Merely Players by J. M. Gregson Page A

your Alec Dawson series. We have good contacts both here and in America. I suggest I conduct some exploratory work on your behalf and then come back to you. You will need to sever your ties with your present agent to facilitate this process.’
    â€˜That seems a sensible approach.’
    â€˜There will be no fee at this stage. If we eventually secure you an acceptable offer, I would expect you to sign up with the agency at that point.’
    â€˜That is eminently acceptable.’ Adam found himself trying to use phrases Gilbey might have used to him. It was always a temptation for an actor; sometimes the last person you wanted to present was yourself.
    â€˜This preliminary procedure will probably take a week to ten days. May I ring you then at the number you gave me?’
    â€˜Yes. And only at that number, please. It is my home number. But I would prefer that you spoke only to me about this.’
    â€˜Good. That is understood.’ Gilbey made a final note and stood up. ‘I look forward to doing business with you, Mr Cassidy. And I hope ours will be a long association.’
    Adam tried to control his elation as the lift bore him back to earth. He had at that moment no knowledge of how long this new association would last.

FIVE
    A dam Cassidy had secured his first small role after leaving drama school in 1990 in a revival of An Inspector Calls . The lead part had been played by Dean Morley.
    Dean was only five years older than Adam and he had taken the raw young actor under his wing. He had helped him with the delivery of his lines. At Adam’s request, he had taken him through his one major speech in private, showing him how he could make a greater impact if he could make himself take it more slowly. You could give greater impact to ordinary phrases if you delivered them after a pause, could make dialogue seem better than it was if you made it important to yourself. They must have talked about such things at drama school, though Adam couldn’t remember it. In any case, this was the first practical application of it for him. He had learned the lesson eagerly at the time, and found it still useful with the occasionally stilted dialogue of the Call Alec Dawson series.
    Dean had continued to help Adam in his first few years in the business, putting in a mention for him with casting directors, recommending him to the agent who secured him a tiny part in a low-budget British film, and, most important of all, using a contact to get the eager young man his first small speaking roles in television. It was not entirely altruistic, of course: few things are in a cut-throat and overcrowded profession. Morley realized that a young man with Cassidy’s looks and common sense might make progress, and eventually be able to reciprocate these favours.
    More immediately, the twenty-two-year-old Adam Cassidy was a young Adonis and Dean Morley was homosexual. He was not one of the prancing queers more common in fiction than in fact. He was never aggressive and always discreet. Nor was he stupid; he saw Adam giving attention to the young women who were always at hand in green rooms and could not ignore it. But there was always a chance that he might be bisexual; there were many precedents for that, in a business which seemed to redistribute hormones copiously and ambiguously. Dean Morley was an optimist.
    He was also well used to refusals. When Adam decisively rejected his advances, he shrugged his shoulders and got on with the acting life. There were always other possibilities and Dean exploited them cheerfully. Life wasn’t to be taken too seriously, he told everyone. He maintained a boisterous exterior and trusted that no one would see the quiet desperation which besets the lives of all men.
    In any case, his early kindnesses to Adam Cassidy were certainly not wasted. As the younger man’s television successes rapidly surpassed those of Morley, he remembered those early days. Dean found that a