by Judy Nunn
‘How’s that?’ Maddy came to with a jolt. The hairdresser was holding a hand mirror behind her head and looking enquiringly at her in the main mirror. But who was the dark-haired youth staring back? It was Francine, that’s who it was, Maddy thought with a surge of confidence. Phil was right: she was spot-on for this role, and, by God, she’d get it!
And she did. The test wasn’t gruelling at all. The moment she walked into the bare rehearsal studio she knew that Viktor Hoff wanted her for the role. His reaction was exactly the same as Phil’s had been when she’d walked into his office two hours earlier to show him the new dark bob. ‘Perfect! You look perfect,’ Phil had enthused.
‘Wonderful! You are wonderful! You are my Francine,’ Viktor insisted. ‘This is Rodney Baines, your lover.’
As Maddy shook hands with the extremely good-looking Englishman standing beside Viktor she wondered how she could possibly be ‘his Francine’ when she hadn’t even read for the role yet. Little did Maddy know that Viktor’s ego was of such proportions that if she were to test badly he would still cast her, confident that his direction could bring a brilliant performance out of even the least talented actor. Even if she were to prove a complete moron it wouldn’t matter—he would shoot the film with such expertise that no one would know.
As it turned out, Maddy performed the scenes wonderfully, leaving Rodney Baines far behind her. Did he already have the role, she wondered, or was he auditioning as well? His face looked familiar and he was devastatingly handsome, but his performance was rather wooden.
It was all over very quickly. Viktor took them through each of the scenes only twice. Then he clasped Rodney and Maddy fervently to his breast, saying, ‘You are my Christmases, come both at once’.
Viktor was a tall, craggy man with a pterodactyl face, a strange accent which was actually a mixture of Dutch and Polish, and a habit of confusing the cliches he insisted on using. In reality, his command of the English language was masterful and his confusion was probably a deliberate addition to the colourful Continental image he chose to present. His films were immensely successful in the art cinemas of Europe and the UK but he had yet to conquer the American cinéma vérité circuit. That was his main aim, and he was convinced that Androgyne was the film that would do it.
As soon as Maddy arrived home at her Kensington bedsit she rang Phil from the share phone on the ground floor to tell him the good news, but he already knew.
‘Viktor was on the blower the moment you walked out the door, love. Told you you were a walk-up start for it, didn’t I? Now did Viktor mention the nudity clause, not that you need to worry about it, of course, it’ll all be very tastefully handled.’
Maddy was fully aware of the erotic nature of many of the scenes but hadn’t really contemplated the necessity of working stark naked. She and Phil finally agreed that, if Viktor was prepared to discuss his intent and the angles of his shots before they commenced each of the scenes (naturally in a closed set), she would quell her inhibitions and agree to work nude.
‘He’ll come at that, love, don’t you fret. Now off you go to your Dad’s and I’ll give you the nod as soon as we’ve sorted out the money and the dates are set.’
Maddy hung up and bounded up the four flights of stairs to her attic bedsitting room to start packing. She was pleased that she’d been able to agree so readily to the nudity clause. Hell, why not, she convinced herself. Viktor was a genius and a man of great taste. No hint of salacity would be allowed to sully a Viktor Hoff film.
Maddy hugged herself gleefully and smiled as she looked around at the tiny room with its pot of yellow daisies sitting on the window sill. After Androgyne, there would be no more attics, she told herself. Attics had become synonymous to her with the bottom rung of the ladder. No more stealing greenery and branches of berries from Kensington Gardens at dusk to augment the daisies and cheer up her room. (She was thoughtful enough never to steal the flowers—what would happen if everyone did?) And, best of all, no more recycling of clothes four times a year. At the start of each season, shortage of hanging space found Maddy swapping the clothes from her tiny cupboard with those bundled away in the three tattered old suitcases stashed under the bed. Androgyne would mean built-in wardrobes. What bliss, she thought, as she started to pack her army surplus duffle bag.
It was two o’clock. She had an hour to walk around the corner to Gloucester Road tube station, catch the underground to Paddington Station and be on the three o’clock for Windsor. Maddy felt very happy.
