Distant Music

by Charlotte Bingham

  No, Elsie did not feel sorry for her. She hated her.

  ‘Mind if I sit in here, Elsie?’

  Mervyn Castle whistled tunefully, and happily, while placing his luggage on the rack above his seat, and collapsing with purposefully exaggerated drama opposite Elsie.

  Elsie studied Mervyn Castle with her usual detached indifference. He was the kind of actor that she had come across a great deal while she was growing up, a puzzling kind of man of indeterminate class, small, middling plain to almost ugly. In fact so plain that she often found herself wondering why such men became actors at all.

  Sometimes, at a dull moment in rehearsal, she had tried to capture the moment when the Mervyn Castle kind of actor, whilst they were growing up, stood in front of their mirrors, of a bleak morning, and said to themselves as they stood on the bathroom stool, ‘Mervyn, you are small with a large nose, small eyes and hardly reaching five foot three. You really should become an actor, for with your looks and height you too could be a great star!’

  Well, Mervyn might not ever become a great star, as he probably knew by now, but he probably did not care, because he was a great character actor. Pin accurate, never fluffing, Mervyn could not, ever, be faulted, not ever. Never corpsed, as the expression for laughing at the wrong moment on stage had it, and handled whatever was thrown at him with the kind of faultless aplomb that Elsie already knew came from a dedication and inner discipline which was totally admirable. He was also the perfect gentleman. She therefore did not mind his seating himself opposite her, and settling down to the crossword with the look of a man well used to being not only on tour, but on an endless tour. For that was what actors like Mervyn were used for by managements: to tour endlessly, even sometimes pointlessly, backing up the bigger names that were often precisely the opposite to themselves, inaccurate, unpunctual, careless and unreliable.

  ‘Worked for Portly Cosgrove before?’

  Elsie took advantage of a pause in his thoughts as he stared out of the window struggling with some elusive clue.

  ‘Yes, and Donald Bourton. Good team. Pay on time, never let us down so far, number one tours too, which for a young management is quite something, wouldn’t you say?’

  Mervyn nodded agreeably across the short space that divided them. Elsie stared at him.

  ‘Yes, I would. Yes, but you know, what do you know about them?’

  ‘Just that.’ He returned to his crossword. ‘That, after all, is all you need to know about managements, isn’t it, dear?’

  Elsie said, ‘Yes.’

  Like most actors determined to survive, as well as most character actors, Mervyn was a cautious customer. He would not trust anyone not to say at least something to someone, to his detriment. Speaking out of turn would not be his style. Besides, he had probably known Dottie, way back, when she was meant to be a star, and the moon was made of green cheese.

  ‘Well, now, that’s finished.’ He folded his newspaper and nodded at Elsie. ‘Want to come for a coffee?’

  ‘That would be nice.’

  Elsie followed Mervyn swaying from side to side down the train corridor to the refreshment car, not because she wanted a cup of British Rail coffee, or because she particularly wanted to get to know Mervyn better, but because, for some reason she could not define, she thought she might now be going to learn something new about Portly and Donald. Something else told her that it was not going to be to their advantage.

  Chapter Six

  There was a beautiful lake. That would be enough to quite fill the eye and mind, but not withstanding that, there was, too, a folly with Gothic windows and in front of it a jetty, and a boat tied up, but not any ordinary boat. This boat was canopied, and had long cushioned seats, and was waiting for Coco to finish in make-up before stepping down into its welcoming pale blue velvet comforts.

  Make-up.

  Coco had stared at herself the first morning when the gentleman in whose charge she had been put had finished with her. She did not just stare, as a matter of fact, she gaped. The reason she had gaped at herself, hardly recognising her own face at all, was because the make-up man, Gus Chester, or whatever he was called when he was at home, had managed to make her look like a pretty good imitation of an old actress friend of her guardians – big red lips, blue eye shadow, rouged cheeks, and worst of all worsts – no eye-liner, just a little mascara on the lashes.

