It was one of those clear November days when winter seems worth it, when the sky is the exquisite blue of a Caribbean sea, the ground frosted and robins hop on spindle legs. The horses stamped and clattered against flint, the tractor churned up mud and fumes with hay bales in its teeth, gate latches pinched at frozen fingers. Clare put on an extra layer of tights beneath her jodhpurs, made breakfast silently, watched her daughter go off to school, curls bouncing against the fur-lined hood of her Parka jacket, down the stony farm track to the lane, heard the bus aching to a stop to pick her up. She was full of Ros this and Ros that, Ros let’s Molly smoke, Ros knows Emma Watson and last night, Ros says I can go skiing, resulting in a row about money. It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t right, and to top it all, tonight was dress rehearsal.
At least she knew her lines, unlike Scott who relied on Issy to prompt him. Issy should play all the parts. She knew them better than anyone, even Ros who’d said are we off book at the first rehearsal way back in October and assumed, when everyone had looked at her like she was mad, that they didn’t understand theatre speak.
“Brian has his lines written on a coaster,” Scott had replied, making Ros gasp and punch him softly on the arm; Clare had noticed everything. Right from the beginning. She led her eleven o’clock hack up muddy bridleways clogged with brambles, shouting over her shoulder low flying when branches made them crouch to their horses necks, and saw Ros everywhere. Ros shrugging out of her coat, a fur lined collar like Nancy’s. Ros getting parsley stuck in her teeth and pushing her bowl away. Ros saying she’s lucky to have him.
She’d always said to Tessa your fracture lines make sense when Tess would complain, when Tess would cry, when she’d wonder why Scott stuck it out or she did. Theirs was a marriage of inconvenience, held together with common bounds; the war zone of his childhood, the war zone of hers. His might have been grenades and car bombs and Molotov cocktails thrown over the playground wall, but at least the violence was on the outside. Hers might have been floral pelmets and sparkling surfaces, but constant attack made more deadly by its hiding had shattered her equally, and, come out in the automatic weapon of her illness. Both had lived a childhood of threat. Both were running. Both found humour in the dark.
She texted Ros, u coming tonight then felt stupid. Of course she was coming tonight. Ros hadn’t missed a single rehearsal, she was hardly going to miss the dress. It was just that she hadn’t heard from her in a couple of days. It was just that she couldn’t help it. But there wasn’t time to delete everyone and anyway that would throw up an alternative awkwardness, so now she was going to have to live with it until she’d put the horses out and had five minutes to herself, which was never. They clattered into the yard, toes frozen, the line behind her crowding to a stop at the rails. Jump down, shin pain onto hard ground, horses knocking and rubbing, Clare took off her gloves and stuffed them in her pocket to undo soft noseband and cheek strap, the stable girls crowding too to help the novices untack. Her phone in her back pocket as she left them to it, a few strides to the tack room, she made coffee at the cheap, tan kettle, the mugs on the sideboard stained, the teaspoons tide-marked, the Nescafe almost empty. Ros hadn’t looked at her phone since 10:53 this morning.
Clare took her cup of coffee into her office, the tiny room off the tack room that was more paper than desk. She shut the door. She wanted to punch Scott. If it wasn’t for Freddy and Tessa, she’d go and find him right now in his stupid zebra Land Rover and punch him right in that annoying swarthy face of his. He should know better. She looked at her phone. Nothing. She typed want to get a bite before rehearsal? And pressed send before she could stop herself. Now there was no way she could change it. One deleted message was a mistake, two were a story.
*
By the time Clare pulled up outside the theatre that evening, she’d looked at her phone fifteen times, and not looked at it twenty. She pushed the heavy green curtain aside to find the chairs had been put out and Brian already in costume, a heavy woollen suit, dark green, she was pretty sure it had been used in a performance of Robin Hood. He’d been supposed to wear a tweed suit suitable for an old Edwardian doctor shoved into the 1930’s, but even Clarice the costume woman hadn’t been able to make it fit.
“Ruth!” She’d been Ruth for over a month, even on the yard when he delivered hay bales. A couple of the new DIY’s had assumed that was her name and started calling her that.
“Sorry I’m late.” She headed backstage, the door beside the kitchen that led to a small maze of corridors and rooms. In the girls’ changing room she found chaos, and Clarice, with pins in her mouth. Diane was trying on a tiara, a feather boa trailing, Issy was on her phone; a between-the-wars house maid playing Candy Crush, while Barbara sweating in worsted twill, tried to do up the buttons of a jacket three sizes too small. Between rails and mirrors, Clare looked for Ros.
Clarice, ancient and paper thin, held up Ruth’s costume, a black and white dress with sailor’s collar for Act One, Act’s Two and Three would be spent in a skirt suit last used by Tessa to play Nanny McVeigh. That was when Tessa had been well, the clear water she’d hit which they’d all prayed would last, a handful of years of no nonsense, of meds and steadiness, though Tessa had said she was dying. What more do you want? Clare had asked her, and she’d said to feel alive. Clarice had already bull-clipped the back of the suit jacket to make it fit. Apparently it would be fine as long as she faced forward.
“Ladies,” bellowed Brian from outside the door, rapping on it for good measure, making them all shout coming and for fuck’s sake and Brian simultaneously.
“He’s like a bull,” said Diane, discarding the tiara in favour of a sequined headband. Clare shoved out of her clothes in a corner of the room, her heel stuck in the narrow jodhpur leg, mud from behind her knees scattering as she pulled it out. She was the last to get on stage.
