She took a deep breath, trying to centre herself and instantly regretted it as she inhaled what seemed like the entire vehicle emissions of Westbourne Park Road. She spent the next five minutes coughing and thinking she was going to die of lung cancer on the spot. And what would her epitaph be? Here lies Valentine Fleming, failed actress, single, leaving behind no children. Her funeral would just be attended by her mum, brother, aunt, and friends. There would be no one giving speeches about how they remembered her Lady Macbeth and how her Rosalind had defined a generation. There would be no one eulogising about how unfair it was that she had never got the Oscar for Best Actress. No large plasma screen showing her finest moments in stylish black and white, while 'What a Wonderful World' played and there wasn't a dry eye in the church. There would be no white coffin (did that say tacky or timeless chic? She couldn't decide) in front of the altar decorated with lilies and white roses, only a cardboard one because her mother was very eco-aware and would have insisted on sustainable materials. She probably wouldn't allow any flowers at all unless they were grown in this country, because of their carbon footprint. Valentine would end up with a wreath of nettles and hogweed. In fact her mum probably wouldn't let her have a church funeral at all, but would bury Valentine in the back garden, next to the two deceased cats and five hamsters, in some kind of humanist ceremony. She cheered herself up by reminding herself that she'd be dead and wouldn't know anyway.
Twenty minutes later, when her bus still hadn't turned up, panic had well and truly set in. She rifled through her purse, which only contained a solitary fiver, not enough to get her to The Circle Arts Centre, the theatre on Baker Street. She'd have to get a taxi some of the way and then leg it. There then ensued a further five frustrating minutes when every single available taxi ignored her outstretched arm as if she'd suddenly become invisible. In the end she had to practically stand in the middle of the road, risking death to flag one down. The cardboard coffin, hogweeds and burial next to the hamsters might be coming sooner than she realised. Finally one stopped. She got in and quickly explained her cash crisis to the taxi driver. 'We could go via a cash point,' he replied.
'No, there isn't time; I've got to get to an audition. I'll run some of the way,' Valentine said, willing him to put his foot down.
'Oh you're an actress are you? Would I have seen you in anything?' the cabbie asked, pulling away maddeningly slowly, as if he had only just learned to drive.
Fuck, why had she mentioned the audition? She hated telling strangers about her profession; they always asked that question.
'Probably not,' she replied, trying to keep the edge from her voice. She was buggered if she was going to give him a run-down of her CV. She didn't ask him how long he'd been driving a cab or when he'd passed the Knowledge. But that was the thing about revealing that you were an actress; it gave other people carte blanche to ask personal questions.
'Perhaps your big break's round the corner,' the cabbie persisted. 'What's your name and then if you make it I can say that I've had you in the back of my cab. Driven you, I mean!' The cabbie gave a raucous, dirty laugh at his own joke, worthy of Sid James in his Carry on roles, while Valentine rolled her eyes and squirted a shot of Bach Rescue Remedy into her mouth to stop herself telling him to piss off.
'Candy Beaver,' she lied, instantly regretting giving herself a porn-star name, and quickly got her copy of A Midsummer Night's Dream out of her bag as a barrier to further conversation. She liked to get to auditions in plenty of time, but at this rate she would have just seconds to spare. She chewed her nails (a disgusting habit she knew and promised herself that if she got the part today she'd stop doing it) and squirted more Rescue Remedy into her mouth. You couldn't OD on it could you? After what seemed like two minutes the meter hit five pounds.
'That's your lot,' the cabbie said cheerfully, pulling over. 'Good luck in the audition Candy,' he called after her as she thrust the fiver at him and opened the door. Then she started running, thinking bitterly that if she had been No Talent Moore the driver would have taken her all the way. Then again if she was NTM she wouldn't be going to an audition for an off-West End play in the first place. Almost instantly her hair, which she had so carefully arranged into an elegant bun, started breaking free and cascading down her shoulders, leaving behind a trail of pins. A bad omen. Curly hair was like marmite and aroused strong feelings in people, which was why she preferred to keep it tied back at auditions.
Fifteen minutes later, dishevelled-haired, red-faced (the extra blusher had definitely been a mistake) and out of breath, she burst into the theatre building. She was nearly ten minutes late – a complete audition no-no – and saying the bus hadn't come would sound pathetically lame. She'd blown it. There was no one in the foyer and guessing that they were all in the theatre she tentatively knocked at the large green door in front of her. There was no reply. Bollocks, what should she do? Stay out here? Or go in? But say they were in the middle of a scene? She pressed her ear against the door straining to hear anything. Nothing. She knelt down and tried to look through the keyhole but something seemed to be blocking her view.
She was just about to get up when the door opened and she found herself staring straight into a denim crotch. A very nice one, she had to admit – just the right proportions – but oh God never mind that now! She just hoped it wasn't the director, or maybe it would be good if it was. She had never gone the casting-couch route before but frankly right now she was willing to try almost anything to get a part. Hastily she averted her gaze upwards into an amused pair of dark-brown eyes, owned by a very handsome man. Surely too striking to be a director? He had leading man stamped all over his gorgeous face and his broad-shouldered, sexy, lean-limbed body, all six foot two of it by her reckoning, though it was hard to be sure from the position she was in.
