Lucky Break (14 page)

 

‘So tell me,' Rob was pulling her down beside him – he loved a row, it always left him amorous – ‘what did Maisie say? I want to know everything.'

‘Well,' Charlie slipped out of his embrace and sat, her knees pulled up, at the other end of the sofa, ‘she asked me a million questions about what I wanted to do and how I thought I might go about achieving that, and what extra skills I had, you know, singing, dancing . . . swimming with dolphins . . .'

‘Sure,' Rob nodded. ‘Always say you can do everything and then worry about it later.'

‘Then she said she was pretty certain she could get me work, even though the industry is still very narrow-minded about anyone . . . exotic. But it's changing, she said, anything is possible if you're determined enough. And she liked the way I do my hair.' Charlie ran her fingers through her new, dried straight hair, honey-toned and falling to her shoulders.

Rob grinned. ‘I knew she'd take you on.'

‘No, you didn't.'

‘I did!'

‘This isn't about you. Why does it always have to be about you?' Charlie wasn't really angry, but she couldn't help it, she found she was hurtling towards another row.

‘Anyway,' she continued irritably, ‘haven't you got to go in for your matinée?'

‘It can wait.' He leant over and nibbled at her ear. ‘I've arrived after the half before. They know I'll get there. Come on, we'll be quick.'

‘No,' Charlie squirmed. ‘But how about I meet you later. We can go out and celebrate. Stage door? Or shall I come up to the dressing room and surprise you?'

‘Stage door is fine.' He ignored her taunting tone. ‘Unless you want to see Barry and Hugh in the buff. Not a pretty sight. I'll be down. Soon as I can.'

She gave in then and kissed him, and the spark that she'd been fighting ignited in her blood. ‘Later,' she breathed, her heart buckling, ‘I'll be there.'

 

As soon as Rob had gone Charlie phoned her parents. It was always easier to talk to them when she had something definite to say. ‘That's wonderful news, dear,' her mother said, before shouting to her father. ‘Udo, dear, take the phone upstairs, it's Charlotte.' She turned her attention back to Charlie. ‘Maisie Monck Associates. How grand.'

‘Maybe,' Charlie lit a cigarette, ‘let's wait and see if I get any work,' and for something else to say she told them about Equity, the actors' union, and how until the year before it had been a closed shop. ‘No one could work unless they had an Equity card, but the only way to get a card was if someone offered you a job.'

‘That doesn't make any sense, though.' Her mother sounded vexed.

‘Well,' her father boomed into the second receiver, ‘it does make sense if you're already in the union, then you don't have newcomers flooding the business every year. Now it will be even more impossible to find employment.'

She heard her mother sigh. ‘If only you'd kept up with your languages. You could have worked internationally.'

‘There are so many opportunities,' her father said, ‘abroad.'

‘You might have tried one of those big hotels. You were always such a clever little thing . . .'

‘Look,' Charlie held the receiver away from her ear. She knew this routine well. ‘I'd better go. My agent might be trying to get through.'

There was an affronted silence at the other end, but they couldn't argue.

 

Five minutes later, like a miracle, her agent did call. ‘Right,' Maisie said. ‘I'm going to be sending over some pages of a script. It's a French–American co-production –
Celestina
– and they're looking for a newcomer, an unknown, so we're going to push you. I'll let you know when I've set up a meeting. How's your French?'

‘Umm. Fine.'

‘Great. I'll get the pages in the post today. Let me know as soon as you've got them.'

 

Charlie arrived at the theatre early. She nodded to the man who sat inside the little booth, and stood in the narrow corridor, listening to the last scenes of
Hedda Gabler
echoing out through the tannoy. The tension was building, that poor woman spiralling into despair, and then Rob's voice as Tessman, sending a shiver through her, as, once again, he failed to understand his wife. Charlie heard the rustle of skirts as Hedda sat at the piano, and the raucous notes of a polka as she crashed up and down on the keys. There was Tessman again, telling her off, and the false tone of acquiescence as Hedda demurred. ‘I shall be silent in future.'

By the time the shot rang out, Charlie felt her nerves ready to snap. For a moment there was silence, then the gasps and shudders of the audience, before Rob began to wail. To hear that sound, that keening wounded cry of sorrow, had Charlie transfixed, her eyes pinned to the mesh box of the tannoy, her breath held, so that it shocked her when the applause rose up and rattled in her ears.

‘Good show tonight.' Actors were pounding down the stairs. They must have had their clothes on underneath their costumes, or the lure of the pub was enough to put a spring into their step that was sometimes lacking, at least Rob claimed, when they were on stage.

‘That sounded good.' Charlie waited while he posed for a photo with three Italian teenagers and signed an autograph for a lone man who'd not seen the play.

‘Fucking rubbish,' Rob huffed, the smile dropping from his face as soon as they were out of earshot. ‘God, that little bitch Jessica gets more tricky every night. You should have seen what she was getting up to, some business with a ball of wool, right in the middle of my big scene with Hedda.'

‘Well, I only heard the last ten minutes but it gave me goosebumps, honestly, it was so good, even stage-door Stan looked moved.'

‘No?

‘Really. He had tears in his eyes.'

‘Don't push it.' Rob was laughing, and arm in arm, friends again, they walked through Chinatown and into Covent Garden, not even stopping to discuss where they were going, striding across the square, turning off down a quiet street that Charlie felt was theirs, and in through the secret, thrilling door of Joe Allen's.

‘Good evening to you both,' the head waiter welcomed them warmly, and it occurred to Charlie as they breezed after him through the maze of tables, that for the first time, tonight, it was
her
good luck that they were marking.

