by Laura Wood
“Nora, darling!” she exclaims, her words ringing through the air with the perfect clarity one might expect from an opera singer.
“Hallo, Del.” Nora leans forward to kiss the woman on both cheeks. “Meet my new assistant, Freya. Freya, this is Adelaide.”
“Just call me Del.” She beams at me, her mouth a slash of scarlet lipstick. “Now do come in, it’s far too cold to be standing out on the doorstep.”
The inside of the house is exactly as I had imagined, dark and worn, and a bit of a warren. The walls are covered in framed posters, faded with age, and advertising operatic performances starring Adelaide St James. This, then, will be our home for the next three days.
Del is already off, leading us on a brisk tour, rattling off the information as though she’s shared it many times before.
“This through here is the kitchen,” Del gestures. “There’s gin in the pantry.” Then, after pause, “And milk, I think.” She carries on down the long hallway. “Here’s the sitting room, where folks tend to gather in the evening, post-performance.” The room is large, and contains a battered upright piano, several faded floral sofas, a record player, a large ceramic bulldog with a bowler sitting drunkenly on his head, and a bookcase that is full of empty wine bottles.
“Quite a few of your lot have arrived already. That girl, Viola, well, she’s quite the attraction, isn’t she? That hair and those eyes … very exotic. I wonder where she got those looks from.”
I think Del means the words as a compliment, but there’s something about the gleeful, hushed way she talks about Viola that makes me feel uncomfortable, even though I can’t quite put my finger on why.
Nora doesn’t reply and Del continues to rattle on as she leads us up the stairs. “And there’s Russ, of course – he’s been here before, asked if he could have his old room, that sweet boy.” Her face is pleased and rosy as she drains the last of the drink in her hand. “I’ve put you in your usual room, Nora,” she says. “And you,” she glances at me and I am suddenly struck by the unusual amber colour of her eyes, “you’re in here with … Alma! That’s it. Nice girl. Bit quiet.”
Del taps lightly on the door and without waiting for a response flings it open. Inside are two wrought-iron single beds with a small strip of faded blue rug between them. Sitting on one of the beds with a book in her hands is a girl about the same age as me.
“I’ll leave you to get settled in,” Del says and leaves with Nora in her wake.
“Hello,” I say a little awkwardly. “I’m Freya.”
“Alma.” The girl gets to her feet. She is tall and slender, with pansy blue eyes that study me carefully, and slightly mousy blonde hair. She is dressed simply, in a soft blue dress. Her face is rather long and serious, but sweet – like a painting of a saint. She looks as though she should be surrounded by woodland creatures, resting her hand on the head of a slumbering fawn. “It’s nice to meet you.” Her voice is low and musical, and it matches her face.
“Same here.” I step into the room and hold out my hand, which she shakes. “I’m the new wardrobe assistant.”
“I’m the understudy,” Alma replies.
Of course. Alma is understudying the roles of Cecily and Gwendolyn on the assumption that both actresses are unlikely to be off at the same time – more of the budget cuts Miss Meriden shakes her head over. Like Eileen, I haven’t run into Alma at the theatre yet. “So you’re an actress,” I say with interest, taking a seat on the bed across from hers.
“Trying to be,” Alma shrugs, attempting to affect a nonchalance that doesn’t quite come off. “This is my first tour, though.”
“Mine too!” I exclaim. “Although really it’s my first anything – I’ve barely even been away from home before, and it was absolute blind luck that I ended up here, I can tell you.”
Alma sits back down on the bed and pulls her knees up to her chest, toying with her long braid of blonde hair. “I expect you were hoping to be rooming with someone who could show you the ropes?”
“I’d much rather have a friend I could muddle through it with,” I say.
This draws a hesitant smile; she gives me another of those careful looks, as though she’s taking my measure. Her face relaxes, and the smile grows. “Me too.”
“Besides, Nora will show us the ropes,” I say.
“Don’t you find her dreadfully intimidating?” Alma asks.
