Midsummer Madness

by Stella Whitelaw

  He was pulling off the poncho and the sandals. Then he carefully slid the red dress over my head and hung it on a chair. He guided me towards my bed and wrapped the duvet round me like I was a parcel. That’s right, I was now actually a parcel. Send me somewhere sunbaked and sandy.

  ‘This is your bed,’ he said. ‘It’s for sleeping in. Goodnight, Sophie.’ He hesitated for a second, on the verge of going, as if he might kiss me, but he didn’t. I think he sighed and stood back, a shadowy figure now as he turned off the bedside lamp.

  I was not surprised. After all, it wasn’t Christmas yet, despite the bright lights outside. Christmas was a long way off, at least I thought it was.

  ‘I think I’m going to sleep now,’ I said, even more happily. ‘Night, night, my Superman.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Hangovers are not my normal scene. But it was there the next morning, staring me in the mirror. I put my face in cold water hoping to freeze out the dull ache in my head. It was many years since I had felt this bad.

  I looked at the wavering idiot in the mirror. ‘And just who are you this morning?’ I asked.

  The reflection didn’t have the strength to reply. It staggered back to bed.

  About midday I surfaced again and managed to struggle into yesterday’s clothes. My face was streaked with stale make-up. Breeding ground for early wrinkles. Always clean face, moisturise, tone etc, they say. How long since I last toned? It was a foreign word.

  I drank some water, tottered downstairs and let myself out. The fresh air hit me like a wet sponge. It would have to be the bus this morning. I couldn’t walk more than five yards without serious help.

  I normally enjoy stalking London from a bus top. Watching the streets and houses pass by and curtained windows appearing above shops. Glimpses into other people’s homes. Everything looks different from the top of a bus. Trees brushed their golden leaves against the framework like gloved hands, clouds were like bruises. By the time I reached the theatre, I felt almost normal.

  ‘You look dreadful,’ said one of the stage hands as I walked backstage. He was either Alf, Bert or Fred. He was carrying some of the court tapestry hangings.

  ‘I am dreadful,’ I agreed. ‘But I’m working on it.’

  Bill Naughton and the stage hands were running around like demented squirrels who have forgotten where they buried their nuts. The lighting wizard was dancing over his switchboard in the projection box. He knew his remote controls, memories, pre-set keys and thyristor dimmers. The lighting for the cyclorama was crucial, especially in the shipwreck scene. Joe Harrison was roaring instructions into his mike from the stalls. This much had to be done. If the technical was not right, then it didn’t matter what words the actors said. That much I knew from my days as the lowest ASM of ASMs in rep.

  That was my non-scary route to being a prompt. ASMs often had to prompt if no one else was around. And I was also call-boy, in charge of props, frequently all jobs at the same time. It had been a ruptured learning curve but one that I took on board with humility. I wasn’t going to be a star. No name in lights. No first nights. So I trained myself to anticipate every need. It was an unrecognized art.

  And I’d taken on other part-time jobs, waiting at tables, bar work, Christmas sales assistant. Once I’d prompted two shows at the same time, which meant a lot of running between theatres and timing as precise as Greenwich.

  I sank back into a chair in the back stalls. They paid a lot of money for this seat but the view wasn’t that good. Did management know that? I rarely spoke to management, believed in keeping my head down and out of sight. They were faceless people, banking the money, signing cheques, making decisions.

  Joe Harrison did not look as if he had been up half the night, wining and dining his cast and helping the idiot prompt to bed. He was fresh and dynamic, on top of his world, trousers pressed, open-necked white shirt and dark navy fleece. It was sickening. He was talking to Lights on the intercom.

  ‘Let’s get the balance of the lighting right, footlights and battens,’ said Joe.

  Hilda had been working on his costume designs for days. She was trundling back and forth with armfuls of velvet and brocade and seafaring hessian. I slide out of my seat and took a devious route to wardrobe.

  ‘Do you want any help?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, would you Sophie? Thank you,’ said Hilda, brow furrowed. ‘I can’t sew and show. He wants to see everything at once. You know.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘What’s next?’

  ‘This is Olivia’s costume for Act I.’

