Personality

by Andrew O'Hagan

  The Daily Mirror call her ‘cuddly’. I won’t stand for any of this ‘cuddly’. The papers always want to stick people in a pigeonhole, that’s their problem. The Radio Times called her, what was it – ‘the moon-faced, diminutive balladeer from Bute’. Where on earth did that one come from? Her look is improving all the time. Every day she is more in charge of herself, more perfect, and that’s what separates the men from the boys in this business, I’m always telling her. Sometimes you have to give things up to gain the best. And that is what Maria is doing every day; she’s working all God’s hours to be the best in the business.

  We had the room redecorated for her. Something a bit younger and more with it. Fearfully bright. She’s a young woman now, but she still has that lovely accent and such a bubbly way about her. The other night it was terribly funny. We were having a cigarette outside the BBC theatre at Shepherds Bush Green, Richard and I, and Bernie Winters and some of the dancers from the Cannon & Ball Show, and suddenly Maria leaned out of the top dressing room window with half her make-up still on, a towel around her neck, this little window, and she broke into a soprano version of that song, ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’. She’s just the sweetest thing.

  She took a glass of water to her room and closed the door as soon as we got home. So tired. I finished signing some letters up in my study and then looked through the blinds at the city and the West End. It’s amazing to look out and see all the city’s compartments closing down for the night. But some of us take our time getting to sleep I’m afraid. It’s a frightful bore. My husband puts his head on the pillow and in seconds he’s out like a light. What a sweet man. Don’t know where I’d be without him. I sometimes think we love our husbands most in the hours they’re asleep. I’m bloody well thrilled when the day comes to an end, mind you, and the phones go quiet, and tomorrow is another problem. I like a whisky and water in my favourite armchair. Even at that time it can be jolly noisy outside: from the top of the house you can hear the wolves howling half the night over in Regent’s Park.

  6

  Personality

  ‘Squeeze those lemons,’ said Mr Wall the balletmaster, walking up and down the line of girls at the barre, pointing his stick and waving a finger. ‘Round and through, round and through,’ he said. ‘Straighten your supporting leg and bend and hold and up. Louisa. Please maintain turnout on the legs and développé, and one, and two, and lift, and arabesque. Hold. Hold. Hold. And arms. And down.’

  Mr Wall always wore the same outfit to class, brown cord trousers with frayed bottoms and a blue leotard that revealed a ridge of bones on his chest. On his feet he had wooden clogs sticky with resin, and sometimes, on a warm day in a fit of macho zeal – rare in an English balletmaster and unforgettable in Mr Wall – he would kick one of his clogs out of the open window in order to demonstrate an essential pointedness of the feet. Yet he would only ever raise his leg about half as high as he used to manage, showing in one swift movement that he had passed thirty years old and had no intention of breaking his back for Italia Conti. Mr Wall was all eyes and cheekbones. His feet were ugly, gnarled, and showed every minute of their years.

  ‘Battement frappé. And … Beat, beat. Hold. Beat, beat. Hold. Girls: lift out of your waists and rotate your hips. You are sagging. You are sagging! Do you hear me or am I talking to myself? Louisa. Maria! You are like elephants today. Beat, beat. Hold. Chins up. Yes, and yes, and beat, beat, hold. And first position arms. And double-beat, double-beat, pilé, and up!’

  If some of the girls were inattentive, glued to their copies of The Stage, Mr Wall was always guaranteed the attention of two women, the pianist Mrs Mimms, who lived in Peckham and played for bus fare, and Miss Thompson, a former Tiller girl who taught modern dance at the school three days a week. ‘This is not a fitness class,’ Mr Wall often said, ‘and it is not for deportment. Even if there are no Lynn Seymours in here you’ll learn a bit of discipline if it does me in.’

