“I don’t actually think of Richard as a rich young fella,” I said. “I’ve known him for years. His father and my father were at school together. I wouldn’t dream of going out with him just because it happened to be convenient.”
“Well, I reckon you should,” Mickey decided. “And what’s more, I reckon you should keep him around as a future prospect for the marriage stakes. You’ll probably end up marrying somebody after all, and you don’t want to get hitched to any actors because they’re all mixed up before they start. You’ve got to use your loaf, Grace. Think of the security. Think of the money.”
I looked at her in exasperation. “Security isn’t everything,” I said. “Money isn’t everything.” It was all very well for Mickey to dish out advice about men. She hated them. In her short career she had been taken advantage of so many times that she had developed an aversion to the opposite sex which amounted to a serious psychological hang-up. Since I had known her she had never had a date, and there had often been problems on modelling assignments because any form of physical contact repelled her. In spite of this, at times I suspected even because of it, Ziggy kept her on, and whenever possible teamed her with male models who were known to be gay.
“You’ll be glad of money and security one day,” she said, “and Richard Egan’s offer might be the best you’ll get.”
“He hasn’t actually made an offer,” I pointed out.
“But he will,” she said in a confident tone, “just you wait.”
We were sharing a cheap meal in a Crouch End café and the waitress crashed a pizza tin on to our table in a bad-tempered way. Chiefly due to Mickey’s spectacular looks, our table was attracting the attention of the male clientele whose admiration she obviously considered her own exclusive province. Our pizza had taken an unusually long time to arrive and we had long ago finished our side-salads. I had not eaten all day and watched avidly as Mickey flourished the serving knife.
“Wait a minute,” Emma Hall said in a commanding voice. “Don’t cut it yet, she’s given us onions.”
“So what?” Mickey wanted to know. “Who cares?”
“I do.” Emma pulled the pizza tin out of range of the serving knife in a pre-emptive manner. “I’ve got a singing lesson tonight and I can’t breathe onions all over my tutor.” She called the waitress back to the table. “We didn’t order onions,” she informed her. “Mushrooms and pine kernels, we said; You’ve given us onions.”
The waitress gave her a look of hatred and snatched up the tin. She flung it back on to the counter and there followed an altercation with the pizza cook which involved many venomous glances towards our table.
“I don’t think pizza onions are all that strong,” I objected, anguished by the sensation of being within a hair’s breadth of a meal, only to have it snatched from beneath my nose. “Couldn’t you have scraped them off your portion, or sucked a peppermint before your lesson? Are onions instead of pine kernels really such an issue? I’m absolutely starving.”
“So am I,” Emma agreed, “but it isn’t just because of the singing lesson, it’s really a matter of principle.”
Mickey gave me a vengeful look. She had not been enthusiastic about my proposal to invite Emma in the first place. Now that we faced another interminable wait for a fresh pizza, she was even less enthusiastic. It did seem a high price to pay for someone else’s principle.
“Pine kernels are not onions,” Emma insisted, “just as coffee is not tea, and potatoes are not tomatoes. There is no point in ordering from a menu if the staff can then serve whatever happens to be convenient. That pizza was probably a cancelled order.”
“I’d settle for a cancelled order instead of a principle any day,” Mickey grumbled.
Emma ignored her. “Richard Egan is also a matter of principle,” she announced.
“Really?” I looked at her, interested.
“Most certainly. You were absolutely right to say what you did. You can’t afford a relationship with someone like that.”
“Well, that’s a load of rubbish,” Mickey interjected. “If you ask me, Grace can’t afford not to have a relationship with somebody like that.”
“But then Grace wasn’t asking you,” Emma said, “she was asking me.”
“I wasn’t aware that I had asked either of you,” I pointed out, “and don’t think I’m not grateful for your interest, but there isn’t much more to be said about Richard. He won’t try to contact me again.”
“Of course he will,” Mickey scoffed. “Now you’ve torn him off a strip, he’ll be keener than ever.”
