Make me a Star (The Silver Bridle Book 1)

by Caroline Akrill

  I’ll be a star!”

  Rather abruptly the performance was over. Emma Hall stared at Ziggy defiantly. Ziggy swallowed a few times and tapped his ears in an experimental manner as if he was an air traveller suffering altitude pressure. “Well, Blue Eyes,” he acknowledged, “you certainly got volume.”

  “Mr Stanislavski,” said Mr Vincinelli in a severe voice, “I have to tell you that if this happens one more time I charge you double for rent of my table.”

  “Double my rent?” Ziggy said, scandalised. “When I give your customers free entertainment?”

  Mr Vincinelli walked back to his counter like a man with a headache.

  “Well,” Emma Hall demanded, “what do you think?”

  “I think you got to take singing lessons,” Ziggy said.

  “I’ve had singing lessons. I’ve been having singing lessons for the last six years of my life!”

  “Take more singing lessons. Go away. Go get a day job in a nice shop. Get singing lessons four nights a week. Come back in six months.”

  “Six months!” Emma Hall stared at him, appalled.

  “On the other three nights,” Ziggy went on, “get dancing lessons.”

  “Now listen to me, Ziggy Stanislavski,” Emma Hall said angrily, “I’ve had dancing lessons and I’ve had singing lessons. I’ve had dancing and singing lessons until I’m blue in the face. I’m sick of lessons. Lessons won’t get me anywhere; what I need is stage experience.”

  “And you listen to me, Blue Eyes,” Ziggy said. “You want to be on the West End stage, then you get singing lessons four nights and dancing lessons three nights, and in six months you come back and we’ll try again. Otherwise forget it.”

  Emma Hall looked as though she might launch herself across the table and punch him on the nose, then suddenly the façade of self-assurance crumbled and her blue eyes were flooded with disappointment.

  “Oh rats,” she said, “am I really that bad?”

  “You’re not as good as you got to be,” Ziggy told her, “and that’s a fact.”

  Somehow she managed to cope with this unwelcome response, controlling her breath and her emotion as only a singer can, straightening her drooping shoulders, catching her bottom lip with her teeth. “OK,” she said, “thanks for hearing me.” She turned and made for the door.

  “And Blue Eyes,” Ziggy called after her, “in your lunch hours take acting lessons!” Having delivered this parting shot he called for three cappuccinos.

  “Is it really necessary to be so hard on people,” I wondered. “I thought her voice was terrific.”

  “Sure it’s terrific,” he said, “lots of voices are terrific. I got terrific voices calling up orders in McDonalds right now. What d’you want me to tell her, Kiddo? That the West End’s eating its heart out for her terrific voice when I know there’s a famine out there? When there’s already twenty thousand starving in the queue? Sure she’s got a voice, but I got nothing for her and a few more lessons won’t do any harm. If she’s a stayer, she’ll be back before six months, and then maybe there’ll be something and maybe there won’t.”

  Mickey, who would have much preferred to be a singer than a model, said wistfully, “If I had a voice like that, I’d really be going places.”

  “Listen, Kiddo, the only place you’re going is back to that crooked agency to pay them off,” Ziggy dug into his money belt and extracted a wad of notes which he proceeded to count out on to the table. When Mickey had come out of Modelling School she had done the usual tour of the agencies with her portfolio, starting with the well-known ones, working down via the less well-known to the frankly dubious where, like hundreds of would-be models before her, she had been ripped off. The agency had enthused about her looks, and promised to find her work but criticized her portfolio and dispatched her to a nearby studio to have a new set of photographs taken. Naturally, the photographer had been on the payroll and there was no work to be had, but Mickey had been presented with a bill for two hundred and thirty pounds for a new and grossly inferior portfolio. This kind of thing was happening all the time for there was always a fresh supply of innocents; would-be dancers, singers, models, actors and actresses coming out of the schools, believing that they had something special to offer. “Without somebody who knows the business you’re just babes in the wood,” Ziggy maintained, and already I had seen enough to know that he was right.

