Stage Mum (7 page)

I waved and shouted ‘good luck!’ as she joined the line of children being shepherded off, then started forcing myself to focus on how well she’d done to get this far, and tried to look forward to my first ever visit to New York.

The atmosphere in the waiting area was noticeably more tense than it had been the previous week, or, in fact, during any of the earlier auditions. A couple of anxious fathers were pacing up and down, looking as if they were expecting their partners to give birth any minute. A quick glance around the room revealed that most of us mums seemed to have got our faces stuck. We formed a panorama of frozen little smiles hanging under unblinking terrified eyes: like a herd of meerkat trying to think up a polite way of introducing ourselves to an oncoming juggernaut. Our few attempts at conversation dwindled rapidly into silence, and only one or two brave or, possibly, seen-it-all-before types managed to concentrate on the newspapers they’d brought with them.

A lot more noise emanated from the audition room this time, and none of it was angelic singing. One of the other mums told us that
there
was a window from the corridor outside the loo, through which, if you stood on tiptoe (small kids = short parents), you could see what was going on. It wasn’t exactly appropriate audition etiquette, but it was irresistibly tempting. I took a trip to the toilet. On my way out again – just as I was wondering whether I could summon the chutzpah to peer through the window (which, it turned out, had been papered over) – the door (also papered over) to the audition room swung open, and a young woman with a long, straight, white-blonde ponytail and a gentle smile ushered three small chattering girls out towards me. Through the doorway, I caught a glimpse of groups of kids sprawled on the floor, reading magazines, playing card games and talking while they waited.

The door swung shut and, one by one, the girls went to the toilet. ‘How’s it going?’ I asked the young blonde woman who, I now knew, was ‘chaperoning’. ‘Oh, fine,’ she said, giving absolutely nothing away. Damn. Should have asked a better question.

I went back to my seat at the table in the waiting area. The same mum who’d told us about the potential viewing window said that she thought Andrew Lloyd Webber
himself
was in there with the kids. ‘Really?’ I asked. ‘Did you see him?’

‘I think so,’ she said

I fleetingly contemplated another trip to the loo so I could try to see if she was right, but decided against it, partly because I had an unaccustomed attack of inhibition, but mostly because I wasn’t that interested in catching a split-second view of Andrew Lloyd Webber
himself
. Discounting those teenage years during which – demonstrating either admirably catholic taste, or the disturbingly random impact of raging hormones – I was simultaneously besotted with David Bowie, Bob Geldof and David Coverdale (for the uninitiated, the very macho and hairy lead singer of Whitesnake and, before that, Deep Purple), I have never been either particularly starstruck, or any good at recognising celebrities. A few years ago, in the space of two weeks, I failed to recognise Bianca Jagger, Eddie Izzard and Jonathan
Dimbleby
at close quarters. Mr Dimbleby answered very politely when I asked him, over the plate of crisps I was offering, who he was and what he did for a living.

It was a long two hours. There was no singing, and no knowing what was going on in there.

Eventually the kids were let out. One older boy told his mother that he was pretty sure he hadn’t got a part as they’d shuffled the kids into families and he and a few others had been left sitting to the side.

Dora came out smiley, but not as bouncy as on previous occasions.

‘It was a bit boring,’ she said. ‘We had to sit down doing nothing for lots of the time. And one of the girls was very rude.’

‘Rude?’ I asked, as we headed out the door.

‘Yes,’

‘What did she do that was rude?’

‘She said she has an oval face. But she hasn’t. Her face is round, so I said “Your face is round”, but she said “No it isn’t, it’s oval. My mum said.”’

‘So she said her face was oval when you think it’s round?’

‘Yes. But she was wrong. And she was very rude.’

My attempt to explain the nature and purpose of tact – and of the difference between opinion and fact – simply did not compute. At that age, Dora hadn’t yet grasped the idea of either difference of opinion or white lies. There was simply the truth, which was good, and lies, which were bad. And very rude. ‘I’m hungry,’ she said, changing the subject.

‘Were you with her for a lot of the audition?’ I asked over fried egg, beans and chips – her treat of an early tea at the closest thing we could find to a greasy spoon in Covent Garden.

‘Yes,’ said Dora, baked bean sauce dripping from her chin.

‘What did you have to do this time? I didn’t hear any singing.’

