by Lyn Gardner
“With Miss Swan; row G, seats 21 and 22 in the stalls,” said Georgia. Eel had told Georgia exactly where they’d be sitting in the hope that Georgia might spot them.
“I’m going to get her,” said Jon James decisively. “She’s our only hope.”
“This is the maddest thing I’ve ever heard,” said Josie. “It’ll be a disaster. The death of all our careers.”
“We’ve no choice, Josie.” Jon sounded desperate but determined. “The bigger disaster is not doing the show. All our backers, some of the most powerful people in show business and the critics are sat out there! If we do it with Eel as Gretl, we just might get away with it.”
Jon disappeared out of the pass door and into the auditorium. He walked briskly down the aisle. The crowd saw him and those who recognised him began to murmur, guessing that something was seriously wrong. He looked slightly deranged.
The director stopped at row G, leaned across several people, pointed at Eel and said, “I need that child and I need her now. This is an emergency.”
Chapter Fourteen
Eel hadn’t had a clue what was happening when Jon James pulled her out of her seat. He had looked so strange that for a moment she thought she’d committed some terrible crime she didn’t know anything about and was going to be thrown out of the theatre. But he’d whispered something to Alicia and Alicia had nodded to her, so they’d gone with the director, who had practically dragged Eel through the pass door and into the wings of the stage. Only when they got there, and Jon James had explained the whole situation, did Alicia protest.
“She can’t possibly go on, Jon! She may know all the songs and the dialogue, but she doesn’t know Gretl’s moves. There’d be chaos. You might as well let a rabbit loose on stage. It’s not fair on the show and it’s not fair on Eel.”
“Miss Swan, she does know all the moves. We’ve rehearsed them after school,” said Georgia. “I know she can do it.”
They all turned to Eel, who was pinching herself in case she was dreaming. She was going to be Gretl in The Sound of Music! “I know I can do it too,” she said. She shook back her curls and looked Alicia in the eye. “And I want to do it, and I’m not going to let you stop me, Granny.”
Alicia could see how determined she was, and she could also see the desperate faces of the rest of the cast, all willing her to say “Yes”. She nodded briskly and smiled at Eel, who was dancing madly around, unable to believe what was happening.
“Eel, calm down, you need to conserve your energy,” she told her granddaughter. “Where’s that costume? Let’s get her in it. Georgia. Tom. I want you to look after her on stage to the best of your abilities. I’m relying on you both. Don’t let me or Eel down.” Alicia turned to Jon James. “I hope this is the right decision, Jon. I feel like a farmer sending the family pet lamb to the slaughter. I just hope that you have luck on your side and that Eel can pull it off.”
*
Now Eel was waiting in the wings with the others. The moment was approaching when they would all enter stage right. Eel felt as if ants were crawling inside her tummy. Georgia was holding her hand. Then suddenly she was being pulled on to the stage.
The lights were bright and unbelievably hot. Her mouth felt dry. The stage seemed vast, much bigger than it looked from the stalls. The darkness of the auditorium looked like the gaping mouth of a monster waiting to swallow her up. She had thought that she would be able to see the people in the audience, but they were just a blur in the darkness.
She glanced along the line and saw Abbie, Tom and Georgia, people she knew so well, but they didn’t look like Abbie, Tom and Georgia. They looked like much brighter versions of themselves, as if somebody had turned up the contrast on the TV as far as it would go. Eel tried to collect her thoughts. She had to stop being Eel and start being Gretl. She knew it would soon be her moment to speak and she felt a little sick.
Mia, who played Marta and who was next in line to her, said, “I’m Marta. I’m going to be seven on Tuesday and I’d like a pink parasol.”
Eel waited until the laughter passed. This was her moment. She opened her mouth and thought nothing would come out, but to her surprise she heard a voice saying, “I’m Gretl. I’m five,” and the way she said it and tossed her chestnut curls like a small pony tossing its mane made the audience laugh.
