|
|
|
Bantam • Modern fiction
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 
CHAPTER ONE
Calypso O'Kelly was serenely stuck in gridlock, filing her nails and talking cheerily to her secretary, Iseult, on the speaker phone. It was impossible not to be cheery around Iseult. The pretty thing had a sweet voice, a mass of curly black hair, brilliant blue eyes, and a dazzling smile. Couriers, clients and cleaners alike all loved her so much that sometimes Calypso might have felt jealous. But then, there was no need for Calypso to feel jealous about anybody, really, because she had a perfect life.
'How much longer are you likely to be?' asked Iseult.
'Around twenty minutes, by the look of things.'
'Oh! You lucky thing! Enjoy it!'
'You know I will. Bye!'
Calypso loved the morning gridlock. It meant that she could spend her time going through casting briefs and consulting her diary while listening to Radio 4. At that hour of the morning she would have preferred to listen to something rather more mindless, but Radio 4 had gravitas, and it was useful to be in the know about gravitas-type stuff so that she could make worthwhile contributions to dinner party conversations.
Today's diary reminded her to send thank-you notes to Liam Neeson and Neil Jordan, to set up a casting session for next week, and to respond to an e-mail from shit-hot Hollywood film director Jethro Palmer. It told her that she had a lunchtime meeting with film producer Noel Pearson, and that she was attending the theatre this evening for the opening of a new Tom Murphy play. It reminded her to take out a subscription to a glossy new Irish arts magazine that she knew her husband Dominic would love, and it screamed at her to MAKE A HAIR APPOINTMENT!!! She also noted the list of phone calls that had to be made before midday. She was glad to see that she had a window before lunch that she could use to get a nail repaired.
The pages of her diary were more crowded than Jennifer's in Harpers. In the driver's seat of her nifty little Mercedes convertible, Calypso stretched like the cat who'd got the cream. Oh! How she loved her job! She loved the wining and dining and sociability of it, she loved the thrilling rush she got every time she discovered new talent, she loved the buzz she got out of telling an actor he'd got the part, and - because she was secretly a fan of Hello! magazine (she read it when Dominic wasn't around) - she loved the fact that she often met real live celebrities.
The traffic slid forward six feet. Calypso put on the handbrake for the hundredth time that morning, opened her case and extracted a casting brief for a new movie. She ran her eyes down the list of characters required. As usual, the male characters outnumbered the female characters by a ratio of around five to one. All the female characters bar one were under thirty: 'hotel receptionist - early twenties'; 'first clubbing girl - late teens'; 'second clubbing girl - late teens'; 'Stanley's girlfriend - mid-twenties'; 'Stanley's mother - early sixties'.
OK, thought Calypso. Let's check out what age Stanley is. Chances are he's at least ten years older than his nameless girlfriend. She was right. Stanley, the movie's lead role, was stipulated as being in his 'early forties'. In real life, how many twenty-something girls were involved with men in their early forties? She didn't know a single one - apart from her, of course. Dominic was considerably older than she was. But in the male-dominated fantasy world of film, the older the guy, the younger in direct proportion to his age was the doxy that swung off his arm. Had been that way since Bogart and Bacall - and even now in the new millennium, it looked like it always would be that way. Woody Allen was a classic example. He'd been getting away with it for decades.
Calypso had escaped from the acting game at a fairly early stage of her career. She had seen what the future held for her, and noted how someone had once described actors as 'walking milk cartons with expiry dates everywhere'. Thank heaven she'd been such a smart cookie! Friends of hers in the business who were barely out of their twenties were having a tough time of it. She'd had to make serious efforts not to look appalled when a director had recently described a twenty-eight-year-old friend of hers as 'past it'.
But that was mild compared to some of the remarks she'd been privy to after an actor or actress had delivered the words 'thanks very much indeed, it was lovely to have met you' with a shaky smile, and backed out of a casting session. She knew how it felt to be a fly on the wall in a jock's changing room: had done since an occasion long ago when one evening she had as near as dammit been that hypothetical fly.
Gazing out of the car window at the terminally stationary traffic, she recalled now the conversation she'd overheard in the men's loo of the Dublin Theatre Festival Club just over a decade ago . . .
She was under the table in the Festival Club - not because she'd drunk herself there, but through choice. A producer from a UK television station was visiting Ireland, checking out the talent. He'd met Calypso at a casting session, and now, completely rat-arsed, he was staggering around the Festival Club with his tongue hanging out, hunting for her. Calypso had dived under the table to avoid him.
