by Minnie Darke
Nick nodded. He knew what she meant. Both he and Laura knew, but had not openly acknowledged, that at some point tonight Nick would surprise Laura by producing the ring box that was presently in his pocket, and proposing to her.
The design of the ring wasn’t any more of a genuine surprise than the timing of its presentation. Laura had been involved in every part of the process—selecting the jeweler, choosing the stone (a deep red ruby), sketching the setting (simple, elegant, white gold), ensuring the correct sizing and sending Nick a text message to let him know the ring was ready to be collected.
It was only practical, Laura had said, for a woman to be involved in selecting her wedding jewelry. After all, she’d told him, if it was going to be forever, it had to be perfect.
* * *
Tansy Brinklow put her foot down and her brand-new Alfa Romeo Spider put on yet another burst of exhilarating speed. It was just after 8 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, the top was down, “You Sexy Thing” was throbbing through the speakers, and the ends of the silver-gray cashmere scarf that covered Tansy’s hair were blowing in the wind.
Tansy had no particular destination in mind. Right now, all she cared about was passing a road-train that was blocking her view of the road ahead. She indicated briefly and slid into the left lane. As she passed the monster truck, it seemed to her, fleetingly, as if something had flown out of its passenger window—something like a dirty rug, or a mangy soft toy. But when she looked in her rearview mirror, there was nothing lying on the road. Tansy shrugged and drove on toward the city, not realizing that a small brown stowaway was now huddled down on the floor behind the driver’s seat, panting with relief.
* * *
At around 9 p.m., Nick and Laura’s taxi was passing the western edge of the city’s Botanic Gardens, and Nick—even though he was peripherally aware of the tightness of his shirt collar and bow tie—was feeling the way he often did when someone else was driving him around, which was pleasantly mesmerized and dreamy.
“What are you thinking about?” Laura asked.
“Hm?” he said, although he’d heard her perfectly well.
“I said, what are you thinking about?”
“I was thinking about my stars,” Nick said, and this was mostly true.
And, as the spiritual forces of the universe converge within you, Leo had written, there will emerge a new clarity in which love can blossom. But, of course, thinking about the stars, and about Leo Thornbury, inevitably caused Nick to think of Justine.
“You and your stars,” Laura mocked, squeezing his hand.
At that moment, Nick saw a small dog—a terrier of some kind—leap out of a black convertible onto the road. No longer feeling mesmerized, Nick leaned forward to watch the dog weave its way between the cars that were traveling in the same direction as the taxi. He saw it make its way safely to the traffic island, wait for a moment, then bolt—through the oncoming traffic—in the direction of the Botanic Gardens. For the most part, the dog did an amazing job of dodging the speeding cars. But then it miscalculated and was struck on its left side by a fast-moving car. The dog slid sideways across the asphalt. There was blood on the road; the car didn’t stop.
“Holy shit! Did you see that?”
“Yes, yes. That does not look good,” the driver said.
“Stop the car,” Nick said.
“What’s the matter?” Laura asked, peering out into the traffic. “Was there an accident?”
“A dog was hit. I’m going after it.” Nick flicked open the latch of his door.
“A dog?” Laura asked, incredulous. “Nick, we’ve got a dinner reservation.”
“You go on. I’ll catch you up. Order without me, all right? I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“You can’t just go running after a dog! Not tonight! It’s New Year’s Eve, Nick. We’ve got plans.”
But Nick had already stepped out into the heavy traffic, and was blowing a kiss to her through the window of the taxi’s closed door.
Nick, as the dog had done, made it safely to the traffic island and paused there. Unlike the dog, he had the advantage of being easily seen by the drivers of the cars that sped along the section of road. Holding up both hands in a gesture that was part surrender, part plea, part apology, he made his way through the muddle of swerving vehicles and honking horns to reach the far side of the road, where, on the sidewalk, the dog had left an erratic, spotted trail of blood.
