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Tuesday, April 13th, 1999 — Hanover Gardens
"Do you have your passport?"
"I've got it."
"How about your jacket?"
"I have it 'ere."
Grumbling noises continued even as Nain kept asking for more and more specific things. Each time she received a nod or a grumbling agreement until the child before her started to act even more childlike and more undignified.
Contrary to what you might be imagining, it wasn't me that was doing all that grumbling. No, it was none other than Clive Price. My very own grandfather who had come up with the brilliant idea of going to Italy by — drumroll, please — a freaking train! Our road trip was going to last us at least three days and perhaps an extra if we missed a single train out of the planned dozen interchanges in the future.
"You've no idea how beautiful it is! I made this trip back in the '60s. There's nothing quite like it, there is." Granddad gushed on and on in his Welsh English, repeating the starting of words at the end.
"Hush, you've told him that a hundred times. Where are your maps, then?"
"In the luggage — outside pocket, easy to reach," Granddad said in a clipped voice.
"Hmph," Nain nodded.
"How about your toiletries? Have you packed them?"
"'Course I have, woman. This isn't the first trip I've been on with you," Granddad said, bristling up cutely.
"Might be the first time you've not forgotten something," Nain conceded grudgingly.
"Now, we'll be going through Paris." Granddad said a smile quickly blossoming on his face,
"Eww," I grumbled, as any Englishman would.
Granddad reached for a hug.
"Hey, France is a beautiful place," Nain interjected.
Granddad and I exchanged a glance. France might be our ally and friend, but there was a certain level of piss-taking between friends.
"Don't be a bad influence on the boy," Nain said seriously.
"You wouldn't get it, I'm teaching him how to be a man." Granddad replied, sounding like the petulant child he'd been all morning.
I nodded in agreement. Our histories were as entwined as two nations could get. A hundred years of war and a few hundred more wars had gone down between our nations. We had conquered each other over and over again until ultimately, our cultures had become quite similar. A few bits of murdering each other for centuries would do that.
Granddad continued on, as if nothing had happened.
"Then we hit Switzerland through Geneva and then to Chur. It's a beautiful city, you'll see. But the mountains — god, it's a right beauty, that. We'll cross the Alps to reach Italy."
"You know this adds two days to our journey," Nain said.
"Bah, I'm taking Wilf and I say what goes. Olly and Erin can complain when they're taking him in the summer," Granddad said.
We had reached an agreement that we would all take an extended holiday during summer. I also mean that this was a holiday with the extended family. I'd finally be seeing my Welsh cousins after almost two years. They hadn't even come up to London to see me, they were tiny little things and the older ones were too cool to see a children's musical. I'd been asking to get Henry Harrison, my best friend from Woodfield Primary, into the trip — but it'd been falling on deaf ears. I'd keep trying because it's already been months since I'd seen him last. Friends needed to meet. Allies needed bit of a friendly rivalry going.
"Wilfred, you listen — and listen well. You'll see something on this journey so beautiful you'd never get it on an aeroplane. You'll know it when you see it, and then you can tell me if it was worth it," Granddad boasted.
"Oh, he'll like it," Nain said with a knowing smile.
Honestly, I was more excited about taking trains for days. The idea of a long rail journey through several countries fascinated me to no end, but Granddad had taken enough flak from Nain that he seemed desperate for some validation.
"I don't mind — as long as you two help me with my script," I said.
"You and that script — you've read it front to back dozens of times," Granddad grumbled.
"He's a diligent worker, he is," Nain said proudly.
"I'm rich too and handsome to boot." I said with a grin.
"Oh, good lord — let's not start on this Wilfred," Nain said, rolling her eyes.
Officially, I had earned more money than my mum, Granddad and Nain. I still hadn't beat Father yet, but construction work paid decent wedge and I was still some ways off that. It would all change when I started getting paid for my current role — the one I was travelling to Italy for.
Mr Adrian Baldini was a bald fraud. Except he wasn't really a fraud — no, that's just an expression we use to take the piss out of every bald person. He was 100% bald though. Adrian had signed me to his agency after my mother had scoured London for an agent with an upstanding reputation. He used to work for the biggest talent agency in London until he was denied a promotion for the nth time. Now he had a fresh new agency of his own with two dozen actors signed up to him and I was currently his best-paid client. Me — a boy just a touch under ten years old.
My family had always given me their full support but the €75,000 he negotiated for really let them know that I had a place in this industry and a lucrative career ahead. At the current exchange rate, that money was just a bit shy of £50,000. So much money, at such a young age.
What could I do with it?
—✦—
Tuesday, April 13th, 1999 — Waterloo International Railway Station
It'd been just half a year since I'd been to Waterloo. This place was famous for having the London Eye; a year ago Mum took me on it. It was overhyped in my opinion, but I still cherished the memory of sightseeing London with my mum. Half a year ago, I was here for Oklahoma! And today I was here to leave London — and England — behind.
Waterloo International Railway Station was the newest and fanciest of its kind in London. The turnstiles, the matrix departure boards and payphones operated using telephone cards — it was all the newest of technologies of the day.
"My god, they're charging an arm and a leg for this," Granddad complained.
