Midsummer Madness

by Stella Whitelaw

  Suddenly I didn’t want him there, sitting at my table looking relaxed, eating my food. I didn’t want him in my life again. It had taken me a long time to stand on my own feet. Love is to burn, to be on fire. Pass me the extinguisher. I was starting to think in staccato jerks.

  And I forgot to make my evening call, dammit. Joe was already turning my life upside down. Where had I put the arsenic? No one is allowed to buy it these days. I could hardly spike the ice cream with bleach.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Joe sat back from the table, stifling a yawn, rubbing his eyes, muttering about still having work to do. The ice cream was good, grated chocolate on top, though I did wonder if it also had some shreds of cheese. I hadn’t washed the grater in between.

  He got up and stretched his legs. ‘Sorry Sophie, I’m not going to help with the washing up,’ he said. ‘You finish the wine. It’ll help you to sleep.’

  I wanted to tell him that I didn’t need any help. I could sleep standing up. He would be gone soon, once the run was going well and his job done. Directors don’t hang about. He could go back to New York or wherever his next production was going to be staged. Back to the penthouse suite.

  So there was an end to this purgatory. He would be out of my life and I could get on with living it in my slow, rising-from-the-ashes way. Throw me a lifeline, someone, to get me through the next few weeks. That was all I asked.

  He’d gone downstairs before I’d even noticed. No thank you. Perhaps he found thank you difficult to say. Some men are like that. The words stick in their throat.

  I left the washing up for the morning. I wanted the scent of him to linger for a little longer. I put his wine glass to one side. This was a serious case for therapy. I curled up on the couch, half asleep, sipping wine, remembering everything, every moment, every word.

  My mother was delighted to get a call in the morning. ‘What a surprise,’ she trilled. ‘Were you doing something special last night?’

  ‘I was having supper with the director.’

  ‘So, is he someone special?’ My mum was so nosey. It comes from living in a windswept cottage on the outskirts of nowhere. The seaside town of Swanage was down the A351, south of Bournemouth. But the schoolbus stopped at the lower end of the lane. It had home-made traffic humps.

  I didn’t answer. Yes, the director had once been special. ‘He’s going to move me, the prompt, to some totally alien spot where I won’t be able to hear or see and it’ll make my job a nightmare.’

  ‘Darling, that’s awful. Can he do that?’

  ‘He can do anything. He’s the director.’

  ‘You could walk out. We’d love to have you down here. We haven’t seen you for ages. This is often mentioned, especially at bedtime.’

  ‘Hardly commuting distance for my work.’

  ‘Get a job down here. You did it before, part-time jobs. Remember? Boots are always advertising for extra assistants. And there’s the library. What about all the hotels? They need seasonal staff. There are endless work possibilities. Besides, you deserve a proper holiday. I know you love the theatre but you work such long hours. We could go for lovely walks along the cliffs.’

  ‘Any news for me?’ I could hardly say the words. They always choked me.

  ‘Well, there’s the school play but you said you’re not going to be able to make that, didn’t you? Any hope in sight?’

  ‘I can’t see how, unless the show folds. It could bomb but I doubt it. The rehearsal last night was terrific, everyone on top form. Pre-dress this evening.’

  ‘Must go, darling. Someone at the door. Such a rare experience out here. Hope it’s not those Jehovah’s Witness people. We have such long conversations which I don’t understand.’

  My mother came off the phone. She chose to live her life on the coast of Dorset, not far from the sea. Living my life for me. It was where I should be, wrapped up against the wind, waddling through sea puddles in wellies.

  Elinor’s appointment with the hairdresser was ten o ‘clock. I knew Joe would have booked some top, high-class Knightsbridge snipper, tight leather pants and a ponytail. He wasn’t mean. I thought I ought to be there with last minute frantic persuasion in Joe’s ear or holding Elinor’s hand in sympathy.

  It was a brisk walk through the milling crowds of stockbroker suits to get to the theatre on time, beating the trundling London buses. I could walk faster than a bus trundled. I was eating a banana on the run. That was breakfast. Everywhere in the semi-dark of the theatre was bleak and deserted except for the cleaners.

  ‘Hiya Mavis, hiya Maud,’ I called out.

  ‘Hello, Miss Gresham.’