'It's OK - you can come out now,' came a friend's voice from above. She emerged, laughing. 'Well, thank God for that! I'm bursting for a pee.' Still laughing, Calypso headed for the Ladies like a heat-seeking missile. The queue that was snaking out of the door set her zipping in the opposite direction. Without so much as a second thought, she hit the men's loo across the corridor. One surprised gent was tucking himself away as Calypso darted past into a cubicle, sending him a bright smile as she swung the door shut. She heard the outer door to the loo open and shut (he hadn't washed his hands! she observed), and then open and shut again as someone else came in. Two someone elses: two lubriciously laughing someone elses.
'Very cute piece of ass,' said a familiar voice.
'You speaking from experience?'
'Oh, yeah, oh, yeah!' More lubricious laughter. The sound of flies being unzipped and porcelain sprayed. 'She got a bit above herself once - thought she could make it without putting out - but as soon as she heard I was casting students as extras in the Christmas show, she got spooked and changed her mind lickety-split.'
'Ha. Did she get the part?'
'No. Snooty bitch got her come-uppance. I cast the succulent Ms Calypso O'Kelly instead.'
Calypso froze.
'Hey! She looks like a real goer!'
'Haven't hit base there yet. But I'm working on bringing her to her senses. Or should I say - to her knees. Ha ha ha.'
'Ha ha ha.'
'Hey - did you get a load of that blonde in the silver shimmery thing?'
'The one with the great tits?'
'Yeah. Her name's Zsa Zsa - can you believe it? I brought her back to my joint last night and . . .'
It got worse. Calypso had never heard men talk that way about women before. The description of what had been done to poor Zsa Zsa was so graphic that she felt like being sick. Finally the outer door to the Gents opened and shut. They hadn't washed their hands either.
Calypso sat there, staring unseeingly at the graffiti on the cubicle wall, thinking harder than she'd ever thought in her life. How she would have loved to have swung open the door and confronted them! How she would have loved to have stood there with an insouciant hand on her hip, letting a contemptuous look linger on their undone flies, before turning on her high, high heel and declaring: 'You honestly think I would put that in my mouth?'
But she knew she'd done the right thing by resisting the temptation to confront them. She had acquired new knowledge, suddenly. Knowledge was power, and power was control. And what had happened so shockingly just now had determined Calypso's future with the blinding flash of a coup de foudre. She had made one of those monumental decisions that occasionally descend from out of the blue with gob-smacking, life-changing force. Knowledge. Power. Control. Control was self-empowerment, and Calypso was going to wrest back the control over her own life that until now she had relinquished so unthinkingly to others. To those others who 'knew what was best for her'. To the teachers and the 'mentors' and the producers and the directors - all of them, all of them men. From now on, Calypso was going to make the decisions about whose offers of assistance she'd accept and whose she'd reject.
The sudden, surging sense of liberation she felt at the knowledge that she could call the shots - why shouldn't Calypso O'Kelly kick ass with the best of them? - almost made her reel. She would have her work cut out - of course she would, she knew that - but Calypso had always been a hard worker. She'd worked hard at trying to please her parents, she'd worked hard at school, she'd worked hard at her theatrical training. She had determination on her side, and ambition, and the dazzling optimism of which only those who have not yet hit twenty are capable.
As she let herself out of the cubicle and went to the basin to wash her hands, the name of her new business flashed into her head and she almost laughed out loud at how good it sounded. Calypso O'Kelly Casting. Oh, yeah!
The door to her office boasted a plaque with Calypso O'Kelly Casting engraved on it in classy, understated letters. Calypso swung through it into the reception area and gave Iseult a bright 'Good morning!'
Iseult's 'Good morning!' back was even brighter.
'Anything new?' asked Calypso, hanging her coat on the stand and kicking off her shoes, as she always did when alone with her staff in the office. She always put them on again if she was expecting visitors, though. She hated her feet so much that she even found revealing them to her beautician when she went for pedicures humiliating.
'Jethro Palmer phoned. I've booked a table in Le Blazon for tomorrow evening. Neil Jordan wants you to phone him. Nothing urgent. Oh - Individual magazine rang. They want to do a profile on you and Dominic for their "Power Couples" slot in the May issue.'
'Cool!'
'The editor asked if you could ring her back to confirm today. I have an outline here of the kind of stuff they want.' Iseult tore a page from a Post-It pad and handed it to Calypso.
