What They Do in the Dark (18 page)

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.

F
RANK
D
ENNY 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.