  I climbed the stairs with my arms overflowing with stiff black material. It was intricately pleated with tiny looped buttons. Olivia was in mourning for her brother. I felt swamped with her grief, just carrying the dress. Some of it was the hangover.

  ‘Sophie? What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘It’s so terribly sad,’ I said to the empty theatre. ‘She’s lost her brother, a man she adored. For seven summers she will keep afresh a brother’s dead love.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Sophie. Leave it, will you? You’re not prompting now. This is a technical.’

  ‘Here is Olivia’s costume,’ I said, holding it up. ‘Made to your design. Does it suit the role? What do you think? Is she mourning enough?’

  ‘Black is black,’ he barked. ‘It’ll be the way Olivia wears the costume. Take it away and don’t bother me again. I’ve got enough to do.’

  ‘You said you wanted to see all the costumes.’

  ‘Did I? Well, I don’t remember. Bill, what’s happened to the gauze? It’s hooked up. Sort it out.’

  ‘Sorry, technical fault.’

  I traipsed back downstairs to Wardrobe. ‘He says it’s perfect,’ I told Hilda. ‘Exactly what he wanted.’

  ‘Oh, good, thank goodness. He has such strange ideas. I know they’ll look magnificent on stage but they are not easy to make.’

  I put on a Gwyneth Paltrow attitude for my next appearance. She can be so dignified and aloof. I timed my arrival on stage with a pause in the technical proceedings. Joe was beginning to look glazed.

  ‘Yes?’ he said.

  ‘Maria,’ I announced. ‘Scheming gentlewoman.’

  ‘I know who she is,’ he said wearily.

  ‘She has a sharp and witty tongue.’

  ‘Go away,’ he shouted. ‘I don’t want to see you or hear you again.’

  ‘This is her costume. Aren’t you interested?’

  He tore his attention away from the script to the costume I was holding up. It was a painful process. I doubted if he was taking in an inch of the serving woman’s simple homespun clothing. I shook out the linen cap with downcast eyes.

  ‘Go away and do what prompts normally do when they aren’t prompting. Go shopping. Read a book. Anything except interrupt my technical.’

  I vanished downstairs, gathering shreds of pride around me like another costume. There was plenty of sewing to be done and I could about see to thread a needle. Hilda made a gallon of strong black coffee which helped a lot.

  ‘I gather it was some party after the reception,’ said Hilda, trying to make a cap out of sweeping feathers for Feste, the clown.

  ‘You didn’t come?’

  ‘No, I peeped into the Press do and then went off home. I’ve an elderly mother to look after and I leave her alone enough as it is. She sits in front of the television all day. Cheaper than Prozac.’

  ‘Does she know what she’s watching?’

  ‘Heavens yes, she’s a dab hand with the remote. Zaps from soap to soap, checking situations. She knows more about them all than I do. She could go on Mastermind easily if she could manage that walk to the black chair.’

  ‘Good for her,’ I said, sorting a box of buttons and buckles for Hilda. She needed six matching silver buckles for Sebastian’s costume. Joe ought to come down here and see the miracles Hilda was performing.

  There was a lot of hammering going on upstairs. The technical had finished by the sound of it and
urgent repairs and alterations were in progress. We were rehearsing Act II, scene 1, the sea coast, at two o’clock. The shipwreck was a miracle in the making. Thunder and lightning and waves.

  I went quietly to my corner, not that keeping quiet made any difference. The hammering and banging was horrendous. My ears went into rehab. I looked down into the stalls. Joe was fast asleep, long legs draped over the arm of the next seat, head cradled back on his shoulder, floppy hair falling over his face. He looked most uncomfortable. He’d wake up with cramp in his neck. There was nothing I could do. He wouldn’t thank me if I woke him to suggest he used the couch in Elinor’s dressing room.

  The cast were creeping in with varying degrees of hangover. Bryan looked quite green as if he had been drinking pond water all night. Elinor was incredibly brave and jaunty but winced at every unnecessary step. Fran wore an extra inch of make-up. Only Jessica seemed unaffected. Perhaps she had been emptying her wine into the potted plant behind us.

  Joe stirred, brushing his hair aside, and sat up with a jerk.

