Distant Music

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘It’s nothing to do with the actress herself, dear boy,’ he told Oliver, pursing his lips and raising his eyebrows at the same time. ‘By no means, no, absolutely not. I am afraid it goes a great deal deeper than that. She is a friend of her former agent. Someone that Elsie now never speaks of.’

  ‘Isn’t that a bit pathetic?’

  ‘No, not pathetic, Ollie. No one who ever knew Miss Temple would dismiss her as pathetic, Oliver, believe me. Think Lady Mac-you-know-who from the Scottish play, and you only get a little near to Miss Temple.’

  ‘Bad as that, eh?’

  ‘No, worse. Terri-bloody-fying, if you get my meaning? I have never negotiated with anyone so tough. But she did, to give her every due, make Elsie what she is. She devoted all her energy to her, but of course, once Elsie became successful, she kicked her out.’

  Oliver nodded, his eyes becoming matching green mosaics, as they often did when he was, of a sudden, and at last, deeply interested in what someone else was telling him.

  There was a short pause, and then he said, ‘Now, that is something that happens a great deal in the theatre, apparently. Funnily enough I heard Freddie and Mary talking about that only yesterday, after the read-through. Yes, apparently it is quite a syndrome, actors’ wives, agents, all sorts of people, they like working to make someone into a star, but once they are up there, topping the billing, and all that, they get bored and leave them, or kick them out, only to start the whole thing again with someone else. Interesting, isn’t it? It’s the journey to the point of success that involves them, not the arrival. All that plotting and politicking towards something which finally really doesn’t hold much interest for them at all. I say, hope you’re not like that, Portly?’

  Portly smiled half to himself, and half to Oliver, and his eyes which normally wore a benign expression, gazing out at the world as if they had never witnessed anything but kindness, now changed expression.

  If he ever got ‘up there’ again, he would never abandon anyone, not anyone. He would work his legs off for them, and for himself, and he would make quite sure to thank his lucky stars that he had been given that second, glorious, chance to bite at the apple, or get near to the fire, as they called success in America. What was more, he would consider himself the luckiest man in the world.

  ‘No, I don’t think you will find that I am like that, Oliver, not for a single, solitary second. I want everyone on my books to be successful, and stay successful. Nothing else is interesting.’

  He turned away to go into the kitchen of the flat, his thoughts once more on the lasagne that he was making, on the salad that he insisted on turning with his own, admittedly well-washed hands, coaxing each little lettuce leaf and piece of tomato into marrying with his subtle French dressing.

  Oliver lit a cigarette, and smiled. He had really enjoyed seeing that determined expression crossing Portly’s face. More than that, he had gloried in it. After all, now that they had the agency, they had to be grown up. It was a fact, a sad fact, but their salad days were over, for ever, and they somehow all knew it. Things had to start moving for all of them, or else, before they knew it, they would be old, and the curtain would have fallen for the last time – on them.

  But first the curtain had to rise on Love To Popeye. The nerves, the shaking in the shoes, the whitened faces, the colour draining even from lips that had only a few seconds before been coloured with Max Factor lipsticks – it was always the same. The wondering if it was really worth it, each actor or actress asking him or herself the same question. Why had they not taken up market gardening? Or running a corner shop? Why had they decided on acting of all things? Acting that required nerves of steel to just walk on stage and say a line without looking like a complete ass. Acting that required a degree of self-belief that was almost incredibly fantastic. Acting that asked of a human being what no one but a raving idiot would imagine could be possibly possible, namely to be in the right play, at the right time, with all the right actors around you, and all the scenery staying upright, and all the lighting cues happening rather than not happening, and with all the costumes fitting and the wigs staying straight, and the audience in a rollicking good mood, not to mention the critics, and every mum and dad and sister or brother rooting for you, rather than hoping against hope that you will fall flat on your artistic face. To ask this was, quite simply, to ask the impossible of life.

