I flipped the plastic lid off the cardboard cup and sipped the scalding liquid. Not coffee. Whatever it was, it wasn’t coffee. I snapped the lid back on and dumped the muck in a bin. Now I knew what I needed to make my life complete.
I found a decent coffee shop and smiled at the salesgirl. “Two bags of Rich Italian Roast and a French press, please.”
By midday I was back in the theatre, caffeine-fixed and sorting out my living space. Two of the six dressing rooms had cold running water, but only the bigger of them had an intact hand basin and a flush toilet, so that room chose itself for my bedroom. It would need alterations. A cold-water birdbath was bearable during this May heat wave, but the English weather could turn unpleasant at any time of year, and I had no intention of living like that for long. At the very least I’d have a shower unit installed.
Swept out and mopped down, with the camp bed and sleeping bag set up in one corner and the camping stove sitting on a trestle table across the room, it felt like an okay place to nest while I licked my wounds.
I walked down to the mediaeval harbour that evening, and while I queued for a bag of fish and chips, I read a tourism leaflet that said the Barbican was the only part of old Plymouth town to survive the Blitz in the Second World War. It was the place from where Sir Francis Drake sailed, from where the Pilgrim Fathers departed to settle the New World (the Mayflower Steps) and where Britons danced in defiance of Hitler’s Luftwaffe.
The area certainly oozed charm. Narrow cobbled lanes of Elizabethan buildings radiated from the harbour and gave the place a higgledy-piggledy character. It was easy to forget that a modern city enfolded this bohemian quarter against the sea.
I ate my fish and chips, then sat outside a bar on the ground floor of a converted warehouse to wash the meal down with a cold beer. Two young women were spinning big fire-string things for an appreciative circle of passersby near the Mayflower Steps, but I couldn’t enjoy any of it. I was numb. I didn’t belong anywhere or to anyone.
The air—heavy with summer smells of beer and cigarette smoke, diesel oil from the harbour, food from every direction and a hundred different perfumes and aftershaves—tasted like life and made me feel like even more of an outsider.
The Barbican was changing character from a daylight tourist trap to a nighttime party place. At nine o’clock I left the streets to strutting boys and whooping gaggles of girls and retreated to my dusty old theatre.
Surveying the inside of the building by the light of a battery-driven lamp wasn’t the most efficient method, but I repeated the process to keep my mind busy.
Would Tony’s tentative plan to convert the property into apartments work? Or could I do something else with it?
I wasn’t sure if the building had ever been used for its intended purpose. Or any purpose. Stacks and piles of building materials sat here and there under centuries of dust. Despite the ornate scrollwork across the curved front piece of the upper circle and gold paint peeling from plaster cherubs everywhere, the place felt more like an unfinished building project than a former working theatre.
My theatre and me: perennially unfinished business, both trying to figure out what we wanted to be.
Eventually, and inevitably, I found myself in the foyer, trying again to locate that bloody door and still haunted by the lovely dream woman’s song. I failed to find the door, laughed at myself for trying to substitute a fantasy for my lonely sadness and went to bed.
Stretched out on the camp bed, I realised my bedroom had no ceiling. I could see straight up to the false roof, about fifty feet above, and the rats were scratching up there. I’d check it out tomorrow. In the daylight.
As soon as the intruders broke into my dreams, I pulled on my boots, jogged to the back of the theatre and got there just as a boy and girl passed through the magic door. The foyer smelled of chips and vinegar.
I stepped into the square and crossed the road cautiously, wary of attracting attention. The place was throbbing. Coloured lanterns twinkled in the trees, and a folk band played some manic tune while several couples whirled about and a wide circle of seated revellers clapped along. The youngsters I’d followed sat and opened their bags of chips.
A second group of people sat slightly apart from the main crowd, cooking and eating around a low campfire. One of them was the lovely woman, and she stared directly at me.
I moved out from behind my bush, trying to look as if I hadn’t been spying on her, while she walked towards me. She was so beautiful that I nearly forgot to breathe.
“Hello.”
Her light scent filled my mind, and her voice warmed me like central heating from a long sip of brandy on a cold day.
“Hello. Is that a magic door?”
“Yes.” Her eyes twinkled with humour.
Was this happening, or was I dreaming? Maybe I’d find some sort of rational explanation if I stuck around. “Are you going to send me away again?”
“Send you away?”
“Like you did last night: singing, charming me, whatever it was you did.” See, I told myself, this is the thing—I don’t believe any of this is actually happening, but at the same time I totally believe this woman is real and that she sang some sort of enchantment on to me.
She cocked her head and studied me. “What’s your name?”
“Joe. What’s yours?”
“Min.”
Somebody threw a pebble into deep water somewhere far back in my memory, but the sensation lasted only a second, because she was talking again and drawing me back to the present.
“How did you find us?”
I nodded towards the theatre. “I just moved in.”
“Ah, I see.” She glanced back at the garden and started walking towards an open gateway in the perimeter hedge. “Would you like to meet some of the others?”
The four people Min had been sitting with watched our approach: a man, in his sixties I guessed, who was dressed up like Plymouth’s answer to Davy Crockett; an older woman in a bundle of long skirts; and a couple of teenaged punks.
