I Must Confess

by Rupert Smith

  ‘I’m so sorry that you wasted your money,’ I said to Nick as I dropped the newspaper on to his desk. ‘Let’s remember our time together as something beautiful.’

  Nick shot me one of his looks, the kind that once had me cowering in fear and eager to please. They no longer worked. ‘I’ll be out all day,’ I said, hoping to avoid a scene. No such luck.

  ‘You will be in meetings with me all day, young man,’ he breathed, ‘talking to producers, directors and publicists. We have work . . . to . . . do . . .’ He could hardly get his words out; I could sense the anger coming off him in waves of bad, blocked energy. I tried to keep visualizing sky blue, coral pink, grass green, but Nick was still a powerful force, dragging me back to his vicious level. For a moment we faced each other in silence. Then I spoke, calmly.

  ‘Let me go, Nick.’

  ‘Not on your life.’

  ‘We’ve worked together well. We had our time. It’s passed. Now I must move on. I’ll never forget you.’

  ‘Damn right you’ll never fucking forget me, you ungrateful little shit.’ Nick was actually spitting now, flecks of saliva glittered in his beard. ‘You will drop all this crap and come back to work today or I will make you sorry you were ever fucking born, Marc. Do you understand me?’

  ‘I understand you and I pity you, Nick.’ I tried to lay a hand on him to calm and heal him, but he knocked it away

  ‘What’s the matter with you ? Are you on drugs ? What have they done to you ? This is everything we’ve worked for, everything you’ve ever wanted. Why do you think I keep pulling you out of one scrape after another? Because I believe in you. Because, despite the fact that you are so lacking in the brain department, I still believe that you have talent! And now you expect me to sit here and watch you throw it all away ? Well I won’t let you.’

  I was impressed. For once, Nick was being honest, finally recognizing that I was an artist in my own right, not just a piece of meat to be paraded before a hungry public. But it was too late.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to hurt you. I must have my freedom. If you really believe in my talent, let it grow, let it flower and fly. I appreciate all you’ve done for me, but I can no longer work in the decadent, corrupt traditions of Western theatre. I have found a new world, Nick,’ (he was practically crying with fury by now) ‘and I must follow my heart.’

  Suddenly, Nick was calm. ‘If you leave me now, Marc,’ he said, standing, ‘you must understand three things. Firstly, we will never under any circumstances work together again. Secondly, I retain absolute rights over all the work we’ve done of whatever kind. And thirdly, you agree never to seek any kind of financial settlement from me. If you agree, you can shake my hand and you’re free to go and throw your career down the pan. Or you can stay, we can work together and I’ll forget all the problems you’ve caused me. What’s it to be?’

  There was no question in my mind. Why did Nick think he could lure me with money? I held out my hand in a gesture of farewell. He understood. ‘Just one moment, then, before we say goodbye,’ he said, rummaging in his drawer. ‘You want to be absolutely, legally free of me, don’t you?’ I nodded. ‘So let’s have it in writing. No arguments, no unpleasantness. Just sign here.’ It was a simple document, formalizing the conditions that Nick had spelled out to me before. I signed and dated it, shook Nick’s hand and went to my room to pack a few belongings. When I left the house with a hold-all and a few carrier bags, Nick said goodbye with a friendly smile and a wink. ‘Good luck for the future, mate!’ he shouted after me as I skipped down the stairs. Who would have expected him to be so reasonable ?

  I went from Holland Park straight to the Outer Space, where Moska was holding another class, this time for his whole company There were many familiar faces there – Julian, of course, Anna, even Nutter – as well as a handful of performers whom Moska introduced as ‘my corps de ballet’, a collection of thin, beautiful men and women who were warming up and stretching amidst clouds of cigarette smoke.

  When I appeared in the room with my bags, the strain of a recent parting must have shown in my face. Anna swamped me in a huge motherly embrace, and for once I found her emotional openness (which had sickened me before) strangely comforting. I knew that I had a home, I had friends. I was learning to relax and take life as it came. Even Nutter was warm in his greeting, although I could see that he was nervous in this new company.

