‘Who’s not here?’ Eric Mawby asked. His perfectly produced, hammy old voice had the authority of special eminence.
They all began to compare scripts and talk at once.
‘I’m Dickinson.’
‘Who’s doubling as Parsons? You, Fred?’
‘I’m Allenby,’ Eric Mawby said. ‘And you’ve got the plum of course, Phil.’ He was looking at a sad-faced man of about forty who sat by himself, and who looked up at Mawby with eyes that appeared to have been drained of their colour by some sort of violent excess. I guessed at a nervous breakdown, or alcoholism. ‘That’s right Eric,’ he said. ‘That’s if you call a masochistic queer who gets buggered by Turks a plum part.’
There was a burst of laughter around the studio but the sad-faced man didn’t smile. He had a beautiful voice, and now I knew who he was; I’d been trying to remember. Philip Desmond was the closest thing Australia then had to a star. He had done two films and a good deal of stage work; his Shakespearean performances were revered. But this made no one a living: like everyone else, Desmond made his living in ABS radio plays like this one, and in the big commercial soap operas (When a Girl Marries; Reflections in a Wine Glass). He still had the remnants of those matinee-idol’s good looks that had been fashionable here and in Britain in the 1930s: dark brown hair parted on one side; wide-set eyes whose straight top lids made them look ‘steady’. But all the lines of the face were drawn down by a weary melancholy, and there were unusually emphatic pouches under his eyes. Tonight he would play the clinically depressed Lawrence of Arabia; type-casting, I thought.
A huge, hollow voice sounded from a monitor the size of a packing case, over by the door. It was Martin Gadsby from the control-room.
‘What we’re waiting for, mes amis, is Simon bloody Harrington, who has simply not turned up, and who was to have played the Turkish General.’ He stood up; a few seconds later the hushed double doors of the studio opened, and he was moving across the carpet towards us, script in hand: shorter and stockier than he had seemed through the glass, in a pink shirt and old-fashioned red bow tie. He took the cigarette from his mouth, holding it away from himself as though it were about to explode. ‘Unreliability is becoming a disease,’ he said. ‘I’ll give him five minutes more, and if he doesn’t come I’ll have no choice but to cancel rehearsal.’
The regretful expressions around the wall were false; we would still have to be paid for this call. There was a silence.
‘I think I could do it,’ I said.
All the faces around the wall looked at me; Gadsby, the cigarette back in his mouth, pivoted slightly and raised his eyebrows. His elderly eyes were of an unusual forget-me-not blue: the eyes of an ageing beauty queen. Like the startling blond hair, they were in blatant contrast with his grey moustache and sagging, disciplinarian’s face. ‘Ah. The new man from Melbourne,’ he said. ‘Showing commendable ambition, eh, dear boy?’
There were small chuckles — some of them malicious. Gadsby turned the pages of his script, squinting through his smoke. ‘You’re doing the lecturer,’ he said musingly. ‘Only one scene. Very well; we’ll relieve you of that, and see what you make of the General. But if you can’t give me what I want, Richard, we abandon rehearsal.’ Silence returned, during which eyes hovered about me like mosquitoes.
We halted for a coffee break at the end of the first act, at a point where I’d appeared in two scenes, but not yet in the key one where Lawrence was tortured.
‘Your General is interesting, so far,’ Gadsby said to me. ‘But let’s wait and see what you do with his big scene.’ He turned to Phil Desmond. ‘Phil, your Lawrence is too camp.’
Phil Desmond raised weary eyebrows. ‘Well, he is camp, Martin, isn’t he?’
‘That doesn’t mean you play him as a trissy little queen, dear boy.’
‘I believe that’s how Guinness played him.’
Gadsby took the cigarette from his mouth and stared as though he had been affronted. ‘I doubt that,’ he said. ‘I really do. But whatever the case may be, would you mind playing it my way?’
Phil Desmond now had the expression of a brave boy being rebuked by a cruel teacher. ‘Which way is that, Martin? You haven’t told me.’
