Page 2 of A Class Act

So, here I was, back in London post-Covid, my uncurbed enthusiasm for musical theatre and a life treading the boards brimming over once again. I was now in my late twenties, still broke and sharing a somewhat dubious flat above yet another Turkish doner kebab joint near Berwick Street Market, on the edge of Soho, this time along with two other actors.

Leonard, my agent, had gone into some sort of decline during Covid, retiring to St Anne’s on the chilly Lancashire coast with his long-term boyfriend, but had come up trumps by passing me on to a new, upcoming agent called Dorcas O’Hara. When she’d learned I’d previously had a part inBig,but, more importantly, my father was Jayden Allen, she had immediately taken me on and was forging ahead with trying to get me the theatre work I craved.

I divided my daytime hours between being put through my paces at auditions for the big shows in the West End (I was confidently aiming high), reading for smaller parts in plays in the more provincial theatres (hence the visit to the Old Bailey and my first sight of Fabian Carrington), and earning enough to pay the rent and for own-brand basics from Aldi by waitressingat an upmarket and very on-trend French haute cuisine restaurant called Graphiteon Conduit Street.

My tiny room – big enough to fit just a single bed and chest of drawers – horrified even Jayden who, gigging and touring since the age of seventeen with his many reggae bands, was used to dossing down in less than salubrious places. But it was perfectly placed between theatre-land and Graphite at the junction with New Bond Street in Mayfair.

I’d never been afraid of hard work – just terrified of the bolshy adolescents to whom I’d naively attempted an introduction to Shakespeare and Wordsworth as instructed on teaching placements back home in Yorkshire.

Now, those horrible, interminable classroom hours left behind back in the north, I was fighting fit and raring to go, ready to showcase once more just what I was capable of. The long hours on my feet at the restaurant didn’t deter me from spending time, whenever I could, practising routines over and over again in a nearby gym and dance studio owned by an ex-boyfriend, in exchange for teaching a couple of his weekly Zumba classes. I just couldn’t afford the exorbitant London gym memberships I’d have had to take out in order to keep up my fitness. I had to be ready, at the drop of a hat, for any potential auditions with sometimes sanguine, often short-tempered, theatrical directors and this did mean I had to keep on the right side of Xander, the owner of the gym.

Three weeks after the heart-stopping morning spent at the Old Bailey, I walked through the closing of another unusually hot and beautiful May day in central London. Nature seemed intent on unfurling and unfolding before me, the acidic green leavesof the street’s plane trees a sharp contrast to the candyfloss pink cherry blossoms’ playful bobbing on the evening breeze. I breathed in the scents and sounds at the end of Friday’s rush hour: diesel and frustrated hooting of black cabs; warm pavements already dominated by tables, chairs and throngs of newly released office workers, jackets discarded, holding bottles of Sauvignon Blanc aloft while air-kissing new arrivals.

And I didn’t want to be anywhere else but in the centre of this seething, gorgeous throng of humanity.

Well, other than joining the queues snaking patiently along the pavements of each theatre I now walked past on my way to my six-hour shift at Graphite, but a girl has to pay her rent and eat. Knowing I was going to be late yet again, I picked up speed as I weaved haphazardly towards Mayfair.

‘You’re early,’ Bess Bridger, yet another out-of-work actor, managed to say through a mouthful of cake as I headed to the row of lockers in the staff rest room. That was a misnomer for a start – the waiting staff were rarely given any breaks, let alone an actual rest, even less so on Friday and Saturday evenings when the work was hectic. I kept meaning to google how much rest we were legally entitled to, but Miss Muffler, the German-born harridan masquerading as line manager, had little truck with either comfort breaks or anyone having the temerity to demand workers’ rights.

Bess pushed what remained of the Colin the Caterpillar cake in my direction. ‘Stefan’s birthday cake,’ she volunteered, pointing a sponge-, cream- and chocolate-smeared knife towards one of the sous chefs, who responded with a friendly wave of his own, extremely dangerous-looking, cook’s knife. ‘I can’t believe we work in one of the poshest restaurants in London and yet all we get is a sodding kid’s cake to eat.’

‘Hell,’ I said, suddenly ravenously hungry and wishing I’d finished the remains of the sliced loaf and peanut butter I’d leftin the kitchen back at the flat. ‘Is that all you lot have left me? Colin’s arse?’

‘If you’d been as late as you usually are, you wouldn’t even have got that. I’d be quick if I were you – Godzilla’s on the warpath.’

