Distant Music Read online

  ‘So you love the play?’

  Elsie cut her toast, and put some strawberry jam on it. She nodded, but did not allow her eyes to leave the jam, the toast, the cup of tea. ‘I love the play.’

  ‘And you want to play Francine.’

  She nodded again, her mouth now full. Being a man of exquisite manners, Portly quickly popped his own jam-covered toast into his own mouth, and they both chewed silently, and then sipped tea while dwelling on this announcement.

  ‘So you will sign? With Cosgrove and Bourton? You will sign.’

  ‘Yes.’ Elsie’s eyes strayed to the cake. The sponge looked so soft, and the filling so pink, she felt she was eating it before she even took a mouthful of the delicate confection. ‘I will sign, but my agent will not.’

  ‘No, I thought as much.’ It was Portly’s turn to nod. ‘She is a bit of a stickler.’

  At that moment, her mouth full of the best cake she thought she had ever tasted, Elsie thought she did not really care what Dottie was, not just at that moment, but seconds later, after she had discreetly swallowed the confection, she too nodded her head.

  ‘She is a stickler, and worse.’ Portly took a bite of his cake and Elsie continued, ‘She does not like your standards of production, I am very much afraid. She thinks they are not up to scratch.’

  ‘I thought as much when she didn’t come round on the first night. It is only a local pantomime.’

  ‘I am afraid you do not understand. She does not like any standards of production – not since the war. In fact she hates all managements, and loathes everything that has happened since 1945, except Oklahoma!

  ‘Ah, so we can do no good, whatever happens?’

  ‘No, and I am seventeen, Portly, not twenty-one.’

  ‘You may be a minor in age, but you are a major in talent.’

  Elsie wrinkled her nose. ‘Touché,’ she said, for no better reason than that Bill Langley said it, and she always thought it sounded rather sophisticated.

  ‘It was meant to be a compliment, Elsie. Touché is for when people score off you. You say touché the way, as it were, you would say “fair enough”.’

  Elsie coloured. ‘Oh, I thought it meant “how touching”.’

  They both stared at each other, and then it happened for a second time, but now Portly could actually see it, the sublime and heart-warming sight and sound of Elsie laughing.

  ‘What shall we do, Portly? It is a moot point, is it not? I mean, how can we sign me to your company if me, being I, cannot sign for myself, being a minor, voyez-vous?’

  ‘There must be some way we could buy your agent off, mustn’t there?’

  ‘No.’ Elsie shook her head. She was talking about her grandmother now, not her agent. Dottie was not the kind of person anyone could buy off; it was not a possibility. The truth was that Dottie could not be bought off by anything, because she liked how she was, in fact she adored how she was. She liked the difficulties, the awfulness of the theatre, the lodgers and their hopelessness, she enjoyed it all.

  ‘Does she own her own house?’

  Elsie nodded.

  ‘Does she have a car?’

  ‘She would not want a motor car.’

  ‘Nothing then?’

  Elsie looked up of a sudden, before embarking on her second helping of the delicious cake.

  ‘There is something. But I don’t know, I don’t know whether it is possible, whether it would work, but we could try it.’

  Dottie stared at her. It had been years since she had acted, and they both knew it.

  ‘Cosgrove wants me for the part of the housekeeper?’

  Elsie nodded. ‘Yes, yes, he does.’

  ‘But he has never seen me act.’

  ‘No, but his uncle did. Remember his uncle was in management, before the war – Cosgrove and Barraclough, it was in those days.’

  ‘Don’t remember that.’ Dottie looked momentarily suspicious. ‘Don’t remember him, not at all.’

  ‘Well, you would not. Most of their productions were north of the Watford Gap. They really only did plays for the north, what they called brown soup plays, trimmed and tailored for a specific audience. They did very well, apparently. Always full, at the seaside resorts of course.’

  ‘Do you know Brighton still had forty theatres, even a few years ago?’ Dottie asked, from nowhere, and for no reason she picked up a saucepan and examined it.

