The Actor

By Noël Cades

When Eloise starts dating a famous actor, she has to make decisions about her entire future.

Eloise is still at school when she meets actor David Astwell at a party. Rich and famous with heartthrob looks, she can’t believe it when he invites her to be his date at a movie premiere.

But as Eloise falls for him, David is spending more and more time in Hollywood.

Is he stringing her along? And if he is serious, can she handle the pressure of a relationship in the spotlight?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Noël Cades
• Release date: Dec 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9780648087489

Book preview

978-0-6480874-8-9

Chapter 1

London, New Year’s Eve, 1998

I first met the Actor when I was fifteen.

I was staying in London with my Aunt Rosa and Uncle Gerard, while my parents were overseas. They were very different from my parents. Aunt Rosa ran a fashionable art gallery and was terribly stylish. Many of her friends were connected to the theatre or the world of fashion, and her life was a whirl of social activity which was all part of her business as well.

Uncle Gerard was quieter, though he was in fact the greater celebrity. He was a renowned composer, at least that was the epithet always used by the newspapers. This was because he was famous, as he had written the scores for a couple of popular West End musicals, but also because he was respected for having composed classic symphonies as well. The snobbery over this was ridiculous, Aunt Rosa always said, because the musicals made squillions more than the symphonies. But somehow, people felt it was acceptable to look askance at the lower brow forms of music, while enjoying the very luxurious hospitality they bought.

Aunt Rosa didn’t care. She was the kind of woman who enjoyed life and people and had no problem being generous towards those I felt were utter hypocrites. Let them sneer! she said.

But don’t you mind? I asked. There had been a particularly spiteful review of Uncle Gerard’s latest musical in one of the newspapers that morning, written by a critic whom I knew that my aunt and uncle had had to dinner many times.

Goodness no, darling. Water off a duck’s back. It’s column inches, nothing more.

I was sure Uncle Gerard must mind, though admittedly he never showed it if he did. Most of their friends, the inner circle, were decent people at least. Not spiteful, anyway.

Aunt Rosa and Uncle Gerard had no children. Whether by choice or circumstance I had no idea, but it made Aunt Rosa delighted to dote on me - my favourite niece! - when I was deposited with her every other year or so. I was her only niece. If she treated me more like an exotic pet or an accessory than a child, I didn’t mind.

But now I was fifteen. So far as Aunt Rosa was concerned, I was suddenly a young woman. She was having one of her parties, on New Year’s Eve, and saw no reason why I shouldn’t come.

There’ll be some amusing people. Perhaps no one quite your age, but you won’t mind that, will you?

I wasn’t sure whether I would mind or not. I doubted it. I felt as though I were finally getting a set of keys to their glamorous world. Instead of peeking down through the bannisters at the tinkling and chinking of laughter and wine glasses in the crowd clustered below, I would be among them.

My parents, I was quite sure, would not approve. But they had lost any moral high ground, I felt, by deserting me the day after Boxing Day. My father, a chemical engineer, had a research conference in Berne. Why the Swiss insisted on having conferences when everyone else was enjoying the Christmas and New Year party season, I had no idea. But my mother was travelling with him, and they planned to make a trip of it and visit some old friends. It would be deadly dull for me, so they thought, whereas in London I could visit museums and be taken to Uncle Gerard’s latest show.

They had no notion that Aunt Rosa would include me in her adult festivities. Nor that she would take me shopping for a completely unsuitable outfit.

I’m not sure what I have to wear, I had told her, and I honestly wasn’t fishing. Her guests were always very slinky and sparkling, and I had no party dresses with me.

We’ll go shopping. All the sales are on, but I’m sure we’ll find you something.

Anyone else would regard the sales as an opportunity to buy. For Aunt Rosa, it meant nothing much was left in the shops except last season’s fashion. Which was ironic, since she herself frequently wore vintage couture.

Oh no, it’s alright, honestly. My mother would kill me if she thought I was inveigling Aunt Rosa into buying me clothes.

It’ll be fun. We’ll make an afternoon of it.

This was how I ended up with a ridiculously expensive Gucci dress that was far too sophisticated for a fifteen-year-old. My parents would have died had they seen me in it; my friends would have died with envy.

