What They Do in the Dark

I WAKE UP the morning of the audition with a balloon of joyous dread bobbing in my stomach. It’s impossible to eat breakfast, although Mum nags, and I know if I don’t make the attempt she might decide I’m ill and use it as an excuse to stop me going. She seems to want to do that quite badly, so I’m on best behaviour. Ian doesn’t help by making lots of comments about me being a film star and being ready for my close-up. In the end Mum tells him to give over, which is a relief. He’s taken aback by her command, which she barely bothers to coat with another tone. It’s the kind of thing she says to Dad all the time, but she’s never done it before with Ian. It makes me see the permanence of this arrangement between them. The balloon tugs inside me, heavy.

Although we’ll be at school, we don’t have to wear uniform, and we approach disaster when I appear wearing my dungarees as a tribute to Lallie. Mum says I need to put on a dress instead. I very strongly want to wear the dungarees; they are what I’ve been wearing every time I’ve been to the audition before drifting off to sleep, and Lallie has got talking to me about them (‘Nice dungarees’, ‘Thanks’), and we’ve become friends and live together in her TV house with Marmaduke the butler. Mum, though, insists on a dress. Will it be the same? Will it even be possible to enjoy meeting Lallie wearing a dress? I appeal to Ian, who sides with Mum even though I know he’d prefer to support me. In the end it comes down to an ultimatum: do I want to go to the audition?

We arrive ten minutes before the official start, me in a dress, and the hall is already packed. Christina isn’t there – they left for Butlin’s at the weekend – so I sit near Michelle and Maria from my class. The mums and dads hover for the spare ten minutes, during which Mum gets out a brush and refinishes my hair. Then they’re all told to go away by a woman who was there when we signed up, an oldish woman with lots of interesting rings on her fingers and clothes of a kind I’ve never come across; they don’t match, but she’s smart. She has a posh voice, which helps to quell us, and doesn’t seem the type to be got around.

‘Thank you so much for coming today,’ she says. ‘As you know, it won’t be possible to use each and every one of you, although I think I’m right in saying that there will be a scene in the playground where anyone who wants to can appear … ?’ She dips her head towards a man, neither young nor old, just grown-up age, who is clearly important. He nods tightly.

‘So let’s get started! I’m Julia, by the way, the casting director – you’ll be meeting me first. And this is Michael, the director, Mike, who some of you will be meeting later. He’s a very busy man! Oh, and Pam, my assistant – she’ll be seeing some of you as well.’

Pam is one of the other people, mixed in with the teachers, there to shepherd us. She’s younger and has a friendly look I like, although Julia clearly doesn’t think much of her.

A group of fourth-years is led away by Pam. As it becomes clear that this is all that is going to happen, everyone goes quieter and starts to get bored. I’ve brought my ballet bag with me, at Mum’s suggestion, just in case I need to slip my shoes on (I’ve brought tap as well) and show them what I can do, and Michelle and Maria and I occupy ourselves for a time with its contents, them trying on my shoes and me showing them a few tap steps sitting down with my knees up in the air.

The fourth-years come back, full of pioneering self-importance, and another ten are sent in. Everyone crowds round the returned group, eager for news, but we’re marshalled back in line with a few tantalizing scraps. These are soon amplified into concrete rumours: apparently one boy, Andrew Meeton, had to swear. Maria asserts, disappointingly, that the swear word was ‘bugger’. But it reaches me from the other side of the row that what he actually had to do was pull his trousers down and show them his arse. I am suitably shocked, but confident that, being a girl, nothing of that sort will be required of me. Admittedly, the tap shoes are looking doubtful. I eat the two chocolate digestives Mum has tucked into the bag for a snack. The chocolate is melted from the heat, so I lick my fingers and the spaces between my fingers clean, like a cat having a wash.

The next lot out claim they are being given speaking parts. Well, two of them. I start to feel worried: what if all the good parts have been given out by the time they get to third-years? What if all the parts have gone? I count the obstacles in front of me, up to forty-two. Four more groups. By now Dawn and Maria and I have stopped talking and are slumped against the wall. This is not how I expected it to be.

