by Rupert Smith
‘By which you mean, keep away from the hippies.’
‘By which I mean, you . . . you dear, sweet, misguided boy, that I have a very nice new job for you, something that will ensure your success for a good few years, if you’ll just knuckle down and do it.’
‘Oh yes, and what is it this time? A regional tour of Pardon Me But You’re Sitting On My Face?’ I was bitter, sarcastic. ‘Or an advertising campaign for toilet paper, perhaps, which would be only right and proper after I’ve had the entire nation crapping itself for the last three years?’
Nick was unruffled. He smiled, suddenly reticent. ‘No. It’s not that.’ He ordered another bottle of wine, drank a glass with impenetrable calm, smiled and lit a cigar. He was trying my patience with another of his pointless mind games. I cut through to the heart of the matter.
‘So what is this job ?’
‘Job? Ah, you’re interested all of a sudden. Well, it’s a marvellous job. The sort of thing that any young actor would give his eye teeth for. West End show, movie deal in the bag. But you’re right. I don’t think it’s right for you after all. I don’t think you’ve got the right attitude for this sort of thing any more. And who’s to say if you’ve got the talent? It takes more than just a pretty face to play Shakespeare.’
‘Shake – ’
‘Excuse me a moment!’ Nick cut me short, stood up and waddled off to the lavatory, trailing his cigar in the air as he went. I waited for five, ten minutes. Finally he sat down with an infuriating little pussycat smirk on his face as he toyed with his food and avoided my gaze. I could have cheerfully ripped his wig off and plunged him face-first into the buttery mess on his plate.
‘You mentioned Shakespeare, I believe.’ I was a miracle of restraint.
‘Oh, yes. A great favourite of yours, isn’t he?’
‘You know how much I love him. How much I’ve longed to play him.’
‘Perhaps you’ve mentioned it once or twice.’
This was too much. ‘Do you want me to walk out of that door, Nick? Because I will. And believe me, you’ll never see me again if I do.’
‘There’s no need for scenes, dear boy,’ he said, warming up and suddenly enthusiastic. ‘I’ve found you something simply splendid. The job of a lifetime. And it’s yours – if you’re ready to make a serious commitment to your career and stop dicking around with a bunch of drug addicts.’
‘They’re not – ’
‘Now listen and learn. Stoll Moss want you for the lead in their new show. Major West End opening, no provincial shit. So let’s not ask any questions and let’s just keep out of trouble till the ink’s dry on the contract, shall we ?’
‘What’s the part?’
‘Hamlet.’
Hamlet! The part that every young actor feels born to play. But how much more did I, with my Shakespearean training? I was careful not to show any enthusiasm, but my heart was thumping so much that my voice must have wavered.
‘Hamlet! Well, that’s a pretty good gig, I’ll admit.’
‘I should bloody well say it is, boy! And it’s not just any old bloody doublet and hose deal that nobody’s going to go to, either! This is Hamlet for the 1960s, a sexy Hamlet, a rock & roll Hamlet! This is Hamlet with balls! What do you say? Do you think you’re man enough?’ Nick recharged my glass with champagne. It was a critical moment. I sipped and pondered.
How much I had changed! There was a time when I would have jumped at the mere mention of Hamlet, would have signed any contract out of sheer excitement at playing Shakespeare’s most challenging role. But I’d learned to be cautious. It’s a sad fact: the young, the talented have to become distrustful, to develop a sixth sense for self-preservation. And despite my strong spiritual belief in the ultimate goodness of human nature, I was well aware by now that Nick Nicholls was nothing but a con man and a schemer. So I relaxed, enjoyed my champagne and smiled, quickly reviewing the potential pitfalls of this glowing proposition.
‘Mmmm . . . Hamlet, eh? I see . . . Interesting . . .’
To my intense satisfaction, Nick was now puffing on his cigar and checking the back of his head for stray hairs – a sure sign that he was anxious. I caught his eye, but he looked quickly away, collected himself and resumed the persuasive grand manner.
‘Yes, Marc, Hamlet. You’ve heard of it, no doubt. Perhaps even studied it at school. Phyllis was a great one for Shakespeare, wasn’t he ?’ He hissed the name of my dead benefactor, seeking to depress me with bitter memories.
