by Judy Nunn
‘It’s no big deal. Just for my next play, that’s all. We can collaborate again after that.’
‘Why?’
‘I need a bit of space, I suppose. Sometimes I feel I’m too influenced by you.’
‘But that influence has helped you write a great play. That influence has been creative, wouldn’t you agree?’
Julian was beginning to feel a little unnerved.
‘Wouldn’t you agree, Julian?’ Alex persisted.
‘Yes, yes of course, it’s just that …’ How on earth could he offer a reasonable answer? Julian wondered. He only knew that he had to prove to himself that he could write without Alex. ‘To be quite honest, Alex (Oh God, that sounded corny, and he wasn’t being quite honest anyway), you’re a pretty powerful person at times and I … well, I just want to discover myself a bit more, relate to other things about me without your influence affecting my reaction.’ What a wimp he sounded.
Alex smiled patiently. ‘That’s a load of bullshit, Julian, you discovered yourself years ago. You’re one person who knows himself exceedingly well. You always have—it’s the first thing I admired about you.’ He stood up. ‘Want a drink? It’s a bit early, but if we’re going to bust up the partnership we should wish each other luck, don’t you think?’
Julian nodded. Alex poured them both a Scotch and they clinked glasses.
‘It’s David you really want to get to know, isn’t it? Cheers.’ And he took a swig of Scotch. Julian stared at him, unable to speak. ‘I’d give it about six months, a year at the outside. Go for your life, have a good time.’ The smile was pure Alex. Charming and cheeky—and just a little dangerous. ‘I’ll book your next play for a year from now, shall I?’
Was he right? Julian wondered. Was it really that simple? And if it was, then surely to exchange Alex’s influence in his life for David’s and their mutual love was a good thing. So why did he feel such foreboding? ‘How did you know about David?’ was all he could say.
‘Oh, come on now, buddy, you think you can hide anything from me?’
‘How? Nobody knew. Nobody.’
The smile flickered for a moment. ‘I’m not nobody, Julian.’ Then it returned and with it a wealth of warmth and affection. ‘I wish you every success and every happiness—you know that.’
Julian felt slightly ill.
A child’s squeal rose high in the early morning air and shattered itself amongst the columns of Sacre Coeur Cathedral. There was a second’s pause then the child’s voice broke the silence again. ‘Yuk! What is it?’
A tiny, lone figure on the massive steps of the cathedral started picking at the glutinous mess in her hair. ‘Yuk,’ she said again.
‘Cut,’ a voice called. And from behind the arches sprang a dozen people, including hairdresser, makeup artist, cameraman, director and Madeleine Frances, who was first to examine her daughter’s head.
‘Crotte de pigeon,’ she announced and everyone burst out laughing. Maddy looked up at the first of the pigeons settling themselves on their morning roosts to catch the early sun. ‘A pigeon just pooed on your head, Jen,’ she said and the laughter started afresh at the look of disgust on the little girl’s face.
Maddy stifled her own smile and took the box of tissues from the make-up man. ‘Ça va, Jean-Marc. Je vais le faire.’
The director called a short break while Maddy sat Jenny down on the step, squatted beside her and started cleaning the mess out of her hair. ‘Gee, talk about a lucky sign,’ she said.
Jenny looked suspiciously at her mother.
‘I’m not kidding,’ Maddy insisted. ‘Your first trip to Paris and a pigeon poos on your head from the top of Sacre Coeur Cathedral! Wow!’
Jenny continued to study her mother’s face for any telltale sign of duplicity. ‘That’s lucky?’
‘About as lucky as you can get,’ Maddy said. And she meant it.
Jenny smiled back at her. ‘Great!’
It was three days before Christmas and it was cold on the steps of Sacre Coeur. Cold and very beautiful. There had been rain during the night and the whole of Paris sparkled at their feet in the early morning sun. Maddy always loved the view of Paris from Montmartre.
Although this was her third French film—each one shot in Paris—it was the first time she’d been able to bring Jenny along and the director had even insisted on casting the child. It was a small, non-speaking role, Jenny having not one word of French at her command, but she was thrilled nevertheless.