It was the sort of dress that fashionable London girls wore to nightclubs. Girls who dated pop stars and were photographed in the tabloids. Girls whose antics we read about, far away in the provinces, whom we secretly longed to be like even though we pretended to disapprove of them.

I would happily have worn the new frock with my Doc Martens, for that was what we all did back then. Skirt or jeans or minidress, the DMs were uniform footwear. But Aunt Rosa bought me some heels, not overly high, but high enough that I was sure I must look at least eighteen.

So there was me, dressed up to the nines, sipping a cocktail and hoping that no one would guess I was a schoolgirl and this was my first grown up party. The smell of cigarette smoke and perfume infused the room, now crowded with people in their winter party season finest. I was hoping to see at least a few famous faces so I could brag to friends back home.

And then I saw the Actor.

I had a vague notion he was going to be there, for Aunt Rosa had mentioned his name to someone on the phone a day before. He was on the younger end of the guests, and he was satisfyingly famous, a proper household name. Theatre and television and a few films, Merchant Ivory and costume drama type things. He was also incredibly handsome, at least in photographs.

At the start of the party I had been stuck in the conservatory talking to some old friends of my aunt and uncle whom I had met before. Not many people had arrived yet, and the caterers were still getting things ready. Aunt Rosa always had her parties catered. Otherwise it’s not a party, is it? she said. It was true. There wasn’t much point having all your friends over if you spent the entire time in an apron getting canapés out of the oven, like June and Tracey, the two women employed to do so, were doing.

Hermione, a former opera singer, wearing a very low-cut emerald green dress, wanted to know all about my A-levels and university applications because she had a daughter a year younger than me, at some expensive London private school. You don’t mind if I pick your brains, do you? Lolly has no idea what she wants to do, and Rosa always tells us what a clever girl you are.

I didn’t actually start my A-levels until the following year, but I already had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do and what courses at which universities I would eventually apply to. I was thinking of History or English Literature. So I told her what I could, and then I listened politely to a long list of Lolly’s many talents and how she had been selected to play Lady Capulet in her school production of Romeo and Juliet, which was of course a much more mature role than Juliet, and Lolly really was the only girl in the fifth form with the emotional range to play it convincingly, and how Lolly absolutely adored Shakespeare and had been studying A Winter’s Tale for her English exam. Short of humming Mrs Worthington, I could only nod and smile.

I was glad to be released when more interesting guests began arriving and Hermione drifted off to converse with more important people than her hostess’s teenage niece.

In turn, I armed myself with a cocktail from a tray, which was my second already. It was some mysterious concoction of Uncle Gerard’s that had gin in it, though I wasn’t sure what else. I wandered through the drawing room to see if I could recognise anyone in the throng.

And so I saw the actor, and he caught my eye.

I probably gave a nervous smile back, I can’t honestly remember. I do remember that he smiled at me and half raised his eyebrows. He was incredibly good looking, with dark blond hair, grey eyes and perfectly chiselled features.

The smile was more than good enough. I would tell all my friends that he eyed me up. They might not believe me, but I would claim it nonetheless. Claire Bennett had claimed a county cricketer had given her the eye when she spotted him in a restaurant the previous summer, and I was determined to one-up her on that.

Much of the party was a bit of a blur. Mainly because I drank more than I should have, so I was tipsy. I probably heard tonnes of interesting gossip that I couldn’t remember the next day. I remember a very long and dull conversation about art, which I knew nothing about, despite Aunt Rosa’s gallery. There was an impromptu musical interlude where Uncle Gerard was persuaded to the piano and Hermione trilled something or other. I spent half an hour talking with an old lady in purple about her younger years dancing in Paris, which was one of the most interesting conversations of the night.

A chinless couple of men who probably weren’t much past thirty tried chatting me up, but I didn’t find them attractive or interesting. Midnight was drawing near and I really didn’t want to get stuck with either of them anywhere near the mistletoe which Aunt Rosa had dangled from every chandelier.

So I made my excuses and went back to the conservatory, and that was when I finally met the Actor.

Hello, he said. You’re Rose and Gerry’s niece, aren’t you?

I am.

I was wondering why you were stuck here with all of us. Wouldn’t they let you out for some fun?

