A Postillion Struck by Lightning (44 page)

It was pitch dark and smelled of conditioned air and beer stains. Glitters of light slitted through the shutters. I felt my way across the room, hit a table, and pushed open the windows. Hot smoggy air came up from the Studio Yard. In front the yawning doors of A and C Stage. Six men pushing half a snowcapped mountain trundled up the yard. A woman came running down, a bundle of sequined dresses over her arm, a paper cup of coffee in her hand. To my far left, the carpenters' shop. Planks and sawdust and gilded doors leaning against the concrete walls. To my right, high up, the misty smog-smudged ridge of the hills. The great wooden sign striding the skyline, one letter missing, long since fallen. Hol-ywood.

I had arrived at last. I was there where it all started. The most oriental city on earth West of Calcutta. My heart fell with despair. Six months to go.

Joe came barging in opening doors and drawers, switching on lights, trying taps and pulling the lavatory chain. He plumped up cushions and looked round the room carefully. Hands on hips, blue jeans bursting, a gold cross round his neck winking in the thin sunlight. He jangled his identity bracelet and shrugged.

“This is a good room, you know. Masculine. All the Male Stars have rooms like this, very Butch. This one is
reely
nice, you know? They're doing you good so far. Two ice boxes you got, television, radio and a shower
and
a bath … that's a First Class Room. You get judged by that here, you know. If you get to have just the john and a shower and no ice box you don't
reely
rate. Not at all. This is Star Stuff. You like it?” He seemed indifferent.

It was pine panelled. Fake plaster pine panelled. Tweed carpet like old porridge. Chairs and settees covered in violent tartan. Hunting prints on the walls, a sword, a galleon in full sail, two ice boxes disguised as corn-chests, lamp shades with maps of the world on them. I found “England” squashed up beside “Norway”, a small table with a flat bowl of plastic sweet peas and dahlias. The bathroom off. Plain, white, Butch. All very Male.

“Fine.”

“Well it's gotta be. This is what you are allocated. This is what you got. This is what you stay with. Get it? It's
reel
nice. But I'll just check something.” He was back in the bathroom turning on all the taps, pulling the plugs. He beckoned me to come in to him. In the roar of water he said, in normal tones: “Just check we ain't got any bugging things here. If we have you gotta keep your trap closed unless you run water, get it? That blurs the tape.” He strode into the dressing room and yanked at the pictures. Henry Alkins were pushed about. No microphones. The air-conditioner above the door was pulled apart. Satisfied, he lifted the bowl of sweet peas and dahlias. They came up in his hands with a long black wire which ran down through the table-top. His face was triumphant. But the wire was unconnected. No plug at the end … thin twists of copper. He replaced the bowl and motioned me into the bathroom again.

“You see that? Wired. And there is another air-conditioner just over the window. Even for a
reely
good room it don't rate
two
air-conditioners.” Back he went, up on a chair and struggled with the second air-conditioner. The vented front came away in his hands revealing an empty metal box behind. There was dust and a dead moth. Worms of fabric dust… he scattered thoughtfully over the carpet. “I reckon it's all been disconnected … when Levison was alive, every sodding room was connected to a Central Pool. So they could know if you was ‘happy' or if you was ‘worried about the script' or anything like that. Just so they could ‘help' you if supposin' you was too shy to ask out for something … but I reckon that's over now. Things was different with McCarthy… but you seem unhooked. Just watch out, though. If you do have something reely important to say, just do it in the john. No use you taking any chances. Saul Gallows didn't want you in the Movie, you know that, a Limey with a British Accent… so you just gotta be careful and keep your nose nice and clean? You ain't Gay, are you?” I shook my head. He patted his crotch. “Just thought I'd ask, that's all, most everyone is in this town … but we'll get on fine. There's a nice guy who tested all the girls for the part of the Countess… but he ain't against you. You'll like him, his name's Rod Raper … that's what the Studio call him … we just call him Al. You'll meet him I reckon. Reel nice kid. He won't hold nothing against you.”