  “Three hundred quid, less fifty is two hundred and fifty,” Ziggy said finally, pushing a pile of notes across the tiles to Mickey, “and you make sure you get a receipt because I’ll be checking, so don’t go blowing this little lot down Oxford Street.”

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Mickey objected, “what do mean three hundred less fifty? I may be a little lacking in the upper storey in your estimation, Zig, but I can work out percentages, and I know ten per cent of three hundred isn’t fifty quid!”

  “OK, Gillespie, look at it this way. Thirty quid commission. Fifteen quid I shelled to get your hair fixed, and five quid so you could buy a pizza – I got it all in the book…”

  “Don’t bother with the book,” Mickey said hastily, “I’d forgotten about the hair and the pizza.”

  “Just don’t forget to pay off the agency, Kiddo.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Now Grace Darling,” Ziggy turned his attention to me. “You got to go do a film test. It’s not something you get cooked about, it’s a formality, but you got to do it because they need to get you on film.”

  This was the first I had heard of it. “Why?” I asked. “What for?”

  “I told you, they got to take some shots, they have to see how you look on film. After that they can tell you lose some weight, grow your hair a couple more inches, get your teeth fixed.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my teeth,” I said, “I’ve had them fixed.”

  “I’m just telling you why they need the shots.” Ziggy paused in order to receive the cappuccino from Mr Vincinelli who appeared more than usually agitated and had over-steamed the milk so that the froth stood up in mountainous peaks.

  One felt that Mr Vincinelli, who had a love-hate relationship with Ziggy, spent his time behind the espresso machine composing his latest complaint against Ziggy’s ‘artistes’ and sure enough: “Mr Stanislavski,” he began in a wounded tone, “last week I ask you to invite no more tap dancing ladies to my café because of damage to my floors, and now I ask you, I beg you, please to invite no more singing persons because for this I need special licence from the police, and it is quite possible that you make many troubles for me in my business.”

  “The only troubles I make for you in your business,” Ziggy said, spooning raw cane sugar over the exaggerated froth on his cappuccino, “is if I split. If you got a legitimate complaint, Vincinelli, I got to listen, but you know and I know that your customers like my auditions, and if I go, they go.”

  Mr Vincinelli walked back to his counter, temporarily defeated. “At this film test, Grace Darling,” Ziggy continued, “you get to meet your co-star.”

  “Co-star?” I had not even considered my co-star. I had been too preoccupied with the prospect of having to ride a horse. “Who is he? Do you know who he is?”

  Ziggy shook his head. “I got no information on that score, Kiddo, except that he’ll be six feet otherwise you wouldn’t have got the part.”

  The thought of a co-star immediately made me feel inadequate. What would happen if we disliked each other on sight? Such things did happen, I knew, and to people of proven ability who were already well-known and famous for their work. The odds were rather stacked against two novices, both out to make an impression, who had neither the ability nor the confidence to be generous in their work.

  Worse, what if my co-star turned out to be an established television actor? Would he despise me for my youth and inexperience? I was sure that he would. How could he possibly respect someone who, apart from training videos and the fumbling efforts of the ‘techies’, the stage management students at dra
ma school, had never before faced the cameras. I could imagine myself, flushed with hopeless embarrassment, sweating in the heat from the lights, mumbling, forgetting my lines, losing control of my hands and my feet, knowing that the camera crew were trying not to laugh at my discomfiture, that the Director was boiling with rage, and somehow worse than anything that Tom Silver, who had seen two hundred and twenty-seven females without a flicker of an eyelid before deciding to take me, was looking on balefully from inside the collar of his anorak.

  “And so, Grace Darling,” Ziggy said, “you got to go to Whipps Common, Thursday morning, ten a.m. sharp.”

  As a location for a film test, the absurdity of it jerked me out of my speculations. “Whipps Common?”

  “Location shots, Kiddo. The Great Outdoors. It’s a horse story, remember; you won’t be shooting in the studio – you got to have your hair blowing in the breeze.”