It was Phil Pendlebury who experienced a pang of misgiving as he hung up. He was pleased that Maddy felt confident about the nude scenes and Viktor Hoff’s treatment of them, but he wondered whether maybe he should have told her about Rodney Baines. Oh well, he decided, she’d find out for herself soon enough …
Maddy tied her sweater around her waist, heaved her duffle bag over her shoulder and started on the one and a half kilometre trek from Windsor railway station to Robert’s home.
It was another lovely day. She was hot already and much of the walk was uphill, so she was bound to have worked up a sweat by the time she arrived. She could just hear her father: ‘Look at the state you’re in, Maddy, you should have let me know what train you were on. I really don’t mind picking you up, you know.’ There would be that edge to his voice which had become steadily more brittle over the years. And she would say, ‘It’s a lovely day, Dad, I really felt like a walk,’ which they both knew meant nothing. If it had been raining she still would have walked and her reply would have been ‘But I like walking in the rain, Dad.’
Maddy rounded the corner at the top of the hill and walked up to the red brick building in the middle of a row of ugly but impressive Victorian terraces. She pressed the bell beside the metal plaque which read, Robert McLaughlan, Orthodontist BDS., MDS (Ortho).
The door was flung open before she’d lifted her finger from the bell.
‘Mummy!’ And Maddy was nearly bowled over backwards by the six year old dynamo that launched itself at her.
‘Jenny!’
‘I’ve been waiting for hours and hours. You’re all sweaty.’
‘Yes, I know, darling.’
As Jenny, legs wrapped around her mother’s waist, continued to chatter away and nuzzle Maddy’s neck, another figure appeared in the doorway.
‘The child’s been waiting all afternoon. You could have let us know which train you were on. I would have been quite happy to—’
‘Yes, I know, Dad, but it was such a lovely day …’ Maddy couldn’t be bothered pointing out to her father that she had told him she would be on one of the midafternoon trains. Yet again she was a bad mother but she told herself to let it rest.
‘Hello, Alma,’ she said to the matronly, oncepretty woman standing quietly in the shadows at the end of the hall. ‘Has she been good?’
‘A handful, Miss Frances, but on average, yes.’ The housekeeper smiled, stepped into the light and deftly disengaged the child so that Maddy could retrieve her fallen duffle bag.
‘Want to help me unpack?’ Maddy asked Jenny.
‘Any presents?’
‘What do you think?’
Maddy piggybacked the girl upstairs to the bedrooms, Robert returned to his surgery to tend to his last patient for the day and Alma retired to the kitchen to prepare the evening meal.
Later that night, after one of Alma’s excellent hotpots, Maddy tucked the child into bed and started reading The Gumnut Babies to her.
‘Not again,’ she’d said to Jenny’s request. ‘This’ll be the fourth time around.’
But Jenny nodded firmly and there was no getting out of it. The Water Babies, Toad of Toad Hall and Peter Pan were all firm favourites but The Gumnut Babies reigned supreme. Jenny was fascinated by her Australian antecedents and was determined to live in Australia one day.
‘When you’re older we’ll go there,’ Maddy promised over and over.
‘How old? Seven?’
Eventually Maddy gave in to a ceili
ng age of ten. It seemed a lifetime away to Jenny but it nevertheless satisfied her. ‘When I’m ten I’m going to Australia,’ she boasted to her school friends.
And to Maddy, Jenny’s tenth birthday became a deadline. By then she was determined to have ‘made it’. She wanted to be in the position of being able to spend time in both countries. Much as she loved England, she wanted to foster her daughter’s affinity with Australia. And most important of all, of course, she wanted Jenny to get to know her grandmother.
Although Maddy hadn’t seen Helena for nearly seven years, she and her mother were closer than they had ever been. It hadn’t started out well. Six months after Robert took his pregnant daughter with him to England, Helena had a nervous breakdown. The social whirl she’d adopted took its toll and she signed herself into a clinic for repairs. She hadn’t let Maddy know and, by the time she left the clinic, there were endless worried phone messages, letters and photos of a brand-new bouncing baby girl. It was all Helena needed to perfect a total recovery. As a concerned grandmother she took stock of her life, realised it was frivolous, and resigned from all social committees except those which benefited handicapped children. Then she met Todd Hall, a fifty-five year old widower with two adored grandchildren of his own, and married him.