‘Oh yes,’ I replied brightly. ‘I’m very familiar with the play It’s one of my favourites, and so of course I’ve read it several times. Now tell me, Nick,’ (by now he was twitching again) ‘what sort of production would this be, exactly ? The full text, four hours, with a classically trained cast in the Old Vic? Would that be the sort of thing you had in mind ?’
Nick resorted to bluster. ‘Four hours, don’t talk out of your arse, boy. What audience is going to sit and watch you droning on for four hours ? We’re in show business, remember, so we’ve got to put on a show.’
My bluff was working. In fact, I’d never read Hamlet – opening the complete Shakespeare that Phyllis had left me brought back too much grief. ‘I see.’ I narrowed my eyes, rested my chin on my hands. ‘Do tell.’
‘It’s . . . well . . . it’s a new version of the play. An up-to-date version.’
‘In what way, up-to-date, exactly?’
‘You know . . . it’s a mmmszkl.’ Nick contrived to take a gulp of wine, suck his cigar and smooth his beard all at the same time.
‘What was that word again, Nick? That last one? I don’t think I heard it aright.’
‘A musical.’
‘Ah. A musical.’
‘Yes, a bloody musical. What are you suddenly getting so snippy about? Musicals were all the fucking rage with you not so very long ago, weren’t they ? West Side Story, you did that a treat didn’t you? Remember that little show? Remember those nice pictures Uncle Nick took after the show ? Lovely they’d look all over the papers with your Mum and Dad’s Sunday morning tea and toast, wouldn’t they ?’
I was used to this sort of mindless filth, the deluded ramblings of a sick brain. ‘Tell me more. I’m intrigued to know just how you’re intending to turn Hamlet into a West End musical comedy. What’s the name of the show, for instance?’
Nick was turning puce under my expert goading. For one crazy moment, the hope leapt up in my heart that he’d simply burst a blood vessel and drop down dead in front of me.
‘Danish Blue.’
‘Come again?’
‘Danish Blue, all right? Danish, as in Prince of Denmark, Blue as in blue movies. Sexy, sophisticated. Sit down!’
I had drained my glass, wiped my fingers and carefully folded my napkin and was now preparing to leave.
‘It’s the chance you’ve been waiting for, you ungrateful little bastard! Sit back down this instant! They’ve written a fantastic rock score. It’s a vehicle for you, it’ll make you into a star!’ I was half-way out of the restaurant. Nick had to shout. ‘They’re offering you fucking piles of money, you little shit! Come back this instant! Come back! Come back!’
I could still hear him shrieking from the street.
Strange how much in my life has depended on being in the right place at the right time. Just as I left Nick stewing in the Ivy, I turned the corner into Long Acre and there, tripping daintily down the street, was the unmistakable figure of Julian, trailing clouds of chiffon and a small gaggle of amused children and their abusive mothers. He blew kisses as the women shouted insults; when they saw me approaching they hushed their noise (I was always treated with respect by the public) and went about their business. Julian was about to kiss me in gratitude but I sidestepped his embraces and fell in beside him.
‘Fancy meeting you here,’ he giggled, obviously stoned.
‘And where are you going? I thought Howard disapproved of the West End.’
‘Oh bugger Howard,’ said Julian, and sn
iggered at the appalling image. ‘I’m going to the Outer Space darling!’
I must have looked dumbfounded. ‘Haven’t you heard? It’s the latest thing, darling. Everyone’s getting into theee-ah-tuh!’ He pronounced the word like Tallulah Bankhead. Julian may have been grossly effeminate, but he was amusing. ‘We’ve all joined the avant-garde. We’re going to be in showbiz, we’re all going to be big stars, Just! Like! You!’ He pirouetted off down the street and out of sight. I found him draped artistically around a lamp post at Seven Dials.
‘You are coming, aren’t you ? Moska said he particularly wanted to meet you.’
‘Moska?’
‘Moska, darling, Moska! The great underground superstar director! Don’t you read the press at all? We’re all going to be in his next show! And he’s dying for you to be in it too so be a good boy and just follow me.’
Julian frogmarched me along Tottenham Court Road; by now we were well out of my usual West End territory and heading towards the depressing hinterland of the Euston Road. Suddenly he stopped, teetered for a moment on his heels and pulled me into a doorway. ‘This is it! The gateway to the staaaaaaaaaaars!’