And then I see her. Standing at the door, near the vaulting horse where Mr Scott parks his papers on assembly days. There is a strange second of delay between recognizing her and knowing who she is, then the impossible reality flows into that gap, flooding me with magic. Lallie. As familiar as my mum. There. Not on the telly. In my life, human. Smaller than I think of her, although of course she is literally tiny on the telly screen, but small, smaller than I am. She is with her mum, who I recognize from magazine photos, but she’s actually talking to Julia, who now seems less stern. I am so bound up in my thirsty intake of the scene that the thought of telling Michelle or Maria doesn’t even form: I am all looking.

Lallie is wearing a peaked cap over her springy hair, and oh God, matching orange dungarees. Her clothes, as I knew they would be, are perfect. She doesn’t do anything, just talks – she seems to be chewing gum – with her hands tucked into the bib of her dungarees and one plimsolled foot balanced on top of the standing foot in a way I immediately note and decide to copy. But how can she be so small? Just as a stirring of recognition snakes through the hall like a run of dominoes coming down, she moves on. Julia gives her a kiss – a kiss! – although it is not the kind of kiss I am accustomed to receiving, it’s a kiss between equals, her mum puts her hand on her shoulder, and they disappear through the door. The recognition has now become shouts of ‘That’s her!’ and ‘Lallie!’ and I see her buck as her name is called and turn back to respond, although her mum is still herding her out. She gives an uncertain smile and a wave, just like any girl our age would, with friendliness in it and apology, a botched gesture that she seems to want to take back as she goes. She’s gone. For a few seconds I watch the doorway, the way I watch the picture on the turned-off TV even after it’s shrunk to nothing.

‘That wa’n’t her!’ Michelle says scornfully. I argue roundly, along with Maria and the others, but she won’t be convinced, perhaps because she was one of the last to notice her. And all the time I feel elation and sadness, striped together like toothpaste; elation at the sheer glamour of Lallie appearing in my life, and sadness that her separate existence is now an experienced fact, confirming my failure to be her. We are not even alike, despite the freckles and the tap. She is small in a way I will never be, she is dark, she is her. I am forever me. It doesn’t stop me craving the orange dungarees.

Nearly an hour later, we are called in. The balloon in my stomach has now risen to my throat, making me feel sick. I know that if they ask me to sing, it will come out as croaking. My pulse beats in my ears. Pam holds us in a corridor outside the classroom where the important people are and tries to chat to us, but I have to keep swallowing to stop myself from vomiting. She says they won’t be long and rolls her eyes. She says there’s nothing to be nervous about, and that if we aren’t chosen it doesn’t mean anything bad, it’s just a matter of them looking for children who fit into an idea they have for the script. It’s the script, really, she says, and having the right sort of look. The possibility of not being chosen leaks bile into my mouth. I ask if there’s time for me to get a drink from the water fountain at the end of the corridor, and she says, ‘Of course.’

I’m bowed over the warmish nub of water when someone claps my back, making me wet my chin. Before I turn I already know who it is; no one else barges and pokes like this.

‘Give over!’ I rub my cheek as though the water has hurt it. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Come for’t film, haven’t I?’

She looks, for Pauline, as though she’s made an effort. Two hair grips hold her black-and-white hair back at the forehead, which is noticeably cleaner than the rest of her face below, and she’s wearing a dress. She’s standing too close to me, like she does, and I automatically start breathing through my mouth.

‘You can’t come with me,’ I say, indicating Michelle and Maria and the nice lady. ‘You have to go and wait in the hall.’

As so often when I talk to her, I’m not sure if Pauline is ignoring me or hasn’t heard in the first place. She just comes with me when I head back to my group.

‘I saw Lallie Paluza,’ I can’t resist telling her, although it means nothing to her. She puts something in my hand: a Flake, almost liquid in its wrapper.

‘I don’t want it,’ I say, and try to hand it back.

‘I got it for you.’

‘I don’t want it!’

But there’s nothing I can do because she won’t take it, and now the door to the classroom has opened and disastrously the nice lady is telling us to go in. I try to explain about the Flake and Pauline, but they both end up in the room with me, Michelle and Maria. We face a table full of grown-ups; there is the woman, Julia, and the important man, Michael. Also another man who smiles nicely and winks, who is called Hugh. I can see they have a list in front of them and recognize, with relief, the mechanisms that will save me and eject Pauline.

