Maddy Again

by Pamela Brown

  ‘That was without exception the most nauseating exhibition I’ve ever seen,’ he said, wiping his spectacles as she finished. ‘Don’t you dare repeat it at the audition. I’d rather you did Lady Macbeth.’

  Eventually he found for her a speech of Gerda’s from The Snow Queen, which was quite dramatic but was the right age, and told her, ‘Work on it—it needs all the sincerity in the world. I’m sorry I shan’t have an opportunity to hear you again before you go for the audition. Your day is Thursday, Thursday morning at eleven-fifteen. You ought to have a chaperone with you. Can your mother go?’

  ‘No,’ said Maddy. ‘She’s miles away in Fenchester, but I expect Mrs Bosham would like to come. She’s my landlady.’

  Mrs Bosham was only too pleased to oblige.

  ‘The ’ousework can go to pot fer once,’ she said. ‘I’d love to come to one of them there studios and see what ’appens.’

  ‘It won’t be a proper studio,’ Maddy warned her, ‘just the producer’s office. The producer’s name is Morgan Evans. He’s Welsh,’ she added unnecessarily.

  She had not gone to the Academy at all that morning, but had spent a long time brushing her hair and dressing very carefully. Now, in a neat blue dress with a clean white collar, and navy shoes and white socks, she looked as neat as a bandbox, walking along beside Mrs Bosham.

  ‘You do me credit today,’ Mrs Bosham told her.

  Maddy was unusually quiet, as she was wondering about Morgan Evans, and whether he would be very Welsh—like Fluellen in Henry V.

  ‘I reckon that’s the place,’ said Mrs Bosham suddenly, pointing to an enormous building that towered up over Kingsway. They stood still and looked up at it, and then went in. Inside there was confusion. People were surging about as though they had trains to catch, builders were hammering, and the array of telephones on the commissionaire’s desk rang continuously.

  ‘I have an appointment to see Mr Morgan Evans,’ said Maddy importantly to the uniformed commissionaire behind the desk. ‘It is for eleven-fifteen. We’re a little early, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Better too early than too late, I always say,’ Mrs Bosham chimed in, and the commissionaire looked at her curiously.

  ‘I’ll just find out if Mr Evans is ready to see you, miss,’ said the man, picking up a phone. ‘What name is it?’

  ‘Madeleine Fayne,’ said Maddy.

  He consulted a list of extensions then plugged in and rang a number.

  ‘Mr Morgan Evans there?’ he inquired a few moments later. Maddy could hear a voice squeaking rather crossly at the other end. The commissionaire sighed, said, ‘Thanks’, and put the phone down.

  ‘Seems to ’ve moved. Have to try again.’

  ‘This is a madhouse,’ the commissionaire confided to Maddy and Mrs Bosham. ‘Nobody seems to stay in the same office for two minutes. Like musical chairs, it is. Got the builders in, y’see.’

  At last the producer was tracked down, and by this time it was well past eleven-fifteen.

  ‘Right, Mr Evans, I’ll send them up,’ said the commissionaire. ‘Third floor, turn right, number three-six-two,’ he told Maddy.

  Mrs Bosham was a trifle doubtful about the lift. ‘But there’s no one to work it,’ she objected.

  ‘It’s automatic,’ Maddy told her.

  ‘Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t,’ said Mrs Bosham, shaking her head. ‘You’ll not get me in a contraption like that. Silly ’aporths we’d look if it got stuck. Stairs are good enough fer me. Come on.’

  By the time they reached the third floor they were out of breath and panting.

  ‘I can’t go in yet,’ gasped Maddy. ‘Wait a minute till I get my breath back.’

  They stood still in the middle of the corridor, and let the stream of messengers and secretaries and technicians swirl past them. An office door, marked 362, stared them in the face. Suddenly the door opened and a girl looked out. ‘Oh, are you Madeleine Fayne?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Maddy, who had regained her breath.

  ‘Oh, good, we thought you’d got lost on the way up. Come in. Are you Mrs Fayne?’ she inquired of Mrs Bosham.