Nick jogged along, following the evidence, until he found the dog huddled into the foliage at the base of a hedge. Through a single dark eye, the dog watched Nick approach, its whole body trembling. There was blood in the dog’s fur, and one forepaw appeared to be painfully twisted.
“You poor little bugger,” Nick said. “I think we’d better get you some help, hey? Come here, mate. Come on, come here.”
Nick crouched low as he continued to move forward, and the noises he made were soft and soothing. Even so, the dog’s one eye seemed to grow larger, and darker, from fear, and just when Nick was within pouncing range, the dog got to three of its four legs and dived through a narrow gap in the hedge.
“Shit,” said Nick, and he took off at a run, following the hedge and trying to remember how many entrances there were to the gardens, and where the hell they were. After a few minutes, he came to a pair of gates made from tall spears of wrought iron. Affixed to the left-hand gate was a playbill for Sideways Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
Nick pushed on the right-hand gate, which swung open. Inside this precinct of greenness and quiet, he surveyed the darkened dips and rises of the lawns, the curving pathways and the black shapes of the trees. The lampposts at the sides of the paths were almost invisible in the dark, and their globes of light seemed to hang in the night, as fuzz-edged as dandelion flowers. Nick searched the scene, until he saw a flash of limping movement at the crest of a rise.
The dog had a good head start on him, and it was many minutes before Nick—running as fast as he could in his shiny, grip-free shoes—reached the place at the top of the slope where he had seen the dog. The rise gave a view down over the Botanic Gardens’ famous lily pond, but once again the dog had disappeared from sight.
Oh well, Nick thought, he’d tried his best.
“Hey Siri,” he said to his phone. “Call Laura Mitchell.”
“I’m sorry,” Siri said. “I didn’t quite catch that.” His Siri was aging, and lately had become quite hard of hearing.
“Call Laura Mitchell,” he enunciated to his Siri, but as he did so, Nick sighted the dog laboring up a stretch of lawn on the far side of the water, heading for a stand of tall conifers.
“Which Laura did you want to call?” Siri asked, flashing up options on the screen of his phone, but Nick ignored her.
Which way to go? Nick wondered. Which way was shorter, around the lake to the left side, or the right? Or…there was a third option.
Across the middle of the pond was a narrow concrete weir, over which water flowed in a shallow waterfall. If he were to walk across it, he reasoned, he’d barely get his feet wet. He would do it, he decided—he would go straight across the middle of the pond.
The concrete weir was as wide, or even slightly wider, than his footprint; it was hardly a wire strung between skyscrapers. Nevertheless, Nick felt his pulse accelerate as if he were attempting some death-defying feat. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right…But then, in his haste, he stepped directly onto a lily leaf rather than carefully edging a toe underneath it. The leaf’s surface was slippery. Nick’s foot slid sideways. Without thinking, he flung out his arms wide to recapture his balance, and as he did so, he let go of the phone in his hand. It made only the barest splash as it followed gravity all the way to the bottom of the lily pond.
“No!” Nick cried out, for although it was a long way from the newest iPhone in the world, it was still Nick’s second most valuable p
ossession, after his bicycle. He stood with hands on hips and looked back at the dark water, floating with leaves. His phone was gone, and there was nothing, he knew, to be done about it. But now it was pretty much compulsory for him to find this dog. If he found the dog, the loss of his phone was noble. If he didn’t, it was only stupid.
* * *
It seemed to Phoebe Wintergreen that she and Luke were the only two members of the audience who had come to Romeo and Juliet without a picnic blanket and a basket full of dips and crackers, wine and plastic glasses. Although Luke had spread out his coat for them to sit on, the heels of Phoebe’s hands were numb from being pressed into the dewy grass, and her skirt felt damp all over.
They’d taken turns sipping from the neck of a bottle of Stone’s Green Ginger Wine that Phoebe had nicked from the pantry shelf where her mother hid her cooking plonk, but although the evening had begun with such promise, Phoebe was sensing all her hopes fading away. Surely if Luke was going to reach over and take her hand, he’d have done it by now. They were in Act Three, for heaven’s sake.
