A Postillion Struck by Lightning (40 page)

If Lieutenant Anthony Forwood, R.A., on leave from his Battery at Hornchurch, and slightly bored after dinner, had been able to get into the Regent Cinema for the last showing of “Edison The Man” that Saturday night, it is fair to say that this book would have ended at the paragraph above. As it was, he bad-temperedly wandered down the hill to the Theatre and bought a seat, easily, for the last two acts of “Grief Goes Over” and sent his card round to the dressing-room. On such frail threads hang one's destiny. Ivy who worked in Front of House came through the Green Room with a tray of empty coffee cups and the card, which she flipped through the curtained entrance to the Gents dressing-room. “Chap out front sent this round for you,” she called. “Says he's a representative from Al Parker the agent. He's waiting.”

The card was an ordinary visiting card. But Al Parker was no ordinary agent. At that time he was the “chic-est” agent in London and his clients were nearly all Stars. My heart leapt. The company were impressed. Annie shot up to the stage to peer through the Curtain and have a look at the visitor while I cold-creamed my tear-ravaged face and struggled out of my father's tails.

“He's tall, blond, in full regalia,” she reported, “and not Jewish.”

“What do you mean, regalia?” I asked.

Annie was struggling into a black lace frock because Saturday night was “our” night together at the warming-panned Mill Stream, and she always liked to look her best on the dance floor.

“He's an officer of some sort, and Ivy says he's a local and they live up at Chalfont and are very rich or something; he's giving her a lift home in a few minutes so don't be long or we'll never get to the Mill and I'm starving.”

Someone lent me a clean white shirt and someone else a tie and
in my only suit, the black stolen shoes, and clutching the card, which had impressed me by being embossed and not printed, I went up to the auditorium to meet Mr Parker's Representative who was sitting very uncomfortably, for he was over six foot, in the last seat of row A.

I was quite unprepared for the elegant splendour reclining in the too-small seat before me. Booted, breeched, tunic'd, buttons and badges glittering brightly in the meagre light of the dim auditorium, his hair shining like a halo, he extended an indifferent hand, told me his name and said that he had been in Front and thought I was “interesting”. I sat nervously in the empty seat beside him. “Far too young, of course, but a very strong—Quality?”

“Well … I'm too young, I expect, but you know …” He waved his vague hand somewhere in the air.

“There's a war on, I know. And the tails were frightful, of course.”

“They are my father's.”

“That's what they looked like. Have you got an agent?”

“No. It doesn't seem worth it: I'll be called up pretty soon.”

“When? I mean, how soon?”

“Next birthday. March.”

“Well … that gives us a little time. I represent Parker in London. I'm looking out for my own clients for after the war, if you think it's a good idea I might represent you. You need experience, of course, but you have got a …” again the hand waved loosely in the stale air of the theatre, “a Quality, I suppose. Do you want to talk about it?”

I said yes very quickly and he unfolded from the seat and stood before me, a glittering figure. He murmured with a suppressed yawn that we couldn't talk here and that as his home was very near, and he was giving Ivy a lift back because she lived at the end of his lane, perhaps I'd care to come back with him, meet his grandfather and have some cocoa?

Annie was grumpy, but reluctandy agreed that I should go as long as I didn't stay long and got to the Mill Stream before the sausages ran out. She said she'd go on with the others and keep me a place at the table. Sally, unimpressed, reminded me coldly that the Set had to be dismanded before midnight because we had to start the rigging for rehearsal the next day on “Children To Bless You”.

We dropped Ivy off at her house halfway up Cokes Lane and through a misty October night bumped along a rutted drive through hundreds, or so it seemed to me, of cherry trees until we reached the low, rambling, creeper-covered house where he lived.

In the glimmer of the dimmed headlights, through wisping mist, a torch bobbled among the trees and a woman in a headscarf and Wellingtons waved a tin bowl at us.

“Forgot the ducks again!” she said cheerfully. “Enjoy the show?”

