The rest of that day was the most nerve-wracking Maddy had ever spent. Despite Morgan Evans’s announcement that they would ‘run straight through’ they stopped and started continually. Maddy made three false starts on her opening speech. The first time she was using too much voice, the second time she was stopped for her chair to be moved a fraction of an inch to the right. And on the third occasion one of the dancers walked right across the front of the camera that was focused on Maddy.
It seemed as though they would never get as far as the sketch. The dancers and singers had been rehearsed separately by Morgan Evans’s assistant, and this was the first time that the producer had seen them. All sorts of things seemed to be wrong with them, and Morgan Evans came down from the control room to the studio floor and put them through their paces.
Maddy was longing to go and watch, but did not dare leave her little bit of set. She had not been able to rehearse the interview properly, for the girl and boy who were to be interviewed were not arriving until the afternoon. By the middle of the morning she was ravenous, and could not imagine how she was going to last out until lunch-time. The lights were so hot that she felt much too warm, even in a summer dress.
The actors in the sketch sat about in bored attitudes, wondering when their calls would come and watching Maddy with, what seemed to her, coldly critical eyes.
The amount of activity in the studio was fantastic. The heavy cameras tracked silently into position and swarms of technicians walked about, stood and stared, adjusted lights, argued with each other, and one even came and held some sort of meter right under Maddy’s nose, so that she sniffed at it and said, ‘Delicious.’
He did not seem at all amused, however, and she felt rather silly. By lunch-time they still had not got as far as the sketch, and when they were told to break for an hour Sunny came up to Maddy and said, ‘My stomach keeps doing the somersaults. I sure wish they’d get on with things.’
They went out to the restaurant where Maddy had had coffee the first time she had come to see Morgan Evans, but by now they were no longer hungry, and only toyed with their food.
‘I can’t see how we shall ever be ready to go on,’ wailed Maddy. ‘We haven’t rehearsed the interviews or the sketch, and we go on at five. And I know I’m terrible. I can tell from the way people are watching me. And the sponsors won’t like me. And I’ll get the sack. Oh, how awful! I shall never be able to hold up my head at the Academy again.’
‘It’s all right for you, Miss Maddy,’ Sunny told her. ‘You been taught this acting, but I ain’t never tried before.’
When they returned to the studio things seemed much more organised.
They started off with the sketch, which went quite well, although there were many stops and starts. Sunny was a big hit and made the studio staff laugh several times.
‘Doesn’t it seem tragic,’ said Maddy to Rita, ‘that all this trouble is being taken, and no one is going to see it except a few silly, fat old men.’
‘Yes,’ said Rita shrewdly, ‘but if they like us, we’re in, and if they don’t—we’re not.’
‘Will the first programme that really goes on be the same as this one, do you think?’
Rita shrugged.
‘Don’t know,’ she said. ‘It all depends on Them.’
‘Maddy,’ yelled the floor manager in the distance. ‘Madeleine Fayne, please.’
And Maddy realised that she had missed her cue for the closing announcement.
‘You’ve got to be nippy here,’ the floor manager told her. ‘After you exit at the end of the sketch you’ve got to hurry round here, behind the scenery, and change in the quick-change room, then back into your own little set, and you’ve only got a minute and a half. Now, do you think you can do it?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Maddy confidently. ‘It’s just that I forgot altogether this time. And it won’t matter if my buttons aren’t done up properly down the back, will it?’
‘No,’ laughed the floor manager, ‘as long as your dress hangs on you, that’s all that matters.’
Just then the call-boy came up to the floor manager and said, ‘The girl and the boy for the interview have arrived. Shall I bring them up? Do they want make-up?’
‘Yes, bring them up,’ said the floor manager. ‘Before we decide about make-up we’d better see them on the tube,’ meaning on the television screen.
Maddy was greatly relieved to hear that the boy and girl had arrived, and that she would have an opportunity to rehearse with them. To her surprise they both greeted her in excellent English, shaking hands politely.
The French boy was very small for his age, and extremely serious. He was accompanied by a fierce-looking man, who gabbled away angrily at him in French every few minutes.
The Persian girl was about sixteen, and quite attractive, with lovely limpid eyes, but rather a long nose. Maddy found the interview extremely difficult. She had learnt the questions she was to ask, but the girl and the boy constantly anticipated them, so that by the time Maddy got to a certain question it had already been answered. The most difficult thing was to bring the interviews to a close gracefully. At first both the boy and the girl were shy, but by the end of the conversation they were in full swing. The first time she went through with the girl, Maddy saw the floor manager making ‘Cut’ gestures by drawing the side of his hand across his throat, and she said firmly, ‘Oh, we’ve got to stop now. Sorry.’
