Well-behaved Women Read online

  She took off her glasses, and stepped past the lectern to peer at us.

  ‘Most of you,’ she said, then paused for a moment, ‘will never be on Home and Away or Packed to the Rafters. You will most likely never be on television at all during your careers, which will be short. You may never even get to a level of competency which will see you on stage with an amateur theatre company. Statistically, half of the people in this room will have dropped out by the time you are supposed to be graduating. These are the facts, and you must accept them now, or be willing to work hard to prove me wrong.’

  I rolled the way she said ‘amateur’ around in my mouth. Amater. Amater.

  She continued, ‘In this course, you will undertake no fewer than six major productions, one a semester for the three years of your degree, each with a different director and in a different style. You will be competing for roles with every other person in this room. I’m telling you now that the people who come to see these performances will be the people hiring you—or not hiring you—after university.’

  She did not smile, or end with comforting words, and the room was so silent I had to turn and make sure there were other students behind me.

  ‘I will be your first director. I won’t be taking attendance,’ she said, moving to take a spot in the centre of the dark, bare room and waving her hands to indicate she wanted us to come closer. We stood, leaving our notebooks and bags in clumps on the floor, approaching cautiously like gazelles on a lion-infested plain. ‘You know if you are here or not. By the end of the semester, I will remember the names of those of you who have worked hard, as well as those who have earned my ire. I can tell you from previous years that students who do not make themselves memorable do not go on to do well.’

  I could feel my heart beating behind my breast. My skin was warm. Like everyone else in the room, I wore black stretch pants and a dark singlet, but unlike everyone else, my body was curvy and stood out. Not one of us was wearing shoes, though we had not been told to take them off. A hangover from high school drama classes. The room smelled vaguely of a decade of sweaty feet.

  I chucked my chin higher, and imagined that she was talking only to me. Perhaps she was. I felt her eyes on me as she surveyed the class, all fifteen of us, her mouth pursed as though she were thinking of some strategy to improve the substandard lot she had been given. We stood as still as statues, barely daring to breathe, until Miss Lovegrove clapped her hands and we began our warm-up.

  She had us walk about the room with no specific direction, asking us to feel aware of our bodies, and to lead with our toes or our belly buttons or our foreheads. She had us lie on the floor and meditate, and when one of the boys appeared to fall asleep, she took up a ruler and smacked it against the floor by his ear, causing all fifteen of us to jump to attention. All the while, she watched us and took notes in a leather-bound journal, crossing things out and sighing, and frowning until those lines deepened into a scowl.

  By the end of the class, I was covered in chalk and dirt from the floor. Miss Lovegrove looked at the stainless steel wall clock above the door and put her glasses back on, sitting down on her chair in the corner with her notebook. We waited for instructions. She looked up after a beat and said, ‘That is all.’ Fifteen pairs of tired feet scrambled for the sides of the room to pick up bags and shoes. Miss Lovegrove held up a hand. We froze.

  ‘Wait.’ With a manicured fingernail, she pointed at four of us: me and three other girls. ‘Stay behind.’

  A ball of salty tears rose in my mouth. The four of us stood acquiescent as the lucky eleven who had escaped attention moved past us with their heads down and burst into the fading sunshine outside. She waited until the door had closed behind them to speak.

  ‘Our production this semester is going to be A Streetcar Named Desire. All four of you displayed a level of focus which impressed me. You seem well-presented enough, and you have the kinds of faces which I can work with.’

  Butterflies rioted in my stomach. I glanced around at the other girls, trying to work out what it was we all had that she’d seen, but there was not a ‘type’ to describe us all.

  Miss Lovegrove went to the curtain covering the back wall. The little silver rings holding the fabric up sang on their rail as she pulled the curtain aside, revealing rows of costumes, a set of flats for painting sets on, wooden chairs, buckets of half-used paint and brushes, as well as a bookshelf containing playbooks. A contemplative finger scanned the shelf and came to rest at ‘W’ for Williams. She removed four copies and stood holding them out.

