No Room for Secrets by Joanna Lumley

Author:Joanna Lumley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2004-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Bedroom

I had the actor’s dream again the other night. I am standing at a large make-up mirror in a tatty dressing room. Beside me is one other actor but there are three reflections in the glass. My face is deathly white and an unseen person’s hand is drawing a long red slash over my right eyebrow up to my temple; my eyes are kohl-blacked. Now I am standing in the wings looking on to the stage. The curtain has gone up and the lights are on but the play has not started. It is to be a version of L’Après-midi d’un faune. I look down and see that I am in a long pink gauze dress covered with paper flowers. The stage has been designed as a grotto, with butterflies, ferns and a real waterfall. I realize that I am about to make an entrance.

Grabbing the stage manager by the arm, I whisper, ‘I can’t remember my first line.’ She shoots me a scornful glance. ‘In the herbal…’ she prompts in a hiss. I look back at the stage. I have never even seen the ballet; I can’t imagine what the play could be about. ‘I will have to go on with the book,’ I whisper. ‘Please get me the book.’ She makes an impatient gesture and hurries away on plimsolled feet. The stage is very bright and still; I can hear the audience moving restlessly. Mesmerized, I start to walk out of the shadows, my long skirt clenched up in my shaking hands. Flash! I am bolt upright in bed, awake and trembling, the veins in my neck standing out like guy-ropes. The bedclothes are bunched in my fists and I am soaked in sweat.

There are variations on this dream. Sometimes I am locked out of the stage door in the street, knowing my entrance cue is about to be spoken on stage inside the packed theatre. More often than not I can’t even find out what play we’re about to perform, let alone what character I’ll be playing. I’m always pleading to be allowed to glance, just glance for a second, at the book to give me the roughest idea of the text. The other people in the dream are always hostile and never meet my eye, always busy with something more important.

In dreams, I’ve woken up naked in Selfridges’ window in the morning rush hour. I’ve stood up to make a speech and all my clothes have fallen off. Everyone has naked dreams; do nudists, I wonder?

Q. This is a big room – long windows all along one side, an open fireplace, wooden blinds, a huge Moroccan painted wood chair, a terracotta bust by Karin Jonzen of a woman contemplating, books on tables and on a shelf behind the bed. The curtains look home-made…

A. They are. I’ve got a sewing machine and I can make simple things like unlined curtains. Because I can’t be bothered to be too exact the hems are all slightly different lengths, but that really isn’t going to bring down the government.

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