Everyone laughed, and Morgan Evans came down into the studio and said quite kindly, ‘No, Maddy, you mustn’t finish it off like that. If you’ve got to stop abruptly just say very firmly, “Well, thank you very much, so-and-so, for coming along to the studio today. We’ve certainly learnt a lot about your country”—something like that. But never, “We’ve got to stop now.”’
‘Sorry,’ said Maddy. ‘From the faces that the floor manager was making I thought it must be urgent.’
At last they were able to get a run through the whole show, and everyone began to feel better about it. Morgan Evans came down from the control room with a sheaf of notes on their performances.
‘Don’t grin so much, Maddy. Rita, don’t sway when you’re in close-up. You keep up a constant roll as though you were on board ship. You’ll make everybody seasick. The dancers must hold their pose at the end until we’ve faded. Some of them moved’—and so on for a long time.
Then he said, ‘And now The World of Youth editorial board want to see you all at tea in Room Fifty. If you’ll follow me.’
When Maddy saw the tea that was laid out on a long table she gave a wail of dismay.
‘Oh, no! Not before the show! I just couldn’t. Meringues! And I can’t touch one.’
She was so deeply upset by this bad bit of planning that she went up to Mr Stanley of The World of Youth and said earnestly, ‘Do you think they’ll clear all this away while we’re doing the programme?’
‘I expect so,’ said Mr Stanley. ‘We shall be having a conference after the show.’
‘Oh, what a shame,’ said Maddy. ‘You see, my tummy is so full of butterflies at the moment I haven’t got any room even for a meringue, and I was wondering whether I could come back here afterwards and make up for it.’
Mr Stanley smiled indulgently.
‘I’ll see to it that a special plate of cakes is reserved for you until after the show,’ he promised.
‘Oh, thank you, that’s very kind of you,’ said Maddy gratefully, and went in search of a cup of tea and a dry biscuit.
Everyone seemed in much the same state of excitement and the tea was hardly touched.
‘We’ll have the whole spread left till after the show,’ said Morgan Evans. ‘You won’t mind if we eat while we talk at the conference, will you?’
‘Not at all,’ said Mr Stanley. ‘I’m hoping there won’t be a great deal to be said.’
All too soon the call-boy came knocking at the door, to take the cast down to have their make-up touched up. To Maddy’s delight she had her face powdered, and her lashes and eyebrows darkened a little. Sunny’s face was powdered too, with the darkest powder they could find, for under the lights her skin was apt to shine as though it had been polished.
As they made their way back to the studio Maddy kept saying, ‘After all, nobody’s going to see this programme. It’s not going out.’
‘Then why are we doing it?’ demanded Sunny, who had never really understood the whole situation.
‘Because it will be so nice when it’s over!’ laughed Rita, looking very glamorous in her costume and exotic make-up.
Morgan Evans came round giving last words of advice.
‘Lots of sincerity, Maddy. Not too much grinning. And for heaven’s sake don’t forget that last quick change.’
While she was waiting for her cue Maddy felt very conscious of all the important people sitting in front of the television screen up in Room 50.
‘Well, if they don’t like it, they’ll have to lump it,’ she thought, just as the floor manager gave her the signal to start.
Of course her first grin was too wide, and the interviews were rather slow and over-ran slightly, but the quick changes went beautifully with the help of a dresser, and Maddy knew that the sketch was good. But during her quick change back for the final announcement, there was nearly a tragedy. Some of the hair at the end of Maddy’s left plait got twisted round a button, and there she was, inextricably caught up, with the seconds ticking by.
‘Now, don’t squeal,’ ordered the dresser, a motherly woman with spectacles, and she gave a brisk tug that pulled the hairs out at the roots.
Maddy didn’t squeal, but the tears sprang to her eyes and caused her mascara to run. She made the last announcement with tears rolling down her cheeks.
And then it was all over, and the floor manager was waving his arms and saying, ‘Relax, everyone, relax.’
Morgan Evans came down into the studio carrying a sheaf of notes as usual, saying, ‘Pretty good, everyone. Not bad at all. Now, go and change and come up to Room Fifty and we’ll hear the worst.’
‘You were jolly good, Sunny,’ said Maddy. ‘They must have liked you.’
‘I’m just about on my knees,’ laughed Sunny. ‘I ain’t never been so tired in all my born days.’
They splashed cold water over their faces in an effort to cool down, and then, tremblingly, made their way up to Room 50, where Mr Stanley greeted them at the door.
