Laura Cassidy’s Walk of Fame

by Alan McMonagle

  Indeed it will, Laura.

  Indeed it will.

  *

  I’m standing outside the front window of the house, peering through the gap in the curtains. They are all in the sitting room. Mother and Peter Porter. Jennifer and Little Juan. Yoohoo Lucy. Fiona French. Odd Doris and Dolores. One or two others I vaguely recognize. And Fleming. Music and laughter. Dancing. Now a collective hush. And someone has dimmed the lights. And now a candle-lit cake. And the song. Happy birthday to you. And Little Juan is encouraged to offer the Spanish version. Cumpleaños Feliz. Hip, hip hooray. Hip, hip hooray. Cheers and applause. Popped bubbly. The birthday girl is in tears. Mother is in tears. Little Juan and Fleming put on their party hats and blow streamers. They whoop and holler. The music is turned up. Fleming grabs Jennifer and Little Juan and together the three of them form a dancing circle. Mother and Peter Porter join in and now the others and they all form a dancing circle around Jennifer. For she’s a jolly good fellow. And so say all of us.

  *

  Barna Woods. Moonlight and dew and peace and calm after the rain. My friends the trees. I reach inside the hollowed oak and pull out the scrapbook, tear open the plastic bag. I reach in again and feel around until my fingers wrap themselves around the knife. I tuck it away inside my pocket. I seek the clearing I am so fond of. I grip the scrapbook and rip out its first pages. Then the next and the next. I tear and shred and toss ribbons of paper into the darkness around me. I gather pages into a tidy pile, flick my lighter and watch them burn, burn, burn. Movie faces. Favourite scenes. Lines of dialogue. Names of characters. Pasted-in clippings. I watch it all come apart before my eyes, see my words become flames and take to the air. Drift, flutter, spark hither and thither, softly land on the ground around me. All the movie parts and all the movie lines. An entire movie world’s worth, flittered into thin air.

  Do I know you? Well, Miss Come-and-get-me Tinsel Dress. By the time your opening-night performance comes around you’ll know me.

  That you can be sure of.

  I drop spread-eagled to the ground, seeing stars, listening to my own laughter. I slip my hand inside my pocket, dance my fingers along the knife. I watch the silent branches, discern grotesque patterns, watch the gnarled trunks transform themselves into familiar faces. I settle in for a long night of secret conversation. I start singing out the names of my trees. I have fallen asleep before I get very far. And as soon as I wake up I know exactly what it is I am going to do.

  Part V

  WALK OF FAME

  GLORIA SWANSON

  March 27, 1899 – April 4, 1983

  aka Norma Desmond

  Inducted: February 8, 1960

  Star address: 6750, Hollywood Blvd (movies); 6301, Hollywood Blvd (television)

  Screen debut at age 15

  Made and spent eight million during the 1920s

  One Golden Globe, three Oscar nominations and six husbands

  Icon of the silent era. 10,000 fan letters a week

  Real name: Gloria May Josephine Svensson

  ‘Writing the story of your life is a bit like drilling your own teeth.’

  30

  For a time, brief and by-and-large untested, when I was very little I used to think I could walk through walls. I could float, drift, hover wherever I liked, when the mood took me. I could haunt people that bothered me, show up when least expected, say boo! I could make different shapes of myself, fit through cracks and narrow openings. I could slide, swish and sway. I could be here and not here. Walk on water, dance through mountains, tiptoe my way in the spaces between tall buildings. These were things I could do because I had decided I could.

  I used to so enjoy imagining the world around me through the eyes of others. Strangers. Foreigners. Long-ago people. People yet to live. Dream people even, floating forms caught in a no-man’s-land between this life and another, slipped inside my skin to register an experience and then out again and away back to their place of origin.

  I would so easily lose count of the number of different people I became.

  *

  In their own particular way, everyone has been communicating as to my no-show the night of Jennifer’s birthday. Fleming knows better than to ask. Jennifer is acting as though it doesn’t matter. Little Juan tells me over and over again all the good stuff I missed out on. Mother, though. Mother knows something is off. And it is bugging her because she can’t quite alight on precisely what it is. She has tried coming at it from an angle. She has tried the direct approach. And she is not fully buying my line that, on the night of Jennifer’s birthday, we were rehearsing until the early hours of the morning. Suffice to say that for the past couple of weeks she has been watching me very closely. That’s OK. A couple of evenings ago I came up with an easy way of dealing with this unwanted scrutiny. And I am doing something I thought it unlikely I would ever get to do – I have moved in with Fleming.

  All is well – for a day or two. Fleming rustles up a hearty meal or three. He doesn’t pry too much. I even get to meet the brothers, who make a great show of being on their best behaviour.

  The evening before opening night, I receive a rather interesting note from Imelda.