  ‘Oh, no, no—I’m Mrs Bosham.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said the girl, as though that explained everything.

  The office was very small indeed, and squashed inside it were three desks, littered with papers and books and files. The walls were covered with photographs of actors and actresses, and the room seemed to be filled with people. A middle-aged man, with thick hair that was beginning to go grey, sat at the largest of the desks, and was looking piercingly at Maddy with extremely blue eyes from under heavy brows.

  ‘This is Mr Morgan Evans and this is his assistant,’ the girl said, and proceeded to sit down at a desk with a typewriter.

  The assistant was sitting at a small desk with two telephones on it, and two other young men were sitting on the floor, writing furiously on foolscap, clipped on to script boards.

  ‘This is Madeleine Fayne and chaperone,’ the girl reminded Mr Morgan Evans.

  The assistant found a very small and rather rickety chair for Mrs Bosham, and she sat down on it gingerly.

  ‘Well, Madeleine, how old are you?’

  ‘Fourteen,’ said Maddy.

  ‘H’m—and you are one of Leon Manyweather’s protégées, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘H’m—I’ve heard something about you. Let’s see, you’ve not done any television, have you?’

  ‘No,’ said Maddy. ‘But I was in a film.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Mr Evans narrowed his eyes. ‘I thought I’d seen you somewhere before. An historical film, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. It was called Forsaken Crown.’

  ‘H’m. You played the lead, the heroine, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘H’m—it was quite a long and difficult part. Are you doing any more films?’

  ‘Not at present. My parents want me to complete my training at the Academy first. But television wouldn’t interfere with that, would it?’

  ‘Television interferes with everything,’ said Mr Morgan Evans gloomily, and everyone in the office laughed. ‘I won’t go into details about what we’re wanting until I’ve seen what you can do. It’s not so much an actress we need as a personality. The job really calls for someone with a lot of experience, but who looks very young.’

  Maddy nearly decided to change her mind and do ‘I’se Not Cwying’ after all, but then didn’t dare, because Mr Manyweather had condemned it so definitely.

  ‘Have you had any stage experience?’

  ‘In repertory, in my home town.’

  ‘H’m.’

  Everybody looked at Maddy very hard, weighing her up, and she looked right back at them, determined not to show that she was nervous.

  ‘Right. Well, let’s hear your audition. Stand over there by the door.’

  It was the only corner of the room where there were a few square inches to spare.

  Maddy took up the position in which she had been taught to stand—not too stiff, nice and relaxed, with one foot slightly in front of the other. Then she reminded herself not to overact, and tried to imagine that just her head was framed in a television close-up. All was going beautifully, and she knew she was being quite sincere, yet not being too carried away, when something terrible happened. Mrs Bosham’s chair collapsed. She landed on the floor with a screech of horror among the splintered pieces of wood. There was general confusion, and everyone tried not to laugh while she was helped to her feet. The assistant gave up his chair, a much stronger one, and she was settled into it, very red in the face.

  ‘Start again, dear,’ said Morgan Evans.

  Maddy did so. But when she reached the particular passage during which Mrs Bosham’s downfall had taken place, she suddenly remembered it, and felt a giggle bubbling up inside her. She tried to quell it, but first of all a terribly unsuitable grin appeared on her face, then her voice broke, and she collapsed altogether, ben
ding double and holding her tummy.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry—oh, I’m sorry,’ she kept exclaiming between paroxysms. Her laughter was so infectious that everyone joined in, including Mrs Bosham.

  ‘I’m that sorry,’ said Mrs Bosham, wiping her streaming eyes. ‘It’s all my fault. She’d be all right if it ’adn’t been fer me.’

  ‘Look, I think it’ll take some time for us to settle down again, don’t you, Maddy? So we’ll go and have a coffee, and then try again. What you have done so far is very good indeed.’

  They all adjourned to the restaurant behind the building, and while they drank coffee Morgan Evans pumped Maddy about herself, and seemed surprised and amused by her answers.

  ‘Now, I’ll tell you what it’s all about. Have you ever heard of a magazine called The World of Youth?’

