A Postillion Struck by Lightning

by Dirk Bogarde

  “No.”

  “He played piano like no one else played piano.”

  “I believe…”

  “And you don’t?”

  “No. Never.”

  “Well we gotta start then. That’s what I’m here for. To teach you to play piano and fast. And like Liszt.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me till I have.” He played some scales rapidly. I watched his hands, dull with fear. “These are just scales … we’ll have to do a lot of this, just to exercise your fingers … show me your span.”

  “What’s that?

  “Shit! Put your hands out in front of you and spread your fingers … that’s a span.”

  I did as he asked. My hands looked supplicating. They were.

  “Nice span you got. You play tennis?”

  “No.”

  “Football?”

  “No.”

  “Ping pong … table tennis?”

  “No neither.”

  Another long stupefied pause. The air-conditioner hissed and throbbed.

  “You play that game you have in England. With a bat and a ball… like rounders?”

  “Cricket?”

  “Yeah. Cricket. You play that?”

  “No.”

  “Shit.” He played another set of scales.

  “And you gotta be Liszt?”

  “They tell me so.”

  “In five weeks we start shooting in Vienna. You going to be ready?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Not in a million years let alone five weeks. You got eighty-five minutes of fucking Music in this Production. Eighty-five minutes of music not including conducting Les Preludes and the Rákόczy March.”

  “They said they’d use a Double for my hands. They would only shoot me in long shot or so that my hands were hidden by the key-board. That’s what they said.”

  “Where did they say they would use a Double?”

  “They said so in London when we all first met … and in New York when I met the Front Office in Mr Gallows’ office. We’ll use a Double, they said.”

  “They didn’t tell me. They told me I was hired for six months to teach you piano, to teach you to play like Liszt and to Conduct. I got the Contract. You wanna see my contract? Six months I have. I am at your total disposal. I don’t have a wife, two kids, or a cardiac condition… I just have you and two pianos and eighty-five fuckin’ minutes of music to get into you before the end of the six months.”

  “I’m sorry.

  “So’m I. Shit. A Double. No one told me about a Double. They said categorically you would be required to play it all. That’s what they told me. Fuck the Front Office and Gallows. They just don’t happen to be here in California. They don’t know. Charles Vidor says you play and you play, I assure you.”

  “Well. I’d better start. I mean, perhaps you could show me, very slowly, a bit of something I have to play… not Chopsticks. It’s too fast.”

  “So is the fuckin’ 1st Concerto …” He started, very gently and softly to play. It was good. He played with deep feeling and tenderness. I listened and watched. Horrified. How could I ever remember where the fingers went. Which keys to use, the black or the white?

  He stopped. And glittered at me.

  “That’s the Moonlight. That’s the slowest piece you got in the whole eighty-five minutes. Try with me. Put your hands on the keys … look, like this …”

  For the next half an hour he quietly and kindly told me about sharps and flats, about bass and span, about thighs, and back, about wrists and fingers, about tempo and allegro and Christ only knows what. I was stunned into voiceless silence. I grew eighty fingers, I sweated, I hit my knees but I never once hit the keys or got the right hand doing anything at the same time as the left. It was a grim half-hour. The glitter in Aller’s glasses was like sheet lightning. But cold.

  “You have as much co-ordination as a runaway train for Christ’s sakes. … Do you dispute that?”

  “No.”

  We went on trying until my time, according to the piece of Paper, was over. I got up from my chair unsteadily. He sat in his looking stunned. His fat lower lip sticking out like a sulky baby. I thanked him and started to the door.

  “Remember I’ll be here all day. Right until six-thirty p.m. And then I’m available to you all evening at your hotel or here or wherever you like. I don’t finish until you do. I don’t leave the Studio until you do. I’m here all the time for you to practise. You got five weeks and not a chance in hell. See you later. Remember I’m here all the time, just waiting.” He started to play something slow and sad again, his head up, his eyes fixed on Myrna Loy.

