I Dream Alone

by Gabriel Walsh

  It was clear that Frank was more than a bit annoyed that I was even called into the casting office. I was there to accompany him and support his ambition and not my own. By the look on his face it was clear that he might have been happier had I stayed seated in the waiting room or not have accompanied him to the office altogether. When I drove away from Frank’s front door I found myself hoping that I’d be called in the next few days.

  * * *

  Inside a massive costume truck that was parked on Second Avenue on New York’s East Side I was measured for and fitted into a uniform of the French army of 1778 and told to report to a sound stage a block away. With a bunch of other young men of similar age I was paraded down the street and directed into a big warehouse type of place that had been converted into the city of Paris as it might have looked a few hundred years earlier. Having seen so many old black-and-white films that took place in Paris I was half expecting to see The Hunchback of Nothin’ Doin’, as it was referred to in Dublin in my past.

  The night before, when I told Mrs. Axe I was offered a bit part in the television production of The Scarlet Pimpernel and explained to her how it had come about, she laughed and seemed genuinely pleased. Mr. Axe had a similar reaction. He told me he had read most everything written on the subject of the French Revolution and jokingly advised me on how to act as a Frenchman. When I told him I only had one line and that I was to play a French soldier he congratulated me and advised me not to lose my head.

  Once inside the building, myself and the others who marched down the street with me were introduced to the actor Michael Rennie who was playing the part of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

  Mr. Rennie was sitting on a large sofa having his face powdered and drinking a cup of coffee at the same time. There were many stage hands around him attending to his requests and he seemed to be talking to all of them at once. However, when he saw his small army of young French soldiers, of which I was one, he officially welcomed us both personally and professionally. With a big smile on his face he asked all eight or nine of us if we knew our lines. Although I didn’t know it at the time he was apparently making fun of us.

  A few feet behind him sat Maureen O’Hara, being attended to by a hair stylist and a few dressmakers who were stitching a frilly-looking item to the big gown she was wearing. I had seen her years earlier on the screen in Dublin. If nothing else happened to me this first day on the set, it was all worth it because I was in the same room as the Irish icon. I was tempted to approach her and tell her we had homeland geography in common but I sat on the impulse. Diminutive as it was, my past and my present had happily found common ground this day as I found myself floating on the outskirts of my own fantasy. I was dressed as someone else and in the environment and atmosphere of the massive sound stage I wanted to believe I had become someone else. I was transported to an earlier period in history dressed up as a French soldier and I was mesmerised by the sight of Maureen O’Hara sitting not too far away from me in person. The star of The Quiet Man and The Hunchback of Notre Dame was sitting in the same room as me and I definitely felt and believed that I had been transported from one planet to another.

  Earlier, when I was being dressed in my military outfit, I had been given a page from the script and a line was circled in red that said: “Je suis trés fatigué.” Another heading said: “Soldier Number One is tired and wipes his face with his uniform sleeve.” What the other actors, who like me were now members of the League of the Pimpernel had to say I didn’t know. My nerves were shaking so much the sabre that was hanging from my waist was rattling like a church bell. I began to worry and thought I was going to be judged by the way I spoke French: in this case only one line of the language. Panic swept through my bloodstream and instantly I couldn’t even remember the line.

  A minute or two later Mr. Mark Daniels, the director, approached and asked me if I was ready for a camera rehearsal. What he meant by that I had no idea but I said yes. Mr. Daniels led me and the other soldiers to a long wooden bench alongside a table. There was another bench on the opposite side of the table.

  To my amazement the director asked me my name.

  I replied: “Gabriel Walsh.”

  He looked at me and shook his head as if it had been severed by the guillotine that was situated at the far end of the Paris setting. “No! Not your own real name. What number soldier are you?”

  I quickly grasped the idea that he was referring to the name of the soldier I was assigned. “I’m a number, sir,” I obediently answered.

  “You’re the first. You’re Number One. I want you to sit here at the end of the bench. You’ve just come back from a battle and you’re tired. When you see or sense that the camera is across from you, say your line. You got that?”