‘What’s that you’ve got in your hand?’ asks Hugh.

‘It’s a Flake,’ I tell them, to mystifying amusement. ‘She gave it me, I don’t want it, it’s all melted!’

‘Why don’t you put it in the bin,’ Julia suggests coolly, her amusement less genuine than the two men’s. I’m grateful for this, as well as scared. She’s scanning the list for Pauline’s name.

‘She’s not on the list, Miss,’ I say.

‘Oh, well,’ says Michael. ‘What’s your name?’ and Julia takes up her pen and writes at the bottom, where there’s a blank bit.

‘Bright, as it sounds?’

If I could kill Pauline, I would. The Flake wrapper has leaked chocolate on to my palm and I lick it away so I don’t get choc olate on my dress, but this amuses Hugh even more, I can see, as though he thinks I can’t resist eating even at this crucial moment.

They ask us questions, about how old we are and what we’re doing for the summer holidays.

‘I’m going to Spain with my mum and dad,’ I tell them, shame at turning Ian into my dad piled on to the shame of what’s actually happened between my mum and dad. When it’s her turn, Pauline claims that she’s going to Spain too, with her parents, and I want to shout that she’s a liar, but I’m a liar too. After this, Michael asks Pauline to come closer to the table, and asks her a lot more questions, about school, and her brothers and sisters, and although Pauline tells some more whoppers robbed from me, about liking reading and making up stories (although she stops short of claiming she too wants to be a teacher when she grows up), the more questions he asks, the more she begins to talk to Michael properly, looking at him instead of off to one side of him like she usually does, and all the time he’s staring at her, flanked by the two other grown-ups, who also look and look. I prepare a few of my own answers so I’ll be ready for similar questions, but there’s no need. They thank us all and the door opens and the nice lady scoops us out into the corridor again. That’s it.

Michelle and Maria are giggly and relieved. I turn to Pauline and push her so hard she bangs back against the wall.

‘You’re a liar, you!’

‘Oy, steady …’ The nice lady gets hold of my shoulder.

‘She told lies.’

‘I never!’

‘It doesn’t matter, chick,’ the lady admonishes. ‘It’s not like an exam. They just want to get a look at you really, sort of get an idea of what you’re like. It’s not the end of the world, is it?’

But I’m bawling. The door opens, and I think I’m going to get in trouble for making a noise, but Julia wants to say something to Pam and registers my distress only remotely.

‘Oh dear.’

She nods the lady away and says something to her. When we get back to the hall, Pam says me and Michelle and Maria can wait outside for our mums and dads to collect us. She asks Pauline to wait with her. Pauline looks worried, as though she might be in trouble. I can’t bear to tell her the opposite, that they want her and don’t want me, but when I see Mum in the playground, that’s what I sob, incomprehensibly – they want her, they don’t want me. Eventually, she makes sense of it.

‘They must have made a mistake.’

When I assure her that they haven’t, that they really do want Pauline, Mum goes in search of an authoritative adult to confirm this, and is passed up to the nice lady. I can see them talking together, the benign head shake that fends Mum off, all too quickly. She has to content herself with an impotent, audible ‘Ridiculous!’ as she stalks back to me.

‘She can’t tell us much – supposed to be in charge, you’d think they’d get someone who knows what they’re talking about …’ She aims this mainly at Michelle’s mum, who smiles warily and continues to leave. Briskly, Mum takes one of my bunches and makes it do the splits to tighten the bobble on my scalp. ‘They haven’t made any final decisions, apparently, but you’re right, they’re seeing Pauline now. Is that chocolate?’ She rubs at a stain on my dress, adjusts my second bobble.

In the car, my snorts convulsively subside. ‘Knew she’d get het up,’ says Mum to Ian, who suggests pancakes at the Copper Kettle, and refuses to believe me when I say I’m not hungry. He insists on ordering my favourites, and I joylessly post sweet, claggy forkfuls into my mouth so Mum can’t get irritated about my lack of gratitude for the treat.

‘Even if they use her, it won’t be anything big,’ she reassures me. I’ve reached the point of not wanting to talk about it any more, in the hope it might go away.