‘I had to be Marta,’ she told me.

‘Not Gretl?’ I asked.

‘For some of the time at the beginning. I’ve had enough. Can I have an ice cream?’

‘Just eat a bit more of the egg white. And then you had to be Marta?’

‘Can I stop after one more mouthful? I had to say “I’m going to be seven on Tuesday and I want a pink parasol.”’

‘That’s nice,’ I said, my heart sinking. ‘So you got to say more lines. Did you get to be anyone else? Friedrich or Kurt?’

‘No, but they said maybe I could be Liesl next time. Can I have an ice cream?’

‘Yes,’ I said, thinking, after Bethany’s experience, that this must be the end of the road. ‘Were you with the same group of children for most of the time, or did you change round?’

‘Most of the time but changed a bit. Can I have a chocolate ice cream?’

‘How many children were with you?’

‘Dunno. Can I have my ice cream now?’

‘In a minute. Was there anyone there called Andrew?’ I asked.

‘Andrew?’ she mused. ‘Hmmm. Yes.’

‘What was he like?’

‘Nice. Can I have my ice cream
now
?’

‘Of course. You deserve a treat for getting to the final round. You’ve worked very hard learning singing and lines and dancing and done brilliantly well. Especially as it’s your first time. You won’t mind if you don’t get a part, will you?’ I asked, feeling that I might mind more than Dora.

‘No. I’ve done very well to get the last audition.’ My brainwashing had, evidently, proved successful. ‘But I might get a part, mightn’t I? I’d like to be in it.’

‘Yes, you might. But if you don’t, we’ll go to New York and see Auntie Louise and Talya and have a fantastic time! Do you want to ring Daddy and tell him what it was like while you’re waiting for your ice cream?’ When, the previous September, Laurie and I had told
Dora
that we’d decided to get married, she had announced that, straight after the wedding, she’d start calling Laurie ‘Daddy’. And she did.

I dialled his mobile and they chatted. Whilst half listening to Dora’s side of the conversation (just in case Laurie managed to extract more information from her than I had done), I mulled over how I’d take it if she fell at this, the final hurdle. Would I be able to conceal my disappointment from her? Would I actually be that disappointed? It would probably feel like we’d started off along the Yellow Brick Road, only to be dropped straight back into black and white Kansas before we’d had any proper adventures or even met a Munchkin. There would be compensations, though, even if these were just the comfort and familiarity of home and routine (well, as much routine as two freelancers and a child with an active social life can cobble together).

Dora scraped the last drip of melted chocolate ice cream – ‘Don’t squish it all up like that.’ ‘I
have
to. I’m making ice cream soup’ – out of the little stainless steel bowl, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, at which point I noticed exactly how long and dirty her fingernails were. Then we made our way, hand in hand, humming ‘The Lonely Goatherd’ back to Covent Garden station, and travelled home. We counted the stops and talked about all the things we would do if she didn’t get a part, and all the things she wouldn’t be able to do if she did. We arrived at our house, fought our way past the piles of shoes, bikes, scooters and things that we’d sorted out to take to charity shops several months ago but hadn’t got round to taking, and flopped on to the sofa.

Laurie quizzed Dora further while I ran her a bath.

At about 7.30, I called her up so I could bathe her and, most importantly, cut her fingernails. I snuggled her into bed, read her a story and said good night. As I was on my way back downstairs, the phone rang and Laurie answered it.

I ran downstairs and hovered, while Jo Hawes told Laurie that
Dora
was being offered a part. They wanted her to play Marta, the second youngest von Trapp child. She’d done it! My little girl, at the ridiculous age of six, with precisely no acting experience, no more dance training than a million other small, pink-obsessed poppets and one singing lesson under her belt had sung, acted and danced her way happily and unconcernedly through five rounds of auditions and landed a role in a West End musical. It was one of those rare moments when you suddenly zoom out and get a completely different perspective on your child and catch a glimpse of what other people see. Like when you read her school report to discover that she’s been consistently thoughtful about volunteering to help tidy up after every lesson and wonder whether this could possibly the same child who, when asked very nicely to put her own plate and cutlery in the sink, or to tidy away one,
just one
, naked Barbie, consistently doesn’t (Dora would like you to know that, now she is older, she does clear up her Barbies and dinner things).

