Midsummer Madness

by Stella Whitelaw

  It was the first time that I hadn’t wanted to go back to the theatre. I was dragging my heels like a reluctant puppy who didn’t want to go walkies. Normally, I can’t wait. I’m drawn like a magnet but the scene offstage had unhinged me. A trip abroad might be a suitable change of plan. EuroStar was not far away at Waterloo Station. They would take plastic. The train leaves every hour. I could be in Paris in three hours. Parlez-vous Français? I could go and see the Mona Lisa. We had similar smiles and maybe the same secrets.

  But I was where I was and I couldn’t cut and run. My new clothes would help bolster my confidence, I hoped. The old downtrodden image was gone, and my new bright appearance, when I appeared flashing designer labels, was ready to prompt. There was an unused dressing room near Wardrobe. I might even wear daytime mascara.

  Surely Elinor would recover in time for the show? She was a real trooper. But Fran would be eager-beaver at the starting post to take over. It was her one and only chance of fame. She’d play Viola even if she was gargling with TCP between every scene and had cottonwool stuffed up her nose.

  ‘What’s the news?’ I asked Bill as I slid in backstage, hoping not to be seen, laden with bags.

  ‘Elinor is still prostrate, in bed, really ill apparently. Fran is running a high fever, but it may miraculously cure itself. You know Fran, any going virus for a bit of high-voltage drama.’

  ‘Maybe she’ll arrive at the last moment, dragging herself from her sickbed to save the show, etcetera. First night heroics,’ I added.

  ‘Or, if they are both too ill to perform, then Joe may have to cancel the opening night. It’s happened before, many times. Shows do get postponed and people get their money back.’

  ‘He would be devastated. Twelfth Night means a lot to him. He’s done so much work, loves every line.’

  ‘But Fran would love it more if the show had to be cancelled,’ said Bill, shrewdly. ‘Although she wants to play Viola, be an instant new star, to actually have to do it would be putting her to the test. Not a rehearsal this time. She’d have to go out there in front of a critical audience and play Viola. I don’t think she can do it – she doesn’t have the talent. Maybe she knows she couldn’t do it.’

  ‘Bill, that’s awful but you might be right. She’s so full of bounce and confidence that we are all taken in, but maybe she’s not really up to it.’

  ‘Let’s see what happens. This is getting more interesting than Shakespeare. Pity he’s not around. He’d have written another damned good play about it.’

  Bill went off somewhere into the murky backstage pong of dust and glue-size. A knife-cutting draught came from some open door. There was always a lot to do backstage, as I knew from my humble ASM days. At least I had moved on from then, had my own corner. If I knew where it was. I was stirring myself into a sour look mood, ready to hurl a few at him when Joe appeared.

  So where was Joe going to put the prompt now? I didn’t want to know. I had a feeling I was going to be annoyed, upset, desperate, or possibly all three.

  I found the empty dressing room. It was veiled in cobwebs, hadn’t had any polluted London air for months. I cleared a chair and draped my new clothes over the back. It didn’t take me long to change. The lilac mohair was gloriously warm and the velvet scarf lay in shimmering folds round my shoulders; the black jeans clung, sex on legs. Mascara would be over the top, I decided. I didn’t need it. Lashes are superfluous to prompting. They get in the way of page turning.

  The cast were arriving back carrying take-away burgers and curries. The spicy smell filled the theatre. I’d forgotten food. I’d forgotten quite a lot of things and didn’t know what Joe had decided to do for the rest of the day. He came in and dumped his gear in Row D.

  ‘Because Elinor is not with us today, this doesn’t mean slacking off and going home early,’ said Joe. He was eating an apple. There was a bag of fruit on his desk in front of him. ‘We are going to pick out the weak scenes and sharpen them up. Letter scene first, Act II, scene 3. Sir Toby, are you ready?’

  Viola was not in this scene so I settled myself in the prompt corner, draping the scarf. I felt different. I began to relax, breathing evenly. No more being Viola for a while. She had time off. She could go sightseeing round Illyria.

  ‘Much better,’ he said, coming up on stage. ‘Give Feste room for his song. Don’t crowd him even when you are making fun of him.’ He wandered over to the prompt corner and looked down his nose at me. ‘Well, well, who are you? Such glamour. Have we met?’

