Moon Pie (22 page)

‘My mind is made up. I have let you act in the films of that boy so long as it did not become too serious. But now I must be firm.’

Martha couldn’t think what to say to persuade her.
Instead she said, in a quiet voice, ‘I really want to do it.’

Grandma said nothing, and Martha knew then that it was no good. Grandma would never allow her to go to the audition. She bit her lip. ‘It’s not fair.’

‘It’s not a question of what is and isn’t fair, Martha. It’s a question of what is for the best.’

‘It is for the best. For me.’

Grandma pursed her lips. ‘We must not always be thinking of ourselves. I know what a determined girl you are, Martha, and I realize how disappointed you are. But, really, there’s no more to say.’

She took off her glasses and looked at Martha hard. ‘How did you find out about this film?’

Martha remembered what Dad had said and hesitated. ‘At school,’ she said.

Grandma continued to look at her.

‘There’s a poster in the library.’

‘I’m sorry, Martha,’ Grandma said at last. ‘But the answer is definitely no. Please don’t risk upsetting yourself by asking me again.’

There was nothing else to say, and Martha went back up to her room.

When Tug came in, hours later, she was still sitting on her bed staring sadly at the wall. He climbed up
beside her and put his head against her shoulder, and they stayed like that for a long time, in silence. At last, without saying anything, he gave her a biscuit, warm from being held so long and slightly broken, which he had stolen specially from Grandma, and went back to his own room.

T
he next day they met Dad in the park, and Martha told him what had happened. They walked together round the edge of the boating lake.

‘What did she say?’

‘That I was too young.’

She didn’t tell him what Grandma had said about meeting untrustworthy people in film and television.

They walked round the lake again.

‘Do you think she might change her mind?’

Martha shook her head. ‘No. Never.’

They walked round the lake a third time.

Martha kept looking at Dad. She was upset enough herself, she didn’t want him to be upset as well; she didn’t think she could bear it if his face went pale and shiny, if he started to jerk his arms around or run his hands through his hair.

But he didn’t do any of these things.

He smiled instead. ‘Never mind. If Grandma won’t help you, I will.’

It took her by surprise. ‘But, Dad, you’re not allowed. What about your court order?’

He put his finger against her lips. ‘Don’t worry about me. You’ve done enough worrying about me to last a lifetime. Worry about your audition, if you like.’

‘But, Dad.’

‘We’ll do it together. In secret. No one will ever know. I can tell how much you want to do it. And I want to help you. The only question is: are you going to let me?’

Martha still hesitated.

‘Put it this way,’ he said. ‘Do you trust me?’

And she nodded.

In any case, it was too late to stop Marcus. He had broken his promise. By the time Martha went back to his house, he had read the text, blocked out a selection of scenes for treatment and drawn up the rehearsal schedule. Martha’s audition costume was already at the design stage, he said, and ‘shaping up nicely’.

‘Audition costume?’

‘Leave it to me,’ he said. ‘ “Very short, very tight,
very ugly dress of yellowish-grey wincey.” I quote from the book.’

‘Wincey?’

‘Like pyjamas. My only worry is that it won’t exactly knock your eye out. I was wondering …’

‘No fur, Marcus.’

‘How strange,’ he mused, ‘that I should be making something deliberately ugly when my whole life has been dedicated to beauty.’

At the first rehearsal he told Tug the story of
Anne of Green Gables
.

‘An old woman and her brother, farming in the wilds of Canada, decide to adopt a boy from an orphanage to help them on the farm.’

Tug thought that sounded reasonable.

‘But there’s a mistake, and they’re sent a girl instead. She’s quite mad, has an over-active imagination, a heart of gold and absolutely no common sense.’

Tug thought that sounded normal.

‘She has a lot of misadventures. Gets her best friend drunk, dyes her hair green, accidentally poisons people. That sort of thing. Gilbert Blythe falls in love with her, so she smashes him over the head with a stone.’

Tug and Marcus thought about this together. ‘It’s a classic, apparently,’ Marcus said. He looked disappointed. ‘Between you and me, don’t you think it sounds a bit too straightforward?’

Tug thought. ‘Is there any food in it?’ he asked.

‘Now you mention it, I believe there’s a pie.’

Tug said he thought it was a masterpiece.

