Olivia's Curtain Call

by Lyn Gardner

  “I miss you, Dad,” said Olivia as they both rang off.

  “Was that Jack?” Tom asked as he came bounding into the room. Olivia nodded. He peered at her closely. “You all right?”

  “Yes,” said Olivia. “It’s just he said he was lonely. He’s never said that before. It made me think how much time he spends travelling and is away from us all on his own. After Mum died, he and Eel and I were all together all of the time. Always. The circus was our family and our friends rolled into one. But since we’ve been at the Swan, that’s changed. The Swan is our home now, and it’s Alicia’s home, but it’s not really Dad’s home, at least not in the same way. He’s always coming and going and on the move, so when it comes down to it, he’s always alone. It makes me feel sad.”

  Tom put his arms around Olivia and gave her a comforting hug. “But he’s only in Russia this time. That’s not so very far away, and he’ll be back soon. Then he’ll be around all summer, and the three of us will be working together, and if the new act works out we can even get some gigs. He won’t be lonely then.”

  “Mmm, maybe,” said Olivia, looking worried.

  Tom narrowed his eyes. “Is there something you’re not telling me, Olivia Marvell?”

  Olivia nodded. “But you’ve got to promise not to tell anyone else. It’s a big secret.”

  “Spill,” said Tom.

  “I’m going up for something. In the West End. And if I get it, it’ll mean rehearsals and a proper run, at least as long as a child licence would allow.”

  “So you wouldn’t be able to do the high-wire act with me and Jack,” said Tom, trying to keep the disappointment out of this voice.

  “No, I could, because once the play was running I’d still be able to rehearse. It just means we’d have to put any performances back until the autumn.”

  “Well then, I can’t see the problem,” said Tom. “Jack told me that if I got a job, we could work round it.”

  ‘I’m sure he meant it too,” said Olivia, “but you’re not his daughter or the one he’s been teaching high-wire since the day she could walk. I think it was just a bit of a shock to him that I was even contemplating auditioning for a stage role, particularly if it might interfere in any way with the high-wire.”

  “It’s a bit of a shock for me too. But a good one. Aeysha was only saying the other day that it was a real shame you don’t audition for stage jobs because you’re such a brilliant actor. We all thought you were totally wedded to the high-wire.”

  “I am,” said Olivia. “But I don’t see why I shouldn’t do both.” She grinned. “Maybe I’ll be the first person to win an Olivier Award for best actress, and also do high-wire and flying trapeze for Cirque du Soleil. Look, I probably won’t get the job. But it just seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up. When Gran asked, it felt like fate.”

  “So what is this mysterious job?” asked Tom excitedly.

  “Juliet. In the West End.”

  “Oh, Liv,” said Tom, “that would be extraordinary. You’d be perfect.” He suddenly stopped. “And is it true that Kasha is playing Romeo?”

  “Yes,” said Olivia. “Isn’t it brilliant? If I got it, it would be such a coup for Gran and the Swan. Me and Kasha on stage together, playing the lovers,” and she was so taken up with the idea that she failed to notice the odd look that flashed across Tom’s face.

  “Yes,” said Tom. “It would be brilliant.” But he didn’t sound entirely convinced.

  Olivia’s mind had already raced on to the routine they were going to practise. “Come on, Tom, we’re wasting time talking about something that will probably never happen. Let’s hit the wire, partner.”

  Chapter Five

  Olivia and the others were sitting eating lunch together.

  “So let me get this right,” said Aeysha. “It’s so bizarre I can’t get my head round it. Huff didn’t ask you to read or anything?”

  Georgia and Katie shook their heads.

  “No,” said Georgia. “He just took us to the hotel lounge with this woman called Lara, who he said was a friend of his, and told us that we had to behave as if we were sisters.”

  “But he said that he didn’t want us to act, he just wanted us to ‘be’,” said Katie. She wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t really know what he meant. How can you just ‘be’? As soon as you start thinking about it, you get self-conscious and start acting. It felt really odd. At least at the start.”

