Make me a Star (The Silver Bridle Book 1)

by Caroline Akrill

  In the vicinity of the truck, the camera in its own little jacket lay on the pavement where it had been precipitated at the moment of impact, surrounded by shards of glass from one of the headlights. Ted and Norm were engaged in a private battle. “You bloody stupid berk!” Ted yelled. “Don’t tell me you didn’t notice a bloody great pile of concrete when it was right in front of your sodding nose!”

  Nobody seemed to care whether I was alive or dead, but certainly they now knew that I was both a liar and a fraud. Painfully, slowly, I managed to get to my feet. I felt no joy in the realization that I still retained the use of all of my limbs. All I wanted was to get away. As I stumbled across the common, snatches of furious argument followed me.

  “Don’t talk to me about special permission because I know there’s none been granted…” “If this horse had broken a leg he would have had to be shot, have you any idea…” “Six thousand quid’s worth of camera up the spout, and all because a bloomin’ idiot can’t see the nose in front of his rotten face…” And over it all the desperate pleading of the Casting Director, “Now look, fellas, it’s not going to help anybody if we get all het up…”

  By the first stroke of good fortune to come my way all day, a bus was just about to draw away from the request stop. Putting on a painful spurt to cross the road, I just managed to catch it.

  “…and then the handler called me a stupid, empty-headed little fool, and everyone started fighting, and so I walked across the common and got on the bus.”

  I could not bring myself to look at Ziggy as I related this. Instead, I concentrated upon dislodging a piece of dried spaghetti which had glued itself to one of the tiles on the table-top. Half a day and a sleepless night had passed before I could summon enough courage to face this encounter, and when I had finally forced myself to walk into the Café Marengo it had been a relief to see Ziggy sitting alone in his corner booth. Ironically, an audience was now the last thing in the world I wanted.

  Ziggy said nothing. If he had blamed me, if he had set about me with recriminations, I could have coped. I could have cried that it was his fault for sending me to audition without telling me that horse-riding ability was the prime requirement. I could have berated him for saying that horse riding was a piece of cake, that one lesson was enough for anybody. But Ziggy said nothing and it was not easy to cope with. Keeping my eyes on the piece of spaghetti, I said, “I know you think I’ve thrown away the best part I’m ever likely to be offered. I do understand how you feel, but I want you to know, Zig, how hard I tried. I honestly don’t believe that anyone could have tried harder.”

  Still there was no response. The piece of spaghetti began to blur in front of my eyes. It was quite appalling how often I had found myself near to tears in the last few days. Not only did it seem that I had lost control of events, but also of my emotions. It was a bad sign. Before this, I had never seriously doubted that I had what it took to make an actress, that I had the necessary grit. Now I was not so confident. Suddenly I began to doubt myself.

  None of this would have escaped Ziggy’s notice. And by now I knew him well enough to know that not only had I lost the part, I had also lost my agent. Ziggy was not the kind of person who had the time or the patience to nurture a delicate plant or massage a bruised ego. Ziggy wanted no truck with clients who were emotional or temperamental. What he wanted was a fighter, a hard-boiled survivor who could take all the punches, who could take any amount of rejections on the chin, who could be knocked out for the count one minute and be up and fighting again the next. Well, there had been a time when I honestly believed I qualified, but when the opportunity to show my true mettle had come, I had not even lasted the first round.

  “Mr Stanislavski!” Mr Vincinelli called. “Is young lady on my telephone to speak with you!” From behind the counter he waved the receiver urgently.

  “I told you I don’t speak to young ladies on the telephone,” Ziggy replied, “especially not now, I’m busy.”

  “But this is five times now she ring,” Mr Vincinelli protested. “This is five times in two days and she is most insisting. And I remember this young lady because she have a very big voice and frighten away my customers!”

  Emma Hall. Emma Hall was a tough cookie, I thought. Emma Hall was a fighter who wouldn’t let a prize slip through her fingers. She would have been in there punching for the part until the end. Emma Hall would not have crept away across the common and wept silent tears on the back seat of the bus all the way home. I wondered what had happened to me. At the Rose Jefferson Academy where the fall out rate during training had been six out of ten, I had been told that seventy per cent of those who graduated became discouraged and disillusioned and gave up within two years of leaving drama school. Was I about to become one of that seventy per cent? After all I had been through? After weathering the disapproval of family and friends? After three years’ hard slog at the Rose Jefferson Academy? After thirty auditions, had the fact that I had been so near to success only to have it snatched from my grasp, finally snapped my spirit?