Destiny comes in strange disguises. There was nothing promising about the prospect that faced me: the side door of a modern, post-war pub, already seedy in the afternoon light, and the dim view of a few determined drinkers supping up the last of the lunchtime session. But Julian led me up the stairs to a deserted pool room which a shaky handwritten sign proclaimed to be ‘The Outer Space: Theatre Workshop’. Inside a small, sparsely built figure in a long white shirt, black leggings and bare feet jumped, turned and stopped, jumped again, turned, bowed and leapt. I saw flashes of a narrow, lined, tanned face with a peculiar bird-like profile, framed by corkscrew curls that hung from a sadly thinning crown. The hands were long and thin, permanently held in oriental gestures, miming a fan, twirling together like a bird in flight. Had he seen us? I thought so; Julian evidently thought not, as he was holding his breath, his hands clasped under his chin in adoration.
Finally the dance was over, the dancer bowed one final, deep reverence and then seemed to wake from a trance and notice our presence. He held out his arms and bounded towards us, still maintaining complete turn-out and the full range of Balinese hand gestures. He embraced Julian and kissed him on both cheeks, then, as I held out my hand to shake his, he executed an elaborate curtsey and remained grovelling before me for nearly a minute, while I studied the wide centre parting that ran from forehead to nape, revealing generous amounts of scalp on the way Finally he rose, clasped my hand in both of his and spoke in a voice strangely accented (French? Russian?).
‘One great artist greets another,’ he announced. ‘I am . . . MOSKA!’ I felt for a moment as if I ought to kneel, but soon recovered myself. ‘Pleased to meet you. I am Marc.’
‘I know you. I see you everywhere. I see you too,’ he tapped the centre of his forehead, ‘in here. For long time I say to myself, with him I must work, with him I will create great work. I see in him what the world does not see. I recognize in that beautiful boy the soul of an artist.’
Balm to my soul! At last someone had recognized that there was more to me than the cheap exploitation of my good looks. How long, I’d asked myself as I cried with frustration in my prison-bedroom at Nick’s, would I have to struggle in the mire of commercialism before somebody plucked me out and gave me my wings? When would I find what I needed most – a mentor and a teacher, someone who sought to develop me, not to exploit me? And here, this strange creature in a dingy little room had answered my prayers. I didn’t know what to say, but held on to his hand.
‘I feel the spirit stirring in you, Marc’ (he pronounced it ‘Mahrrrrk’). ‘We were meant to meet. Let us work, now.’
I glanced at Julian, who had tears rolling down his cheeks. Moska guided me to the centre of the floor, let go of my hand and stood facing me, breathing deeply and loudly through his nose as he elegantly extended his arms above his head. I mirrored him. After a series of gentle movements of this kind Moska astonished me by leaping, suddenly and unexpectedly, into the air and into my arms. I caught him and held him like a baby (he was surprisingly light) to prevent his falling painfully to the floor. This was my first experience of a theatre workshop and the elaborate regimen of ‘trust exercises’ that began each rehearsal.
We carried on like this for nearly an hour, throwing ourselves at each other, falling into each other’s arms, lying prone and being lifted ceiling-high on fingertips. It was pleasant, relaxing and invigorating, a far cry from my experience of rehearsals, a mechanical recital of lines and ‘hitting your mark’. Finally we broke; Moska reached for a packet of cigarettes, sat crosslegged on the floor and motioned for Julian and me to join him. There had been no discussion so far of our working together, just an easy assumption (based on my obvious suitability for this type of work) that we were already collaborating. Instead, Moska answered Julian’s eager questions about his recent tour of the Far East where he and his company had performed a show called Psychosis, ‘an exploration of male sexuality and the American imperialist ambitions in South-east Asia’. The tour, he said, had been ‘a triumph’, the highlight being the desertion of an American soldier from a base in Korea to join the company (and, it seemed, to become Moska’s favourite until the military police caught up with him in Dubai). ‘The spirit is strong in the East,’ said Moska, brandishing his cigarette like a dainty geisha. ‘I learnt much from their traditions. In the West, theatre is all corruption and death,’ (how this struck a chord with me!) ‘while in the East it is beauty and light and colour! This you will see in our new show,’ he announced. ‘Through movement, music and spectacle we will open the hearts and minds of the people!’