  ‘Oh, yes, it’s for children, isn’t it? Well, teenagers.’

  ‘That’s right. Well, this magazine is having a half-hour programme every weekend, intended to appeal to girls and boys in their teens, and based on the sort of things they have in their magazine. Now, they want someone to compère the programme—it can be either a girl or a boy—they don’t care which—but it’s got to be someone with a lot of poise, a lot of acting ability and complete self assurance.’

  ‘Sounds just like me,’ said Maddy, giggling.

  ‘But it’ll be hard work. It’ll mean mid-week rehearsals, and then all day Saturday for about fourteen weeks.’

  ‘Sounds wonderful,’ said Maddy longingly. ‘Would I be able to miss any lessons?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ laughed Morgan Evans. ‘The rehearsals would be arranged so that you didn’t miss any schooling.’

  ‘Pity,’ said Maddy. ‘Oh, I do hope I can do it…’

  ‘We’re auditioning hundreds of youngsters,’ said Morgan Evans. ‘Before we finally decide we’ll probably hold a camera audition.’

  ‘How exciting,’ said Maddy. ‘I have been inside a television studio, you know.’

  And she proceeded to describe their outing with Mr Manyweather.

  By the time they had finished coffee Maddy was feeling much more confident; Mrs Bosham had recovered her composure, and was talking sixteen to the dozen to the secretary, who was listening in a somewhat dazed fashion.

  ‘Well, back to the salt mines,’ said Morgan Evans, and they all trailed back to the office.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll ask you to render the same passage again, Maddy, in case we all get afflicted in the same way a second time,’ said the producer. ‘Instead, I’ll give you something to read.’

  ‘Oh, help,’ said Maddy. ‘I’m not too good at sight reading.’

  ‘Nobody is, but you’d be working at such speed in this series that if you were a bad reader at rehearsal it would hold up everyone else.’

  He handed her a script. ‘Now take a look at this. Read it over to yourself for a few minutes, and then read Helen’s part to me.’

  Maddy took the script and began to read it rather fearfully to herself. It seemed to be a commentary on a trip to Cornwall. Helen’s lines described the journey, but other characters kept butting in all the time, and Maddy got confused as to what was happening. ‘You do want me just to read Helen, don’t you?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, skip the other people’s lines.’

  As she read, the phone kept ringing, but the secretary answered it in as soft a voice as possible, and the other people all kept silent in order not to interrupt Maddy’s study.

  ‘Right?’ said Mr Morgan Evans at last. ‘Let’s have it then.’

  Maddy knew that she was reading very badly, but the layout of the script was confusing. It was quite unlike an ordinary play. The dialogue was in a column at the right side of the page, and a description of the action was in another column at the left side. Mr Manyweather had shown them such a script at the studios, and had promised to try and bring some for them to rehearse with him, but had not been able to do so.

  When she had finished Maddy said shamefacedly, ‘Oh dear, that wasn’t very good.’

  ‘It wasn’t too bad,’ said Mr Morgan Evans. ‘Quite a lot of the children we’ve seen just couldn’t read it at all. In fact, I began to wonder if some of them could read. But you see, you’d have a great deal of that sort of material to cope with. Do you think you could mange it?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Maddy fervently. ‘I’m absolutely sure I could.’

  ‘Right. Well, we’ve got dozens more to see—but you never know. Now, if you’ll give my secretary your address and phone number we’ll know where to contact you. Or it might be done through Leon Manyweather. By the way, do you think your parents would object to you doing this?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Maddy airily. ‘They’re used to anything.’

  ‘Good. Well, you may be hearing from us.’

  Maddy said goodbye all round, and so did Mrs Bosham, who added, ‘I’m that sorry about the chair.’

  In silence they made their way down the stairs, and Maddy did not speak until they were out in the street.

  ‘Well now, I wonder…’ she said.

  ‘I think you done very well,’ said Mrs Bosham. ‘Course, me and that chair was a bit of a bloomer—I’m ever so sorry. And you were just doing your piece real nice. Still, it gave you a chance to ’ave a nice talk to the gentleman, while we was ’aving coffee.’