'I don't usually have this effect on women on first meeting – I'd say usually halfway through the second date,' he said smiling, his brown eyes with a very naughty glint in them. Was he flirting with her?
Valentine felt at a horrible disadvantage. She hastily scrambled to her feet and stuck out her hand. 'Valentine Fleming. I'm so sorry I'm late.'
'Really? A Valentine on Valentine's Day? But isn't it a boy's name?' he asked as he shook her hand. His hand felt cool and firm. Valentine prayed that hers didn't feel sweaty. She did so hate a moist palm herself.
'Yes, it's a boy's name,' Valentine replied, trying not to go into surly teenager mode – people were always telling her this. 'I was born on Valentine's Day and so that's why my mum chose it.'
'Happy birthday then,' the good-looking man said. 'We've got a bit of a theme here as I'm Jack Hart. Harts and Valentines, we go together.' All right he was good looking, but he also seemed a bit of a wanker.
'So you're not the director, are you?' Valentine asked, surreptitiously trying to smooth down her wild hair as she followed him into the theatre. She paused for a moment, trying to orientate herself in the space – there was a stage in the middle of the room, and tiered seats on three sides, which could probably seat two hundred. She liked the feel of it.
'Nope, another actor like you. The director's just nipped out for a fag, said he'd be back in a minute.' His dark-brown eyes moved over her appraisingly. 'You might want to do up your dress before he gets back, unless it's deliberate, in which case, very nice.'
Valentine looked down. The wrap dress had unwrapped. Her come-to-bed black lace bra was on full display. Usually it was strictly reserved for the bedroom, as it was ferociously scratchy and totally revealing but she'd had to wear it as she'd run out of clean lingerie.
'Don't worry, it could have been worse. I once did a whole audition with my flies undone,' Jack continued.
'Did you get the part or just show yours?' Valentine muttered sarcastically, feeing that Jack Hart, although undeniably attractive, was way too cocky. She would have bet money on him having gone to public school and then to Oxford. He had that kind of easy confidence that only came with money and privilege and alw
ays getting what you wanted. She was self-aware enough to admit to having a slight chip on her shoulder, having gone to a rubbish comprehensive, and coming from a very non-theatre family, where the only books in the house were John Grishams and Dan the Da Vinci Code Brown's, and the only family trips to the theatre had been to pantomimes.
'Both, actually.'
Jammy bastard. She turned away and pulled her copy of A Midsummer Night's Dream from her bag, wanting to compose herself for the audition.
'Love the hair by the way, very pre-Raphaelite.'
Damn, it must be looking wild.
'And I wouldn't bother reading that,' Jack said, seeing her book. 'I had a quick chat with Vince, the director, and he wants us to improvise.'
The horror, the horror, the horror! Valentine had one of those heart-of-darkness, staring-into-the-abyss moments. She hated improvising at auditions. You never knew quite what you were supposed to be doing and as you didn't know the other actors there was none of the feeling of trust, which was what improvisation was supposed to be based on.
'So what part are you up for?' Valentine asked, her heart sinking – all those hours she'd wasted getting into the role of Titania.
'Bottom,' Jack replied, grinning wickedly. 'So you're in love with me.'
'Yeah, only because I've been drugged!' Valentine shot back.
At that moment Vince, the director, walked into the hall. He was a small, intense-looking man in his mid-twenties, dressed in a long black military-style coat several sizes too big for him and scruffy Converse trainers. Valentine immediately switched into charm mode and introduced herself, shrugging off her irritation with the arrogant Jack. Vince, who she noted had a moist and limp handshake, then launched into a long and frankly tedious explanation of how he saw the play, during which Valentine could feel her eyes glazing over. Sylvia, her agent, had raved about him, saying that he was an up-and-coming director; he'd been to Oxford and was well-connected and bound to be destined for great things. 'Get in with him now, darling, is my advice. And you never know who'll come and see the show – it could be your big break.' When Valentine had first signed up with Sylvia she had hung on her every word, convinced that success was only just round the corner. Now she was wise to Sylvia's tendency to exaggerate.
Jack caught her eye at one point and she saw his lips twitching.
Bugger off, she felt like saying. I need this part!
Vince's vision included having the forest scenes set in a giant club with Titania as a hip DJ, who along with her husband Oberon had a sideline in selling hallucinogenic drugs. 'So right now I want you and Jack to improvise a scene in a club. I'll say no more than that, but Valentine, I want you to make the first move. I'll put some music on to give you some ambience.' He walked over to a portable CD player and pressed play. Dance music pulsed through the theatre, while dread filled Valentine's soul. Then he sat down cross-legged on one of the front-row chairs and leaned forward, looking like an expectant gnome. It was at moments like this that Valentine wondered what had ever possessed her to want to act. Perhaps she should have gone into nursing like her mum. Admittedly there was her phobia of hospitals to overcome, but maybe she could have had aversion therapy or watched back-to-back episodes of ER to get over it. And that way she'd have a steady job where people respected her and did not expect her to humiliate herself on a regular basis. Then she tried to clear her mind of everything. She'd bloody well improvise her arse off . . .
