Covent Garden in the Snow

by Jules Wake

  ‘I’ve no idea. In fact, that’s the weird thing, he’s not mentioned anyone recently.’ I cast my mind back over recent conversations. There’d been no clues. ‘Not someone from the orchestra, I know that much.’ Vince had a fondness for percussionists and brass instrument players. Whenever a touring orchestra came, he was sure to find a new friend but they only stayed for a brief while before moving on to the next venue.

  I squeezed her arm. ‘We’ve given him the safe sex talk enough times, all we can do is be here to pick up the pieces.’ Both of us wished he could find ‘the one’.

  ‘Funny he’s not said much about it, if it is a date.’ Jeanie put down her mug and stared thoughtfully over at him. I could tell by his studied inspection of his mobile phone that he knew he was being talked about.

  ‘Maybe he’s growing up?’ I suggested.

  A beat later, we both burst out laughing and Vince looked up, his curiosity antennae instantly tuned and mouthed ‘What?’ across the room.

  ‘Yeah and I’m going to buy me a pair of unicorns,’ Jeanie responded.

  With another fifteen minutes before I had to head downstairs to the IT department, I sneaked over to the computer and quickly logged onto my email. I just wanted to check there hadn’t been any other emails resulting from my virus.

  Who was I kidding? I wanted to respond to Redsman’s email. He clearly hadn’t liked my suggestion for a book about Arsenal. Jeanie was still out of sight, so I quickly typed a response.

  To: Redsman@hotmail.co.uk

  From: Matilde@lmoc.co.uk

  Re: Subject: !!!!!

  It could be my dead body we’re talking about. I’m just off to see his royal ITness, the Prince of Darkness, the corporate bod who lives down in the lower ground floor. I’m to be given lessons on the correct use of computers. They weren’t best pleased about the virus.

  I’m still a bit confused how it got to you … lots of people here received it. You should see my pile of loo rolls. Think they’re a bunch of comedians. Oh, how I haven’t laughed.

  Must go. If you never hear from me again, send in a search party to dig up the basement.

  M

  P.S. Liverpool will be lucky to win the match this week let alone anything else.

  I checked my watch, still a couple of minutes to go. I wandered over to Vince’s cubby hole. The make-up team each had one. It was our workspace and consisted of a shelving area, a long work bench and a chair, along with a small chest of drawers.

  ‘Hi Vince,’ I said pointedly when he didn’t look up.

  ‘Oh, hi,’ he said, all smiles and fake bright eyes, as he finally lifted his head, as if he’d had no idea I was there.

  I sighed. ‘Will you wish me luck?’

  Vince’s mouth pulled down at either corner. ‘Glad it’s you and not me.’

  ‘Yeah, he’s too bloody good looking for his own good,’ I said dispiritedly.

  ‘Lordy girly, are we talking about the same man. Good looking?’

  ‘Yes, don’t you think so?’

  ‘You need to get some new glasses. He’s not a patch on Felix.’ Vince sounded quite aggrieved.

  ‘I’m not planning to be unfaithful or anything, I just noticed he was,’ I shrugged, ‘you know, rather easy on the eye.’

  ‘Average, darling. Average.’ Vince turned up his nose but kept his eyes down, his fingers nimbly plaiting an intricate hairpiece. ‘Unless you like that sort of thing, I guess.’ Through his strategically ripped jeans, his knee was jumping up and down with the frantic energy of teeth chattering. ‘Shouldn’t you be leaving?’

  ‘Are you alright Vince?’

  ‘Fine, why?’ he snapped.

  ‘Got anything nice planned this weekend? What are you up to tonight?’ I was half hoping that he might be free. With an early finish, I didn’t fancy being on my own in the flat again.

  ‘I’m going away.’

  ‘You didn’t say anything about that before.’

  Vince pouted. ‘What? Now you’re like the social life police? I don’t have to tell you everything. It’s called a private life for a reason.’

  I took a step back.

  Vince shared anything and everything about his vibrant social life.

  I put my hands up in defence, said ‘Sorry’ and got the hell out of Dodge.

  Making a strategic retreat, I realised that now I was going to be late.