“Not a bit,” I tell her. “I know she looks so glamorous, but she’s been really kind to me.”
“That’s a relief.” Alma slumps back against her pillows. “Because everyone I’ve met so far has been intimidating as anything. Apart from Kit, of course.”
“No, Kit’s not scary,” I agree. “Do you know each other well?” I don’t know why but I feel a strange sort of possessive feeling. Kit is my friend.
“Only from rehearsals,” Alma says, a slight flush rising in her cheeks. “He’s very kind.”
“Mmm,” I murmur noncommittally. “And what about the other actors?”
“They seem nice.” She sounds a lot less certain now. “I don’t know them very well.” She hesitates, then says confidingly, “Russ and Viola don’t seem that fond of each other.”
“I think they are probably having a big love affair,” I say. “Squabbling lovers, you know, like something Shakespearean. They pretend to hate each other, but deep down it’s all trembling passion and swooning and—”
Nora sticks her head around the door. “Freya, you’d better come and grab your bag from the van,” she says. “Then we’ll all head over to the theatre – dress rehearsal in an hour. Get your skates on.” She flashes a grin at Alma. “You too – it’s all hands on deck. Things are about to get very busy.”
Nora sweeps from the room, leaving us scrambling in her wake. Alma looks both thrilled and nervous and I am sure those exact emotions are reflected on my own face.
“This is it, I suppose,” I say, giving her an encouraging smile. “Now it all really starts!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I miss most of the rehearsal. As soon as we reach the theatre, a large brick building set on the corner of a busy road with a higgledy-piggledy backstage area and a decent-sized auditorium, Nora has me unpacking and pressing and steaming and organizing an endless parade of costumes. Each costume has many parts to it, and they must all be treated as carefully as if they were delicate invalids, and we their weary yet devoted nurses.
Nora is a perfectionist with an eye for detail. “There’s a loose thread there.” She gestures at the claret-coloured gown in my hands, and swoops down, a pair of gleaming silver scissors already in hand to snip the offending thread, barely visible up this close, let alone in the audience.
I admire her attention to the small things. I find it soothing to do this methodical, practical work. There’s a richness to it as well, one that comes from seeing and experiencing the level of detail that goes into a performance – the things the audience may not notice individually, but that become part of their larger impression of the play. Like the embroidery on the bodice of this claret dress. It had been my idea to add it, in gold thread that catches the lights and adds to the sense of opulence onstage.
“You’ve got a good eye for this.” Nora’s voice breaks into my thoughts, and she gestures to the embroidery that I have been considering. “That’s neat work, and you were right about it finishing off the gown.”
I feel a glow of pride at that.
When we’re finally done (for the time being, anyway), and Nora tells me to take a break, I slip into the back of the auditorium to get a glimpse at what’s happening onstage. It is there, sitting up high, lost in the shadows, that I get my first glimpse of Eileen Turner.
It is only her and Rhys Cantwell on the stage and they are deep in conversation, their voices an indistinguishable murmur, as they discuss some finer point of her performance. Mr Cantwell suddenly throws his head back and laughs, a sharp bark of laughter and the first I have heard from him. Is she funny? Somehow I never imag
ined that.
I drink in the sight of her. She’s smaller than I imagined, but then I suppose it’s difficult to imagine your hero being anything but larger than life. Yet here she is, slight and delicate-looking. I search her face for a glimpse of the young woman in the photograph that is still hanging on my wall in Cornwall. She’s in her seventies now, and her face is beautiful, elfin, with high cheekbones. Instead of the endless waves falling to her knees, her hair is silvery white and cropped short. She’ll be wearing wigs during her performance.
She steps away from Mr Cantwell and moves towards the centre of the empty stage. She pulls her shoulders back, and suddenly she’s not small at all – she’s a force, a hypnotizing, whirling force of nature. She becomes – in front of my eyes, and despite the lack of make-up or costume – Lady Bracknell, a difficult, haughty, overbearing woman who is used to getting her own way.
