In the Still of the Night

She wasn’t going to remember the words. Her mind was a blank. She stared at the back of the theatre, where a little red light lit the Exit sign, trying to concentrate – and at last the first line came up out of the well of memory and then another and another.

When she had finished there was a silence. It seemed a long time before the man said, ‘Thank you. What modern piece did you prepare?’

‘Look Back in Anger,’ she stammered. ‘The scene where …’

‘Fine, off you go,’ he interrupted, and she flushed with humiliation, realising he knew exactly which scene she would have picked, who she would be playing.

But she couldn’t get out of it, she was there, standing in a blue light, on the bare stage, her knees knocking, feeling hopeless, feeling sick. What was the point of going on when she was bound to fail?

It would be too humiliating to run away, though. She took a deep breath, and after a few words forgot herself in the pain of the woman she was pretending to be.

Coming out of it, she was dazed for a second. The dark dazzled her. She heard breathing, then the light on the desk was switched off, and she heard seats banging back as the three people below stood up. They hadn’t said a word.

She’d known she wasn’t going to get in. She wasn’t good enough. Why had she thought she could act?

Turning away, shaking, icy cold, she stumbled off the stage to go back along the corridor to the stage door.

‘Where are you going?’

They met her in the wings, three of them, the man the tallest, between two women, one of them with a very familiar face, an actress she had often seen on the stage of the National Theatre. The women smiled at her.

‘Well done. Enjoyed that. Must rush, Roger will talk to you. Bye.’ They looked at the man and said, ‘Bye, Roger,’ in voices that seemed teasing, or mocking, then they walked off.

Annie began to follow them, muttering, ‘Well … thanks …’

The man caught her arm. ‘I haven’t finished with you yet. One or two more questions. Come to my office.’ He urged her round the back of the stage. Annie dragged her feet, wanting now just to get away. It was so cold back here, cold and dusty. She found herself going through a door, into a corridor that led to an office with a name plate on the door.

She read it as he waved her inside. Roger Keats, Senior Tutor.

Her favourite poet was John Keats. She had a picture of him pinned up on the wall over her bed: a thin, pale, willowy young man with golden hair. Nothing like this man, with his fleshy mouth and those eyes that kept staring at her in a way that made her very uncomfortable.

She looked away. He’d called this his office, but although it held a desk and filing cabinet, it looked too cosy to be an office. Lined with shelves of books, the walls hung with faded old prints of famous paintings, the room was dominated by a red velvet Victorian chaise-longue piled with cushions of many colours.

Roger Keats shut the door and strolled forward. ‘We’ll let you know, in a week or so.’ He threw his clipboard, rustling with papers, on the desk, and lounged there, his hands gripping the edge of the desk, his stare wandering over her in that odd, smiling way. ‘I see from your application form that you sing, you’re in the school choir, and have had ballet lessons since you were four.’

‘Yes.’ She wasn’t good enough at either to think of making a career as a singer or a dancer, though.

‘Your posture is terrible. Hasn’t your ballet teacher tried to correct it?’ He took a leather-bound book off the shelves and put it on top of her head. It wobbled and was heavy. She grabbed for it before it fell.

Mr Keats slapped her hand away. ‘Leave it. It should balance there if your posture is correct. Come on, head up, shoulders back. Don’t slouch. Let me see you walk towards that wall.’

Annie walked, trying not to shake. Reaching the other side of the room, she turned to go back, but he blocked her way. Grabbing her shoulders, he pushed her up against the wall; the book fell to the floor with a crash and she jumped, eyes wide.

He stared down into them. ‘Always be aware of your body, Annie,’ he softly said. ‘I am. Think about it now. Your head. Your neck, balancing your head on top of it, feel it, concentrate on it,’ he ran a hand up her nape and the little hairs on the back of her neck prickled unpleasantly. He pressed her backwards until she felt the wall forced into her spine. ‘I don’t ever want to see you stooping and hanging your head down again. Walk like a queen – and keep your stomach in …’ His hands released her shoulders and slithered downwards, making her nerves jump, making her stiffen, with a little gasp. His fleshy mouth smiled wider. ‘What sort of bra do you wear? Do you wear one?’ He squeezed as he asked. ‘Doesn’t feel as if you do, your breasts are small but soft. These little tiny buds are breasts, aren’t they? How old did you say you were? You have the breasts of a little girl.’

He looked into her frightened eyes; his mouth was moist and very red. He smiled as if he enjoyed her fear. ‘Never mind, I like little girls. I like them very much.’ His fingers smoothed, pressed, dug into her.

Frozen in panic like a rabbit in headlights she didn’t try to get away, just trembled.

‘There is a lot of competition to get in here, Annie, and we expect our students to work hard and do as they’re told. It’s up to you, Annie. We’ve seen fifty girls, all of them talented. To get in, a student has to have something special. I make the final decision – so, do you want a place here, or don’t you?’

Annie lived in one of the older suburbs of London, South Park, on the wrong side of Regent’s Park. Her street was shady in summer with plane trees whose dappled bark gave a sleepy country air to the white and green Edwardian houses with their gables and pink roofs, and on warm evenings there was a heady scent of privet from every garden as you walked past. On very hot days flying ants swarmed from the sand below the paving stones and dive-bombed you as you walked over them, terrifying her when she was a child. Even today she panicked if an insect flew at her.

The house had been left to Annie’s mother by her first husband, whose parents had bought it while it was still half-built in 1907, and had lived in it until they died.

In those days this had been a very middle-class area, with servants sleeping in the attic and a horse and carriage stabled at the back of the house in a cobbled mews. Today there were no horses in the mews, although the cobbles remained; they gave class to the tiny, pastel-painted cottages where trendy, highly paid secretaries and city executives lived.

By the time Annie was born the road had become shabby. Some of the houses were sub-divided into flats; the gardens were wildernesses. The sixties were in full swing and living was easy, except for women like her mother. Sometimes Annie felt her mother had been born middle-aged, always worrying, always working. From her first husband she had inherited a greengrocer’s shop just round the corner, as well as the house, but they had had no children. Annie suspected that that first marriage had not been happy, but her mother never talked about it. She only talked about Annie’s father, long since dead. Her mother still ran the greengrocer’s shop; it was their only source of income now and Annie was expected to help whenever she wasn’t at school or doing schoolwork.