  “Tell Emma Hall to go take a running jump,” Ziggy said. “Tell her I don’t take personal calls, least of all from people who need singing lessons.”

  Mr Vincinelli relayed this in a harassed voice, and banged down the receiver. “She say fine,” he cried in exasperation, “she say fine, she ring again tomorrow! I tell you Mr Stanislavski, I have many, many things to do instead of answer my telephone! What you try to do to me? You try to ruin my business?”

  “I told you what to do,” Ziggy told him. “Get me a separate line installed. I’ll pay the rental.”

  “Get him a line installed,” muttered Mr Vincinelli, “get him a line installed!” In his indignation he addressed a customer sitting in solitary state at the counter. “Do you hear what he say to me? Get him a line installed! I ask you one simple question; is this his business, or is it mine?” He snatched up the customer’s cup and saucer. “You want more coffee? I give you one for nothing! What do I care!” He vanished behind the espresso machine to vent his annoyance in a welter of angry gurglings, furious boilings and whooshings of steam. The customer turned round on his stool and gave us a look of complete bewilderment. But the silence at the table in the corner booth of the Café Marengo remained unbroken. I had one more try. “I know you are angry with me,” I said, “I know I’ve lost you money, and I know you won’t want to be my agent any more, why should you? But before I go, I just want to say how much I’ve appreciated your help, and how dreadfully sorry I am that it hasn’t worked out.”

  Still I could not look at him. If I had lost undreamed of riches with the part, I had not been the only loser. I was to have been paid five hundred pounds a week whilst I was filming, plus a retainer of fifty pounds a week until I received the script, then a hundred pounds a week until filming started. Out of this Ziggy would have taken his ten per cent which, at a time of abnormally high unemployment, when even more than the usual eighty per cent of Equity members were without work, was a substantial sum for an agent to lose.

  No wonder Ziggy felt sore. No wonder he got up from the table in disgust. No wonder he slung his leather blouson with the apliquéed silver star over his shoulder and paused for a brief word with Mr Vincinelli, cocking a thumb in my direction to indicate that I was now an ex-client, someone of no account, a no-hoper, a person to be got rid of at the earliest opportunity. No wonder he went out of the Café Marengo without a backward glance, leaving me abandoned in the corner booth.

  Of all the rejections I had suffered, this was by far the most wounding. Ziggy had not only been my agent, in his uncompromising way he had been my mentor, my champion and my comfort. He had never told me it would be easy and it had not been. He had never promised me success and there had not been any. He had never offered me his friendship, but I had honestly believed him to be my friend. Now I knew differently.

  Had it not been for Mr Vincinelli and the solitary customer at the counter, I might have laid my head on the tile-topped table
and howled my eyes out. In the circumstances it would not have been an extreme reaction to my predicament. I had no job, no money apart from unemployment benefit, no agent, and in three weeks I had to move out of Henry Irving House because my year was up. What did I do now? Did I hoof it yet again round the established agencies, hoping that one of them would take pity on me and ask to hear my well-worn audition pieces; the feminist monologue from Waking Up by Fo and Rame; the plea of Portia from The Merchant of Venice:

  ‘You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand,

  Such as I am. Though for myself alone

  I would not be ambitious in my wish

  To wish myself much better. Yet for you

  I would be trebled twenty times myself-

  A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times

  More rich.

  That only to stand high in your account,

  I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends,

  Exceed account…’

  Of course, there were many jobs open to out-of-work actresses, The Stage and Television Today was full of them. I could promote the latest lines in scent and after-shave in Harrods or Harvey Nichols; I could sell life assurance over the telephone; I could conduct market research in the streets; I could even dress up as a serving wench at the Court of King Harry for the benefit of roistering, mead-swilling tourists. But would any of these jobs give me artistic satisfaction? Would they lead to something better if I accepted them? I knew they would not. I knew that the sensible thing to do was to go back to Wallingford, enrol on a secretarial course, acquire marketable skills, and settle down in a ‘proper’ job. The thought was unbearable.