"Everyone wants to take the Channel," Nain sighed.
"These don't look anything like the trains I knew back in the day," Granddad said admiringly.
The Eurostar — all steel, yellow trim, and that sleek bullet-shaped nose — looked like something straight out of the future. Science fiction had arrived early, and it was costing us over seventy quid each.
"This bad boy goes a hundred and eighty miles an hour," I said, quoting something I'd read in a brochure somewhere.
"Bah, I'm telling you, Wilf — we're on a commuter line. No chance we'll hit that speed until we're under the Channel," Granddad said confidently.
It took us fifteen minutes to get on the train and settle in, and we were soon rolling out. Nothing like the faff of showing our passports and getting our luggage through. Granddad was proven right almost immediately with how slowly we picked up speed, and I was already beginning to get bored.
"Three hours to Paris," Nain said.
"Back in my day, there were no Eurostars — it was just the train," Granddad said.
"Even in my day, there were no Eurostars," I pointed out.
They'd only opened about four years ago. I was already in school then.
"You know what I mean, lad," Granddad chuckled. "We'd take the train from Victoria Station down to Dover, then ferry across to Calais. That was about five or six hours, depending on how the border and the transfers went. Now we're down to three hours. Soon enough we'll be reaching Paris in an hour or less," he said confidently.
I looked outside through the window in our standard seats. If London Underground was a car, it'd be a beaten up van. Eurostar was a Benz with all the bells and whistles. To say it was comfortable didn't do it justice. But even that didn't get me all that excited. We were provided a meal which had cost us thirty quids of surcharge for the "plus" option. Meal was unremarkable and I was bored of seeing the English buildings and small towns pass by.
"Want to help me with my script?" I asked both my grandparents.
They seemed to think it over before Nain replied.
"Maybe you should take a break from it. Some time away from it, will do you some good. Provide a fresh perspective and all that," Nain said.
"She's right, you know. Did you know that soon we'll be in the tunnel for up to thirty minutes?" Granddad suggested and changed topics to distract me.
Shaking my head, I went through my rucksack which I kept on the seats with me. Not many things were currently in it, it wasn't my dance bag but I found the script inside. It was true that I had read it way too many times — I was starting to remember every line and page number. Maybe my grandparents were right and I needed to just enjoy the moment. I looked outside again for five minutes before I ruffled through my rucksack again. This time, I came up with a book by an Italian author with a familiar name.
Zeffirelli: The Autobiography of Franco Zeffirelli — it said on the cover, with a photo of the director's slightly younger but still aged face. Zeffirelli had gotten his fame in England by putting on Shakespearean plays, operas and musicals, so it was no wonder that his autobiography was written in English. Reading a biography of all things was not my idea of fun.
But I had motivation to the tune of £50,000. I was playing Luca Innocenti — a stand-in for Franco's own self and bakcground. This man had a biography written thirteen years ago, which seemed enough time for his ego to have grown enough to do a film version of it and direct it himself. How big could a man's ego balloon up? With a new perspective on Franco's guts and fascination with the psychopaths of the world, I was even more intrigued about reading how he thought of himself.
"I've told you about commuter train lines, did I not? This is dreadful, this," Granddad complained.
"You could've helped me with my script, you'd be less bored." I said with an exaggerated eye-roll.
"Or you should've brought a book," Nain said with a chuckle.
She was holding her own book and seemed to have settled into a comfortable position.
A long minute passed where we enjoyed the silence.
"Wake me up when we leave the Channel tunnel," Granddad said finally.
—✦—
Tuesday, April 13th, 1999 — Paris, France
When the bright star outside — called the sun — shone brightly again, we knew we were in France. There were genuine cheers of happiness from the passengers when we finally left the dark and dreadful tunnel. It was the same type of crowd that clapped when aeroplanes landed.
I wanted to clap for my own reason — we had just been under the damn sea going at near two hundred miles. Humanity had achieved that. We had grown bored and annoyed of simply taking ferries and just went, "Why don't we just build a tunnel under the sea that went for thirty miles?". Then they'd done it, we were literally under the sea in a train. My latest dated revelation went up thirty more years in the future. How much could we achieve in that time?
Sadly, France looked exactly the same as England did. Entry to the tunnel had a long wall around it, as did the exit. I tried to look down my nose at the buildings and towns rolling past as was my right as a Brit. But even that was hard when I couldn't see a difference between our towns.
"That's Calais, Wilf," Granddad pointed to a city in a distance.
I excitedly tried to find some sights but we were at the outskirts of the town. Only sights that were visible enough were the warehouses that featured every dozen feet. It was simply boring — so I continued to read my book.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we will soon be arriving in Paris," the intercom announced.
"What?" I asked, stupidly.
"The line in France will be high-speed, I'd wager — far less dilly-dallying about," Granddad said.
Much to our childish relief, we were boarding the TGV Lyria after only half an hour spent in Paris. This time we were bound for Zurich, Switzerland.
"You were wrong," I told Granddad.
"What?" he asked.
"We're going through Dijon and Basel," I pointed at the board.