Maddy smiled every time she heard her mother’s voice over the phone, dripping with maternal concern, or read her mother’s letters full of the latest correct diets for infants. It was yet another image Helena had decided to adopt—she hadn’t really changed at all. But she would make Mr Todd Hall very happy. She had been a perfect hostess-wife for Robert, now she would be a perfect grandmother-wife for Todd.
Maddy realised that she finally knew her mother. It wasn’t Helena’s fault that she had no concept of herself as an individual, that she could only be what others wanted her to be. It was sad, really, Maddy thought. So she encouraged the grandparent in Helena and even joked with Jenny about the extra grandpa she’d inherited, Todd of Todd Hall, who looked very nice in the photos.
They never joked about Todd of Todd Hall in front of Robert, of course. Even Jenny knew that was taboo. Robert had allowed Helena to divorce him but he in no way considered himself free of his wife. He never mentioned her name and never intended to see her again but, as far as he was concerned, Robert and Helena McLaughlan were married for life.
After the initial shock when Maddy had announced her pregnancy, Robert had derived a certain pleasure at the thought of an impending grandchild and it was his idea that Maddy accompany him to England and have the baby there. He would employ a full-time nanny and they could all live very comfortably together. Subconsciously, Robert was building yet another cocoon for himself and when Maddy rebelled, demanding she be able to pursue her career, it spelled destruction for their relationship. If she wished to abandon her child for a life of frivolity in the theatre she must do it under another name, he insisted.
Maddy’s rebellion was total. She took the baby and left. Then she found a cheap bedsit in Kensington, changed her name and set about trying to find herself some work. It was an impossible situation, Maddy realised, doomed to failure from the outset. Robert was horrified at her absconding with the baby, and begged Maddy to at least accept money, but even that was impossible. If money was all it took, Maddy could have approached Helena. But Jenny needed a home and Maddy finally relinquished the struggle, accepting Robert’s total support of the child until she could make a career for herself. She refused to accept Robert’s money for her own support though, even between acting jobs. She earned more when she wasn’t acting, anyway, particularly at Danny’s Downstairs.
The days she could spend with Jenny were precious to the two of them. She kept the child well up to date with the progress of her career. They would read through Maddy’s scripts together and Jenny would become as excited as her mother at the prospect of a new role.
‘Andro … How do you say it again?’ Jenny asked as she leafed through the script of Androgyne.
It was Friday. They’d been for a walk around Windsor Castle and now they were picnicking in the park. The castle and the picnic were regular activities when the weather was fine and Jenny never seemed to tire of the combination.
‘Androgyne,’ Maddy pronounced carefully.
‘Can we read the part where they meet and he thinks she’s a boy?’
With the exception of some of the more explicit scenes, they had read the entire script through together and Maddy had been very open about the subject matter.
Although puzzled to start with, Jenny had been fascinated. ‘I didn’t know boys loved boys.’
‘Some do.’
‘Do they get married and live together and have babies?’
‘They can live together sure, but they can’t have babies, Jen. You need a boy and a girl to make a baby. I’ve told you that.’
‘But they could in your movie,’ Jenny insisted, ‘because Francine’s not really a boy.’
At which point Maddy had laughed and admitted defeat. ‘That’s true.’
So the scene where the lovers met at the fancydress ball became Jenny’s favourite. When Maddy explained that Georges Sand, Francine’s choice of character for the Great Figures of Literature theme, was a woman who dressed as a man, Jenny was completely won by the mystery and romance. Francine became yet another role which Jenny was determined to play one day.
‘But they might not make any more films of Androgyne,’ Jenny pointed out. ‘They don’t keep repeating films the way they do plays.’
‘Sometimes they do,’ Jenny countered, ‘when the films are really good ones.’
