Follow Your Dream

by Patricia Burns

  She could do it, Lillian knew. She wanted to have the chance, wanted it more than anything.

  ‘Glad you think so, Mr Fuller,’ she said.

  ‘So you see, I thought we’d better get together and—er—discuss it further.’

  ‘Discuss?’

  ‘Yes. You see, Lindy, you’re not the only one I could give this part to. I’d like to choose you, I really would. I just need you to—er—persuade me that you’re right for the job.’

  She had to make sure that he really was saying what she thought he was.

  ‘Persuade you?’ she said, acting the innocent.

  ‘Oh, come on, darling, we both know what I’m talking about. Naughty but nice, eh? And don’t try and pretend you’re giving away something precious. I know you dancers. You’re at it all the time. Why waste it on some spotty youth when I can help you with your career?’

  Lillian felt cheated, used, overwhelmingly angry. She really, really wanted this part. For a moment she even found herself considering his bargain, before stamping on it, disgusted with herself.

  ‘You want me to have sex with you before you give me the role?’

  ‘If you must put it as baldly as that, yes. That’s the deal.’

  ‘I am the right person for this job,’ she burst out. ‘I’d be damn good at it. You know that and I know it but—’

  ‘So, what’s the problem?’ Paul Fuller interrupted, holding out a hand to her. ‘You give me what I want; I give you what you want. It’s easy.’

  ‘Not for me, it isn’t. I don’t want it that much,’ she told him.

  Paul Fuller shrugged.

  ‘Suit y’self, sweetie. There’s plenty more here that’ll be more than happy to take your place.’

  ‘They’re welcome to it,’ Lillian cried, and slammed out of the room.

  She ran down the dim corridor, choking back tears of anger and humiliation. How dared he think she would do that? How dared he? She found herself at the stage door and burst out into the damp street, her chest heaving. It was so unfair. He had all the power and he sat there playing with it, making other people dance to his tune.

  ‘Not me, matey,’ she said out loud. ‘Not me. Nobody owns me.’

  She marched round the block, muttering to herself, oblivious to the fact that she was still dressed in her dance clothes and people were giving her funny looks. She considered just giving up and going home. But this was the last of the calls for large scale pantos. She had waited for this one because of the chance of a solo role, and now that man had ruined it for her. She walked a bit further and, when she finally calmed down a little, began to take in something of her surroundings. Nottingham was a great city. It would have been nice to do a season here. Still fuming, she went back to the theatre to pick up her things.

  She sidled in to find the dancers gathered in a group on the stage. An ASM, the same one who had run Paul Fuller’s message for him, was standing in front of them with a list in his hand. She joined the back of the group. One thing was for sure, Paul Fuller wasn’t going to give her a job now.

  ‘What’s going on? Have they announced the fairies?’ she asked the girl nearest to her.

  ‘You just missed it. It’s those three over there,’ the girl told her, nodding at a group standing downstage left. Lillian looked at them. One of them was Dawn.

  ‘Stupid bitch,’ she muttered.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ the girl next to her said.

  ‘Not you.’

  A couple of dancers turned round and glared at her. ‘Shh!’

  ‘—and these people are in the chorus line—’ the ASM said and read out a list of names.

  To Lillian’s amazement, she was on it. She stood quite still, an island of quiet in a sea of chattering girls, some pleased, some angry, all disappointed at not getting the solo roles.

  ‘—some decent digs, if you’re interested.’

  ‘Er—what?’ She realised that one of the other dancers was talking to her.

  ‘I said, I was here last year and I know some good digs.’

  ‘Oh. Right. Thanks.’

  Should she stay? It meant swallowing her pride. It meant watching that Dawn take her place in the spotlight in every single performance. The whole thing stank. But the alternative was appearing in a second-rate show, and she was worth more than that. She had earned her place in a big production. Very reluctantly, she pulled herself together and managed to smile at the girl who was talking to her.

  ‘Sorry, I was thinking something through. Yes, I’d love to take a look at these digs. Get them off the theatre list and you never know what you’re getting, do you?’

  Her course was set.