After that, the rest of the performance passed in a complete whirl. She forgot all about Eel; she was Gretl. Josie was constantly with her in the wings, whispering what she should do next and, as far as they were able, Tom and Georgia stuck to her like glue. Everybody on stage did their best to help her, but Tom was brilliant, whispering in her ear and on occasion taking her hand to guide her to the right place.
Everyone, that is, except Katie, who was seething at this sudden turn of events. She hadn’t expected Freya to break her leg when she’d pushed Tom into her; she had just wanted to get Tom into trouble. Instead her actions had threatened the whole performance and led to that horrid little Eel girl getting her big break. But there was nothing she could do about it; Eel was being watched so closely that Katie couldn’t risk trying to do anything to scupper her performance.
And what a performance it was! This was what Eel had been born to do, and she commanded the stage as if it was the only place she belonged, the only place she could ever be. Watching from the wings, Jon James gradually stopped looking agonised and started not just to relax but to smile broadly. Alicia nodded her encouragement, but knew that her granddaughter didn’t need it. She was a natural.
When she ended up in the wrong position in the middle of “The Lonely Goatherd”, Eel, Tom and Georgia managed to turn it into a little joke so the audience thought it was Gretl’s mistake, not the performer’s. It was as if the presence of Eel and her extraordinary energy and freshness had had a galvanising effect on the rest of the cast, who had quite forgotten all about their first-night nerves and instead – like Eel – were giving the performance of their lives.
The atmosphere was electric, and it was sizzling in the audience too. Everyone was aware that some kind of disaster had been narrowly averted, but it wasn’t until the interval, when the production’s publicist briefed the critics, that the news spread that the child playing Gretl had been plucked from the stalls. The audience had already been responding enthusiastically to Eel, but now they became ecstatic at her every move. “So Long, Farewell” brought the house down, and after that the show – and Eel – rolled on in triumph to the very final note.
The red velvet curtains swished shut again and the house lights came on, but the audience was having none of it. They were still on their feet, stamping and cheering, roaring their approval, refusing to budge and demanding that the curtains open again. The Sound of Music was the hit of the season.
The house lights dimmed and the curtains parted once more. The audience went crazy. On stage, the cast beamed and raised their hands to clap and cheer the audience. There hadn’t been a curtain call like this in the West End since the sixteen-year-old Toni Swan had played Juliet and broken every heart in the house. Nobody left, not even after the fifth or sixth curtain call, not even the critics who normally scurried away as soon as the curtain came down to meet their deadlines. Tonight they stayed because they knew that theatrical history was being made.
Jon James, who had come on stage to take a bow after the eighth curtain call, stepped forward and held up a hand to quieten the audience. All was hushed, except for the clicking of cameras from the photographers, who had been let into the theatre as the show finished and had been allowed to stand near the foot of the stage so they could take the best pictures.
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you,” he said. “Many of you are already aware that this production almost didn’t happen tonight after our Gretl – Freya Graveny – suffered an accident just minutes before curtain up and was unable to perform. Freya has a broken leg, but will make a full recovery. We wish her all the very best. Due to illness, we were in the very unusual position of not having anothe
r Gretl available to perform tonight. So it looked as if we would have to cancel our first night. But fortunately for us there was a little girl sitting in the audience who had been to several previews and who knew all the songs and moves. Her name is Eel Marvell.”
The crowd went crazy, whooping and hollering. Jon James put his hand up. “I know this is going to sound completely mad, but I’d seen Eel perform a song from the show, and on the basis of that alone and the fact she is a pupil at the Swan Academy, I had every confidence in her. So I decided to take the biggest gamble of my career and put her on stage tonight to play Gretl, even though she had never rehearsed with us and never performed professionally on stage before. I think you’ll agree that it’s been one of the most remarkable debuts the West End has ever seen. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to say something I thought I’d never ever get to say: tonight, a star is born! I give you Eel Marvell.”