‘Some things surely don’t need pointing out,’ Gadsby sighed. ‘Lawrence was a man of action and a hero. Would it be too much to bear that in mind, Phil, or beyond your powers to convey it?’
Desmond’s eyes dropped to his script, and he said nothing. Gadsby stood up; and with an air of relief, the others began to get up too, and straggle out through the double doors for coffee.
On my way back to the studio I went along to the washroom. Large, blue-tiled and brightly lit, it was empty except for a man who stood at the row of washbasins, hunched over with his back to me. When I came from the urinal to the basins he was still there, stooped in the same attitude; and something about his stillness made me curious. I looked up at the reflection in the big mirror above the basins. It was Philip Desmond, and he was crying.
The reflected face looking back at the reflection of mine was crumpled into a mask of tragedy, tears running down his cheeks. I let liquid soap trickle slowly from my hands, and gazed at this unbelievable image. The red-rimmed eyes didn’t seem to expect me to look away; seemed, on the contrary, to want my attention to their woe. I swung sideways to take in the real face, half hoping that the mirror had misrepresented it, and that he merely had grit in his eye.
But no; he was silently crying, and looked more than ever like a schoolboy who had just been caned — or would have done, had it not been for the heavy bags under the eyes, the deep lines from the nose to the corners of the mouth. The tears ran into these furrows. ‘If — Mr — Martin — Gadsby,’ he said, spacing the words, ‘is — rude to me — again, I shall bloody well — walk out.’
I could find no answer to this, but tried to look sympathetic. I felt infinitely sorry for him, and infinitely contemptuous. Desmond was the best actor in Australia; was this all he could do with his success? He swayed a little, and I caught the smell of liquor. He blew his nose; the sobbing had abated.
‘You’re just starting,’ he said. ‘And you’re pushy enough to make it, young Miller — that’s obvious. Take some advice.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Get out.’ He smiled: a falsely winsome smile. ‘Get out, sonny boy; or spend your bloody life recording commercials for toilet paper, and being insulted by talentless old shits like Martin Gadsby.’ His voice rose now, booming in the echo-chamber of the washroom; no longer the small voice of suffering but the huge, effortlessly-projected voice of the stage professional, heavily and bitterly hammy. ‘Do you re-ahlly want to be an ac-tor?’
He burst into breathy laughter, staring at me expectantly. Then his eyes filled with tears again, and I turned towards the door.
As I did so, his voice rang out again. ‘Oh, General! You’re going to arrange for me to be broken, when we go back in there, aren’t you? “Bodily integrity violated, will broken” — isn’t that how it goes? Will you enjoy that? Martin will. He’s looking forward to this scene. Oh, by the way, he likes young actors. It’s just the old ones he gets sick of.’ He began to laugh again, and I let the door swing shut.
Lawrence, it may be recalled, doesn’t actually speak to the Turkish General in Rattigan’s play; so I didn’t at any stage exchange dialogue with Philip Desmond. Lawrence is tortured and sodomised in an outer room, while the General, within earshot, discusses it with a young captain. Then Lawrence is dragged in; he lies on the floor semiconscious, and the General speaks to him; but he can’t respond.
The only actors at the stand mike now were Roy Taylor, a cheerful man with a large Air Force moustache who played the captain, and myself. Desmond sat on his chair by the control room window, his eyes still pinkish from crying, and seeming to ask for mercy. It was probably my private knowledge of his suffering that enabled me to play the scene as well as I did. I worked very close on mike, giving the General a soft but penetr
ating voice, with a suggestion of sibilance. It helped to make him sound delicately obscene, under a perfectly civilized and intelligent surface.
At the moment when Lawrence was dragged in and flung on the floor; at the moment when the General leaned over and pulled Lawrence’s head up by the hair, I couldn’t resist a quick glance at Phil Desmond.