'Crikey,' said Calypso, scanning the Post-It page. 'They want to know which of us first brought up the subject of marriage and how romantic was it? I'll need to be a bit economical with the truth there. Dominic actually proposed to me when I got locked in a hotel loo once upon a time. He ended up sliding the ring under the door.'
'Couldn't he have waited till you got out?'
'No. He was dashing off to catch a plane. I had to wait for ages before they located the head porter. Luckily there was a copy of Newsweek in there. I kept myself amused by drawing Mickey Mouse ears on every picture of a politician I could find.'
'Who wore them the best?'
'Guess.'
'Dubya?'
'Got it in one. New mugshots?' Calypso indicated a pile of manila envelopes that had been stacked on her desk.
'I guess. Hand-delivered this morning by Postman Pat. He really is called Pat, you know. I got chatting to him one day. He's awfully sweet.'
'Iseult, you think everyone's awfully sweet. You'd probably think Osama bin Laden was sweet if you met him.'
'He looks sweet. He's got eyes like Po.'
'Po?'
'In the Teletubbies.'
Calypso smiled and raised her eyes to heaven, then reached for a paperknife and slit open one of the envelopes. 'Oh, no. Silly fellow. No SAE enclosed.' She considered the ten-by-eight shot the envelope had contained. 'Still, he's not bad-looking.'
'A contender for the bodice-ripping epic?'
'Sadly, no.' She handed the photograph to Iseult, who raised a questioning eyebrow. Calypso responded with a resigned nod, and the actor's mugshot was consigned to the waste-paper basket.
She hated having to do this, but in purely practical terms it was the only alternative she had: she received so many unsolicited packages these days - some came from places as far flung as Australia - that returning photographs simply wasn't an option. The cost of the postage would run to hundreds of euros - it was amazing how many actors didn't bother to enclose SAEs.
Quickly she scrutinized the other mugshots that had arrived in that morning's mail in the vain hope of spotting a face that might be right for the new star she was seeking. Not one passed muster, not one had the all-important 'Wow' factor.
The 'Wow' factor was as much of a mystery to Calypso now as it had been when she had first started out in the casting business. No matter how stunningly gorgeous or how talented a performer, if you didn't have that thing the camera loved, you simply wouldn't hack it. Directors nowadays were all on the lookout for the next hot actor or actress who oozed 'Wow'. It was a rare and elusive commodity, and as valuable as a treasure trove.
She shook her head and handed the photographs over to Iseult. 'I'd love some coffee when you've a minute, Iz,' she said. 'And would you mind nipping into the Pen Shop for some of that handmade paper later? I'm out of it, and I've thank-you notes to get off ASAP.'
Picking up her briefcase, she padded through to the office, sat down at her reassuringly oversized desk and switched on her computer. She swung round in her leather-upholstered chair while she waited for it to boot up, still feeling a bit cat-who-got-the-cream-ish, and wondering who she'd get to do her make-up for the photo session with the Individual photographer. The girl in Nu Blu Eriu, probably. That meant she could have one of their rose-petal massages beforehand.
Viv, Calypso's casting assistant, put her head round the door just as Calypso's screen-saver - a photo of her cream Burmese cat, Marilyn Monroe - materialized. Viv was as deadpan as Iseult was bubbly. She was shrewd, efficient, and - most importantly of all - she had an excellent eye for talent.
'Calypso, hi! Sally Ruane was on to me earlier. She wants you to get back to her ASAP.'
'Did she say what it was about?'
'Don Juan's Double.'
Don Juan's Double - the bodice-ripper Iseult had referred to earlier - was causing Calypso many headaches. Although she'd got hold of the right actress for the female lead - a rising French star - she had not yet been able to find the all-important male. Another casting session for unknowns was to be held the following week, and the chief reason she was meeting Jethro Palmer, the director, for dinner tomorrow was so that she could run some more established names by him. Unfortunately, there were availability problems with all of the more desirable candidates. 'Desirable' being the operative word. The 'Wow' factor was required bigtime on this project.
As soon as Viv's head disappeared back around the door, Calypso picked up the phone and speed-dialled Sally's number. The agent was a good friend and had as canny an instinct for casting as Calypso. She was generally a very laidback individual, so the fact that she'd used the ASAP word meant that something was up.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
© Transworld Publishers |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
More Information
Publication Date: 21/06/2004 • 624 pages • 178 x 106 mm
• ISBN: 0553815776
Territory: UK C/Wealth + EU ex Can |
|
|
|
home
about Transworld
how to buy
news by e-mail