The format of the audition was simple. Martha would present one scene of her own choice, and do one given to her by the director. For rehearsal purposes, they chose three scenes representing three different aspects of Anne – Angry Anne, Honest Anne and Imaginative Anne. Over the next three weeks, Martha practised them all.

Tug helped her learn her lines.

Laura filmed the scenes from different angles and under different sorts of lighting so Martha could study the shoots and make adjustments.

And Marcus ran everything. He also made the ugly dress, which, to everyone’s relief, proved to be ugly in a very straightforward way.

Sometimes Dad came to Marcus’s house. He talked to Marcus about general arrangements, and to Laura about technical issues. One afternoon he watched Martha rehearse.

‘Imaginative Anne,’ Marcus whispered to him. ‘The first time she’s done it.’

Martha appeared in the spotlight, lightly poised, her head cocked on one side. She was wearing Marcus’s ugly dress, which made her look younger and needier and somehow more hopeful all at the same time. There was a twinkle in her eye. ‘Now,’ she said, peering about. ‘I’m going to imagine things into this room so that they’ll always stay imagined.’ Her voice was bright and gleeful. ‘The floor,’ she said, squinting at Marcus’s equipment-strewn carpet, ‘is covered with white velvet rugs with pink roses all over them. And the walls,’ she added, switching her attention to a dull stretch of wallpaper, ‘are hung with gold and silver brocade tapestry.’ Suddenly she straightened up. ‘I can see my reflection in that splendid big mirror,’ she said, assuming a lofty expression. ‘I am tall and regal, clad in a gown of trailing white lace, and my name,’ she added – her mouth twitching briefly with fun – ‘is the Lady Cordelia Fitzgerald!’

They all decided that she should perform Imaginative Anne as her chosen piece.

Her Honest Anne was equally good. But she had more difficulty with Angry Anne.

‘I hate you!’ she shouted, stamping her foot. ‘I hate
you! I hate you! How dare you call me skinny and ugly? How dare you say I’m freckled and red-headed?’

There was no problem with her expression or movement, but her voice was slightly unconvincing. There wasn’t enough emotion in it.

‘Sometimes it’s hard to make yourself really angry,’ she said.

‘Think of Grandma,’ Tug said.

With Laura and Marcus’s assistance, Martha worked hard on the scene, and it improved.

‘Anyway,’ Marcus said. ‘You might not get an angry scene to do.’

For two weeks they practised everything, and on the day before the audition, Marcus addressed them all from in front of the mirror.

‘Tomorrow our leading lady, Martha Luna, makes history with the first professional audition of her career. A moment for all our memoirs. Martha, would you like to say a few words?’

Martha wouldn’t. She was beginning to feel nervous.

Marcus, who had no notion of what nerves were, went on smoothly. ‘Then it only remains for me to thank you all for your hard work. Please be here
tomorrow at nine o’clock sharp. We set off at quarter past. Mr Luna is our chauffeur. That’s it. Take another look at the dress on your way out. Get a good night’s sleep. Pray to your gods. And darling,’ he said to Martha, ‘prepare to conquer the world.’

O
n Saturdays Martha and Tug usually tidied their rooms and changed their bedding, and helped round the house. Today Martha had persuaded Grandma to let them go to Marcus’s instead, to ‘finish a new speed film’.

It hadn’t been easy. Martha didn’t like lying, and Grandma was suspicious.

‘This is very inconvenient, Martha. Can’t it wait till Wednesday?’

‘All the costumes have to be returned to the shop by the end of Saturday.’

‘What costumes?’

‘A tea gown. And a petticoat.’

‘What is the film?’

Martha hesitated.
‘My Fair Lady.’

‘I thought you’d done that one.’

‘We’re remaking it. It’s a remake of the remake.’

Grandma frowned. ‘Just this once then. Grandpa will take you. And pick you up no later than
five o’clock. You’ll have to tidy your rooms after tea.’

Sitting silently in the back of Grandpa’s car at a quarter to nine on Saturday morning, Tug didn’t dare look at Martha. She had explained to him very carefully that he mustn’t say anything about the audition in front of Grandpa, and he sat next to her on the back seat staring the other way with both hands over his mouth.

‘He hasn’t got toothache, has he?’ Grandpa asked.