‘Very nice, Madeleine. Very nice, Miss Mackenzie. I knew I’d spotted a winner.’
He was beaming with pride, as though he had acted the part himself, and not Sunny.
‘And now, we have one or two suggestions to make, haven’t we, gentlemen?’
The one or two suggestions turned out to be a complete remoulding of the whole programme. Miss Tibbs was there with her notebook and pencil saying, ‘Yes, yes’ in a businesslike way to every suggestion that was made. The only difficulty was that many of the suggestions were completely impracticable.
Morgan Evans pointed these out as patiently as he could, saying, ‘You see, if we move the singing and the dancing from the middle of the programme to the beginning, it means Maddy has no time to change before the sketch…’
‘But must she change?’ asked one of the board.
‘We think it helps the illusion a little,’ said Morgan Evans. ‘If she’s wearing the same dress as she was wearing in the studio scenes the viewers are less likely to believe that she’s in South America.’
‘True, true,’ said Mr Stanley. ‘But isn’t there some other way to get round it?’
Maddy, on her third meringue, could see that it was going to be a long session. They rambled on and on, occasionally coming back to a point that they all agreed on, such as, ‘And Maddy, you must appear to take it more seriously. It’s no good looking as though the whole thing is a huge joke. If you could compère the show as earnestly as you’re getting through that plate of cakes, it would be a good thing. But it was a jolly good effort, and you remembered every point we told you.’
‘And so can I do the series?’ asked Maddy point-blank.
‘What’s that?’
‘You mean you’re not throwing me out.’
Mr Stanley threw up his hands in horror. ‘No, no, no. My dear child, what an idea—of course not. You and Miss Mackenzie will appear in the whole series, as contracted. And we hope to include the other artistes from time to time. Now, Miss Tibbs, as to next week’s script…’
It was nearly half past six and the show had finished at half past five, when Morgan Evans interrupted Mr Stanley with, ‘Don’t you think the cast could go home? We’ve got a great deal to decide before rehearsal on Monday. They’ve had a hard day of it, I know.’
‘Oh, yes, by all means. Run along,’ said Mr Stanley. ‘You’ve made a good try of it, everyone. But there are a lot of ends to be tied up by this time next week.’
The editorial board beamed and shook hands as the cast went out, and once in the street Maddy turned to Sunny and said, ‘We’re really going to be on television! I never thought it would happen.’
The Monday rehearsal began a week of turmoil. The whole script had been rewritten once more, so that it bore only a slight resemblance to the first one, and this made it extremely difficult to learn.
The musical part of the programme was to be totally different and the same boy was to be interviewed, but not the same girl. Poor Rita’s part had been cut to nothing, as the editorial board had considered that she was ‘too glamorous’ to fit in with the tone of the programme.
‘Not very flattering to Sunny and me,’ giggled Maddy.
But when she read some of the copies of The World of Youth that Mr Stanley had insisted on sending her, she saw what they meant. The tone of the whole magazine was more earnest and ‘hands-across-the-sea-ish’ than Rita could ever be—and certainly than Maddy herself.
The week seemed to fly, and by the weekend everyone was exhausted and rather fed up with learning variations of the same script.
Maddy was not so frightened this week, although she knew the programme was to be seen by millions of viewers. She was used to a large audience, but the thought of a few important gentlemen sitting up in a viewing room was much worse.
The pace of things at the Academy was increasing too, for the end-of-term shows were looming near. Fortunately, Maddy had only been given small parts because of her television work, but Zillah was playing the lead in a detective play, in which she had the role of a beautiful spy, and had to speak with a foreign accent. This she had learnt syllable by syllable from Armand, the French boy in their class, who was himself playing an English colonel with great difficulty.
The entire Academy had promised to watch Maddy on Saturday afternoon, and her mother had phoned to say that they had had a set installed for the same purpose. There was to be a large gathering at Mrs Bosham’s, another at Snooks’s house and another in the common room at the Academy. Everyone wished Maddy luck on Friday evening, and loaded her with mascots of every type.
‘I can’t take them all to the studio,’ said Maddy to Zillah. ‘I think perhaps I’ll leave them at home and just take Disgusting.’
‘Disgusting’ was the remains of a teddy bear that she had had from infancy, which was now scarcely recognisable, but which went with her on very special occasions, even if it meant doing him up in a brown-paper parcel to disguise him.
On Saturday morning there were telegrams from her mother and father, and Sandra and the rest of the Blue Doors, saying that they would be watching, and wishing her luck; and one from Mr Manyweather saying, ‘Best of luck to my prize pupil’.
