The Unfinished Symphony of You and Me

by Lucy Robinson

  ‘Excellent,’ Bea remarked crisply, watching Brian. ‘I have been wondering where that moustache had gone. Did you pin it to his crotch on purpose?’

  I was aghast. ‘Of course not! I don’t know how it got there. But I do know that this is a disaster.’

  Bea let off a sharp bark of laughter. An assistant stage manager waved at her to be quiet and she ignored him. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

  ‘Sally,’ I replied. ‘Sally the merkin girl. Perhaps you should offer me a job in the wigs department.’

  Bea laughed again and clapped a strong, scented arm around my shoulders. ‘Welcome to the world of the stage,’ she said. ‘This happens all the time. And when it does, it is priceless. Come up to the wigs room after the show. You need a drink.’

  I walked in an hour later and gasped. It was up in the eaves of the opera house and had a stunning view across the West End and right down to the far reaches of south London. The Crystal Palace radio mast blinked at me as I wandered through a bewildering sea of wig and makeup paraphernalia. Kirby-grips, prosthetic disfigurements, hairdryers, glues, brushes. Half-completed beards, makeup charts, magnifying glasses, scissors and hairspray. A treasure chest of disguises.

  ‘Sit,’ Bea said, opening a mini fridge under one of the tables. I looked round and eventually sat on a stool, rubbing my hands together. They were always cold. ‘Oh, put your hands in an oven,’ she said breezily, gesturing at a little room full of metal stationery cupboards.

  I frowned. ‘Oven?’

  ‘Sì. Those are wig ovens. We set the wigs in there overnight. Useful at this time of year,’ she added, pulling what looked like an incredibly expensive cashmere shawl around herself. She showed me an oven full of wigs on head blocks and then propped open the doors of another, which was empty. She pulled up two chairs next to it and handed me an impressive vodka and tonic, which even contained ice and lime wedges. We sat with our backs to the warm oven and looked out over London.

  ‘Sally the merkin girl,’ she said, chinking my glass. ‘Eccellente.’

  I chuckled. ‘They’ll probably sack me.’

  Bea snorted. ‘Darling, they’ll probably promote you.’

  ‘Hear hear!’ said a man’s voice. Brian Hurst, the lovely dad-like baritone, had just arrived in the wigs room with the errant moustache in his hand. ‘This is yours, I believe,’ he said pleasantly, handing the moustache to Bea. ‘Great work, Sally,’ he added.

  ‘You two both have very strange accents,’ Bea announced.

  Brian laughed. ‘Ghetto kids, Sally and I. We keep it real.’ He smiled, then left.

  Bea looked delighted. ‘Oh, favoloso!’ she exclaimed. ‘A ghetto child! Where are you from?’

  ‘Um, Stourbridge?’

  She looked blank. Of course. Why would a rich Italian woman know where Stourbridge was?

  ‘It’s in the Midlands, near-ish to Birmingham,’ I explained. ‘Southernmost tip of the Black Country?’

  Bea nodded vaguely. ‘Your accent is precious, darling.’ She smiled. ‘I like you.’

  And with that I was taken on.

  We saw each other almost every day for years. Right up until that fateful night in New York after which she disappeared to Glyndebourne and Fi refused to come home.

  Scene Four

  June, 2011

  ‘But … but you’re a BALLET DANCER!’ I exploded. Fiona glared guiltily at me and then at the line of cocaine that was racked up neatly in front of her. It was so large that it had a nasty, grainy shadow under the bare light bulbs round the mirror.

  I was twenty-eight. I’d been working at the Royal Opera House for seven years and had become deputy wardrobe mistress; the second act of my own personal opera was coming to an end. I could sense Act Three on its way. Acts One and Two had been very gentle but this new era felt different. Smelt different. It was everywhere: a heady current that pulled me along and refused to say where it would deposit me.

  That morning, Bea had summoned me upstairs to the wig-washing room and announced that she’d secured me a job on the Royal Ballet’s summer tour. ‘The Rite of Spring, six weeks touring the east coast of America,’ she purred. ‘Starting in New York at the Metropolitan Opera House.’

  I gaped at her. ‘But … I don’t work on ballet,’ I mumbled. ‘I’m opera …’

  Bea snorted, tossing her mane. ‘So was I, darling, but it’s time for a change. I’m flexible. So are you.’