I slumped into one of the tartan chairs and Joe jangled a
bracelet, fixed the blind over the window and presently left me to my Masculine-Plaster-Panelled-Gloom.

Beside one of the map-lamps lay a large piece of paper. Cautiously I took it up and read it: Production 9678. Pre-Production Day 1. 8.00 a.m. Arrive Studio. D.R. 2. Block A. 8.30 a.m. Music Conference. Room 2456. Block C. V. Aller. Dummy piano. Playbacks. Key Board. 10.00 a.m. Make Up. Room 2784. It went on until it simply said “Car. Main Gate. 6.30 p.m.” Trapped.

Room 2456 was dim, painted brown with a brown carpet and three pianos. The blinds were down; electric light gleamed dully on the scratched wood of the Broadwood. On one wall a faded colour photograph of Myrna Loy, on the other a View Of Naples. A tall coat and hat rack. A gramophone. Two chairs and Victor Aller. We had met briefly before at what was called a “General Meeting To Get Acquainted”. He was to teach me the Piano and never leave my side night and day until the final Shot was in the Can. He was totally at my disposal. Small, benign. A Russian Jew with glittering rimless glasses and beautiful hands, he sat quietly at the Broadwood playing something sad. I didn't interrupt him but sat quietly in the chair beside him. He switched music and went into something extremely fast, short and vaguely familiar. He placed his hands on his knees and smiled at me.

“That's Chopsticks.”

“Oh.”

“You know it?”

“I think so … somewhere.”

“Everyone knows it. It's a child's exercise. Play it.”

“I have never played a piano in my life. I couldn't.”

A pause like a century.

“You gotta be Liszt.”

“I know that.”

“Liszt played piano.”

“Yes”.

“You don't dispute that?”

“No.”

“He played piano like no one else played piano.”

“I believe…”

“And you don't?”

“No. Never.”

“Well we gotta start then. That's what I'm here for. To teach you to play piano and fast. And like Liszt.”

“Thank you.”

“Don't thank me till I have.” He played some scales rapidly. I watched his hands, dull with fear. “These are just scales … we'll have to do a lot of this, just to exercise your fingers … show me your span.”

“What's that?

“Shit! Put your hands out in front of you and spread your fingers … that's a span.”

I did as he asked. My hands looked supplicating. They were.

“Nice span you got. You play tennis?”

“No.”

“Football?”

“No.”

“Ping pong … table tennis?”

“No neither.”

Another long stupefied pause. The air-conditioner hissed and throbbed.

“You play that game you have in England. With a bat and a ball… like rounders?”

“Cricket?”

“Yeah. Cricket. You play that?”

“No.”

“Shit.” He played another set of scales.

“And you gotta be Liszt?”

“They tell me so.”

“In five weeks we start shooting in Vienna. You going to be ready?”

“What do you think?”

“Not in a million years let alone five weeks. You got eighty-five minutes of fucking Music in this Production. Eighty-five minutes of music not including conducting Les Preludes and the Rákόczy March.”

“They said they'd use a Double for my hands. They would only shoot me in long shot or so that my hands were hidden by the key-board. That's what they said.”

“Where did they say they would use a Double?”

“They said so in London when we all first met … and in New York when I met the Front Office in Mr Gallows' office. We'll use a Double, they said.”

“They didn't tell
me
. They told me I was hired for six months to teach you piano, to teach you to play like Liszt and to Conduct. I got the Contract. You wanna see my contract? Six months I have. I am at your total disposal. I don't have a wife, two kids, or a cardiac condition… I just have you and two pianos and eighty-five fuckin' minutes of music to get into you before the end of the six months.”

“I'm sorry.

“So'm I. Shit. A Double. No one told
me
about a Double. They said categorically you would be required to play it
all
. That's what they told me. Fuck the Front Office and Gallows. They just don't happen to be here in California. They don't know. Charles Vidor says you play and you play, I assure you.”