  ‘After tomorrow’s class, you will each audition for Blanche.’ I looked down at the script in my hands and then looked back at the other girls. In my mind, I had the strangest notion that the part was already mine. I smiled at Miss Lovegrove, waiting to catch her eye. Eventually, she did meet my gaze, but her face was blank, mouth downturned like that of a giant koi.

  * * *

  The next day, she chose our scenes for us, a different one for every girl, and we auditioned in order of our appearance in the play.

  I felt the world go still as I waited. I felt the boredom of the two girls who had already auditioned and the nerves of the girl who had not. Miss Lovegrove sat on a pillow with her legs tucked under her. She tapped her lower lip with a fountain pen. Finally, it was my turn. I took a deep breath and began. My voice felt thin, and I could feel my tongue thickening, stumbling over the words as I struggled to hold the accent I had chosen. I had managed half the scene when she spoke, waving her hand in the air.

  ‘Thank you,’ she murmured, her voice the slice of scissors through fabric.

  I stopped, with my mouth still open. ‘There’s more to the scene.’

  ‘I have seen enough.’

  I dropped the papers to my side. ‘But the others got to finish their scenes.’ She glanced at me over her catlike spectacles, and I am sure I saw her smile. ‘You’d like to finish?’

  ‘I’d like the chance.’

  She glanced at the other two girls who had already performed. ‘I saw more of Blanche in you in those six sentences than I saw in these two put together. The part is already yours. But by all means, continue.’

  The room was so silent that the sound of her pen in her notebook was like the murmur of a waiting audience. I swallowed the spittle that had gathered around my tongue. ‘The part is …’

  Miss Lovegrove rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, it’s yours. Don’t get excited yet, you’ve merely been cast. The hard work is ahead of you.’

  The final girl, the one who had not yet auditioned, raised her hand.

  Miss Lovegrove slid her glasses up on her nose. ‘Yes, I know I didn’t see your audition. Do you want to read for Stella? Will that prevent your complaints?’

  The girl withdrew her hand.

  Miss Lovegrove glanced back at me, her mouth twisting. ‘What are you still doing here? Go.’

  I turned and went as commanded, and I did not once look back.

  * * *

  I walked too heavily, I was too tall and curvy, and difficult to costume. There were costumes in storage already that had been used in every other production of Streetcar the university had ever done, but they sat above my knees and wouldn’t zip up. Until I’d been to this school, I had never thought of myself as overweight, but the experience of having a teacher pinch at the rolls of skin which bunched under the sides of my bra was humbling. As she attempted to do up one of the dresses, she muttered, ‘There’s simply not enough time to lose all this extra padding.’ A special appointment was made with the students from the costume design program. I was expected to give up my evenings until the new costumes were complete.

  She was always watching me, as I rehearsed, as I took notes in lectures, even sometimes walking around the campus or eating lunch. When I looked at her from my point on the stage, Miss Lovegrove’s lips would work back and forth as she sat across the room, her nose crinkled with distaste.

  It was how she was with all the girls, but to the boys in our clas
s she was nurturing, attentive. She pressed her body up against theirs as she showed them how to stand, how to sit, how to lean over a poker table. The play didn’t call for many women either. It was just me and Eleanor, who was playing Stella, and a girl named Lynne, who had been cast as Eunice. Only Eleanor was from the original quartet who’d auditioned. The girls who had read, Dawn and Rachel, had been relegated backstage and given non-speaking parts. There were no understudies. The show would go on the way Miss Lovegrove had cast it.

  * * *

  In the dressing room, day after day, seated in front of a lighted mirror, I listened to my castmates gossiping.

  ‘Have you seen the way she throws herself at Phillip?’

  ‘God, I know, it’s so pathetic. And it clearly makes him uncomfortable.’

  I couldn’t identify who was speaking without giving myself away, but I was almost certain that it was Dawn and Rachel. My palm left a sweaty mark on my script, smudging the yellow highlighter I’d used to mark up my own lines.

  ‘I think he secretly enjoys it.’

  The two girls laughed. ‘I’m sure he enjoys her attention more than he enjoys having to play opposite Nicole.’