  Dearest Laura,

  You are not going to believe this. Call it an impromptu decision on my part. Something, no doubt, to do with the attitude certain bigwigs are adopting in relation to some suggestions I have for the Scorsese project. Rewrites I have deemed necessary for my character. Plus an issue I have with one or two of the shooting locations. (If the movie significantly references Sunset Boulevard I don’t see why we cannot film there. Marty reckons we can do it all in his beloved New York, but I’m not so sure he is right on this occasion.) And cue the clamour for an urgent conference call in order to resolve these sudden bumps in the road the moneymen seem to think I am causing. Me! Imelda J Ebbing. The single most important reason this project is getting off the ground in the first place. Don’t they realize I have better things to do with my time, that I need to get into character for this once-in-a-lifetime part? That’s what I had to say to Falstaff when he came for me, like the tap-dancer of doom he is fast becoming. And so I had to interrupt my morning sleep in order to indulge some infantile whimsies drummed up in a boardroom half a planet away. Martians, Laura. It’s the only word for them.

  Come on, then, I said, once seated at my desktop. Let me have it with both barrels, I told the moneymen, a uniquely baffling quintet, seated in line at a table so large it was clearly meant to intimidate me but instead merely dwarfed the suited numbskulls behind it. And quelle surprise! It was not the rewrites I am insisting on they wanted to talk about, nor my vigour for a Hollywood location shoot. What was most pressing is the myriad stories concerning my dalliance with Ennio, stories that seem to be readily available to just about anyone who is bothered – along with a variety of suitably compromising photographs. Lurid shots taken in hotel rooms, according to one of my interrogators, a bespectacled boor who would better serve the world by making ice cubes at the South Pole. This is going to be costly, declared another, frantically pointing to Exhibit A, a gutter-press tabloid I couldn’t quite make out. And why, a particularly odious one of them was very keen to ascertain, have I declined to mention anything of this?

  Yes, but you see, I said, now that it was clearly my turn to speak, I thought we had gathered at this unearthly hour to scale the heights of artistic endeavour. I will say this, however: Ennio has the most captivating mouth. And so, to borrow a sentiment from my favourite actress, go hump yourselves! Now please, if any of you screwballs has anything worthwhile to contribute, say it now. Otherwise this call is at an end.

  Of course the spineless jibber-jabbers didn’t particularly care for being dictated to like this. They’ll be in touch, they said, before I had a chance to say anything else, and that is the last I have heard from them. No doubt they have gone away to chatter amongst themselves, big-boys’ style.

  Let them. Let them chatter. Let them pussyfoot. They’ll come crawling back.
They always do. And that is when they will realize what a mistake it was interrupting my beauty sleep.

  Meantime, the gutter press are hot on my heels, determined not to permit me a moment’s respite. Some of them have even set up camp outside the gates of my home, zoom lenses at the ready. There’s even a rumour that Svetlana the cellist is lurking in the vicinity. Goodness! I hope she hasn’t brought along her bow and arrow. Falstaff suggested that I vanish off the grid, lay low in some no-name backwater nobody has heard of – until the entire ludicrous affair blows over. And this is when I came up with an absolute winner of a plan, dispatched Falstaff to make some calls and la-di-da I am coming, Laura. I am coming to see you!

  My people have set it all up. I googled that theatre company you may or may not be involved with, and lo-and-behold it turns out that a certain opening night is imminent. Falstaff has already booked me a front-row seat. Against his will, Sir Henry is coming too. I’ll drag him kicking and squealing if I have to. So, Laura, please say I am going to see you walk out when the curtain goes up. Afterwards, we can catch up properly. I’ll even let you show me around that little harbour, you can point me out those starry lights you used to labour on about all the time. OK. I must dash. Falstaff is going to whisk me cloak-and-dagger style to the airport. Sooo exciting! See you at the theatre. Kiss, kiss. Bang, bang. You’re dead! Mel. x

  At first I’m tempted to panic. Last thing I need is made-it-big Imelda showing up on opening night. Making a fuss. So, then. Where is she? Where’s my favourite sparring partner? I dwell on it for a bit, then begin to realize that her coming all this way may not be such a bad thing after all. In fact, it might actually work out in my favour. And the more I think about it the more inclined I am to see how her appearance might be of use. After all, it is none other than yours truly she has come all this way to see, it is yours truly she will be talking about when she turns to Mr Super-Agent sitting in the front row alongside her. There! What did I tell you? It is yours truly she will insist on when it comes time to cast . . . Oh my, Laura. Think of the possibilities.

  *

  It’s almost light out. A clear light – sharp and golden, a world away from the cloying, grey light that usually accompanies the November rains. Fleming and myself are squirrelled away inside his shoebox bedroom. Beyond the thin walls we can hear his brothers take turns barking at each other and cat-calling at us. They have been at it all through the night. At long last things reach breaking point, one of them says the wrong thing and the fighting breaks out.

  ‘You know what we should do,’ Fleming says, tickling my neck. ‘We should get out of Dodge. Leg it, once and for all time. You and me.’

  ‘Go on,’ I say.

  ‘Under cover of dark we’ll do it. I’ll take the brother’s car. I’ll meet you at the harbour bridge. And we’ll drive the hell out of here and not turn back.’

  ‘Where will we go?’

  ‘We’ll just keep driving. Across rivers and streams. Up and down the mountains. Around the bottomless lakes. We’ll stop when we have to. We’ll take a boat when we need to. And when we reach the other side we’ll point ourselves towards the nearest open road and on we go.’