  We had gathered at the Space for a ‘workshop’. I was expecting a script and a readthrough, but when I asked Moska about the show and my role in it he simply beamed, made a few expressive hand gestures and scampered across the room to join the dancers. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Julian, ‘this is how he always works. The show has to evolve out of improvisation. Just relax.’ He handed me a joint, and I was grateful for the wave of peaceful wooziness that it imparted.

  The initial exercises completed, we sat in a large circle on the floor and began the ‘guided trip’ that initiated Moska’s method. First of all we joined hands and closed our eyes and hummed. Then we played ‘word catch’, throwing random phrases across the circle to each other. Nutter was squirming with embarrassment, but soon the drugs calmed him and he sat there laughing to himself. Then came the class proper, a welcome opportunity to actually do something rather than just sitting about. Moska put us into pairs (I was partnered with Anna ; Moska himself took Nutter) and began to lead us in a dance, the only accompaniment a rhythmic clash of finger cymbals. There were no formal steps, but I improvised a casual foxtrot while Anna ground her pelvis in a figure-of-eight pattern. We were not a comfortable partnership. After we’d tottered inelegantly round the room for a few minutes, Anna gripped me firmly by the hips and jammed our groins together.

  ‘You’ve got to learn to relax, Marc,’ she whispered in my ear. ‘You’re so tense. Move your hips with mine, babe.’ She began her pelvic grind again. ‘White middle-class men are so uptight about their bodies. Come on, feel the rhythm. That’s it. Round and round and round and round . . .’ I glanced across to Nutter, who was mutely suffering a similar mauling from Moska, but was too stoned to care. ‘Try and be a little less Western in your thinking,’ murmured Anna in my ear. ‘Go with the flow, baby . . .’ Julian, sailing past in the arms of one of the ballet dancers, deftly inserted the ever-burning joint into my mouth. I took a long, deep drag, and another, and another. I began to see why, in underground circles, cannabis was such a popular drug – it completely inhibited any sense of embarrassment at the foolish pranks that comprised so much of the lifestyle.

  The dancing lesson over, we sat down once again for a ‘rap session’ – a discussion of the news and views of the day that would ‘inform’ the show. And there was only one subject on people’s minds: the events in Paris. It was May 1968, a month that would go down in history For the first time that afternoon, Nutter came alive, recounting with enthusiasm a narrative of street violence, barricades, sit-ins and strikes that had turned Paris into ‘ a battleground in the struggle’. How different from my memories of the city where I had wandered, so innocent, at the side of that grand boulevardier Nick Nicholls. Now the world of chic cafes, the hushed interiors where money talked while waiters whispered, that paradise of the élite was all to be swept away in the fires of the glorious revolution! This was our storming of the Bastille, our October revolution, the defining moment that marked cataclysmic change.

  The day wore on in more exercises and discussions, although by four o’clock everyone (including our director) was so high that nobody could remember what anyone else had said, and we spent the last hour of rehearsal rolling around giggling. Finally, as everyone was leaving, Moska took me to one side.

  ‘I can count on you, yes, Marc?’ he asked, taking my hands in a characteristic gesture. ‘To me you have become necessary, the central point of my art, my . . . inspiration.’ He whispered the final word.

  ‘Of course. I’m a professional. You can rely on me, don’t worry’

  ‘And if sometimes my metho
ds are a little different, you won’t . . . what do your friends say ? Freak out ?’

  ‘Of course not.’ I was beginning to worry; there had still been no mention of money or an opening date. Just at that moment, Nutter bounded across the room and gripped me around the waist.

  ‘Fie, wrangling queen! Whom everything becomes – to chide, to laugh, to weep! Come my queen! Last night you did desire it!’ He tore me from Moska and held me in a melodramatic clinch. He had remembered! After all these years Nutter had remembered one of our greatest scenes from Antony and Cleopatra. All my doubts were swept away; I knew then that destiny intended me to star in this new role, and that I must not be ensnared by something as unimportant as money.