  Coco said nothing about the horrendous vision of herself that Chester had achieved until she was in her costume, and then, being Coco, she had marched straight up to the director, and not caring what anyone thought of her, or was likely to think of her, had accosted him with, ‘I say, Mr Trimble, I am not altogether sure that a young woman in the Edwardian era would have looked exactly like this, are you?’

  After which she had made sure to push her face towards the director until their noses practically touched.

  Of course Freddie Trimble had taken one look at her, and burst into fits of laughter. Just as well they had met before they went on location or he might have thought that Coco looked like that normally.

  ‘Coco, darling, you look ghastly. Take it all off for goodness’ sake, and tell Gus to give you a no make-up make-up, would you? To make you look as fresh as the morning dew, and not a hint of Garbo in the silent era, please.’

  Telling Gus Chester this was not only not easy, it was perfectly impossible.

  He kept saying, with a shrug of his huge shoulders, ‘I’ve been making up stars since before Freddie Trimble was even sucking his thumb! You stay as you are, madam, or else he can come and have it out with me.’

  There was obviously no arguing with him, so Coco waited until Chester had moved on to some other luckless individual and then, once his back was turned, had flown at her face herself, removing the ghastly red lips and rouged cheeks, taking out everything except her eyes, to which she swiftly applied kohl from a little supply kept in her handbag. Then she shot off towards the lakeside location before anyone could notice.

  As it happened the young actor playing her lover-to-be had already arrived, tall, immaculately made up and costumed in a blazer and boater. They were introduced by Trimble in a quick perfunctory manner, and what seemed to Coco like only a few seconds later found themselves kissing each other in the back of the luxurious craft provided for the scene. Well, to be accurate, as Coco would tell Oliver a few days later, ‘Within seconds of saying how do you do he was kissing me passionately on the chin – you know, cheating it, because of the camera angle.’

  Of course Oliver would pretend not to be interested, because that was Oliver all over. He never did want to be interested in anything he had not yet done, until he did it, after which he became a perfect expert on the subject, or, as Coco often reminded him, a perfect bore.

  But that was all to come. Now all Coco could hope was that her chin had not doubled in size since she had wolfed a large breakfast from the refreshment place, or butty wagon as she had learned that it was called, and that the cheating was working, because whatever Aeneas Mayo was doing to her, it certainly did not feel anything like a kiss. She just hoped that it looked like one.

  ‘Sorry.’ Aeneas straightened up, and tried to smile after ‘Cut!’ ‘I haven’t had much experience of this. Your first time too, I expect?’

  Coco nodded. A silence fell as the camera crew stared up at the sky and down at their light meters, and Freddie Trimble paced up and down beside the lake shore looking every inch the worried director.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ Aeneas whispered as they both watched the crew, themselves somehow frozen into position.

  Coco looked from the water where she was now trailing one lace-mittened hand back to Aeneas.

  ‘The money we’re earning!’ she whispered back.

  Their eyes met instantly, and they both tried not to laugh, recognition of their mutuality of approach being so instantaneous, however, that they failed dramatically in their efforts.

  ‘What are you going to do with it? If we get paid, that is?’
Aeneas went on, one eye on the green bank and the director muttering to the cameramen, and one on Coco herself.

  ‘I am going to buy myself a car, and I am going to drive very fast in it. An MG, I hope. If I’m not sacked beforehand. And you?’

  ‘The same. An MG. Or an Austin Healey.’

  ‘Yes, or an Austin Healey,’ Coco agreed, and another silence fell as they both stared into a future where this might, just might be possible, if they were not sacked, or something.

  ‘Right, let’s go again,’ Trimble bellowed from the lake shore. ‘And Aeneas? Try to give it a bit more passion, would you?’

  Aeneas nodded towards Freddie Trimble with his loudhailer and viewfinder. As he turned towards her to start the scene again, Coco whispered, ‘Just pretend I’m an Austin Healey, and passion will flow!’

  ‘Don’t – please – I’ll only get carried away!’

  ‘Cut! Would you two stop giggling, please? You’re meant to be kissing not laughing.’

  ‘Sorry Freddie.’

  ‘Sorry Freddie.’