‘No,’ Martha said. ‘He’s just got nothing to say.’

She had nothing to say either. Now that she was on her way to the audition, she felt more nervous about it than ever. She was also nervous about Dad. At the back of her mind was the fear that Grandpa or, even worse, Grandma, would find out he was violating his court order by helping them. He was due to pick them up at Marcus’s just after Grandpa had left.

To Martha’s dismay, when they got to Marcus’s Grandpa insisted on coming into the house – as he occasionally did – to say hello to Marcus’s mum and dad. He didn’t seem to be in a rush to get back to Grandma.

‘I think I might stay and watch a bit,’ he said.

She began to panic. For a moment she thought that everything was going to go wrong before it had even started. But Marcus rescued the situation.

‘Alas,’ he said to Grandpa, ‘we operate a sealed studio policy. No unauthorized personnel allowed during filming. It’s the insurance,’ he added, a phrase he often used in awkward situations. Adults were very sensitive to matters of insurance, he had noticed.

Grandpa left, not a moment too soon. Almost immediately afterwards, Dad arrived.

‘And now,’ Marcus said. ‘Our date with glory.’

Gathering together their copies of the various scripts and Martha’s costume, they got into Dad’s car and set off, leaving Mr and Mrs Brown smiling vaguely at the door.

‘They do not know,’ Marcus said wistfully, looking back at them, ‘that history is being made.’ He checked his watch and smiled. They were exactly on schedule.

It was an hour’s drive to the studios. Their excitement mounted steadily, and by the time they turned off the ring road and began the last stretch of the journey, the car was a hubbub of voices. Dad was explaining to Marcus how television companies organize their costume requirements, and Tug was
asking Dad how television companies organize their canteens, and Marcus was telling Laura how celebrities organize their fame, and Laura was asking Dad what cameras professionals used. Everyone kept looking out for the first sight of the studios, and thinking they had seen them when they hadn’t, and laughing at themselves.

Only Martha was quiet.

There was an up-and-down feeling in her stomach, and a gulp in her throat she couldn’t quite swallow away. She tried to think of nothing, but it didn’t work. Instead she found herself thinking about Mum, the way she looked in all those photographs, with that strange expression, as if she knew something wonderful and was about to tell her what it was, and never would. She wished Mum was with her now. With all the auditions she had been to, Mum must have known everything about up-and-down stomachs and ungulpable gulps; she would have known exactly what to recommend.

They parked in the studio car park and got out, everyone still talking and laughing.

Martha said in a small voice, ‘Dad?’

‘Yes?’

‘I feel anxious.’

He gave her his hand, and she held it tightly.

‘Are you going to stay with me?’

‘Don’t worry. Whenever you need me, I’ll be here.’

They went into a building, through the security systems and down several corridors to the performers’ room, where the other auditionees and their families were already waiting. They were quieter now, talking in whispers, but just as excited. From the auditions manager, they learned that it was the last round of auditions before the director flew home. There were fourteen candidates altogether, most from theatrical agencies, some from abroad. The most exciting news of all was that there were still no front-runners for the part.

Dad gave Martha’s hand a squeeze. ‘They really could choose someone here today,’ he said.

According to the schedule they were given, Martha was last on the list. Dad read out the order of events.

‘You need to have your hair done in three quarters of an hour. Then you go into make-up. Then wardrobe. Finally the audition room. That’s at twelve fifteen. Excited?’

‘I think so.’

‘Nervous?’

She nodded. She still had hold of his hand.

They sat together in a corner of the room.

‘Mum used to get nervous before auditions.’

‘Did she know any trick to stop being nervous?’

‘She did actually.’

‘What was it?’

‘Bananas.’

‘Bananas? Did it work?’

‘No. She never remembered to eat them.’

For a while they sat together in silence.

‘Mum would be very proud of you,’ Dad said quietly. ‘And I’m very proud of you too. I’ll be proud of you whatever happens in the audition. You won’t forget that, will you?’

She shook her head, and gradually she began to feel better. Though she remained nervous, she was determined to do her best. She sat up straight and pointed her nose at the clock, and said to herself:
I don’t need bananas because Dad’s with me, and I don’t mind if I don’t get the part because Mum would be proud of me anyway, and if I do get the part even Grandma will have to be proud of me
.