‘Yes, sometimes.’ It was easier to give in when Jenny’s obstinate streak showed itself. The girl was already determined to be an actor and Maddy was constantly reminded of her own stubborn determination as a child. She was also reminded of Alex.
God, how like her father she is, thought Maddy as she looked at Jenny. The same sandy hair, the same fine bones, the cheeky, defiant grin and, above all, the same fascination with everything about her. And, like Alex, her fascination was her fatally attractive quality. Although Jenny lacked her mother’s fragile beauty, when she turned her full attention upon the object of her interest, the force of her personality was undeniable and her piercing grey-blue eyes were riveting.
Although the child was a constant reminder of Alex, Maddy’s pain had long since passed. All she felt now was relief that she had summoned the strength to escape him. She remembered the decision over which she had agonised during the fortnight of abortion pills and hot gin baths. With each sickening experience she felt a deeper guilt at her weakness in allowing Alex to so orchestrate her life. And, each time her body refused to miscarry, a tiny seed of triumph grew. Her body wanted this baby, she told herself. Why should Alex deny it her?
The deep-rooted teachings of her childhood crept more and more into Maddy’s consciousness until, finally, the moral belief in her child’s right to life gave her the courage to make the decision. The decision to leave Alex.
In doing so, Maddy was convinced that she would never experience such an all-consuming love again but perhaps that was for the best. She would become her own person once more. Giving birth to her child was the first step, building her own career and her own life was the second. Some instinct told Maddy that if she allowed herself to remain so inextricably tied to Alex he would destroy her.
The night of the ‘abortion’ was her first show of strength and her memory of it was one of the highlights of Maddy’s triumph.
‘I don’t want this abortion,’ she’d said.
The doctor had shrugged disdainfully. ‘Yes, it’s not altogether uncommon for some young women to reconsider their decision to terminate at the last minute. It’s entirely your prerogative, of course, but you must realise that, as I have allocated my surgery time and booked my assistant,’ he gestured to the crisply starched nurse standing to attention by his desk, ‘I can only refund fifty per cent of—’
‘I don’t want a refund.’
There was a pause. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I want you to keep the money and I want to stay here for as long as the abortion would take and I want you to tell me what the aftereffects would be.’
That was when the doctor’s jaw had dropped and Maddy suddenly knew she’d made the right decision and everything was going to be fine.
The doctor went to dismiss the nurse, but Maddy called her back. ‘No, I’d rather you stayed. My friend is outside and he might see you go.’
The nurse looked sulkily at the doctor. Having assumed she’d been granted a last-minute reprieve, she was loath to relinquish a paid night off. ‘I can leave through the back garage,’ she suggested.
‘Sit down,’ the doctor said.
So the nurse sat down and remained scowling while the doctor answered Maddy’s questions. He was quite happy to list the physical reactions following a termination. Due to the anaesthetic she would possibly be dizzy for ten minutes or so upon leaving the surgery. ‘We anaesthetise for the minimum amount of time and we like to get you up and about fairly quickly to reduce the aftereffects.’
I bet, Maddy thought, and to reduce the time I’m lying around in here.
‘You would be advised to go home and lie down,’ the doctor continued, ‘and you would probably sleep quite deeply for a couple of hours.’
Maddy listened attentively while he told her of the cramps and the bleeding she could expect following the fatigue. ‘Those are merely the physical effects, of course,’ the doctor concluded. He seemed to be enjoying his lecture. ‘The emotional reaction differs with every patient, depending on—’
‘Thank you. That’s all I need to know.’
And the three of them sat in uncomfortable silence for a further fifty minutes until the time was up. Then the doctor bundled Maddy out the front door and turned off the light, wishing she’d been the usual distraught teenager only too grateful to have her problem sorted out for her. What right did she have to make him feel guilty? He was only doing what a number of his colleagues did, cleanly and well, thereby saving the reproductive systems—and sometimes even the lives—of many young women who would otherwise be forced to suffer the butcheries of backyard abortionists. Besides, abortion would be legalised any day now so the whole argument was redundant.