  I went into Elinor’s dressing room. It was empty. I toured the rest of the theatre. There was no one around. Had I missed a sudden city-wide epidemic of the plague? That Chinese bird flu? Had the Lord Chancellor closed down all the theatres without anyone telling me?

  Terrorist alert. That was it. I hadn’t listened to the news. Perhaps London was at a standstill. But now footsteps were arriving. Stage hands, Bill Naughton, Hilda, members of the cast dragging themselves in, but no Joe, no Elinor, no Fran. Had I poisoned him off last night? Had the ice cream reached its sell-by-date and I hadn’t noticed? But I had eaten the same meal and it hadn’t affected me. I hadn’t used the bleach.

  And no Mr Snip-Snip. This was intriguing. The plot thickened but Shakespeare didn’t write it. He would have done if he had been around. He’d have called it Not As You Would Like It.

  I had brought some black coffee and added no-fat creamer. Ready, Steady Cook would have made four gourmet desert dishes out of that and the banana. Plus several dozen extra ingredients whipped out from under the counter.

  ‘Where is everybody?’ I asked Bill.

  ‘No idea. Don’t ask me. Late night again perhaps. I wasn’t invited.’

  A nasty suspicion loitered. Perhaps Joe had not gone straight downstairs to his flat, pleading tiredness. Maybe he had gone round to Elinor’s place to talk her into the boy transformation, or maybe he had a late date with the fragrant Fran. Maybe he’d taken her to that stunning new bar at the Berkeley Hotel. It was called the Blue Bar and looked like a theatrical set. It was the perfect place for spotting stars. She would consider herself as being spotted.

  ‘Where’s he going to put me?’ I asked Bill.

  ‘I don’t know. Rumour has that it’s in the Royal Box disguised as a cherub. Could you manage that?’

  ‘I don’t have to be here,’ I said, stomping about angrily. ‘I can get a job anywhere. I was phoned by the National twice last week. They’re short of prompts.’ This was totally fiction, easier to say than a lie.

  ‘Then go there or help me do these drapes and then have lunch with me. I know a terrific pub that does a great sausages and mash. Lashings of onions.’

  ‘My favourite,’ I sniffed.

  Bill never gave up. He was a nice enough young man but his company bored me to tears, no, not real saturating tears, but to distraction. He was also a clumsy oaf. I can’t stand clumsy men. I knew what he would be like in bed, all gropes and grunts and a penis the size of a radish, with me staring at the ceiling.

  I helped with the drapes as Bill was short of hands. Where had everyone gone? Was there a company bonding day out on a Thames river steamer to which no one had remembered to invite me? Perhaps Fran had organized it, which would explain the lack of an invitation.

  A few people drifted in. Hilda had to sew. She had a few of Joe’s new ideas to add to costumes. Her mother was still watching soaps. Apparently she had spotted flaws in the story lines and was busy writing in to the bosses. They must love her letters.

  ‘She’s amazing,’ said Hilda. ‘All brain, but no body. She can barely move. Arthritis, you know. It’s the devil. Very painful.’

  ‘That’ll be me when I’m a paid-up old person.’

  Now this was depression setting in. I could feel smiles dying on my face. There was a mental test you could take on Google. Of course, if you took it and the resu
lt was a depressing twenty-five out of forty, what did you do next? Phone a doctor? Take Quiet Life? Life told me to go down to Dorset.

  I was on my fourth black coffee when Joe arrived. He threw his leather jacket on a seat and flexed his neck. His neck always seemed to hurt. I wondered if he had fallen out of an apple tree when he was young and told nobody.

  ‘Prompt!’ he shouted. The theatre vibrated. The ghosts flinched.

  ‘I’m here,’ I said, stepping forward the required half-inch. ‘But no one else is on stage and the rehearsal hasn’t started, so I’m off duty, so to speak.’

  ‘We have a crisis,’ he said. ‘Where are you? A small crisis, but nevertheless, we have to rise above it.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, nodding knowingly. ‘Tell me and I’ll rise. What sort of phoenix do you require?‘

  I do say the stupidest things. Without doubt, there was a gremlin at my christening. No Good Fairy with looks and good fortune and handsome princes. My christening was the tail end of conveyer belt fairies. I got the one who was having a bad hair day.

