She was disturbed by a man’s voice calling her name just as she made to slide the flat disc of her headphones into her ears.
“Bee! Bee Mycroft, isn’t it?” the unfamiliar voice called.
Instantly, the distant hum of the drone became audible again. The heat-seeking facility in the machine would have detected the second presence from some distance away and immediately begun to transmit the information back to the Central Information Centre from where they were controlled, on the top floors of what had once been Buckingham Palace.
Bee turned sharply, and sighed as the drone hovered overhead. The man caught up and fell into step with her, panting slightly from the exertion.
“Bee,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if it was you or not – I saw you coming out of the Tube – I’m Adam Wilson, by the way. Sorry if I gave you a shock there – not too sure if you remember me but I worked on –”
“High Society,” Bee interrupted with a hesitant smile. “You’re Head of the Costume Faculty, aren’t you?” Of course he was, she thought. Adam Wilson, of all people. Of all the coincidences! She had encountered him numerous times before, not that he’d remember, of course. And not that they’d actually ever spoken – but he was certainly someone that she had thought about frequently. It had been almost six months since they had worked alongside each other, preparing for the Weatherall’s Christmas musical, where all faculties of the college came together to stage a full-scale, West End style musical at a proper venue so that all of the disciplines could experience theatre for real.
It was also almost six months, then, since she had taken the plunge and pressed ‘send’ on the e-mail. When no response came at the time, she had been sure that she would never hear back from him. And while she had been disappointed, she had taken it as a firm sign that what she had sent him was never meant to be and had carried on plodding through the day to day.
“I don’t think that we were formally introduced, were we?” Adam continued.
Bee shook her head slightly, her steps slow and awkward beside him, unsure if they should continue walking or just stop which, thankfully, they eventually did when Adam thrust out his hand and she shook it.
“You sent me some designs,” he continued. “I’m not sure if I got back to you – it was all so frantic at the time and then straight after the Christmas break it’s into exam prep . . .”
He continued to speak while Bee registered what he had said. He’d received them. Her designs. Those sketches that she had done. And more than that, he’d said he had meant to get back to her – somehow knew who she actually was, remembered her. She was at once overwhelmed at this and baffled as to why this man – with his reputation – was chatting to her on the street near her house. She tried to retain what he said, all the while making a study of his face up close.
She mustn’t be intimidated by him, she told herself. For starters, he wasn’t all that much older than her – by the looks of him maybe mid-thirties? She was, after all, one of the oldest students on her course at twenty-five.
His hair was a sandy-blond colour, cut short at the sides, a little longer at the top. He was a little bit feminine, quite pretty actually, she observed. His accent was cut glass –‒ public school without question. He wore a pale blue shirt under a navy blazer over a pair of burgundy tight-fit jeans. His brown brogues were thick-soled. A tan-coloured satchel slung across his chest. All very consciously vintage. There was something old-fashioned about him in general, thought Bee. And terribly British. Terribly theatre, as the saying went at Weatherall’s. She forced herself to tune back in to what he was saying.
“. . . anyhow, I’ve always intended getting back to you about the sketches and I’ve just never quite managed it. Geoffrey Cameron pointed you out to me at the time – hard to miss you with the . . .”
His voice fell away and he pointed at her hair, the distinctive red curls now held tightly back in a ponytail.
Bee blushed with embarrassment. Her hair was filled with dust and paint, she knew. Her intention tonight had been to give it an overdue wash and then hide in her room for some peace and quiet while it dried. Her hand shot to her scalp and she swallowed hard, realising suddenly that her overall appearance – a pair of scruffy jeans and the ancient hooded fleece that her father used to wear – oh God, that he had wrapped Godiva in as a piglet, if she remembered correctly – was most certainly not what she would have worn had she been given a formal appointment with the man standing before her. Because this meeting – this chance encounter – was something that she had thought about often in the previous six months.
“I’ve been working on the end-of-year project,” she managed, looking down at her appearance, before her voice trailed away. She felt embarrassed at how she looked – she had dressed that morning, after all, with only heavy woodwork and lifting in mind. No one on her course dressed any differently from this. What was the point with all of the dirty, manual labour that it involved? Yet still she felt dowdy and dirty beside Adam. It struck her suddenly how very clean he was.
“Oh gosh, the Grecian thing that Gerry’s got a bee in his bonnet about?” finished Wilson with a smile.
Bee smiled back and nodded. She had thought it was just her who had noticed that her course head’s passion for Antigone verged on the obsessive.
“I had a peep in at the rehearsals at the weekend actually. Shall we?” asked Adam, indicating that they should walk again.
They fell into a slow step.
“It looks great,” he went on, “but I have to say that I hate it when Gerry gets his choice of the end-of-termer. He always picks something Theban and the costumes are such a bore – really nothing that my crew can get their teeth into. It doesn’t benefit them in the slightest when they go looking for actual work: ‘For my final college assignment I pinned some sheets’ sort of thing is all that they can come up with when it comes to the crunch.”