Tybalt—striding across the stage with heavy blades swinging in both hands—was being played by a woman. She was tall and imposing, with auburn hair pulled back tightly into two thick braids, and a costume that suggested her as a Viking shield maiden. Mercutio, already fallen on the ground behind her, wasn’t dressed in matching Viking style, but in what might have been Oscar Wilde’s velvet smoking jacket.
“Mercutio’s soul is but a little way above our heads,” said a distraught Romeo, looking up into the sky, “staying for thine to keep him company. Either thou or I, or both, must go with him.”
Romeo’s costume was of a different style again. He wore a simple white shirt and a pair of rustic, knee-length breeches that made him look like he might have just been out herding goats in an Austrian meadow.
Tybalt, with utter disdain, held a blade tip to Romeo’s throat, and the audience took a collective breath as the actress delivered her next line: “Thou wretched boy, that didst consort him here, shalt with him hence.”
But Romeo dodged the threat, gripped his own blade tighter and readied himself to fight. “This shall determine that!” Romeo cried, and lunged for Tybalt.
As Romeo and Tybalt dueled, Phoebe caught sight of what seemed to be a dog. It was limping down the right flank of the audience and being pursued by a guy in a tuxedo.
“Look,” Phoebe whispered to Luke. “Over there.”
“Is it part of the play?” Luke whispered back.
“Not the version I know.”
“What’s he doing?”
“He wants to catch it, I think.”
Phoebe could see that the tuxedo guy was trying to keep low and remain unnoticed, but that he wasn’t really succeeding.
When the dog reached the edge of the stage’s pool of light, the tuxedo guy pounced. But the dog had no plans to be contained. It yelped and struggled, the blood from his jaw smearing all over the front of the guy’s white shirt, then launched itself back to the ground, landing with a yowl of pain. It took off at a limping run, his head half turned back to keep an eye on his pursuer. Phoebe put a hand over her mouth as the dog ran straight into the middle of Romeo and Tybalt’s duel.
“What the hell?” yelled Tybalt, suddenly off-book as a flash of grubby fur fled past her feet.
It seemed to Phoebe that the dog was going to run straight through the set and out the other side, but then, catching sight of the arc of Romeo’s swinging blade, the animal reversed direction. People in the audience laughed nervously, unsure of what was going on while the poor dog dashed confusedly in this direction and that, getting under the feet of first one of the fighters, then the other, while the tuxedo guy hovered at the edge of the stage light with his arms spread as if he hoped to be able to snare the dog if it bolted in his direction.
Then Alison Tarf herself—the director of the play, and of the company—appeared in her stage-crew blacks, her pale hair flying about as she tried to grab the troublesome canine. But the dog swerved away from her and ran between the legs of Tybalt, who lost her balance and fell heavily into Romeo, her sword fist striking hard against his face. Romeo dropped his sword and let out a cry of distress. Most of the people in the crowd were out of their seats or up on their knees, straining to see what was going on.
“My toof! My toof! I’ve lost a fucking toof!” Romeo shouted.
“Is this for real?” Luke asked Phoebe.
“I have no idea what’s happening.”
There was blood on Romeo’s hands and face, and Mercutio—who had been lying dead on the cobblestones—suddenly sat bolt upright.
“It’s my bloody front toof,” Romeo cried out.
Tybalt, on her hands and knees, was searching the path. “I’ve got it! I’ve got it,” she said, holding something up between thumb and forefinger.
Then Alison Tarf managed at last to snatch up the tiring dog by its rib cage. She was still holding the panting animal tightly against her chest as she took center stage. “We do apologize,” she said, a little breathlessly, “for this unscheduled interruption to the production. Please talk among yourselves for a moment while we reorganize ourselves.”
Phoebe, overhearing snippets of the conversation that followed (what are we going to do…fucking catastrophe…no understudy…send everyone home!…give them back their money…where’s James?…taken him to the emergency dentist), couldn’t believe her bad luck. Why couldn’t it have been Juliet who’d needed to be helped off the stage? If it had been Juliet, then she—Phoebe Wintergreen—would have been able to go down and say to Alison Tarf, I know Juliet. My soul is cousin to her soul! I can be your Juliet.