  The annoying thing was, Paul Fuller was an excellent producer and a talented choreographer. The panto was a real spectacular, with a big cast and orchestra, magical special effects, slick comedy scenes and great dances. In other circumstances, Lillian would have been delighted to be part of it. But, every time she saw Dawn perform, she felt sick with anger and a sense of powerlessness. She knew she could put far more life into the lines the good fairy said and, as for the solo, she could do it one hundred per cent better. Dawn was proficient enough, but she had no soul.

  She went home for a flying visit at Christmas, as usual. Even though it was the second Christmas with both Bob and Wendy settled in their own places, it still seemed strange without them around. She was surprised at how much she missed both of them. Bob, Susan and the Ker-shaws all came round to Sunny View for tea on Christmas Day, which livened things up no end, but Wendy and Terry stayed away as Terry’s family had joined them for the day. As she ran about preparing dinner, Lillian wondered how Wendy was getting on coping with a baby and a toddler and cooking for all her visitors. Terry would be sure to want to show off and have the table groaning with food and drink. She didn’t have time to find out before she had to rush back to Nottingham.

  The panto opened on Boxing Day and played to packed houses all week. Then, for the matinee on New Year’s Eve, four of the cast who were sharing digs called in sick. They had all gone down with a virulent stomach bug. One of them was Dawn, another was the girl who was understudying the fairies. Paul Fuller was pulling his hair out. He burst into the female dressing room.

  ‘Marilyn—’ he grabbed the arm of the girl nearest to him ‘—you’re a nice little dancer. This is your big chance. Have you been watching what Dawn’s doing?’

  Marilyn went quite pale. ‘I can’t do it without a rehearsal, Mr Fuller. Not in a million years.’

  Paul Fuller gave a growl of frustration. ‘For God’s sake—’

  He cast about the room. His gaze lit upon Lillian. ‘Lindy, I know you could do it.’

  Lillian’s heart beat fast. This was it. Her A Star Is Born moment. But she was not letting Paul Fuller off the hook. Oh, no. She stared back at him, stony-faced.

  ‘Yes, I could do it. Standing on my head.’

  Relief flooded his face. He was all smiles.

  ‘Great, great, wonderful. What a trouper! Come along; we’ve just got time for one quick run-through, then Denise can have a go at your costume for you.’

  Lillian did not respond. She stayed sitting on her stool, looking at him. ‘No strings?’ she asked.

  Paul Fuller flushed. ‘Strings? What strings? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  Around her, the other dancers sniggered. They all knew what was going on with him and Dawn.

  ‘And it’s not just understudying—I get to do the role for the rest of the run?’

  He looked quite shaken. ‘I…I don’t know about that—’

  Lillian shrugged. ‘That’s the deal, take it or leave it.’

  ‘Well—I—’

  He looked around at the rest of the dancers, hoping for a break. Lillian held her breath. If some cow cut the ground from under her by offering to stand in just until Dawn came back, she would strangle her with her bare hands. But Dawn was not popular with the rest of the company. They just looked from Paul Fuller
to Lillian, waiting avidly to see who was going to win.

  ‘All right, then,’ he conceded.

  ‘Good,’ Lillian said with a gracious smile. She stood up. ‘We’d better have that run-through, hadn’t we?’

  As she followed him out of the dressing room applause broke out behind her. It was almost as sweet a moment as when she’d stepped into the spotlight for the very first time.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ‘WHAT’RE you having, Lindy? Tea or coffee?’

  ‘Oh—tea, please. And an Eccles cake.’

  Lillian and a couple of the other girls from the company bagged a table in the crowded café while Marilyn went to get their drinks. It was a rainy afternoon in Nottingham and the January sales were in full swing, so the place was full of shoppers with bulging bags. Underneath the pleasant aroma of food there was a whiff of wet woollen coats that reminded Lillian of school cloakrooms. The other two discussed whether Nottingham was better than Leeds for shopping as they waited for Marilyn. Lillian got out the present she had just bought for her little niece’s second birthday, a baby doll in a nightie and frilly cap. She hoped little Coral learned to love it and maybe be a little less jealous of her new baby brother. More than that, she hoped Wendy would be pleased. Her sister had been very subdued when she had last seen her, back in November.