  And yet, it can happen. It is a fact. And for the cast and author, the producer and management of Love To Popeye, it did happen. And it happened so big, and so stupendously, despite the sudden unseasonal heat of the autumnal night, despite the fact that the side doors had to be opened to let in some cold air, and the audience became a sea of waving theatre programmes, and the bar ran out of both warm beer and warm white wine – despite all that, the comedy took off, and ran off, as a comedy has to if it is to win against the audience – all of whom are busy telegraphing their inevitable hostile first night message to the stage: ‘Make us laugh – if you dare’.

  Of course it helped that Elsie looked beautiful, and that she had no first night nerves whatsoever.

  ‘Why aren’t you nervous, Else?’ Oliver had wanted to know, asking her in a sudden and purposefully ferocious manner, because his own lips, hands and body were trembling like jellies on an express train, not to mention everyone else’s, including, for no reason he could quite think, those of both the stage manager and, if you please, the assistant stage manager.

  ‘Because, Ollie, there is really no point at all in being nervous. It is a complete waste of time.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  Oliver’s lips had now started to knock together so that they actually made a burr, burr, burr sort of sound, as they might if he was freezing cold, and his attempts at lighting a cigarette were failing miserably because the cigarette would keep falling out of his mouth on to the shelf in front of his make-up mirror. He looked at Elsie, standing dressed and made up and now staring into his mirror at him. He hated her for being so composed, her lips not trembling, the expression in her slightly protruding eyes one of barely concealed contempt.

  ‘There is no point in being nervous, Ollie,’ she told him in her most bored voice, ‘because, love, it dissipates your energy. The only thing to be nervous about is getting the play right. If you are nervous, then you are thinking about yourself and not the play, or the rest of the cast. Try being a little less selfish, and you will be sure to become a little less nervous, see if you don’t. Being nervous as an actor is exactly like being shy as a person. If you stop thinking about yourself, the nerves, or the shyness, will vanish. Besides, I have decided to strain every nerve not to be nervous. I always do decide this. That is why I am not nervous. And that is what you should do – decide not to be nervous, and the whole silly business will stop.’

  After this, for her, really very deep and searching speech, Elsie had swept out of Oliver’s dressing room, her lip curling, her eyes still flashing veiled contempt at him.

  It worked, of course, and almost straight away.

  The fact that Elsie had made such a show of despising Oliver for practically falling to pieces in front of her meant that he almost immediately found that level of indignation that is entirely necessary if an actor is to pull himself together and not make a cracking ass of himself just because it is a first night, and just as if the play is not going to be played on any other night.

  In the end Oliver bounded on stage giving every impression of not caring a tiny damn if the audience liked him, or his play, or indeed anything that was happening once the curtain rose. He played his own piece as if he was back in the nursery playing only to Cliffie, who, thank God, had elected not to come until the play was ‘run in’, as he put it.

  That neither Elsie nor Oliver would ever be able to remember the first night of Love To Popeye in any detail was quite normal. Actors remember certain aspects of a first night – missed cues, or fluffed lines; spectacular moments – but not the whole performance, and most particularly n
ot if it is a success.

  Bartlett would always remember it because it was the first time a cast that he had produced rose to the occasion in such a way as to make both the play and his production look even better than he could have hoped.

  Mr Stephens remembered it because he had never realised, before he saw himself portrayed on stage by Frederick Darby, that he was so warm-hearted, so kind, so lovable or, indeed, so delightful.

  As a result of Love To Popeye he would say afterwards, ‘I am not nearly as nice as that young man Oliver Lowell made out, you know, really I am not’ – while busily writing out a cheque for yet another local charity.

  And yet even his wife noticed that, perhaps as a result of seeing the play over a dozen times, he became, if anything, more like his character on stage – even, eventually, affecting the same kind of suiting as the actor who had played him, and sporting the same kind of rather elaborate fedora which he raised to his fellow citizens every few seconds, eliciting smiles from many who thought of him now only as ‘that nice man in that play’.