  Miss Thompson came in with a full face of make-up. She carried a pot of Leichner in her handbag, the contents of which were not always blended well on her from jaw to neckline, and she also carried a comb and a packet of kirby-grips, which she used to maintain her hair in a bun. Mr Wall and Miss Thompson would sometimes demonstrate a movement together, and they seemed harmonious enough, though on closer scrutiny you could see that her experienced gold heels had the advantage over his clogs when it came to modern rhythm. Mr Wall was very much the artist at Italia Conti, a fact which made Miss Thompson blush with pleasure under her make-up, but the girls had crushes of their own, and Miss Thompson, besotted, experienced, pzazzy Miss Thompson, was often the main subject of their admiration.

  ‘Five, six, seven, eight,’ said Miss Thompson, ‘kick-ball-change, kick-ball-change, clap, stretch, turn, clap.’

  The room smelled of sweat and resin and extra-curricular cigarettes. The whole of professional London smelled like that to Maria. If you stood on the squeaky floor covered in daylight from the windows, watching yourself in the full-length mirrors, the hours passed in a sort of immense whiteness, and your mind could float anywhere: she noticed this, standing that way, her eyes going into the mirror,aware of the music that travelled from faraway rooms to be absorbed in the bleached-out drama of her concentration.

  She mixed only slowly with the other girls. Most of them came from places she’d never heard of, and they were in a funny position in relation to her, having more knowledge of life perhaps, but less of the business. In the Maths class she got sent out for ignoring the lessons. The teacher came up behind her and noticed she was writing something at the back of her jotter. It had nothing to do with Maths. She had spent weeks filling the jotter with the names of all the famous people she could think of.

  ‘You have to do some ordinary work,’ said her housemaster, Mr Keening, who almost admired her.

  ‘She’s not very clever,’ said one of the girls.

  ‘She’s been on Parkinson,’ said another.

  ‘So?’

  ‘You don’t have to be clever for what she’s doing. She’s got an amazing voice. She works.’

  Most of the girls envied Maria, and she was treated as a sort of oddity at Italia Conti, an enviable freak, just as she had been at school.

  Miss Thompson started taking her after-hours for private lessons. Sometimes they worked hard all the way to supper-time on routines from musicals. ‘I love it when you get to know the moves and then you can just go with the music and forget them,’ Maria said.

  ‘That’s the goal,’ said Miss Thompson. ‘Don’t think about the moves, just learn them, then dance.’

  Mr Wall thought she needed more suppleness.

  Mr Keening thought she shouldn’t sing with groups.

  Mr Epping thought she needed more Maths.

  Miss Thompson thought she should relax a bit.

  Mrs Gaskell wanted her to work.

  ‘Everybody wants me to listen to them,’ Maria said to her mother one afternoon, speaking from a telephone box in Vauxhall. She always used phone boxes; she didn’t like speaking to her mother from the house in Primrose Hill.

  ‘You haven’t been phoning me,’ said her mother. ‘You have to phone your mother. I know you.’

  ‘I know,’ said Maria.

  ‘You’ve only got one mother, and she knows how hard you’ve worked. Ignore them. D’you hear me, Maria? Those people are just doing a job. My God if I was down there I would take a strip off those people.’

  ‘Never mind.’

  ‘How do you think this makes me feel? Hundreds of miles away and there’s nothing I can do. You never listen to me, I’ve said what people are like.’

  ‘It’s okay, mum.’

  ‘I only want the best for you, Maria. I know it’s all working out down there, but, you know, sometimes I think you’re a wee bit selfish.’

  Maria stared at the cars. Someone was pointing at her from a car parked at the lights. ‘There’s just so much

  ‘And d’you think it’s easy up here? Le
t me tell you, lady, you’ve got it comfortable.’

  ‘Mum.’

  ‘The bloody way things are here, lady. You don’t know the bloody half of it. London. Bloody London. You don’t know how lucky you are.’

  ‘Mum.’

  ‘Privileges. Bloody easy time of it. You want to come up here, lady, and work in this café for a week, see –’

  ‘Mum. It’s not right. It’s not right what you’re saying. You started off saying you knew what I was meaning. I’m in rehearsals for the show and I’m working hard. What am I doing wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’ There was silence on the line.

  ‘Mum. Everything’s good.’

  ‘Is it, Maria? Is everything good? Is everything in your wee fucking world good?’

