Distant Music Read online

  The food was classic English nursery fare in both style and taste, and was perfectly delicious. Chicken coated in a subtle saffron sauce, parsley potatoes, garden peas, lightly flavoured custards with poached fruit, and jugs of freshly made lemonade.

  Holly, sitting as still as a mouse, fed herself as neatly as was possible for someone who had only recently learned the art, while turning every now and then to look to Coco for reassurance. It was a memorable occasion, but for one reason more than any other.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Coco murmured to Holly, much later as she pushed open their flat door. ‘Guess who is going to buy who a pug?’

  On the next visit to ‘the palace’, as Coco had now nicknamed the vast house, she took with her two or three samples of the dresses that she had, some weeks before, had in mind to make for Holly, but now had to be sacrificed for the sake of the little family’s finances.

  ‘Oh yes, Mrs Hampton, this will be truly perfect for the princesses. Just the right kind of detail and sophistication. His Royal Highness will be very pleased, I am sure.’

  Nanny Ali was talking about the pièce de résistance of the sample collection, which was a velvet coat with a stand-up collar, and a small amount of smocking in a different colour just below. Long tight sleeves, a small lace-trimmed velvet purse on a silk cord, and a matching hat which tied at the top in an insouciant bow, made up what they could all see at a glance was a stunning outfit.

  ‘I thought,’ Coco told her audience of nursery maids and Nanny Ali, ‘that if I made these up in seven different-coloured velvets, the children would be different, but the theme would be the same, if you understand me?’

  ‘Wonderful, Mrs Hampton,’ breathed one of the nursery maids, unable to contain her enthusiasm. ‘Just like something out of a story book, that is how they’ll look.’

  Nanny Ali did not seem to mind this interruption, but simply beamed at Coco, her eyes positively radiating an emotion which Coco could not quite translate.

  ‘I think they would look very pretty,’ Coco agreed with the nursery maid. ‘Very pretty.’

  Nanny Ali obviously held the purse strings for the fitting out of her charges, which made both of them very happy, because she promptly put in an order for seven velvet coats, purses and hats and seven little wool suits in varying colours, also with matching hats, not to mention dressing gowns with velvet collars and silk-lined night-dresses with matching lace-trimmed mob caps.

  ‘That will teach Nanny Cadogan and Nanny Westchester to look down their noses at us when we visit Peter Pan,’ Nanny Ali murmured as she wrote out a cheque to cover the cost of all Coco’s materials.

  Of course Holly did not know it, but security for both her mother and herself now beckoned. Despite the success of Popeye, life as a theatre designer held out no certainties for a young mother and her daughter, and just lately, due to the success of the ‘kitchen sink’ school of drama, there had been a lull in demand for any but either the most distinguished or the best connected of theatre designers. And British films were not, as yet, open to women designers, being, as Coco had observed, very much still a male-dominated club.

  ‘I would so like it if this could become a regular thing for us, Holly darling,’ Coco murmured to Holly as she bathed her that night. ‘It would take care of so much, the expense of the flat, your clothes, and nursery school, all that.’

  Coco thought, with sudden guilt, of how much money she had managed to waste on herself in times gone by. It seemed an unimaginable amount now that she had Holly to support, but none of that would matter if only she could keep on supplying ‘the palace’ with clothes for the princesses.

  Once she had put Holly to bed, Coco’s evenings were always spent sewing and listening to the radio. She would not have a television, simply because she knew that if she did she would only watch it, instead of sewing. Tonight the evening’s concert was interrupted by the sound of the telephone ringing. Coco stared at it. She had placed it carefully on a high kitchen stool, so that it would not be missed, and she now mounted the stool and put the telephone on her lap, hoping against hope that it would not be Gladys wanting a bed for the night, or angling for some other favour. Mentally she started to prepare a list of excuses which would get her out of seeing Gladys, or, worse, putting her up.

