CENTRE STAGE

Random House Australia - ISBN 9781741666007

‘Well done! Good lad!’ Harold Beauchamp’s fruity baritone was warm and genuine as he engulfed Alex’s hand in his two huge paws and pumped effusively. ‘A full scholarship too, by God, not one of those puny little half-measure things. Well done!’

Harold was an actor and lived up to the image he felt an actor should have. He was larger than life. Well, he believed he was and he certainly appeared to be. He was a big man physically, fat, but not obscenely so, and his build suited him. He dressed flamboyantly, his gestures were grandiose, and his manner of speech highly theatrical.

Naturally, Harold came in for his share of criticism, mostly from fringe theatre devotees who were equally pretentious in their own way, and from failed actors who were jealous of his success. The fact was that Harold was a good actor and a successful one. His appearance as well as his talent made him extremely useful and for years he’d had the pick of the leading roles for character actors: Big Daddy, Sheridan Whiteside, Cardinal Wolsey, the lot.

      Now in his mid-sixties, Harold could easily have passed for fifty-five, but no one believed him when he said he was, because they all knew how long he’d been around.

When Alex had first met him two years before, Harold had been playing Captain Shotover in Heartbreak House. Alex, who had never been to the legitimate theatre, was overawed. His girlfriend’s parents had given her their subscription tickets because they didn’t like George Bernard Shaw’s plays, and Alex had let himself be dragged along purely so that he could have Lenice’s body on the mouldy carpet of his Darlinghurst bedsit afterwards. They always made love on the floor – Lenice liked it that way.

But they didn’t go back to his bedsit that night. In fact they didn’t go anywhere together that night. Alex insisted Lenice take him backstage and introduce him to Harold Beauchamp. Lenice was a twenty-four year old socialite and any connections she didn’t have Mummy and Daddy certainly did, so it was an easy introduction for her to effect.

An hour and a half later she wished she hadn’t. She sat totally ignored as Alex became immersed in Harold’s theatricality and Harold became a victim of Alex’s fascination.

She was shocked. Tears welled up in her eyes. Then she scolded herself. She was above this sort of treatment – what on earth had she been doing with a nineteen year old boy from the gutter anyway? If Lenice had known that Alex was only seventeen she wouldn’t have minded at all. To the contrary, she would have been delighted: she liked rough trade, and she liked it young.

Lenice was shocked because this wretched old ham was obviously a queen, and did that mean that Alex was possibly bisexual, and if he was, how dare he make love to her! She walked out of the dressing room with great dignity, closing the door only a little too firmly behind her.

Neither Alex nor Harold heard the door and it was half an hour later before Harold gestured to the empty chair.

‘Your woman,’ he said.

‘What?’ Alex looked around.

‘She’s gone,’ Harold announced.

‘Oh.’ Alex was momentarily disconcerted. He supposed it was because he’d been talking too exclusively to Harold, but she could have interrupted, surely. ‘Oh, well.’ He stood. ‘That means I’ll have to walk home. I’d better be off.’

But Harold had a better idea. ‘Coffee and cognac at my place,’ he said. ‘And we can talk into the wee hours.’

They hailed a cab – ‘I don’t drive,’ Harold explained, ‘never have’ – and arrived at his Double Bay apartment at one-thirty in the morning.

At five o’clock it was Harold who finally called it a night. ‘”And so to bed”, dear boy, “and so to bed”.’

Alex hadn’t understood any of Harold’s weird turns of phrase but he loved the theatricality of the man.

‘You’re here,’ Harold said as he threw open the door to the spare room. ‘Don’t wake me before midday.’ And he went to bed.

It crossed Alex’s mind that Harold was a singularly trusting man. Even to a seventeen-year-old it was evident that there was money strewn all about the elegant Double Bay apartment. Harold’s taste in objets d’art was impeccable.

Alex helped himself to one final tiny slug of Bisquit cognac, quietly opened the balcony door and stepped outside to admire the view. The first glimmers of dawn flecked the sky and Sydney Harbour was still and unspoiled, yet to be churned over by the water traffic that would shortly start its daily grind. Nestling comfortably in the marina below were millions of dollars’ worth of luxury boats. Alex wondered if Harold had a boat. Probably not, he decided, he wasn’t really the type.

What a life, Alex thought. An apartment like this, a view like this, nightly acclaim from appreciative audiences, respect, fame and fortune. Then and there Alex Rainford decided he’d become an actor.

He drained his Bisquit and went to bed.