Lucky Break (17 page)

‘Yes,' Nell agreed, but as the months passed Nell felt increasingly alarmed.

 

Early in the New Year Lyndsey called and asked if Nell would pop into the office. ‘Is anything wrong?' she asked, aware that the word ‘pop' usually preceded something unpleasant – an invitation to climb on to a doctor's couch, a request to pop to the toilet – but Lyndsey reassured her. ‘Ethel wants to have a little chat, that's all.'

Ethel Dabbs's agency was in the basement of a house in Putney. The basement was as cluttered as a real home – with a sink and a draining board under the window, and three desks arranged around the room. Ethel was busy on the phone. ‘Yes, darling. Yes, of course. I'll tell them you can't
possibly
.' She took up a pen and made a note. ‘I know, I know, it's one of your peccadilloes. You just can't share a dressing room with
anyone
!' When eventually she was finished she beckoned to Nell. ‘Now,' she adjusted her glasses, ‘it seems we have a problem.'

Nell swallowed.

‘My dear girl, you're not getting any work.'

Nell stammered. ‘I know, but . . .'

Ethel put up a hand. ‘I'd like you to try something. I'd like you to go and see someone. He used to be an actor himself, one of mine in fact, but now, among other things, he gives coaching in audition skills.' She wrote an address on a piece of paper and pushed it towards her.

Nell felt herself enveloped in a flush of shame. She'd spent three years at drama school – in fact it had been two, but she couldn't always admit, even to herself, that she'd been asked to leave. She shouldn't need any kind of coaching.

‘Don't worry about the money.' Ethel mistook her hesitation. ‘The agency will pay. We'll consider it an investment.'

‘No. It's not that, it's just . . .' Nell remembered her manners. She folded the address and put it in her pocket. ‘Thank you,' she said, and smiling briefly at Lyndsey, she hurried towards the door.

 

The ex-actor lived in Pimlico in a large, solemn apartment. He led Nell through the hall and into a study. ‘Please,' he said, indicating the polished parquet of the floor before him. ‘When you're ready.'

Nell took a breath. She looked round as if to centre herself, cleared her throat, coughed twice, and then, knowing that really she'd never be ready, she chose a chair, placed it at an angle and began.

‘
He thought it was terrible, the idea of women shooting at each other
. . .' She'd chosen a play by Ian McEwan, a play for television that she'd never seen. ‘
It is terrifying . . . But it terrifies men for a different reason
. . .' Nell, although her gaze was fixed on an imaginary colonel from the Second World War, was also watching the actor. ‘
On the anti-aircraft units the ATS girls are never allowed to fire the guns
.
' She saw the actor blink, and scratch his head. He hates me, she thought, he knows I'm useless. Nell had to struggle to remember the next line. ‘
Their job is to fire the range finder. If the girls fired the guns as well as the boys
 . . .'

Nell had borrowed this audition speech from her new flatmate, Sita, who'd got it from a friend. ‘. . .
if girls fired guns, and women generals planned the battles
. . .' She imagined Sita in their tiny sitting room, her long hair flying, her cat's mouth spitting out the words, and she wondered if she should attempt to sound more like her, less West Country, more East End. ‘. . .
then the men would feel there was no . . . morality to war, they would have no one to fight for, nowhere to leave their . . . consciences
 . . .'

In her imagination the colonel leant forward and put his hand, condescendingly, on hers. ‘
Take your hands off me
!
' she bellowed, flinging away his arm. But immediately she was plunged into doubt. What if the actor was offended by her choice of speech? Thought she was a feminist making a point? She dropped her voice, showed she could be thoughtful. ‘
When we went to bed it didn't matter that he couldn't . . . I didn't care . . . I really didn't care
. . .' and as she mused about love and shame, and the parallels between the war and sex, she sank down, finally, on to the chair and waited for whoever was judging her to lift their rifle and take aim.

‘Thank you,' the actor said, giving nothing away. He motioned for Nell to come closer. ‘I want to ask you a question.' He looked at her, kindly. ‘And I want you to tell me honestly.' There was a pause. ‘What are you thinking when you're doing your piece?' Nell looked at the floor and without expecting it, her eyes filled with tears. ‘What am I thinking?' She frowned. ‘I'm thinking . . .' She thought of all the many things that she'd been thinking, but then one clear truth rolled towards her. ‘I'm thinking . . . I'm not going to get the job.'

‘So what happens?' The man was smiling at her.

‘What happens?' Nell's head was so full she could hardly hear. ‘What do you mean?'

‘What happens when you stand there, laying bare your heart and soul, with that certainty running through your brain?'

‘I don't get the job?'

‘Exactly,' the man rewarded her. ‘Exactly right. Now, I want you to answer me a few more questions. Are you a good actress?'

That was the terrible thing. How was one to know? ‘I think so.' She took courage. She remembered her performance as Emilia in
Othello
. ‘Yes. I can be.'

‘And are you reliable, co-operative, hard-working?'

‘Yes.'

‘Would you be a valuable member of a company?'

Nell shrugged, but the actor wasn't letting her off. He cupped his hand to his ear.

‘Yes.'

‘So you may in fact be just what a director is looking for. You may be the answer to their prayers.'

‘Well . . .' It had never occurred to Nell that she might actually be useful. Each time she'd been offered a job she assumed it was a mistake which the director would soon discover and regret.

‘Now.' The ex-actor leant back in his chair. ‘Will you do your piece again?'

‘All right.' Nell grimaced. What if she was just as bad?

‘All right!' he challenged her.