  ‘Act II, scene 1, the sea coast. Stand by Viola and Malvolio. Enter Antonio and Sebastian. Antonio, you’re an old sea captain, not the back row of Chorus Line. Walk like one,’ he said.

  Sea-legs, I noted in a margin. Walk with sea-legs. It would be fun to practise sea-legs with Tony, who was playing Antonio. He was a private person. He had probably done that on purpose, to rile Joe, a touch of Dirty Dancing.

  It was a smallish part but Tony knew his lines. I noticed he was growing a beard. Always the professional. His career was on the wane although once he had been a matinée idol, loads of lead parts in low budget Ealing Studio movies. Years ago I would have queued for his autograph. Now I was prompting him.

  ‘If you will not murder me for my love,’ I said.

  ‘I know, I know,’ he said abruptly. ‘It was a pause, a dramatic pause.’

  ‘Sorry. I’ll mark it.’ I didn’t mind.

  ‘If you will not murder me for my love, let me be your servant,’ he went on. The scene continued to the end. Viola and Malvolio followed in a street scene. It went well, flew. I could see that Joe was pleased.

  ‘Well done, both of you. Scene 3, Olivia’s House.’

  The afternoon wore on as slowly as a weekend queue of double-piled trolleys at a supermarket check-out. Singles eyed each other in case we had more than nine items in our baskets. I could feel my eyelids starting to glue. I didn’t care if they knew their words. Any minute now I would prompt with a line from Christopher Robin. See if anyone noticed.

  ‘Ten minutes, everyone,’ Joe announced. ‘And if you have any dramatic pauses, new or old, intentional or unintentional, please see our prompt so she can mark it in her book. You know that she needs to mark all moves, business and pauses arranged in the dialogue.’

  I felt a small glimmer of satisfaction. Joe had noticed Antonio’s unfairness and made it a point. Thank you, Mr Harrison. I’ll carry up your post on a wet day.

  My legs creaked as I tried to stretch them. The tea station was about three miles away and the biscuits would be soggy before I got there. The only sustenance available was a peppermint in my pocket which had lost half its wrapping paper and was sticky with fluff, crumbs and unmentionable debris.

  Bill Naughton was there before me. He slipped his arm round the area which I jokingly called my waist.

  ‘So how are you doing, flavour of the month?’ he asked, pressing the coffee button.

  ‘Flavour? Don’t understand.’

  ‘Haven’t you seen the morning papers? Full of the press reception, highly original concept, medieval food, medieval music. Good preview of the show. Even if the chocolate fountain didn’t turn up.’

  ‘Didn’t it?’

  ‘No. Not a flake.’

  ‘Then we won’t pay for it.’

  ‘Has he thanked you yet? You know, money?’

  ‘No, but he made that speech at the party. It was a job to do and I did it.’ Call me slob in harness.

  The theatre still smelled of the party. The scent of elderflower drifted from the curtains; beef in pastry was being swept off the floor; the scent of quinces and strawberries clung to the undisturbed air. It was nearly in the past. Soon yesterday’s papers would be wrapping chips.

  I wondered if Joe would ever understand my passion for the play? Was he on my wavelength? Once he had been, a long time ago. Nothing that he would remember now. Hunger, starvation, homelessness were things that were purposely forgotten. I didn’t blame him. I only blamed him for changing so much.

  I took my tea in styrofoam and escaped to a corner where I would be undisturbed. London was outside, a crowded, noisy, fear-ridden metropolis with a history of centuries only a few feet beneath the cracked pavements. It worried me. All these Starbucks coffee outlets occupying the sites of Georgian coffee shops that had real character, real people drinking and shaping the world. Men with more than their annual million bonus on their mind and whether they could afford a journey to Middle Earth. I was nearly broke.

  ‘Have I thanked you for last night?’ It was Joe Harrison. He had a coffee in one hand, script in the other. His hair was flopping over in that old remembered way. Perhaps I ought to take a photo of his hair so that I’d remember him in thirty years. In thirty years? Where would I be when I was officially an old person?

  ‘There was the speech,’ I said. ‘I don’t remember a lot after the Greek taverna. That was a good idea, thank you. Loved the food, such fun. Different.’

  ‘You drank too much on an empty stomach.’

  ‘There’s an epidemic going around.’

