Stage Mum

by Lisa Gee

  ‘Can I wait in the car?’ asked Dora helpfully.

  We both went to wait in the car. I studied the route. I turned the engine on and then switched it off. I checked my make-up in the little mirror and wished I hadn’t: somehow, like my dress and trousers, the different parts of my face didn’t seem to quite match either. I turned the key again, and turned the car round to face the right way. ‘Are we going without Daddy?’ Dora asked.

  ‘Here he comes,’ I said.

  Laurie double-locked the front door, walked slowly over to the car, opened the back door, slowly and carefully put a spare pair of shoes in the footwell and a precisely folded spare jumper on the back seat. Then he took off his jacket, folded it carefully, put it down next to the jumper and got into the passenger seat. ‘Hurry up,’ I hissed, scowling at him. ‘Do up your seatbelt.’ Then I realised that I’d forgotten to bring the bread, jumped out of the car, ran back to the house, opened the door, found it, then realised I’d forgotten a jacket, ran to the coat cupboard in the kitchen, dithered over which one to bring, grabbed one at random, double locked the front door, sprinted to the car and hung the jacket on the back of my seat, from where it fell crumpled on to the floor. I left it there and strapped myself in. Laurie, to his credit, said nothing and barely even smirked.

  It was a quick and easy journey, and we arrived at Tracy’s house in plenty of time to help out. Tracy’s mum Janet, Pippa and Piers were already there, Pippa and Janet hard at work chopping things. Tracy set me to work preparing salad. There were four lasagnes – two meat, two veggie – already cooking and the same number of pizzas ready to go in once the lasagnes were cooked. Then there were drinks to prepare: we mixed massive jugs of something Christine’s mum, Wendy, suggested, called River Thames (Coke and orange juice), and a basic virgin colada – pineapple juice and coconut milk. Laurie got stuck in washing glasses and I started putting out crisps. ‘Keep the sweet things for later,’ said Tracy sensibly. The sweet things included twenty-four individual brown-paper-package-tied-up-with-string cakes, decorated with icing-sugar red roses, each with a delicately placed raindrop on it, that Connie had sent for the children.

  The kids and their families started to arrive. Carol, Steve and Michael brought their karaoke machine. The younger children ran around shrieking, hugging each other and playing. The older kids helped themselves and each other to non-alcoholic cocktails, complete with paper umbrellas, hugged and chatted. The parents gossiped, drank, helped out in the kitchen and photographed and videoed the proceedings. All nineteen of the children, plus family members came – even those who’d originally thought they wouldn’t be able to make it. The karaoke machine proved a great hit. At the time, David Ian was working on the reality TV shows for Grease in both the US and UK. The soundtrack went on to the CD machine and all the kids who knew the songs sang, clustered around the microphone. Dora got the bug, and it wasn’t until Laurie and I took her to see Hairspray six months later and I downloaded the soundtrack that we were allowed to eject her Grease CD from the car stereo. I got slightly fed up of listening to it, but reflected that her Grease obsession had, at least, spared us the hell that is High School Musical … There was dancing. And a quick speech – David was away, but had left a letter for Tracy to read to the kids, talking about how hard they’d all worked and how well they’d done.

  And then, suddenly, it was five o’clock and time to go home. After some tidying up and a lot of hugging, we left and drove home, and got there quickly enough for Dora to have an early night before her last show.

  SO LONG, FAREWELL

  BEFORE DORA WENT to bed on Sunday night, we checked that she’d written all the cards for her friends performing the following evening and that we’d wrapped the presents. She was a bit uncertain about what to write, so we’d discussed a few alternatives: I’ve loved working with you, good luck for the future; I’ll miss you; See you soon, I hope! I had supervised closely. When she’d been doing the good luck cards, the spellings and sentiments had been completely straightforward. But goodbye messages felt more complex. And after the Mother’s Day card she’d given me the previous year, across which, in her best joined-up handwriting, she’d carefully formed the words ‘I Love you so much Mummy so I send you a speshil mesig. Your the beast,’ I thought with these cards I’d best keep an eye. We didn’t want to accidentally spoil any friendships or cause any unnecessary upset.