  Georgia nodded. “It’s a good job Miss Swan warned us beforehand that it was going to be a very different kind of audition. But after a while Huff was so funny and entertaining, and the tea he gave us was so delicious, we completely forgot that we were at a really weird audition and just enjoyed ourselves,” said Georgia.

  “Yes,” said Katie. “He was really nice and so indiscreet. He told us all sorts of scandalous gossip about Hollywood stars. Lara was nice too. And he showed us pictures of his two little boys who live in Hawaii with their mum. He seemed really sad that he doesn’t see his kids much. Then he asked us about our families.”

  “And the tea was fab! Five different kinds of cake and those really lush French macaroons,” said Georgia.

  “And that was it?” asked Tom, perplexed.

  “Yeah,” said Katie. “There was a man at a nearby table who seemed to be watching the whole thing, and he turned out to be a friend of Huff and Lara, and they introduced us to him, but that was it. I don’t suppose we’ll hear anything further. But at least I got the chance to prove to Huff that I’m not a complete monster and we got tea at a really plush hotel.”

  Tom laughed. “Even I’d pretend to be your sister, Georgie, for five different kinds of cake.”

  Olivia and Eel were sitting companionably on Eel’s bed, wrapped in her old Harry Potter duvet. There were pictures of ballerinas torn from magazines pasted all over the wall, as well as posters from Les Miserables and Matilda. By the bedside table there was a framed photograph of Jack, Toni, Olivia and Eel taken shortly after Eel’s birth, together with a second photo of Jack and Toni looking painfully young and rapturously happy.

  Eel had been regaling Olivia with stories from her and Emmy’s Matilda audition. All the children had sung and danced alone, and then they had taken part in a group workshop.

  “It was brilliant!” said Eel happily. “I loved it so much. I’d like to audition every day.”

  Olivia wished that she could say the same. She was going to see Jon and the casting director for Romeo and Juliet in the morning and she was so nervous she hadn’t been able to eat any supper. Her stomach was fluttering as if she had swallowed a butterfly. She wished that she had half of Eel’s self-confidence.

  “I so hope I get it, Livy. I feel as if I was born to play Matilda.” She suddenly sang a snatch of song.

  “Just because I find myself in this story, it doesn’t mean that everything is written for me…”

  Olivia smiled. Eel was so right for Matilda. But would the casting people see it?

  “Have you rung Dad and told him?”

  Eel nodded. “He sounded almost as excited as me, but I’m not sure he even knows what Matilda is, as it hasn’t got any circus in it. He’s never even listened to the soundtrack. Can you imagine that?”

  Olivia shook her head in mock horror. “Otherwise, did he sound all right?”

  “Actually,” said Eel, “he sounded a bit down. I think he’s really missing us all.”

  Olivia frowned. “The other day he told me he was lonely.”

  Eel looked surprised. “But he’s surrounded by loads of people every day. How can he possibly be lonely?”

  Olivia smiled to herself. She was certain that Eel had never felt the intense isolation in the middle of a big crowd that she experienced all the time.

  “Anyway,” continued her little sister. “He’ll be home next week.”

  “I know that,” said Olivia. “It’s just that when he said he was lonely this image popped into my head of somewhere dark and cold out in space. You, me and Gra
n and all our friends are waving at him from one planet, and he’s perched on another tiny rocky planet far away all on his own. It made me feel really sad.”

  “But he’s in Russia, not outer space,” said Eel reasonably.

  “I know. It just made me think of how much you and I needed him when we were really little and how we need him so much less now because we have a proper home with Gran. And we’re getting older and doing our own thing, and I wonder how he feels about that. And one day we’ll be quite grown up and we’ll get flats, and maybe we’ll fall in love, get married and have children and have our own lives and he’ll be all on his own…”

  Tears were running down Olivia’s face, and Eel put her arms around her and gave her a big hug. “Oh, Livy, don’t get upset. That’s such a long way off.”

  “It will happen sooner than you think, Eel. What if I get Juliet? What if one thing leads to something else and somewhere along the line I have to choose between acting and the high-wire? If I ever gave up the high-wire, Dad would be devastated.”