  ‘We’ll be lucky if we earn enough to buy a spare wheel, if this goes on. You know what Trimble’s called,’ Aeneas whispered, so sotto voce that even Coco could hardly hear, as they sank down once more into the pale blue velvet. ‘He’s called Two-Take Trimble. So if this is take number three this is our lot, Coco Hampton, as in Court.’

  They scraped under the wire, with only three takes, and into their next costumes, after which came lunch.

  Aeneas Mayo had graduated, if, as he told Coco, that was the term for it, from a rival drama school. He had actually lasted the whole two-year course, and as a result had the worldly air of a much travelled actor, someone who had seen the world, and learned from it. In other words, he had subsequently spent two years in weekly repertory work at innumerable theatres all round the country. He knew Crewe like the back of his hand. He had felt its hard benches eating into his backside on cold Sunday afternoons. He knew about train delays, and missed entrances, both into trains and on to provincial stages. He knew about theatrical landladies who send you down the garden to the privy with the wrapper from the loaf; not to mention directors such as Freddie Trimble who send you up the wall, as well as he knew his own hairline.

  Coco, being Coco, was outwardly completely, and determinedly, unimpressed by all Aeneas’s experiences.

  ‘I know all about touring actors,’ she said airily, as they queued incongruously for roast beef and roast potatoes, or Irish stew, on what was turning out to be an increasingly hot day. ‘All about weekly rep.’

  Aeneas took his spectacles from the pocket of his costume, held them upside down, and stared through one of the lenses at Coco. ‘Oh yes? And how long have we been at Ramad?’

  ‘Two, no, three weeks.’

  They both started to laugh.

  And then, as Coco said, ‘Roast beef, please,’ to the caterer, she added, ‘No, just four, actually. Then Liskeard came to the college and I don’t know why, he cast me. Though he seems to have disappeared, for some reason.’

  ‘Oh, yes, the great Harold Liskeard. He was meant to be directing this, until the day before yesterday, or thereabouts.’ Aeneas’s expression was laconic. ‘But you know how it is.’

  ‘How?’ Coco seized her plate of roast beef and vegetables, suddenly ravenously hungry.

  ‘Irish stew, please.’ Aeneas nodded up to the caterer. ‘Our great star, Richard Lexmark – thank you. Yes, thanks to our great star, Harold has gone on vacation.’ He turned with his plate of food, and nodded towards a free table behind them. ‘Let’s go over there.’ As they walked he went on, ‘Yes, the great Richard Lexmark.’

  They sat down.

  ‘We won’t be meeting him, will we?’ Coco asked with some relief.

  ‘No.’ Aeneas, already all too practised in the ways of the world, looked carefully round to see that no one was listening. ‘No, thank God. Do you want to hear the story?’

  ‘You bet.’

  ‘Well, he wanted the starring role like there was no tomorrow. So, you probably know what happened?’ Coco shook her head. ‘No? Well, he went bald-headed after Liskeard. Holed up opposite his flat, rang him at all times of the day and night, flew at him whenever possible, must have just must have this part! And once ole Frank had cast him, and he is signed for the role, ole Richard Lexmark, what do he do? Big Star Sexy Lexie make sure to have Harold Liskeard sacked!’ He nodded at Coco’s amazed expression. ‘Oh yes. That is par for the course with stars and directors. There was no way Lexmark was going to have him direct him, not once Liskeard had held out against his being cast. Capiche? Understand? The philosophy is: you didn’t want me, and now you have got me I don’t want you, fruit cake!’

  Coco stared at Aeneas, her mouth full of roast beef and potatoes. ‘Wow,’ she said eventually.

  ‘Quite a big wow, as it happens. But there you are.’ Aeneas shrugged his costumed shoulders, his napkin carefully spread across his clothes. ‘That is how it is with ye big stars, Miss Coco Hampton as in palace. They get what they want out of you – or you might say they get what they want out of one – and after that they throw you overboard. We’ll probably be the same, when we are big stars. Just the same, when it comes down to it.’