“‘You must understand that I know,’” I said. I was telling him that I knew what had been revealed by the rape: in the General’s words: ‘Bodily integrity violated, will broken.’ The silence in the studio had deepened two layers. As I looked up from my script, I caught a glimpse of Gadsby through the glass. He was sitting very still, watching me as though trying to work out a puzzle. The smoke from his cigarette went straight upwards.
When the rehearsal was over, he shuffled into the studio and moved directly across to me, ignoring the remaining actors.
‘Congratulations, dear boy, that was splendid.’ He patted my shoulder twice, blinking rapidly; friendliness made his eyes look beseeching instead of threatening. ‘And now I think we should talk. Have you time for some supper? There’s an excellent place up in the Cross. It serves the most wonderful cream cakes.’ He gave me a confiding smirk, as though divulging the whereabouts of a brothel for special tastes.
He led me along Darlinghurst Road, main street of the Cross, through the quarter’s unsleeping carnival. It was after ten o’clock, but many of the coffee shops and patisseries and delicatessens were open, and the pavements crowded; life quickened on this little hill, while the city slept below. Gadsby’s hand was under my elbow, steering, making me feel uncomfortably like a bride being given away by an aged father. We moved through a close, warm stillness like that of a circus tent; one seemed to catch the odours of canvas, and the dung of herbivorous animals, mixed with the Cross’s real smells: grilling hamburgers; cut flowers, coffee. Gadsby led me around the corner into Macleay Street, crossing that invisible line where the Cross proper becomes Potts Point.
There was a sort of elegance here, under the plane trees and awnings; an elegance deriving from a wistful dream of Continental Europe. Gadsby’s goal proved to be an outdoor café on a flag-stoned terrace, whose strings of coloured overhead lights lit the pale-green plane leaves. When we sat down under a multicoloured umbrella, served by waiters in mess jackets and red cummerbunds, the dangerous, drunken shouts and car-horns of the Cross became safely remote; sounds from a distant fairground.
Gadsby had begun to praise me for my interpretation of the Turkish General.
‘You’ve played a man twice your age impeccably, and got right under the skin of a sado-masochist. Only a very few could do that, Richard — I wonder how you did?’ He chuckled, watching me try to look modestly non-committal; then he leaned forward and patted my hand. ‘There there, dear boy, I’m sure you don’t share the General’s proclivities.’
His warm, somewhat moist old hand remained on mine, imprisoning it on the table. I froze in appalled embarrassment, but I didn’t try to escape, and controlled my expression. The moment was crucial; if I showed even a flicker of disapproval, I might very well see the door I’d so long waited to get through slammed shut; and I had no intention of causing that to happen. I’d eaten too long from the greasy bowl of failure to be so squeamish; I was prepared to endure a good deal of petty discomposure to give up that brew for life.
Gadsby now fixed me with a serious yet almost tender gaze, and spoke softly. ‘So you want to be a producer. Can you tell me a little more about yourself?’
My hand was still trapped, but I isolated its plight in a corner of my mind, organised my thoughts, and began to speak, my tone one of friendly formality, as though our loving attitude was perfectly normal, or had escaped my notice. It was very important, in putting my case, that I shouldn’t appear to be just another actor; I had to produce a background that qualified me to enter Gadsby’s magic realm of control. I spoke about my university years, and dwelt on the theatrical direction I’d done for the University Players — subtly adjusting my vowel sounds so that my accent, like Gadsby’s own, was the one which at that time still signalled a calm expectation of privilege. But now there was a little setback that sent a chill through my bowels.
‘You didn’t take your degree,’ Gadsby said, and frowned. No, I told him, theatre had been all I cared about; and I gave him my most frank smile.
He patted my hand rhythmically, seeming to brood. Then, he smiled back. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘I haven’t got a degree either. No bloody academic qualifications do much to make a producer, do they?’
Now a diversion arrived: the cream cakes. Multicoloured childhood concoctions were wheeled up on a trolley, and Gadsby, freeing my hand at last, blinked upon them with thinly veiled gluttony. Although I wasn’t fond of cakes, I feigned polite enthusiasm as he pondered over a choice for me.