  It was not Gladys, which was a relief, it was Oliver, and he too wanted a favour, but he would not say what it was on the telephone.

  ‘Can I come round?’

  Coco looked at her sewing machine. She had wanted to finish what she was making that night, but if Oliver came round she never would. Moreover, he would keep her up late, moaning – actors did so like to stay up late moaning – and that would mean that Coco would be tired for Holly in the morning.

  ‘Oh, all right, Ollie. But I can’t be late.’

  ‘What a welcome,’ Oliver grumbled, half an hour later, as he pecked Coco on the cheek. ‘Oh all right, but I can’t be late.’ He raised his voice to a falsetto as he always did when imitating Coco. ‘I mean to say, Coco, I have not seen you since I went abroad, you know? And how long is that?’

  Coco shook her head. Since having had a baby she felt so much older than Oliver. It was as if she had sat some terribly difficult exam that he had not taken, which, in a way, she had. In motherhood.

  ‘Heavens, Ollie.’ Coco stood back and examined him in the light of her electrified oil lamps. ‘You do look – brown.’

  He looked terrible, actually, so telling him he looked tanned was the best that Coco could do. Not to tell Ollie something about his looks would have been to cause an emotional upheaval, since Ollie, like most actors, seemed to need to be told about his looks every half an hour, on the dot, or else he became rapidly convinced that no one in his immediate vicinity loved him.

  ‘Where’s Holly?’

  Oliver looked round the room with one sweeping glance, and then down at Coco, this time with accusation in his eyes, as if Coco might have given Holly away, or eaten her for dinner.

  ‘In bed fast asleep, where do you think, at ten o’clock at night? Would you like a glass of wine?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Oliver sank down into a chair and stared up at Coco. ‘God it is good to see you, Coco. Must have been an age.’

  Coco nodded absently, her mind still on her sewing. She knew that Oliver had been having a bad time of it and that as a consequence she would now no doubt be subjected to a catalogue of moans about the lack of suitable scripts, the shortage of suitable parts, and the complete absence of suitable managements to put on his plays. She therefore placed a glass of wine in his hand and sat down at her sewing machine again, thinking to sew and listen.

  ‘No, no, Coco, you cannot paddle away at your old granny sewing machine while I am talking to you. That I will not allow, really, it would be like talking to the bad fairy in the Sleeping Beauty, or something. Besides, no one can sew and listen, and I want you to listen to me, very carefully, really I do.’

  ‘Oh, I can listen, Oliver, really I can. Besides, I am afraid that I must. You see, I have a commission now to make dresses and coats for these little foreign princesses, and I really must get on with them.’

  Oliver did not seem to register the importance of this new security in Coco’s life. Instead he groaned.

  ‘No. Please. Please, listen to me, Coco, please! I have something so important to ask you – please.’

  ‘Ask away. I am listening.’ Coco frowned down at the paper toile that she was cutting out.

  ‘No, I insist you put down your bloody sewing. No, you must, you must sit down, there, opposite me, and listen. I have something so important to ask you.’

  Oliver was loveable, but just so demanding. Even so, reluctantly, Coco did as he asked, and sat down opposite him. Oliver took a draught of the wine she had handed him, and stared first up at the ceiling, and then at Coco, and then at his shoes. Coco was silent, dreading that he was going to ask her for money, which now that she had a baby she really could not spare.

  ‘Will you marry me, Coco?’<
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  As always when returning to his delightful new flat Portly rang the bell for the hall porter and asked him if there had been any letters for him.

  ‘Just the one, Mr Cosgrove, from Rome.’ Again, as always, when it was a small paper-thin airmail letter, it was from Elsie. She seemed to have been travelling backwards and forwards from Italy for the past eighteen months.

  Portly darling, she had scrawled in cheap ball-point, the letter having obviously been written on location, I really must have some proper work to do when I come home, a play or a review or something, darling. Nice though it is to be paid to do nothing, I now feel I have been doing nothing on location for ever! Please, please find me something, even television would be all right. Lots of love Porters, Elsie.