Over the past several years Maddy had polished up her own convent-taught French to a quite passable degree. Not so her Italian. To her humiliation she’d been dubbed in the one and only Italian film she’d made. The director hadn’t minded in the least—he’d expected it. From the outset, he’d booked his sound studios for an extra fortnight for that express purpose. But, always a perfectionist, Maddy had been cross that the three-week Italian crash course she put herself through when she found she had the role hadn’t resulted in her total command of the language.
‘OK, Jen, you’re all cleaned up. Let’s get this show on the road.’
The day’s shoot at Sacre Coeur went smoothly—it was a happy unit and they were on schedule, so there was little pressure—and a wrap was called at four in the afternoon. Maddy wanted an early morning start with Jenny and she hoped everyone would understand when she begged out of the wrap party to be held later that night. They did and there were the customary fond hugs and exchanges of phone numbers which would never be followed up as Maddy said her goodbyes.
When she and Jenny got back to their tiny hotel two blocks from the Champs Elysees the fat lady was in the tiny foyer waiting for the tiny lift. ‘Bonjour,’ she said. ‘Bonjour,’ they replied and started running up the stairs to the fifth floor.
The first day they’d been there the fat lady had insisted they join her in the lift. It had taken them several minutes to get the cage doors of the lift closed around the sandwiched flesh and a further several minutes to concertina them open on the fifth floor.
The stairs were so tiny that they had to jog up in single file. They always jogged and they were always out of breath by the time they arrived, but it was all part of being in Paris and they loved it. And from their tiny room they could see the Arc de Triomphe.
‘When I’m a famous actress I’m going to buy a little flat in Paris,’ Jenny panted, leaning out of the window, ‘and it’s going to have a view of the Arc de Triomphe.’
‘Good for you.’ Maddy lay flat on her back on the double bed which virtually took up the whole room and gasped for breath.
They went to their favourite restaurant that night where Jenny had her usual frogs’ legs in white wine sauce and half of Maddy’s escargots a la maison.
‘For a nearly-ten-year-old you have sophisticated and very expensive tastes,’ Maddy said. ‘You’d better hope you meet a millionaire somewhere along the line.’
‘Why? I’m going to be a millionaire myself.’
‘Quite right, dumb statement, and don’t talk with your mouth full of snails.’
The following morning the tiny maid—all the staff in the hotel seemed to be tiny—arrived with their huge cups of steaming cafe au lait, croissants, bread rolls and jams at seven o’clock. By half-past eight they were off on their tour of Paris.
This may well be one of the happiest days of my life, Maddy decided, as she looked at Jenny skipping through the Tuileries Gardens. But then, she thought, so many of the happiest moments of my life these days relate to Jenny.
I haven’t been a good mother, she mused, as she watched the child throwing bread to the clusters of pigeons fluttering at her feet. Too much ambition, too many rungs of the ladder to climb. And there still are, aren’t there? she asked herself. Madeleine Frances has a long way to go yet, Maddy McLaughlan, so don’t kid yourself you’re going to change overnight. Strange how totally Jenny understands, though. Hell, Jenny understands me better than I do myself.
Already Jenny was determined to be an actor, just
as her mother had been determined at the age of ten, but, probably through Maddy’s example, Jenny seemed very aware of the sacrifices involved. It had even been Jenny’s idea to delay their trip to Australia by twelve months. True, Maddy had given her the unspoken option. What a shit I am, she thought, hating herself as she told Jenny about the West End offer—I shouldn’t have said a word. But then came the flood of relief at Jenny’s reply: ‘You can’t knock back your first lead in the West End, Mum; we’ll have to put the trip off.’
The following day Maddy had gone out and bought two first-class return Qantas air vouchers, which she planned to give to Jenny on April the 13th, her tenth birthday. At least the poor kid can look at them for a year, she thought, and she swore to herself that no matter what offer came up, they were off to Sydney in 1982. Jenny’ll be eleven and I’ll be, oh hell, Maddy groaned, thirty. Midlife crisis time, don’t think about it.
Maddy rarely did think about age, but then she didn’t have to. She still looked eighteen. At times she cursed her extraordinarily youthful appearance—when was she ever going to play the great classic roles?—but she was also fully aware that it was one of her main assets. Her gamine image, with her delicate bone structure and short cropped blonde hair, was particularly popular with the European film directors.