  I supposed that was reasonable, if rather unexpected and nerve-wracking. “But Ziggy,” I reminded him, “it’s the riding I’m really worried about. I’m just terrified that when they find out I can’t do it, they’ll re-audition for the part.”

  “Listen, Kiddo,” Ziggy said patiently, “you’re cooked about the riding even though I tell you there’s nothing to it. I tell you what ...” he produced a twenty pound note from his money belt and pushed it across the table, “go get yourself a lesson.”

  It was generous of him, but, “One?” I said faintly.

  “Have a heart, Grace Darling,” Ziggy said. “You don’t need more than one. One horse-riding lesson’s enough for anybody.”

  “One day

  When I am famous

  When I am

  Fêted everywhere, known,

  And wanted;

  Too high on my cloud to regret you,

  I’ll forget you.”

  The room next to mine had been unoccupied for weeks, but now the clear, emotion-charged voice of a singer rang through the wall which, for all its fussily patterned wallpaper and framed theatrical handbills, was little more than a hardboard partition.

  It was not that I minded the singing. There was precious little peace and quiet to be had at Henry Irving House, N8, anyway, but I could have wished for something a little less ironic. Henry Irving House was supported by a little known Arts Trust Fund which meant that drama, model, and music school graduates could apply for one year of subsidised accommodation at the end of their training, which gave them a year in affordable, sheltered housing whilst they looked for work. I did not need to be reminded by the lyrics of ‘Stage Fright’ that all of us at Henry Irving House were waiting to be famous; clinging desperately to hope; acting our heads off in the daylight hours to keep up a confident façade. But oh, when one lay in the darkness of one’s own little room at night, how quickly the façade crumbled away. Doubts and fears stood waiting in the shadows to crowd around the bedside like a Victorian family called to a dying relative. Self-doubt, gloom and anxiety were familiar night time visitors to my bedside, and now a part was actually in the offing, terror of losing it stood beside them.

  Over and over again I had relived the audition; seeing again the Casting Director’s harassed expression, and the way Tom Silver had opened one eye, then two eyes, and the way he had zipped up his anorak and capered away across the dusty floor after saying he would make me a star without even asking to hear me read a script. Was it possible that an important television part could be decided in such an eccentric fashion? I did not know. But the following day my riding lesson was booked, and the day after that I was to attend the film test on Whipps Common. Every time I thought about it my stomach twisted into a painful knot. I tried hard not to think about it at all.

  “Telephone for Miss Vincent!” Above the lyrics of ‘Stage Fright’, the voice of Lancelot, Henry Irving’s landlord shrilled. I went out on to the landing with my heart in my mouth, praying that it wasn’t Ziggy ringing to tell me the whole thing had been called off.

  Outside my room, typical Henry Irving pandemonium reigned. In her room on the opposite side of the landing Mickey was working out to the accompaniment of a record. Lancelot, clad in a pink jumpsuit and one dangling earring rapped on her door, “Not so LOUD, darling! Turn the volume DOWN! I tell you, it’s bedlam out here!”

  On the staircase, two young men wearing visors and flourishing fencing foils were practising parries and thrusts. I dodged past them with Lancelot tripping behind me. “Very laudable dears, very, but not on my stairs if you don’t mind. It’s very inconvenient for the other tenants and I do have to think about the Wilton.”

  One of the young men held off his opponent long enough to glance down at the stair-treads. “Come off it, Lancelot. Some of us do know what Wilton looks like. This haircord rubbish is so old it’s practically historic.”

  In the hall I retrieved the dangling telephone receiver.

  “Grace? Is that you?” It was Richard’s voice.

  “Yes.” Relief that it was not Ziggy ringing to tell me that Tom Silver had changed his mind soon turned to exasperation. I was far too fraught to think about Richard, and I certainly did not want to talk to him. I had far too many important things on my mind. “What do you want?” I asked in an unwelcoming tone. “I’m rather busy at the moment.”

  “Busy doing what?” Richard countered. “I was under the impression you were unemployed.”