‘Course it won’t,’ says Ian. ‘You have to be trained, like, to take a star part. Go to stage school – that’s where they’ll look for the speaking parts. Down in London.’

‘It’s a funny way to go on, getting kiddies’ hopes up.’ Mum raises her voice, hoping for an audience, and manages to catch the manageress’s eye as she stands by the till. Ian goes to the toilet, and once he’s left us Mum seems to lose interest in her indignation. Her sipping of her coffee becomes inward and complicated. I exploit this slackening of attention to stop eating, and cut the rest of my pancake into cunning shreds that can be dispersed over my syrupy plate and abandoned. I remember that I’ve seen Lallie, and haven’t even bothered to tell Mum, but I can’t quite bear her lack of interest. Then I wonder if Pauline has seen Lallie now, met her even, and the possibility revives the crucifying injustice of it all. I know that even if she has, Pauline won’t care. That’s almost the worst of it.

‘Mum?’

Elbows on the table, she lowers her coffee cup slightly. I don’t know what I’m going to say.

‘Can I, can I see Dad?’

The cup comes all the way down to the table, like I’ve pushed a switch. I think she’s going to be very angry.

‘What d’you want to see him about?’

‘I don’t know. I just want to see him.’

Mum’s head writhes elaborately, as though I’ve put a cord round her neck.

‘Because … well, I hope you’re not expecting much.’

‘I’m not,’ I reassure her. I haven’t got a clue what she means.

‘He doesn’t pay a penny for you, you know. Ian’s taken it all on.’ Dumbly, I wait for her to stop. She’s definitely very angry, but at the moment, it doesn’t seem to be at me. She takes a punctuating sip of coffee, rattles the cup back into the saucer, slopping. This helps her find what to say next. ‘Not many men would, a woman with a child. Everything he’s got. You should thank your lucky stars, Gemma.’

Tears stab the back of my throat but it feels crucial now not to shed them. Ian is coming back from the toilet. He drops hugely on to the banquette next to me, making me seesaw up.

‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ he says. ‘Man walks into a bar, there’s a horse having a drink, he says to him, “Why the long face?”’

Mum tuts. She doesn’t like jokes, even Ian’s jokes. Ian squeezes my thigh with his vast chocolate-Brazil-eating hand. It hurts, like a pinch. ‘You’re a star, you’ll see. Isn’t she, Mum?’

‘I don’t know where they’re looking, if they want Pauline Bright. Everyone knows, that family …’

Dad has been erased from the conversation, as he always is around Ian. I can see that this is the way it will always be now, unless I do something. I remember, sickly, how easily I myself erased Dad when I was telling them about our holiday in the audition. Maybe when I replaced him with Ian, that was the moment God decided that I didn’t deserve to star in a film with Lallie. Ian gives me one more heavy pat on the leg, jabs a tickle at my stomach, then takes up the flimsy bill for the pancakes and hoists himself out of the seat to pay.

‘What do you say?’ prompts Mum.

‘Thank you, Ian.’

He does a bow, as is his way. ‘My pleasure, sweet ladies.’

I force a smile.

‘That’s better,’ Mum says.

FRANK DENNY GOT the phone call from America bang in the middle of his lunchtime sandwich. It was only twenty minutes he took at his desk, on the rare days when he wasn’t lunching a client, and Veronica knew the sanctity of that time, which included a fifteen-minute forty winks with The Stage draped over his face. Calls from the Yanks were the sole permitted interruption to this ritual, since the time difference made them oblivious to the inconvenience. However dazed he might feel, Frank was expert at vamping until his brain caught up, which it did like a psychic act narrowing the possibilities by firing general questions until the audience member unconsciously revealed all, sometimes helped by his mark in the form of Veronica posting scribbled notes on his desk and miming additional details. But today it was easy, since there was only one female Quentin on his mental Rolodex.

‘How’s it all going up there? Pleased with my lovely little girl, I hope,’ Frank beamed into the phone, whose ancient mouthpiece hummed with years of his own breath. He realized, with a practised repression of annoyance, that although Quentin was a Yank, she was actually in the country. Veronica wasn’t to know.