  ‘I’ve been ringing around,’ said Joe, screwing his hands through his hair till he looked like a hedgehog. ‘Both Elinor and Fran are down with flu. Seriously high temperatures, aches and pains, sore throats, both unable to perform. Sophie, you will have to read in Viola at the pre-dress this evening. OK?’

  Who was I now? Gwyneth Paltrow, Emma Thompson, Reese Witherspoon? How about Cate Blanchett? They deserted me in droves. There was only me, Sophie Gresham, left trembling in the prompt corner. My muscles went into paralysis at the thought. At least I would have a script and I could read.

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I’ll read and I’ll prompt but don’t expect any costume changes. I’m at least six inches taller than Elinor. And a bit heavier, though I’m not measuring. Since I eat pasta and she doesn’t eat anything thicker than watercress.’

  I was reminding him of the meal. A very good meal that he hadn’t said thank you for. There was a glimmer of contrition on his face. Did he remember that he had left, gone downstairs to his luxury first-floor flat, leaving me to wash up?

  ‘Would you mind wearing a cloak?’ he asked. ‘Something to swish about?’

  ‘I’ll wear a cloak, but that’s all,’ I said. ‘Close to a clodpole.’

  Neither of us understood what I meant. Shakespeare wrote something with the word clodpole but its meaning was lost in time. Spiritualists say, of course, that spirits live on but where was he among all the misty mothers, fathers and grandparents that tap on shoulders and move watches and photographs and send loving messages? Why wasn’t he tapping on my shoulder, right now? Had Shakespeare ever turned up at a public séance?

  ‘We’ll start early, two o’ clock,’ Joe said. Other remnants of the cast were arriving, either anxious or bewildered or both. ‘Elinor is ill. Flu we think, but we’ll still go ahead with the pre-dress. Prompt will read in.’

  ‘Where’s the understudy?’

  ‘Fran’s ill as well. Same sort of bug.’

  ‘Very catching,’ said Bill. He was no great fan of the luscious Fran. She had scorched him a few times with a flap of her eyelashes. ‘Not up to being tested. All talk and no do. Or rather, couldn’t do.’

  I filled in time, helping Hilda sew on braid, then I hid in the darkened wings. Even though I was only reading, it was going to be an ordeal. Not exactly stage fright but a degree near. Joe Harrison had no idea of what he was asking me to do. He had soared high, forgetting ordinary people, in his meteoric climb. He’d probably forgotten my name. Prompt came more easily to mind. The pre-dress started.

  ‘Curtains. Duke’s Palace,’ he called out. The theatre went dark. I couldn’t see a thing. I could barely remember how the play began.

  ‘If music be the food of love, play on,’ said Orsino, the Duke. The phrase had lived on for 380-odd years, oft repeated. Beat that, Pinter.

  Then the storm, thunder and lightning and the wreck at sea exploded on stage. It was awesome. Somebody pushed me on stage and I was pretending to be drenched with sea water, staggering from the waves.

  ‘What country, friends, is this?’ I said, shaking off sea water.

  And the captain said: ‘This is Illyria, lady.’

  I could barely remember anything. ‘Oh my poor brother,’ I wept. Somehow the play went on and I remembered the words and went from scene to scene with some faltering, book in hand, but unopened. The tension was high but I was mentally soaring away with the Bard. I was there in the court, being Viola, loving the Duke, caring for Olivia. Joe had completely vanished from my mind. Who was this man? I kept strong, kept fighting the nerves. Joe who?

  When the play finished, hours later, with the last note of the Jester’s song, I stood somewhere, not in the right place, exhausted. I had long ago melted into a puddle of nothing. The Duke said to me: ‘Your master quits you’ and I went, taking his hand as he took me as his mistress.

  I couldn’t even remember the last lines of the play. If they needed prompting then it was too late. I had nothing more to say. I was evaporating into the air. Joe could put the prompt where he liked. How about inside an upturned boat downstage right?

  There was a round of applause. Sparse but then there were only about twenty people in the audience and that included the cleaners and front of house staff and some management.

  ‘Brilliant,’ said Joe. ‘Bloody brilliant.’

  I didn’t know who he was talking to, not me certainly. I was all done up. A sort of trashy, thrown out mess, something swept up from the Thames mudbanks. Someone put a coffee into my hand. It tasted of gravy.

