Merely Players (2 page)

Adam had always had the looks. Even when the greater talents around him at his drama college had confined him to carrying spears and speaking pathetically few lines, his looks had been noted. Others had dominated the stage in the modern and period pieces where Adam had secured his first small parts, but agents had noted his looks and his bearing. His voice was clear, but his projection was limited: his words did not carry to the back of the larger theatres. But he had an impressive profile, a charming smile, and a willingness to work. In due course he was taken on by an enthusiastic young agent.

He was given a small part in a television sitcom. Its storyline involved two established female stars sharing a flat. Adam was one of the many eligible bachelors who flitted through the strivings of the pair for permanent partners. A female reviewer in one of the tabloids noted him as the best of the beefcake in a modest series and the editor chose to set one of Adam's publicity pictures beside her column. There was an immediate response from readers. Moreover, this was in August, the traditionally slack time and ‘silly season' for news. So the paper ran the beefcake debate for a full week. Some readers suggested alternative ‘hunks' and others supported the original review in asserting Cassidy's physical charms. It was trivial stuff, cynically exploited, but for an obscure and not over-talented young actor, there is truly no such thing as bad publicity.

The industry which was to become Adam Cassidy had been launched.

The sitcom was a limited success and ran for only two six-programme series. But the writers noted that their previously unknown beefcake had now acquired that awful modern attribute, ‘celebrity status'. He was given greater exposure and a few more lines in the second series. The two established female stars were made to swoon over him in private and compete for his attention in public. They were both more than ten years older than their quarry, so that writer and director saw fit to make their pursuit of their handsome hero increasingly desperate and a little ridiculous.

That didn't do the status of the young actor with the short speeches and the gorgeous profile any harm. When the sitcom's final episode was concluded, the general verdict was that although a tired format should be mercifully put out of its misery, a new television presence had been established.

There were enough offers of work to gladden the heart of any agent. Adam now switched to one who was both shrewd and perceptive. Tony Valento was a failed actor himself. He told his clients that and very little else. Tony saw the limitations as well as the natural attributes of his young client. Television was Cassidy's natural metier, Valento assured him; privately, the agent congratulated himself that he need never canvas theatre producers on Adam's behalf again. Tony secured him a series of smallish parts in successful productions. He was an innocent young man among the highly experienced elderly cast in an episode of
Midsomer Murders
; he emerged as the innocent victim of a complex plot to frame him in the last scene. He was the idealistic young sergeant assisting a cynical superintendent in a forgettable one-off drama – he put his life on the line to save a young mother, and received a stern official police rebuke for his heroism, whilst the television audience applauded his actions.

When the BBC made their big-budget drama of the year,
Great Expectations
,
it was Adam Cassidy who figured as that bright young man of the world, Herbert Pocket. The director severely pruned some of his scenes after seeing the rushes, and a couple of the older critics compared his performance unfavourably with that of Alec Guinness in David Lean's ancient film, but in the great television scheme of things, that scarcely mattered.

Adam Cassidy had his appearance in a classic. His agent duly added ‘versatile' to his list of attributes. He was continually in work. He even managed to learn a little about his limitations, and became a more effective performer as a result.

Now, at forty-two, he was an undoubted television star and a national, even an international, name. The series specially written for him, in which he played Alec Dawson, a private detective who received a series of glamorous and perilous assignments, was now in its fourth series and more popular than ever. The plots were unlikely, even occasionally preposterous, but no one seemed to mind that. They weren't meant to be taken seriously, were they? And Adam Cassidy had the good sense to put exactly that idea forward in a succession of carefully timed chat show appearances. He announced that he didn't take either the series or himself too seriously. The British public liked that in their heroes.

As is quite usual in such situations, there was an increasing discrepancy between the way the public chose to perceive their star and the reality of the person himself. Very few people would turn their backs on stardom, but it is a difficult status to cope with. People stop telling you what they think and start telling you what you want to hear. That makes it difficult for you to be objective, and eventually you become unwilling to trust what people are saying to you. You can rely on very little of what you hear, and you begin to choose that little for yourself. In extreme cases, you begin to believe the greatest lies of all: your own publicity.

Your agent and most of those who work with you are riding on the back of your success. They note the signs of megalomania which are beginning to appear in you, but feel powerless to challenge them without jeopardizing their own fortunes. Only those closest to you can tell you the truths you do not wish to hear, and even they may do so at their peril. Adam Cassidy's first wife, Amy, warned him that he should not confine his contacts with his children to posing with them and their expensive toys for publicity photographs. ‘I can't shut myself away in the house and play happy families, woman!' Adam had told her.

Amy didn't like that ‘woman', didn't like the fact that he never wanted her to accompany him to film premieres, didn't like the fact that his being out and about meant visiting a succession of other beds.

The divorce settlement was expensive, but Adam could afford it. It became forbidden ground in interviews; the sooner the public forgot all about it, the better.

Two years later, Adam Cassidy remarried. The bride, Jane Webster, had been the damsel in distress in one of the most celebrated cases of Alec Dawson, television private detective and modern knight errant. There had been suggestions of their off-screen attachment in their enthusiastic screen clinches. For the millions of admirers of the series, it was a match made in TV heaven. A fair proportion of them chose to forget that their star had ever been married before.

In one sense, this second marriage proved the match Adam's fans wanted it to be. Jane Webster had looks and a presence which matched those of her new husband, even though her talent was limited. As the first fine bloom of her looks left her, the parts would certainly have declined. She declared that she was sacrificing her career to provide domestic security for her new husband, that wifedom and motherhood mattered more than stardom for her. She retreated demurely from the cameras as her pregnancy became more apparent.