‘She’s terrific—’

‘Isn’t she? I always say, a star’s a star, whatever the age.’

There was a silence down the line, inexplicable as a time delay.

‘What can I do for you, my love?’

‘I just wanted to get a little background, about Lallie …’

Uh-oh. Unless it was just financial stuff, fees and precedents. ‘Fire away.’

Veronica, realising her help wasn’t needed, disappeared to make him his post-forty-winks cup of tea.

‘Well, I met her and her mom—’

‘Katrina, yes.’

‘Yeah.’ There was a little pause. ‘Quite a lady.’

‘Oh darling, if it’s the mother you’re worried about, I have to say you could do a lot worse, believe it or not. I mean, she’s protective, but she does let Lallie just get on with it—’

‘Yeah, I can see that, that’s not a problem for me.’ In the fractional gap before Quentin launched her next sentence, Frank’s mind tumbled through the possibilities like a safe cracker: puberty? The nose (they’d fix it, why not)? The decision to go with American talent instead (despite it being an English part)? Her being too common to play a princess (elocution lessons – the kid was a mimic, for Christ’s sake)?

‘I just wondered … if, given the mom and all, she’s being pressured to work.’

F*ck me, so that was it. Frank burst through. ‘God, no! Have you spoken to her? She’s born to it, darling, absolutely. I mean, I’m not denying Mummy has a big hand in it, you can see that for yourself, but Lallie, heavens – she loves the business, absolutely eats, sleeps and breathes it.’

Again, a little silence. Maybe there really was a delay – it was still long distance, even if it was only Yorkshire.

‘She seems a little … joyless to me.’

Bloody hell. He’d have to have a word, pronto. What had Katrina been doing up there?

‘I’m sorry about that, it doesn’t sound like my girl at all. She might be tired, to be honest – she went on to the film straight off her telly job and it’s been a long stretch. They do still get tired, kiddies, even though they restrict the hours. It’s only natural.’

‘OK.’

Frank was not used to dealing with Americans of this ambling, considered kind. Women, yes, but they tended to be hyperactive New Yorkers who condensed any conversation into its essence and shot it straight into your bloodstream. This girl sounded almost dopey.

‘Maybe you saw her at the end of the day?’

‘We had breakfast.’

‘Ah …’ He chuckled. ‘She’s not one for the early starts, I could’ve told you that. Did she say she was keen?’

‘She said. Mom did most of the talking. She doesn’t know the book – she liked my pitch, I think.’

This sounded better. Solid ground. Veronica put his tea on the desk. Frank became brisk.

‘Terrific. It’s a wonderful opportunity for her, I’m sure she can see that. I’ve mentioned to the mother about booking a holiday once she’s finished on this one, that should set her right. I’ll insist, Quentin, you’re quite right. She’s only human.’

This was a favourite technique of his. We’re all in this together, working on a problem slightly to the left of the one you thought you had before we started the conversation. He pressed his advantage.

‘And are you thinking about screen tests at this stage? Might that help, to get her out at the studio, see how she looks in costume, down to action as it were? That might be a thought, if you wanted – she could do the holiday first for a week – I know she’s mad to go to Disneyland, like they all are. It’d really set her up.’

‘Oh. Yeah, that could work for us. I’ll talk to Clancy in the office.’

He wasn’t there yet, that was for sure. There was still this hesitation, this gap on the line. And he didn’t buy that it was just because Lallie hadn’t done a song and dance when she met her – although why the hell not, he had no idea, considering she was a song-and-dance machine whenever he saw her. Maybe she really was tired. He scribbled a curve of zeds on his notepad, next to where he had written and underlined ‘holiday’.

‘I hear the rushes on this one have got everyone talking.’ He hadn’t, but they always had.

‘They look terrific.’

‘What about Lallie?’

‘I think she’s going to be amazing.’

That, at least, sounded genuine. So what was the problem? Everyone wanted more than they should: his clients from him, the producers from the clients, it wasn’t right, really. There had to be limits.

‘Well, that’s all that matters, isn’t it, at the end of the day – what you’re getting?’

‘I guess so.’ Pause. Frank had given up. ‘She is a child. I mean, just a little kid.’