  I looked at her doubtfully. I was a creature of routine. I wasn’t sure I knew how to costume those lithe, muscled little creatures in the ballet department. And, more to the point, my job in the summer was to oversee the inventory and repair of several hundred operatic costumes at our store in Cardiff. I’d done this every summer for years and quite enjoyed the holiday romance I always had there with a friend of Barry’s who owned a coffee shop. He was genuinely called Jesus, in spite of being white and Welsh.

  But Jesus was not part of Bea’s plan for me that summer. She had sorted everything out, in the way that only Bea could. After seven hot summers in the wardrobe stores, my boss, Tiff, had agreed that I deserved a break and had borrowed someone to stand in for me. And the deputy wardrobe mistress from the ballet department, who should have been going to America, was about to give birth to triplets.

  I was in.

  ‘Barry will be dancing in the tour, as will Fiona,’ Bea concluded, applying a creamy red lipstick called FURY! in the mirror. ‘The four of us will take America by storm. I know people in every city we will visit. We will drink cocktails and eat lobster every night. It will be … how do you say? … monumental.’ She blotted her lips. ‘Yes. Monumental.’

  If Bea said it was going to be monumental, it would be monumental.

  Although the thought of being on tour with Fiona made my nerves prickle. Fiona had found out recently that she had been passed over once again as a first soloist, leaving her at the same rank she had held for the last seven years. She had decided that it was because she was too fat and last week had stopped drinking alcohol ‘to get THIN’. From what I could tell she had also pretty much stopped eating.

  How will you cope with her abroad? a small voice asked me.

  I ignored it. I was going to NEW YORK. We’d muddle through; we always did.

  ‘Now, I’ve ordered you some proper luggage,’ Bea told me. ‘You will not tour with your nylon suitcase, Sally. We do this in style, sì?’

  ‘I … Sì! Thank you,’ I gasped. ‘Oh, my God!’ Bea kissed me on the cheek and dismissed me, as was her custom.

  I bowled down the corridor to the lift, imagining myself eating pastrami sandwiches on an iron fire escape and maybe bumping into Carrie Bradshaw. There was a spiralling joy in my chest, an opening up of possibility.

  A lone soprano was singing a jolly little bit from I puritani in the corridor and I felt so giddy with excitement I joined in under my breath. ‘ “Son vergin vezzosa”!’ we sang. ‘ “Ah sì! Son vergin vezzosa in vesta di sposa”! “Oh, yes! I’m a charming virgin in a wedding dress”!’ I giggled all the way back to the wardrobe department.

  And then, a few hours later, I found myself standing in a dressing room with my cousin and a line of a class-A drug. Two cherry-red spots pricked her cheeks and her mood was deadly. Fi had always been completely insane around food and quite dangerous around drink but this … This was new.

  It was an hour before tonight’s performance of La Bohème and I’d just walked into the children’s dressing room looking for a missing pair of derby boots. Bracing myself for a tussle with eight mental stage-school kids, I’d been somewhat surprised to find that they’d been moved to a different room, and that there, in their place, was Fiona with a pile of white powder. I was dumbfounded.

  ‘And this is the CHILDREN’S DRESSING ROOM!’ I continued in a panicked hiss.

  ‘Oh, babes, stop being silly.’ Fiona, who was regaining her composure, dismissed me as if I’d caught her cheating at bridge. Without warning, she leaned down and snorted up half of the
line. Her lovely freckled face looked pinched and nasty as she inhaled; it strangled my heart.

  ‘Stop, Freckle!’ I whispered desperately.

  ‘Sssh!’ she said, with a little laugh. A laugh that someone had scooped the insides out of. ‘It’s just coke! Coke isn’t serious, babe.’ She sniffed the last few bits of powder up into her nostril. ‘Everyone does it,’ she added conversationally. ‘You’re probably the only person I know who doesn’t.’

  I baulked, uncertain. Really?

  Fiona started tidying up the other half of the line ready for action, a delicate blush spreading over her bony shoulders. As a result of her recent diet she was gaunter than ever. From behind she looked like a child: skinny, underdeveloped, soft downy hair on the nape of her neck like gossamer threads.

  I couldn’t stand it. ‘Freckle …’ I whimpered, tugging on her ponytail like I’d done since we were tiny. ‘Please stop.’

  She took the rest of the line. ‘You should live a little, Sally,’ she said lightly, ‘before you start judging everyone else.’ She licked her finger and ran it round the dressing-table, then rubbed the remaining powder into her gums. ‘Your twenties are for pushing boundaries, enjoying yourself.’ She turned round, now smiling brightly, although the smile was cruel. An accusation that I had comprehensively failed at being a twenty-something. ‘I’m just doing what everyone else does, silly Sally!’

