by Rupert Smith
At the end of that number, I sensed a restlessness in the crowd. I had given them so much, and yet they wanted more. I could see Nick furiously gesturing to me from the side of the tiny stage, and remembered the next section of the routine: I removed my jacket and tie and undid the top two buttons of my shirt. Once again, the faces at the front of the stage were beaming. An elderly gentleman handed me a handkerchief from his top pocket to dab the sweat from my forehead, neck and chest; when I handed it back he gave me a bashful glance like a lovestruck schoolgirl.
As I launched into ‘Maria’ I took myself on a little tour of the tables (which didn’t take very long in the cramped spaces of La Bohème), stopping to sing to a few lucky patrons, cheekily drinking from their glasses or puffing on their cigars. One or two of them took advantage of my proximity to unbutton more of my shirt; others slipped notes and cards into my pockets. I regained the stage intact (just) for the final climax of the song, threw my arms open in an all-embracing gesture and took the applause as my shirt, now fully undone and damp with sweat, dropped to the floor.
There had been some disagreement in rehearsals about the grand finale; Nick had suggested that I should continue to disrobe, a suggestion which I found frankly bizarre. Now I saw the sense of the idea; it was what the audience wanted, and who was I to deny them that pleasure? Many of them had come to know of me through the medium of Nick’s marvellous photographs – and those enduring, classic images were now my image. So as Jim banged out the introduction to ‘It’s De-lightful’ I clambered up on to the lid of the piano and removed my boots. By the end of the first verse, both socks had come off. Finally, I wriggled out of my trousers and rolled around on top of the piano in my caleçon. Jimmy didn’t miss a beat, although I’m sure he slowed down; the end of the song just never seemed to come. Eventually I jumped down from the piano, possessed by a frenzy of elation; I knew the audience – and bigger audiences all over the world – was mine. I took my bow as dozens of elderly hands reached out to help me off the stage (or out of my caleçon, I was never sure which) and ran back to the dressing room.
The last thing I saw as I turned to wave goodnight to my audience was the ashen face of Nutter. Our eyes met for a fraction of a second before he turned and, dragging Sue with him, rushed from the club and once again out of my life. Jealousy is an ugly emotion.
The next morning I was sick and remorseful. The evening had ended after a long, boozy party I can’t remember how much champagne I drank. Nick took me back to Holland Park for another modelling session ‘while the muse is fluttering around your shoulders’, of which I remember next to nothing. All I wanted was to creep home to Phyllis, pull the blankets over my head and sleep.
I expected the worst when I returned to Elephant and Castle, but for once Phyllis was all charity ‘You poor, deluded child,’ he said, struck by my grey face and bloodshot eyes. ‘What have they done to you?’ I mumbled some vague story and then burst into tears; I’ve often found that a major professional triumph leaves me emotionally vulnerable. ‘It’s all right now. You’re home. You’re safe.’
Phyllis put me to bed and nursed me through the next two days as I fell prey to all sorts of ridiculous regrets. He confirmed my worst fears, that I’d prostituted my talents, made a fool of myself in front of some of the most influential men in town, lost my oldest school friend and nearly (he said) lost the love and respect of the one man who truly cared for me – Phyllis himself. After listening to this catalogue of my woes, all I wanted was to be cradled like a child. As Phyllis rocked me in his arms, I fell into a deep, healing sleep.
The next day, however, he was less obliging. He had been ‘disgusted’, he said, by my ‘pornographic display’ and feared that I was being exploited by a ‘sex ring’. It was the language of the Sunday papers that Phyllis clandestinely loved to read, and hardly rang true from a man who had forced teenage schoolboys to parade in drag and jockstraps. But there was truth in what he said, and he knew that he’d hit me where it hurt. I too was uncertain about Nick’s motives, nervous about the kind of attention I was getting. And while Nick had taught me many valuable lessons about show business, I couldn’t dismiss Phyllis’s assertion that ‘the man’s a pimp’. Phyllis warned me that there were no short cuts in the theatre; that if I wanted the kind of real, lasting success that my talents truly deserved, I had to pay my dues. Nick, he said, was offering me a quick, one-way ticket to obscurity.