Bee smiled. “You should modernise it,” she suggested offhand, immediately regretting the words that had just come from her mouth. “Sorry – I didn’t mean to – I meant just for fun – punks, or Goths or something . . .” She flushed deeply, glancing at Wilson who was a good head taller than her – which was unusual. She was relieved to see that he was smiling.
“That’s not a bad idea,” he mused, glancing at her with a grin. “Not entirely original – I’ve done it before and brought it into the 1920s – but punk – now there’s a thought. Not very fashionable at all any more, punk. But what a challenge . . . all that lovely Vivienne Westwood stuff . . . Do you live around here somewhere?”
Bee nodded again. “Pilton Gardens.” She pointed in the direction of her home. “I share with two of my cousins. Only just at the moment it’s two of my cousins, my aunt, my uncle, their other two kids and a football-crazed lorry driver most of the time.” She wanted to kick herself. Why would Adam Wilson care about any of that? What did he want with her anyway?
He stopped walking suddenly. “Sounds like utter hell,” he remarked. “Look, to be serious for a moment – oh bloody thing!” He swatted at the ever-present police drone as if it were a fly, even though it was a good ten feet above his head. “I hate modern Britain, don’t you?”
Bee glanced upward at the device, which remained static. She wondered if it would register Wilson’s action as a threat and incur some follow-up? She glanced around nervously.
“I live around here too,” he continued. “Just on Pinegreen Road – I assume you know the King Harry pub?”
Bee nodded. “I grew up round here,” she said suddenly, feeling another irrational need to explain herself. “Used to be called The Gibraltar before . . . well . . . the whole Harry thing . . .”
“Shall we go for a drink there?” Wilson asked suddenly. “I mean . . . would you mind . . . I have something that I’d like to discuss with you. Sorry – all of this is a bit out of the blue. I’m a bit out of sync, having pursued you all the way from Fulham Broadway!”
Bee wasn’t sure if she saw correctly but
for a moment she could have sworn that Adam Wilson blushed.
It was contagious. She reddened, and lowered her head slightly so that he wouldn’t see. There was silence for a moment before Wilson spoke again, his voice serious and quiet: “It’s about your designs, the ones you sent . . . and . . . I can’t bloody hear myself think with that thing up there.” He pointed upwards at the drone.
Bee glanced at her watch. She would have preferred this invitation to come at a different time and in a different place. It was already half past eight and she looked like a builder’s labourer. But then again, no one was expecting her at home. And the football on TV was likely to last for another while. And how long would she have to wait for another invitation to discuss her sketches – her designs as he’d called them – with Adam Wilson of all people? She smiled nervously.
“I’d be happy to,” she replied, indicating that she would accompany him to the pub.
Wilson smiled, and stood back to let her lead the way.
* * *
Bee Mycroft lay on her bed that night with much to think about. Her tongue was still tangy from the Merlot but she didn’t want to clean her teeth, couldn’t face bumping into one of the other residents of the house on their way to the bathroom. And she needed to think, uninterrupted. Because the meeting with Adam Wilson couldn’t, in fact, have been more timely for her. It was something that she had wanted for a long time now, she realised, but had been afraid to acknowledge it. After all, her dad was paying huge amounts of money for the set design course at Weatherall’s – and she had sworn blind when she had finished at Taunton that it was what she definitely wanted to do as a career.
But more and more, from before High Society at Christmas, before ever she had sent Adam Wilson the speculative sketches of a pale blue dress with a tight bodice and flowing skirt, sparkling with hand-sewn diamante and pearl trimmings, before ever she had finally admitted it to herself, she had felt an inexorable creative pull in another direction. Toward clothing. Toward fabric and shape and bias and cut.
Bee wondered, if she had never found that sketchbook in the attic, might she have been content with hammering and painting and the occasional trompe l’oeil feature forever? But since the day she had come across it she had been intrigued. She had no idea who had placed it there, of course. Probably that American woman who’d lived there had left it behind and then forgotten all about it. But the sketches captivated her – all very out-of-date stuff, but beautiful. Elegant. Flattering. The smart styles and feminine appearance of the pieces sketched onto the same tall, short-haired figure. All of them an inspiration for the stuff she had started to doodle herself, and for the design that she had impulsively sent Adam Wilson.
He had loved it, he explained as they sat in the pub. It was head and shoulders above some of the stuff that his students were producing, he’d told her. However, he couldn’t have included it in the show, simply because she was from Set not Costume, and he was bound by college politics. But he hadn’t forgotten it and had since been intrigued by it, he said. She couldn’t transfer courses at Weatherall’s unfortunately, but if she was really interested, there were two other places that could work out for her. One being RADA, the other, however, a little less well-known. It was Bee’s turn to be intrigued as Adam spoke in hushed tones of a college she had never heard of before. A small, exclusive place, he said. It had just been an art school for years, but in recent times had begun to specialise more and more in fashion design. Eventually, it had grown in stature – there were big names in fashion on the board – all the oldsters, mused Bee, but big names indeed. Lady Beckham, Sir Gok Wan. There were rumours that Baroness McCartney might take up the chairmanship for the ’20-’21 academic year. Which was when they were to introduce a course that Adam felt might be perfect for Bee – a degree in Costume Fashion Design – clothes that were theatrical in essence, yet not for use in the theatre.