  But the worm of suspicion was gnawing away in my mind. What did Moska want from me ? Was it simply a question of two creative souls calling to one another across such very different disciplines ? Or did Moska have another, baser motive? My doubts deepened during a late-night conversation at home (I was sharing a room, but nothing else, with Julian). Moska, he revealed, had learned from a casual conversation in a gay bar that I, Marc Lejeune, had taken to hanging out at the house. Suddenly he had been inexplicably keen to offer parts to anyone who wanted them, to which Julian, star-struck like so many homosexuals, responded eagerly. Soon the whole house had roles in the new Moska show, on one condition: they must deliver Lejeune.

  ‘Why is he so keen on me, Julian?’

  ‘He thinks you’re fabulous and gorgeous and so do all of us,’ replied my ingenuous room mate.

  ‘Is that all ? Has he ever said anything else about me ?’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose he has . . .’ I immediately detected a reluctance, as if something was being hidden from me.

  ‘Go on, Julian.’

  ‘I don’t know if I should.’

  I was seductive, moving closer. Julian couldn’t resist me. ‘He said he needed a star. He said he was sick of playing to empty rooms above pubs. He wants success so badly, Marc, and he thinks you can give it to him.’

  So that was it. I was confused. On the one hand I felt hurt that Moska had compromised my artistic integrity with this crass gesture towards Mammon. On the other hand I was flattered that the underground theatre had recognized me as an important cultural icon, one that could be explored and even exploited in the right theatrical setting. So who was using whom ?

  For the next week, I lay low, going to workshops at the Outer Space during the day, relaxing with Nutter, Anna and Julian at night. They had become like family to me: Anna the loving mother I had never known, Nutter and Julian the brother and ‘sister’ (his term) I had missed so much as an only child. I kept out of Nick’s way; he had no way of finding me, and I thought it better to let him lick his wounds. He’d soon find a new protégé – God help him. But soon I felt the time was right to make the final break; and besides, I needed to collect my belongings from Holland Park and settle my account with Nick Nicholls Ltd.

  I arrived late one afternoon. I knew Nick’s hours: he was always to be found at home around this time, recovering from lunch. I let myself in at the street door and climbed the old familiar stairs, a thousand memories crowding to meet me with every step. I almost felt a wave of affection as I put the key in the lock of the flat – Nick and I hadn’t always been unhappy together, I remembered, and we had achieved a lot. ‘The old team!’ I thought with a sigh, hoping that a friendship could be salvaged from the wreckage.

  But the key would not turn. It was an old lock, and sometimes prone to stick; I jiggled the key and tried again. No luck. I took the key out, inspected it, and tried again. The lock had been changed.

  Immediately, I sensed trouble. I’m an intuitive person, like so many actors. I knocked on the door. Silence.

  I knocked again, louder, and listened intently. I could hear Sugar barking and yes, there was the unmistakable flip-flop of Nick padding down the tiled hallway in his leather slippers. I must have woken him from a nap. The footsteps stopped at the door; once again there was silence.

  ‘Nick?’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s me!’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘It’s me, Marc! I’ve come to pick up my stuff!’

  ‘Go away.’

  Sugar was barking hysterically at the sound of her lost master’s voice, scrabbling wildly at the door that stood between us. ‘I won’t be a minute, Nick Just let me get my books and clothes and stuff and I’ll be out of your way.’

  ‘You’re too late, Marc.’

  ‘What do you mean ?’

  ‘Remember that piece of paper you signed ? I can’t believe you’ve got the nerve to come back here after what’s happened.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve got nothing to say to you, Marc. Get yourself a lawyer. Goodbye.’

  I was completely at a loss. What had I signed? Did I really have no right to my clothes, my jewellery, the personal belongings accumulated over a number of years, many of them gifts ?

  ‘Let me in, Nick!’ I shouted. He sensed the fear in my voice and was ruthless.

  ‘Get out, or I’ll call the police.’

  ‘Nick, for Christ’s sake, what’s going on? Let me in!’

  I was banging on the door in my frustration. Heads were peering round doors along the landing; Sugar was whining pitifully

  ‘I’m giving you a count of ten, Marc, and then I’ll call the police. Run along now. Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven . . .’