‘Come on, Jen, I’m starving.’
Jenny finished feeding the pigeons and they walked through the gardens and sat on one of the park benches near The Louvre to eat their mid-morning crispy rolls with camembert cheese.
‘Oh no!’ Jenny exclaimed when she got up. ‘I s’pose you’ll tell me this is lucky too.’ She pointed at the pigeon mess on the back of her jeans and Maddy burst out laughing.
‘Well, why does it have to happen to me?’ Jenny was very indignant. ‘Why didn’t it happen to you?’
‘Because I look before I sit on a park bench, stupid.’ Maddy stood up, still laughing. ‘Come and we’ll wash you down in the loo.’
This time though, Jenny wasn’t going to be as easily humoured and she was still grumbling fifteen minutes later as she passed by the Venus de Milo, unimpressed. ‘She’s got no arms,’ she said, rubbing the seat of her wet jeans, ‘and I’m cold.’
Maddy looked at the strong little face. Jenny was angry. There was an irritable scowl in place of the customary direct gaze and even the sprinkling of freckles across her nose were flushed with annoyance. Strange how someone could have freckles in the middle of a European winter, Maddy thought. The true Aussie genes, I guess. Oh, hell, she really is mad at me, I shouldn’t have laughed at her. I wonder what I can do to jolly her out of it?
Then they turned the corner into another gallery and there, on the far wall, was the Mona Lisa.
‘Looks just like the postcards,’ Jenny said sullenly. ‘And it’s not very big.’
‘Go and look at it from over there,’ Maddy suggested and Jenny walked reluctantly to the far wall, giving her wet backside an ostentatious rub on the way. She stood there for at least a minute. Then she walked to the opposite wall, then walked up close to the barriers around the painting, prowling from side to side as close as she could get to it. The guard seated by one of the gallery doors gave her a warning glance. Finally, she returned to her mother, excited, her eyes glowing. ‘Mum, everywhere I go she’s looking at me.’ The derisive laughter and the wet backside were both forgotten.
At the end of the day the Mona Lisa was still the highlight. The ferry trip down the Seine, the market stalls along the embankment, even the coach trip out to Versailles and the guided tour of the palace paled into insignificance by comparison.
‘How can they do that, Mum?’ Jenny asked as she was tucked into bed. ‘How can they paint a picture that follows you everywhere?’
‘I don’t know, Jen, I guess that’s why it’s a masterpiece. I’m sorry I laughed about the pigeon poo.’
‘Oh, that’s OK.’ A big yawn. ‘Gee, I wonder how they do it.’
‘Rodney!’ As Maddy walked out of the customs hall at Heathrow Airport the first person she saw was Rodney Baines.
‘Roddie! Hi!’ Jenny ran to him and he picked her up and spun her around.
‘Hello, trouble,’ he said, then, ‘Oh, sorry,’ as Jenny’s sneaker clocked the woman beside him in the small of the back.
‘You shouldn’t have come out to meet us.’ Maddy kissed him on the cheek as he put Jenny down and took their suitcases. ‘Honestly, I didn’t expect you to.’
‘Didn’t have anything better to do.’ Rodney shrugged. ‘I thought you might want to have a Christmas Eve lunch before you head off for Windsor.’
‘We’d love to,’ Maddy said. ‘But let’s go home and get some unpacking done first.’
An hour later they were trudging up the four very steep flights of stairs to Maddy’s apartment in Great Titchfield Street.
The first thing Maddy had thought when the estate agent showed her the building two years before was ‘Oh no! More stairs!’ but, once she saw the apartment itself, she knew she’d be happy climbing a further four flights if this was at the top.
From then on, every time she opened the door to the cosy living room with its heavy wooden mantelpiece and large open fireplace, it made Maddy happy to think that this was hers. Today was no exception. ‘Hello, home,’ she said and threw herself gratefully into one of the monstrous but comfortable armchairs she’d bought at Shepherds Bush markets.