We clambered out of the car and slammed doors.

“Cousin Phyllis,” he said. “This is a chap called Bogaerde. Is there some cocoa or anything?”

Cousin Phyllis went ahead of us wagging her torch and we followed through wet grasses. In the low heavily timbered hall, she clumped off somewhere to get “the refreshments” and my companion said that his name was Tony which would make things easier, and ushered me into the study, a snug room, down a deceptive couple of steps, a fire glowing in the grate, Staffordshire figures, and his grandfather, Pip, sitting in an armchair, late eighties, bearded, clasping a thick walking stick, one leg up on a padded stool. He was polite and warm, and I was almost immediately at my ease. We sat talking about the Theatre and the War until Cousin Phyllis, chatting and eager, brought in the tray with cocoa and fruit cake and Forwood said that Herbert Farjeon was getting the Cast together for another version of his Revue, “Diversion”, at Wyndhams in a few weeks' time. There was, he said, a pretty good chance that he could get me into it, as a glorified chorus boy, if I was free and wished to do so.

I agreed immediately. He was pleasantly unsurprised. “There is only one thing else,” he said, “if I do get you in I would naturally wish to represent you, be your agent so to speak, after the war. Would you agree to that?”

Sitting round the study fire that evening, Pip starting to nod off, one veined hand occasionally slipping from the wooden stick, Cousin Phyllis thoughtfully sipping her cocoa, Forwood sprawled in a deep armchair hardly bothering to stifle a yawn (he had to be on duty at dawn in Hornchurch), I felt so immediately secure, the atmosphere was one of such familiar trust that it never remotely occurred to me to say anything other than “Yes” without qualification. We shook hands, I remember, which was the only form of contract we have ever had, and shortly afterwards,
full of cocoa and cake, and the warmth of the welcome, I was driven back through the orchard down to the Mill Stream where, with a very casual salute, as if this sort of thing happened every evening of his life, he dropped me in the car park and swung the car out on to the main road. For a few moments I stood in the foggy night before the blacked-out restaurant door. “Where or When” came faintly through the latticed windows. I watched the Mercedes turn left on to the main road and roar back up the hill to the ivy-covered house at the top of Cokes Lane.

Suddenly I had an Agent. The possibility of a West End job again, and something intangible which might, or might not be … “a quality”. I felt, with a burst of joy, that I owned the world. I didn't know that eight years later I should also own the house.

“A -One, A-Two, A-Three, Back! Four, Five, Six, Turn!” The voice was a metronome, relentless, cold, mechanical, occasionally human only when it rose to a desperate cry on the words Back! or Turn! usually applied to myself. I was as graceless as a duck; the other five appeared almost balletic in comparison, probably because they had already been through it in the First Edition of the Show. I was suffering gready from my usual complaint: lack of co-ordination. However, I bumped and staggered about and watched the others with a sense of despairing envy. Having got this far I was going to get the steps right if it killed me and everyone else concerned. A dim back room in a pub off St Martin's Lane, some mirrors, a bashed piano, the front removed, bent wood chairs insect-like round the walls, dirty coffee cups, a bald-headed man in shirt-sleeves banging out the opening number of the show. It was a Judy Garland movie, completely familiar to me: as if a dream was repeating itself. The stars, Dorothy Dickson, Bernard Miles, Edith Evans, Joyce Grenfell and the Director, Walter Chrisham, didn't come to the chorus rehearsals … they fitted themselves in a few days before the opening, and the whole Company only got together for the Numbers. I was in about five and both the Opening and the Finale. Not overworked; and in between fittings for a full dress Kilt, my first Tails, a bathing suit, a dinner jacket and sundry bits and pieces, I spent most of my time in the room in the pub trying to get my feet to do what the metronome voice implored them to do. It wasn't easy. I began to doubt the wisdom of Tony Forwood. I might have “Quality” on the stage at Amersham, but it seemed not to be much in evidence half a mile from Wyndhams Theatre, Charing Cross Road.

