Read Online Curtain Call by Anthony Quinn - Free Book Online

to him were getting smaller and, strangely, older. Instead of the dashing romantics he longed to play, directors were casting him as uncles, loyal advisers, second dukes. Three years after his ‘triumphant’ Laertes he auditioned for another
Hamlet
and was asked to read for – the gravedigger! Frustrated, he eventually took aside Mr Becker, the manager of the company, to ask why he was being overlooked for the major roles. Jimmy listened to him blather for a while before he pressed him to give an honest answer. Becker paused, embarrassed, and then he said quietly, ‘I’m sorry, James, but nobody will cast you for those parts. You simply don’t have the looks.’
    So there it was. He could have persevered in defiance of the man’s judgement, but in his heart he knew he had heard the truth, or something like it. He quit the company, without so much as a goodbye to anyone, and worked for a time in his father’s drapery business. It was a desolate period in his young life. For months he avoided the theatre altogether, sickened at the thought of his lost future. Then, during a week’s holiday in London, he went to see Henry Irving play Dubosc in
The Lyons Mail
, and was transfixed. On returning to his lodgings he wrote a review of the play, rhapsodising over three paragraphs on the actor’s ferocious gusto and individuality. He had written pieces for the school magazine, but nothing before had so fired his enthusiasm, or his pen. He sent it to the
Post
, with a covering letter, and the next day an editor wrote back. The paper couldn’t run his Irving review, but would he care to try out as their London theatre correspondent? Four weeks later, following a brief interview, the job was his. The performer in him had not been wholly thwarted; henceforth he would create his own sort of drama from the stalls, to be enjoyed in print the next day. It was revenge of a kind. But in thirty-eight years he had never forgotten the critical verdict Mr Becker had passed, regretfully, on his physical appeal.
    The cab had stopped on Charlotte Street, quiet at this hour, though he could see the lamps still agleam inside Bertorelli’s. He paid off the cabbie – quite a fare after all his waiting – and found the covered alley by the side of the pub. Newman Passage: don’t mind if I do, thought Jimmy. At the foot of the alley was a cobbled mews, where he counted off the numbers until he reached the door he’d been told about. A sullen-faced bantam who answered his knock gave him the once-over before stepping aside. The lounge he entered was long and dimly lit, like a Mayfair clubroom, and occupied by men in murmurous colloquy. Not knowing anyone, Jimmy was about to settle in a corner armchair when a strapping fellow with brilliantined hair and a neat moustache approached him.
    â€˜Mr . . . Quex, is it?’
    â€˜Call me Jimmy,’ he replied, accepting the man’s handshake.
    â€˜Sergeant Teague, sir. What’ll you have to drink?’ Without waiting for an answer he called to another man lounging nearby. ‘Bottle of Black & White, if you will, Reg. Two glasses.’
    â€˜And a tankard,’ added Jimmy. The man nodded and slunk off.
    Teague looked at him in a genial way, but said nothing, so Jimmy began the story of his evening, and made a little comic anecdote of his dropping off during the play. Teague only listened, though when the Scotch arrived at the table he poured them each a good three fingers and raised his glass. ‘Here’s how.’
    Jimmy drank and continued to talk of the London theatre and its audiences, cracking the odd joke, but Teague just sat there, nodding benignly. It seemed that whatever he said, and however amusingly he said it, he could not pierce the fellow’s carapace of polite indifference. Jimmy, used to entertaining company, decided on a different tack.
    â€˜So, Sergeant,’ he began, looking about the room,