A Fairy Tale for Christmas

by Chrissie Manby

  Jon broadened his list of potentials with some names that Kirsty didn’t recognise.

  ‘Who are these people?’ she asked.

  ‘They’re from the other am-dram societies in the region. It’s not strictly kosher to ask them and chances are they’re already booked up for the season anyway, but you never know.’

  Jon put down his pen and sighed.

  ‘This time next year,’ he said, ‘we could be back in the sun.’

  Kirsty nodded. ‘Yes. Please. That sounds great. But what about your seasickness?’

  ‘Oh, we’re not going back on a ship,’ he said.

  ‘Then where will we be getting our Vitamin D?’ Kirsty asked.

  ‘I’ve applied for a job in the UAE.’

  ‘The University of East Anglia?’ Kirsty guessed. ‘Not much sunshine there.’

  ‘UAE not UEA, my darling fluff-head. In the Middle East. Dubai.’

  This was news to Kirsty. Since the night they’d talked about Berlin and Prague, Jon hadn’t mentioned working overseas again. ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Directing a season of Shakespeare.’

  ‘In the Middle East?’

  ‘It’s a great job.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me you were going for it.’

  ‘I just put my application in this morning.’

  ‘I thought we were going to talk through all possible job options together.’

  ‘We’re talking about it now.’

  ‘You know what I mean. If you get this job, what am I supposed to do?’

  ‘You’d love it out there. All the sunshine you can handle.’

  Yes, thought Kirsty. And all the restrictions that went with it. One of the girls who worked on The European Countess had done a season at a hotel in Dubai. She’d filled Kirsty in on the reality.

  It was especially galling that Jon could even think about dragging her to Dubai without discussing it with her first when she had already followed him back to Newbay. Standing in their decidedly dark kitchen (it was a particularly gloomy day) she couldn’t help thinking where she might have been that winter. She hadn’t even considered pressing Jon to follow her. And he could have. He could have met her at various stopovers. They could have had a wonderful winter.

  Kirsty had valued their relationship too much to risk spending so much time apart and she thought Jon felt the same way, yet that was exactly what Jon was suggesting now. Because there was no way, was there, that Kirsty would really be able to follow him? She could go and visit him for a week or two at a time, she was certain, but to spend any more time with him would mean getting a special visa, surely? And how would she be able to get a visa to stay in a strict Muslim country with a man to whom she wasn’t married? Had Jon thought about that? It suddenly crossed Kirsty’s mind that not only had Jon thought about the complications, he had embraced them. Perhaps he had chosen to apply for the job precisely because it would be difficult for Kirsty to follow him.

  ‘Show me the job advert,’ she said.

  Jon turned his laptop so she could look at it.

  He had applied to direct an all-male Shakespeare company. All male. Kirsty couldn’t even have applied to join the tour as a performer in her own right. Not that she had ever done any Shakespeare. She hadn’t picked up one of the Bard’s plays since she finished her GCSEs. Kirsty was all about musical theatre. She would never play Juliet.

  Kirsty’s heart was in her boots. Right then, however, she decided against arguing with him. Jon hadn’t got the job yet. He’d just sent a CV off. She told herself he would have discussed it with her had there been more time before the application deadline.

  ‘It looks really good,’ she said. ‘The money’s amazing.’

  ‘And tax free,’ said Jon. ‘I knew you’d be pleased.’

  Maybe Kirsty was a better actor than she thought.

  ‘We could have a really good time out there. I’m sure we can find you a job.’ And then he said, ‘You’ve got secretarial experience. There must be loads of options—’

  ‘I’ll pretend you didn’t say that,’ said Kirsty.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ said Jon.

  ‘I’m not sure I do.’

  Jon pulled her onto his lap and started kissing her neck. ‘I just want us to be together.’

  On his terms only? said the little voice in Kirsty’s head.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  After the Dubai revelation, Trevor’s continued ill health was the biggest thing on Kirsty’s mind. Someone from the NEWTS spoke to Trevor on a daily basis but though he talked a good game, they knew he wasn’t coming back. His short stay in hospital had changed things. He had been discharged in what passed for full health, according to the NHS, but he seemed suddenly much older than the seventy-year-old they thought he might be. The idea they had ever thought he would be able to sustain a fortnight-long run of very physical theatre suddenly seemed quite laughable.