  But Coco was not interested in their future stardom. She was much more interested in Aeneas Mayo’s making fun of her.

  ‘Did you just take me off?’ she demanded.

  Aeneas pulled an innocent face, and immediately put on his spectacles upside down to make her laugh.

  ‘No, no, no, it was just a passing blague, as in French for joke, see? I just thought you might say one at that moment. I mean, you might. Not that you did,’ he added hastily.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t,’ Coco told him sharply. ‘And if I don’t make fun of you and your horrid way of holding your knife, you just keep off my accent, OK?’

  They both stared at each other. Impasse. No further than this could either of them go, at least not with any confidence. Deadlock. Their eyes met. She could see that she had annoyed Aeneas, and she was glad. He could see that he had annoyed Coco, and he was glad.

  After which they both burst into fits of laughter, and Coco asked for Aeneas’s help.

  ‘In what way do you need my help?’

  ‘Make-up.’

  He stared at her. ‘Yes, well, we’re both having to go back in, after this little lot.’ He cast his eyes down at their now empty food plates, wiping his mouth on his napkin and sighing.

  ‘But that is the whole point,’ Coco explained, doing the same. ‘That is the whole point, I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I did my own.’ ‘You did your own? You did your own make-up? You do realise that you are quite likely to cause a strike? That that is enough to have all the plugs pulled, doing your own make-up? You so much as pull a comb out and scrape at your own quiff and the whole set could be left in darkness, you do realise that?’

  ‘Well, no, but I do now that you have told me!’

  Aeneas frowned and rubbed his face with the side of his glasses, and then he put them away, frowning.

  ‘Who was it who did you, ole Chester? Made you look like Clara Bow or something out of the silents, I expect?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘OK, so I’ll cover for you.’

  ‘Yes, but what will you say?’

  ‘I’ll say … I’ll say that you are unwell, as in, you know, gone to Matron, off games? And that you will be back any minute, if he asks for you, which he won’t, because he’s a lazy old devil.’

  Diplomatically Aeneas stopped suddenly because Coco had reddened to the point where she knew that any old passer-by could have warmed their hands by her face, so hot had she become. Aeneas put out a cool, and surprisingly elegant, hand, and covered hers with it.

  ‘It’s all right, Coco as in Hampton. I am a man of the world, remember. Believe me, two years in repertory turns you into a very grown-up boy.’ He smiled with sudden, genuine warmth. ‘Look, skip
off and hide behind a bush until you’re called. Two-take Trimble won’t care if you have half your head missing just provided he does the scene in two takes, and Chester won’t care, providing he gets off early to see his boyfriend. Really. Just scarper.’

  Coco did as she was told, and lived in fear for the rest of the afternoon. In fact everything that Aeneas Mayo had said would be so, came true. She did her own make-up again, Aeneas and she did their scenes in two takes, and the end of the afternoon arrived with the end of the light. No one seemed to care a tuppenny damn if she had orange lipstick on her mouth or, as it transpired, kohl on her eyes.

  ‘That is it for me, then.’

  They were on the bus together going back into the centre of London.

  ‘Oh.’ Coco turned and looked at Aeneas. Out of costume, in his usuals, as he called them – black-framed spectacles, dark hair cut long, suede jacket brass-buttoned, and blue jeans tucked into suede half-boots – he looked every inch what she thought a man should look, good news indeed to her costume-conscious eyes. ‘I thought you had some more scenes?’

  ‘No, yet another nameless part, my speciality. I am doomed to be cast as luckless young men found in boats kissing the wrong gels and then sent to India for my sins.’

  Coco nodded, expressionless. She would miss Aeneas on set. Might even miss him off set. ‘OK. So, hope we work again.’ She shrugged her shoulders and stared out of the bus window.

  ‘Is that all you can say, Coco as in Hampton Court?’

  ‘Oh, do shut up about Coco as in Court or Hampton, or anything else. What else is there to say?’

  ‘Come for a coffee?’

  ‘Oh, all right.’

  She followed him off the coach into Hammersmith Broadway where, for some reason, they were all being ejected.

  ‘Taxi!’