  ‘Can I go now?’ I asked. I meant could I go home, go away, disappear forever, slip into a pair of old slippers.

  ‘No, you can’t. We’re taking some of the scenes again. Duke, that crown looks ridiculous. I didn‘t design that. It’s not a coronation. Look at my sketches. He’s indoors, relaxing, having a glass of wine, thinking about Olivia. Sea captain, what’s this with scuffed trainers?’

  ‘Er, sorry … not sure. I didn’t know what to wear.’ Tony looked worried, as if he had been all morning at central casting.

  ‘Go see Hilda. There are boots for you. She’ll find them.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Sophie.’ He demanded my attention.

  ‘I’m the prompt. You can’t give me notes.’

  Joe shook his head, pushing his hair back. He held up his hands in supplication. ‘I wouldn’ t dream of giving you notes. I wanted to thank you for reading for us. I know it was something of an ordeal for you.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I could feel it. I can read the body language.’

  ‘Quit the body bit,’ I said, embarrassed.

  That was new. He hadn’t read my body language before, that night. In fact, he had been totally illiterate, not understand what it had meant to me.

  ‘Don’t ask me to do it again.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I won’t. Both our actresses hope to be fully recovered by tomorrow and back onstage. A day in bed, lots of hot drinks, aspirins. It works wonders. Take five.’

  ‘I’d like to take a hundred and ninety-five.’

  ‘Then pick your cards up on the way out.’

  It was like a cold slap in the face. I hadn’t meant what I said. Another of my useless, zany remarks gone astray.

  I collected my things, coat, bag, bottle of water, and stumbled my way to the stage door, a smile welded on with superglue. It was sort of sleep walking. Someone handed me my scarf. Another patted me on the shoulder. How could Joe be so cruel?

  ‘You don’t mean this,’ said Bill, blocking my exit. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’ve had it,’ I said. ‘I can’t take any more. Did you hear what he said? He thanked me for reading the part, then told me to pick up my cards. Wasn’t he listening? I didn’t read the part. I was the part. I was Viola.’

  ‘I know, I know. He didn’t mean it. Walk around, girl. Go shopping. Do something different. The show isn’t the end of
the world. But we can’t do without you, Sophie. Think of the others, they all need you.’

  ‘I’ll go and walk by the river,’ I said. ‘And think of ice fairs and ferrymen. They found dead people in the river every day in those days. They fell in when they were drunk or weak with hunger.’

  ‘Don’t fall in. Come back, please Sophie.’

  ‘I could get work as an extra, on TV, costume dramas. They are always looking for people. There are adverts in The Stage.’

  ‘Oh yes? Do you want to get up and be out before dawn, lining up with hundreds of others for your costume, waiting around for hours for awful food at the canteen? You’d hate it. Be honest, would you really like that?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t. That’s true.’

  I took a walk by the Embankment, stopping to read the poems on the paving stones, watching the laden barges sailing under bridges. He had been long gone before they laid the stones. Well, I couldn’t find any of his sonnets.

  Why didn’t they include him? He’d been around, walking to his theatre, The Globe, along this bank of the river from his lodgings. These were his footsteps.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I was walking by the Thames, thinking. My wardrobe needed a significant makeover. That jazzy red flapper dress had given me ideas beyond my means. But I wasn’t going to turn into a dolly shopaholic. Twice a year was twice too often. Most shop assistants gave me the creeps, long nails and short noses and Bambi-sized clothes. I longed to be served by a normal-looking, jolly lady who said she had a daughter just like me.

  Charity shops are thin on the ground in central London. Forget Oxford Street, forget Regent Street. But there was one surviving in Edgware Road, a bit trendy, fairly expensive, lots of good stuff donated from the nearby high-class blocks of flats.

  I found some Ralph Lauren black jeans that fitted, several Jacques Verte shirts that were abandoned luxury cruisewear (did they get too seasick?), a floppy lilac mohair jersey that must have cost a bomb. The label alone was impressive. And a vibrant blue velvet scarf that changed colour with every movement. I had to have it. The entire lot wiped me out of ready money but I didn’t care. This was the new me, not exactly colour coordinated but bright. Pulsating with energy.