I wasn’t sure what to respond to this. I didn’t know anyone in London except for my aunt and uncle, so I had nowhere else to go. I didn’t want to say this, though. Aunt Rosa’s parties are always interesting, I told him.

Not for someone of your years, I shouldn’t think.

I also didn’t want to get onto the subject of my years, for I had spent the night in the hope that everyone thought I was at least nineteen, if not twenty-one, which seemed a very sophisticated age. I glanced at the wall-clock, an ornate object with carved, gilded vine leaves around it.

It’s nearly midnight, I said.

Then the chimes started going, and I could hear from the kitchen that someone had turned on the radio or television and Big Ben was sounding. As the countdown was being chanted, he leaned in, and I leaned in, and suddenly he was kissing me.

My stomach lurched. For months and months afterwards, I only had to recall it all and my stomach would lurch yet again at the memory.

I had been kissed before, but not by an actual man. Let alone someone famous.

His lips were closed on mine at first, and then they parted. Then I realised he was actually kissing me properly, with tongues, and I was scared but even more excited. My mind was racing. He tasted of alcohol, which I probably did too, but in a good way.

I didn’t really know what I was doing but letting him lead seemed to do the trick. I don’t know how long we kissed for, because when the final bong went and all the cheering and Auld Lang Syne started, he was still kissing me. At some point his arms had gone around me.

Then finally he broke off and said Happy New Year but I was too stunned to say anything. Initially, anyway.

Just as I found the words to say Happy New Year back, we were interrupted by people coming in and shaking hands and kissing and knocking glasses and wishing everyone a wonderful next twelve months and so on.

The party broke up not long after that, and I had got pulled aside by someone else, and the Actor had vanished, and I never got to say goodbye.

Chapter 2

London, 2001

It was two years before I saw the Actor again.

Of course I’d enjoyed plenty of bragging material from our first encounter. Even if most girls didn’t believe that we’d really French kissed, they could just about believe he might have pecked me on the cheek or similar. Certainly that I had met him and spoken to him at least, because they knew about my uncle.

You are lucky, my best friend Milly had said, sighing with envy because she did believe me about the tongues thing. She knew I wouldn’t lie to her, anyway. And if I had wanted to lie to the others she would have been totally on board, because we never liked Claire Bennett to get the better of us. Tell me what he was like again. Exactly every moment! Milly insisted.

And so my approximately two minutes in the drunken company of a famous actor had to be spun out into an involved romantic drama. We all read romances back then, so it wasn’t hard to embellish with a few phrases about magnetic attraction and unquenchable thirst and rising surge of passion. I don’t know if Milly truly believed it had been exactly like that, and I was pretty sure I didn’t. But it was a fifteen-second kiss that became a fifteen-minute wonder and it permanently elevated my status at school as a girl who mingled with famous people in the holidays.

Once, and only one famous person, but it was enough.

Now, two years on, we were all in the Upper Sixth and in the midst of university applications, offers and rejections, mock A-levels and revising for actual A-levels. I was doing English, History and French which naturally meant I was going on the school sixth form trip to see Hamlet in London. Starring the Actor.

Amanda Trent and Claire Bennet, two girls we didn’t much like but always seemed to end up getting thrown together with, started digging at me.

I expect you’ll be getting free tickets, won’t you, Eloise? Amanda said, giving a nasty smirk to Claire. The two of them were members of the in crowd at school, and Claire had never forgiven me for outdoing her cricketer. Claire had blonde hair in a short bob and always attracted loads of boys. Amanda was chubbier and didn’t get so many, but she did alright with Claire’s rejects.

I shouldn’t think so, I said.

But naturally you’ll be popping around to the stage door with a sprig of mistletoe? They caught one another’s eyes again and started laughing at me, but it gave Milly an idea.

You should try going round to the stage door. Why not? He’s bound to remember you.

I doubted this. I also doubted that one could pop around to the stage door anyway, even if I knew where it was which I didn’t. There was probably loads of security.

Unfortunately Claire and Amanda leapt on the plan. Of course you’ve got to visit him! I bet he’d be quite insulted if you didn’t, given how close you claim to be with him. Or don’t you dare? Perhaps you haven’t got the nerve?