Shoving Colin’s last white-chocolate leg into my mouth, I quickly changed into the blue and cream long-sleeved matelot-style T-shirt and cream waistcoat, before tying around my waist, in authentic French bistro fashion, the long cream apron. Damn. In my hurry to be ready when Walburga Muffler arrived for her pre-shift pep talk and inspection I’d got a huge dollop of melted chocolate on my waistcoat.

‘Bugger.’

‘Act your way out of that.’ Bess grinned as our boss appeared and I folded my arms against the offending brown stain.

‘Ah, Robyn, you decided to join us?’ she barked, eyeing me through slightly closed eyes. ‘You have stomach ache?’

‘Stomach ache?’ I stood my ground.

‘You are hanging onto your middle as though you need the appendix whipped out?’

‘Already out, years ago,’ I lied.

‘Well, do stand up straight,’ she ordered, as though I were a recalcitrant nine-year-old. ‘The restaurant is full to capacity this evening. Go. Stand by your station. Head up, shoulders back. Smile.’

2

In order to eat out in the most expensive square of the Monopoly board, I’ve always reckoned, those being seated by Claude, the restaurant’s front of house, must have either a) saved up for years, or b) just won a shedload on the lottery. Or c), as was more often the case at Graphite, the diners simply had more dosh than they knew what to do with and didn’t give a second thought to spending obscene amounts of it there, where a starter of oysters with just a squeeze of lemon would set them back the same as feeding a whole family living on the brown square of the Old Kent Road.

Whether it was my own working-class roots, or a steadily increasing leaning to the political left, the more I saw of this blatant squandering of wealth,the more I questioned my own part in pandering to the wealthy while helping to further this inequality. When I’d raised this with Jess, my big sister, who worked long hours as a carer in a home for the elderly on the outskirts of our pretty Yorkshire village of Beddingfield, she’d just given me one of her looks. It was just the way of the world, it always had been, and, as far as she could see, always would be.

Giving a surreptitious glance down at the offending stain on my waistcoat, I realised I could just about hide it by hitching up my apron and retying it over the chocolate. While this did nothing to ensure sartorial elegance, at least it gave me cover until I could beg Claude – who was my mate and disliked Miss Muffler as much as the rest of us did – to look out another in the pile back from the laundry.

I was making my way over to Claude when the front door opened, bringing in the remains of the heavenly late-spring evening and a party of nine. I quickly and perhaps prejudicially surmised they fell into my category c) guests. The women, all slim, tanned, manicured and coiffed with swishy locks, wearing tiny designer dresses the price of which would have kept me in hummus for a decade, stepped through the door with the confidence and elan found only in women who’ve been born into wealth and privilege. While the five women wore the colours of exotically plumaged birds, the men were soberly suited in conventional city blacks and greys and still to loosen, let alone remove, their neckwear.

Claude greeted and immediately escorted the nine to the far table in my assigned station and I followed at a distance, conscious of my apron hovering somewhere below my breasts instead of on my hips, turning to check my cart of linen, silver, glasses, and china had been adequately restocked by the outgoing waiter. Although a large group like this would mean a lot of extra work depending on how much alcohol they put away – and Friday usually meant more than average – tips were often in direct proportion to booze drunk. I sent up a tiny prayer of thanks to the Front of House in that Great Restaurant in the Sky: if all went well I might have enough by the end of the evening to treat myself to a good seat atthe musicalMrs. Doubtfireat the Shaftesbury Theatre.

‘Good evening and welcome,’ I trilled, conscious that Walburga Muffler was hovering, watching my every move while probably desperate to readjust my pinny now anchored snugly beneath my armpit. Graphite was getting a name for its fabulous selection of cocktails and that old 1970’s favourite, The Harvey Wallbanger – a heady mix of vodka, Galliano, and orange juice – was making a comeback. Because of this, Bess, Claude and I had rechristened Walburga ‘Wallbanger’ and every order for it had me wanting to titter.

‘Wallbangers all round, I think,’ the diminutive, slightly rotund and balding chap who’d taken charge demanded of me without deigning to look my way. I stood smiling benignly while biting the inside of my lip at the thought of asking Marcel, tonight’s bar steward, for nineWalburgas.

‘Lovely, you’ve made a good choice there.’ I beamed, not one person at the table apparently interested in my opinion. ‘I’ll fetch menus for you,’ I went on, ‘but we have a specials board just to your right…’ I interrupted their conversation, indicating in the manner of an air stewardess pointing out emergency exits. The response was that doubtless expected by any airline attendant: total lack of interest, bordering on irritation.

---