  Joe helped me into my trousers. Skin tight black taffeta. A white frilly shirt… a jacket cut like an hour-glass. We did up zips, hooks and eyes, he fixed an expert silk cravat, and tucked Kleenex round it to prevent the make-up staining the white cloth. Agony to sit down, legs stiff like a milking stool, glossy patent boots slid on, and trousers strapped under. Gloves, sixty pairs all hand made in Paris, France, were chalked and eased on to my swollen, fat fingers. He said I looked swell. I felt silly and too tight, and scared to death. It wasn’t my Test we were doing … I already had the fatal role … we were testing ladies for The Countess. But I felt as terrified as if they were testing me for Cholera.

  In the Make-Up Room a silent man in a white coat like a surgeon had covered me in a pink nylon robe, read a list of instructions in his hand, studied some enormous black and white blow-ups of Liszt aged twenty-seven and started to work. We didn’t speak. Except once, when I said, politely and quietly, “I never wear make-up in England.” He didn’t stop covering my face with a scented sponge. “You do in Hollywood,” he said. The final result in the mirror looked like a mad Rocking Horse. My hair had been washed and rolled in curlers and baked and combed and tinted and primped and finally covered with a thick spray of lacquer so that it moved almost independently of my head and body. A great bouffant, faintly pink, tea-cosy of a hairstyle. Liszt at twenty-seven. A mad rocking horse in a pink candyfloss wig. I was humbled to the dust. Joe didn’t help by saying I looked cute … and when the whole paraphernalia was put together, taffeta trousers, frilly shirt, pink hair and hour-glass coat, I looked and felt like something out of an Army Drag Show. But worse.

  The Test Stage was small, made of corrugated iron and concrete, and built in 1914 when the Studio first developed on the site of an Orange orchard. It was blinding, hot, and smelled of dust and wet paint. There was a quarter of a room. Flock wallpaper, gilded panels, real mahogany doors, thick carpet, bowls of plastic lilac, a piano, naturally, and a fat silk settee. They were busy hanging a chandelier when I walked onto the set and found my chair. Green canvas, my name printed across the back. Awkwardly I sat down, heart heavy, but beating like a mad yo-yo. Someone came up and shook hands and said he was Buddy and welcome to Hollywood, and a nice looking woman with rimless glasses and a stopwatch round her plump neck said her name was Connie and I looked just dreamy. I thanked her and apologised for not being able to get out of the chair because of the tightness of my pants.

  “Mercy me! So British of you! Never you mind a bit. Mr Vidor won’t be too long: he just went to see yesterday’s Test on one of the Chopins. Do you want a cup of coffee? I’m so glad you’re on the Production, I just loved you in that film about the Doctors! So English and quaint. Oh here’s Mr Vidor now. I’ll get you some coffee.”

  Charles Vidor was shortish, sixty-ish and, as far as he was concerned, stylish. Grey spiky hair like a hedgehog. Manicured nails blushing a gentle pink. Rings glittering. A flat platinum watch. A viewfinder in gold hanging round his neck inscribed with the names of all the films he had directed with it: dressed entirely in grey. Cashmere, silk shirt, immaculate flannels, crocodile shoes, a cigarette in a long paper holder. He smiled across the quarter room, spoke to someone arranging a jar of plastic roses, slapped someone else on the back and sat down beside me in his own canvas chair.

  “You
look cute,” he said and patted my knee absent-mindedly.

  “I feel ridiculous personally.”

  “You look great, kid! Great. I like the hair. You look just like him … like the pictures we got up in the office … you seen them? You look just like him. Claude-Pierre said so too and he should know. Claude-Pierre is French from France and he’s done all your costooms and he KNOWS. You know the velvet we got for your waistcoat when you play the Campanella bit cost fifty dollars a piece? Fifty dollars for a bit of Paris velvet? Can you beat that? My wife wouldn’t spend that much on a bit of Paris velvet and God alone knows she spends. You look great.” He reached into his cigarette case and fitted another long thin cigarette into the holder.

  “About the Campanella …”

  “What about it?” He was casual and didn’t meet my eye.

  “Mr Aller says that I have to play the piano. You won’t be using a Double.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “But you said that you would. I can’t play the piano. Or tennis or cricket, even a mouth organ.”