 

The pages arrived the next day. The first scene was on a train. A young girl, Celestina, off to work as an au pair, meets a French boy and falls into conversation. They talk, they flirt, they are drawn compellingly towards each other. The scene was full of awkward pauses, misunderstood English, flirtatious glances. Just reading through it made Charlie smile. And almost all her lines were in English.

‘This is my stop, sorry, I suppose I'd better get off.'

The girl jumps down on to the platform but when she turns to wave, she finds the boy has jumped off after her.

The second scene was very short. The two characters lie by a smouldering fire, their clothes in disarray, the sound of waves lapping on the nearby shore.

‘Don't go back.'

‘I have to.'

‘You don't have to do anything. Except stay here with me.'

They begin to kiss.

‘But what about university, my degree . . .'

‘What about life?'

He looks at her in the moonlight.

‘Yes. Life.'

They kiss again, more passionately. The fire flickers. Big Heat.

 

‘You can't do this. It's porn,' Rob said, when he'd read the scenes. ‘Don't be fooled by that old euphemism, big heat, it means full-on nudity and fucking.'

‘It does not,' she scowled. ‘It's art. It's French, mostly, and the director, his last film was about the poet, Victor Hugo.'

‘Well,' Rob's face was dark, ‘you probably won't get it anyway.' And that night in bed, he kept the light on and read his Bukowski, flicking the pages noisily, until long after Charlie was ready to sleep.

 

The meeting went well. The casting director greeted her enthusiastically, and the director, a small shadowy Frenchman in a polo-necked sweater, watched her keenly as she read. ‘Very nice,' he said, nodding, ‘very nice.'

Maisie was ecstatic when she called. ‘They loved you,' she gushed, ‘they want to see you again, for some camera tests, and this time to read with the boy they've cast. Marcel Perez. He's a bit of a star in France. Are you free next week? On Monday?'

‘Sure,' Charlie said, and she turned to check that Rob was out of earshot before asking if she could get hold of the whole script.

‘I don't know,' Maisie sounded distracted. ‘They've only sent these scenes through for now. They're probably still working on it. So, two o'clock on Monday. Same place. Call me the minute you get out.'

 

That Saturday it was Rob's last night. Charlie went in early and sat in the dressing room, listening to the voices, magnified, telling the story with pure sound. She closed her eyes, and felt the whole tragic world of Norway, of Ibsen, of lies, ambition and hopelessness, descend upon her. How could they bear it, these actors, every night, spinning out the same sad story? But even as she thought this she could hear too that they'd found new meaning in the lines. I'm probably not cut out for theatre, she decided, I'll concentrate on film, and snapping open her eyes, she caught sight of her face in the mirror and laughed briefly to imagine for a moment she'd be lucky enough to choose.

Charlie stood up and looked at the cards stuck on to the mirror, the flowers, some fresh, others drooping, the towels and books and assorted make-up, the little pot of black powder Barry used to fill in the bald spot on the back of his head. He had a photo of his children, and a card from one of them, ‘Good luck Daddy, break a leg', with a drawing of a man hopping happily across a stage. Every night after the show Barry rushed to catch the train to Brighton, arriving around midnight, cycling his bike through the deserted streets to Hove. It's worth it, he said, just to smell the sea air, and be there when the kids wake up in the morning, and Charlie knew that if she'd had Rob's baby, if she'd moved anywhere for sea air, she'd never have seen him again.

Charlie waited until the famous shot rang out, the audience began gasping, and then she slipped out of the dressing room and down the stairs to stand in the little corridor beside Stan's booth. They both kept their heads down as Rob wept for the last time and when the play ended she imagined the audience up on its feet, exalted, the clapping was so loud it hurt her ears.

There was a party afterwards at a bar in Holborn for the cast, the stage management, the director and assorted friends. The actress who played Hedda, Sally Warren, arrived weighed down with flowers. ‘Oh my darling,' she clasped her arms around Rob's neck, and Charlie understood why it was that actors talked with such intensity. How could you not say ‘darling' when you'd journeyed through a lifetime with a person, bared your soul, wept tears, exchanged kisses, borne heartache, reached the heights of unimagined bliss? Why would you shake hands sombrely when you'd once died in their arms? ‘We'll keep in touch,' they promised each other. ‘Yes. We
must
.'

Charlie took a glass of wine from a passing tray. ‘Cheers,' she leant in to Rob, ‘you sounded amazing tonight. And you too . . .' Sally Warren was beside him, ‘you were incredible.'

Sally raised her own glass. ‘Congratulations to you too. Rob tells me you have your first screen test coming up.'

Charlie glanced at Rob. ‘Yes . . . I'm not sure . . .'

‘That's right,' Rob rested his arm heavily on her shoulder. ‘She's going to be a big star.' He looked balefully across at her, and with a knowing smile Sally moved away.

‘For God's sake,' Charlie turned to Rob, ‘why do you have to tell everyone? I probably won't get it.'

‘Everyone will know soon enough.' He had her arm in a tight hold. ‘When you're down in the earth by the smouldering fire with your kit off and some French bloke humping you from behind.'

‘Rob!' Charlie looked round, but no one seemed to have heard. The room was filling up, a trail of men and women in white shirts was circling, heavy round platters of canapés held aloft. Starving actors descended on them. ‘Shit.' Charlie felt her stomach flip. She turned her back to the room. ‘Don't look, but it's Gabriel Grant. From Drama Arts. You remember? Pierre was obsessed with him and Patrick Bowery was convinced he was the great white hope of British theatre. He's handing out snacks.' She turned to check, hoping that maybe she'd imagined it, but Gabriel, oblivious, was heading straight towards her.

‘Where, which one?' Rob strained to see, and at that moment Gabriel's eyes met hers. A sort of shudder washed over him, the physical embodiment of shame, but it was too late to look away. Rob turned to the bar.