I hadn’t claimed any such thing, but a challenge was a challenge. Refusing to try was almost to admit that I’d made the whole thing up, or at least to deflate one of our school’s greatest ever myths. I had benefitted from the kudos of being the girl who once kissed a famous actor which was an even greater wonder to girls in younger years. Now I had to put my money where my mouth was, so to speak.

I might well do so, I said, and hoped my further silence on the subject would appear enigmatic, rather than evasive.

After the play was over and we filed out of the auditorium into the crowded lobby, where people were spilling out from the warm fug of the theatre into the chilly night air, they were on my back about it again. I was hoping that Mrs Padstow would hurry us all onto the coach so there wouldn’t be time. Unfortunately she was giving us ten minutes to go to the bathroom and so on. We won’t be stopping at any motorway service station, so take your opportunity now.

There were some moans and groans, because hardly anyone wanted to head straight back home.

The queues are ages, we’ll need more than ten minutes.

There’s a McDonald’s over the road. Can’t we get some food first?

It was the last week of term, the play had been outstanding, and we had all been very well behaved. And we were the Upper Sixth, after all. Mrs Padstow relented. All right. Half an hour. Anyone not back on the coach by then will be explaining themselves to the Head tomorrow.

Everyone else was full of glee but my heart sank. Half an hour was easily long enough for the others to push me out and round the side of the theatre, to a stage door. It was frustratingly easy to find.

It was manned by an old fellow who wore a doorman’s black hat. I was expecting a queue of fans and autograph hunters, but unfortunately it was just us. Amanda gave me a sharp poke in the back.

Is it possible to get a message to Mr Astwell? I asked.

Mr Astwell, eh?

Yes. Could you just tell him it’s Rosa and Gerard’s niece? Rosa and Gerard Gordon.

If I’d tried this anywhere else, I may as well have said Joe Bloggs or John Smith. But this old man worked in the theatre world, and in that sphere. my uncle’s name was recognised.

"Gerard Gordon, eh? Madness in the Moonlight and Cliffs of Dover?"

They were two of my uncle’s biggest commercial successes. "Yes. And Remember September."

Alright then, I’ll see what I can do. Oi, Jimmy. A skinny, lugubrious looking lad, carrying a stack of boxes, appeared at the door. Take a message to Mr Astwell’s dressing room. Gerard Gordon’s - niece, was it? - here to see him.

I waited, suddenly conscious of what I was wearing. Jeans and a purple top and my black corduroy jacket and a scarf, because it was March and still freezing. I had my hair, which was blonde, in a ponytail and I briefly considered whether I should loosen it. Then I thought of Claire’s and Amanda’s scorn, and left it as it was.

Two minutes later I was being ushered through a dingy corridor to a dressing room door. For a place frequented by top actors and actresses, it seemed quite shabby. I don’t know what I expected backstage to be like, but less dark and cave-like than this. Jimmy knocked twice at the door, then nodded for me to go in.

The Actor had been sitting at his dressing table, though he rose to greet me. He was taller than I remembered. But then I had had heels on at the party.

He still had his stage make-up on, and it looked odd this close up. Not like normal make up, in fact. More like a few crude lines of face paint. The smell of greasepaint reminded me of a school play I had been in.

He was faintly surprised by my appearance. Jimmy said Gerard Gordon had asked to see me.

It’s not Gerard or Rosa, I’m afraid. I think the message got confused. I’m their niece. Sorry.

There’s no need to apologise. To be visited by Rose and Gerry’s niece is a far more unusual and interesting proposition. He was spectacularly handsome. Debonair summed him up exactly, I think. All the angles of his face were sculpted perfectly, and his jaw had a firmer and more chiselled look than I remembered. I was studying his features more closely because of the makeup, trying to see under it. The light, mainly from the bulbs around his mirror, was also much brighter than it had been in the conservatory.

You probably don’t remember me, I began, feeling about as awkward as I ever had, but we met at my aunt and uncle’s New Year’s Eve party a couple of years ago.

I remember you very well. His gaze was direct and I felt I could read his thoughts. He was remembering exactly what had happened.

I thought you might have forgotten, as everyone had had a lot to drink.

He laughed, and the corners of his eyes crinkled. He gestured for me to sit, which I did, and he sat down as well. My darling, I might have been merry but I wasn’t blackout drunk.