  “Be reasonable! This is Today! Movies can’t be faked now. Television brings it all close to them … We want you to be the first to really play. Everyone else had a double in the old days, but this is Today! We’ll start on a close up of your head, anguish, passion, all the music registering there … your love for the Princess … your mother … your agony of mind over the Church… and then we pan down, without a cut, mind you, and see your own hands, your very own hands, actually playing the music he wrote! It’ll be a sensation. So moving …”

  “But when do I have the time to learn all this stuff. There is eighty-five minutes Aller says…”

  “Aller is the greatest teacher in Hollywood. He taught Cornel Wilde to be Chopin. He worked on two of my last pictures, I trust him implicitly. If he says eighty-five it means he can teach you eighty-five minutes. And we’ll have a Box Office Smash such as you have never seen before. You want to be a Movie Star? Well, you have to work for it.” He lit his cigarette and waved cheerfully across at someone else arranging yet another pot of flowers.

  “Don’t put the fuckin’ things behind the chair, Al, they’ll stick out of her head when we do the Close shot… move ‘em to the little table by the drapes there … fine … you’re a good kid.”

  I sat in a state of rigid despair. There was nothing more to say; yet. I’d have to wait. Try a few more times with Aller. Connie came with coffee in paper cups, she offered sugar in paper wraps, and plastic spoons. She sat beside us on a small stool, twinkling like a Japanese lantern, all sweetness and light with the eyes of a ferret. We sipped coffee.

  “What was the Test like, Mr Vidor … did you find your Chopin yet?” She swirled coffee with a pencil beaming brightly at us both.

  Vidor stretched his legs thoughtfully, and smoothed his creases. The crocodile shoes shone and gleamed like Connie’s eyes.

  “There’s one might do. Australian guy. Good looking, but I didn’t like the wig. He looked faggy. You know?”

  Connie nodded seriously.

  “I don’t want a faggy Chopin, be difficult with the George Sand… know what I mean? A woman with a feller’s name and wearing pants… it could be very difficult. I got Wallis to check out some other Chopins and a few George Sands … maybe we’ll do a couple more tests tomorrow. I can’t be sold on mat Australian yet.”

  Connie finished her coffee. “Maybe Make-Up or Hair could fix a different wig for him?”

  “We’re checking just that. He’s in Hair right this minute.”

  There was a slight disturbance somewhere across the quarter room. Women came huddling into the lights … a lot of chatter and fixing … in the middle of the group a small pale girl dressed in yards of blue silk with her hair plaited and an expression of sheer terror. One of the Countesses. One of the finals who would be tested that day with me. We all stood and were introduced. She was French, had flown in a day before, was sick with fright, tired, bewildered, and ready to weep. Vidor took her away gently, and talked to her kindly. His arms round her shoulders, his viewfinder hitting her breasts.

  We started Testing shortly afterwards. I sitting in a chair, she arranging plastic roses on a piano. My voice seemed to come from the soles of my patent leather boots… hers from below the Seine. After a couple of long shots they moved in to close stuff and during the break two people walked onto the set, greeted everyone with large hand waves, hugged Vidor and, with eyes like unforgiving steel nuggets, perched themselves on two tall bar stools and watched us. Our first Audience. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon. No one introduced anyone, and apparendy no one was about to do so. The Test proceeded before them as they sat immovable, unflinching, on the stools. It was rather like being something in a Fair Ground. Only they didn’t actually chuck anything at us. It might have been better if they had. After a great deal of flower arranging, and waving of hands, and a long imploring speech at my feet, the Countess came to the end of her ‘bit” … and we started all over again on mine. The Film Stars slid off their stools, called “See yah!” to the crew, hugged Vidor, made a joke, roared with laughter. And left. The set went back to work. We continued.

  I ate a beefsteak-tomato and some cold chicken in my Olde Worlde Male Dressing Room. Joe pottered about opening a can of beer, folding my costume, gathering together boots and button hooks. The beer tasted of thin yellow water, the tomato of water, the chicken of cold roast water. I was soggy with it all and with the day. I still had to go down and face Aller who I knew was still sitting in that hateful room waiting for me at the damned piano. Joe looked sympathetic and slid into a chair opposite me.

  “Hate the Test?”

  “Yes… everything.”