* * *
Nick, under the withering gaze of Alison Tarf, opened his mouth to speak.
Then stopped himself.
What was he thinking? In his pocket was a very large ruby ring that his girlfriend was expecting him, at some point during this evening, to slip onto her finger. And in Alison Tarf’s arms was a bleeding dog—a dog that had become Nick’s responsibility. The animal needed the attention of a vet. But Nick also knew Romeo’s part. He still knew every word, he realized, thinking of Justine, sitting on her balcony, cross-legged, with his open script on one knee and a box of Maltesers in the other.
“I could—” Nick began.
“You could what?” Alison Tarf said tersely.
“I could…play Romeo,” Nick said. “I know Romeo. I did Romeo just this year. At the Gaiety. I still have all the lines.”
Then Alison Tarf looked at him more closely. With refocused vision, she stared at him, hard. “I saw you. I saw that play,” she said. “And didn’t I call you? About an audition?”
“I’m sorry, I—”
“Who is he?” asked Juliet, perplexed.
“He,” said Alison Tarf, suddenly lit up with joy and mischief, “is our new Romeo.”
Nick stroked the head of the exhausted dog. “See all those people, buddy? They need for the show to go on. Do you reckon you can just hang on through to curtain call? Please? I’ll get you to the vet just as soon as I can. All right, mate?”
And was it Nick’s imagination, or was there just the glimmer of understanding in the dog’s one, dark eye?
“Okay,” said Alison, “let’s do this thing.”
Nick asked the director, “What about costume?”
Alison Tarf took Nick by the shoulders and surveyed him in his tuxedo and blood-splattered shirt. “You’ll do just fine as you are.”
* * *
Annabel Barwick—Cancer, weekday veterinarian and weekend quilting enthusiast, star of wedding photographs that co-starred a cockatiel called Sheila, practical supporter of numerous local animal shelters and founder of a vaccination charity for homeless Nepalese dogs—was working late that New Year’s Eve.
She hadn’t intended to work late, but a
young red-and-tan sheepdog had been brought in, vomiting and listless, and the X-rays had revealed that a squeaker from a soft toy had become firmly lodged in his bowel. The dog was now coming out of its anesthetic with a seam of Annabel’s immaculate stitchery down its shaven belly.
Having sent home all of her staff but one nurse, Annabel sat at the front desk of the surgery filling in paperwork relating to the sheepdog’s operation. Beyond the glass door that led out into the street, the city was in party mode, and Annabel could sense the pulse of its festivities. When the door opened at around 11:15 p.m., it let in a gasp of noise—the bass beat of music, the shouts of revelers, the irritating mosquito-buzz of vuvuzelas. It also admitted a young and good-looking guy wearing a tuxedo and holding a bloodied terrier in his arms.
No, no, no, no, no, thought Annabel, feeling the last of her hopes of leaving the surgery before midnight evaporate into nothingness. Briefly, she considered telling the man that she couldn’t help. That perhaps he could try a different clinic. But then she looked into the eye of the broken dog. It needed help. And now that she looked at the dog more closely, she realized that he had crossed her path before.
“That’s Brown Houdini-Malarky,” Annabel said, coming around to the other side of the counter.
“You know him?” said the guy in the tuxedo.
“Did you adopt him?” Annabel asked, incredulous.
“What?”
“From the Dogs Home? Did you adopt him?”
“What? No, no. I don’t know the first thing about him. He got clipped by a car, not far from the Botanic Gardens. I just happened to see it, so I chased him and got hold of him, and came as soon as I could. Well…there was a bit of a delay. Shit. He’s not going to die, is he?”
The vet smoothed back the fur that fell down over Brown’s one good eye. The dog’s breathing was labored, but not disastrously so. There was sticky, clotting blood in his fur, and it was all over the fine white pleats of the man’s tuxedo shirt, too.