  ‘I was just saying it was a wee bit tiring. Everybody wants me to be a bit better.’

  ‘Well, listen you to me, lady. You could be better. These people are paid to know what they’re talking about. People can forget you, you know. Oh aye. You can easily be forgotten. Make no mistake about that. You just go back to that school and decide what you’re doing, Maria, and what it is you want out of life, because nobody’s got time in this world for moaners.’

  ‘That’s the pips going.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The pips. That’s the money ran out.’

  ‘Cheerio then.’

  Maria waited for her mother to back-track or say something else. She put another coin in, one she’d held back, and she waited for her mother, and eventually her mother did say something. ‘Giovanni’s moved in with another woman,’ she said.

  Maria hung up.

  *

  Miss Thompson was trying to explain what happens in West Side Story. ‘The main girl is from Puerto Rico,’ she said, ‘and these people are immigrants in America.’

  ‘She’s called Maria,’ said Maria.

  ‘That’s right, the same as you. And your name is Tambini, so that means you’re what?’

  ‘Italian. My grandparents came to Scotland from Italy.’

  ‘Right. As immigrants. So, you know, this is a story you can relate to. This is a story about people coming from one country to another and trying to make a living.’

  ‘I love the songs,’ said Maria.

  ‘But to sing the songs you have to understand what they’re about.’

  ‘I do,’ said Maria.

  ‘What happened to all the Italians in the war?’ asked Miss Thompson. Maria tapped the bottom of her shoe.

  ‘They were on the other side.’

  ‘Yes. Did that involve your own family?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It must have.’

  ‘No. They ran a café in Scotland. Everybody liked them.’ Miss Thompson looked into Maria’s eyes, wiped her hands, and stood up.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘I want you to work as a group on this number. It has a cha-cha-cha feel. We’re going to link up the movement, then Mr Keening will take you for the songs. Sexy number this. Okay.’

  Miss Thompson reapplied her lipstick and took two of the other girls into the corner to give them steps. Maria leaned on the barre and arched back, mouthing words, and when she came back up she stared at herself in the mirror. When she looked this closely at her own face she caught something in her eyes that made her feel it was somebody else looking. Her body was apart from her. The person with thoughts was different from the person with arms and legs, a stomach and a face. This was the first time this thought had ever occurred to her, that day in the mirror at Italia Conti.

  ‘She’s outgrown the school,’ said Mr Keening.

  ‘She had outgrown the school before she arrived,’ said Mr Wall.

  ‘She was only here for the school lessons,’ said Mr Epping. ‘She was here because of the schoolwork quota.’

  ‘She’s a much better dancer than when she arrived,’ said Miss Thompson.

  ‘She’s outgrown it. She’s old enough to leave,’ said Mr Keening.

  ‘Always was too grown,’ said Mr Wall, ‘and you can’t discipline instincts like hers. She knows what she has to do before she does it. Such energy in such a small body.’

  ‘She’s very special,’ said Miss Thompson.

  ‘She’s really sort of shy,’ said Mr Keening.

  ‘Except when it counts,’ said Mrs Mimms.

  ‘It always counts,’ said Mr Keening.

  ‘I don’t know about that, Mr Keening,’ she said, ‘but when it counts not to be shy I’ve never seen a girl like Maria Tambini, and I’ve been coming to this school almost since the day it opened.’

  Mrs Mimms put half a custard cream on the rim of her saucer and picked a crumb from the corner of her mouth. ‘But, I do say,’ she said, ‘have you ever met a girl so completely devoted to succeeding?’

  ‘She has succeeded,’ said Mr Keening.

  ‘All succeed who come here, Mr Keening.’

  ‘In their own way, yes,’ he said.

  Miss Thompson raked her hair with a perm comb. ‘I don’t really know how to put it,’ she said. ‘She follows herself with her eyes.’

  ‘That’s the training,’ said Mr Wall.

  ‘She doesn’t have any small talk.’

  ‘It’s the training. Being in showbusiness and all the people around her. It’s just the training.’

  ‘She’s really something of a performer,’ said Mrs Mimms.