  I nodded my head affirmatively, too terrified to utter the word yes.

  The director then placed the other soldiers along the benches. Some sat next to me, others across from me. Mr. Daniels stepped away and a stage hand placed a tin mug in front of me. This terrified me even more. “Take a swig from this before you say your line,” the stage hand said. When I looked in the mug there was nothing in it but before I could ask a member of the crew what I should do with the empty mug the lights dimmed and someone called out: “Rehearsal!”

  At this point in time I was tired from worrying and when I noticed the big film camera passing in front of me I was able to mumble “Je suis trés fatigué” while I wiped my brow with my sleeve at the same time.

  When the camera reached the end of the long wooden bench a call for “Lunch!” was bellowed out and the lights came back up in the cavernous space.

  During the lunch break I made my way over to the table where the stars of the show were sitting and eating. A company photographer was snapping pictures of just about everything and everybody. I tapped him on the shoulder and asked him if he’d take a picture of me sitting with Maureen O’Hara and he agreed – providing the star had no objection. Without hesitation I sat down next to Miss O’Hara and quickly told her I was also from Dublin. Before she had a chance to respond to me the photographer snapped a picture of me sitting with the star of the show.

  After lunch I was back sitting on the long wooden bench and leaning on the table with the empty mug in front of me. As I stared into the empty mug I kept wondering why there wasn’t any beer or even water in it. I turned to an assistant, an older man who appeared to be wrapped in wires from head to toe, asking if I could have a little water, even a drop of whiskey put in the mug and he told me no and to pretend I was sitting in an Irish pub at home after spending my last penny. An actor, sitting nearby dressed in rags and looking like he had spent too much time with Quasimodo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, told me to piss in the mug and to stop complaining. I was about to tell him to go fuck himself when the lights dimmed and the camera started rolling.

  When the director called “Action!” I was more confident than before. I took my time with swigging my ‘drink’, wiping my forehead and saying my one line. Whatever way I said it seemed to please the director. He thanked me and a few minutes after that I was told that my assignment was completed. An hour later I was out of costume and while driving back to Tarrytown I was feeling more and more like a new person.

  * * *

  I continued to spend most of my time working in the office at the castle but I found that I was always waiting for a phone call that would take me back to New York for work as an actor. Several weeks after my first adventure Ruth Conforti, the casting director for Talent Associates, left a message for me at the castle. When I returned the call I was informed that there was another bit part for me in another production: The Light that Failed, by Rudyard Kipling.

  The instructions and logistics were the same: report to the same office at a given date and be fitted again for a new costume. The star of this production, when I reported for work, turned out to be a Mr. Richard Basehart. This job came easily and went uneventfully but when it was over I was invited by a fellow actor, after we both finished
our three-line speaking assignment, to accompany him to an audition for a play that was to be produced in the Bucks County Playhouse in Pennsylvania. This was the theatre Frank had been interested in – the premier showplace for plays that had recently been produced on Broadway. I arrived with my fellow actor at the office of Mike Ellis, the producer and owner of the Bucks County Playhouse. As was the norm and what I had come to expect, auditioning for anything in New York City had become a case of ‘hurry up and wait’. While waiting and listening, a common ritual in such situations, I learned that Mike Ellis was producing Jean Giraudoux’s play Tiger at the Gates, a play dealing with the Trojan War in ancient Greece. Yet again, a subject Mr. Axe had often talked about. The overall theme and thesis of the play seemed to be that man’s proclivity for wanting ‘more’ of everything ultimately leads to conflict. The consequence of such an impulse is that war among mankind cannot be avoided. The setting and time for the play takes place inside the walls of the city of Troy only hours before the start of the Trojan War. The central plot line is that of the disenchanted Trojan military commander Hector. He tries to avoid war with the Greeks. His wife Andromache is about to give birth, and this reinforces his desire for peace. With his worldly-wise mother Hecuba, Hector leads the anti-war faction in his homeland and attempts to convince Paris, his brother, to return the beautiful captive Helen to Greece from whence he had abducted her. The abduction of Helen is the spark that ignites the conflict. Giraudoux pens Helen as an object of desire, but also a metaphor for human greed and its darkened destiny.