  Portly folded the thin airmail paper carefully back into its original shape, and placed it in his desk drawer. Of course Elsie was completely right, she did need to do something other than film on location in foreign parts, because, nice though the money was, the best part of what she did would, as they both knew, end up on the cutting room floor. Her original stage appearance in Love To Popeye was now well forgotten, except by a very few. Such was the ephemeral nature of success in the theatre, even the most glittering success faded into the mists of yesteryear within a very short time, leaving the participants flailing around trying to find the next way forward for their careers.

  Since his telephone at the office never, ever stopped Portly found that he usually did most of his more constructive thinking at home, alone, in the flat. The past two and a half years, since his return to London, had proved to be both rewarding and stimulating. Thanks to handling Elsie, PLL had taken off, and was now very much in the forefront. They had moved offices and were currently housed in a building in the King’s Road. Here actors and actresses, playwrights and screenwriters could happily call in, knowing that Portly and Constantia, his secretary, would always be pleased to see them, and more than that, would always have news of some kind for them. This was not difficult, because subtly, without anyone’s realising quite why, the worldwide focus of attention in both films and television was beginning to switch from America and Italy to England, or more specifically to London. And as if to make an international audience feel more at home in the capital, more and more Italian restaurants with shining tiled floors in complicated designs were opening up everywhere, and film actors and actresses, pop stars, and theatrical knights, flocked there to meet producers and directors, every one of them all too aware that the London scene was not just changing, it was positively buzzing.

  Somehow, without particularly concentrating on it, PLL had become the agency to which television producers in particular had begun to turn for both writers and actors. While this was very flattering, the truth was, as Portly well knew, that asking actors to appear on television was one thing, but getting them to actually do so was quite another. English actors still curled their lips in derision at what they considered to be this horrid upstart medium. They would not be caught dead appearing on television. They would rather be out of work. The theatre was what counted. Films and television, but television in particular, were below the salt, they would tell Portly, who listened with his usual courteous expression on his face, while mentally remaining unimpressed.

  The truth was that British actors and actresses were terrified of television. If they forgot their lines in front of a theatre audience, it mattered, but it did not shatter their careers. If on the other hand they did the same thing in front of what was now millions of people staring at their televisions in their own homes, they could become not famous but notorious overnight. No one knew how to handle television, not the producers, nor the directors, nor the performers. It was dismissed by everyone as merely a medium for panel and variety shows. So, it sometimes seemed to Portly, he alone saw the potential in television, live or filmed. He alone saw that it could be both an exciting and a stimulating medium for playwrights and actors, if only they could be brought to see it too, instead of coming out with a lot of hackneyed abuse at the very mention of it.

  Because of this, the fact that Elsie had mentioned television in her letter from a film set in Rome was exciting. Portly knew that Elsie was far too down to earth not to know that her star was no longer in the ascendant, that although she was fondly remembered for Love To Popeye, that play, and her performance, had long passed out of the forefront of people’s minds.

  With all this in his head, the next morning Portly arrived even earlier than usual at his office, and seizing the trade papers started to look through them with an eye to one thing, and one thing alone – finding Elsie work in television. If he could get Elsie to do television, then, gradually, bit by little bit, he would be able to get a whole host of his other actors to follow. Elsie Lancaster on television in a scintillating play, or even in a series, would be quite something. Moreover, it would start a general feeling of unease, because, if Elsie was doing television, why not any other well-known young actors?

  As he spread out the trade papers on his desk and sipped at an excellent cup of Italian coffee, sent up from the downstairs café, an item caught Portly’s eye. It was small, but significantly placed, and when he saw the names involved Portly realised that there was even less time at his disposal than he had imagined. Now he really did have to find something for Elsie.