And so, for a while, I came back under Phyllis’s wing. I even agreed to find a job. The manager of the local pub was happy to take me on as a pot boy three lunchtimes and three evenings a week for a small but sufficient wage. I knuckled down, disciplined myself and observed life from behind the bar, noting down the character types that I’d use in later performances. Phyllis was delighted; when I returned, exhausted, from a shift at the pub, it was the most I could do to wolf down some supper and fall into bed.
This state of affairs lasted for three weeks. Then, one morning, I happened to collect the post and found a fat, brown envelope addressed to me. I tore it open, and inside was forty pounds – more than the total amount I had earned at the pub. And there was a note.
First instalment on photo sales. Well done: you’re a star in the making. Lots of plans. Call soon. A bientôt. NN.
Forty pounds! A fortune to a boy of my age. And plenty more on the way, by the sound of it. How could I continue to wear myself down in drudgery when destiny was calling so loud and clear from the other side of London ? As soon as Phyllis was out of the way, I called Nick.
He was in great good humour, making no reference to the fact that we hadn’t spoken for so long. ‘Glad you rang,’ he said. ‘I’m taking you to a party tonight. Some people I want you to meet, you’ll like them. Your sort of people. Pick you up at nine!’
If he’d offered me a million, he couldn’t have seduced me more effectively. Fun, glamour—just the things I’d been missing! I longed to get out of the house, out of SE1, if only for a night; I fully intended to kick up my heels for an evening and return to my job the next day But I just wasn’t meant to have an ordinary life. Fate kept getting in the way.
I told Phyllis I was working late at the pub, and waited for Nick on the corner of the street. He was punctual, rolling up in his sporty little car on the dot of nine. ‘You look immaculate!’ he remarked as we sped away, feeding an appetite for praise that had been starved in recent weeks. As we sped through the city, I could feel myself coming back to life; the adrenalin was pumping through my veins, I was singing, happy to be alive. Maybe Nick was bad for me – but it felt so good!
I didn’t know where we were going, didn’t care. Finally we stopped in St John’s Wood, at a handsome house far grander than any I had ever entered before. ‘Just be your own sweet self,’ said Nick, ushering me through the hallway where my coat was taken by a butler. ‘Everyone’s dying to meet you.’ And there was colour, life, YOUTH ! Young people, beautiful people, sexy, just like me. They thronged the floor, dancing, shouting, laughing, flirting. If I can pinpoint one moment in the sixties when the youth explosion really began, it was then; as I walked into that party something just seemed to click, and life would never be the same again.
A drink was thrust into my hand, and I was whirled around the room. Everyone seemed to know who I was, to like me; and they were all ‘in’ something – models, singers, actors, writers, journalists, designers, painters, politicians. I danced with a beautiful, blonde-haired girl who span me so much I flew, dizzy and unstable, into the arms of a handsome young man who span me back the other way. I was kissed a thousand times, and whenever I took a sip of my drink the glass was magically refilled. Nick was at my elbow all the time, making introductions, oiling the wheels, ensuring that I had the time of my life. ‘Look, there’s Mandy,’ he said, pointing to my blonde dancing partner. ‘I wonder if Christine’s with her ? Oh yes, here she comes. Christine,’ – he presented me to a striking brunette in a tiny black dress – ‘this is Mark.’ Christine kissed me and took me
to meet ‘my friends’, a distinguished collection of foreign gentlemen, one of whom slipped an arm round my waist and took me for a tour of the building. As he spoke no English, and I didn’t speak a word of Russian, our conversation was limited to sign language, but when I returned to the party an hour later I felt I had made an important new friend. Mandy and Christine were delighted that I had been such a hit with ‘the attache’.