  I gritted my teeth. From the foot of the staircase Lancelot was trilling, “Then go and practise in the street, jump up and down the kerb, use your imagination, but not on my haircord, if you don’t mind!”

  “Grace?” Ricard demanded, “are you still there?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I’m still here.”

  The front door banged shut behind the fencing partners.

  “There are times,” Lancelot remarked to me in passing, “when one looks at the type of person coming into the dramatic arts and is racked with concern for the future of the profession.”

  “Now look here, Grace,” Richard said firmly. “We have to talk.”

  “One day

  I’ll be up there

  with the stars

  Everyone will know me

  I will be so far above you

  There will be no time

  To love you.”

  The singer had now added a taped musical accompaniment. The clear voice soared. Lancelot stiffened. He went back up the staircase.

  “What would you like to talk about?” I enquired. “Your most recent outing with Maria Cunningham?”

  “I haven’t been out with Marcia Cunningham since the weekend,” Richard said.

  “What a pity. Why don’t you ask her out this evening?”

  “I already have.”

  “Then why bother to ring me?” I snapped.

  Lancelot’s voice floated down the stairs. “Sweetheart, it’s beautiful, it wrings my heart, but it’s very loud…”

  “What do you expect me to do, Grace?” Richard said in a furious voice. “Sit here on my backside waiting for you to condescend to inform me you are coming home for one weekend out of six?”

  “You know that isn’t what I expect,” I said crossly. “I haven’t the right to expect anything! I thought I had already made it clear that I’m not free to make any sort of commitment, I’m not ready for the kind of relationship you want. I have to put my career first!”

  “And what career is that, for heaven’s sake? You haven’t got a career, Grace! You’re just fooling yourself!”

  After all the agonized uncertainty of the last few days this was simply too much to take. “What on earth do you know about my career?” I demanded. “What makes you fit to judge?”

  “I know a damn sight more about earning a living than you do,” Richard said in an arctic voice.

  “But not through your own efforts,” I reminded him angrily. “Not because of anything you’ve done! Only because you were handed your father’s business on a silver plate! You’ve never had to struggle in your life! You don’t know the first thing ab
out building a career!”

  The fencing partners paused at the foot of the staircase, interested.

  “If you’d been a halfwit you would still be where you are,” I raged on, “running the family business, drawing a fat wage packet, driving a Porsche! So don’t think any of that qualifies you to criticize my efforts because it bloody well doesn’t!”

  Lancelot, halfway down the staircase, gave me a reproachful look over the banister rail. “Temper, darling,” he warned. ‘Language.’

  “I think you had better stop there, Grace,” Richard’s voice was pure ice. “I really see no point in continuing this conversation.”

  “Right!” I cried. “You’re absolutely right!” I threw the telephone receiver back into its cradle. I leaned my head against the wall. I was shaking with rage. I felt terrible.

  Lancelot tripped down the stairs and shooed away the fencing partners. He was all sympathy. “Come and sit down in my dear little flat,” he suggested. “I’ll open a bottle of my nicest wine and we can watch Eldorado together and be pleasurably appalled.”

  “No, thank you,” I sniffed. “It’s very kind of you, Lancelot – most kind; but honestly, I couldn’t”

  “I can’t say I blame you,” he agreed.

  Back in my tiny bedroom I sat down on my divan and tried to convince myself that if I never saw or heard from Richard Egan again, it would be to my advantage.

  “But one day

  When it is all over

  When I am

  No longer lovely, nor young,

  Nor wanted,

  When the only stars are high above me,

  Who will love me?”

  I put my head under my pillow. It was not that I minded the singing, it was the lyrics that got on my nerves. Not only that, but I suddenly realised that I recognised the voice. It belonged to Emma Hall.

  “I think you’re barmy to choke him off like that. I mean, you’ve only got a few weeks left at Henry Irving, and say this TV part don’t come off and nothing else turns up? You’ll have to go home for a bit to scrape up enough cash for a deposit on a room, so what’s the point of kicking a rich young fella like him in the teeth just when you need cheering up?”