  I skidded to a halt in the doorway to find Marcus ready and waiting, not quite drumming his fingers on his desk. There were, however, two mugs of coffee sitting there.

  ‘Here you go.’

  I inhaled the delicious scent as he pushed one towards me.

  He’d definitely earned a brownie point or two with his coffee. ‘Sorry I’m late.’

  ‘I expected it. I guess I should be grateful you turned up at all.’ The rueful shrug accompanying his words robbed them of any malice. A simple statement of fact which irked me even more.

  ‘I do have a job of my own.’

  ‘I know, so I’ll try and be quick today. And this will help make that job easier so that you’ll have more time. Ready for your first lesson?’

  ‘Not really. But in for a penny in for a pound.’

  His green eyes danced with sudden amusement, transforming his face which made my body go into silly mode with my hormones hijacking any common sense and sending my pulse into overdrive. Bloody hormones. What did they know? I didn’t even like him that much.

  Although I had to admit, it struck me how healthy and wholesome he looked. I might have likened him to the Prince of Darkness but he was clearly a damn sight more used to sunshine than I was. It struck me that I spent too much time with either stick thin dancers or singers with healthy diaphragms and sturdy chests and people whose working hours were principally after dark. The LMOC was my whole world and what a world it was. Most of my friends worked here. Jeanie had worked in theatre for years and had a million and one amazing stories. She’d worked with everyone who was anyone. Vince had come from provincial theatre and had less experience but had lived and breathed theatre life, so had a huge acquaintance of set designers, sound engineers and props people. My friends in the orchestra, Philippe, Guillaume, Karla and Angela had lived all over the world and came from different countries and cultures and Leonie and Sasha from the wardrobe department were slightly alternative and very bohemian. It was easy for us all to stick together because not only did we have the theatre in common, we all worked similar shift patterns.

  ‘Have a seat.’ He pointed to the one next to him and I realised he changed the configuration of his desk so that we could now share his monitor, with me sitting at the end of his desk. ‘You never know you might learn something.’

  I sank into the chair with all the petulance of a teenager. I didn’t like the way he wrong-footed me. It made me feel out of place. This was my world. My place. I hated feeling like this. It made me act even more childishly.

  ‘I do know. I won’t learn anything useful because it’s not necessary.’

  He leaned back and folded his arms and lifted one eyebrow in a superior fashion. I felt about five.

  ‘OK, how about you teach me some things?’

  That sounded a bit wanky management approach to me, i.e. he was trying to butter me up. I wasn’t completely stupid.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘How many wigs do you have in the department?’

  I shrugged. ‘No idea.’

  ‘OK, how many in the current production of Don Giovanni?’

  ‘I’m impressed, you know what’s on.’ My barb struck and I saw a tiny twitch in his eye. It made me feel a bit better and then I felt ashamed that I felt like that. It was mean and uncharitable. He was new in the job. ‘There are eight main roles, the men have several wigs each, and the women have hair pieces. And some of the chorus have a wig. For this particular production, I guess we have seventeen for the principals, plus a few spares in case they get a bit untidy and we haven’t got time to redo them.’

  ‘
What about Romeo and Juliet?’

  ‘You have been doing your homework. We have five for Juliet, for the principal ballerina and her understudy, thirty-five hair pieces for the corps de ballet. Wigs for the older male parts and the nurse. I think by the time we finish, we’ll have around fifty.’

  ‘And do you keep a record of what you’ve got? Do you keep them all? Use them again?’

  ‘We used to take Polaroids of everything and then file them. That was the easiest way, although a lot of the time there’ll be some one who will remember a production from way back. In that case, we’ll go and look through the old Polaroids and then look in the storeroom. Unfortunately, they don’t hold their colour too well.’

  ‘Polaroids?’ His face said it all. ‘You don’t have a digital camera?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said, suddenly relieved that I could reassure him on that front. ‘We used it a lot.’ Oh shit. ‘Weeelll, that was until it got full up and let’s say it doesn’t work for us.’

  ‘Full up?’ Marcus’s voice sounded suspiciously choked.

  ‘Yes, you know. It says there’s no more space.’ I lifted both shoulders. ‘When we tried to free up some space, we managed to delete everything, so we decided not to use it anymore. We have a little card index file system, where we write descriptions down.’ When we remembered, or got around to it.