"Ah, they must've changed it. Sensible choice, that," Granddad said, as if he'd known it all along.
Shaking my head, I gazed out of the window for far longer than I had leaving London. Calais looked like England — as did much of northern France — but the colours and the architecture shifted the further we travelled. Everything looked much greener without the overcast sky, which made the whole experience far more palatable. If you averaged out every shade of building in France, I reckon it'd come out a touch greyer than England's overall.
Eventually I got back to reading the autobiography again. Franco Zeffirelli was born as an illegitimate son of a wool merchant. He was denied the names of both his father and mother who were both afraid of a scandal. His mother had given him the name Zeffiretti, which meant "little zephyr" — a reference to Mozart's opera that she'd enjoyed. Unfortunately, even that name had been denied to him when the register's office had mistyped it and he was forever know as a Zeffirelli.
His mother had tragically died when he was only six. He lived in an orphanage until an aunt of his took him in to the family. I found it fascinating that the story was largely similar to the character I was playing — but also so much more normal. The autobiography was being honest, very drab with the rare details it morseled out, and lacking any real tell into what Zeffirelli was like or who he was as a person.
Not many would call Tea with Mussolini as an exciting story when it came to Luka's character. But this was even more boring than that, I had even more questions than answers. So I opened one of the most recent articles in which Zeffirelli was being blasted for his conservative Catholic views despite coming out as gay himself. The man was all kinds of opposing views and conflicting opinions.
When I had acted as Pablo in Children of the New Forest, I hadn't really developed a character to play. I was only reading lines in my best Spanglish accent.
In the time since then, I'd been honing my craft and working on trying to analyse the characters I portrayed. So far, this was my first professional attempt — but I had already explored this with many characters from all kinds of sides and scripts I had received over time. Georgie was a great teacher and a better scene partner to work with for things like that. She never made me feel stupid or embarrassed me for bold and odd choices I made with characters.
The reason, I say all this was because I was starting to dislike how few lines I'd had — the child years of Luca Innocenti were too short, too normal. Children and child roles in general were completely lacking in individuality. Much like the autobiography that Franco had written.
I was getting all kinds of useless information. Luca was a boy of ten — a boy too shy and lacking any sharp personality. I was reading about the man that boy would grow up to be, rather than the boy he was. It was useless and boring task.
So, I tried to analyse his rise to success.
Franco Zeffirelli had been inspired by Laurence Olivier, who he'd seen as Henry the Fifth. Performance had changed Franco's path in life and drew him to theatre. He had done odd jobs — working as a stagehand, set designer and painter for all kinds of opera productions and even tried acting. As it seemed so common with all the stars or wildly successful people in the entertainment industry, he was found by a director who had hired him as an assistant director — which changed his life. There was always someone who plucked out a misunderstood genius and thrust them to stardom.
Twenty-five years until he got his first role as an assistant director.
Twenty-six years until his set design, helped by his architectural study in Florence, took him to work in movies with the biggest stars and movies of the time. Time enough for him to learn new and old tricks, time enough to absorb it all.
Thirty years until he was finally allowed to direct his own production.
These were all numbers and timeframe too big and long for me to even consider. I didn't want to wait until thirty to start working on my movies. I wanted success fast — but I also wanted to be ready for it. Like the train chugging along, I was moving fast. A hundred and fifty miles fast — yet the journey ahead was so long and unknown.
"Look — see out there. That's Basel. We're in Switzerland," Granddad said.
I looked around, but aside from the colour palette being a bit more beige than back in France, there wasn't much to note.
"Get your jackets ready," Nain said.
"It won't be cold — I've told you," Granddad complained.
"We're heading into the Alps, fy anwylyd. It's getting visibly colder out there, can't you see?" Nain said, pointing outside.
It was true — the sky looked more familiar to a British man than ever, and the the window was cool to the touch. The haze outside also seemed to scream the word, cold.
"Fine, put it on, Wilf," Granddad grumbled.
As we searched for the next train to board, I felt perched on the edge of an idea — teetering right at the precipice of my mind. Ever since leaving London, something had been missing, and crossing another border brought that absence sharply back into focus. I thought of the future ahead: six months of productive theatre work, six months of well-earned money, all well spent. Yet the problems lingered, hadn't it? I was in another slump, with nothing new booked. My audition numbers kept increasing, percentages booked decreasing. Adrian was pushing commercials yet again — like he'd done the last time I was flunking out of auditions. Adrian was making a killing with his clients doing commercial work — but that wasn't me.
Time felt like it was running out as Britain slipped behind me. And it was only more clearer when leaving France behind. I needed a new role, even before I'd started filming for the current one. I'd be busy only until June, then unemployment was staring at me. No theatre to return to, no Tommy Stubbins as a safety net to fall back on. What other nine year old worried about this in the world? Maybe Clive did back in the day.
Was this how actors felt? I'd heard they juggled multiple jobs just to make ends meet, never pausing their search for the next opportunity, even with a role in hand. John's words floated up to my mind:
"Auditioning is the job. Showing up is the getting paid part."
I needed to start doing my job—searching for auditions.
I needed a role, a full schedule—my calendar booked all the way until June this time next year.