“Announcements,” said Brian, reversing into an armchair. The stage was set for the Condomines’ living room, a fireplace and armchairs, a mantlepiece and lamps, a piano made of plywood. There were art deco ashtrays, and occasional tables, one set with crystal glasses that caught the light; a mid-war, middle class cosiness imagined from episodes of Poirot and Miss Marple. Clare had pointed out once to Brian that not everyone had the exact era of furniture in their house, she had a wash bag from the 1990’s, but Brian had told her in so many words not to worry her pretty little head, and Clare had reminded herself that am dram was as much for the players as it was for the audience. It had nothing to do with real. Very little did.
Issy would make her entrance upstage, a doorway that doubled as an exit for all of them. Ros would appear through the glass doors stage right as if spiriting in from the garden, Clare would spend a great deal of time on the sofa. Brian put his hand down to steady himself. “As you all know, we’re missing Ros tonight, Clarice is going to stand in for her.”
Did they all know? Clare sidled up to Diane and whispered, “What’s happened? Is she all right?”
Diane gave her an indeterminant nod and gentle pat on the arm that could have meant anything.
Brian continued, “tech tomorrow, let’s be on time, a lot to get through,” he looked at his watch, fat and cracked on his wrist, and then at Clare. Clare pretended to itch her foot.
Scott already lounged in the armchair nearest the fireplace, an imaginary scotch in his hand in a not imaginary glass. “Can I smoke?”
“We’ve been through this, Scotto.” Brian pulled at his waistcoat, trying to stretch it over his belly.
“They all smoked,” said Scott, miming a cigarette.
Lounging there like all the world owed him. Clare took her first position without catching his eye. She wasn’t supposed to be pissed off with him until Act Two, but there was no harm in taking a run up. Brian reversed into the wings giving Clare and Scott the stage. They’d been through the fact that Noel Coward began with only Edith and Ruth - Issy and Clare; a comical conversation mistress to maid with Scott making his entrance mid scene, but Brian had insisted that he knew better than the author, that the stage was too empty without Charles, that the audience expected it. Likewise for Ros, no disembodied voice from behind the fireplace for her, Elvira’s entrance would take place entirely, and immediately from the garden. Clare had whispered to Ros seriously, don’t bother, you should have seen his interpretation of Waiting for Godot. Who knew there was a talking bird, and Ros had had to run off stage to empty her bladder. The good old days last month. When they were all friends and Scott hadn’t done his crinkly eye routine and Ros called her almost every day. She went through the motions of her scene, Issy genuinely funny as the maid, haphazard and bobbing, almost dropping the tray, careering over carpet, running from her exit and suddenly they were in it, like magic the words appeared in her mouth as the scene unfolded, the Bradman’s arrived and the lights were dimmed for a séance.
Or would be dimmed. Tech tomorrow, their tech man absent tonight and so they faked it, Brian filling in the change of gels and spots with verbal queues as if they all weren’t a thousand times aware of it.
At the end of Act One Scott caught her by the drinks table. “You alright there, Clare?”
She was tired of everyone making his life easy. Poor Scott. Mad wife. “I suppose you know why Ros isn’t here.”
Diane righted the stool she’d knocked over, Barbara straightened the rug.
“Why would I know?”
“Positions Act Two, everyone,” Brian clapped his hands.
Clare raised her eyebrows and took up her pose by the mantlepiece.
When Clarice had a coughing fit, Diane filled in for Ros instead, and tore her boa in the process, leaving feathers all over the stage. Brian forgot his lines and blamed the lack of lighting, Issy stole the show with double takes worth a Golden Globe and Scott delivered his performance of Charles as if the last months of rehearsals had been a complete waste of time. How did he do it. His natural ability was irritating. While Barbara helped Brian tidy props for the final act, Scott cornered Clare by the piano.
“Time of the month is it, Clare?”
“Fuck off,” she shook her arm free from where his loose grip touched it.
“Come on, you’ve a face like a slapped arse. What is it?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Well, if it’s nothing, I was wondering if you could do me a favour.”
If she was straight she might have fancied him. His suit fitted perfectly, a deep grey whorl, double breasted and open to a shirt, the tie loosened. A mess of honey hair that he promised would be combed for opening night, those damned green eyes; Ros wasn’t the first to feel seduced by him.
“You know, she’s not as tough as she looks,” she whispered as Brian said nearly there troops. “She’s fragile. You can’t take advantage of her.”
“Take advantage of who?” He moved to the sofa.
She sat beside him. “You know who, Scott. She’s delicate, she’s been through a lot.”
“Are you talking about Tess?”
Clare laughed, “yeah, right, your long suffering wife.”
“I’m perfectly aware she’s delicate.”
“I’m talking about your other wife.”
“Ruth,” shouted Brian from the wings, “less chit-chat more spit-spat.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” said Scott.
“You’re holding up the scene,” said Diane behind them. It’s Arcati and Charles.”
Clare didn’t answer. She got up and left them to it.
*
Later that night, far from the theatre and on her way home, she felt her phone buzz in her pocket. On the darkened road she pulled over, a muddy gateway, not enough room but she found she couldn’t wait.
u around tomr?
The thrill of it, the twist in her stomach, the lurch in her heart. She replied, picking up Tessa then straight to tech. See u there?
Silence. The three dots that taunted her. She looked up to waste time, the tangle of hedgerow lit by her headlights, the ping that made her look down again.
she’s coming home?
Smiley face yes
Nothing. Last seen at. Silence.
Loved the one-liners and humour: "One deleted message was a mistake, two were a story." "You should have seen his interpretation of Waiting for Godot. Who knew there was a talking bird."
And that ending; so powerful.
Tessa's coming home in time for the performance? Sensing a big scene on the way! ;)