  Marcus closed his eyes and his lips moved. I think he said, ‘Give me strength.’ Or it might have been ‘For fuck’s sake.’

  After giving his rather appropriate pound sign cufflinks a thorough visual inspection, he swallowed hard and quickly scribbled down a couple of notes.

  ‘And do you make all of them in house?’

  ‘What?’ I was still focusing on the pen and notebook, wondering what he’d written down. I couldn’t imagine it was anything very approving.

  ‘The wigs, do you make all of them?’

  ‘No, not all. It depends how many are needed. We have piece workers who will do some.’

  ‘So how do you work all that out? Who’s doing what? When it needs to be done by? What’s ready?’

  ‘It can be a bit stressful, I guess.’ Damn, I’d walked straight into that one. I was not going to elaborate and admit we’d had some major panics in the past. Because it didn’t matter. We’d always got things sorted in time.

  ‘Really?’ He studied me so quizzically I felt as if he could look straight through and could tell I was avoiding the complete truth.

  ‘Yes, OK,’ I hedged, ‘it is very stressful but it works.’

  ‘But it could work better. Be less stressful.’

  ‘What, you’re going to wave a magic wand?’

  ‘No but I could come up with a system to help you. A project management package.’

  It sounded a bit too good to be true. ‘What’s in it for you?’

  He laid down his pen and gave me a grave look. ‘It’s like trying to herd a box of angry kittens with you. Believe it or not, I’m trying to help both of us. What’s in it for me, is that, for one thing, you might treat a computer with a bit more damn respect instead of just yanking the plug out when it doesn’t do what you want.’

  ‘That was a one off,’ I said. ‘It was just unfortunate that you walked in when you did. I’ve never done that before.’

  ‘Unfortunate? Careless I think.’

  I narrowed my eyes at him for a second. ‘Oscar Wilde?’

  ‘I have been to the theatre occasionally. Despite what you may think, I’m not a complete corporate philistine.’

  ‘I didn’t say you were.’ Although come to think of it, I might have done. The phrase nagged at me.

  ‘We’re straying. Whether it was the first time or not, it demonstrated your complete lack of respect or understanding for a computer.’

  Maybe now wasn’t the time to volunteer the fact that I often used the CD drawer to put my coffee on when I was working on a complicated hair piece. If I spilt coffee on any of the expensive human hair we used Jeanie would kill me.

  Suddenly he stood up and moved from behind the desk. ‘Tell me about your typical day.’ Marcus’s sudden change of tack threw me for a second until I realised he wasn’t asking me about my shower routine in the morning but about my working day.

  ‘We have shifts. We don’t need to be at the theatre until a few hours before curtain up. But then there are rehearsals, matinees and evening performances, so our times vary. No one’s a clock-watcher.’

  We all lived and breathed the job. Most of us probably would have done it for free.

  ‘Tell me, what did you do yesterday?’

  ‘I spent the first half hour cleaning hairbrushes, rinsing out sponges and sharpening pencils.’ Nothing that a computer could help with and the look I levelled at him reiterated my thought. A slight smile curved on his lips.

  I pulled a face as I remembered that yesterday had been a bit of a fiasco. ‘I had to nip out to grab some light pancake because we’d completely run out. Then—’

  ‘Does that happen often?’ His face was grave as he asked the question.

  I lifted my shoulders. ‘Very, very occasionally,’ I lied. ‘Only because we don’t tend to use that one very often. After that we had a big delivery from the wholesalers, which I had to unpack with Vince.’ Which we’d forgotten was arriving and had chucked a spanner in the works as the boxes took up most of our working space until we’d got everything put away.

  ‘What sort of delivery?’

  ‘Hair stuff. You know Kirby grips, hair nets, hairspray, mousse. We get through buckets of the stuff.’

  ‘And how do you order all that?’

  ‘The wholesale people are quite good at giving us a call every so often and we just place an order. What?’

  He didn’t exactly pull a face but I could see precisely what was going on in his head.

  ‘You can never have too many hair pins,’ I retorted.

