After a year of the Stage Management course at the Drama College, during the second year Alec found himself on secondment as Assistant Stage Manager with a small theatre company called "The Ensemble."
The company had a home base in an old church that had been converted into a theatre, but much of their time was spent on the road performing in provincial towns. Had they been reliant on ticket sales for their income it is doubtful if the company would have lasted a month. As it was, a State Government grant enabled them to carry on.
The members of the company were mainly young people, the actors being graduates from a university school of drama. They were a wild free living bunch and especially on tour there was much hopping from bed to bed. The director, herself a fairly recent graduate from drama school, would have had difficulty in controlling her unruly crew but for one member of the company, Rachel.
Rachel was the stage manager and something of a disciplinarian. She was about thirty five years old, and this made her at least twelve years older than the next eldest member of the company. She was an odd personality mix in that her demeanour often made her seem to be nearer forty five than thirty five, yet physically she looked no more or perhaps even less than her actual age.
She had long dark hair that was always drawn back severely and her aquiline nose gave her a slightly hawkish appearance. Her mouth might have been considered sensual if her lips had been more relaxed, and when she did give a rare smile it exposed beautiful even white teeth.
It was her eyes that drew most attention. They were a deep green colour, slightly slanted and when fixed on you gave the impression that she saw right into your depths. Many a recalcitrant young actor had quailed before that gaze.
Her body was slender and supple with breasts that seemed a little too large for her slim frame and they usually moved provocatively, unbridled beneath a loose fitting shirt; and the shirt with jeans was her almost invariable attire. As for her legs, since they were always clad in jeans no one was sure what they might look like.
In my own mind I have often likened her to a black panther I once saw in the zoo. It was looking out through the bars of its cage, seemingly at peace, yet one could sense the danger that lay behind its steady gaze. Rachel had a similar look and like the panther seemed somehow caged, though what might constitute the bars no one knew.
I may have drawn too harsh a picture of Rachel. Stern though she may have been she was the one who bound up the cuts and bruises; it was she who would nurse a sick member of the company; if one of the company should have the misfortune to be hospitalised, it was Rachel who was the first to visit them. It was even she who would go to the pharmacy to buy ointment for haemorrhoids for one member of the company too embarrassed to go for him self.
In short, Rachel was something of a stern but caring matriarch within that youthful company.
On first meeting her Alec had two simultaneous reactions. The first was when she extended her hand to shake his, saying, "Rachel Conway," and he felt the strength in her grip. "This is a woman to be wary of," he thought, and although Alec stood at least four inches taller than Rachel, he felt himself to be overawed by her.
The second reaction was extremely odd. Alec felt as if he knew her – that he had met or seen her somewhere before. He was not alone in this feeling for Rachel said, "Haven't we met somewhere?"
They went thought the routine of, "was it this place or that." but could come to no conclusion. They finally agreed that they had not met before.
Rachel, always tending to get straight down to business said, "You'll be working with me. The first thing you can do is sweep the stage and then put the urn on for tea and coffee." It is a strange phenomenon but however many times a stage is swept, it still needs sweeping.
Alec, proud of his achievements in the first year of the course felt somewhat irritated at being given such lowly tasks, but in the following weeks and months he was to learn the things about stage management they did not teach at the college.
He soon discovered that Rachel was always the first to arrive at the theatre and the last to leave. Most of the moving, packing and loading was left to her and Alec. After a hard day's "slogging" as Rachel called it, they still had to "call the show" at night. The impression was that Rachel had only work and sleep in her life, and that began to apply to Alec as well.
This leads to the matter of Rachel's personal life. While other members of the company copulated freely with each other, each to their own particular sexual bent, Rachel had never been know to engage in sexual activity.
A couple of the bolder males had made approaches to her. Her response was along the lines of, "Go away and play with someone your own age."
The males having failed in their attempt to inveigle themselves into Rachel bed, or alternatively to get her into there's, a female actor tried her luck and got the same response.
Thus the sex life of Rachel became a mystery and the source of much conjecture. Perhaps she had a lover somewhere, but how did she find the time to be with him or her? Since she always worked from dawn till well after dusk, and as they were so often on the road, it seemed impossible that she had a paramour tucked away somewhere.
Another idea was that Rachel was a sort of sexual neuter; that she didn't experience sexual desire. It was this view that tended to prevail.
Under Rachel's firm tutelage Alec was gradually given increasing amounts of responsibility until on occasions Rachel let him call a show on his own, but still under her watchful eyes. From being somewhat apprehensive about her Alec gradually learned to appreciate those softer qualities that Rachel expressed in caring for her little flock of miscreants.
Whilst Rachel never talked about her personal life, Alec, for the first time away from home for any length of time, used to confide in Rachel. He talked about his parents, revealing that he was an adopted child, and even though his adopting parents could not have been, as he put it, "more loving," he often wondered about his real parents; who they were? Where they were? Why had they put him out for adoption?
Over lunch time talks Alec covered many aspects of his life, his hopes and ambitions, and was a little boastfully about his female conquests. Rachel made no comment, but thought it odd that despite the fact there was a surplus of females in the company, Alec did not seem to be bedding any of them.
For her part Rachel, as I have said, did not reciprocate when it came to the personal. When she did talk it was almost invariably about work. It was therefore a surprise, when the company was performing in one of the inland mining towns, Rachel announced that her parents lived there.
I don't think any one in the company ever thought of Rachel as having parents. They seemed to think that Rachel must have arrived on this earth fully grown – she was always there and always would be there, to comfort and admonish, and since there was no need for anyone to admonish Rachel, neither did she need anyone's comfort.
There seem to be people like that. They go on year after year serving others yet never seeming to be served them selves. As it is said, they get "taken for granted." They seem to have no needs or desires of their own. One cannot picture them in the loving embrace of sexual intercourse, and even if they have children one feels it must have been pregnancy by divine fait accompli. Thus the view that Rachel was a neuter prevailed.
Alec was even more surprised when Rachel invited him to go with her on a visit to her parents. The visit was to be on a Sunday afternoon when for once Rachel and Alec did not have to get things ready for a Monday move.
Why Rachel wanted him to go with her was a mystery to Alec. When he rather cautiously asked why, Rachel simply replied, "I'd like you to meet them and them you." Knowing Rachel as he did Alec decided to leave the matter there, and since the town was not exactly raging with entertainment on a Sunday afternoon, he accepted the invitation.
Further surprises were in store for Alec. On meeting her parents Rachel showed more emotion than he had ever seen in her before. There was hugging and kissing and even some mother and daughter tears as they enquired after each other's well-being.
Mother was a very emotional type of woman and was physically an older version of Rachel, with the same handsome looks, but without the stern exterior. In that respect Rachel more nearly resembled her father, a taciturn miner.
As they greeted each other Alec stood in the background until Rachel came to introduce him. As Alec looked at them and they at him, something like a little tingling electrical charge seemed to jump between them. There was a second of recognition, and then it was gone. Mother kissed him on the cheek and father shook hands with a grip like a vise.
Alec felt glad to be in a normal home again after weeks of motel living. He missed his parents and felt himself embraced by Rachel's parents. At one time Alec found himself alone with the mother who said, "I'm so glad Rachel has got a nice friend; it's been very hard for her."
