Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [95]
Lorcan was the last of the four short-listed candidates and the moment he began watching the others auditioning, he almost expired from insecurity, racked with jealousy and terror because the others seemed variously, younger, taller, fitter, richer, better-trained, more experienced and better connected than him. He hated feeling this way. But, as always, Lorcan hid his sense of inadequacy under a veneer of arrogance.
And then it was his turn. He did Hamlet’s soliloquy, standing alone on the stage, under one spotlight, his large, lean body contorted with indecision, confusion writhing across his beautiful face.
‘He gives good tormented procrastinator,’ Heidi, the stage manager, murmured.
‘He does,’ the director agreed.
When he finished, Lorcan had to clamp his jaw closed to stop himself pleading, ‘Please tell me I was good. Please let me be in this production.’
He wasn’t to know that the person they’d really wanted to understudy Hamlet had accepted the lead in The Iceman Cometh at the Almeida. So when Heidi told him he’d got the part, he had a moment of joyous disbelief, before the pendulum of his self-esteem swung violently in the opposite direction. Instantly he was thinking that this was nothing less than his due. Of course they’d picked him. Why wouldn’t they? His recent terror melted like snow in the sun.
‘Congratulations.’ Heidi beamed.
Lorcan gave an Aw-shucks-it-was-nothing grin.
‘I know it’s only the understudy role to Frasier Tippett,’ she said, ‘but well done.’
‘Yeah, well, maybe Frasier Tippett will have a terrible accident. You never know and here’s hoping.’ Lorcan elaborately crossed his fingers, flashed Heidi a devastating smile, and lounged away.
Heidi’s beam wavered, wobbled, then disappeared. Frasier Tippett was her boyfriend.
The following day Lorcan was due to make a television commercial for butter. He’d had the audition six weeks before, and when he’d got the part he’d been unutterably grateful. Television ads paid phenomenally well. It was possible to earn enough to live on for a year. But now that he was about to be restored to his rightful home – in the spotlight of serious theatre – his mammoth ego was back in the driving seat. Why should he be grateful for the butter ad? So what if it paid thousands? They were lucky to get him, and he intended that they knew all about it.
At the appointed hour – well, only forty minutes after it – he showed up at a freezing cold, windowless converted warehouse in Chalk Farm to begin shooting. He was greeted by a mob of hysterical people – producers, directors, casting agents, best-boys, advertising executives, representatives of the Butter Board, make-up girls, stylists, hairdressers and the countless people who appeared on every shoot to stand around drinking tea, with keys and bleepers hanging from their belts.
I control all this, Lorcan thought, savouring the sensation of invincibility. I’m back. Wonderful stuff.
‘Where’ve you been? We tried to ring you on your mobile, but your agent says you don’t have one!’ Ffyon, the producer, gasped. ‘Surely there’s some mistake?’
‘No mistake,’ Lorcan smiled, his low voice soothing Ffyon. ‘I don’t have a mobile.’
‘But why ever not?’
‘No peace with a mobile,’ Lorcan lied. No money to buy one, more like.
After climbing over an ocean of orange cables to shake hands with the bigwigs from the advertising agency and the Butter Board, Lorcan was ferried off to Make-up. Next, a young girl approached him with a comb and a can of hair-spray, but Lorcan caught her arm tightly and arrested its progress. ‘Don’t touch the hair,’ he said curtly.
‘But…’
‘No one touches the hair unless I say so.’
Lorcan treated his hair like a prize-winning pet. He indulged it, pampered it, gave it little titbits when it behaved itself and was very reluctant to entrust it to the care of strangers.
Then it was time for Wardrobe. After myriad changes, the two stylists had to admit that, despite the truckloads of garments they’d brought,