  But who was going to play Buttons instead? Jon had a clandestine meeting with a player from another local company, Newbay Arts and Theatre, who was disgruntled with his own crew because he’d been passed over for the part of Scrooge in their version of A Christmas Carol. Kirsty was astonished by the cloak and dagger business that accompanied Jon’s meeting with this bloke called Craig. They didn’t dare be caught together in Newbay, so they agreed to meet in the car park at a service station near Exeter.

  Though it was late November, both Jon and Craig wore sunglasses to their rendezvous. They treated the whole thing with the sort of seriousness you could perhaps imagine in Hollywood. Say, if you were Barbara Broccoli meeting a potential Bond and didn’t want the paparazzi to break the news before you had a chance to break it yourself.

  ‘I don’t get why you have to be so secretive,’ Kirsty said.

  ‘You have no idea of the politics,’ said Jon. ‘If it gets out that Craig has met with me, his own company could blacklist him for years. He’ll never get a lead part again. I don’t want to screw things up for him if he isn’t right for us.’

  Craig wasn’t right for the NEWTS. Not because of his acting skills or lack of them. Jon would have snapped Craig up to play Buttons in a heartbeat, but when Craig heard that Annette Sweeting had been cast as the stepmother, he said he would have to decline. Turned out that Annette and Craig had history. Before Annette was a NEWT, she was an NAT (Newbay Arts and Theatre). She and Craig had played opposite one another in a very racy production of Dangerous Liaisons. They had succumbed to a ‘showmance’. Annette was newly widowed, but Craig had a fiancée. Caught up in the drama of their on-stage/off-stage affair, Craig called off his engagement, only to have Annette dump him as soon as the show run ended. Seven years on, with a wife and small children, he still wouldn’t consider being on the same stage as the woman who had ‘wrecked his life’.

  So that was that.

  Craig’s tale was not unusual. The amateur-dramatic scene of Newbay was full of similar stories. Showmance was rife.

  ‘Which is why I made sure that your love interests in this panto were played by a girl and a pensioner,’ Jon joked to Kirsty.

  Then he pulled Kirsty into his arms. He’d been especially tactile the last couple of days, as if he knew that Kirsty was still smarting from his suggestion that she take a secretarial job in order to be able to follow him abroad again. She was trying hard to take his explanation for that at face value. It wasn’t that he didn’t think she could have a career on the stage, it was just that he didn’t want to be apart from her. Their relationship was more than a showmance.

  ‘Does that mean you’re going to find me a totally unlovable Buttons?’ she asked him.

  ‘I hope so,’ said Jon.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  While all this was going on, the wardrobe witches were doing their worst. Kirsty’s heart sank when she went for a second fitting and saw how they had altered the eighties dress. If it was possible, they had made it look even uglier. Bernie, who was in Wardrobe at the same time to be fitted into her Godmot
her garb, pulled a face that let Kirsty know she felt her pain.

  ‘I can’t wear that thing,’ Kirsty said as she and Bernie made their way back down the stairs.

  ‘I agree,’ said Bernie.

  ‘It makes me look like a turkey wrapped in foil. But what can I do about it? Those old cows are determined to make me look more like a jacket potato than a princess.’

  ‘Leave it with me,’ Bernie said. ‘I am your fairy godmother after all.’

  ‘Thanks, Bernie,’ said Kirsty, though she wasn’t sure what Bernie could do. The three witches had dressed Bernie in something that resembled one of those knitted doll covers for a loo roll. If that monstrosity represented Bernie’s sway in the wardrobe department, then Kirsty had no hope at all.

  The following evening, however, Bernie texted Kirsty and asked her to come over to the house she shared with Vince around tea-time. Vince wasn’t there. He was doing a late night at his dental surgery. A surprising number of people wanted to get their teeth whitened ahead of the party season, Bernie explained.

  Bernie and Vince’s house was lovely. It felt like a proper home, which was something that was missing from Kirsty and Jon’s stark rental flat. Kirsty immediately felt comfortable as Bernie invited her to sit down on their big blue squashy sofa and placed tea and homemade cake on one of the occasional tables.