  It was Elsie’s turn to stare at Dottie. This was her grandmother at her most awkward. Bad enough, Elsie knew, that Elsie had been offered the lead, but for Dottie to be offered the important part of the housekeeper was almost worse. What would happen to Mr Cosgrove now? What would he become? Obviously he could no longer be a man of hideous taste since he was offering Dottie an acting role. Nor surely could he be a man of shoddy standards, for the very same reason.

  Elsie now watched her grandmother with the cold discerning eye that is reserved for those who hear and see too much from too young an age. She watched while Dottie struggled with her emotions like a fish on the end of a line. Vanity and flattered pride now struggled with realism and fear. She had castigated Portly Cosgrove for so long, reviled him throughout the pantomime season; now that he was offering her a chance to tread the boards once more, what would she do?

  ‘I will read the play through again, and then see.’

  Elsie phoned Portly a few days later to report on progress.

  ‘She is reading the play through, yet again.’

  ‘This must be the fiftieth time.’

  ‘She wants to make sure that she is right for the part, and that the part is right for her.’

  Portly groaned. ‘Of course she’s right for the part. Why else would we have offered it to her?’

  ‘Because you want me, remember?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I know that, but – but I don’t think that is the point, Elsie. I mean, she hasn’t worked for years, has she?’

  ‘No, she has not.’

  ‘Well, then, I would have thought that she would have fallen down on her knees and thanked God. I am, I thought, manna from heaven.’

  ‘It is because she has not worked for years that she has to think about it so hard. You know, I think she is frightened. I think that is at the back of it. That she is terrified. She is rusty. She must be, having not acted for so long.’

  ‘Supposing she says no, we really are up the famous alley.’

  ‘Do not worry,’ Elsie told Portly in her clearly enunciated way. ‘Please, do not worry. I know she will say yes.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because,’ said Elsie, ‘I do.’

  She quietly replaced the telephone, and went in search of her grandmother.

  Dottie was ironing, as usual.

  Elsie sometimes thought that the iron was attached to her grandmother’s hand, so much had it become a part of it. She also thought that Dottie’s oft-declared aversion to a particular and very famous new play was because one of the main characters was always, like Dottie, at the ironing board with a depressed expression.

  ‘I suppose that was Portly Cosgrove, yet again?’ Dottie did not look up as Elsie came into the kitchen carrying a large basket of her own ironing.

  ‘No,’ Elsie lied, quickly and adroitly. ‘No, it was not Portly Cosgrove, it was Dimitri Becq, remember him? He wants me for a tableau in the summer, but I said no. Unless you want me to do it, of course?’ she added, ingratiatingly.

  ‘Of course I don’t want you to do it,’ Dottie said, looking up for the first time. ‘That man is an absolute crook, really he is. I don’t know how he looks at himself in the mirror in the morning.’

  ‘He probably wears a beard for that reason.’

  Dottie gave her a quick look, but seeing that Elsie had made a joke, and quite a good joke, she merely looked away as if she had said nothing.

  ‘I don’t know what to do about this wretched part, Elsie, really I don’t. I mean, going on tour at my age – I mean, what will it do to the lodgers, to my boys? I mean
really, I don’t think I can leave them just like that. They won’t be able to cope.’

  ‘Of course they will. They are all grown men, and besides, you know you can get Queenie to come in and run the whole caboodle for you, just as she does when you go to London to see plays. There will be no real problem there, Dottie, really there will not.’

  ‘I know you say that, Elsie, but supposing there is? Supposing they are miserable while I am away, supposing they walk out? Then my whole livelihood, the whole business that I have built up here, will all be wiped out, and I will have no more security.’

  ‘Very well, then do not take the part. Say no to Portly Cosgrove. It is quite simple.’

  ‘But you said he will not do it without me, which means he will not give you the part. I don’t want to sacrifice your hopes just because I don’t want to do it.’

  Elsie had been waiting for this, and now at long, long last she saw it rising up in front of them all, the great, grand Let Out for Dottie.