  And yet, despite all its success, everyone involved knew that nothing would come of it for any of them unless someone from some West End management, some spy from the great metropolis, or some international agent, came to view what they had now all come to consider as their little comic masterpiece.

  It is always called ‘luck’ because whatever else can it be called, at the end of the famous day, when someone’s secretary, in an idle moment, reads a newly arrived script and decides that she will induce her boss to put it on? Whatever else can it be called, for goodness’ sake, when a bored man’s car breaks down, and he makes his way to a matinée of a play that he knows nothing about and finds it funny and enchanting, and decides there and then to back a new and more expensive production, take it on tour, and bring it into the West End?

  Of course it was just luck that Denholm Heighton’s Jaguar ‘motor car’ as he always referred to it, developed a fault, and rather than wait at the garage he strolled off and bought himself the last seat in the stalls at that day’s matinee. Despite being in a particularly foul mood, he was won over completely by Love To Popeye and, perhaps more importantly, fell wildly in love with Elsie Lancaster.

  Being allowed backstage after the performance was not a difficulty since Denholm Heighton was one of the most famous names in theatrical management.

  ‘I will take this play on an extended tour of the best dates, and then into the Criterion, or the Comedy, or even perhaps the Haymarket, who knows? It will run and run—’ He paused. ‘I have to say that I have not always admired Freddie Darby in the past, but equally I have to admit that I now take it all back, because I love him in this. And the way he plays the scene with the fedora – well, it is perfection. I could write the reviews now. As for you, Miss Lancaster …’ He turned from Oliver to Elsie, and his smile sent up the temperature of Elsie’s dressing room another few points. ‘The whole of London is going to be at your feet, my dear, within a very few months, of that there is no doubt at all.’

  Elsie smiled what Oliver always called her I think I am going to be sick smile at Denholm Heighton, but murmured, ‘How sweet of you. We didn’t actually think we were quite on song this afternoon.’

  ‘I am now going to book a room at the White Hart Hotel, and stay for the evening performance. Who do I negotiate with?’

  ‘Portly Cosgrove represents us, and Mr Stephens is the management, as you know, but Mr Stephens is leaving all the business side to Portly.’

  ‘Cosgrove.’ Heighton stopped by the door. ‘That name rings a bell – has he been in management?’

  ‘No – at least I don’t think so, no.’

  Elsie smiled, but this time it was not her going to be sick smile, but her best and most dazzling smile. Her you will not remember anything when you wake up from this smile.

  ‘No,’ she told Heighton. ‘Portly Cosgrove is quite new to management. Quite new. Mr Stephens is a businessman in his own right, but he prefers to leave the fine tuning to Portly Cosgrove.’

  ‘Don’t speak to me of fine tuning – blasted Jaguar!’ Heighton frowned, momentarily. ‘What was his name again, did you say?’

  ‘Portly Cosgrove.’

  ‘Good, well, tell him to be here after the performance this evening, and he can come and dine with me at the White Hart Hotel, and we can see if we can’t reach an agreement by midnight tonight. How fortuitous, really, that my wretched motor car broke down. Lucky for me, and I hope, very soon, it will be lucky for you too.’

  He slapped Oliver on the back, quite lightly.

  ‘You are a very clever young man. This play will be a great hit, you know, I am certain of it. It will run and run, and change all your fortunes.’

  He did not add that it would change his too, because they all knew that he was so successful his fortunes did not really need changing. For Denholm Heighton Love To Popeye would be just another hit, whereas for the rest of them, it would be life changing.

  If Denholm Heighton was right, never again would Portly have to put newspaper in his shoes, never again would Elsie carefully count the change from the loaf at the bakery, or spend hours comparing the prices of lipsticks at different chemist shops. Never again would Portly have to balance the budget for their food, making sure that the all-important Creative Leftovers, as he always called them, would carry them through from Tuesday to Friday.