“Well. I'd better start. I mean, perhaps you could show me, very slowly, a bit of something I have to play… not Chopsticks. It's too fast.”

“So is the fuckin' 1st Concerto …” He started, very gently and softly to play. It was good. He played with deep feeling and tenderness. I listened and watched. Horrified. How could I ever remember where the fingers went. Which keys to use, the black or the white?

He stopped. And glittered at me.

“That's the Moonlight. That's the slowest piece you got in the whole eighty-five minutes. Try with me. Put your hands on the keys … look, like this …”

For the next half an hour he quietly and kindly told me about sharps and flats, about bass and span, about thighs, and back, about wrists and fingers, about tempo and allegro and Christ only knows what. I was stunned into voiceless silence. I grew eighty fingers, I sweated, I hit my knees but I never once hit the keys or got the right hand doing anything at the same time as the left. It was a grim half-hour. The glitter in Aller's glasses was like sheet lightning. But cold.

“You have as much co-ordination as a runaway train for Christ's sakes. … Do you dispute that?”

“No.”

We went on trying until my time, according to the piece of Paper, was over. I got up from my chair unsteadily. He sat in his looking stunned. His fat lower lip sticking out like a sulky baby. I thanked him and started to the door.

“Remember I'll be here all day. Right until six-thirty p.m.
And then I'm available to you all evening at your hotel or here or wherever you like. I don't finish until you do. I don't leave the Studio until you do. I'm here all the time for you to practise. You got five weeks and not a chance in hell. See you later. Remember I'm here all the time, just waiting.” He started to play something slow and sad again, his head up, his eyes fixed on Myrna Loy.

Joe helped me into my trousers. Skin tight black taffeta. A white frilly shirt… a jacket cut like an hour-glass. We did up zips, hooks and eyes, he fixed an expert silk cravat, and tucked Kleenex round it to prevent the make-up staining the white cloth. Agony to sit down, legs stiff like a milking stool, glossy patent boots slid on, and trousers strapped under. Gloves, sixty pairs all hand made in Paris, France, were chalked and eased on to my swollen, fat fingers. He said I looked swell. I felt silly and too tight, and scared to death. It wasn't my Test we were doing … I already had the fatal role … we were testing ladies for The Countess. But I felt as terrified as if they were testing me for Cholera.

In the Make-Up Room a silent man in a white coat like a surgeon had covered me in a pink nylon robe, read a list of instructions in his hand, studied some enormous black and white blow-ups of Liszt aged twenty-seven and started to work. We didn't speak. Except once, when I said, politely and quietly, “I never wear make-up in England.” He didn't stop covering my face with a scented sponge. “You do in Hollywood,” he said. The final result in the mirror looked like a mad Rocking Horse. My hair had been washed and rolled in curlers and baked and combed and tinted and primped and finally covered with a thick spray of lacquer so that it moved almost independently of my head and body. A great bouffant, faintly pink, tea-cosy of a hairstyle. Liszt at twenty-seven. A mad rocking horse in a pink candyfloss wig. I was humbled to the dust. Joe didn't help by saying I looked cute … and when the whole paraphernalia was put together, taffeta trousers, frilly shirt, pink hair and hour-glass coat, I looked and felt like something out of an Army Drag Show. But worse.

The Test Stage was small, made of corrugated iron and
concrete, and built in 1914 when the Studio first developed on the site of an Orange orchard. It was blinding, hot, and smelled of dust and wet paint. There was a quarter of a room. Flock wallpaper, gilded panels, real mahogany doors, thick carpet, bowls of plastic lilac, a piano, naturally, and a fat silk settee. They were busy hanging a chandelier when I walked onto the set and found my chair. Green canvas, my name printed across the back. Awkwardly I sat down, heart heavy, but beating like a mad yo-yo. Someone came up and shook hands and said he was Buddy and welcome to Hollywood, and a nice looking woman with rimless glasses and a stopwatch round her plump neck said her name was Connie and I looked just dreamy. I thanked her and apologised for not being able to get out of the chair because of the tightness of my pants.