“Well, I must say, Algernon, that I think it is high time that Mr Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shilly-shallying with the question is absurd.”
Her voice rings through the air, and it’s a wonderful voice. Deep for a woman, and warm, she lingers on “t”s, and compresses some of the words, giving them a rhythm, a particular music that is unique to her. It’s a voice that, once heard, you would recognize anywhere.
She finishes her bit of dialogue and then, as easily as one would slip off a coat, she sheds Lady Bracknell and moves forward, Eileen Turner once more, to talk to Mr Cantwell.
I sit, stunned, as the rest of the cast appear. Kit, his red-gold hair shining under the lights, steps onstage and begins calling to others in the wings. Directions about the scenery, I presume. Mr Cantwell gathers them all together and begins speaking to them. I watch Viola; she is rapt, nodding earnestly, all her attention pinned to his face. Russ sits on the edge of the stage, leaning back on one hand, the very picture of relaxed nonchalance. Dan and Daphne, who are playing the two other lead roles, stand slightly to one side like naughty school children – I see Dan whisper in Daphne’s ear, and she stifles a laugh, swatting at him with her hand.
I wish I could hear what they were saying. I wish I was up there with them. I want it, with a ferocity that makes my heart pound. Here I am – so close and yet, still, so far away.
“There you are!” Nora exclaims behind me. “Come on, we’ve got work to do, break’s over.” She must see something of my feelings in my face, because her expression softens. “And Lindsey the make-up girl has just turned up with a tin of biscuits. Let’s go and put the kettle on.”
I scramble to my feet. Biscuits may be the only thing to help ease this particular pain. I follow her out of the auditorium, casting one last, longing look over my shoulder at the stage, at the actors and their director lost in their play.
***
By the time the performance rolls around that evening, I feel as though an entire kaleidoscope of butterflies has taken up residence in my stomach. The build-up to the curtain rising is excruciating – and I’m not even going onstage. I feel like a jack-in-the-box, wound further and further, waiting to explode. I’m not the only one; the tension is a palpable thing. You can practically see the cloud of nervous energy wrapped around each person.
“Is it always like this?” I ask Nora through teeth that seem determined to chatter.
“Yes,” she says, with a grim smile. “Though the first night is by far the worst.”
It’s a relief, then, a blissful exhalation, when the curtain finally goes up, and – like a well-oiled-machine – we all fall into the roles we have practised over and over.
Standing in the wings I watch the scenes unfold between the frantic burst of the costume changes.
There is something deeply pleasurable about watching the cast win over the audience, who seem increasingly eager to be pleased as the night goes on.
The laughter begins almost straight away, but it builds and builds. There are so many clever lines, so many good jokes, and each one is given space to breathe and to shine.
The audience and I watch, delighted, as Algernon and Jack meet up, as Algernon reveals he has an imaginary friend called Bunbury who he uses to get out of things he doesn’t want to do, as Jack explains that he uses the name Ernest when in town so that he can get away with bad behaviour. We hang on every word as Jack reveals he is in love with Algernon’s cousin Gwendolyn – daughter of Lady Bracknell – and as Algernon falls for Jack’s ward, Cecily. We laugh and laugh at the increasingly complicated tangle as both women believe their beloved to be named Ernest.
Of course it’s Eileen who steals every scene she appears in. When she first walks onstage there’s a spontaneous burst of applause that halts the production for several minutes. Seeing her work up close is incredible, watching the play of expressions on her face – the twitch of an eyebrow, the flicker of a smile at her mouth – is like a lesson in itself. It’s all I can do not to start taking notes. I’ve still not spoken to her as Nora is in charge of all her costume requirements; she seems to me as unapproachable, as unknowable as God. For the first time, I understand what it means to be magnetic; you simply can’t take your eyes off her.
By the time Russ and Dan – the actor playing Jack – are arguing over a plate of muffins, the audience are approaching something like hysteria, and I’m finding it hard to smother my own giggles, spluttering as quietly as possible in my darkened corner. Across the stage from me, in the prompt corner, I see Alma clutching the script in trembling fingers and doing the same. Our eyes meet, and I see my own excitement reflecting in the dark, gleaming pools of her eyes.