  No, their lives were about to change for ever and ever, but would they, Elsie suddenly started to wonder, become any happier? Surely that would not be possible, because the truth was that since the play had opened they had all become as one in their joy at its success. Now, however, they were going to have to share it with more and more people, and, in some strange way, it would become used, and worse than that – they, Elsie, Oliver and Portly would become used to the success of it, so that it would lose its taste, its reality, its freshness.

  Oliver waited until Heighton had visited all the other actors’ dressing rooms and was wandering back to book himself into the lovely old hotel that stood in the centre of Tadcaster before turning to Elsie and saying, ‘Well, really, I honestly think that the reason managements like this play so much is because of the fact that I have made the theatre manager such a warm-hearted old sweetie! I really do think that. Do you realise what this means?’

  Elsie shook her head, picking up a magazine and pretending to read it with fascination, as she always did when she heard Oliver about to embark on one of his extra-long moans.

  ‘This means,’ Oliver went on, ‘that every time you want a hit in the theatre you have to write a kindly manager into it. I think my next play will have to be called The Kindly Impresario. God, honestly, it makes you sick. All those funny lines, everything you do, every single thing we both do – what did he say about them? Nothing. Just went on and on about how brilliant Freddie was. Really, impresarios!’

  Elsie read on, not looking up. It had started already, as it always did.

  ‘I hope Portly knows how to deal with him. I mean, Denholm Heighton, you know his reputation? Tad Protheroe told me all about him. He chews up provincial managements for breakfast. I hope Portly gets a lawyer to give the contract the once-over before he puts his monicker on it.’

  It occurred to Elsie that a few hours earlier Oliver had hardly heard of Denholm Heighton, but now, of a sudden, he was an expert on him.

  Elsie stared at the stunning dress in the photograph in the magazine she was intent on reading. Soon, pretty soon, she might be able to afford that dress, and the one on the next page, and the one after that. It was unimaginable, and yet true. Except she must not imagine it, or anything else. She must just take one day at a time. Anything more would be madness.

  ‘Beginners, please.’

  They were no longer beginners. Not even Oliver was a beginner, not any more.

  ‘I must see if we can’t get Coco to do the costumes for the touring production,’ Oliver mused. ‘I’ll speak to Portly about that. Because if Heighton is going
to overhaul the production, which he surely must, it would be good for PLL if Coco gets to do the costumes for any new touring production.’

  Elsie put down her magazine and stared at herself in the mirror. Blasted Coco Hampton. It seemed she was going to follow them everywhere, no matter what. ‘You don’t know whether or not she has any talent, do you?’

  Oliver left the dressing room without bothering to answer. Of course Coco had talent. She was, after all – Coco. Coco had always had talent. When he thought of Coco in her little flat with Holly and all those nappies and bottles, he felt nothing but impatience, and yet the thought of not including her in the success of Love To Popeye was simply not a possibility. Coco would do the new costumes, and make a name for herself, and a future for Holly. He would make sure of it, no matter what Elsie had to say on the matter.

  ‘Beginners, please!’

  Their second call, and the curtain was about to rise for the second time that day. Oliver closed his eyes. It was all about to happen. The cold draught that always swept through the set when the curtains rose, the murmur of the audience gradually dying to a hush, the sound of a late arrival, Elsie and himself waiting in the wings to go on, as if drawn by a magnet. Gone were the desperate first night longings to become a market gardener, to do anything rather than go on stage. From now on, for him, there would be no other life, not ever.

  He started to hum as he made his way towards the small stage. Hey diddley dee, an actor’s life for me. And in a very few moments the curtain did indeed rise, on the rest of his life.

  PART THREE

  DANCING TO THE TUNE

  Now you must surely hear it! Ah – at last – I see you do!

  Kenneth Grahame, ‘The Piper at the Gates of Dawn’

  (from The Wind in the Willows)

  Chapter Thirteen