Adam Cassidy was now a rich and successful man; the world was at his feet. That was the cliché with which chat show and other television interviewers often used to bring him on, possibly because it was the introduction suggested by his agent. Adam spoke earnestly of his love of the live theatre and the classics, of his desire to ‘return to Shakespeare, the core of all our work'. He judged correctly that not many people would know that he had never played a significant Shakespearean role and that the few who did would not be foolish enough to display that knowledge.

The Alec Dawson adventures went from strength to strength, Adam explained, (his appearances were usually timed to publicize a new series). That made it difficult to find time for the serious roles he wanted to take on. He was grateful to television, of course, but she was a hard taskmaster. How wise the bard was when he said that all the world was a stage, and all the men and women on it merely players. Adam sighed, shook his head, and moved into the hilarious anecdotes about his co-stars that he had arranged to deliver at this point.

Each new series and each successful interview was another step in Adam Cassidy's progress towards becoming that distinctively British phenomenon, ‘a national institution'.

On the evening after the scene which climaxed in his preventing murder by his timely intervention in the darkened bedroom, Adam drove himself home. He was using the big maroon Mercedes which was one of the three cars he now owned. He could have afforded his own driver, but he preferred to employ one only for special occasions like film premieres. He enjoyed driving; he could still remember the thrill of his first car, a battered Ford Fiesta with a dodgy gearbox. Each time he slid into the comfortable leather driving seat of whichever car he now drove, it was a reminder of those days and how far he had come since then.

It was well into autumn now, almost the end of October, and he felt the chill in the air, even at six thirty in the evening. There might be the first frost tonight, on the hills around his house and on the greater heights to the north. But German engineering was as efficient as ever; within three minutes, well before he reached the M62, the car was warm. By the time he struck due north up the M66, he was cocooned in that familiar, controlled warmth which made the weather outside irrelevant. The only real danger was of falling asleep at the wheel.

There wasn't much danger of that, with an active mind like his. He reviewed the events of the day and decided it had gone well. He had fluffed one line in the morning shooting, but the scene had needed to be re-shot in any case because of an oversight by one of the continuity girls about the levels of the drinks in the glasses. The director had severely rebuked her, whilst no one had said anything to him. That was how life was; the girl had better get used to it.

Cassidy got on well with his fellow-actors. They were mostly seasoned professionals and highly competent, but they knew facts of thespian life. They were delighted to have a part in a series which was highly successful, whatever the critics might say about it. Adam had been a little in awe of one of the theatrical
grandes dames
who was playing his eccentric aunt in this series. To find today that she was appearing in pantomime for the first time in thirty years gave him a lift and subtly altered the terms of their relationship. Adam congratulated Margaret on her bravery and energy, of course, but everyone knew that serious actors only accepted pantomime work when the other offers dried up.

He'd love to do panto himself, he said, when they broke for coffee; it must be great fun. But pressure of work meant that it was a pleasure Adam Cassidy must deny himself this year and for the foreseeable future.

He lived some forty miles from the studios in Manchester where he did most of his work. His house was just south of the Trough of Bowland, which the Queen had once said was her favourite place in the land. Adam revived that royal quote when he was given the opportunity in interviews, though he was careful to conceal the precise location of his residence. You needed privacy and seclusion once you became a television star. They helped you to preserve your balance, he said.

Once he left the motorway and struck off over the moors for home, the traffic became thinner. He listened to
The Archers
on Radio 2. He didn't hear it every day, but you picked up what was happening easily enough. It was pleasant and undemanding. It added interest when you knew some of the actors, and it added satisfaction when you knew that some of these people who now seemed only modestly successful had been big names when he was struggling as an unknown. As the familiar jaunty signature tune marked the end of the episode, he switched to Radio 4 and heard the critic's review of the latest Pinter revival at the National Theatre. One of his contemporaries at RADA had a lead, and for a moment Adam was envious. But only for a moment; Adam Cassidy retained through all the adulation showered upon him a core of self-knowledge, which told him that he would never have made a lead at the National. It gave him a small, bitchy satisfaction to hear the critic saying that his friend's performance was flawed.

He sped north again on dual carriageway past the old towns of Whalley and Clitheroe, then turned west along lanes for the final part of his journey, where he scarcely saw a car. The house was modern and huge. He and Jane had originally planned to adapt the high Edwardian house in the centre of the spacious site, but eventually the architect had persuaded them to demolish it completely and build the house of their dreams. Or the house of the architect's dreams, Adam sometimes thought wryly. But they had kept the old name for the house, Broad Oaks, and the original high walls at the boundary of the site.

He pressed his automatic garage door opener, watched the door rumble slowly upwards, and slid the Mercedes into the huge cave of garage beyond it. If the night was to be as cold as he expected, he didn't want his vehicle covered with white frost when he came to it in the morning. He'd rung Jane from his mobile an hour ago to say he was on his way. He watched her for a minute through the uncurtained windows of the kitchen when he got out of the car. She still had the blonde hair and large blue eyes which had secured her roles as a youngster. At thirty-seven and after two children, there was an inevitable thickening of the waist and the first signs of ageing in her face; the thought struck him that women with fair complexions aged more quickly or at least more visibly than brunettes. He was five years older than her, and no doubt showing signs of maturity himself. But a lot of men grew more attractive with age; everyone said that.

Jane had her apron on and was busy with pans when he went into the kitchen. He kissed her lightly on the forehead and stood behind her for a moment with his hands clasped around her waist, allowing the right one to slide down over the soft roundness of her stomach, caressing it for a moment with the fingers a million women would have loved to feel. ‘Domesticity suits you!' he murmured softly into her ear.