  ‘It just doesn’t sound very,’ he clicked his pen off and on again, ‘organised.’

  If I’d been a cat, my back would have been arched and I’d have hissed at him.

  ‘Are you trying to say we’re not very professional?’ I could feel my mouth creasing into mulish lines. What was it about this man that made me revert to being so juvenile?

  ‘No, not at all.’ Exasperation was written across his face. ‘But I can already see ways in which I could help you. The computer is not your enemy but it’s only your friend if it does what you need it to do. Using it could help enormously. Help you create orders of things you need and stop you running out of them. For example, remind you when you’re low on pancake … what is that by the way?’ He gave a self-deprecating smile, which made the green eyes twinkle. ‘I’m assuming you’re not talking the maple syrup variety.’

  I bristled for a second and then realised he didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. Maybe it was time I cut the guy a little slack.

  ‘Base. Make-up base. Not pancake anymore but we still call it that. I think some of our prima donnas would get very irate if you tried to smear their faces with anything that went with maple syrup.’

  ‘I thought as much.’

  OK. Brownie points to him. I could see he was trying to help but really, we were fine as we were.

  ‘We’re actually quite good at that,’ I started, ‘although I guess it could be helpful to keep some sort of list of what we have.’

  ‘Ever used a spreadsheet?’ he asked with a grin.

  ‘Now you’re just trying to blind me with science. I hate the damn things.’

  I stared at the very posh leather-bound notebook as he quickly wrote something with a silver Cross pen.

  It reminded me of my mother. She always used Cross pens and Smythson notebooks. She would approve of Marcus.

  ‘You’re looking pissed off again,’ he commented.

  ‘Sorry, I was thinking about my mother, it does that to me.’

  He looked startled. ‘Right. OK. I’ve got a few ideas about some software and asset management programmes to h
elp you manage your inventory that would be easy to implement and would, I promise you, be of practical help. Once they’re installed and you know how to use them, you won’t believe how you ever managed without them.’ He gave me a wry grin. ‘We can explore some off-the-peg solutions which will be straight forward to install.’ His face sobered. ‘The hard bit will be down to you and you’re going to need to commit to it. The final success will be totally reliant on you. There’ll be a lot of set up work, inputting data and information. Stock-taking.’

  I sat up straighter and shook my head.

  ‘I haven’t got time. And like I said, we’re very good at managing our supplies.’ And the thought of it all being down to me scared the pants off me. I didn’t want the job. ‘This is a very busy time of year for us. The Nutcracker starts in three weeks, we’re full on. I just won’t have time.’

  His eyes narrowed.

  ‘Are you going to tell Alison Kreufeld that?’

  Chapter 7

  My day didn’t get any better after I’d begrudgingly agreed to another information sharing session the following week with Marcus. When I returned to the make-up department Vince barely spoke to me and when Pietro rocked up for his call, he wasn’t himself at all.

  ‘Is everything alright?’ I asked. Stupid question because anyone within two feet could feel the waves of anger radiating from him.

  He threw himself into the cream leather seat in front of the well-lit mirrors, a scowl creasing deep lines across his forehead. Leonie hurried into make-up after him, still trying to lace up the ornate brocade jacket he wore. She threw me an anxious look as with ill-grace he submitted to her, tying the laces and adjusting the elaborate trimming at his neck and cuffs. She worked with jerky movements, tight-lipped and frozen jawed. Pietro stared stonily at himself in the mirror.

  Oh God, I had to get him on stage on time tonight.

  I felt slightly sick as I dabbed my sponge in the pan stick. It was like having to go head to head with a dragon who might roar at any moment and singe my eyebrows into oblivion. If that was all he did, I’d count myself lucky. An hour to curtain call and he was still a long way from the zone. No amount of scales in the lifts would help if he didn’t start making that mental shift into character. Actors, singers and dancers all prepare themselves before they go on stage. They use a variety of methods to put themselves in the zone. For some it’s very casual and only a five-minute job. For others, from the minute they enter the theatre, they start thinking about their character. Dancers begin warming up and stretching their muscles. Singers start to tune up their voices, practising their breathing, running through scales and vocal exercises with their mouths and cheeks to get all the musical juices flowing.