Mrs Bosham was busy preparing a fine spread for the friends that Zillah was bringing to watch.
‘Leave some for me!’ begged Maddy. ‘I shall be ravenous when I come in, because I don’t suppose they’ll give us tea again this week.’
She went off to the studio in quite a festive mood, and Sunny was just as excited.
‘My folks is having a party,’ she told Maddy, ‘and all the young ’uns is asking their friends in. My, my, I’d better be good.’
The studio did not seem so frightening this week, and it was nice to be greeted by name by the call-boy and the camera crew. The rehearsal was as chaotic as ever, but Maddy now realised that this was normal and nothing to worry about.
Nobody seemed quite as tense this week. As Morgan Evans said, ‘There’s no point in worrying now. They’ll either like us, or they won’t.’
At lunch-time there were more press photographers, and much posing for photographs all over the studio.
Maddy had one taken sitting on a camera, which delighted her, and Sunny and Morgan Evans had one taken ‘conferring over the script’.
The afternoon rehearsal was quite smooth, and Maddy found the Chinese girl she had to interview much easier than the Persian of the previous week. But in the sketch everybody started reverting to last week’s lines, and Rita got herself absolutely tied up and had to be prompted.
‘You’ll be all right,’ Morgan Evans comforted her. ‘It’s just that being in the studio again brings back the lines you said when you were here last.’
At tea-time Sunny and Maddy just sat in their dressing-room and drank some milk and ate biscuits that Mrs Bosham had made Maddy bring.
Just before the programme was due to start the call-boy knocked on the door, and came in bearing two beautiful bouquets, one for Maddy and one for Sunny, each bearing the same message, ‘Good wishes for your first television appearance. I know you’ll be good.’ They were signed ‘Morgan Evans’.
This quite made the day for them both.
‘Flowers,’ cried Maddy. ‘Just as though I were grown-up.’
‘Flowers,’ cried Sunny. ‘Just as though I was’—she hesitated, then finished up—‘a real actress.’
Maddy was so thrilled that she did not feel any butterflies in her tummy when the call-boy cried, ‘On the set, please.’ It was not until she sat waiting for the floor manager’s signal that she suddenly realised that in a few seconds millions of people sitting at their tea would be saying, ‘Oh, who’s this? What a funny girl!’ and so on.
But it was too late to worry; the red light had gone on on the camera in front of her and the floor manager’s arm had fallen—the signal to begin.
‘Smooth as silk,’ cried Morgan Evans afterwards, kissing her on both cheeks. ‘And you really looked as though you meant it all. No Cheshire grins. Jolly good.’
‘I say,’ said Maddy, ‘thank you for the flowers.’
The editorial board came down into the studio, delighted with it all, quite sure that the alterations they had recommended had made the show.
‘Isn’t it heavenly when it’s over,’ cried Maddy, as they took off their make-up.
But the day was not over, by any means. As Maddy and Sunny passed the Academy on the way home, a group of students who had been watching the programme rushed out to congratulate them, and insisted on taking them to an ice-cream parlour and buying them enormous sundaes.
Back at Mrs Bosham’s a gang of the ‘Babies’, replete after a huge tea, were loud in their praise too. Zillah, shining-eyed, said to Maddy. ‘You looked just like you, only serious!’
‘I was serious,’ laughed Maddy. ‘I knew all you critical creatures were watching me.’
The next few weeks flew by, bringing the last week of term. Maddy was quite relieved to think that she could soon devote her energies entirely to television, for she was in such a whirl that she hardly had time to think.
The reaction to the first programme was favourable, and Morgan Evans was delighted with them all. Maddy and Sunny each had several fan letters, which thrilled them considerably, and they answered them with care.
‘We’re doing very nicely,’ said Morgan Evans. ‘If we can keep the programme up to standard for the next couple of weeks we shall have nothing to worry about.’
But on the Saturday before the end of term everything began to go wrong.
Maddy woke up with a bad cold, there was a go-slow strike of studio electricians, and bad weather delayed the plane on which one of the children to be interviewed was to travel.
At four o’clock Morgan Evans was tearing his hair and muttering in Welsh.
‘We must just find someone,’ he cried. ‘Have we got anyone in the studios? Any colonials perhaps?’
Strangely enough, there was neither a foreigner nor a colonial available.
‘We’ll just have to go out into the street and find someone,’ cried Morgan Evans, turning round to look for his assistant. Then suddenly he seemed to remember something, and turned back to Maddy.
‘What about that friend of yours?’ he asked. ‘She’s a central European of some sort…’
‘Central European?’ Maddy looked puzzled.