  Laurie took her to school on Monday morning as I had to go to a meeting and interview some people on video. I dashed home later – via Marks and Spencer, where I bought a bunch of roses, bathed and changed and, having made sure that I had all the presents and cards for everyone performing that night, grabbed a suitably huge wodge of tissues, carefully dethorned the roses to ensure the flower-throwing experience didn’t go horribly wrong, and collected Dora from school slightly early. This was partly because it was a special night and I wanted her to have the chance to squeeze every last gram of enjoyment out of it, and partly because I wanted the chance to squeeze every last gram of enjoyment out of it. There was also a video edit to approve en route, supper to eat with all the other children performing that night and their families, and tickets for me, Laurie and my dad to collect from the box office.

  We rushed home so Dora could change into other clothes and went straight into town. I asked her how she was feeling and she shrugged. I suspected that it didn’t feel like the end yet, that it wouldn’t until later that evening, when she was experiencing rather than anticipating it.

  The editing took slightly longer than I had hoped, then we ran to the restaurant where we were meeting everyone else. A few of the others had already arrived and so we found places to sit – me at one end with some grown-ups, and Dora at the other end with her friends. We ordered quickly, as the kids didn’t have long before they had to be at the stage door. While we were waiting for the food, I decided to dash down and pick up the tickets. I could have waited until we took the children down to the stage door, but I was tense with worry. What if it was too late to pick them up and the box office thought I wasn’t coming and sold them to someone else? Anyway, there should be enough time between ordering and the food arriving to fit it in, and as Dora didn’t care whether I was there or not and there were plenty of responsible grown-ups around to keep an eye on her, off I went, dashing down Upper Regent Street, across Oxford Circus, into Argyll Street, into the box office, out of the box office, back across Oxford Circus, etc., back to my risotto, and a wave of embarrassment as it was Lynn’s birthday and almost everyone else had bought her a birthday present and I hadn’t (because I didn’t know it was her birthday) and because Adrianna was there (which I didn’t know she would be) and I hadn’t brought her present with me either.

  In a scrummage of wrapping paper, the children exchanged and opened their gifts, forgot where they’d put some of the things, found them, thanked each other and ate some of their dinner and all of their ice cream as quickly as they could. Lynn and I volunteered to herd them all down to the theatre. Adrianna and her dad came too. It was raining and we were a bit late, which, naturally, everyone apart from me was completely relaxed about.

  When we reached the stage door, Russ took me aside to say that Jo Hawes would be emailing to confirm that they did want Dora to come back the next weekend and the one after. I called Dora over and let him tell her there and then, hoping that knowing she was coming back for more might mean she would cry less that night. She jumped up and down ecstatically. Her wish had come true and she’d be doing her last performance with Molly-May! I was delighted, partly because she was so happy, but also because it meant that her last show wouldn’t be anyone else’s last show. That would, I hoped, make it all less traumatic, as there would be no mass hysteria, just one child wailing quietly and inconsolably. There was another up side for Dora. In a surfeit of jamminess, she would get to be at all three teams’ farewell parties. The joy of this was not lost on her. ‘Mummy! I’ll get three goes at the chocolate fountain! Three goes!’

 
Lynn, Darren, Adrianna and I waved the kids off and went back to Piccolino’s to finish our dining experience and collect all our kids’ presents. There were cuddly toys and painstakingly handmade pots and fridge magnets, jewellery – Jack and his family had bought the girls silver heart locket pendants with Sound of Music 2007 engraved on them – and pens and chocolates. A lot of people had gone to a lot of trouble. We sipped liqueurs and dunked biscotti, then paid the bill and made our way to the theatre, laden with flowers for throwing, our children’s gifts and enough tissues to mop up a melted polar ice cap.