“You may think so,” I said, “but then you don’t know Richard.” And I did know Richard. And I remembered the icy chill of his voice when he had said, “I think you had better stop there, Grace. I see no point in continuing this conversation.” And I knew only too well how the jaw would have tightened, how the mouth would have compressed into a line, how the beautiful blue eyes would have hardened into flint. No, I knew Richard, and I knew he would not contact me again. I had burned my boats there.
“Well, if he doesn’t try again that will be good news,” Emma decided. “Because if you’re really serious about your career, Grace, you have to give up all close relationships, especially with people who try to discourage you.”
“Now wait a minute,” I said. “There’s no doubt in my mind that I’m totally serious about my career, but I wouldn’t be so quick to criticize Richard for trying to discourage me – all he knows is that I’m out of work and miserable.”
“There you go,” Mickey said in a satisfied voice, “now you’re sticking up for him. I knew you were mad about him really.”
“I am not mad about Richard Egan,” I insisted.
“Yes you are.” Mickey could be very irritating at times.
“Well, if you are mad about him, it could be very damaging for your career,” Emma said in a censorious tone.
“What career?” I asked grumpily.
“Well, there’s the television serial, for a start.”
“If I get it,” I said. “I have the film test to get through first, and after that, there’s the little matter of the horse riding…” The knowledge that I had burned my boats with Richard, the uncertainty about the television part, and the hunger gnawing away at my stomach made me feel depressed and irritable. I wished I had stayed at Henry Irving with a Pot Noodle and a mug of coffee. At Henry Irving I could be depressed in peace, without having to share the cost of a pizza I could not really afford with people I liked less with every passing minute.
“I think you should pull yourself together, Grace,” Emma advised, “because even if you lose this part, you can’t allow yourself to be defeated. You just have to try harder for the next. You just have to get in there and make it happen.”
Career counselling from someone who hadn’t even managed to find herself an agent was the last thing I wanted. “I’ve been out there trying to make it happen for eleven months,” I reminded her tartly.
She shrugged. “Maybe it will take another eleven months.”
“Now she sounds just like Ziggy,” Mickey commented.
“There are worse people to sound like. I’ve heard he’s a very good agent. I’m going to get on his books,” Emma announced.
Such confidence was very irksome. “Ziggy’s books are full,” I said. “He won’t take you.”
“He will,” Emma said. “Because I’m going to make him.”
At this moment a loutish youth on an adjacent table leaned back on his chair in order to tweak one of the endless locks of Mickey’s hair. In an instant she had whipped round with the pizza knife in her hand. “If you do that again,” she told him, “I’ll slit your throat.”
His face froze. “Now hold on there,” he protested. “It were only meant to be a joke.”
“I don’t joke,” Mickey snapped. “Not with people I don’t know.” She returned the knife calmly to the table. “If I don’t get something to eat soon, I’m going to have to start on the plastic flo
wers.” She took a purple anemone from the arrangement in the centre of the table and stuck it in her hair.
“Now you’ll just attract more attention than ever,” Emma pointed out, “although if you don’t enjoy the attention, I wonder why you wear such exotic clothes.”
“Exotic?” Mickey frowned.
“Well...” With supreme tactlessness, Emma corrected herself, only to make matters worse. “What I really meant to say was provocative.”
“Provocative?” Mickey glared at Emma. Surreptitiously I removed the pizza knife to my side of the table. “Are you saying I go around indecently dressed?”
“Not indecently dressed exactly,” Emma tried to explain. “All I mean is that you should wear slightly less…”
“She couldn’t wear any less,” I interrupted in an unhelpful way, “otherwise she wouldn’t be wearing anything at all.” This was true. Mickey was currently wearing a skimpy, shrunken jersey that barely covered her midriff and a mini-skirt she had constructed herself out of a wash-leather.
“I didn’t mean less clothes,” Emma said irritably. “What I was going to say was a little less eye-catching clothes.”
“What you mean,” Mickey flared, “is that I should cover myself up so that nobody notices me!”