And Lassie’s just a collie, darling, but it’s a bit late in the day … which reminded him. Frank wrote ‘worming tablets’ next to his doodles on the pad and triple-underlined it. Kenneth had been dragging his arse along the carpet when he’d left that morning, and if he had them it was only a matter of time before Charles succumbed.

‘Well, she is and she isn’t. She’s got a gift, that’s plain as the nose on your face.’ He wished he hadn’t mentioned noses; it might bring Lallie’s to mind, and for all he knew Quentin herself might have a problematic schnozz. ‘And let me tell you, the first time I met her, she told me that the thing in the world that makes her happiest is working. This is from a nine-year-old girl. It’s born in her.’

In the gap, he pencilled in the loop of the ‘b’ in ‘tablets’. Come on, Frank. ‘But can I say, I think it’s wonderful to come across someone in your position who’s really concerned about these things. Hand on heart, it’s something I’ve thought about a lot, but also hand on heart, I’ve got to tell you that she’s not one of those kiddies who’s forced into it – I wouldn’t be looking after her if she was, couldn’t live with myself. But it’s good to know that if she does go to the States, she’ll have someone apart from me looking out for her.’

Quentin actually laughed at this, an unpleasant, gentle little chuckle which took him by surprise.

‘Do you know Hugh Calder?’

Where was this going? He felt uneasy.

‘Of course. Best in the business, Hugh.’

‘Do you think he’s a nice guy?’

Frank stopped doodling, banjaxed. Never for long, though.

‘What can I tell you? The man’s charm itself. You’ve met him …’

Now he thought he heard a sigh down the line. He amended his approach.

‘I don’t know about nice, but he’s a true gent. Tough, mind – well, you have to be, don’t you? He wouldn’t be doing what he’s doing if he was a pushover, but, let’s say, honourable.’

That was over-egging it a bit, but you never knew what got back to people. He could hear Quentin breathing, as though she had come up a flight of stairs.

‘Is he into women?’

Crikey. What had he heard? This and that, nothing to frighten the horses. He’d certainly never gleaned an atom of queerness around him. The breathing continued, awaiting his answer. If he hadn’t known better, Frank would have believed that Quentin really was ringing him from what was for her the middle of the night, wanting him to keep her company. He got those calls from clients every so often, the ones he had to give his home number, although of course it was the line in the office; he wasn’t mad. It still drove Lol to distraction, that interruption to sleep so Frank, dressing-gowned, could coax them through when they told him they’d taken pills, or wept for their marriages, or more usually their careers. In his experience, the pill-takers weren’t repeat callers, and he didn’t resent a genuine emergency, but the ramblers, the lost souls who wanted hand-holding in the sozzled small hours, they were a piece of work. And this woman wasn’t even a client. Besides, he had a meeting with bigwigs from Anglia at two. Is he into women, indeed.

‘As far as I know,’ he said maliciously, and started to wind up the call. He thanked Quentin again for her concern over Lallie, emphasizing its rarity and re-emphasizing their common values, lauded her non-existent non-brainwave about Lallie taking a holiday, and finessed the ending by pressing her to suggest a time when the studio might want Lallie to fly over. October, she proffered. Such provisional motes were all Frank needed to accrete the solid pearls of business: the next time they spoke, he would tell her that October was OK for Katrina and Lallie, and they’d be going ahead with booking tickets, unless the studio preferred to arrange it? With any luck this would be a conversation he’d have with Quentin’s assistant, who more likely than not would oblige, already presuming October to be a done deal. And by then it more or less would be – Quentin’s seniors would hear that Lallie was coming over, their minds would be concentrated on her as their lead and they’d want to make it work, bar her not delivering the goods. It took a stronger soul than this girl evidently was to face Frank Denny down.

‘Call me any time,’ he signed off. His tea was by now just on the wrong side of warm, so he asked Veronica to bring him another cup and warned her about further calls from Quentin. If she called again today, he was right, and she was a nutter. If it was tomorrow, she still probably was. By Friday, he’d be prepared to talk to her again. It was no skin off his nose. There he was with the nose again. Of course the Yanks were superb at all that malarkey – none better. That was another conversation to have with Katrina; Frank made a note.