Annie had been sceptical when I told her of my good fortune that evening at the Mill Stream. To begin with I
was
an hour late, the sausages
were
off and she felt the whole thing boded ill. Agents from the West End, she pointed out, were pretty sharp people, who seldom kept their words, and a Revue didn't seem the best place for a straight actor to begin his attempt on the West End. And if I did get the job, she asked pointedly, what would happen
to her? I would be in London and she'd be stuck in Amersham on the Hill and we'd never see each other? It posed a great many problems, I could see, so I obliterated everything for the time being. I still had a whole standing Set to dismantle that night, and decided to enjoy what remained of Saturday: after all I might never hear another word from Mr Parker's Representative on his Ack Ack site in Hornchurch.

Which was where I was wrong. A few days later he telephoned to say he'd fixed it, and then a telegram arrived from Bertie Farjeon saying he was happy to welcome me to the Show, that rehearsals commenced in two weeks' time, would I please confirm soonest. Sally Latimer was understandably irritated, but agreed that I could leave at the end of the following play. Annie looked glum and said that she would try and get a job with ENSA … I packed my suitcase and arrived back at Fellows Road, Swiss Cottage, and repossessed my bed under the stairs.

The first rehearsal, on the stage at Wyndhams, was pretty frightening. All in our Best, Edith Evans magisterial in mink, Dorothy Dickson in fox and an Orchid, and our Director, Wally, elegant in pale blue silk. The six “Chorus” sat on one side of the stage, the Elite on the other. We were all perfectly friendly and integrated, but everyone knew their places, and a feeling of discipline, position, and West End reigned quietly. This was no harassed Uckfield, no Rough and Tumbled Get The Show Together Amersham. This was as polished, smooth and organised as a well designed, luxurious, motor-car. Or so it seemed to me.

I was greatly heartened to find that one of the six of us was my friend in wrinkled tights from Shere, Peter Ustinov, and even happier to find that we were sharing a dressing-room together. We were the only men. The other four were girls … and one of them was particularly wise and understanding of my timidity and gracelessness, to such an extent that she even attempted to make herself as idiotic as I felt and was, in order to encourage me, although I well knew that she was far more experienced than she pretended. It was all done for me and I loved her very much for it. Her name was Vida Hope, and hope was exactly what she offered at every clumsy, inexperienced, rehearsal. Thus, with drums and a piano in the orchestra pit, we started out on the big adventure. I knew that I had a lot to learn and a long way to go. Never mind. Get on and do it.

Sitting there in the Stalls waiting my turn to work, watching the polished poise of Miss Dickson “walking through” a dance routine with Wally, plotting the moves, the turns, the steps, the movement of an arm, precisely, calmly, and with complete confidence and assurance made my heart thud with excitement. I sat there every day and never missed a second of any part of the Show … from Irene Eisinger throwing wide imaginary shutters in a Mountain Chalet singing “Tales From The Vienna Woods”, to Joyce Grenfell making her Entrance, taking her positions, and making the Exit … to the most magical of all, Edith Evans, sitting under a working light on a wooden box, her mink over her shoulders, snow boots on her feet, declaring in that liquid voice of astonishing range, Queen Elizabeth's speech before the Armada. I glutted. I watched and listened constantly; all that seemed improbable was that I should ever master the A-One, A-Two, A-Three and TURN of the very ordinary Dance Routines … but I worked. Somewhere along the line I had been given an infinite capacity for trying, or perhaps it was Ambition.

My mother was very pleased at this turn of events, and my father forced to admit that in a little over a year I had, at least, managed to survive in my chosen profession, and with some small subsidies from himself, usually half a crown here and there when things got really tight, plus a florin and a hurried meal in her kitchen from Aunt Freda, I had managed to pay my way, supplementing my meagre income (we were not paid for rehearsals) by working in a couple of cheap restaurants near Leicester Square and pocketing the tips while clearing the tables and washing down the counters.