  “Aren’t you getting a bit ahead of yourself, Livy? You haven’t even been to the first audition yet. And you’re never going to give up the high-wire, are you?”

  Olivia sniffed and gave a watery smile. “You’re right, Eel. I just wish we could see into the future and know how everything was going to turn out, and that it was going to be all right.”

  “Well, we can’t,” said Eel sagely, “but we can try and do something to help Dad.”

  “What?” asked Olivia. “What could we possibly do to make him feel less lonely?”

  “We’ll have to think really hard,” said Eel. She screwed up her entire face with the effort of thinking. Suddenly a brilliant smile spread across her features. “I know,” said Eel triumphantly. “We need to find him a wife.”

  “A wife?!” Olivia felt as if Eel had punched her in the stomach. “That’s a terrible idea.”

  “I think it’s a rather good one,” replied her little sister.

  Chapter Six

  Olivia was sitting alone in the kitchen of the Romeo and Juliet rehearsal space in Clapham. Jon had picked her up early and driven her to the rehearsal rooms, explaining on the way how the audition would work. She’d been told in advance to prepare the famous balcony scene from the play, and a scene between Juliet and the nurse.

  “We’ll do that one first,” said Jon, “even though it comes after the balcony scene, because it’ll give you chance to warm up a little before you really have to hit top form with Romeo.”

  “Will the scene with the nurse be with Cassie Usher?” asked Olivia.

  Jon shook his head. “I’ve got a standin for the morning. Honey. She’s very good and as nice as her name. She’s going to play one of the ball guests in the production but I reckon that she’s marked out for greater things. She knows that you’re inexperienced and I know she’ll give you all the help she can. I chose her specially.”

  “But it will be Kasha in the balcony scene?”

  Jon nodded as he pulled into a parking space behind the rehearsal rooms and turned off the engine. “Yep,” he said. “I want to do it the way we’ve done all the Juliet auditions so far. Kasha doesn’t know who his Juliet is until the moment he turns and sees her on the balcony. It adds a bit of uncertainty and spice to the proceedings.”

  “But he knows me,” said Olivia. “Won’t he be ever so surprised?”

  Jon grinned. “Not if he’s really in character. Though it hasn’t always worked. When Amber Lavelle appeared on the balcony, Kasha was so horrified that he got the giggles and couldn’t carry on. Amber was furious and we had to do lots of ego-stroking. But she must have known she wasn’t in with a chance. I only saw her because I owed her new agent a favour and it will probably do Amber some good when word gets round that she was even considered for the role.

  “Hey, but listen, Livy,” Jon continued. “Don’t worry if the scene stops and you have to start again. It’s an audition, not a performance. Some actors give their best performance at the audition and never get better however long you rehearse them. That’s always disappointing. We’re looking for an ability to speak the verse, the potential to grow and develop the character over the rehearsal period and, of course, knock-out chemistry between you and Romeo. That’s the main thing. I’ve seen far too many productions of this play with perfectly good actors but no real sense that they are deeply and passionately in love with each other. I’m taking a gamble on you, Livy, because I think you can deliver that, along with youth and freshness too.”

  Jon showed Olivia the mocked-up set and how to climb up the ladder to the balcony, even encouraging her to stand on the tiny balcony so she could get used to the space. Then he delivered Olivia into the hands of the stage manager, Tish, who had taken her to the kitchen to wait. The sideboard was full of used tea bags, spilled coffee and half-empty bottles of souring milk. Tish had looked apologetic, then grinned and said it was probably a wise decision when Olivia had shook her head violently at the offer of a drink.

  She’d hardly been able to swallow anything at breakfast, despite Alicia insisting that she drink a glass of milk and eat an apple. Olivia could hear her stomach rumbling as she ran over the lines again and again in her head. She felt certain she was about to throw up. Why was she putting herself through this misery? But of course she knew why. She had to prove to herself that she could do it, and because she really wanted to play Juliet. She might never get another chance.

