Olivia Flies High

by Lyn Gardner

  “Where are you, Tom? We’re all waiting for you.” She sounded angry.

  “I’m at Clapham,” stuttered Tom.

  “What on earth are you doing there?” said Josie. “The call sheet quite clearly said the theatre. Can’t you read?”

  “But … you—”

  Josie butted in. “Save the excuses, Tom. We’re all getting fed up with this. You’d better get here, double quick. This isn’t the first time you’ve held us all up. Jon is really losing patience.”

  Tom set off back to the Tube station at a run, miserable and confused. Was Josie insane? Had she forgotten that she had rung his house this morning? Or was he the one who was going mad? He was beginning to wonder. His confidence was in pieces. Only the day before the bag with his practice clothes in, that he’d thought he’d tucked away in his dressing room, had gone missing and he’d had to rehearse in his outdoor clothes, something that had caused comment. Then, when he’d got back to the dressing room, the bag was there exactly where he thought he’d put it.

  Joshua had been scornful. “It must have been there all along; who’d want to steal your practice clothes? Maybe the same person who didn’t steal your shoes. You’re losing it, mate.”

  The journey back from Clapham to central London was a nightmare because of a broken-down train at Kennington. Tom hurried through the stage door, signed in, charged upstairs and changed as quickly as he could. Then he rushed back down into the wings, feeling as if he had run a marathon. He was dripping with sweat and his heart was pounding.

  Jon James noticed him arrive. “Nice of you to join us, Tom,” he said, and his voice was so icy Tom felt like a bucket of freezing-cold water had been tipped over his head. It made him more nervous than ever, and he made a couple of silly mistakes during the rehearsal. He had been so thrilled to be cast in The Sound of Music, but now he was beginning to wish that he hadn’t.

  He thought longingly of the Swan where he was good old reliable Tom and everybody liked him and rated him, but thinking of the Swan just made him think of Liv. If only they’d still been friends, he could have told her everything that had happened and how insecure he was beginning to feel. Maybe he wasn’t a performer after all; maybe he just didn’t have what was needed to make it in the professional theatre.

  When they broke for lunch, Abbie rushed over to him and gave him a very public hug of support.

  “Come on, Tom. You, me and Georgia, we’ll go to the café around the corner together. My treat.” They settled into a corner table and ordered paninis and a Greek salad to share. To take Tom’s mind off things, Abbie and Georgia started chatting about Katie.

  “Cassie’s getting a bit sick of her. She’s always going into her dressing room and trying to chat. She even marched up to Cassie’s agent when she came to take her out to lunch and introduced herself as if she was Cassie’s best friend. Asked the agent if she might take her on! Talk about pushy. She’s only twelve.”

  “When she was at the Swan, she once told me that she asked her mum and dad to get her an agent when she was three,” said Georgia.

  “Oh well,” said Abbie, “at least while she’s busy furthering her career, she’s leaving you alone. I thought she might be spiteful when she realised that you’d been cast and get up to some of her old tricks, like that time she pushed you off the stage at the Swan newbies’ concert so that she could take your place. It’s good it hasn’t happened. Maybe being asked to leave the Swan has taught her the lesson she needed.”

  “Maybe,” replied Georgia. “Apart from the odd bitchy comment, she’s given us no beef. In fact, she doesn’t really mix with the rest of us. Alps team is beneath her. I don’t even think the others like her very much. With the exception of Mia, who’s taken a bit of a shine to Katie because she thinks she looks like Sharpay Evans from High School Musical. But nobody is ever going to cross Katie whatever she does. She’s Chuck Daniels’s niece. Josie made it quite clear on the first day that the rules are different for her.”

  “Ah, Josie,” said Abbie. “How are you getting on with her? She can be a bit sharp. But I think her bark is worse than her bite. The rumour is that she wanted to direct The Sound of Music herself and felt humiliated when Jon James was brought in over her. So she’s been even more bad-tempered than usual. She keeps on getting assisting jobs. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.”

  Tom had said nothing during this exchange. He just picked at his cheese and ham panini, crumbling it into small pieces.