Smiling, Cassie and Sam gently pushed Eel to the front of the stage, and Jon James took her hand and raised it up. The photographers clicked furiously. The roar of the audience was so loud that it could be heard out in the street. Eel beamed and bowed and bowed and beamed. It had been her bestest day ever, and now she was going to the first-night party too! Life couldn’t get better than that. She just wished that Livy had been here to see her and share in her triumph.
Chapter Fifteen
Katie Wilkes-Cox pressed the off button on the TV remote and threw it across the room in a fury. It was the second morning in a row that she had turned on the TV to find a beaming Eel sitting on a sofa being interviewed by fawning presenters. It was unbearable. What had Eel done that everyone thought was so great? Katie had spent a lot of time during the preview performances fantasising about press night and the reviews that would follow. Her role as Louisa was small, but she was certain the critics would spot her exceptional talent and remark on what a star in the making she was. Offers of work would flood in. Broadway and Hollywood would be knocking on her door.
But in the event she didn’t even merit a mention in any of the reviews, and an interview that her uncle had set up for her to talk about being a Sound of Music child had been cancelled when the magazine decided that they would far rather talk to Eel instead.
Katie hated Eel even more than she hated Georgia and Tom, particularly after all three of them had been on early evening TV with Alicia, talking about what it was like to be at the Swan. If it wasn’t for Olivia Marvell and Tom and the others, she would still be at the Swan and would have been sitting on that sofa, too. Life was so unfair!
Eel had been all over the front pages of the tabloids the morning after press night, and once journalists had found out that her dad was the legendary high-wire walker Jack Marvell and her mum the beautiful, tragic, stage actress Toni Swan, they couldn’t get enough of her. Even her nickname had been a source of fascination and many column inches. In any case, Eel’s sunny nature and self-confidence made excellent copy.
Asked by a TV interviewer what had been the best bit of her triumphant night, Eel had replied that it was the three sorts of ice cream at the after-show party, and when another journalist had asked if there was anything that could be improved in The Sound of Music, she had said, “It’s a great pity that there isn’t more dancing in it, because everything in life is made better by dancing.”
All the publicity had been brilliant for the box office and people were so desperate to see Eel perform that tickets were changing hands on eBay at three times their face value. Although Jon James and the producers were keen for Eel to do more publicity, Alicia had decided that this morning’s TV interview should be the last. She was seriously worried that Eel would get big-headed, despite Eel pointing out that she was naturally big-headed anyway.
Eel wasn’t really sorry about her aunt’s decision. It was nice to be the centre of attention but all the interviews were interfering with her dance lessons, and besides she had other things to worry about. Top of her list was Livy. When she and Alicia had got back to the flat at the Swan just before one a.m. she couldn’t resist waking Olivia up to tell her what had happened. Olivia had been grumpy at first, but when Eel had started to tell her everything that had happened, she had become wide-eyed with amazement and so animated that she was almost like the old Livy.
“Will you come and see me perform?” asked Eel, hugging her sister.
Eel knew that Livy hadn’t wanted to see the show because Tom and Georgia were in it. But Livy’s response was immediate and generous: “Of course I will. I’ll come every single night if you want me to.”
“No, you’d get very bored,” said Eel. “There are three things seriously wrong with The Sound of Music – one, not enough dancing and two, absolutely no circus at all.”
“What’s the third thing?” asked Olivia.
“Katie Wilkes-Cox. She kept giving me the evil eye all the way through the performance.”
“How was Tom? Did he do well?” asked Olivia tentatively.
“He was great, Livy, and he and Georgia really helped me out. But Tom’s in big trouble. Jon James and the others don’t like him. They say he’s unreliable and a liar.”
“Tom?” asked Livy, astonished.
“Yes,” said Eel, and she told Olivia everything she had heard from Mia and Joshua. “There are even rumours that Tom pushed Freya down the stairs deliberately.”