  After sitting for at least an hour in the reception room at the producer’s office on West 56th Street I was called in by the producer’s assistant and introduced to the director of the play, a man who looked as if he had seen every pained face of every actor in New York City and beyond. The director took a look at me and immediately asked me where I was from. Apparently he had sensed I was not as fully American as he had anticipated. When I told him I was from Dublin he appeared to be a bit put off. He could obviously detect my accent and after having such a tiring day auditioning hundreds of actors he might well have thought he was wasting valuable time. But, with a certain kind of respect that he naturally had for the profession of acting, he handed me a script and asked me to read from it. He told me to focus on the character Troilus. It was a small but important role and I sensed, because of all the other young actors in the waiting room, it was the last one to be cast.

  Three weeks later I was in New Hope, Pennsylvania, rehearsing for a one-week run of the play. Sitting opposite me around a large round table was Robert Redford, the actor who was chosen to play Paris in the production – Paris of course being the man who stole Helen of Troy and as a consequence set off the war. The actor Hurd Hatfield, who had become famous for his film portrayal of Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, was also in the cast and playing the lead role of Hector. The part of Troilus, which I was picked for, was the very last character to appear on stage and, although the lines were few, I did get to kiss Helen of Troy, played by Louise Fletcher, as the final curtain dropped.

  Every night after the show the cast and crew assembled at the bar of The Inn which was the place where most of the actors and crew stayed. I had a small comfortable room that overlooked a river. For my first week there and while listening to the after-theatre banter I learned a lot about the life of an actor from the professionals such as Hurd Hatfield and Robert Redford.

  Mrs. Axe came to New Hope to see the last performance and stayed at The Inn. After the show I introduced her to as many people as I could. The evening was a happy and exciting one both for her and for me. The day before, one newspaper had nice things to say about the production and one of them even mentioned my performance in a positive way. Mrs. Axe became more celebrative when she read the review and she ordered another bottle of wine. I invited my fellow actor Hurd Hatfield to our table and she ordered yet another expensive bottle of wine for him. In no time the table had as many bottles on it as it had people sitting around it: six in all. When the bottles were emptied by the thirsty crowd, time itself appeared tired as the night of wine consumption slowly took its toll.

  The closing of the show brought on a deluge of sentiment. Actors and crew members exchanged addresses and phone numbers and memories. I became more and more intoxicated and so did everybody around me. And that included Mrs. Axe. The proprietor was obliged to remind everyone of the late hour and he made noises about closing. Mrs. Axe picked herself up from her chair and, after excusing herself from the gathering, made her way to her accommodation. Fifteen or so minutes later I bid goodnight and in most cases goodbye to my friends and actors and proceeded up the wooden stairs of the inn.

  As I walked along the small and very narrow corridor upstairs I passed Mrs.Axe’s room and noticed that her door was ajar and a shaft of light from inside her room touched the corridor carpet. I thought for a moment she might have unknowingly forgotten to close it behind her. She had consumed a lot of wine, more than I had ever witnessed her drink before, and I guessed that she might not be aware that her door was left open. I leaned towards the door and gently began to pull it towards me in order to close it but then I heard, or thought I heard her calling out“Is that you, Gabriel?”Hardly able to stand straight I felt I had electrocuted myself when I heard her voice. With the ability to think gone from me I pushed the door open and saw Mrs. Axe stretched out on the bed wearing her bathrobe.

  Slowly but unhesitatingly I walked into the room and sat on a chair as close to her as I could.

  Again without looking directly at me she began to talk. “I really enjoyed this evening so much. You were good. You were excellent.”