When Nick drove me home that night, filling me in with little snippets of gossip about my fellow guests (Mandy and Christine, he informed me, were ‘in terrible trouble’ with the government), he congratulated me on being the life and soul of the party In the next few days I was deluged with invitations, and I accepted them all.
Something was changing in London. The city was waking up from a long sleep, shaking off the misery of the War and the dreary decade that followed. Everyone was full of energy and new ideas – and I was at the centre of it all. Nobody had more fun, nobody laughed harder or danced longer or went to more parties than I did. Was I running away from something? A secret sorrow in my past – the disappointment of my parents, the loss of Nutter? I don’t think so. I was just young and beautiful and very much in demand.
People were so generous then, not just with money but with advice, introductions. I had many ‘protectors’ vying for my attention (and, happily, filling my pockets along the way) – so many, in fact, that even the ultra-mondain Nick began to display his first signs of possessiveness. At one party, I was about to leave with a new friend (I can’t name him of course, but he was a high-ranking minister in the brand new Labour government) who had excellent contacts in Wardour Street and was hoping to get me a part in a film. I didn’t hesitate; surely what was good for me was good for Nick, my mentor and manager. But as we were getting our coats, Nick swooped down on us, frostily demanding, ‘And where are we going?’ before giving my new friend a barrage of his most unpalatable abuse, naming him a pervert of the deepest dye who would have me ‘squirrelled away to Bangkok’, never to be seen again.
My swain fled. ‘Do you know that he just happens to be a very important member of Her Majesty’s Government?’ I began, but for once Nick surprised even me. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out two tickets for the boat train to Paris.
Paris! The very word sent shivers down my spine. Within minutes we were back in Holland Park throwing a few clean clothes into a bag before jumping into a taxi for Victoria. After just one performance in a tiny West End club, I was on my way to the top. And Paris – city of light, the home of romance, couture and cabaret – was waiting for me.
‘Say goodbye to all that, Mark Young,’ said Nick as we boarded the ferry, waving his arm at the dingy little coffee stand that served bedraggled British passengers, badly dressed, huddling against the cold as they waited for their passage. ‘And say bon soir to a new life and a new you!’
As the boat pulled out of the harbour and I watched the white cliffs of Dover receding until they were a dirty smudge on the black circle of our cabin porthole, Nick surprised me again by popping open a bottle of duty-free champagne and pouring two glasses. ‘A votre santé,’ he said, becoming more and more French the further we got from England. ‘How I long to show Paris to you. And how I long to show you to Paris.’ It was a magical moment – the thrill of my first foreign travel, the rush of champagne, the promise of a new life – and Nick captured it in a roll of film that he shot right there and then in our cramped cabin.
Dozing through the French countryside while the train sped from Calais, I woke in time to spruce myself up before we reached Paris. I splashed water on my face, brushed my hair, cleaned my teeth and arranged the beautiful silk cravat that Nick had presented to me on our departure. Emerging from the toilette, I felt every inch a man of the world.
Paris was a revelation. So much more beautiful than London, the streets teeming with women who had stepped straight out of the pages of Vogue, sleek, groomed panthers compared to the over-made-up, pudgy provincials who passed for beauties in London. And the men – they wore hipster slacks, loafers, brightly coloured knits and even carried little clutch bags, the kind of outfit that would have provoked a murder in the Elephant and Castle. Nick booked us into an exclusive hotel a stone’s throw from the Gare du Nord, where the desk clerk smiled politely to Monsieur Nick and showed us to our double room (with double bed) without batting an eyelid. There was no time to settle in – Nick wanted me to experience my first petit déjeuner parisien at a pavement cafe beside the church of St Vincent de Paul.
As I tasted the café au lait (ambrosia compared to the dishwater of London caffs) and bit into my first pain au chocolat, I happily contemplated the fact that Mark Young, the timid, friendless schoolboy who lived with a demented old man in squalid south London, had come an awfully long way in a very short time. Here I was in the heart of the fashionable world, sipping coffee as a handsome waiter smiled and winked at me as if it was the most natural thing in the universe.