  “Oh, Tom,” said Abbie. “What are we going to do with you? You’re not yourself at all. What’s wrong?” Tom felt his colour rise and his throat got scratchy. For a terrible moment he thought that he was going to embarrass himself and the girls by bursting into tears in front of them. Abbie squeezed his hand.

  “Can you try and tell us about it?” she said gently.

  “It’s no one thing. Well, there’s Liv, of course. We’re still not talking. But it’s everything here too. Things keep on going wrong and I know that everyone’s losing patience with me.” He told them about Josie’s phone call to his house.

  “But that’s so weird. Why would she do something like that?” said Abbie, looking puzzled. “It doesn’t make any sense. There’s no benefit to her in trying to make you look bad.”

  “I can’t explain,” said Tom miserably. “I wish I could. But I feel I’m letting myself and everyone else down. And the Swan. If Miss Swan gets to hear what’s happening, I’ll feel so ashamed.”

  “She’s miles away in Hollywood,” said Georgia soothingly.

  “Actually, it’s a pity she’s not around,” said Abbie. “She’d sort it out.” She looked at her watch. “Come on, time to get back to the glamour and the greasepaint.”

  Chapter Ten

  In the Swan school hall, Pablo and Olivia watched as the children built their structure made from flesh and bone. The tallest, oldest and strongest children were gathered together in a group at the base, packed as tightly together as a rugby scrum. Kasha and his friends Ryan and Jazz had proved to be real team players, never complaining however heavy their load. Even Kylie had won everybody’s respect for her uncomplaining attitude and determination.

  “That Kylie, she is like a donkey,” said Pablo loudly and proudly during one session.

  This unflattering comparison made Kylie shriek all over again. “First you say I’m fat and now you say I’m a donkey!” But she had a big smile on her face.

  Once the pinya was in place, smaller children scrambled up their bodies and on to their shoulders. Then smaller children still took their turn to create higher and higher tiers as the human tower grew taller and taller. Pablo and Olivia clapped as the castell, five storeys high, rose seamlessly up towards the ceiling.

  Emmy clambered to the top and raised her hand in a point. She was completely fearless, and she reminded Olivia of Eel. Olivia felt a terrible pang; she had barely spoken to Eel since Alicia had gone away, and she missed her even more than she missed Tom and her friends. She remembered what Jack had said in his e-mail about looking out for Eel and she felt guilty.

  The tower melted away almost as quickly as it had been built. A huge cheer went up as soon as everybody’s feet were safely back on the ground.

  “Brilliant,” said Pablo. “Your best yet. We’ll get to seven tiers, I’m certain. You’re all fantastic; it is hard for me to believe you have got so high so fast. You are not ugly ducklings, you are beautiful Swans. I’m really proud of you all. I’d like very much to take you all to Spain to show you to my grandmother. When she was little she climbed right to the top just like you, Emmy.”

  Even Olivia was smiling, which was a rare sight these days. She was so pale and listless. The only time she seemed to come alive was when she was practising the trapeze, and then she did so with a fever and intensity that was quite remarkable but also a little frightening. She clearly had a gift for it, just as she did for the high-wire, and was progressing at an astonishing rate, but Pablo found her complete lack of fear and he
r recklessness worrying. It was as if she didn’t care whether she fell or not; she had no sense of self-preservation at all.

  Sebastian Shaw, the acting teacher, who was now acting head of the Swan, had noticed Olivia’s regression too. Sebastian liked Olivia a great deal; he knew that it was her quiet intensity, her ability to experience the world a little more sharply than most people and then express what she saw and felt that gave her the potential to be a great actor. Sebastian had taught Olivia’s mother, Toni, and he thought that Olivia might even be better still. If she would only let herself.

  Romeo and Juliet on the High-Wire had brought Olivia out of her shell, but now it was as if she had retreated back inside again. Sebastian, who noticed everything that was going on, was certain that it was not Alicia’s absence, or even her separation from Eel, but her falling-out with her friends that was worrying Olivia. He wondered whether he should try and have a word with all of them, act as a mediator. But when he raised the issue with Alicia on the phone, she had advised him not to intervene.