  I met up with Laurie, who was grabbing a quick snack in Café Libre. My father joined us there. I put Dora’s bag of gifts in the car and hovered around the table where they were both sitting, clasping our tickets firmly, checking the time on my phone (I don’t possess an actual watch) every fifteen seconds. There were still twenty minutes to go before the show started and it would take us precisely two minutes to reach the theatre and another two to get to our seats. Laurie was reaching the end of his snack in a sensible, relaxed, unhurried sort of way – perfectly reasonable given that no hurry was called for. I, obviously, didn’t see it like that and hopped around nagging him to get going. He ignored me manfully, until we were in the theatre and I calmed down.

  We were sitting to the far right of the stage, in row A. I leaned over into the orchestra pit to say hello to Ros, whose keyboard-playing position was just in front of us. Then the voice of Nick Bromley, company manager, invited us to switch off our mobile phones and welcome that night’s conductor, and the lights went down. We mums waved tissues at each other and made sad-but-happy faces. The music swelled. My smile spread. This wasn’t, as it turned out, the last time I would watch Dora in The Sound of Music, but it was the last time I would do so from the front row, with a whole bunch of friends, making eye contact as we recognised the particular idiosyncratic touches each child brought to their role. Grace’s hand movements during the ‘Do-Re-Mi’ scene. John’s facial expressions when all the children end up in Maria’s bedroom during the thunderstorm. Dora’s ferocious shoulder-shrug when Grace, during the concert scene, tried to steer her gently to where she should have been standing, and Dora, absolutely convinced she was in the right place, refused to go anywhere. At the tear-jerking point in the play where the children hug their father for the first time, several of the kids in the cast actually started crying, which set off the mums.

  My contact lenses weren’t quite as salted up as they were the first time I saw the show – but it was close. At the end, there was the usual standing ovation, and we all stood up and threw flowers. One of mine hit Jack on the head – thank goodness I’d dethorned. Most of the children – and all of the parents – were in tears during the bow.

  By the time Russ led the kids out of the theatre, the tears had evolved into full-scale sobbing. Except for John, who was nonchalantly dry-eyed, the von Trapp children were bawling. Which was slightly ironic, as half of them weren’t actually finishing that night – both Grace (Brigitta) and Yasmin (Marta) were continuing through a second run and Dora had another six shows to go. But it was about the team splitting up as much as the experience ending. All three teams of children had bonded closely together. It wasn’t only the show they’d miss. It was the intense friendships that had, inevitably, developed in the working environment. Laurie, Dad and I let the sobbing Dora hug everyone theatrically, then led her off to the car, told her she’d done fantastically and handed over her pain au chocolat.

  The following Saturday – Dora’s final performance with Geese team – saw a slightly reduced sobfest. As Olivia (Brigitta) was, like her little sister Alicia, doing a second run and scheduled to do too many shows that week, Grace was brought in to cover for her on the Friday and Saturday shows. ‘It was my last ever show with Grace,’ Dora cried tragically en route to the car, instantly forgiving her older stage-sister for trying to steer her into position. She perked up, though, when I told her that I had, on her behalf, ordered the video camera she’d decided to buy, and that she could take it to the party the following weekend.

  Although Dora was very tired and in need of a break, I was glad she’d got to do these few extra shows. It gave her a chance to say goodbye to all the other children properly: the Gretls who she was covering for came to the parties, so she got to see them too. It made a proper end to the experience. Closure. For me too. Also, it meant that she finished only a couple of days before we were due to go on holiday with her cousins, so we’d be on to something else fun and exciting straight away.

  The intervening week was full of school, dance lessons and early nights with me reading from Harry Potter (we were now on … and the Goblet of Fire). Then, suddenly, it was the end of term and her final weekend on the show. She was very excited about taking her video camera in with her. She also had a bag of gifts and cards for the Kettles team and the grown-ups, and my little digital camera, which I surreptitiously asked Russ to please ask a grown-up to take some photos on.