  And what about Richard? Foolishly, out of pique, I had told Richard that the television part was definite, and by now everyone in Wallingford would know of it. Somehow I had to face them, but facing Richard would be the worst. I could imagine his reaction. I remembered the frosty reception to the news that I had landed the part. The wintry manner in which he had said ‘How very nice for you.’ The biting way he had added ‘…after all this time.’ How could I now admit that I had lied? How could I go back and admit to the whole village that I had lied?

  Perhaps I should consider staying on, but how would I afford it once I had left Henry Irving? In some grim, down-at-heel area on the periphery of the city I might find a room for less than eighty pounds a week, and if I could not persuade another agent to take me on, then I would have to steel myself to do what some of the tougher female graduates from drama schools had historically always done; launch myself upon the seedy, second rate nightclub scene as an ‘exotic dancer’, just centimetres away from a stripper, for the sole purpose of gaining Equity membership. Could I do it? Well, once I had never thought myself capable of lying my way into a part, but I had done it. Once I would not have dreamed of lying to Richard but I had done that as well. Pride and the fear of failure had turned me into a liar, and now threatened to make me an exotic dancer – what next on the downward path?

  Overcome by despair and self-pity, I allowed several teardrops to drip on to the tabletop of the Café Marengo. Instantly a cloth appeared beneath my downturned face and wiped them away. I looked up to see Mr Vincinelli standing beside me. In one hand he clutched the cloth, and in the other, red paper napkins and cutlery. He smiled at me in an uncertain manner, as if an attempt at cheerfulness in the face of such obvious distress might be interpreted as wholly unsympathetic.

  Poor, long-suffering Mr Vincinelli had obviously been told to get rid of me, but he could not bring himself to ask me to leave. Instead he began to lay the table as if it had been reserved for a meal, which was unheard of in the Café Marengo. Place mats appeared. Wine glasses. A salt and pepper mill. A glass ashtray. A candle in a Chianti bottle. Menus, painstakingly wiped clean of coffee-rings and specks of Bolognese sauce. Mr Vincinelli gave me a hesitant, encouraging pat on the top of my head.

  “It’s all right,” I managed to say. “I’m going now.”

  Mr Vincinelli drew back in a startled manner. “Going? You mean you go out of the Café Marengo? But Mr Stanislavski, he say…”

  “Mr Stanislavski, he say you stay right where you are, Kiddo.” A hand with a familiar thick silver identity bracelet on the wrist thrust a bunch of multicoloured freesias under my nose. The black leather blouson with the appliqué silver star was tossed on to the opposite bench seat. The blouson was followed by Ziggy himself.

  Over the place mats, the wine glasses, the menus, I stared at Ziggy. My mind began to race. Once again my heart began to flutter like a butterfly in a jam jar.

  Mr Vincinelli scuttled away to the counter and returned with a bottle of Frascati which, with a great deal of concentrated effort, he managed to open. “You like to taste the wine, Mr Stanislavski?” he enquired.

  “And if I don’t care for the taste,” Ziggy wanted to know, “will the next bottle be any different?”

  “I am afraid that it is most possible it will be the same,” apologized Mr Vincinelli. He splashed the wine into the glasses. He smiled fondly at us both. With his free hand he gave me a further and more confident pat on the top of my head.

  I looked at Mr Vincinelli’s beaming face. I looked at the freesias. I looked at Ziggy. Ziggy grinned at me across the crowded tabletop. He shrugged his shoulders slightly.

  An impossible, incredible thought occurred to me. It could not be true. And yet somehow I knew it was. I could not trust myself to speak. My throat had closed. Tears flooded my eyes and coursed down my cheeks. Mr Vincinelli gave me a paper napkin to utilise as a handkerchief.

  Ziggy leaned over the table and picked up the hand still clutching the freesias. He detached them from my fingers. He sent Mr Vincinelli to find a vase. He didn’t give my hand back, he kept it, held fast between his own, on his side of the table. “I got the bell this morning, Kiddo,” he said. “Never mind the aggro. Forget the horse-riding because they’re sending you on a course to learn how to do it. The test came out great. You got the part. They love you, Grace Darling!”