  I wanted to thank her but my brain was spinning about in my head so much I couldn’t think of anything so I sat in silence, looking at her stretched out in front of me. For a few long extended moments I began to think back and tried to put my future and the rest of my life at the castle in perspective. In many ways it was a wonder I wondered about it without being able to define it clearly for myself. Having floated and drifted between so many possibilities and disappointments, I felt like I was missing a piece of a jigsaw puzzle that had fallen to the floor and got lost.Mrs. Axe’s pendulous personality kept me in an emotional darkness that obstructed me from expressing myself when I was working in the office or spending time with Mr. Axe.

  I wasn’t sure what frightened me the most: wanting to leave her or thinking about her leaving me. For an inordinate amount of time I lived beneath two clouds that were constantly threatening to burst.

  As I attempted to focus my unhinged mind in her direction she started to talk. She spoke softly and slowly and was in a more sentimental mood than I had ever seen her. She started to talk about how we first met at the Shelbourne Hotel and how Maggie was so determined to have the two of us meet.

  What would Maggie think now? I asked myself. She would rise from her grave if she was to know that Mrs. Axe and I were in some abstract way stranded in a hotel room in Pennsylvania. Maggie would flee from Heaven itself if she was to see her best friend and the boy she brought to America so intoxicated and hardly able to put two words together.

  Stretched out on her bed in the dimly lit bedroom Mrs. Axe reminded me of the morning I foolishly attempted to serve Maggie her breakfast under the bed. She then told me it was at that moment in time that Maggie took a liking to me. Maggie, it seemed, as Mrs. Axe related, couldn’t believe anyone could be so naïve and responded to the combination of innocence and ignorance that I paraded in front of her that fateful morning. That particular moment in Dublin might even have reminded her of a scene in some Italian opera. To think anyone would want to have breakfast under the bed was not only odd but comical.

  “That incident really got my attention when Maggie told me about it,” said Mrs. Axe. “I did honestly laugh and I was really interested in meeting you.”

  She stopped again as if to be reassured that I had heard everything she just said. Relying on past experience I remained silent. />
  Mrs. Axe continued: “It was during that week I decided to go along with Maggie’s request to bring you here. I hadn’t even told Emerson. He wouldn’t have minded one way or the other. Emerson is happy with just being Emerson. He likes what he likes and that’s that.”

  She paused again.

  I got a bit confused and didn’t know if she wanted me to respond, react or say something. I was tempted to reply and make a contribution to the conversation but my head was in such a spin I felt obliged to put my hands to my ears to keep from hearing the noise that was blasting away inside.

  I commented on the first day I arrived at the castle door and was greeted by Mr. Axe and how we all reacted towards each other.

  Mrs. Axe engaged with me again. “You were solost and tiredthat evening when you arrived with me and Maggie – you just didn’t know where to start or what to say and probably what to even think. And who could blame you? I wanted to reassure you more than I actually did that first day but I didn’t and I want to apologise for that.”

  As I looked at Mrs. Axe from the chair I was sitting on I noticed for the first time that she had closed her eyes. I began to think she had fallen asleep and was not even aware of my presence. I then felt as if I was hit by a blast of thunder while simultaneously a cloud of confused thoughts burst inside of me and Ifelt like I was embracing a religious salvation and the ultimate forgiveness for wanting and wishing the pleasurable images that were suddenly engulfing me. Without having any control whatsoever I was instantly adrift on a mental roller-coaster and believed I was a captive of a happy kind of insanity.

  I leaned over towards Mrs. Axe and lay down on the bed beside her.

  Lying sideways with her eyes still closed, Mrs. Axe whispered, “Close the door.”

  I stood up from the bed, walked to the door and with both of my hands I secured it with a stillness and a quietness I didn’t think I was capable of. When I approached the bed and looked down at Mrs. Axe she rolled over on her back and stared up at me. Her bathrobe had opened and her nakedness captured every aspect of my sight. The shock and excitement made me faint for a moment and I fumbled with dislodging my shoes from my feet. The same ineptness was repeated as I shed my clothing. My very nakedness appeared to be infinite and transparent.