‘Yes, you know the one. You brought her with you the second time you came to see me—you said she didn’t speak very much English.’
Maddy suddenly realised who he meant.
‘Oh, her!’
‘Yes. Can you get hold of her—at once?’
‘Well—er—yes,’ stammered Maddy. ‘I can, but…’
‘There’s no time to argue about it,’ said Morgan Evans. ‘Go and ring her. If you can’t get her we’ll just have to search the highways and byways.’
Maddy struggled to get out the right words, but Morgan Evans barked at her quite crossly. ‘Go on! Tell her we’ll pay her, but it’ll all have to be arranged afterwards. There’s no time to do anything but get her here now. Now, now, now—do you understand?’
‘All right,’ said Maddy. ‘If you’re sure you want her.’ And she ran off to the telephone, giggling quietly to herself.
She knew that Zillah would be at home, because every week religiously she watched the programme in Mrs Bosham’s basement.
With her hand cupped round the mouthpiece, Maddy said urgently when Zillah answered, ‘Listen, it’s Maddy here. Come round to the studios at once. Morgan Evans wants you in the programme.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes. Someone’s let us down. And Morgan Evans thought of you. He thinks you’re foreign because I said you couldn’t speak very good English.’
‘But—but where does he think I come from?’
‘I don’t know—central Europe, he said, or something.’
‘But—but what have I got to do?’ cried Zillah, horrified.
‘Just be interviewed by me. And you can speak with the accent you are using in the play.’
‘Oh, Maddy! No, I couldn’t.’
‘Yes, of course you could,’ said Maddy firmly. ‘Put on your green dress, get a taxi and come round right away. You’ll be paid, so you can afford one. Now don’t let me down.’
She rang off before Zillah could say no, but was by no means certain that she would come.
‘She was very doubtful about it all,’ Maddy reported to Morgan Evans. ‘But I think she’s coming.’
‘Oh, thank heavens. What’s her name? Something unpronounceable? Oh well, we’ll have to get all the details after the programme. Just ask her the usual questions, and if she gets in a muddle answer for her. You know the routine. I hope she gets here in time for lighting and make-up to see her.’
Maddy was feeling a little light in the head from her cold, and could not really appreciate the seriousness of what she was about to do. Zillah arrived breathless and very upset, a quarter of an hour before the programme began.
There was only just time for the make-up department to powder her face and comb her hair, and the camera to line up on her, and Morgan Evans to say, ‘Oh, I am glad you’re here, Miss—er—Now don’t be frightened, will you? Just answer the questions that Maddy asks you.’
Zillah nodded shyly, and then it was time for Morgan Evans to go up into the control room. Zillah was the first item on the programme, so there was no time for her to do more than whisper agonisedly to Maddy, ‘But I shall have to tell some awful lies.’
‘No,’ said Maddy. ‘Tell the truth. It’ll sound all right in that accent.’
It was perfectly true. It did sound convincing in Zillah’s strange half-French, half-West-Country accent. As she spoke of the village and the school at Polgarth one visualised somewhere in mid-Europe.
Maddy cleverly refrained from stating outright where the guest had come from, and kept to such questions as, ‘And so you had never seen television till you came to London?’
‘No,’ replied Zillah. ‘Nor the theatre or the cinema.’
When Maddy had exhausted all the safe questions she was horrified to see that the floor manager had chalked up on a blackboard in large capitals, ‘WHERE DOES SHE COME FROM?’
Morgan Evans, up in the control room, was obviously frantic, because they had neglected to name Zillah’s home. There was only one thing for it.
‘And where exactly do you come from?’ asked Maddy formally.
Zillah looked at her reproachfully, and said in an even more broken accent:
‘Polgarth.’
As she said it Maddy sneezed loudly, so that the name was totally unintelligible. After that, she felt so pleased with herself she could not keep a Cheshire-cat grin from spreading over her face.
When the interview was over poor Zillah was trembling from head to foot, and nearly in tears of nervousness.
‘That was terrific,’ Maddy whispered to her during the musical interlude. ‘Nothing to worry about.’
The sketch went very well, apart from Maddy getting a strangled sneeze that held up the action for a few seconds, and then went away again. And by the end of the programme Maddy was quite sure they had got away with it. But after the last fade-out, when they were all standing around the studio chatting happily, Morgan Evans appeared with a face like thunder. He walked straight up to Maddy and towered over her.
‘I have just received a long-distance call from the West Country,’ he said. ‘And it would appear that your friend is a native of the village of Polgarth in Cornwall, and the girl is as English as you are. You are suspended from the programme, Madeleine, until further notice.’