  My face grew hot at the mention of my name.

  ‘She’s not so bad.’

  ‘You think so? I think she’s a heifer. The only reason she even got the part was because Miss Lovegrove wants to see her fail. I’m glad I didn’t get it now.’

  I wished that I were brave enough to stand up and confront them, or at least let them know that I could hear what they were saying. Instead, their conversation was interrupted by the stage door banging open, and Miss Lovegrove calling for us—for me—to hurry up.

  As the two of them passed me, their faces were surprised, and then dark, as if I were the one who had trespassed against them by listening.

  * * *

  Just before dress rehearsals, a visiting actor came in to speak to the class about the places his qualification had taken him. Toby Duprie was a friend of Miss Lovegrove’s, and had played alongside her on a number of occasions. He was in town for a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which he was playing Oberon. He wore his hair slightly too long, and I suspected that the lenses in his thick black glasses were fake.

  ‘I remember when Pol and I were in your shoes,’ he said, leaning back on the teacher’s desk in the corner of the room, stretching out his long legs and exposing the white laces on his sneakers. ‘God, we were terrible, but we thought we were going to be so famous.’

  Miss Lovegrove, seated at one side of the classroom with a notebook in her hand, gave no sign that she was listening. She pushed her glasses up higher on her nose.

  ‘Polly was always a good student—learned her lines, understood what the plays were about—and they tell you these things matter when you’re training, you see. But it boils down to this. You’ve either got it, or you don’t.’

  He raked one hand through his dark grey hair and looked at Miss Lovegrove, grinning.

  After class, Duprie hung around, signing autographs and doling out advice. It seemed to drive Miss Lovegrove mad. Her arms crossed her body with such ferocity, I thought she might squeeze off her own torso.

  ‘Thank you so much for your time, Toby,’ she said, striding over to our circle, ‘but we really do need to get on with rehearsals.’

  He made a show of looking at his watch. ‘I suppose I should be getting to drinks with my director, anyhow. What play is it you’re doing again?’

  Miss Lovegrove’s lips were stretched so thin that they almost disappeared.

  ‘A Streetcar Named Desire,’ I said.

  His eyes lit up. ‘Funny you should choose that play, Pol. First lead role you ever got, wasn’t it?’

  Then he turned his attention to me and lowered his voice to a stage whisper. ‘Watch out, Blanche. She never likes any of the actresses she casts in this role. Toodle-oo.’

  * * *

  The final dress rehearsal was upon us too soon. She called us in to work scene by scene.

  Scene Ten was me and Phillip, who was playing Stanley. It was a short scene. I had been costumed in a shiny negligee and a matching dressing gown trimmed with feathers. My hair was wrapped and in curlers. My face was heavily made up. I could hear the burr of conversation backstage, where the rest of the class was passing the time.

  ‘We’re going to run this scene with everything we’ve got!’ Miss Lovegrove said from her chair in the back of the auditorium. She was wearing a trilby hat and her eyes were shielded.

  Phillip nodded, his glasses sliding down his face. As he pushed them up the bridge of his nose, Miss Lovegrove scoffed. ‘Phillip, darling, take those off. Do you think Stanley Kowalski wears Clark Kent glasses? He’s a brute, he’s a man’s man. If he experienced any short-sightedness, he would be far too proud to say a damned thing.’

  I could see Phillip’s hands shaking as he removed the specs. My own hands were trembling from the cold. I took my seat on the brass bed to one side of the set and wished with all my might that the cold tea in the bottle on the nightstand was really bourbon.

  Phillip made to go backstage, to put his glasses away.

  ‘Where are you going, Phillip?’

  ‘I need to put in my contacts, it will only take a—’

  ‘We don’t have time for you to put in your contacts, you will just have to do it without them.’

  He nodded and walked straight into the empty doorframe on set. She signalled for the lights to go up. We began.

  We had almost made it through the scene, when she called out to us.

  ‘Stop, stop, stop!’

  We stopped and stood blinking in the lights, looking for her. Her boots clopped on the boards as she made her way to the front of the stage.