“Tom, would never do something like that!” cried Olivia. “Tom’s the kindest person I know and that’s why he’s such a great friend…”
She tailed off sadly, and a tear ran down her cheek. Eel clung on to her. “Livy, please tell me what happened between you.”
“I wish I knew, Eel. I know I was stupid and selfish over Romeo and Juliet. I couldn’t forgive him for choosing The Sound of Music instead. But when I realised what a complete idiot I was being, I sent him a text to apologise. I thought it would make everything OK, but somehow it’s made everything worse. For some reason, it seems to have caused Tom, Georgia and Aeysha some terrible offence and they haven’t spoken to me since.”
“What did you say in the text?” asked Eel.
“Just how sorry I was and how I hoped that he’d have a great time doing The Sound of Music and how much I missed being his friend,” said Olivia, and she burst into floods of tears. “Do you think Tom’s going to lose the role?”
“Over my dead body,” said Eel ominously.
Despite her sobs, her sister gave a small smile. “I do love you, Eel,” said Olivia. She sniffed. “Dad rang tonight. He sounded really cheerful. He’s going to walk Snake Canyon next week. Then he’ll be back to see us. He’ll be so surprised to discover you’re in The Sound of Music.”
“Not as surprised as I am,” said Eel with a grin. “I don’t think I’ll tell him until he’s back.”
Chapter Sixteen
A meeting was underway at the Duke’s Theatre. Alicia, Jon James, Eel and all the children from Alps team were there, with the exception of Freya, of course. She was back at home with her leg in plaster surrounded by cards and flowers sent by the cast, crew and management of The Sound of Music.
Josie and Chuck Daniels had just walked in together, looking rather pleased with themselves. Over a long lunch Chuck had announced that he was going to tour a new production of Dr Dolittle and that he wanted Josie to direct. Josie was thrilled. This was her big break; no more assistant directing for her. She was going to make her mark on the theatre world. She just hoped that animals were easier to direct and better behaved than children. The meeting began.
“Of course, we’re dreadfully keen to offer Eel a contract,” said Jon. “Freya is going to be out of action for at least three months and we’ve agreed that she can come back into the show when she’s fully recovered. We’re booking right through to the end of next year and beyond. The box office has gone crazy. One of our other Gretls is much better. She’ll need a bit of rehearsal and should be back at the end of the week, and the other one will be back soon. But we need Eel rather desperately over the next fe
w days, and she’s clearly a real box-office draw, so if she would agree to join Alps team for a while longer, we would be very grateful.”
“Are you sure this is what you want, Eel?” asked Alicia. “It will leave you much less time for your dancing.”
“I’ll just get up earlier to practise. I’ll dance and play Gretl,” said Eel firmly. Everyone except Katie clapped and Jon looked relieved.
“Well, that’s settled then,” he said with a big smile. “Eel, Alicia – I don’t know how to thank you both. You’ve really saved our bacon.”
“Well, it’s kind of you to provide so many tickets for Swan children to come and see the performance tonight,” said Alicia. “They’re all really looking forward to it.”
“My sister, Livy, is coming,” said Eel happily. She looked pointedly at Tom and Georgia. “She wants to see her friends perform.”
Tom shifted slightly and looked uncomfortable. Katie felt a tingle of pleasure at his discomfort.
“And there’s something else we need to discuss,” said Chuck Daniels.
Now it was Jon James’s turn to look uncomfortable. “Chuck, let’s just leave it, shall we? Everything’s worked out fine.”
“No, Jon, this needs to be sorted out once and for all. It’s outrageous that somebody in the cast should deliberately try to hurt another performer. What’s more, it could’ve scuppered the whole show. We can’t let that kind of behaviour go.”
Jon James sighed. Alicia suddenly looked very alert and the children started to mutter amongst themselves.
“Yes, Jon,” said Josie. “We’ve got to take action.”