‘Why not try that one, son? With the marvellous cream topping? A young fellow like you doesn’t have to watch his waist-line. This is very naughty of me I’m afraid, but one can’t be Spartan all the time.’
An indulgent aunt with a sweet tooth, he now became quite appealing; but I still saw authority in the sag of his cheeks, and remembered Phil Desmond’s tears. Gadsby wasn’t a kindly aunt; yet although he’d said nothing to commit himself, I had a premonition of success — that assisted leap for which so many wait in vain; and I breathed in the odours of cigar smoke and coffee now with cautious exultancy.
‘How old are you, Richard?’ Gadsby asked suddenly. He was leaning forward over his cake, forking it in with great dexterity, dropping not a crumb or fleck of cream. When I told him, he sat back and stared, wiping the cream from his moustache with a clean handkerchief.
‘You’ve got it all in front of you, son — haven’t you?’ His pouched face had in it now an intimate, naked wistfulness; it was as though he had dropped a mask, out here in the warm night, and had plainly told me that he saw in me his own youth; that I stood where he longed to stand again. The surprising moment didn’t last long; he cleared his throat, finished his cake, and changed to a dry, almost official tone: one I was sure he used in the office. ‘I’m glad Rupert wrote to me about you — he described you as brilliant, and I think he was right. But tell me — why don’t you want to go on acting? Why do you want to produce? Is it because of the limp? That wouldn’t stop you in radio.’
‘It’s not that,’ I said. ‘It’s because of the way I am. Some people are raw talent — others are best at managing talent, and putting a frame around it. I believe that’s the category I’m in.’
He nodded slowly. ‘Then you’re like me. You live off the beauty of others; and you may make a producer.’ He lit a cigarette and became curt again.
‘I can’t promise you anything yet; but I’d like to see you in the Department. It won’t be quick or easy, and other people will decide as well as me. Meanwhile, I’d like you to meet a few friends of mine. I’m having a party next Saturday night — will you come?’
We parted with a handshake, standing on the footpath again. He had someone to visit in the Cross, he said, and turned on his heel, his smile already fading like a faulty bulb, moving off up Macleay Street under the plane trees and red brick apartment buildings: an elderly man in a navy Bermuda jacket, with a pot belly and dyed blond hair — changed and reduced by the frame he moved in. How few transform the frame!
5
The following evening I had my first visitor, on Bela Beaumont’s arcade.
Beaumont House was set back from the water, up on Elizabeth Point; but at night the Harbour’s noises were so magnified that I seemed to be suspended just above it, and the sudden squabbling of the gulls could still startle me. It was one of their outcries after a long period of silence that made me look up from the script I was studying. The glass doors were open as usual, and I found that a tall young woman with her hair drawn back in a bun was standing on the dark verandah, looking in at me.
She knocked lightly on the door-frame and cleared her throat, holding herself very er
ect. ‘Excuse me. May I come in?’ It was a quiet, rather high voice, but it made me jump. It was also foreign, although the accent was very slight.
I got up from the rickety little table I used as a desk, murmuring some sort of assent. She stepped into the room, holding a black leather handbag protectively against her stomach with both hands, and glanced back over her shoulder so that I half-expected someone else to follow her in. But no one did, and we faced each other awkwardly in the muted orange glow from my table-lamp, with its aged paper shade. The overhead light was off.
‘Thank you. I’m sorry to invade you like this,’ she said, and smiled. The smile was professionally friendly and infectious, her wide-set grey eyes bright and intent; she waited as though explanations were due from me, and not from her. It was impossible not to smile back, but she made me very conscious of my crumpled white shirt and old grey slacks, since everything about her was formal: her erect posture, tight-waisted black frock and high-heeled shoes of black patent leather. It was a European formality, and in these first moments I thought that she might be German. She was attractive, but seemed somehow old-fashioned, as so many of the migrants did who were currently coming into the country: her dark blonde hair in its chignon was from the Weimar Republic, her wide face dramatically pale, and her straight nose perhaps capable of being earnest.
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