  The whole implication having settled comfortably around her, Elsie, if she could have, would have run around their small garden giving great whoops of joy. If she could she would have made Red Indian noises – whoo, hoo, hoo! – but as it was she could not, and so she stayed, quite still, as was her habit, staring at Dottie with interest. She was always able to stand back from her grandmother, regarding her with the same cold eye that she had used on her ever since she was quite small and Dottie had first beaten her for trying to mend a clock, and then laughed at her when she cried out in terror and pain. Dottie had not been a kindly relative, she had not been warm and soppy; she had been just as she was now – Dottie.

  But at that precise moment Elsie had a feeling of exultant power, because she knew, absolutely, and without any doubt, that she had Dottie where she wanted her. Dottie was in a cul-de-sac. She would now be forced, willy-nilly, to go forward through the stage door, where Elsie wanted her to go, and from there on to the stage itself.

  She would now do the part Portly was offering her, no matter what, because she had found the excuse that she needed. Elsie would be her excuse.

  No matter what the performance she turned in, no matter how she fared in the role of the housekeeper, Dottie now had her emotional get out. She had only taken the part for Elsie’s sake. Had not she agreed to go on stage her granddaughter would never have been given the part of Francine. She had to accept, for Elsie’s sake.

  Elsie could hear her telling her ‘boys’ this, could see the steam on the kitchen windows, hear the sound of the iron banging down on the ironing board as she repeated her cry.

  I would never have taken the part if it had not been for Elsie needing the work, really I wouldn’t. But they just wouldn’t do it without me. It was not my part, but I had to do it for her, she wanted me in. I didn’t want me in, she did, so I had to do it!

  ‘So, for your sake, and you must understand that, Elsie, I will go back to acting. I will do the part, I will take on the tour, but whatever happens, please do not – never put me through this again. It is too much, at my age, to expect a whole production to ride on my shoulders. But, for your sake, I will do so. You understand? Just for your sake, I will do it. But only if the terms they offer are all right, only if, Elsie. Not otherwise. If they do not offer the best terms, if I can’t pay Queenie to took after the place out of my salary, and if my boys are made miserable, then that is it. I will not do it. And I will have to have a one-week get-out clause. You understand that, Elsie? One week get-out and no mucking about.’

  ‘I am quite sure that Portly Cosgrove will give you just whatever you want, Dottie. I know that he wants you more than he wants me.’

  Dottie nodded, not really paying much attention to the compliment, accepting it as her right. The right of an actress who had been deprived of the great roles, and so now could and would accept compliments in the same way that Elsie imagined she doubtless would have accepted rave reviews and bouquets long, long ago, had she ever become a star.

  ‘You had better start learning the role straight away, Dottie,’ Elsie said, suddenly and shrewdly. ‘Because if you do not, you know what it is, you will land yourself in trouble with the management. They like the cast to be word-perfect before rehearsals start.’

  ‘Of course I shall be word-perfect.’ Dottie looked furiously at the departing Elsie. ‘I know that!’ she told the closing door. And then to the iron she said, ‘I am not an amateur. Of course I shall be word-perfect before rehearsals begin.’

  She banged the iron down on one of her boys’ shirts and waggled it over the material in a strange zigzagging sequence all her own.

  ‘As if I would not be word-perfect by the time rehearsals started!’

  And she was, she was word-perfect by the time they all met in the kind of dreary drill hall, Elsie thought, looking round it with her usual sense of wonder that only managements always seem to be able to find without any problem. It was as if the flea-infested halls were opened only to, and for, particular kinds of penny-pinchers.

  Small places of former worship down dreary side streets that no one else had ever heard of, or would ever know of, ever again. Places so obscure that, should you stop to ask the way from passers-by who had lived in the town for their whole lives, they would look at you astonished, shaking their heads, quite mystified. Small, unheated stone buildings with vague marks on the old, wooden floors that were relics of some equally unknown, no longer practised activity, some vital part of war-time work that no one any longer even spoke about.