  There was no point in arguing. I ran down the stairs, but before I left the building I heard Nick’s door open. I stopped in my tracks. Had it all been a joke?

  ‘Oh, and Marc,’ he shouted down at me, ‘I’d suggest you read the Evening News.’ The door slammed.

  I stepped back on to the street in a daze, sick in the stomach. I needed a drink. I marched smartly down to Shepherd’s Bush, heading for a favourite pub that I knew Nick would never be seen dead in (a haunt for the local motorcycle community). As I passed the station news stand, I was reminded of Nick’s parting words: there was the old vendor as usual, crying, ‘Paper late! News or Standard! News or Standard!’ I thrust the money into his hand and tucked the News under my arm. As soon as I was settled in the pub with a large brandy inside me, I began to scan the paper.

  Nothing on the front page, just the latest news from France, where the ‘May Events’ were spreading throughout the nation. (I’d read that later and use it in tomorrow’s workshop.) Boring political news on pages two and three. Adverts. Gossip. Sport. What was he on about? A-ha, I thought, Pinky’s column. But there was nothing: just a bitchy review of a new West End musical, and some idle speculations about Marianne Faithfull. Nick had been trying to frighten me. Then I noticed, in bold type at the bottom of the page, ‘DON’T MISS WEST END SCANDAL SPECIAL PAGE 19’. Again, that old intuition; my palms began to sweat. With a terrible foreboding, I turned to page 19. The first thing that caught my eye was a large photograph of me from Kill Me, Darling (a dashing portrait in which I was holding a revolver) under the banner headline DEATH OF A REGULAR GIRL. At first I couldn’t take it in. My eye glanced across the page to a smaller, grainier picture: a stretcher being loaded into the back of an ambulance, its contents covered by a sheet. I read the caption underneath: ‘Dead at dawn: the body of tragic Janice Jones is removed from her London flat.’

  I read the article from the beginning:

  Popular actress-model Janice Jones was last night found dead in her London apartment, after her eight-year-old son Noel telephoned for an ambulance. An empty bottle of pills was found near the body, but at this stage the police are still regarding the circumstances of her death as ‘suspicious’.

  Miss Jones was believed to have been depressed by the end of her relationship with Marc Lejeune, her co-star in the famous ‘Regular Guy’ TV commercials, who is said by friends of the actress to have broken off their engagement in an ‘abrupt and callous’ fashion. Miss Jones’ home was full of memorabilia of Lejeune: posters, framed cuttings, even a life-size cut-o
ut of the Bran Pops star, who recently absconded from rehearsals for the million-pound West End musical Danish Blue and is facing legal action from former manager Nick Nicholls.

  This is not the first time Lejeune’s name has been involved in police investigations. Just two years ago, Lejeune was implicated in the mysterious death of 68-year-old Bernard Phillips, his former schoolteacher and ‘companion’, with whom the actor was living as a lodger. Police inquiries in that case focused on the strange marks found on the dead man’s body, and the unexplained gap between the time of death and the phone call to the ambulance service. The police investigation was finally dropped due to lack of evidence.

  I couldn’t believe what I was reading. What did Pinky care for the fact that I’d just lost one of my dearest friends – poor, fragile Janice, whose death suddenly hit me like a rabbit punch. I ran to the toilet and was violently sick.

  I had to have another drink, and another, to stop myself from shaking. I read through the article again, finding yet more insinuations and lies. I was not only implicated in two deaths, it went on to say, but I was also a prostitute, a pornographer, a sexual pervert and a drug addict. Suddenly the scales fell from my eyes. This was Nick’s doing. This was his revenge. He’d gone to Pinky Stevens with a story, and been handsomely paid for it. And Pinky, unaccountably vindictive and jealous as he had always been, was only too happy to print the lies. But, they would soon find, there was a price to be paid for insulting a star. I would stop them, and avenge myself, somehow. But how ?

  I made my way home slowly until I was shocked and scared by a woman spitting at me – spitting at me – at Paddington Station. The news had travelled, and I had to act fast.