  ‘What d’you think, Lindy? Leeds or Nottingham?’ one of the girls asked.

  ‘Oh—I don’t know. Here, I think. It’s nearer home so it was easier to get back for Christmas.’

  ‘Here we are!’ Marilyn plonked a loaded tray down in the middle of the small table. ‘Help yourselves. Eccles cake for you, Lindy Lulu, and doughnuts for the rest of us.’

  They all tucked in. Dancing made them ravenous.

  ‘You meeting that lad of yours before the show?’ Marilyn asked.

  Lillian shook her head and swallowed a mouthful of cake. ‘Not today.’

  ‘Why not? You ought to hang on to him, he’s dishy.’

  ‘He’s all right, I suppose.’

  What with all the travelling that they did, boyfriends came and went. Some of the girls managed to maintain longdistance relationships. Some even got married and left the company. Lillian never had any trouble attracting men, and the fact that she played it cool only made them all the keener, but she never kept any of them beyond the run of each production.

  ‘You’re too picky by half, you are,’ one of the girls said. ‘Me, I’m getting fed up with all this moving on. If some lad asked me to marry him I’d say yes like a shot. Nice little place and a nice man to keep me warm, that’s what I want.’

  They all laughed and teased her.

  Lillian looked idly beyond her to the next table. A woman of about thirty was staring back at her with wide eyes and an expression of shocked amazement. Their eyes met and Lillian looked away, faintly embarrassed. Was there something wrong with her hair? Did she have crumbs all over her face? She brushed her hand over her mouth and, as she did so, recognition tugged at her memory and made her look back. There was something very familiar about the woman. She was still staring as if she had seen a ghost.

  Vaguely disturbed, Lillian turned her attention back to her cake. Who was that woman? After more than three years now, moving around doing pantos and summer seasons and weekly variety in between, dozens of people had moved briefly into and out of her life. She couldn’t remember all of them.

  ‘…isn’t that so, Lindy?’

  ‘What?’ She hadn’t heard a word her friends had been saying.

  ‘You’re still hanging on for Mr Perfect.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  She was tired of being teased about James. That was partly why she went out with other boys, just to escape from being nagged about the stupidity of saving herself for someone who was never going to be hers.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  She looked up. The strange woman was standing next to her.

  ‘I…It’s silly, I know, but I heard your friends say your name and…well…you do look a bit like…but it was all so long ago…’

  Now it was Lillian’s turn to wonder if she had seen a ghost. That face—that voice—

  ‘It’s not—?’ she whispered.

  ‘—so I wondered—only I had a little niece once called Lindy-Lou. Lindy-Lou Parker.’

  ‘It is!’ Lillian breathed. She stood up, her knees shaky beneath her. ‘Aunty Eileen? Is it you?’

  ‘Lindy! Oh, Lindy, it is you!’

  Laughing and crying, they fell into each other’s arms.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ they both repeated, pulling away to study each other’s faces. Eileen did look different in some ways. She was no longer a slim young girl, for she had put on weight all over, and it showed on her face, giving her the start of a double chin. Her hair was now backcombed and lacquered into a fashionable beehive but her merry eyes and her infectious smile were just the same.

  ‘Of all the cafés in all the world—’ Lillian misquoted. ‘Are you living here, in Nottingham?’

  ‘Not in the town. I only came in to go to the sales, and I found you! Oh, Lindy, I thought of you such a lot. What are you doing now? Why are you here?’

  ‘I’m in the panto, I’m a dancer. I followed my dream, just like you said.’

  There was so much to catch up on, neither of them knew where to start.

  ‘I can’t stay. My kids’ll be coming in from school. They can let themselves in, but I don’t like them being on their own in the house too long. Look, you must come out and see us,’ Eileen insisted.

  She explained which bus to catch and how to find her house. They arranged to meet the next morning and then she was gone, leaving Lillian dazed and elated.

  ‘My Aunty Eileen,’ she kept repeating. ‘That really was my Aunty Eileen. I never thought I’d see her again.’