  I was not amused. My face hadn’t changed, nor my red hair. It was a touch tousled and dishevelled. ‘How sad, Mr Harrison, have you lost your long-distance spectacles? Or is this an early senior moment?’

  ‘You’re wearing girly clothes.’

  ‘How would you know?’

  ‘I recognize certain clothes, certain designers. They have a look, a label.’

  ‘So, have I got that label look?’

  He peered closely at me, squinting. ‘Good heavens, it’s Sophie, our delightful prompt. What a gorgeous transformation. She has joined the real world of clothes. Well done, full marks.’

  He sounded so aloof and patronizing I could have hit him with my book. But I kept my cool. He was my neighbour and it would not be a good idea to antagonize him. A neighbour from hell could make life unpleasant. He might block the stairs, hide the dustbins, tamper with my mail.

  And I was an essential part of the production team. I didn’t want my prompt corner moved to the foyer. I’d be selling programmes next.

  ‘Like the scarf, great colour, suits you,’ he said as he turned away. ‘Want a satsuma?’ He put the fruit in my hand. He was smiling, not a patronizing smile now, but something more genuine, a smile that reached his eyes. Did I have time to eat it? ‘There’s time,’ he said, reading my thoughts.

  The satsuma was refreshing. Did he have another one to spare? Tomorrow I could bring in a crate. They were perfect snack material. I rolled the skin up into a smaller orange ball.

  I went home alone in my new glory. Joe had gone to visit the two influenza sufferers, hopefully with offerings of flowers and grapes. The Edwardian house seemed tall and empty. I didn’t even know the occupants of the basement or the ground-floor flats. Absolutely nil communication. Not even the occasional Post-it note.

  The second floor had an Arab tenant and I never saw him either. He paid the rent and then disappeared to Dubai where he ran some business.

  My flat felt like an old friend, a welcoming cocoon. I put crumbled stale bread out for the birds on the roof. Lots of brown London sparrows hopped around in eager anticipation, not too many greedy pigeons. Though I loved the gleam of their greeny-blue neck feathers.

  The evening was mine, or what was left of it. Cuppa soup and some late night telly. None of this nauseating celebrity stuff, get me out of here, some Congo jungle or prison-like flat full of rumpled beds, dormitory style, swopping sex. I wanted to see a good film, The Shipping News, a documentary or something intellectual about art which I could pretend to understand.

  I was practically asleep, nodding, had lost track of the plot, when the doorbell rang. Not many people managed the climb to my flat. They might need oxygen.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, without removing the chain on the door. It was ajar about two inches. It was too late at night to open the door. No room for a machete.

  ‘It’s me. Joe. Let me in.’

  ‘Joe who? Password, please.’

  ‘Quit joking, Sophie. I know it’s late. Joe Harrison. Director. Twelfth Night. Take your choice.’

  It was very late but I was still wearing the Ralph Laurens jeans and a jazzy cruise shirt, so I looked reasonably presentable. I let him in. Joe was absolutely shattered, worn out, passed his sell-by date. He fell on to my couch, legs over the arm, his face pale and gaunt. He needed a drink.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Can I talk?’

  ‘Sure, talk. But I’ll get you a drink first.’

  The wine had all gone.
I didn’t keep a wine cellar under the stairs. No stairs. But there were odds and ends left over from Christmases long past. Those liqueurs which were brought back duty-free but no one wanted to drink, even in punch.

  I made him a mug of hot chocolate laced with schnapps. That should blow his mind sideways. Joe was laid out on my couch and no one was on top of him.

  ‘Tell me,’ I said. ‘I’m tired, but sober.’

  ‘Elinor is really ill. There’s no doubt. She’s not faking it. High temperature, aches and pain, influenza, no voice, streaming, poor soul. The doctor says she can’t go on. She can barely make it to the loo.’

  ‘And Fran?’

  ‘Ah, Fran, the luscious Fran, is about the same. Same symptoms. Yet I don’t know about Fran.’ Joe lay back on my couch, sipping the hot chocolate laced with schnapps, his eyes closed. He seemed to like the taste of it. Some of the snarl had gone out of his mouth. He had a mouth that could curl. But I knew it could kiss.

  ‘Fran has influenza, yes?’