  Since the play they were rehearsing was a comedy, the atmosphere was one of determined courage, and the cast, wearing various degrees of temporary rehearsal costumes, started blocking the moves for Donald Bourton, who was producing it, as if they thought he was brilliantly talented, while all the time, as is normally the case in a comedy, feeling quite the opposite – all, that is, except Dottie.

  Dottie, as she had boasted, had taken care to learn the lines before she came to rehearsal, and she was indeed word-perfect. She knew the lines as if she had written them herself, but the only trouble was, perhaps because it was so long since she had actually trodden the boards, it seemed she had completely forgotten how to act.

  Elsie found her fascinating to watch, in a macabre sort of way. Dottie could sit and read the play all through, without a single hesitation, she too, like Elsie, having a photographic memory. What she could not do was speak the lines and move at the same time, and, as they all knew, this was actually what acting was all about.

  Happily, Elsie was now contracted for the run of the play and thoroughly enjoying herself, so she cared less if Dottie was making an idiot of herself. Indeed she quite enjoyed watching her, and, for her sins, without a shred of guilt. Dottie had, after all, taken on the part, and of her own volition had undertaken to show everyone just what she had imagined, all these years, she was actually made of. And this was it. She was not made of brilliance. She had not been endowed with a golden talent, thwarted by marriage and childbirth, as she had, for year after year, loudly maintained – it became abundantly clear from day one that Dottie was made only of the stuff of amateurs.

  Her gestures were mechanical to the point of hilarity, her sense of timing entirely absent, and her voice (a voice that she had always told her ‘boys’ was her greatest asset) a landlady’s voice. It was the voice of a woman who had spent too much time complaining and haranguing. Worse than that, it was, actually, when Elsie listened to it with her usual detachment, the voice of a crotchety woman who having had her own way for most of her life was now being tested, given a chance and failing – and, worst of all, knew it.

  ‘What shall we do about her? I mean, she is your agent, isn’t she?’

  Portly frowned. The whole spectacle of watching this old woman ruining a large part of the second act had long ago stopped being funny and become torture not just for Donald who was producing the play, but for all of them.

  ‘Sack her!’

  ‘But she’s only been rehearsing for
a week. We might get her better.’

  ‘No one ever gets anyone better.’

  ‘Donald thinks he can get her better—’

  Elsie looked at Portly, and he was amazed to see the expression in her young eyes was one of light derision.

  ‘That is just producer talk. No one ever gets anyone right, Portly. They can either act, or they cannot act. It is just a fact, isn’t it? And obviously, Dottie can’t act, poor soul, can she?’

  Portly raised a hand. ‘Thank God. At last! Now. That is how you must talk from now on.’

  Elsie stared at him. ‘How?’

  ‘Like that. Stop enunciating the way you do, stop saying “I do not” and say “don’t”.’

  Elsie coloured. ‘Oh. Do I do that?’

  ‘Yes, you do, and I wish you wouldn’t. You make yourself sound too ladylike! Just talk naturally, and all will be well. Talk naturally,’ he repeated. ‘You have a very pretty voice, you mustn’t worry about crossing every t and essing every s.’

  He put out a friendly hand and touched her on the arm, not wanting to hurt her feelings, and at the same time knowing that he must have, and not caring at all because it was for her own good.

  ‘Oh, fine. So I – won’t say “will not”, I will say “won’t”, is that right?’

  Portly nodded. The point having been made, he now only wanted to get back to his problem, their problem, of how to get rid of Dottie.

  ‘So I sack her, and she takes you down with her?’

  ‘She can’t, not now I am contracted, can she?’

  Portly stared at Elsie, suddenly realising, with no small sense of wonder, that she must have known all along that this was going to happen, that Dottie was going to be hopeless, that she would fail, but that it would matter less than a hill of beans, because Elsie would remain contracted.

  ‘But – isn’t she some sort of relation of yours? I mean, as well as being your agent?’

  ‘No,’ Elsie lied to him airily, and then, seeing he did not believe her, she added, ‘at least not any more! Anyway, she will be pleased to get back to her other work.’