  ‘Did you sleep well?’

  ‘Like a wall.’

  I had an awful feeling. Why this interest in my sleeping? How did I get from the taverna to my bed? I didn’t remember the transition. Perhaps Superman had taken me in his arms and flown me home.

  ‘How did I get home after the party?’ I asked.

  ‘A magic carpet. The Genie was navigating. But you did remember to say goodnight, very nicely, thank you.’

  ‘Was I standing?’ This was important.

  Joe had a sip of his coffee. He was taking in too much caffeine. I ought to warn him. ‘More or less,’ he said. ‘Depending on which view you took.’

  He wouldn’t tell me any more and I was left to guess. There was a ghost of a wink, or it could have been a strange and uncanny trick of the light.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Fran was up to something. I could smell it as clearly as a dead mouse rotting in a boat truck. And this old Royale Theatre had plenty of those. The Arts Grant had gone a long way to refurbishing the inside and outside of the old building but it had not exterminated the rat runs.

  It still had an aura of plush and gilt, with cherubs and nymphs waving the masks of comedy and tragedy. And our new, rich red curtains were magnificent. Pity Joe didn’t want to use them in this run. It was going to be an open stage with lighting dimmed for scene changes. No hydraulic jacks raising the floor to the roof in our theatre. We were not obsessed by theatrical machinery. The elderly stage had a slight rake, rising from the front to the back wall.

  But Fran was definitely negotiating a rat run. All slinky-tailed and beady-eyed, sharpening her claws, painting them Russian red in the wings. Something was going on but I couldn’t work out what it was. She had the self-satisfied look of a well-fed poodle.

  ‘Wasn’t it a lovely party?’ she gushed as she stood by me ready for her entrance. I was taught that if you had an entrance you began several yards back in the wings so that your clothes had movement as well. Exits too should have the same continuation of movement. No emergency stop once offstage. She didn’t work that way. Too exhausting for fragile zero frame.

  I nodded. I didn’t want to talk. ‘The Press were great,’ I murmured, not taking my eyes off the page.

  ‘Not really, they were a bit boring, although there’s a lot about me in the newspapers today. Rising star, they said. I mean the Greek party that Joe threw for us. It wa
s my idea, you know. It began as the two of us, going out for an intimate meal, but somehow it grew. He has such a generous nature.’ She looked down, coyly, as if hiding the extent of his generosity. ‘I didn’t mind.’

  I didn’t believe a word of it. Fran had been as surprised as the rest of us. And I hadn’t seen today’s newspapers. I ought to look at them in case I had made some monumental blunder, like forgetting to invite the editor of Hello magazine.

  Fran made her entrance, managing to tread on my foot at the same time. Quite a skill, her maiming instinct, but I knew her real victim was Elinor. I glared at her. I wanted to do her serious harm. I would have to curb this killer impulse before Fran was found hanging from the proscenium arch, noosed in her own black fishnets.

  Elinor was not having a good rehearsal. She had been in the wrong place several times and once she entered down right instead of down left which threw everyone. Joe was keeping his temper. I think he was discovering a soft spot for the struggling Elinor, which was not good news for Fran.

  ‘I know I don’t keep exactly to the scripts suggested entrances,’ he said patiently. ‘But every one that I have changed, I have asked you to mark in your book. And your moves, they should have been marked. They’ve been fixed for days.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Elinor. ‘And I looked at them this morning, I swear I did. Just to make sure I knew them. And I do.’

  ‘I suggest you look at them again,’ said Joe. ‘With your prescription glasses on,’ he added.

  Elinor wore fashionably narrow spectacles for close reading. Who doesn’t these days? It would be me next. I’d get two for the price of one at SpecSavers. Or pick up those pound jobs which are bits of magnifying glass in plastic frames. Then I could have a pair on every shelf, in every room, beside every book. Call me Four by Four Eyes without the parking tickets.

  ‘Prompt. Line!’

  ‘Methinks his words do from such passion fly,’ I said swiftly. Close one. They were Viola’s lines.

  ‘Surely the officers and Antonio go out the other way?’ said Elinor. She was floundering. She should not have questioned their exit, right or wrong, but kept her mouth shut and stayed within her role.