  ‘I think Fran has influenza. It looks like the flu and sounds a lot like it, but there’s nothing that confirms the diagnosis. She says she’ll come if she possibly can, but that’s not good enough for me.’ He heaved himself up on his elbow. ‘So, Sophie, what do you think? Could you play the part?’

  Something happened to me then. I went into a sort of terrified spiral. My mind was working on a different planet. I was a prompt, not an understudy. I remembered nightmares of past shows, of forcing myself to go on stage with churning sickness. I was a victim of stage fright of the worst kind. This was a scene straight from the cauldrons of hell.

  ‘It isn’t fair,’ I said, gathering a shred of courage. ‘You can’t ask me.’

  ‘There’s the full dress rehearsal first. You could get everything sorted out then. You know the words by heart. You really can act, no problem. You are quite perfect in the part. A natural. The way you walk, the way you talk, everything.’

  ‘No,’ I said, trembling. ‘I can’t do it.’

  ‘Please, Sophie. Please help me out.’

  ‘I won’t do it.’

  ‘What do I have to do to make you do it?’ he asked. There was fear and anger on his face. He was thinking of the consequences. The show would flop. He would have to cancel. Crawl back to New York.

  ‘You didn’t help me when I needed you,’ I said, all the long ago trauma hung over my head like a gathering dark cloud. ‘I had to stand on my own, survive somehow, without you.’

  ‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ said Joe, heaving himself up with anger. ‘Sometimes you talk complete rubbish.’ But he went into the kitchen and made himself some more hot chocolate. It was getting late. I wanted to go to bed.

  ‘You can’t let the show down,’ said Joe, following me into the bathroom. I was cleaning my teeth and washing my face. I certainly wasn’t going to floss in front of him. ‘It has to go on.’

  ‘Go away,’ I said. ‘I have to go to bed.’

  ‘This is an emergency,’ he urged.

  ‘Not till tomorrow, it’s not,’ I said. ‘Fran will recover, you’ll see. Remember, she’s a budding star, waiting for her chance.’

  ‘A budding disaster, you mean. She wants to be a star but she doesn’t want the work that goes with it. Instant stardom is her aim. Not twenty-four hours of horrendously hard work and rehearsal.’

  ‘She might surprise you.’

  ‘I don’t want those kind of surprises. I’d rather have you playing Viola.’

  ‘Fran would knife me in the wings rather than let me go on. Do you want blood all over the set?’ I said, spitting out the toothpaste. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to bed.’

  ‘Shall I turn off the telly, tuck you in bed, turn off the lights?’

  ‘No, thank you. I can manage,’ I said.

  ‘Goodnight, Sophie. Dream of sunny Illyria, off the shores of the Adriatic.’

  He seemed to hover, not knowing what to say.

  ‘I’d rather dream of Skegness on a wet and foggy Sunday, thank you,’ I said.

  Then he had gone, as he had before, leaving the nightmare behind. It was still with me. He’d left it on my pillow, like a nasty, squashed frog.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I didn’t sleep well. Fragments of lines from other plays swirled through my mind, lost in a mist of shifting out-of-town shabby repertory theatres. I was playing a dozen roles, in the wrong order, each in a haze of panic and mind-strapping fright. Frozen to the floorboards, superglued to the wings. No words remembered. Lines lost in a vacuum. This was my worst nightmare, an electric tangle of paralyzing panic.

  I didn’t want to get up. Perhaps I had flu without knowing it. I felt my forehead hopefully. It was cool. No aches and pains in any joint. I was flu-less and clueless. Could I act out having the flu? It was a possibility. Hot showers, heated wheat pack under clothes, hot water bottle strapped to my waist?

  Joe Harrison would be disappointed but I was not his nanny state. In time, he wouldn’t even notice. Men are programmed not to notice. I couldn’t be what he wanted me to be. Words were my life but I didn’t want to say them in a theatre. Call in Meryl Streep. She’d fly over for a couple of million.

  Something was going to happen. I could feel a strange tingling. A Dorset awareness. It was a premonition in my bones. Even less reason to get out of bed. I pulled the duvet over my head and pretended the day had not arrived.

  The phone began to ring. I ignored it. But it would not stop. My ears protested at the clamour.

  ‘Hello,’ I croaked, assuming flu mantle.

