldom found quality – danger. She noticed that he even seemed to lend eating Spanish omelette and biting into his bread roll that special quality. As if, did not the roll quite behave itself, he would find a way of biting into it which would render it unable to enjoy life ever again in the same way.

  Not that Coco was in the least bit attracted to him, because she was not. As it happened she was not someone who particularly liked dynamic men, always suspecting that they must be tiring. But there was no denying Victor was good-looking, and, on a film set entirely devoted to the noble art of hanging about waiting for a cloud to pass over, or the leading man or lady to deign to appear, that was at least something.

  ‘You’re coming out to Spain, aren’t you?’

  Coco nodded. Yes, she was.

  ‘Good, because I could do with someone to swim with, not to mention – anything else.’

  Coco looked away. Oh dear.

  She stared up at the sky once more. She wished she was not going to Spain and that Aeneas was not in Australia, not that she missed him particularly – she did not, after all, know him that well – but she just wished that they were both staying in London, going to movies, enjoying themselves in Italian restaurants, walking in the Park arguing, that kind of thing. For the truth was that ever since Aeneas had taken off for Australia, even Oliver had become less of a friend and more of a complete pain.

  Devoured by some new messianic devotion to his craft, Oliver spent most of his spare time either at the theatre brooding over other people’s performances, performances which he necessarily found either totally riveting or totally devoid of talent, or in the company of his elderly voice coach making strange sounds.

  Happily, or rather unhappily, Coco was seeing him tonight.

  ‘It is just so unfair, Coco.’

  Oliver appeared at the door of Coco’s new sitting room looking unshaven, heavy-eyed, mournful and vaguely unhealthy. Coco stared at him. By the look of him he must be doing a modern drama. Whatever it was, it was quite apparent that drama school was not doing Oliver much good, whereas filming was doing her a lot of good. Well, not her, but anyway her bank balance.

  ‘Do you act to live, or do you act to eat, Coco?’ Oliver asked her, of a sudden.

  Coco looked at him, trying not to show surprise. It was as if he had guessed her thoughts and decided to articulate them in some way, or start an argument, because he felt that they were in some way now different, which indeed they were. Whether they liked it or not, and in a matter of months, they already represented the two sides of the theatre, in their own minds at least, Oliver being art, Coco being commerce.

  ‘I act to live, Ollie, you know that. I am just saving up, and saving up so that I can afford to give up acting, and become a designer. But as long as I am being paid to muck about on a film set, that will do very nicely thank you, although I doubt that it could be said to be remotely linked to art.’

  ‘That is what I mean, it is just so unfair.’ Oliver put his head in his lap in a gesture of overdone melodrama, holding his hands over his neck as he did so, which meant that his voice was coming out smothered and sulky. ‘That is just what I mean. You hate acting, and I live for it, and here you are acting in film after film, while I am still treading water at drama school. Mind you, I did appear on the stage of the Royal Opera House the other day, as a singing slave. Did I tell you? And guess who I met there, doing the same thing?’

  ‘Can’t.’

  ‘Newell. My brother, Newell. Can you believe it? Apparently it is—’

  ‘I can’t hear a word you are saying, Ollie.’

  Oliver lifted his head. ‘Apparently it is some age-old agreement. The Opera House doesn’t just use Ramad as a supply for extras in their productions, but also, of all things, the Household Cavalry. So there we were, the brothers Plunkett, marching on to the stage at the Royal Opera House, and of course their marching was yards better than ours, and didn’t we all look silly titties.’

  ‘Did Newell spot his shoes?’

  Oliver groaned at the memory. ‘He did more than spot them, he took them off me! I would have had to walk home in my socks if I hadn’t had my blasted ballet shoes in my zip bag. Oh God. Can you imagine what I looked like to him, to Newell of all people, shuffling home wearing a duffel coat and ballet shoes? He always thought I was a ponce anyway, and now of course he knows it.’

  Coco, having handed Oliver a glass of wine, now sat down opposite him. The evening was threatening to become a total washout. She had never before seen Ollie i
n such a blue funk, and yet she knew, and felt like kicking him for it, that his blue mood, his mean reds, had nothing to do with anything more than that he was eaten up with jealousy because she was flying off to start filming in Spain the following morning.

  ‘Ollie. Why don’t you give up drama school, and just concentrate on films? I mean, drama school is making you just so mizzy, isn’t it? With your looks you could get into films straight away. Why don’t you? I mean to say.’

  ‘Because I do not want to prostitute myself, that is why, Coco. I am not like you. I am serious about acting, I want to play the great roles, really be up there, act my socks off, and everyone else’s too.’

  ‘Oh well, I suppose that is a point. No one could say I have done anything of great interest, except be kissed on the chin and say “My lord, but does my lord think … ?” a couple of dozen times. As a matter of fact I have done that a very great deal, not to mention being laced into costumes that are so just so cheap and nasty, just so nylon, that it makes me cringe to wear them for even half a day. Still, mustn’t grumble. I am saving like crazy for an Austin Healey.’

  ‘What?’ Oliver looked genuinely shocked. ‘What a reason to prostitute yourself! For an Austin Healey, of all things. How shallow can you get, Coco Hampton?’

  Coco considered this for a moment.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said finally, ‘it might have been much worse. Just think, Oliver, it might have been a Ford. And I mean, say what you like, Ollie, but an Austin Healey is a great car. Really. Say what you like, but my money is on the Healey. Should be a classic.’ She disappeared to stir the leek and potato soup, and then popped her head back round the door. ‘But you, of course, only want to act in a classic, not drive one, don’t you, Ollie?’