  ‘Vince made the cake,’ Bernie told her.

  Kirsty was surprised.

  ‘So you might find he overdid the brandy.’

  Kirsty wasn’t so surprised about that.

  While Bernie ran upstairs to fetch something, Kirsty admired the photographs on the mantelpiece. In a photograph of their wedding day, Bernie and Vince smiled at each other as though they’d both thought they’d won the lottery. Vince was slim and elegant in a dark-blue suit. Bernie looked like a princess in her red velvet dress. She swooned in his arms. There was no doubt they were truly, madly, deeply in love.

  Bernie came back into the sitting room, carrying a garment bag and found Kirsty looking at the wedding photo.

  ‘We got married in December. The thirtieth,’ she said. ‘Mostly because it was cheaper than doing it in the summer. But I’d always wanted a winter wedding. I never fancied being a June bride.’

  ‘I think you were right. You looked stunning in that dress,’ said Kirsty.

  ‘And so will you.’

  Bernie unzipped the garment bag and jumble of red tulle and velvet suddenly tumbled out.

  ‘Is that it?’ Kirsty asked.

  Bernie nodded.

  ‘It is. My wedding dress. It should fit you,’ she said. ‘You might even have to have it taken in a bit to show off your lovely waist.’

  She shook out the dress so that Kirsty could see it in all of its glory. It was even more beautiful in life than it looked in the pictures. And it was obviously expensive.

  ‘It’s Vivienne Westwood,’ Bernie confirmed. ‘I absolutely couldn’t afford it. I went right up to my credit card limit to buy the silly thing. But you only marry the man of your dreams once, right?’

  Kirsty nodded.

  ‘Our wedding day was perfect. I felt so happy and confident wearing this. And Vince’s eyes when he saw me at the top of the aisle. I’ll never forget how he looked at me. Now it just hangs in the wardrobe in the spare room. It’s time it saw the light of day again. Try it on.’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly—’ said Kirsty.

  ‘You know you could. And if a fairy godmother can’t magic up a dress, then what is she good for?’

  Kirsty touched the skirt. She was certainly tempted.

  ‘Try it on, you goose,’ Bernie persisted. ‘There is no way you’re wearing that eighties monstrosity the witches want you in.’

  Bernie laid the dress across Kirsty’s arms and sent her upstairs to the spare room.

  Kirsty knew at once that this was her Cinderella gown. When she was inside it, Bernie joined her to help pull up the laces on the back of the bodice.

  ‘It fits you perfectly. I knew it would. And it suits you.’

  Though Bernie and Kirsty could not have been more different in terms of colouring, somehow the red of the dress was just right for them both.

  ‘Oh, this is wonderful,’ said Kirsty, smoothing down the skirt and admiring herself in the mirror on the wardrobe door. The dress was cleverly constructed to turn any figure into an hour-glass. Kirsty could hardly believe how tiny her waist looked, while her bosom and hips were suddenly Monroe-esque rather than something to be five-two dieted into oblivion.

  ‘There,’ said Bernie. ‘That’s settled. All we’ve got to do is find some shoes and a tiara and you will go to the ball.’

  ‘In this dress,’ said Kirsty, channelling Cinders, ‘I think I could dance all night.’

  ‘Just remember to be back home by midnight.’ Bernie winked.

  Kirsty could hardly believe Bernie’s generosity as she carried the dress back to the flat. There she tried it on again for Jon and was delighted to hear him whistle.

  ‘That’s my Cinderella,’ he said. ‘You’ll be fighting the prince off.’

  Then Jon wrapped his arms around her and kissed the back of her neck and Kirsty allowed herself to believe that some of the magical love Bernie and Vince had clearly felt for each on their wedding day might be rubbing off on Jon too. They would make it. Even if he did go to Dubai.

  But the next rehearsal was difficult thanks to Vince, who once again managed to skip whole pages of script and called the Giggle Twins all manner of vile names for daring to point out his mistake. It was quite astonishing to hear Vince swear like that. It was equally astonishing to see the twins suddenly transformed from mincing dames into growling bare-knuckle boxers. Jon had to step into the middle before Vince had his lights punched out.