  “First days are always the same kid, always the same. Even for Henry Fonda, or Gary Cooper, it’s always the same. You’ll be fine tomorrow when you see the stuff. And after all,” he added reasonably, “you got the part. I mean it’s not as if you haven’t got the role, is it? You. got it. They signed the contract. You’re IN”

  “I’m in all right. Up to my bloody neck. Eighty-five minutes of music I’ve got. That’s what I’ve got, and those bloody silly pants and gloves and this god-awful hair … and all the Campanula and the Moonlight and the Rhapsody …Jesus! Have I got it!”

  Joe slid the pants on to a hanger. “The music is different. Try. If you can’t make it sure as hell they’ll use a Double. Only be warned. Rod Raper, you know the one who has been Testing for you while you were in Britain, well Rod knows it all … the Music … he’s been practising for weeks. And he’s good, I mean good. Worse than that he’s determined. I don’t mean no harm to Rod … he’s a sweet kid. We have assed about a bit, I mean he’s sweet, he’ll do anything. But like I said … he knows the Music. And he’ll fit the costooms … he’ll kill his Daddy to play this role … I’m just tellin’ you this because Tinsel Town is a funny place … you can never be quite sure who’s holding the knife. Get me? Try the score, shit if Rod can do it you sure as hell can. Rod came straight out of a Department Store in Dallas … used to sell shirts and underwear until someone asked him to model the goods one Sunday. He didn’t know a piano from his asshole. About the only instrument he did know how to handle was his cock. So you can see that he’s a very ambitious boy. And there’s another thing you better know, though I shouldn’t even mention a word.” He leaned over my crumpled form and whiskered very close to my ear; there was a strong smell of “Arpege’ and collusion. “They got a big Contract Artist standing by to take over if you screw it all up. A real nice guy … got a couple of good Movies behind him, and he’s under Contract, he’s all set… I shouldn’t say this but you better know. They got all his measures down at Western Costume and everything would fit except maybe the boots … so watch it.” He straightened up and tumbled cuff links and dress studs into a small cardboard box. When he spoke again his voice was normal, for him, and flat as a steel blade. “You better pay heed to old man Vidor. Want another beer?”

  Aller was
sitting in a crumpled heap reading Newsweek. Reluctandy we went to our pianos. And he started, again, fingering the Moonlight. I watched in anguish. Nothing seemed possible. If Rod Raper could do it, why couldn’t I?

  We “worked” for two hours. My hands were sweating, my arms ached, Aller’s voice was dull and defeated.

  “You got no co-ordination at all. It amazes me. Positively amazes me. I seen a child of four with more co-ordination than you. Do you doubt that?”

  I did not.

  “If it’s not too personal—could you tell me how you even got this far?” I was mute.

  “I’ll try and give you some simple scales … you’ll try and learn them … and then go over them again and again tonight on the piano in your hotel room. Maybe tomorrow something will break through. Maybe you’re tired; first day after all. Now let’s start with this… it’s the simplest scale of all…”

  La Campanella had no charm whatsoever, and by the time we got to part 2 of Rondo Capriccioso I slumped gently out of my overstuffed white tweed chair and lay, eyes closed, tears welling, on the thick white pile of my Bel Air Hotel Bungalow. Room Service hadn’t cleared, and half eaten scrambled eggs stiffened in their grease, cigarette butts lay like corpses drowned in cold spilt coffee, and on the Record Player the disc revolved gently, only the hissing of the sapphire point endlessly obliterating the genius of Liszt.

  Taking another record from the high pile beside his chair, Tony Forwood stepped over my recumbent form and slid it from its crackly yellow sleeve.

  “Well … let’s just hear a bit of the Etude in D Flat … it’s slow.”

  “Slow.” I was beyond help or care.

  “Slower … it’s the Theme Song, for God’s sake …” He slid it on and moved the start button.

  “I’m packing it in. Call a meeting tomorrow, with all of them, Vidor, Aller, Feldman … it’s not too late. I’m here under false pretences. They said they’d use a Double … I can’t do it… I played by ear years ago at school … but I can’t be accurate to one bloody note and act all the crap they’ve written in five weeks. I’m packing it in… we’ll get the Pan Am flight back tomorrow night. I’ve got five weeks to learn half Liszt’s bloody output, plus all the rest.”