  ‘Sophie, where are you? I’m expecting you for costume fittings. It’s the dress rehearsal today, remember? Just a few alterations.’

  Joe barked at me down the phone. He sounded brisk, alive, vibrating with enthusiasm, in peak mental condition. Everything I was not.

  ‘I’m ill,’ I said weakly, with a bit of a cough.

  ‘You’re a bad liar. There’s nothing wrong with you. I’m sending a taxi round for you now. It’ll be there in twenty minutes. Put some clothes on. Not all of them. I don’t want a bloated Viola. No apparition, please.’

  He rang off before I could reply. I was starting to hyperventilate. Not a good sign. I could prompt but I could not, in a million years, go on that stage.

  I showered and dressed with shaking hands, trying to eat a banana but it stuck in my throat. The sky was sullen with low and ominous grey clouds like there was an imminent alien landing. One of them could play Viola. They must know every word that was ever written on this universe by every playwright, poet and author. Joe could design a costume that would accommodate extra limbs or one eye.

  I told the taxi driver to get lost but Joe had paid him enough to drive me straight to the theatre. He even drove in bus lanes. The lights outside the Royale were dimmed. They didn’t know what names to put up. The theatre didn’t have a face. It was bare, nameless, a desert.

  ‘I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it,’ I chanted as I walked in the stage door, stiff-legged as if they were co-joined. My mantra. ‘I’m not doing it.’

  ‘Hiya, Sophie,’ said a stage hand, humping a huge tapestry. ‘Hear you are going to save the show. Good on you. Hallelujah.’

  ‘I’m not doing it,’ I said.

  Joe was immediately by my side, tall and dark, his hand under my arm, guiding me downstairs towards Wardrobe. My legs reverted to stiff. Premature arthritis set in the joints.

  ‘This way, Sophie. My wonderful girl. We want to try on a few costumes, just in case. A couple of minor alterations, maybe. We’ll have to bind your bust.’

  ‘I’m not having my bust bound,’ I exploded. Everything was getting beyond annoying. ‘My bust stays where it is.’

  ‘Get Sophie a coffee,’ Joe shouted at Hilda. ‘Strong, black. She needs caffeine. Plenty of it.’

  I turned to face Joe. His face was so familiar, so dear, I almost faltered. ‘I’m not doing any show,’ I said firmly. ‘I’ve decided that I’ll
walk the dress rehearsal for you. Say the lines. But there is absolutely no way that I’m doing the opening night. Do you get me? Have I made myself absolutely clear?’

  He was nodding. ‘Sure, Sophie, understood. Put the pageboy costume on. I found the perfect dye for the velvet, like soft sunshine. I’ve tried to create a harmonious picture. Let this seam out, Hilda. What about her hair?’

  ‘Don’t you dare touch my hair,’ I cried, not quite a demented harridan scream but near. ‘No one, but no one, touches my hair. No opening night.’

  Hilda was cowering behind a pile of material, not knowing what to make of it all. I didn’t mean to alarm her. Madness was contagious.

  I’d had longish red hair for years, since school days. Sometimes my mad mother snipped off a few inches, when I wasn’t looking, saying they were split ends. But I always checked that her few inches were not any longer. She dare not cut more.

  Since then, my hair had been either up or down, or something in between. Forget the disastrous Gothic ebony period. I liked my hair long. It kept my neck warm, hid my face.

  ‘Find her a cap,’ said Joe, beyond arguing any more.

  ‘This was Elinor’s,’ said Hilda, producing a fawn velvet cap with sweeping feather.

  ‘That’ll do. Coil her hair inside it. Only for the dress rehearsal. We’re starting in twenty minutes.’

  ‘Viola starts with the shipwreck scene,’ I reminded him, appalled at what he was making me do. ‘The cloak and torn dress, surely?’

  ‘Yeah, put on some seaweed,’ he growled.

  I still had this premonition. Something was going to happen, not necessarily to me, but to the company, to Joe, to the theatre. Could it be the plague? The Globe had been closed because of plague. Pass me a face mask.

  The dress rehearsal began. It was fraught with late entrances, clothes that didn’t fit, scenery that wouldn’t swing or fell down, props that were forgotten. I was on autopilot. I said the words but with little meaning. It was robotic.