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I blink.
I’m from a small, rural farming community. Showing off isn’t something anyone I know would admit to doing.
‘Well, for me it’s more about unearthing the playwright’s true intentions. Getting to the root of the story’ I explain slowly.
He’s having none of it. ‘Don’t be coy with me, Miss Garlick! And showing off! Go on, say it!’
This has all the hallmarks of a no-win situation.
I wince. ‘And showing off’
‘Good girl!’ He slaps my knee. ‘Remember, all Shakespeare ever wanted to do was show off and make loads of money. All those wonderful plays, beautiful verses, astounding sentiments were to a single end. He wanted nothing more than to escape Stratford-upon-Avon, arrive in London and have the time of his life! I hope you intend to follow in his footsteps!’
He smiles at me expectantly. There’s a sweet, somehow familiar smell on his breath. I try to laugh politely but a kind of snorting sound comes out instead. He doesn’t seem to notice.
‘Now’ He wheels round. Gwen, balancing two cups of hot tea, expertly sidesteps him. He yanks open one of the filing-cabinet drawers and pulls out an instamatic camera.
‘Smile, Evie!’
I blink and the flash goes off. Out spits the picture. Simon throws the camera back in the drawer. ‘There you go!’ He writes my name at the bottom in big block letters with a red marker. ‘Now we won’t forget who you are!’ He beams, sticking my picture on to felt board with a pin. ‘Here she is! Evie Garlick! About to take the London acting world by storm! Now. Lots to do. Lots to do. Lovely to meet you, Evie. Did your parents pay by cheque?’
I nod.
‘Brilliant! Boyd Alexander is your teacher. Won an Olivier last year for Miss Julie at the National. An expert in Ibsen. Brilliant director.’
I nod again. I’ve no idea what an Olivier is, but I’m pretty sure Miss Julie is by Strindberg.
‘Brilliant,’ I say. Obviously this is an important word to master.
‘Absolutely’ He accelerates into the hall. ‘Gwen, when you’re ready!’
‘Yes! All right! Here you go.’ She hands me a slip of paper with an address written on it. ‘I’ve arranged for you to share accommodation with two extremely lovely girls who are staying on from last term. They’re really very lovely, very dedicated. And just…lovely. I’m sure you’ll be very comfortable…’
‘Gwen! If you don’t mind!’
‘Yes, I’m coming! For goodness sake! So lovely to meet you.’ She turns and scurries into the next room, carrying the two mugs of tea, a large leather diary and a packet of shortbread.
And I’m alone, for the first time, in the offices of the Actors Drama Workshop Academy.
Which is costing my parents untold thousands of dollars. That I had to campaign for six whole months to be able to attend. Which is further away from home than I’ve ever been in my life.
Just those three things alone should make it amazing.
I close my eyes and try not to cry. Then I get up and look at my photo. Sure enough, one eye’s open and the other one’s closed. I look like a drunk singing.
Here she is, Evie Garlick. About to take the London acting world by storm.
I show up at the address on Gloucester Place, my new London home, wheeling my bulging suitcases (the ones encased in layers of brown packing tape to keep them from exploding). They got stuck no fewer than four times in the terrifying grip of the Underground escalator. During rush hour. The experience is akin to an extra circle in Dante’s Inferno. Commuters vault up the steps on the left, the rest wedge in behind one another on the right. Tourists, however, suffer public humiliation as they grind the entire system to a halt by attempting to negotiate their bags unaided through the endless tunnels to platforms which, on the little multicoloured map, appear to be all in the same place. In reality they’re about as close as Amsterdam and Rome. The concierge at the Belle View Hotel insisted taking the Underground was cheap and easy. But I’m here now, hot, sweaty and considerably older than when I woke up this morning.
I take a deep breath and ring the bell.
A tall, slender girl dressed in a scarlet Chinese silk robe with a green face mask on opens the door. Her hair’s wrapped in a towel round her head.
‘I’ve got a date tonight,’ she announces, waving me in. ‘A real live English date!’
I’m not sure what to say.
‘Cool.’ I drag my bags up the steps.
‘You’ll love this.’ She props the door open while I continue to wrestle with my luggage. ‘His name’s Hughey Chicken! Isn’t that terrific? I got his number from a friend of mine in New York. She says he’s divine. You’re here for the room, right?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
She holds out her hand. ‘I’m Robbie.’