  “I see it happening all the time, Sebastian,” she’d said. “At their age children fall out with each other and then they make up, or friendships dissolve and reform in a slightly different grouping. It’s all part of growing up. Olivia has got to sort this out for herself. But she seems to take these things harder than most children. She’s exceptionally sensitive, which makes it more difficult to cope with. But she’ll have to learn to cope.”

  Sebastian had seen Olivia and Tom and the others before the falling-out and understood the strength of their friendship. Something big must have happened to terminate it so decisively. But running the Swan was keeping him busy and he had other things to worry about, including a leak in the theatre roof.

  Pablo was rather pleased that Alicia was not there to look over his shoulder all the time and worry about the welfare of her Swans. He rather doubted that Alicia would have let him attempt a seven-tier castell. But Pablo knew he wasn’t making them try anything that they couldn’t manage. Circus performers did extraordinary things with their bodies that made them seem like gods, but good performers didn’t take silly risks. They managed risk, so that nobody – themselves, their partners or the audience – ever got hurt.

  Jack did it all the time when he prepared his high-wire stunts. He would be doing it now in Idaho. Pablo sighed. He had seen Olivia working on the high-wire with Tom, had seen that she assessed risk with a maturity beyond her years and knew it was only unhappiness that was making her reckless on the trapeze. He also guessed that it was only her evenings spent on the trapeze that was keeping Olivia from breaking into pieces.

  “All right, partner? Trapeze tonight?” he asked Olivia as they cleared up. She nodded vigorously, and then ran upstairs to check her e-mail. She was hoping that there would be one from Jack, and there was, but it was only a one-liner attached to a picture of Snake Canyon. But there was one from Alicia, too.

  Dear Olivia, Miss Hanbury tells me that you and she are rubbing along fine but that she barely sees you because you are helping Pablo or practising the trapeze. You will take care, darling, won’t you? Don’t take any risks. I feel as if I’m very far away from you and Eel – who Mrs Lovedale says is having a lovely time with Emmy. I’ll tell you all about Cosmo and Cosima Wood when I get back. I like them both but they are quite a challenge. When they act they run an entire range of emotions from A to B. But it’s good to be back acting again, even if it’s on screen rather than the stage. I haven’t heard anything about how Tom and Georgia are getting on in The Sound of Music. Have you? I imagine that no news is good news, but I’ll be relieved when I’m back in London in a few days’ time and can keep an eye on everything. Take care of yourself, love Alicia.

  The castell children were not the only group working after school at the Swan. In the little rehearsal room at the top of the school, Aeysha and Eel were watching Georgia gathering up her things.

  “Please don’t go yet, Georgia. Let’s run through it again,” pleaded Eel.

  “Eel, I’m exhausted. I’ve already had a full morning of lessons, followed by rehearsals all afternoon and now two hours of teaching you all the moves for The Sound of Music.”

  “Let’s just do ‘The Lonely Goatherd’ one more time so I know exactly what Gretl does during the song. Please, please, please, Georgia. I’ll be your best friend for ever,” said Eel, getting down on her knees.

  “Oh all right,” said Georgia affectionately. When Eel launched a full charm offensive it was hard to deny her anything. “We’ll go through it once more, although you were practically perfect last time. To tell the truth, Eel, you’re a much better Gretl than Freya. If you’d have auditioned, I’m sure you would have got the part.”

  “I think I probably would have, too,” said Eel, so seriously that it made Georgia and Aeysha laugh.

  “But after this, we’re going to stop, OK? No arguments. I’ve come here every day after rehearsals this week so you can fulfil your fantasies of playing Gretl. But it’s over. Technical rehearsals begin tomorrow, when we go through everything with all the sound and lighting, and then it’s the dress rehearsal, then the first preview on Monday and then two weeks later it’s first night – press night – when critics come and write their reviews. I can’t wait for the first preview! It will be the first time we’ve done the show in front of a paying audience. Mind you, all the tickets are discounted because things can go wrong during previews! I’ve got tickets for both of you for Monday, and there’s one for Emmy too, Eel. If Emmy’s mum can get you to the theatre, my mum will drop you both off after.”