‘A centime for your pensées,’ said Nick.
‘I was just thinking how far I’d come,’ I replied.
‘Indeed you have, mon cher. I’d hardly recognize you as the little thief who tried to rob me one afternoon in Soho. No, don’t interrupt, I’m not blaming you. I was impressed. I recognized a spark of talent. How right I was.’
‘Indeed, how right you were.’
There was a pause. I felt that Nick was about to make some announcement that was of great importance to my future. The silence hung in the air for one minute, then another.
‘You’ve changed, Mark.’
I didn’t deny it.
‘I’ve watched you grow and blossom. You’re like a butterfly that’s emerged from a chrysalis. A new person. Unique. Beautiful.’
‘Mais oui,’ I replied, hazarding a little of the French I was already picking up (I have a gift for languages). The waiter looked over again and smiled, striking a match and lighting a pungent cigarette.
‘And a new person must have a new name, a new identity. A name that the world will remember. A name that expresses the new you, the real you.’
Nick pushed a small black box across the table towards me. I opened it, and inside was a heavy silver identity bracelet. I pulled it out of the box and held it up, where it caught the strong morning sun. For a second, I was dazzled by the light. Then, screwing up my eyes, I read the engraving, beautifully rendered in a flowing italic script:
Marc LeJeune
The rest of my long weekend in Paris was a delight. Nick took me to the best boutiques, the best restaurants. And always he had his camera. He photographed me relaxing in the Tuileries, clowning around the Palais Royal, posing against classical statues in the Louvre. There were portraits, casual studies, and an extensive portfolio of shots that he took each afternoon when we returned to our hotel room for siesta.
I was in love with Paris and half in love with Nick; how could I not love a man who had done so much for me? Who had even given me a new name, a name that finally set me apart from the lonely child who was mocked and chased around the playground? That wasn’t me any more. Now I was Marc LeJeune, actor, singer, model, sophisticated international man of mystery I would have said oui to anything Nick suggested. In later years I would pay for my openness, my trust, but how can a young man on his first visit to Paris not believe that the whole world, like him, is in love with life itself? Je ne regrette rien.
On our last evening, over dinner in Montmartre, I agreed to sign a contract that would formalize the business arrangement that had existed for the last few months. In return, Nick made me a solemn promise: international fame by the end of 1965. I could hardly believe what I was hearing, but why should I doubt it? Wasn’t he only telling me what I had secretly known all along?
When we returned to England we set about a punishing round of auditions and interviews. I was out of action for four days in a private ward where Nick paid for the best dental surgeon in the UK to perfect my smile (early portraits show that my teeth, prior to
1965, were slightly crooked at the front). I hardly saw Phylls – I was spending less and less time at his depressing little flat, despite his increasingly pathetic attempts to blackmail me into staying by claiming that his health was failing. I didn’t have time to care for a pitiful old man; and when he really needed me, I wasn’t there for him. But now is not the right time to tell that story. I was too busy and too excited to think about anything else except my career.
Nick was astonishingly proficient and well connected. Producers, casting directors, designers, photographers, columnists – all of them came running when Nick snapped his fingers. Offers of work arrived every day, but Nick turned them all down. We were waiting for something big, something special. ‘There’s no point flogging your arse round provincial rep for four pounds a week,’ he explained when I missed the chance to play my first love, Shakespeare. ‘We can do better than that. You’ve got to believe in me.’ And I could afford to wait; there were plenty of friends to ‘sub’ me until the real money started to roll in.
But I’ve always been impatient, and the agony of waiting for that ‘something better’ was telling on my nerves. True, there were endless parties to take my mind off things, a throng of famous names to meet and a gruelling modelling career to pursue (‘I I can’t get enough of you into my lenses,’ said Nick). But still the big break eluded me.