  Because we had so much to carry, I’d driven into town that day. We were, as usual, early, and as I couldn’t find an extortionately expensive parking space nearby, I waited on the single yellow line by the stage door. Molly-May started handing out her cards and presents. She and her mum Helen had made an impressive card. It was an OK! magazine cover pastiche, entitled Oi!, featuring pictures of the children: one from the press launch, the one of Kettles and Dora singing ‘The Lonely Goatherd’ that was displayed on the front of the theatre, and two from the end-of-run party, with the children all bundled in colourfully together. There was also one of Molly-May, looking fetching costumed up as Marta, with Russ, also looking fetching costumed up as Marta. The ‘headlines’ read ‘ORIGINAL CAST VON TRAPP CHILDREN SAD TO LEAVE THE SOUND OF MUSIC’; ‘Such fun from the very beginning!’ and ‘On and off stage we’re just like a real family’. The one under the picture of Molly and Russ read ‘The fun we’ve had with chaperones’, and had two exclamation marks. Molly-May had also hand-painted eggcups for her friends – Dora’s was dotty and said ‘Gretl’ on it. I popped these, and the other gifts and cards that were distributed before Russ came out to collect the kids, into the car, which I had to keep checking in case there were any traffic wardens in the area. By some unfeasible stroke of luck, I’d managed to reach the end of the run without incurring a single parking ticket. I didn’t want to ruin my unblemished record on the last day.

  After the kids had gone in, I found somewhere to park and went to give a small ‘thank you’ box of choccies to the box office staff and to ask Alan if there was any chance of one standing ticket for that evening’s performance. I didn’t want a seat: I’d already done the big-last-night-throwing-flowers thing, but I did want to be there to watch Dora’s last show. No problem. He printed one out for me. I walked round the corner, bought a final pain au chocolat and drove home.

  That night Dora’s voice was uncharacteristically quiet, croaky and wobbly, but she just about held it together through the performance. I stood alone, leaning on my usual railing – the parents of all the others in the team would be there on Monday for their final night – enjoying the show but tearing up as waves of sadness about this fairytale experience being properly over washed gently over me. Never mind how Dora felt, I would, I knew, miss this like anything. My inner stage mother wasn’t even speaking to me. She was in a complete strop, because I’d let Dora’s time in the spotlight – her time in the reflected glory – come to an end. How could I deprive the two of them of all this pleasure? What was the matter with me that I thought it was time for Dora to stop? Yes, okay, she was a bit tired and she was doing her SATs next term and she was only seven. But so what? She was a pro. It was her thing and I should just let her carry on and do this all the time. Education? Smeducation. She’s clever enough, and if she decides later that she’s missed out, she can always go back to learn some more. Let her live for the moment!

  At the end of the show, I rushed to the front and cheered her and waved. When I collected
Dora from the stage door, she handed me a carrier bag full of the shoes she wore on stage. She was sad, but after she’d said goodbye to all her friends, I gave her a big hug and the pain au chocolat and told her that if she liked, we could wait so she could say goodbye to all the adult cast. We hung around and waited. She said goodbye to everyone. There were lots more hugs. We left after eleven, when Connie Fisher and Lesley Garrett came out, and suggested she could come back and be Marta when she was a bit older.

  ‘Can I?’ she asked me excitedly.

  ‘We’ll see,’ I said. ‘Did you use your video camera?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Lots. I was crying before the show and in the interval.’

  ‘I thought so,’ I said. ‘Your voice sounded a bit croaky.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t cry on stage.’

  EPILOGUE: WHAT DORA DID NEXT

  Went on holiday.

  Did well in her Key Stage 1 SATs and Grade 1 ballet exam.

  Played with friends old and new.

  Restarted piano lessons (we adopted my Auntie Ruth’s underused piano and all three of us are learning).

  Participated enthusiastically in a singing and dancing summer school at Redroofs, then in a local am-dram panto.

  Felt different.

  ‘COME BACK RIGHT NOW OR YOU WON’T BE GETTING AN AGENT!’ probably wasn’t the most appropriate thing to shout down a crowded street after a child who’d scooted too far ahead, but it worked, even though we both knew it was an empty threat. A few months after the end of her run, I took her to meet June Rose, Molly-May’s grandma and the founder and head of Redroofs Theatre School. They signed her to their agency. Dora has an entry in Spotlight, featuring two smiley black and white photos of her (with foliage) taken by my dad. People have often asked me if she’s going to do anything else.