  OLIVER LOWELL SIGNED TO PLAY

  THE MESSIAH

  Young, rugged Oliver Lowell has been signed by the Kass Organisation to play Jesus Christ in a film entitled The Messiah. Louis Kass, head of the Kass Organisation, said yesterday that he was proud to be associated with such a fine project. He was also pleased to have found a fine upstanding young man such as Oliver Lowell to play the title role. ‘He has put his past behind him,’ Mr Kass told a press conference, ‘is about to marry his childhood sweetheart, and is looking forward to a golden future.’

  *

  ‘I can’t marry you, Oliver, I can’t, I just can’t!’

  Oliver was on his bended knees, which, if his offer had been a genuine one, might have been quite appropriate, but since what he was proposing was in the name of business, simply because he needed to have a wife to please the publicity people at the Kass Organisation, at that moment he looked to Coco not only inappropriate to a degree, but also absurd.

  ‘It’s in name only, Coco, really. I mean, I shan’t make any demands on you, really I won’t. It will just be in name only. And I’ll pay you, I’ll help out with Holly. Think about it, I’ll be able to help you, because soon I will be earning trillions from the show. It’s going to sell all around the world.’

  ‘I can’t marry you, Oliver. Apart from anything else, it would be awful for Holly. What on earth would she make of it?’

  ‘It’s just a piece of paper, Coco.’

  ‘Ask someone else. There must be some actress, someone, you could ask. Goodness, you’ve been having affairs with enough of them.’

  ‘I have not—’ ‘I do read the papers, Oliver. I am not completely blind to your recent activities. Not for nothing have you been dubbed “Lover Lowell” by Express Newspapers. And what was it I saw you called in the Daily Mail? Oh yes, “loose-living Lowell of the film star looks, the one-time escort of glamorous French actress Ginette Morceau”. Really, Ollie, whatever happened to Shakespeare? You must be making Clifton blush for you, let alone your father and brothers.’ Coco glanced up from the paper toile she was working on and gave Oliver a mock reproving look.

  ‘They all know, Cliffie and everyone, they know not to believe anything that they read about me. Besides, I have not had nearly as many affairs as they say I have.’

  ‘Big gi-normous huge great deal, Ollie, and while you’re at it, pull the other one. It has all of Bow Bells on it, really it has. Mon dieu, if you are not the biggest spinner of fairy tales around I do not know who is!’

  ‘All right, all right, I admit, I have had some affairs, since Else and I split up, but after all, I would do, wouldn’t I? I am only a man, Coco. I had to get over Els
ie, and the play, I mean to say, I had to get over all that. I mean, Elsie, she did behave dreadfully towards me, really she did. The whole thing was a disaster. Couldn’t have been worse.’

  ‘At the moment you look like a disaster, I mean really, you should see yourself, have you seen yourself? You are a wreck, really you are. You’ve lost all your patina. You were much better off when you were with Elsie. She gave you a bit of polish, really she did.’

  Coco looked down at her childhood friend, who was still for some stupid reason on his knees, with the light scorn that all friends who have known each other as children are able to reserve for each other. It was as if no years had passed and Oliver was still the last to scramble into his seat in the dress circle, his knees knocking with fear in case they were discovered.

  Now he scrambled to his rather larger feet.

  ‘Oh, please, Coco, just marry me, and then forget about it!’

  ‘No, no, no.’

  ‘If you don’t I will kill myself. I mean it! Don’t you realise, I will lose the part, Kass won’t let me play the Messiah if I’m not to all intents and purposes a happily married man. He does not like the recent publicity that I have had. They have taken a straw poll of all the syndication people, all the Christian organisations worldwide, and it seems that whoever plays the Messiah must be a happily married man. Not even a confirmed bachelor will do. So, please, please, marry me, Coco.’

  ‘I would kill you, if I married you, really I would.’

  ‘Coco. Just sit down.’

  ‘I am sitting down, Ollie, in case you didn’t notice—’