  Really? Was she?

  I wasn’t sure. None of the other dancers were like Fiona. They seemed to have lots of fun but they also looked after themselves with such incredible care, wrapping their legs up until they went onstage and hanging out only in the heated parts of the building so they never got cold. They even walked in a special way. They ate tubs of chicken and had special massages and stretched all the time. Surely, when they went to such lengths to look after their bodies, they wouldn’t be taking drugs.

  Fiona was forever freezing cold and stomping around. She drank a lot, she was noisy and sometimes she didn’t even bother to warm up properly. She was a beautiful dancer but I couldn’t help wondering if she’d failed to get promoted because she looked such a mess.

  No! I didn’t believe her! There was no way the others were taking drugs. Fiona was on her own. I felt my hands tremble as if my blood were fizzing.

  ‘Look, I can take or leave this stuff,’ she told me, head cocked to one side. ‘Coke isn’t serious. If I was on crack or scag or something, fair enough, but, Sally, this is just a bit of fun! No side-effects, no hangovers.’

  ‘But it’s still a drug,’ I whispered.

  Fiona did that hollow laugh again and pulled her big dancer’s holdall over her shoulder. ‘You’re not dead yet, Sally. You and your middle-aged outfits could still have a good time. I’m off out. Laters, babes.’ Any warmth in her farewell was as synthetic as a Primark sock.

  I watched the door close behind her and uneasy silence opened up around me. You’re not dead yet. I stared at the mirror. Did she think I looked middle-aged? Did other people think I looked middle-aged? But I’d just said yes to New York! I’d …

  A ball of salt water wobbled uncertainly down my face and I realized I was crying.

  In truth, I probably had failed on the wild front. Since moving to London seven years ago I had mostly just explored the gastropub scene; I’d travelled a bit but only really to European cities that had opera houses. I had not tried drugs, I had not dabbled in lesbianism or gone to a forest rave, and I’d had a succession of pleasant short-term boyfriends, who had been distinctly mild, not wild. And I dressed like I did because, well, it helped me feel I belonged. Was that failure? Was I a failure?

  No! I countered desperately. Fiona isn’t allowed to write me off like that! Taking big deep breaths, I made myself stop crying and patted my face dry. I got a wet wipe out of my wardrobe belt and cleaned the surface in case of residual cocaine.

  I am not boring, I am not boring, I am not boring!

  In the corridor, terrified someone might somehow know, I bumped into Brian. As if sensing I was unhinged, he touched my shoulder and smiled kindly before walking on. He disappeared round the corner, softly singing something from La Traviata.

  As I watched his very normal, very reassuring back retreat down the corridor, I finally began to come back to myself. I’m fine, I told myself, breathing deeply. Fi was just lashing out because I caught her red-handed. And if she says coke isn’t serious, then she must be right.

  After all, what did I know about drugs? Everything would be OK.

  That night Fiona apologized profusely, telling me she had just been ‘dicking around’ and that she wouldn’t take coke ever again if it was going to upset me. ‘I can take or leave that stuff,’ she reiterated. ‘But I can’t take or leave you, Sal.’ The next morning, as a sign of her contrition, she even went all the way down to Southwark to get my favourite breakfast from our long-lost Mr Pickles.

  ‘You’re not dull at all, Sal. You’re my idol. You and I are going to have DA BEST TIME in New York! BFFs, right?’

  I smiled and got going with my egg muffin. I cared too much about Fiona to stay angry. And, apart from anything else, I wanted what she was saying to be true.

  ACT THREE

  Scene One

  June 2011, London

  The day we flew to New York was the day I discovered that Barry was pathologically afraid of flying.

  ‘Not comin’, Chicken,’ he told me briskly, when I eventually tracked him down in a far corner of Terminal Four. He was sitting on a luggage trolley, green of face, rocking back and forth, with his hands round his knobbly little knees. ‘Changed my mind.’ He gave me an authoritative nod to reassure me that this had been decided by someone who knew what they were talking about.

  I smiled. ‘Nonsense. We’re going to tour The Rite of Spring round America. For six weeks! You’ve never been more excited in your life!’

  Barry scrunched his face at me, just like Bea did at people who owned fake-leather handbags. ‘Please go away, Sally.’ He sounded darker.