“One pizza without onions!” What could have been a full scale row was mercifully arrested by the bad-tempered waitress who dropped the new pizza tin on to the table. The prospect of food instantly restored everyone’s humour.
“You’ve got a point in a way, I suppose,” Mickey acknowledged as she drove the serving knife by way of pine kernels, mushrooms, cheese and tomato paste into the crust. “I don’t expect I really mind being stared at, otherwise I wouldn’t be a model, would I?” She slid a piece of pizza, trailing strings of creamy mozzarella, onto a plate.
“And we all want to be noticed in our different ways,” I added, “otherwise we wouldn’t be struggling along, waiting for the world to recognize our talents.”
“That’s true,” Emma agreed, graciously accepting the first slice of pizza as her due. “In a way, we must all have a touch of egomaniacal masochism in our make-up.”
“Perhaps we should call and see the pharmacist on the way home,” Mickey suggested. “He might have pills for it.”
In retrospect, no lesson at all would have been preferable to one. I had found a riding school in a tiny London mews near Hyde Park, where the stables were Edwardian and multi-storey, with access to the upper block by way of a steep ramp with the cobblestones offset to allow the horses purchase on the slope. No one walking past the entrance would have noticed it, but inside the yard one could almost have imagined oneself in the country. The sound of the traffic faded, horses looked over their half-doors, chickens scratched, a coal black cat lay stretched out on a bale of straw. A girl polishing a brown horse with a cloth as if it was a piece of good mahogany furniture, pointed out the office.
I was no more than a few seconds late, but already my instructress showed signs of impatience. Miss Evelyn Trubshawe was wide and weathered, with a brusque manner and an unforgiving eye. She was dressed entirely in black – black boots, black breeches, black jersey and a black leather gilet. Her greying hair was scraped back into a bun which was imprisoned in a black slumber net, and she was holding a whip several feet taller than herself which had a formidable thong to it, ending with a few knots and a little red lash. I was already feeling nervous and my nerves increased when I saw Miss Evelyn Trubshawe. She looked like a gaoler in a particularly depressing film about the Nazi regime.
She looked me up and down in disbelief. “This is it then, is it?” she said in a dry tone. “This is your idea of riding kit?”
Nervous though I was, I did not allow myself to be intimidated. My pink and beige jersey, worn with jeans, pink leg-warmers and stiletto heels may not have been ideal, but at least I had taken the trouble to enquire what I should wear when I had booked my lesson.
“I was told I didn’t need special riding kit for a single lesson,” I said. “When I made the appointment they just said I should wear something to protect my legs, and to be sure to wear shoes with heels.”
Miss Trubshawe looked at my footwear. She gave a snort of disgust. “In this profession, shoes with heels mean heels like this.” With the end of the hideous whip she tapped the heel of her black rubber boot.
“And in my profession,” I said, “shoes with heels mean heels like this.” I lifted a foot and tapped my stiletto.
Miss Trubshawe compressed her lips and gave me a steely look. She was not about to enquire what my profession was, but I could tell she had already classified it as disreputable.
“Come with me.” In a resigned manner she now stumped out into the yard and I followed. In a room filled with saddles and bridles and smelling pungently of leather, oil and soap, Miss Trubshawe propped up her whip and threw open the lid of a vast tin trunk. As she leaned over and delved into it, I rather hoped her black breeches would burst at the seams to punish her for not being the warm, sympathetic instructress I had envisaged, but the stitching held fast.
From the depths of the trunk were produced a pair of rubber boots similar to Miss Trubshawe’s own. They were a size six but even so were difficult to get on and I was forced to abandon the pink leg-warmers. Next, I was handed a shiny black hat with perforated earpieces, a plastic peak, and a complicated harness including a chin-cup, which Miss Trubshawe personally strapped around my jaw.
“There,” she said with grim satisfaction. “That’s a bit more like it. That’s better.”