  ‘You’ve got a drinking problem,’ George Giggle said.

  ‘The only drinking problem I’ve got is that I don’t have a glass in my hand right now to smash your face with,’ Vince replied. And then he and George Giggle were flailing at each other again. The rehearsal was adjourned earlier than planned and everyone – except Vince and Bernie – retired to the bar.

  Vince and Bernie were later seen arguing in the car park. They could not have looked more different from the blissful young lovers in the wedding photograph.

  Chapter Thirty

  The bar was open and busy that evening because the children were practising their songs in the big rehearsal room. Their parents gathered early for a sneaky pint. The prices in the NEWTS’ bar were remarkably competitive.

  Having arrived half an hour before he needed to, Ben found a table in the corner and nursed half a lager while he checked the news on his phone. The lager was watery and the news was generally bad, as usual, but Ben relished the chance to have half an hour to himself. It wasn’t that he couldn’t have had more time if he wanted. Judy was always trying to get him to go out with his mates, always offering to babysit. Ben just didn’t feel it was right to ask her to give up her night so that he could just sit in a pub on his own, which was all he really wanted to do. That would be too sad.

  Half an hour by himself in the NEWTS’ bar was different. He had a reason for being there. He secretly hoped Thea’s rehearsal might overrun. As it happened, Thea’s rehearsal was overrunning but the adult actors soon broke into the peace.

  Ben knew Jon Manley was directing the panto, of course, having seen him at Thea’s audition. Ben hadn’t bothered to renew their acquaintance then and he hadn’t had an opportunity since, as Elaine oversaw Thea’s rehearsals. But here Jon was and he’d spotted Ben at last.

  ‘Oh, my word! Ben Teesdale!’ Jon slapped Ben on the back. ‘It is you! I knew it. I recognised the back of your head. Those ears. I haven’t seen you in years. How long has it been?’

  Ben righted himself after the shock of Jon’s overly friendly slap, which had caused him to spill the top inch of his pint. ‘Erm …’ he hesitated.

  ‘Ten years. It’s got to be at least ten years,’ Jon said. ‘W
here was it? Probably in The Sailor’s Arms. That was the pub we all used to go to,’ he explained to Kirsty, who had joined them. ‘It was the one place where they didn’t ask for ID if you were underage. Everybody went there when we were in the sixth form. We used to go back in the university holidays too. Where was it you went to for uni, Ben?’

  ‘Exeter,’ said Ben.

  ‘Keep it in the county, eh? Don’t want to go too far.’

  ‘It was the right course,’ Ben pointed out.

  ‘Yeah. Ben and I were at the same school,’ Jon continued for Kirsty’s benefit. ‘We didn’t really hang out together then. I suppose we got to know each other down the pub once we’d left St Edward’s. Sinking pints, playing pool, chatting up the girls.’

  Kirsty smiled indulgently.

  ‘Have you met our leading lady?’ Jon asked Ben then. ‘Cinderella – Kirsty – this is Ben—’

  ‘We’ve already met,’ she said.

  ‘You have?’

  ‘I got the audition flyers printed in Ben’s shop.’

  ‘Oh, right. Hey, do you remember Charlie Leyton?’ Jon asked Ben. He gave Ben a comedy nudge. ‘She was a goer.’

  Ben looked oddly uneasy at that particular reminiscence.

  ‘She was my girlfriend,’ said Ben.

  ‘Shit,’ said Jon. ‘You’re right. I forgot about that. Sorry. Still, if she’d been worth worrying about, she never would have got off with me, right?’ Jon gave a comic grimace. ‘Wait. You’re going to tell me you’re married to her now, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Ben.

  ‘Thank goodness for that. She was a slapper.’

  ‘She married my cousin,’ was Ben’s response.

  ‘But you met someone better, I’m sure.’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ said Ben. ‘But I lost her three years ago.’

  ‘Careless,’ said Jon.

  ‘Cancer,’ said Ben.

  Kirsty winced.

  Jon was momentarily stuck for words. But only momentarily.

  ‘So, mate. What are you doing here anyway?’ Jon asked. ‘You’re the last person I ever thought I’d see at the NEWTS.’