  Mr Keening could smell his own aftershave. He wondered if he had overdone it that morning. ‘There’s a problem with jealousy,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, most certainly,’ said Mrs Mimms.

  ‘I think she’s had it a lot tougher than she’s ever said.’

  ‘She doesn’t speak,’ said Mr Wall. ‘She smiles and works hard and golly she sings, but everyone else talks. She doesn’t speak much to the others.’

  ‘There’s jealousy all right,’ said Miss Thompson. ‘It’s always a problem with a girl like that. The others see her getting loads of work and it brings out the worst.’

  ‘It’s just in the way of things – here, I mean,’ said Mr Wall.

  ‘Has there been bullying?’ asked Mr Keening.

  ‘No,’ said Miss Thompson. ‘Names.’

  ‘Swearing?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Things about looks. You know what it’s like. She’s already got a career. They try to take her down a peg or two. They say things about the way she looks.’

  ‘She’s tough,’ said Mr Wall.

  ‘A tough cookie, as they say,’ said Mrs Mimms. ‘She would have to be something of the kind.’

  ‘Strange girl,’ said Mr Keening. ‘Nice, talented. I think we’ve done all we can do for her now.’

  Mr Wall rose from his seat in the staff room. ‘It’s the training,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose she’s had a very ordinary time of it. She’s been singing since she was seven. She’s got experience. She knows the game.’

  ‘You never know, do you?’ said Miss Thompson. ‘Girls like that don’t come out of nothing.’

  ‘She doesn’t say much,’ said Mrs Mimms.

  ‘She sings,’ said Mr Keening.

  ‘Everybody speaks for her,’ said Miss Thompson.

  ‘So what?’ said Mr Wall. ‘That’s who she is.’

  7

  The Palladium

  An eye, coming from the Westway, the tower blocks overhead and the diesel fumes behind the walls, and down there the railway tracks silver with use in the early evening as the trains come in to Paddington, and as they leave, ignorant of all motion besides their own, the trains squeal and chug and bellow inside the vapour of London. Slick with rain, the passengers sink behind their Evening Standards, their minds glazing over with the day’s thoughts; tunnelled in warmth, sleep will ingest them, as their hearts pound softly for home.

  An eye, passing this, passing St Mary’s Hospital, its yellow windows and damp brick, the unwell captured in their beds and the smell of fruit and stewed tea hanging about the wards. Inside, there is movement in the television rooms, the convalesci
ng, the diseased are wearing out the hour in their carpet slippers, the dinner trays undevoured while London darkens, while ambulances gather at the emergency doors. A man dies to the sound of laughter escaping from Blankety Blank. A nurse loses her temper with a bunch of flowers too cumbersome for their vase. A woman goes up in the lift to see the mother she has never met. Porters smoke on the stairwell and remember the worst and the best of Friday night. A Pakistani gentleman says prayers to himself, too old to wait, and ignores the football commentary coming from an adjacent radio. A doctor checks a chart and remembers his wife’s birthday, and out in the corridor a confectionery machine jams and keeps the money. A bone is set, and a lady who grew up in Cornwall remembers the long walk to school.

  An eye, at speed, passing Marylebone Town Hall where confetti lies in blue-reflecting. puddles. An eye, coming along Marylebone Road and crossing Baker Street, reaches the dome of the Planetarium with its countless stars fixed in the dark, and Madame Tussaud’s, with its famous unbreathing figures, the wax hands and eyes and nylon hair quite still in the cold rooms, famous names smiling for ever, robes and tiaras perfectly balanced to meet the demands of the paying public, and down in the basement a Victorian Whitechapel of the mind lies in mechanical silence, everything switched off, the air dense with what remains of the day’s wonder over those cobbled lanes, as waxwork girls look from the taverns and fear for their lives.

  Waxworks: they live here in their strange way, seeming real, famous women, as much looking as looked upon, their startled faces now coated in publicity. Madame Tussaud took a mould of Marie Antoinette’s severed head as it lay unattended on the grass of the cemetery on the rue d’Anjou.