“How you can sit there, calmly eating muffins when we are in this horrible trouble, I can’t make out,” Dan snaps. “You seem to me to be perfectly heartless.”
“Well, I can’t eat muffins in an agitated manner,” Russ counters swiftly, a charming sight in his linen suit. “The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them.” He fiddles for a moment with his shirt cuffs, the cuffs that I altered for him with my very own hands, which are now the source of such joy for the laughing crowd.
Russ is a good actor, I think. It makes me like him more, actually, seeing that he’s perhaps done something to earn his arrogance, though there’s a touch of that slickness that hangs about him onstage.
The whole scene is choreographed perfectly, and I see things in it I have never noticed before. The big-brother, little-brother dynamic, the bickering which hides the fact that both characters are miserable, but unable to seek any kind of solace from one another in sincerity – it has to be through these childish games.
It is a wonderful production and this, I see now, is down to Rhys Cantwell.
All through the last few days he has been invested in every single aspect of the performance – the way a prop is handled, the timing of a line, the fall of a gown. And tonight it all makes sense. The entire staging is beautiful. It’s like when you hear a beautiful piece of music – all the different parts coming together in harmony to create something truly special.
Viola appears to make her entrance and I smooth her skirts and adjust a lock of hair. Earlier, her face was pinched and her eyes looked even more enormous than usual, but when she steps on the stage it’s as though she’s a flower being revived by the spotlights.
I expected that Viola would be good – but instead, she is a revelation.
She has something of Eileen Taylor’s magnetism about her, I think, though not as well developed yet. She’s a much better actor than Russ or Dan or Daphne, for all their solid air of professionalism – seeing them onstage together makes it apparent. It’s hard to look away from Viola. With the smallest pause or change of expression she reduces the audience to gales of laughter, and she’s perfectly cast as Gwendolyn, effortlessly dispensing witty one-liners. She plays the part flawlessly, every gesture absolutely right.
I feel as though I might burst with a mixture of envy and admiration. I wonder why I haven’t heard o
f her before – I follow the theatre world as closely as possible, and Viola is the sort of talent who should be starring in a big London show. There should be girls in Cornwall with her picture on their walls.
When the performance ends and the cast go onstage to take their bows I stand to the side in the shadows with Nora and clap until my hands hurt. The roar of the crowd tells me that they enjoyed it as much as I did. The applause lasts an age and the cast do three curtain calls.
The hustle and bustle after the show is euphoric, riotous, and full of shrieks of laughter, and bouquets of roses and half-dressed cast members swigging from bottles of champagne. There are people everywhere. Only Nora remains focused.
“Fetch that hat before it’s crushed!” she exclaims, as we dart between bodies that seem to be moving in all directions. “And Viola is missing a shoe, last seen in Act One.”
I snatch up the hat in question, and go off in search of the missing shoe.
I find a crowd gathered in Russ’s dressing room. He is wrapped in a blue and silver robe, his dark hair damp with sweat, a half-moon white grin on his face. There are people patting him on the arm, telling him what a great job he did. He spots me and winks. I laugh, elated with it all, giddy on adrenaline, still clutching the feathered hat to my chest.
Mr Cantwell appears, looking very dashing in his evening wear, and he too claps Russ on the arm.
“Very good work, my boy,” he says, and I think despite his calm he looks pleased. “Very good work by all of you.”
I see Miss Meriden behind his shoulder, typically unmoved by all of the heightened emotions on display. Dan, Viola and Daphne join the crowd and a cheer goes up.
Mr Cantwell clears his throat. “You all worked extremely hard, and delivered an impressive opening night performance.” There’s another whoop of approval. “But there’s still work to do,” he goes on, his brows lowering impressively, “and I expect each performance to be better than the last.” He casts a lingering look around the room. “So make sure you rest well tonight. I will see you back here tomorrow to do it all over again.”