I did not think it was better. The hat felt most uncomfortable. There was a long glass display case on one wall of the room, which contained rosettes and prize cards. I could see my reflection in it. I only needed Ziggy’s leather blouson to pass for a motorcycle despatch rider.
“Is this hat really necessary?” I wanted to know. Somehow the image in the display case did not quite match the way I had envisaged myself looking on horseback. In the romantic films of my youth, people had galloped into the sunset with their hair streaming out behind them, and as far as I knew, they still did – in chocolate and fashion advertisements, at least.
“The hat is not only necessary, it is compulsory.” Miss Trubshawe slammed down the lid of the trunk. She grasped her whip and marched out of the door. I trailed behind, furtively tugging at the straps on the chin harness, trying to loosen them.
Out in the yard the girl who had been polishing the mahogany horse was now holding another, this one small and fat, and brown and white in patches, with a mane that stood stiff and upright like a lavatory brush.
“Oh,” I said. “Is this mine?” I was a little disappointed as I would have much preferred the mahogany horse. This solid, rather common little horse, with his odd markings and his white eyelashes, looked as if he would be more at home trotting behind a Romany caravan.
“It is.” The tone of Miss Trubshawe’s voice intimated that this was the horse’s misfortune and not mine. Considering that the half hour lesson was about to cost me ten pounds, I thought she might have been more civil, but I consoled myself with the thought that if I managed to grasp the basic principles of riding in thirty minutes, lack of civility would be a small price to pay, and may even turn out to be an advantage. Miss Evelyn Trubshawe was not the sort of instructress to waste valuable time in social chit-chat.
The girl now attached a long piece of webbing called a lungeing rein to a ring on the horse’s cavesson. I knew all about lungeing reins and cavessons because with some of the money I had left of Ziggy’s twenty pounds, I had bought myself a paperback book entitled All About Horses and Horse Riding. Because of All About Horses and Horse Riding I now noticed that there were no stirrup leathers and irons on the saddle.
“Where are the stirrup irons?” I said.
“There are no stirrup irons,” said Miss Trubshawe.
Then I noticed that there were no proper reins on the bridle. I could see a rein clipped on to the bit, but instead of the bu
ckled end lying at the bottom of the stiff little mane, ready for me to take hold of, it disappeared under the saddle.
“Where are the reins?” I said.
“There are no reins,” said Miss Trubshawe.
“But how am I going to learn to ride without stirrups and reins?” I demanded.
Miss Trubshawe was tightening the girths on the saddle. She gave me a look which indicated that not only did she consider me disreputable and unworthy of her attention, but also brainless as well. “When you can ride without reins and stirrups, you will be given reins and stirrups,” she snapped.
This did not altogether make sense to me. I wondered if there was a shortage of reins and stirrups, if the riding school had somehow run out of them. And yet I had seen lots of them in the tackroom. From All About Horses and Horse Riding, I had learned how to hold the reins, that the rein entered the fist at the little finger and came out between the index finger and the thumb, and that the ball of the foot rested on the tread of the stirrup, and now I felt rather cheated to be so unexpectedly deprived of both. I wondered if, without the provision of reins and stirrups, I would actually be getting my money’s worth in this riding lesson. Or to be strictly accurate, Ziggy’s money’s worth.
It seemed profitless to raise objections with someone like Miss Trubshawe. I decided to introduce myself to my horse. I went up to it and patted its neck. It felt rather coarse, but warm to the touch. The horse did not appear to notice my friendly overture. It did not seem at all interested in making my acquaintance. In fact, it appeared to be practically asleep. The white-fringed eyes were half-closed and the pink lower lip drooped in a languorous manner. Not a muscle stirred as I stroked the brown and white face.
“He isn’t very friendly, is he?” I said to the girl.
She looked rather startled, as if expecting a horse to be friendly was an entirely new idea. “Pedro isn’t unfriendly,” she said, “and you would hardly expect him to fall all over you and lick your boots – he isn’t a dog, after all.”
Make me a Star (The Silver Bridle Book 1) Page 4