Although the living room was large, the two bedrooms, kitchen and bathroom which led off from the sides were tiny. Maddy didn’t mind one bit. The whole place oozed with character and the narrow spiral staircase on the landing outside her door led to a communal rooftop which gave her spine-tingling views of the other rooftops and chimney pots of Central London.
‘How did the movie go?’ Rodney asked, slurping on his milkshake. They were seated in The Drugstore waiting for their hamburgers. They had made the mistake of letting Jenny choose the restaurant.
‘But there are a hundred decent places within walking distance Jen, why Chelsea?’
‘Because I like The Drugstore and you said I could choose.’
‘And because she wants a ride in the Jag, of course,’ Rodney said.
‘Of course,’ Maddy nodded. ‘Ask a silly question …’ Jenny adored driving around in Rodney’s silver Jaguar. In summer he’d open the sun roof for her and in winter he’d turn the heater full on. Today there was an icy hint of snow in the air and Maddy had snuggled up cosily in the back seat watching the streets of London glide by.
‘You’re getting quite a name for yourself with these European chaps, aren’t you?’ Rodney said after Maddy had told him briefly about the shoot. ‘That’s wonderful.’
‘All thanks to the magic we created, my darling.’ Maddy raised her strawberry milkshake. ‘Here’s to Androgyne.’
Rodney was right. Maddy’s popularity with European film-makers was a direct result of her performance in Androgyne which had rapidly developed a cult following amongst cinéma vérité fans. The films offered her were all of the modest-budget variety but they were, in the main, interesting and worthwhile and Maddy had become very popular in art cinema circles.
Of course Phil Pendlebury was still approached with the stray enquiry about Maddy’s interest in making pornographic films—such was the erotic power of Androgyne. But, thanks to the skilful direction of Viktor Hoff, the overall effect of Androgyne had remained artistic and it was hailed in elite circles as a lesson in good-taste erotica.
Maddy had certainly had her doubts as to its good taste during the filming. If it hadn’t been for her faith in Viktor Hoff and the persuasive powers of Phil Pendlebury (‘There is such a thing as a contract, lovie, you could well get blacklisted’) she would have walked out.
Her misgivings revolved around Rodney Baines. And after the first week of filming, every other member of the cast and crew felt the same. It wasn’t that anyone disliked him. In fact they all agreed that he was possibly the most pleasant man they’d ever met. And, because he was so affab
le, even the most censorious critic quickly forgave him his pornographic background. A man was entitled to earn a living whichever way he chose, after all, and here the poor fellow was trying his level best to become a legitimate actor; it was beholden upon his workmates to give him all the help they could. And they did. They gave him crash courses in movement, voice, acting, camera technique, all of which Rodney deeply appreciated. He was a keen pupil and his performance rapidly developed. The wooden quality disappeared and was replaced by a confidence and control he’d never had before.
Not so his penis. His penis was utterly uncontrollable and, despite his own anger and frustration, showed no sign of obeying any form of discipline whatsoever.
Viktor had decided to shoot the film in sequence wherever possible, so for the first week, when clothes remained on, Rodney’s trouble with his penis wasn’t evident. The second week, however, when they started on the nude scenes—and there were many—the problem quickly became evident.
‘Cut!’ Viktor yelled.
The moment Rodney had lowered his underpants his giant penis had sprung to the fore.
‘Roddie, Roddie, no, no, no! You must control your erection,’ barked Viktor in his broken English. ‘No erection in soft-core, you understand?’ He noticed Maddy’s reaction and quickly added, ‘A term only, my dear Madeleine, “artistic” is what we do here.’
Then he drew Rodney to one side and spelled the rules out as simply as he could. ‘We have soft-core pornography licence, Roddie, and in soft-core, no hard cock, you understand? No real sex and no hard cock. Full frontal we can do, yes, but always floppy, you understand?’
‘I understand. Sorry, Viktor.’
‘Is OK. You do good job.’ Viktor turned to the crew, waving his hands expansively. ‘Everybody do good job. Madeleine, you are beautiful.’ He blew her a kiss. ‘Setting up for another take, please.’
‘Cut!’ The same thing happened. And it happened again and again and again.
‘I’m sorry,’ Rodney said each time, mortified. ‘I really am awfully sorry.’