  ‘No.’ Barry’s tantrums were rare; they were also child’s play next to Fiona’s. I sat down beside him. ‘I didn’t know you were afraid of flying, Barry, but –’

  ‘Well, I am, and that’s all I’ve got to say on the matter so I’m just gonna pop off home now, Chicken, OK? Bye.’

  He sprang up and staggered a few steps. Almost as quickly he sat down again on the floor, putting his head between his knees.

  ‘I’m dyin’, Chicken,’ he muttered. ‘Dizzy. Quick, let me take refuge in your linens.’

  ‘You’re not dying, you’re just scared. Listen, Bazzer, I’ve got amazing news. Delta have upgraded you and the other dancers to business class!’

  Barry looked at me desperately. ‘I’m not flyin’,’ he protested.

  ‘You are. I’ll look after you till we get on the plane and Fi can look after you in business class. You can get drunk and sleep all the way there on your FLAT BED!’

  Barry’s face went greener. ‘Sleep?’ he hissed, as if I were completely insane. ‘Sleep? Chicken, I need to be awake every second of the way! Vigilance! I’m not usin’ no bed!’

  I stood up, pulling him with me. ‘Come on,’ I said firmly.

  ‘You have my bed,’ he said. ‘We’ll swap, Chicken. I’ll take your economy seat. No bloody danger of me fallin’ asleep back there.’

  I argued, but he was having none of it. So when I boarded Delta 3, my first ever transatlantic flight, I turned left. Just like they did in books. There was champagne in my hand before I could whisper, ‘Noo Yoik!’ and the world’s jolliest man, named Henk, forced blinis on me and told me I was going to get a FULL-SIZE DUVET LATER ON. And a PILLOW. ‘Can I get you a cocktail, darling?’ he asked. I nodded dumbly and wondered how a woman with a fat bum and a Midlands accent had pulled off something like this.

  After a five-course banquet I sat back clutching my stomach, blissfully happy. There had even been cheese after the pavlova. And unlimited wine! Champagne! ‘Shall we make u
p our FLAT BEDS, babe?’ I asked Fi, who was sulking in the seat next to me. The other dancers – whom Fi had gone somewhat cold on since she had missed out on promotion – had chatted animatedly over dinner but then gone to sleep, and Fi’s usual partner in hard drinking, Bea, had upgraded herself to first without even telling us.

  Barry, whom we’d visited in economy, was fast asleep in spite of his earlier promise to stay AWAKE and VIGILANT for the duration of the flight. Now Fi had that dangerous look in her eye. The one that said: Play with me NOW. Or I’ll go and find something else to do. And you won’t like it. ‘One more drink,’ she wheedled. (She had forgotten she’d given up drinking as soon as we’d arrived at the airport.) ‘There’s a bar upstairs in first and Henk said we could go up if it was just the two of us … Come on, Sal. When are two pikeys like you and me ever going to fly business again?’

  I yawned in the hope that this would get me off the hook. It didn’t.

  ‘Just a nightcap,’ she pleaded. ‘How are we going to get off to sleep otherwise? Listen how noisy those engines are!’

  Fi always had a reason for a drink. If she was ill, it was a hot toddy; if she was nervous, a brandy. If she couldn’t sleep, a cheeky nightcap. And there was frequently a requirement for a ‘winding-down’ wine or a little celebratory vodka. It had always made sense but as the years had passed I’d finally begun to notice that neither I nor anyone else I knew – except, perhaps, Bea – had such a regular and pressing need for medicinal alcohol.

  I sighed, knowing I’d cave in. I so very, very often wanted to say no to Fiona yet I so very, very rarely did. Partly because I loved her and was desperate to maintain what fragile happiness she had, but mostly because I would do anything to avoid an explosive tantrum.

  We went upstairs and sat at the Skybar where an atmosphere of sleek naughtiness prevailed. This was obviously the province of those who didn’t need their flat beds because they were going to see this bitch through with bourbon. There was a power-suited woman, hammering out something on a tablet, and a couple of overweight men in chinos, arguing about someone called Jamie. And a man, a very arresting man, with tight jeans and brooding dark eyes, nursing a Scotch. As we walked in he took us both in. I experienced the usual disappointment as his eyes skimmed over me and slid away, finding Fiona and her tiny little legs poking out of an Acne skirt. He raised an eyebrow at her and then – what? Seriously? – his glass. Oh, my God. I was an extra in the Ferrero Rocher advert.