  ‘Yes,’ Maddy agreed. ‘But I didn’t read very well. It was a jolly difficult piece. Oh, I don’t think I’ve got the job.’

  And yet they had seemed to like her. The way they had all looked at her, in a careful, calculating sort of way, had made her feel there was a chance.

  ‘I should try and forget about it now, ducks,’ advised Mrs Bosham. ‘Then if anything does happen about it, it’ll come as a nice surprise.’

  It was easy to talk about forgetting, but not so easy to do it, for at the Academy everyone was talking about the auditions. When Maddy went into the canteen for lunch she was swooped on by Buster and Snooks, who had not yet had their auditions, and was made to tell them all about it.

  ‘Sounds to me as if you’ve got the job,’ said Buster gloomily. ‘Having coffee and everything.’

  ‘But that was only because Mrs Bosham’s chair collapsed,’ said Maddy.

  ‘Is he nice?’ Snooks demanded.

  ‘Yes, terribly nice. Not funny, like Mr Manyweather. But nice.’

  The other two girls were going for their auditions the following morning, Buster a quarter of an hour before Snooks, and Mrs Snooks was taking them both. Eric and Colin were going in the afternoon, so it was totally impossible for Maddy to put the audition out of her mind, either at school or afterwards, when she kept going over and over the interview to Zillah and saying, ‘What do you think?’

  Zillah did not know what to think, as she had never been to an audition in her life. That evening every time the phone rang at Fitzherbert Street Maddy rushed to answer it, but it was always either a wrong number or a call for one of the other lodgers.

  The next day was Friday, and during the television lesson everyone who had already been to the audition told Mr Manyweather about it in detail. He listened in an interested fashion, and when they had finished he said, ‘It sounds as if you all did quite nicely, but you can’t all get it. In fact none of you may; someone from quite another school may be the lucky one. But whatever the result, it is good experience for you to have been up for the audition. You’ll all go up for many an audition that you don’t get. You realise that, don’t you?’

  Maddy told herself that of course she knew it. But she had always been so lucky about things…

  Just then Buster and Snooks burst in, having returned from their auditions, and they, too, had to tell their experiences in detail.

  ‘That only leaves Eric and Colin to go this afternoon, doesn’t it?’ said Mr Manyweather. ‘Well, I don’t suppose we’ll hear the result until next week, and now we must get on with some work.’

  But just then the bell rang for the end of the period, so t
hey didn’t.

  For several days nothing was heard about the results of the audition. Every morning the ‘Babies’ demanded accusingly of each other, ‘Heard anything?’ only to be told, ‘No, not a murmur.’

  Then one afternoon as they sat at lessons in the schoolhouse the door opened and Miss Smith, the secretary of the Academy, came in. She was a smart, brisk woman with kindly eyes, who always took a deep interest in the fortunes of all students and ex-students.

  ‘Maddy,’ she said, after apologising for the interruption to the geography teacher, who was drawing a map on the blackboard, ‘Maddy, you’re wanted outside.’

  ‘Wanted?’ exclaimed Maddy. ‘I haven’t done anything…’

  ‘Not that sort of wanted. Will you excuse her a moment? It’s rather important.’

  Outside in the corridor stood Mr Manyweather, looking pleased and excited.

  ‘Gretchen, my girl,’ he said, ‘they want you for a camera audition. That’s good, isn’t it?’

  Maddy executed a few steps of the can-can to express her delight.

  ‘Mind you, it doesn’t mean you’ve got it. But Morgan Evans seemed very pleased with you. And what’s even better—the camera audition is going to be in the form of a panel game. Now, you’re better value when you’re being spontaneous than when you’ve learned up a party piece, so I think your chances are good.’

  ‘Is anyone else going from here?’ Maddy wanted to know.

  ‘No. You’re the only one.’

  ‘I’m glad. Because I’d hate to compete against any of my friends, really.’

  ‘You’ll have to get used to that in show business,’ Mr Manyweather told her. ‘But this time I think it probably is a good thing.’