  “Oh, Georgia, I won’t be able to come!” cried Aeysha. “I’m starting filming next week. Tomorrow’s my last day at school. I’m so sorry.”

  “I’ll come; I want to come every night, especially the first night, if that’s when the critics will all be there and lots of famous people.” Eel skipped about the room happily.

  “Tickets will be in short supply,” warned Georgia, “but maybe your gran will be back by then and can take you.”

  “I hope so,” said Eel. “Maybe she’ll take Livy, too.” At the mention of Livy’s name, there was an awkward silence and Georgia and Aeysha both looked embarrassed.

  “I wish you were all friends again,” Eel said sadly. “Livy’s like a rag doll without you. She’s all sad and floppy. What could she possibly have done that was so awful? She won’t tell me. She told me to buzz off when I asked her.”

  Georgia and Aeysha looked at each other.

  “You don’t want to know, Eel. Really you don’t,” said Georgia. “But we’re only behaving as she behaved towards us; she was the one who made it quite clear she doesn’t want to be friends with us.”

  “But I think she does,” said Eel. “I know Livy and I think it’s what she wants most in the whole wide world.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Alicia Swan was sitting in the Green Room of the Duke’s with Jon James, Josie Cutwell and the producer, Chuck Daniels. They were all looking at her intently. She had been back in London only a few hours and she was feeling terribly jetlagged, but as soon as she had arrived at the Swan, Sebastian had told her that there was to be a meeting about Tom that afternoon at the theatre and Alicia wasn’t going to let a little thing like jetlag stop her from being there to defend one of her Swans.

  “Of course I appreciate how serious this is,” she said gravely. “It reflects badly not just on Tom McCavity, but also on the Swan Academy. But I have to say I’m not just surprised by what you’re telling me, I’m completely astonished. I’ve never had the slightest of doubts about Tom’s attitude. He’s bright, he’s always been tremendously hard-working and he shows every sign of being a professional down to his little toes.”

  “Well, there must be some explanation,” said Jon. “I thought he was a really nice kid at first, but he’s turned into a real pain. Frequently late, turning up in the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong clothes. Apparently he also almost missed his cue last night, an
d he would have done if one of the cast hadn’t been right on the ball and sorted him out. Katie Wilkes-Cox is a complete professional. Endlessly helpful and bright as a button. Talented, too.”

  “Ah, Katie Wilkes-Cox,” murmured Alicia. “I’m familiar with her work.”

  “She’s my niece,” said Chuck Daniels proudly, “and clearly a star in the making.”

  “So I’ve heard it said, many times,” said Alicia, imperceptibly raising an eyebrow.

  “Tom behaves as if the production rules don’t apply to him,” said Jon. “It’s been drilled into the children that they have to hang up all their costumes at the end of the performance. No excuses. They all do it, even the littlest ones like Freya, but not Tom. Oh, no. Every night this week, when wardrobe have checked the boys’ dressing room, they’ve found his clothes in a mess all over the floor. They’re not happy; they’ve got enough washing and ironing and mending to deal with without him making more work for them. But when he’s been challenged about it, he swears blind that he’s hung everything up before he leaves.”

  “I’ve always known him to be a truthful boy—” said Alicia.

  “I haven’t,” cut in Josie. “He was outrageously late one day because he’d gone to the wrong place, and he tried to put the blame on me. He said that I’d rung his house and told him there had been a change of plan. Of course I hadn’t. He just hadn’t bothered to read the call sheet.”

  “Look, Alicia, I’m going to tell it to you straight,” said Jon James. “We’ve already got problems with the other children’s teams. Half the kids in Lakes are down with chicken pox, Meadows team has been decimated by a vomiting virus and it’s press night tomorrow. All the critics will be there, and you know how hard they are to please. Some US producers are coming with an eye to a transfer to Broadway, too. So I need Tom. But you’ve got to give him a talking to. He’s giving me problems, and I’ve got plenty to keep me awake at night as it is, what with the stage revolve breaking down twice during previews. We had to send the audience home with a refund.”