  ‘I’m not feeling the fear in you, Nicole. I’m not feeling like Blanche is terrified of Stanley. And Phillip, I’m not feeling that Stanley is enraged enough to rape Blanche yet.’ She looked at us, considering for a moment, her thumb and forefinger cupping her chin. ‘You need to wrench off her dress.’

  My hands flew involuntarily across my chest. ‘What?’

  Miss Lovegrove raised her eyebrows. ‘You won’t be naked, Nicole. It will just be your breasts.’

  Phillip had gone the colour of tomato soup and was choking. I glared at her.

  ‘It’s too late to give the part to one of the others. Just do it, Nicole. Do you want to be an actress or not?’

  I nodded dumbly, shaking the tension out of my shoulders. Phillip looked as if he would faint.

  ‘Phillip, take it from the top of the scene. Say the line like you’re angry with her, like you want to push her down onto the floor and make her shut her filthy whore’s mouth!’

  I shivered. Was it Blanche she was talking about, or me?

  Phillip swallowed and nodded to me. I nodded back. He delivered his line.

  Miss Lovegrove jumped up like a spectator at a dog fight. ‘Now, Phillip!’ she cried. ‘Pull the strap until it breaks, push her onto the ground, and press your knee into her back! Wrench the dress up over her head! Roll her over!’

  He lunged, teeth bared. His hand was cold as it closed around the top of my arm, pulling me roughly from the bed and onto the floor. His other hand roamed inside the dressing gown for the strap. He found it and pulled it, tugging the dressing gown down off my arms so hard that it hurt. He was doing as he was told—he rolled me and pinned me, and pulled the material over my head, pausing only for a millisecond to make eye contact, as though to give me fair warning. His eyes were blank, disengaged. I screamed. I screamed in real terror as the silk slipped over my mouth, gagging me. I gasped for air. My breasts sprung free, pressed into the sandy floor of the set. I didn’t dare look. We kept going. He eased up the weight of his knee on my back, and as he rolled me over, I clutched the bottle that was on its mark next to the bed and smashed it over the edge of the bedside table, harder than I had intended.

  I fought to deliver my line, hissing through my tears
. My voice was a ragged stream of breath. Phillip skittered back as I held the broken glass close to his face, as though for a moment he had forgotten it was all pretend.

  He grabbed me by the waist as I struggled, hoisting me over his shoulder, my bare breasts hanging free towards the ground as I screamed and cried. The bottle dropped to the floor and rolled away ‘Keep going, Phillip!’ cried the disembodied voice of Polly Lovegrove. ‘Drop her on the bed. Climb on top of her. Rear up. Beautiful! Unzip your trousers! Now press yourself between her legs. Slower! Dim the lights.’

  The room became quiet as the lights went out. All I could hear was my own sobbing, and Phillip’s heavy breathing.

  He hurried off me, zipping his pants as he went, and tripping over the edge of the bed. The broken glass crunched under his shoes. I hurried to pull the bed sheets around me before the lights went back up.

  She was standing by the edge of the stage. ‘Much better!’ she cried, applauding. She was looking at Phillip, but he’d angled his body towards the wall. ‘Are you all right, Phillip?’

  He sniffed and swiped at his eyes. ‘Yes.’

  I could feel the rivulets of snot hanging down the sides of my mouth. I couldn’t hold it back anymore. The fear, the shame, the shock; it all came out, and I wailed like a child.

  Her lips twitched. ‘Pull yourself together, Nicole.’

  * * *

  We ran it that way on opening night, and every night after that for a week. I reminded myself that the crowd was made up of people who could determine my future, the casting directors and agents of every company in the city. I wanted to be an actress. I did not invite my mother.

  On closing night, as we broke down the sets and swept the broken glass from the stage, I saw her for the last time. She was standing by the exit door, supervising the transport of the set pieces into the truck. I walked over to her before I knew what was happening.

  She turned and looked at me impatiently.

  ‘I guess I just want to know why,’ I said, folding my arms across my chest.

  She snorted. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Let me decide if I understand or not.’