He was only saying darling in an avuncular way or theatrical way, but it still gave me a thrill. I could just imagine telling my friends that he’d called me darling. Oh. Anyway, I just wanted to say that it was really brilliant tonight. We all thought it was great. We had all thought he in particular was great as Hamlet, but I was too embarrassed to say this. I already regretted coming. I was making such an idiot of myself. As if my opinion mattered compared to actual theatre critics, all of whom managed far more eloquent phrases than really brilliant. I was supposed to be doing A-level English, for God’s sake, and that was the best I could manage?

He didn’t seem to mind, though. Possibly he was used to it. There are more of you here?

It was a class trip. As soon as I said this I regretted it, because I didn’t want him to know I was still at school.

Give your friends my thanks. I’m glad you all enjoyed it.

There was an awkward pause. Awkward for me, anyway, but he seemed to be quite amused. Then he told me something that took me totally by surprise.

I rang up for you a couple of days after the party. Your aunt put me wise.

I was absolutely mortified. Aunt Rosa had never said anything to me. I couldn’t blame her, I supposed. Did she?

It seemed I had already behaved outrageously enough. His lips twisted in a smile that was both knowing and rueful.

It made me feel quite ashamed. He must have been very cross and embarrassed when he found out, I feared. Did you mind very much? When you found out how old I was? I hoped he hadn’t been too horrified.

He looked at me, the amused gleam still in his eyes. He lowered his voice as he spoke.

Would it be even more outrageous of me if I didn’t particularly mind at all?

Once again, he had shocked me. Oh, I said again, feeling very out of my depth. Perhaps Aunt Rosa hadn’t told him my exact age.

Then it seemed as if he were reading my thoughts when he asked: Are you of age now?

This was tricky to answer, because what did he mean by of age? Sixteen was the age of consent. Eighteen was the legal age of majority. People with a more old-fashioned turn of mind, which was pretty much everyone in my parents’ generation, regarded twenty-one as the traditional coming of age.

I was eighteen in two weeks. I am, I told him.

Then how about coming for a drink with me some time?

He had asked me out. A famous person had actually asked me out! It was impossible of course, but it was something to tell my grandchildren. Or Milly and the others, at least. I don’t live in London.

But you can come up to town, surely? You’re here this evening?

Thinking about it, I supposed I could. The thing was that if you lived more than an hour or so outside London, it was rather a momentous thing to go there. You didn’t just pop up for a visit unless you were making a special trip for something. And then it would be a full day trip, and you’d probably have a list of things to do. I’m not sure.

I’m sure you can, unless you’re confined to some convent in the Hebrides. In which case I suppose I’ll have to find a grappling hook and scale the walls.

My stomach lurched at this, and seeing the expression in his eyes, it was the first time I had a sense of inevitability. I don’t mean that I couldn’t have avoided him. Just that we both knew we wanted to meet again, and we would.

It’s not a convent. I wish I could have told him I was at college. The sixth form college in our town was a cool place that was more like university than school. You could show up whenever you liked, in dreadlocks and reeking of weed, and no one cared if you never handed in any coursework. Whereas Hadleigh House was a regular all girls private school, where we still wore school uniform and had assembly every morning and got fined house points if our hair wasn’t tied neatly back.

But at least it wasn’t a convent, at which he expressed relief. That’s encouraging. How about one night next week?

It was all happening very fast. Getting up to London was one thing, and I could claim I was staying the night at Milly’s. Plus the school term finished this Friday which made that aspect easier. But how would I get back? Was there a late train, or could I manage to stay with Aunt Rosa and Uncle Gerard? Except that wouldn’t work, because Aunt Rosa would be bound to tell my mother. It wasn’t fair to make her complicit in it all.

He could read the conflict on my face. Will school be a problem?

No, it’s the holidays. Or it will be.

That’s settled then. How about Wednesday? If you can bear to sit through it again, I’ll leave you tickets on the door. Then come round here afterwards, and Harry will let you through.

Midweek seemed a weird time to be running up to London for the night, and I still had no idea what I would

Reviews for The Actor

[Jemimah · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I absolutely loved it. perfect??.I didn't want it to end.