  Concentrating on the show was really hard that evening, sleeping afterwards even more difficult. Lillian was awake again at six, and up long before any of the others at her digs. Nine o’clock saw her waiting at the bus station for the bus out to the village where Eileen lived. It turned out to be an ugly place dominated by a vast slag heap and the winding gear of the coal mine. A cloud of coal smoke hung over it, coiling up from the chimneys of rows of identical pit cottages. Eileen lived in a flat-fronted terraced place that let straight on to the street.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ she cried, giving Lillian a big hug and a kiss. ‘Let me look at you. D’you know, last night I thought I might have dreamed it all, but here you are. It really is you.’

  Lillian found herself in a small square room with the three-piece suite arranged around the TV set. So this was Aunty Eileen’s home. It felt so odd to be here. She walked over to the mantelpiece above the coal fire, where there was a row of family photos.

  ‘Are these your children?’ she asked, studying them.

  ‘Yes—’ Eileen’s voice softened with love. ‘That’s our Tommy, he’s nine now, and that’s Lindy, she’s nearly seven.’

  ‘Lindy?’

  ‘That’s right. It’s Linda, but we call her Lindy. After you.’

  ‘Oh—’ tears swam in Lillian’s eyes ‘—that’s so lovely.’

  ‘I never forgot you, you know. I didn’t want to leave you. But you do strange things when you’re in love, don’t you? You’re off your head, really. D’you know what I mean? You’re how old now? Nearly twenty? You must have been in love.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lillian said. It did do strange things to you. It stopped you from getting serious about anyone else, for a start.

  ‘I was so crazy about that man, I would of done anything for him. I was so stupid then. I knew nothing about life at all. I just thought that I couldn’t live without him.’

  ‘Is that him there?’ Lillian asked, nodding at a picture of Eileen and a man with his arm round her shoulders at the seaside somewhere.

  ‘Oh, no! That’s my Neil. No, it all ended with the other one in less than a year. I got to realise that he was never going to leave
his wife, and then I found out that he was seeing another girl as well. He had three of us on the go! I was heartbroken, I can tell you. Cried my eyes out for weeks, I did. I suppose I should of gone home then, but I was too afraid. I didn’t know what Mum would say if I came back. I thought she might just throw me out.’

  ‘Well—she was very cut up when you went,’ Lillian said with massive understatement.

  Gran had never uttered Eileen’s name again, to the best of her knowledge. If she did refer to her it was as ‘That Girl’.

  ‘That’s what I thought. I mean—creeping out in the middle of the night like that. If Lindy was to do that to me when she gets bigger, I’d just die of a broken heart.’

  It was hard to imagine Gran dying of a broken heart.

  ‘I’m sure she won’t. You must be a lovely mum,’ Lillian said. ‘So when did you meet your Neil?’

  ‘A year or so after it all finished with the other one. It was quite different with him. Like—we’re best pals as well as husband and wife. We’ve hardly ever had a row. It’s like we’re sort of in tune with each other.’

  ‘You’re so lucky,’ Lillian said with a sigh.

  ‘You sound sad. Have you got a boyfriend?’ Eileen asked.

  ‘Yes, but it’s a long story. Tell me about Neil first. Does he work down the pit?’

  ‘No, thank God. It’s so dangerous down there. You’ll never believe what he does, though—he’s a butcher! It’s a joke, isn’t it? I leave home with a commercial traveller and I end up married to a butcher, just like my mum. It must be fate or something.’

  ‘A butcher? You’re kidding!’

  They looked at each other, smiles tugging at the corners of their mouths. And then they were both laughing fit to burst. They collapsed onto the sofa, tears running down their faces.

  ‘I don’t know why it’s so funny. It’s a perfectly good job,’ Lillian gasped.

  ‘I know, I know. Stupid, isn’t it? Look—come into the kitchen and I’ll make us some tea. I want to hear all about everything that’s happened at home.’

  There was so much to say. They sat across the red formica kitchen table from each other, drinking tea and munching biscuits while Lillian brought Eileen up to date with the family’s lives.