  She suddenly thought of her mother and wondered whether she had once sat on a chair in a kitchen like this one, in similar rehearsal rooms, preparing to audition to play Juliet. Then Toni had got the role against all the odds and had gone on to be one of the greatest Juliets the British stage had ever seen. Everyone agreed on that. Olivia swallowed hard and tried to think herself into the character of Juliet. She closed her eyes, but opened them immediately when her phone rang.

  “Dad! Hi!” she said, surprised that he was ringing her. She knew he would be in the middle of his technical rehearsal, and there was never a spare second during techs.

  “I can only be a minute,” said Jack hurriedly, “but I wanted to wish you good luck for the audition.”

  “Oh, Dad, that’s so sweet,” said Olivia, and her throat constricted. She knew that it must be hard for him, knowing that she was auditioning for a major theatre role when it had always been assumed that she would follow him into the circus.

  “Whatever happens, Liv, I want you to know that I love you and that your mum loved you very much and that she would be so proud of you.”

  Olivia heard the crack in his voice. “Thanks, Dad,” she whispered.

  Then he was gone and, as she switched off her phone, Jon poked his head around the kitchen door.

  “The moment has arrived, Livy.”

  Olivia stood in the middle of the rehearsal room. Five people were sitting behind the long table while a couple of others were lounging against the high pile of mats at the back of the hall that Olivia guessed would be used to rehearse the fight scenes. One of the women was whispering urgently into her phone.

  Olivia was introduced to Honey and then to the people sitting behind the table. They shook her hand, and Olivia was sure they could feel her trembling. She was in such a daze she couldn’t remember any of their names. She had thought that she would be auditioning just for Jon and one or two others, but there were at least eight people in the room. It felt as if they were all examining her very closely. She tried to concentrate on her breathing as she had been taught in voice class, but she still felt short of breath. Her heart was booming so loudly that she could hear it, and she wondered if everyone else in the room could too.

  One of the men sitting behind the table, short with a tanned face and a moustache, leaned into another and said a little too loudly, “This is a waste of time. She’s just a kid. She looks about twelve,” and Olivia saw Jon glare furiously at the man. She felt furious too. They weren’t even giving her a chance.

  Jon raise
d his hands for silence. He smiled gently at her. “OK, Livy, whenever you feel ready.”

  Olivia stood alone in the middle of the hall. She felt tiny and vulnerable. She tried to think what on earth the first line was that she had to say. It wouldn’t come however hard she fought to recall it. She had been over and over the lines until they’d been as rooted in her brain as her own name. But her mind had gone completely blank. It was as if somebody had taken a cloth and wiped the whiteboard in her head completely clean. Panic began to bubble up like a fountain in her chest and she blushed furiously. She was making a complete fool of herself. Seconds had passed and she’d still said nothing.

  She saw the man who’d been so rude about her raise an eyebrow at his colleague. She suddenly felt furious again. She inwardly glared at him before opening her mouth. Astonishingly, miraculously, the words just came, and all her nervousness and the fury she felt at the man became the anxiety and frustration of Juliet as she waited for the nurse to return from her meeting with Romeo to tell her whether or not his intentions were honourable.

  “The clock struck nine when I did send the nurse;

  In half an hour she promis’d to return.”

  The words bubbled easily from Olivia’s mouth, and then Honey entered, playing the nurse, and the scene continued without a hitch.

  “Hie to high fortune!”

  The scene came to a close, and as Olivia spoke the words her heart soared and she felt like a reckless young girl on the brink of something truly momentous. There was a short silence. A few people clapped briefly. Olivia looked around in a daze. She had no idea if it had gone well or been a complete disaster. But Jon was smiling at her and that made her think that she couldn’t have completely disgraced herself.

  “Thanks, Livy. Let’s move straight on. Climb up on to the balcony, please.” He turned to the stage manager. “Tish, can you get Kasha? Then wait with him outside the door and I’ll shout when we are ready.”

  Tish darted away as Olivia reached the top of the ladder and placed her hands on the railing that ran around the balcony.