  ‘And how will we live?’

  ‘We’ll live off the land. Off our wits. Off the strangers we’ll meet. Hell, we might even strike it lucky somewhere and get taken in by a dying billionaire. We’ll end up landed gentry if we’re not careful.’

  Fleming smiles when he says that bit, as next door a bottle crashes off a wall.

  ‘You’ll be lord of the manor,’ I say.

  ‘You’ll be a lady.’

  ‘Oh, my. Pass me the soup, darling, would you?’

  ‘Why, of course, my lady. Tell me, how are the quails?’

  ‘Divine. Absolutely divine. By the way, sweetness. What do you think of my laugh? I think it needs to be more superior.’

  Fleming chortles at that. It’s a pleasant fiction he has conjured. Who knows? In another life I might even have taken him up on his offer.

  There is a loud yelp from next door. Someone gets called a thundering bollox. Another bottle crash-lands.

  ‘Here we go,’ Fleming says next.

  ‘What! You mean to say they’re only starting now?’

  ‘They’re warming up now. That was a good party you missed the other week.’

  ‘What party would that be?’

  ‘Jennifer’s birthday. We were all wondering where you were.’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘I’d say you do.’

  ‘Well, then. You don’t need to ask.’

  Another bottle lands, this one against the bedroom door, quickly followed by an alternating combo of Tarzan yelps and chest beating. Someone gets called a bad case of the plague. A herpes-laden fuckwit. A stale ballsack. An evaporated prick.

  ‘They’re getting closer,’ I say.

  ‘Still warming up,’ Fleming says to that. ‘Have you figured out what you’re doing about this play?’

  ‘Jesus, Fleming. Questions. I came here to get away from all that.’

  ‘I’m just saying. Today’s the day, you know. Opening night. In fact, in about twelve hours’ time the curtain will be coming up.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And? What do you mean, And? You do realize your mother is going? She told me so herself. Herself and Peter Porter.’

  ‘You better not have said anything.’

  ‘I haven’t. But I think you should.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary.’

  ‘Why not?’

  A prolonged wolf-howl emanates from next door. Someone gets called a crossbreed’s leftovers. Someone’s head is compared to a bull’s testicle. I’m tempted to offer some assistance towards the name-calling.

  ‘I told you before why not.’

  ‘Would you mind telling me again.’

  ‘Because, on the occasion of this opening night you’ve been banging on about non-stop, if people are expecting to see me onstage then that is precisely where they are going to find me.’

  ‘But . . . Laura . . .’

  The bedroom door swings open and three or four – it is difficult to tell precisely how many – of Fleming’s brothers fall into the room. They scuffle with each other, chant random and by-and-large indecipherable swearwords, someone unseen throws a bottle that spins through the open doorway and lands among them.

  For a moment they cease what they are doing – as though this rogue bottle has it within its powers to quell the ludicrous posturing. It is only then that I notice they are all scantily attired, among the garments on show are three socks, two string-vests, and canary-yellow Y-fronts. One of them has inked the letters DESTROYER across his chest. The one in the canary-yellow Y-fronts has decided to smear himself in something that reeks of Deep Heat. Are these lads for real? I am about to ask Fleming when the main event begins. I’m not fully sure what it is, but it seems to be some sort of homoerotic display that requires lots of pawing and slapping and groping for whatever bits of flesh can be gripped and twisted into hitherto unknown shapes. Fleming looks at me as if to say, happens all the time.

  ‘I’m going now, Fleming,’ I say. ‘I have a part to prepare for.’

  31

  So, daddy. Today is the day. The Story House opens its doors for the very first time. And Khaos Theatre gets to strut its stuff in its new home. It’s a beautiful day, I cannot get over how clear it is, somebody must have handed over a king’s ransom for the wind and rain to pack it in. And here I am to tell you that I have come to a momentous decision. I am getting the hell out of here. Once and for all. I need to grab some things, pack a going-away bag. Possibly, I should leave a note for mother. Let her know of my plans, that I have been offered a wonderful opportunity in London, that in actual fact I am leaving immediately after this opening-night performance, and that there is no time to say goodbye in person. Mark my words, daddy. A rollercoaster adventure awaits. I really don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner.

  It’s Ime
lda I have to thank. Since moving to London she hasn’t put a foot wrong. In her own inimitable way she’s been on and on at me to get over there. To London, I mean. She has made lots of contacts and it’s pretty obvious she’ll be able to help me out. I’ll probably stay with her until I am settled and ready to look for my own place. Imagine, daddy. Little me lighting up Shaftesbury Avenue. Imelda’s going to be in town this evening, actually. She’s coming to whisk me out of here in person.

  First things first, though. I have some unfinished matters with Khaos Theatre, matters I intend to see through before travelling across the pond to where my talents will be more appreciated. So don’t worry, daddy, I am not going anywhere just yet. And before I do scarper, I will come say goodbye, let you wish me bon voyage. For now, all that remains to be said is fasten your safety belt, it’s going to be a bumpy night.