Nell found her spot on the floor. ‘
He thought it was terrible, the idea of women shooting at each other
.' This time she knew who
he
was, and she remembered that she liked him. Loved him, even. She flew through the lines, Sita, a distant memory, working as she was today in Monsoon Accessories, her long black hair tied back with baubles, her ears hung with silver hoops. ‘
The men want the women to stay out of the fighting so they can give it meaning. As long as we're on the outside and give our support and don't kill, women make the war just possible
. . .' She glared, not at the actor but at the colonel, who was, frankly, scared. ‘
But I'm withdrawing my support
.'

When she was finished she looked up and it didn't matter to her what the actor thought. What anyone thought. Even whether or not she got the job. Not that there was one.

‘Thank you so much,' Nell smiled.

‘Thank
you
,' the actor told her.

Nell reached for her coat. ‘Or is there something else?'

‘Nothing else.'

‘So it's just . . . confidence. Is that all it is?'

‘Confidence.' He shrugged. ‘And talent obviously, and luck.'

They laughed, and the actor held open the door. He watched her as she ran down the stairs. ‘
When we went to bed, it didn't matter that he couldn't . . . I didn't care. I really didn't care
.' The words bubbled out of her, transparent, delicious. It was as if she'd thought them up herself. ‘
He didn't have to be efficient and brilliant at everything . . . I liked him more . . . But he couldn't bear to appear weak before me. He just couldn't stand it. Isn't that the same thing? I mean . . . as the war. Don't you see, the two . . . the two
 . . .'

Ecstatic, she leapt aboard a bus and settled herself at the front like a queen.

 

Within two weeks Nell had her first professional job, at Hampstead Theatre. She was to play a singing telegram-a-girl caught up in a shopping centre siege. At her audition she'd had to bark the first verse of ‘My Way' as if she was a dog.

 

‘Woof, woof.

Woof, woof, woof, woof.

Woof, woof, woof, Wooooooooooof.

Woof, woof. Woof, woof, woo . . . ooof.'

 

But nothing had fazed her.

‘Congratulations.' Lyndsey was as pleased as if she'd got the part herself. ‘I knew you could do it.' And on the first night she sent her a spray of pink and red carnations with a card signed from all at Ethel Dabbs.

‘
Who's
your agent?' The lead actress, Phyllida de Courcy, squinted at the card as Nell stuck it on to the mirror, and the director, Timmy, who had sidled into the dressing room for a last quick chat, answered for her. ‘Ethel Dabbs. You know, when they sent out her CV it was all round the wrong way. Nell, really, you should have a word with them about that.'

‘The wrong way?' Nell didn't understand.

‘They'd put everything in order of the date.' He turned to Phyllida. ‘Not with her most recent work first, but what she'd done at drama school!' The two of them laughed in an agonised sort of way as if it was just too hilarious and sad to bear.

Nell put her carnations in water.

‘Darlings, my darlings, one last note.' Timmy turned and put his spare arm round Nell's shoulders. ‘Pace. Pace. Pace.'

‘That's three notes.' Phyllida laughed, but Nell saw that under the rouge and the lipstick she was pale.

‘It's the half,' the stage manager called from the corridor and Phyllida shrieked. Nell rushed to the loo. Her body felt molten, flaming, slick with fear. It was as if she was about to step out of an aeroplane and plummet into space. She pressed her face against the smooth paint of the door, crouched down and wrapped her arms around her knees. Why am I doing this? she asked herself, and she imagined the shock of her mother, her sister and her sister's boyfriend, of Lyndsey, Sita, Pierre, Charlie, everyone who'd promised they would come, their faces dissolving as she crashed to the floor.

‘Fifteen minutes.' Someone was knocking and she roused herself. ‘Please God,' she murmured, and she swore that if she made it through the night she'd never, ever put herself through anything so terrifying again.

When she went back into the dressing room she found Phyllida smoking out of the window. ‘You don't mind, do you, darling?' she asked and she offered her a puff. The stage manager was back. ‘The five,' he said gently. ‘Positions, please.'

Phyllida clasped Nell's hand. ‘It doesn't get easier.' Her whole body was trembling. ‘I feel more nervous now than when I first began. More to lose!' and they stood together, ice-cold with fear, their palms sweating, clutching each other in the wings.

The audience were in, they could hear them shuffling and chatting, happy, innocent, not knowing that only yards away there were people suffering in agony for their sakes, and then to Nell's horror the lights dimmed, the music faded and forgetting everything she'd ever known, even her name, she stepped out into the empty white glare of the stage.

There was silence. The audience, she assumed, were just as panic-stricken as her, and then, as she'd rehearsed them, her lines came out quite normally, as if she was someone else. Phyllida was behind her, humming, bustling, offering her toast, and by the time Howard entered in his security guard's uniform, Nell was able to turn to him, a cup of tea in one hand, a broom in the other, and welcome him as if this was her home.

During the interval Timmy put his head round the door and blew them both a kiss, and when Nell went on for the second half she was skipping, flying, barking out her song with glee. ‘Woof, woof . . . woof, woof, woof, woof . . .' She caught Phyllida's eye and smiled, she waltzed around the stage with Howard and later, when they all hid behind a bunker of jaffa cake boxes, she crouched there, her blood singing, ecstatic as she'd not been since she was a child. And it was over. There was rapturous applause. The three of them gripped hands and bowed, three times, their hearts high as the moon. ‘You were marvellous, absolutely wonderful.' Lyndsey hugged her, and over her shoulder Nell saw her mother, tearful, glowing, a look of wonder in her eyes, as if now she understood.

 

That night Nell could hardly sleep. There'd been drinks in the bar of the theatre and then a party back at Timmy's in Brick Lane. His agent had been there, a bright and efficient woman from Dove Coutts, and afterwards Timmy had whispered, ‘She liked you. I think she'd take you on if I put a word in.' He topped her glass up with champagne. ‘A chance to get away from the dreary Ethel Dabbs?' And by the time she'd finally got to bed her head was spinning.