2
Thong and Dance
'How did it go?' Lauren called out from the kitchen, where she was sitting at the table flicking through a magazine and cracking open pistachio nuts, when Valentine let herself into the flat later that night. Valentine slumped down at the worn oak table. The kitchen was an eccentric mix of fifties-style cabinets, a dresser full of mismatched but pretty crockery sourced from charity shops, an old-fashioned butler sink with a leaky tap, and bright egg-yolk-yellow floorboards and walls because Lauren said yellow was good for lifting the spirits. Right now the yellow was doing fuck-all for Valentine's spirits; she put her head in her hands.
'That bad?' Lauren asked sympathetically.
'It was impro,' Valentine muttered darkly.
Lauren took a sharp intake of breath. 'Motherfucker!' She'd recently become addicted to The Wire – the gritty police HBO drama series set in Baltimore, which had caused her swearing to go up a gear – even though Valentine had told her time and time again that only Americans could get away with saying 'motherfucker' and then only drug dealers, cops, rap artists or Samantha in Sex and the City. However Valentine was prepared to let this one go; the impro had, after all, been a motherfucker kind of moment. With some effort she raised her head. 'I had to improvise a scene where I was a sexually predatory older woman, trying to seduce a much younger man. I had to dance suggestively and then kiss, or rather snog this other actor. I felt like I was doing some kind of floor show for the pervy director. In fact it will probably be best if I don't get the part, as fuck knows what he intends the play to be like!' She clasped her hands together in anguish. 'God, why does this happen to me? Why can't I get an audition for the RSC!'
'Wine?'
'I'm sick of my life! It's not fair. I can't go on!' Valentine hammed it up, deliberately mistaking Lauren's meaning.
'Ha fucking ha. Come on, let's have a drink. It's your birthday!'
'Happy birthday to me,' Valentine said miserably.
'Oh cheer up, Lily and Frank are coming up in a minute and if you're depressed Lily will give one of her pep talks and I won't be able to stand that.'
Lily and Frank rented the first- and ground-floor flats respectively of the three-storey Georgian house Lauren had inherited from her uncle in Westbourne Park, just five minutes away from the Portabello Road. On paper that made Lauren sound like a spoilt trustafarian. In reality the house was falling to pieces with damp, a roof that needed redoing, erratic plumbing, no central heating and Lauren had no money to do it up. Nor could Lauren sell the house, as Lily and Frank were sitting tenants. Valentine often felt as she looked out the window from their shabby, bohemian living room on to the beautifully restored pastel-coloured multi-million-pound Georgian houses opposite, that their ramshackle home was like an ancient boat moored in a sea of wealth. Any minute now they'd spring a leak, the water would come pouring in and they'd be lost, but in the meantime they had to keep going, papering over the cracks, painting the flat in the brightest colours. It was like a metaphor for her life.
Lily was an actress in her early seventies who still got occasional parts in BBC radio dramas and Frank was a retired sax player in his late sixties. He suffered from arthritis in his hands, or he would still have played. Instead he spent his time selling antique jewellery on the Portabello Road market and cultivating vegetables and marijuana in the greenhouse in the shared garden, smoking to alleviate the pain – the marijuana that was, not the vegetables. Lily and Frank were a couple but refused to move in with each other, claiming that they liked having their own space too much. They had met in their twenties when both of them were married to other people and despite falling in love, they had stayed married to their partners and only met up again ten years ago when Frank's wife had died and Lily had divorced her husband. Depending on her mood, Valentine either thought it was wildly romantic that they were together now or tragic that they had wasted all those years.
As if on cue Lily knocked at the door and called out, 'It's only us; just wanted to see how the birthday girl got on!'
Valentine rolled her eyes and muttered, 'You'd have thought Lily of all people would know that I don't want a bloody post-mortem!' She adored Lily, who had an absolute heart of gold, but her habit of always asking the girls about whether they had an audition or, when they had them, how they did, drove Valentine to distraction.
Lauren shrugged. 'She means well.' And she called out, 'Come in.'
Lily and Frank walked into the kitchen, both of them wheezing away in harmony. 'So darling, how did it go?' Lily asked, as soon a
s she had got her breath back. 'You didn't let me wish you good luck. I had checked your horoscope this morning and everything was looking in fantastic alignment.'
'It was OK,' Valentine lied, wanting to avoid the analysis.
'Anyway, happy birthday! This is from both of us.' Lily handed over a small, expertly wrapped parcel, which Valentine unwrapped to discover a sweet, diamante bracelet – Lily had an eye for an accessory. As usual she looked stylish in a black forties-style jacket nipped in at the waist and a black and white checked pencil skirt, red suede ankle boots, her silver-white hair cut in a sharp bob, her face carefully made up. Lily had not let herself go. Not for her the sexless old-lady uniform of nylon trousers with elasticated waistbands, fleeces with paw prints and flat Cornish pastie-style shoes. Lily still put in the effort and Valentine admired her style.
Valentine Page 2