‘Evie,’ I introduce myself. ‘Evie Garlick.’
‘Really?’ She frowns and the green mask cracks a little. ‘Have you ever thought of changing your name?’
‘Well, I…’
‘We can talk about that later. I suppose you want to see it.’ She’s heading off down the hall, the silk robe flapping round her thin ankles. Pushing the door open, she switches on the light. ‘Ta-da!’
I walk in and look around.
It’s a cupboard. The kind of space that in America, they’d shove a washer and dryer into. There’s a narrow single bed covered in a brown bedspread, a lopsided wooden wardrobe in the corner, and a window that looks out onto a brick wall. The walls are covered in a sixties floral print of maroon and lime, and the carpet was at one time pink. There are bald patches in it now: pale threadbare sections just visible by the dim light of the single bulb that dangles from the ceiling, encased in a dusty paper lampshade.
At £70 a week, I was expecting something more. Something much more.
‘Isn’t it heaven? Everything you’ve ever dreamed of? Don’t worry, my room’s just as bad. She wraps an arm round my shoulder. ‘Come on. Let’s get drunk.’
I put my handbag down on the bed and follow her into the kitchen.
‘Fancy a sidecar?’
‘What’s a sidecar?’
‘Oh, Evie! Well, it’s just heaven on a stick! Or in a glass. Or in our case’—she rummages around in the cupboard—‘in two slightly chipped service station promotional coffee mugs.’ I watch as she blends together generous doses of brandy, triple sec and then crushes a wrinkly old lemon with her fingers. ‘Ice?’
‘Sure.’ Her face mask, gone all crusty, is beginning to flake off.
‘Cheers!’ She hands me a mug. ‘Come with me while I wash this mess off.’
I follow her into the bathroom and sit on the toilet seat, sipping my cocktail while she splashes cold water on her face. The bathroom is long and narrow, with deep-pile navy-blue shag carpet. Every conceivable surface is covered in beauty products—cold cream, astringents, shampoos—used razors are heaped into the corners of the tub, along with an overflowing ashtray and several abandoned coffee cups. The air is heavy and damp, a sweetly scented fug of perfumed bath oil and rose petal soap.
I take another sip of my drink and watch as Robbie rubs off the mask. Her face is pale, lightly freckled, with no discernible eyebrows. Bending over, she unwraps the towel from her head and a pile of white-blonde curls tumble onto her shoulders. She lights two cigarettes from the pack in her robe pocket and hands me one, leaning back on the sink and taking a long, deep drag. I’ve never really smoked before, never quite got the hang of it. But now, with the thick, sweet mixture of brandy and triple sec smoothing its way through my veins, it’s easy to inhale without coughing. I roll the smoke round my palate and exhale slowly, just like Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep.
Suddenly things don’t seem so bad after all.
I’m free. Sophisticated; drinking in the middle of the day and hanging out in a bathroom with a girl I’ve only just met.
‘Let’s go sit somewhere where we can pass out in comfort,’ Robbie suggests and I follow her into the living room. Dark and draughty, it faces onto a busy through road. The greying net curtains flutter every time a truck or bus whips by. She puts on a Van Morrison tape and throws herself onto the faded black leatherette sofa, dangling her long legs over the side. She isn’t wearing any underwear. I sit across from her in one of the ugly matching chairs.
‘So, what are we going to do about this name of yours?’ She blows smoke rings into the air; they float, like fading haloes above her head.
‘Do we have to do anything about it? I mean, it’s not that bad, is it?’
She raises an eyebrow. ‘You want to be an actress with a name like Evie Garlick? I can see it now: Romeo and Juliet staring Tom Cruise and Evie Garlick. Evie Garlick is Anna Karenina. The winner of the Best Newcomer award is Evie Garlick!’
She giggles.
‘OK. Fine.’ I’ve lived with this all my life. ‘What would you suggest?’
‘Humm…’ She narrows her eyes. ‘Raven, I think. Yes. I like Raven for you. On account of your hair.’
‘My hair’s brown.’
‘Oh, but we can change that, no problem. What do you think?’
‘Evie Raven?’
‘No, sweetie! Raven for your first name! Now let’s see…Raven Black, Raven Dark, Raven Night, Raven Nightly! It’s perfect! Raven Nightly. Now you’re bound to be famous!’