The course was revolutionary stuff, he explained. Something unprecedented – modules in history as well as design and also practical stuff like needlework – hard, hard slog. Terribly exclusive too – only people of real star quality could potentially gain a place. There wasn’t even an application process – applicants could only be nominated by professionals and experts in their field, and even then they would face subsequent rigorous screening before they would be whittled down to just twenty names in total.
Bee felt the world spin a little when Adam told her that he thought she had potential to be put forward as a candidate. That he thought that some of the quality that they required had shone through from the single piece that she had sent him – a quality that he hadn’t noticed in his other students, even though they were full-time prospective costume designers. He’d gone through their stuff over and over, he told her. And yet was constantly drawn back to her single garment.
Would she be interested? he had asked.
At first, the answer was no. How could Bee possibly gain a place in something so specialist when she hadn’t even studied basic costume design? Wouldn’t she be best to take the Costume course and then apply? she had argued, overwhelmed by what she was hearing.
He refuted her argument vehemently. There were costume designers nationwide who would fight tooth and nail to get a place on that course, he told her – his own students among them – but also designers with years of training and experience. But this course wasn’t just about costume design – it was about fashion, about trendsetting, about revolutionary design coupled with good old-fashioned mastery of skill – about instinct. It was about creating designers of the future, about lifting fashion out of the grey and black, shapeless rut that the obesity crisis of the last five years had created, and taking it back to being something glorious, something to be proud of, something that celebrated the human form. Bee listened, wide-eyed, as he spoke passionately, not just about the course, but about design, about fashion in general.
“I think you have it, Bee,” he stressed. “They want raw talent after all, not the same old ding-dong that’s being produced day in and day out on stages and high streets everywhere. They want art, not just expertise. They want Hirst, not paint-by-numbers.”
He had asked for more of her work. Which she had in spades. She sketched and drew every spare minute that she could. For a moment Bee sent a silent prayer to the heavens in thanks for the fact that the only time that she got to herself in her own home these days was by locking herself into her room at night and drawing.
Adam had also requested some of her needlework – it was the real tricky area, he told her. No one knew how to sew any more, of course. It wasn’t something that today’s designers had to worry about with the advances in computer stitching programs and robotics. But if she could actually, physically, push thread through fabric then something that simple could be the key difference between her and another applicant. It would be worth it, even though it might be difficult to get the old-style equipment, he had suggested. And costly for that matter.
Bee had smiled when he’d said it, however, and now, lying on her bed, she pushed herself far enough up on her elbows to glance at the table which stood by the window, bearing the old-fashioned sewing machine that she had also discovered hidden in the attic. She wasn’t sure how to use it yet but when she had opened the box it had seemed brand new, with instructions included, and she knew that she could find a good tutorial on the net. It was possible even that Auntie Betty might know how to work the damn thing, although she wasn’t entirely sure that she wished to bring that on herself just yet.
Bee flopped back down on her pillow and stretched her arms above her head, running her fingers through her hair. She’d have to wash it in the morning now. And maybe she’d root out those new jeans that she’d bought in the sales, actually. No harm in sprucing up her image a bit for college. With so much at stake, it might be a good idea not to look like a total navvy, as her dad liked to call her, when she next met Adam as arranged. Tomorrow. After classes, when they would get to work on putting together her applic
ation and her portfolio.
Only another six weeks of set design to go, she thought to herself. And then a whole summer to work hard on getting shortlisted for the course at Darvill’s. Adam had said he would help her – she wasn’t sure why, other than the fact that he saw real potential in her for something different. It could all be a complete wasted effort, of course, but worth a try, he said, to have a place on the very first year of a course that he felt would become incredibly prestigious in the fashion world, something that all budding creative designers would aspire to. He really seemed to believe that a place in Darvill’s College would be something special and he insisted that she had the talent, raw as it was.
Bee smiled. What a night, she thought to herself. New possibilities – what a lucky path that trip to the attic had set her on all those months ago. Like someone was looking after her.
Silently, she mouthed another ‘thanks’ heavenward. She had always avoided what she called Rowan’s hippy tendencies, but had secretly agreed that showing the universe occasional gratitude couldn’t do any harm. After all, what else could have somehow, fortuitously, brought Adam Wilson into her life?
Chapter 47
August 2020
Bee and Adam
Why? Why did Rowan keep on doing that? Throwing those looks? Dumping plates on the table with a clatter? Frowning? Making those remarks? It was so unbelievably embarrassing.
Bee consoled herself with the fact that Adam didn’t seem to notice. That instead he sat with his attention fully focused on Ed Mycroft who seemed oddly animated for a change, fully embracing the rare opportunity to talk at length about his animation processes. From what she could hear of it, Bee imagined that the conversation would bore her to tears – what little of it she could understand. But Adam was rapt, nodding in the right places, making appreciative gasps when required, asking interested questions. Bee couldn’t take her eyes off him for a moment and a warm smile spread across her lips as she thought about how perfect he was, framed golden in a Somerset sunset as they sat around the dinner table in the fading light.
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