So it seemed I had found my longed-for teacher. Moska may have been eccentric and even reviled (the critical establishment treated him as a joke – how typical! – and dismissed the Outer Space as ‘the Waste of Space’) but to me he oozed truth and beauty at every pore. I accepted him as he had accepted me – as one artist will always recognize another. At the moment, that was enough. I didn’t need the details of contracts, opening dates, wages – it satisfied me to know that, finally, I was growing as an artist. When I left the Outer Space, night was falling. I kissed Moska’s hand and called him ‘master’. Wordlessly, he gestured me from the room.
Even before I put the key in the lock at home, I could hear voices raised in a screaming argument. How they cut through the mood of the afternoon! I came crashing back down to earth as I recognized Nick and Janice engaged in one of their famous cat fights. I paused on the landing, did a few breathing exercises before letting myself into the flat, hoping to make a quick escape to my room and enjoy my own space. Of course, I failed.
‘Here he is!’ screamed Janice, hurling herself through the living-room door and into the hall. ‘Now you can tell him yourself! Go on!’ She looked terrible, her blonde hair flat and ungroomed with a generous inch of roots, her face puffy She stank of alcohol, days and days of alcohol. Here was the corruption and death of the Western tradition in one pitiful victim’s body I silently took Janice’s hand in mine (just as Moska had done to me) and she burst into tears like a frightened child.
Nick stomped along behind her. ‘What a pathetic sight. The Regular Guy and his girl – a hippy and a lush. Not a good advertisement for Bran Pops. Oh dear no!’
Janice braced herself again. ‘Tell him, Nick!’
‘Oh, I’m sure our Marc will be delighted at the news. He’s turned his back on all that dirty commercial stuff. They’ve axed the Bran Pops campaign, dear boy. No more Regular Guy’
‘They can’t do it!’ squealed Janice, red-eyed and wild. ‘The public still wants us!’
For once, Nick was right – I was glad to see the back of a job that had become a burden and an embarrassment. But my heart broke for Janice. For months she’d lived only for the few moments that we worked together, when she could recapture the hope and innocence of our early day
s, when the world was at our feet and we were the most envied couple in town. I had grown since then, but poor Janice was trapped in the past, clinging to a fantasy that would never let her go.
‘You’ll find work, Janice,’ I said, trying to comfort her. ‘You’re still the most beautiful girl in the business.’ Nick snuffled with suppressed laughter, and to tell the truth I cringed when I surveyed the tear-stained figure before me, no longer sleek but bulging around the waist, the breasts less firm than in the days when she’d happily pop them out for the cameras. ‘There’s so much more that you can do!’ But what, I wondered, stroking her shaking hand. Inspiration struck. ‘Hand modelling, for instance! You have beautiful hands, and your nails just need a manicure. Think of all those adverts for washing-up liquid! Hands that do dishes can be soft as your face . . .’ I looked up into Janice’s open, frightened face, her skin rough and patchy, the broken veins showing through the hastily applied base. Nick was laughing quite openly now as Janice, shaking and sobbing, seemed to collapse, all the fight gone out of her. She slunk to the door and let herself out of the flat, tottering dangerously down the stairs. ‘And don’t come back!’ yelled Nick. My heart was breaking.
The street door slammed and Janice was gone. I could feel the rage boiling up inside me. I was ready to kill Nick Nicholls for what he had done to that poor, broken butterfly. How he gloated over his victims! How secure he felt at the centre of his web! And if I turned on him, caused a scene, broke a few bones, wouldn’t it just strengthen his hold over me? Nick, I knew, would go to the police at the first sign of trouble. Instead, I practised a technique that I’d learned from Moska: I visualized a beautiful Japanese garden, pink cherry blossom and tinkling streams, and flooded my mind with peace. I went to my bedroom and meditated.
I discovered to my horror the next morning that Nick had placed advertisements in the Stage announcing ‘Marc Lejeune reveals all in Danish Blue – Shakespeare for the Age of Aquarius – Hamlet learns to Rock & Roll!’, as well as a venue, even a date on which I was to open in this debased travesty I was furious, but once again I let peaceful colours wash through my mind, concentrated on my breathing and was ready to face a new challenge in a spirit of creative equanimity.