We jumped up and down, hugged each other, woke Dora up to tell her and jumped up and down some more. Then we shrieked the news over-excitedly down the phone at our nearest and dearest. They all said ‘I told you so!’ Especially my father, who, sounding as if his excitement had almost reached house-struck-by-lightning pitch, reminded me of what his Austrian friend Elfi had joked a year and a half earlier when they’d gone to see the first major staging of the musical in Vienna at the Volksoper Theater (where the director, Renaud Doucet, replaced the phrase ‘schnitzel with noodles’ in ‘My Favourite Things’ with ‘goulash mit nockerl’ as no self-respecting Austrian would ever eat schnitzel with noodles): ‘You must take Dora to see this when they do it in London. What am I saying? When they do this in London, Dora will be in it.’

*

It wasn’t until the following morning that reality set in. ‘What do you mean, no holidays for six months?’ Laurie demanded. ‘
No
holidays?’

‘Well,
Dora
can’t go away …’ I countered lamely, as he was well
aware
that, having recently left her in the care of my sister for a week while we went on honeymoon, we had a lot of return-favour babysitting to do before we could legitimately claim another Dora-free trip. Also, I wasn’t sure I’d particularly want to go away while Dora was in the middle of rehearsing or performing this show. It would be a very demanding time and I couldn’t possibly know in advance how she’d cope with all the pressure. After all, although I understood what a six-month commitment meant, I wasn’t remotely sure that, at her age, she did or could. I could quite easily envisage a situation in which, two weeks into rehearsals or, having clocked up three or four performances, she’d turn round to me and say, ‘That was fun. I’ve had enough. Can I stop now, have a packet of crisps and a chocolate ice cream and watch TV?’ Not to mention the fact that – although I was now sufficiently inducted into the world of performing children to know that a chaperone wasn’t a maiden aunt charged with accompanying two young people of good breeding and opposite sex on a walk round the garden of Northanger Abbey – I didn’t yet know whether I’d have to be one while Dora was rehearsing and performing.
Should I take up knitting?
I wondered, imagining myself sitting on a hard wooden chair in the backstage dark, one of a long row of grinning, wide-eyed mothers, ears straining to catch our children’s voices over the clicking of our knitting needles, while unevenly striped wonky woollen scarves grew down over our knees.

‘I’m not sure if I want to do any more films,’ says thirteen-year-old Raphaël Coleman, whose acting talent was noticed by a family friend who works as a casting director. Raphaël is the veteran of two movies:
Nanny McPhee
, in which he appeared at the tender age of nine, and, more recently, a low-budget remake of seventies horror flick
It’s Alive
, which features a baby that morphs into a monster. The latter job involved spending two freezing winter months filming in Bulgaria, where his mother, novelist Liz Jensen, who was chaperoning him, caught pneumonia. He enjoys the work – ‘It’s a
great
job and you learn a lot’ – and being on set. ‘He loved playing around with all the special effects,’ Liz told me. ‘Because it was a horror movie there was lots of blood, and one of the special effects guys gave him an ear to take home.’ But there are down sides. The hours can be horrendously long: whole days waiting around, after which filming can go on until one o’clock in the morning – although the chaperone can and should call a halt if it’s too much for the child. And by law, the children also have to keep up with their schooling. ‘Sometimes I find it too difficult,’ Raph admits. ‘But you’ve agreed to what you’ve signed up for. If you’ve signed up for it, you should want to do it.’

On the one hand, an important life lesson learned early. On the other, that’s okay once you’re a teenager, and have some experience under your belt. But when you’re younger and you’ve never done it before, you may think you want to do it, but how do you know until you’ve tried?

Meanwhile, as it was still termtime, Dora was at school, practising joined-up writing, learning her two and three times tables and refining her skipping technique. In her spare time, she enjoyed her dance classes and play-dates with her friends and cousins, and started learning to swim and to ride her bike without stabilisers. Her school report was calmly complimentary. A couple of days before the holidays started, I met with the teacher she’d have the following year: Mrs Arin; very dedicated, very bright and switched-on, who leads the school choir, thinks singing is important and believes that learning should be fun. We discussed how Dora would keep up with her work whilst rehearsing and performing, and Mrs Arin handed me a thick wodge of maths worksheets for Dora to complete over the summer.