I never thought of dyeing my hair. Then again, I haven’t come all the way to London just to be the way I was back home. Still, it’s a pretty big leap. ‘Raven Nightly. I don’t know. It sounds like a porn star.’
‘And Tom Cruise doesn’t? I think it’s fantastic. And listen, I’m good at this; I’ve made up all my friends’ names back home. My girlfriend Blue; she was the first person to start that whole colour-naming thing.’
‘Really?’ I’ve never heard of the colour-naming thing.
‘Absolutely! You don’t think my real name’s Robbie, do you?’
Suddenly I don’t feel so sophisticated any more.
‘My parents named me Alice.’ She grimaces. ‘Can you believe it? I had to do something and androgyny is so much more now, don’t you think?’
‘How old are you?’ Maybe she’s older and that’s how she knows all this stuff.
‘Nineteen. And you?’
‘Eighteen. And you’re from…?’
‘The Village.’
I stare at her.
‘New York City’ she explains. ‘The Big Apple. Born and raised.’
‘Wow’
She’s a New Yorker. And not imported; she’s always lived there. I’ve never met anyone who actually lived in New York all their lives. It seems inconceivable that children would be allowed in New York; somehow profane and dangerous, like having toddlers at a nightclub. Surely the entire population consists of ambitious grown-ups from Iowa and Maine all clawing their way to the top of their professions in between gallery openings, Broadway shows and foreign film festivals.
‘Wow,’ I say again.
She grins, basking in the glow of my small-town admiration.
‘I…I may be living in New York soon,’ I venture.
‘Oh yeah?’
‘I have an audition for Juilliard next month.’
‘I see.’ Her face is hard and unyielding, like a door slammed shut. ‘Those auditions are fuckers. Bunch of self-satisfied cunts, if you ask me.’
‘Oh.’
A bus careers past, forcing a rush of cold air into the room. Robbie turns away. I follow her gaze but all I can see is an empty bookcase and the glossy black surface of the television screen.
‘I mean, it’s not like I’ll get in or anything. It’s just, it’s Juilliard, isn’t it? Everyone auditions for Juilliard!’ I laugh, or rather, I make the kind of wheezing sound that could be a laugh if levity were involved.
We listen to the music and sip our drinks.
Suddenly she smiles and the door swings open again. ‘Hey, don’t mind me! You’re going to find it out sooner or later so I might as well tell you now: I’m a shit actress.’
I’m stunned. ‘Oh, I’m sure that’s not true, Robbie!’
She holds up a hand to stop me. ‘No, it is true. Believe me. I auditioned for Juilliard three times. And NYU and Boston and, well, just about everywhere else on the planet Earth. Look, it doesn’t even bother me.’ Her voice is breezy. ‘I’ve made my peace with the whole thing. Really’
At eighteen, I don’t know anyone who’s made their peace with anything, let alone a devastating admission of their own artistic limitations. It’s threatening to me…how can she even say these words out loud? I’ve an overwhelming desire to change her mind.
‘I’m sure you are good, Robbie! I mean, sometimes it takes years for people to grow into their type. And while that’s happening it can be very awkward. After all, not everyone’s an ingénue.’
‘You are, aren’t you?’ Stretching her legs out, she nestles back into the sofa. ‘So, tell me how you got started.’
She’s changing the subject.
‘I don’t know’ I lean back in the chair. ‘I did a play, in grade school. I was a little taller than the others…actually, I was put back a year. The truth is, I couldn’t read properly or tell time or anything…’
I don’t know why I’m telling her this. I’ve only known her about half an hour. But, instinctively, I feel safe. There’s an energy about her; a lightness I’ve never encountered in anyone before, like something’s missing. And where a thick layer of convention and criticism would normally be, there’s only air.
‘That’s dyslexia,’ she says matter-of-factly.
‘Really?’ My parents were so embarrassed by my backwardness, it was never discussed. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Trust me, I’ve spent more time in clinical physiological testing than you can imagine. Go on,’ she urges, making that sound normal too.
‘Oh.’ I’m thrown by my unexpected diagnosis. ‘Well, when I was growing up, in the Virgin of the Sacred Heart Girls School, you were just thick. Anyway, there I was, a bit stupid and definitely spacey, taller than all the other girls and pretty weird-looking because my mother really wanted a boy—she used to cut my hair short—and then I got the leading role in the school play because I was tall with short hair.’
A tenderness washes over her features. ‘And you were good at something!’