Min sat on a cushion and gestured for me to take a place among them.
“This is Joe,” she told them. “He’s all right.”
How did she know?
“Evening, Joe,” said the old man in an American accent. The turquoise stone threaded into his shoulder-length white hair swayed away from his jawbone as he reached across to shake my hand. “I’m Andrew. This—” he nodded towards the old woman, “—is Flo. And these two are Jimmy and Fliss.”
The others said hello as I sat cross-legged on the grass opposite Min. Then Andrew and Fliss resumed their conversation about fixing a roof, while Flo massaged Jimmy’s right forearm and hand. A blackbird sat on her shoulder, watching the process intently.
Jimmy caught me noticing his treatment. “Hurt it last week and haven’t been able to work.”
I winced in sympathy. “What do you do?”
“I’m a juggler.”
The old woman released his hand. “A couple more days. Don’t rush it.”
“Ta.” Jimmy passed her a coin. “Flo’s our fixer,” he told me, then nodded towards the blackbird. “Elvis is her assistant.”
“What do you juggle?”
He grinned. “What have you got? Clubs, knives and swords mostly. Fire sometimes, if the crowd’s worth it.”
A piercing whistle sounded from over near the theatre, and two young women burst into the garden, laughing and skipping through the gate. They dumped their haversacks on the ground and joined the dancers.
Jimmy waved towards the new arrivals with his good hand. “Cindy and Debs are our fire girls.”
I recognised them. “They were down at the harbour earlier, spinning fire on ropes. They’re good.”
“They’re called poi. The fire ropes, I mean.”
“Are you all performers?” I asked.
“Some of us,” said Min. “We have all sorts here.”
Flo and Elvis were staring at me, and they were starting to make me un
comfortable.
“What do you do, Joe?” Fliss asked.
“I’m a carpenter.”
Min’s stillness drew me in. I forgot about the unsettling old woman and her blackbird. Everything else blurred around the edges of my vision, and the music faded into the distance. I knew only Min. I didn’t struggle against the pull. I would have been happy to fall into those eyes forever.
Then she said something to Andrew, and it was as if my ears popped clear. What was going on? Was Min enchanting me? How else could I explain the powerful need that had just filled me?
“Joe is living in the theatre,” she said.
“Why?”
“Sorry.” I tried to switch my brain back on. “Why what?”
Andrew’s gaze was steady. His eyes were morning-sky blue, and the deep crinkles at their corners suggested a lifetime of watching the horizon. “Why are you living in the theatre?”
“I’m thinking of doing the place up.”
They glanced at one another. Clearly my words made them uncomfortable.
“What is this place?” I asked Min.
“This is Quarter Square. It’s a haven.”
With these eccentric types dancing, playing instruments, eating and talking and laughing, it felt as if I’d landed in a gypsy camp in some fantasy film. “You all live here?”
“Most of us. Some move around a bit, stopping for a while in various havens along the way.”
“There are other havens?”
“Yes.”
“This takes some getting used to.”
She chuckled. “I know.”
The violinists called Min over to sing with them. She waved back.
“I won’t be long,” she promised me.
I admired her figure as she walked away.
“She’s a lovely girl,” Andrew said.
“She is.”
The band started a sad piece, full of soaring violins and a slow, melodic drumbeat. Min closed her eyes and swayed with the music, apparently in a world of her own. She started to sing in a strange language, and her voice transported me. I closed my eyes and let myself fly with her song, glimpsing swirling visions of snow-tipped mountains, an exotic city and rivers flowing over green plains towards the sea.
I don’t know how long the song lasted, but when it finished, I returned to myself refreshed, as if I’d enjoyed a long sleep. The band played something livelier, and a passing dancer swept Min into the stream.
“You know, that theatre is the last anchor for this place,” Andrew said.
“Hmm?” I murmured, watching Min dance.
“We’re losing it.” He waited until he had my attention. “Over the centuries, building developments around here have destroyed all the anchors except the theatre. It’s the only structure left standing in the footprint of an original building. The only physical link to the outside. If that theatre goes, Quarter Square goes too.”
I was about to reassure him I had no intention of removing the building, but he continued.
“All those changes in the outside world have affected the square. It hasn’t lost its shape, but the texture of the place has changed.”
The houses surrounding us were clearly outlined in the bright moonlight. None of them were in as good a condition as I’d originally thought. The chocolate-box prettiness of the place had hidden the fact that several buildings were crumbling at the edges.
“Nowhere is solid,” Andrew said. “Not unless it’s used regularly. People have died or moved away, and the place has become…unreliable.” He scanned the surrounding rooftops. “Oh, we can keep repairing it a piece at a time, but nobody wants to spend all their time maintaining the neighbourhood.”
Jimmy and Fliss winked at each other.
“The square is disappearing,” Andrew said, “and these kids don’t care.”
Jimmy rolled his eyes. “Chillax, Andrew. We’ll just move on. There’s always somewhere else.”
Andrew fixed me with his intense stare. “See? We’re losing it.”
Min returned from her dance, breathless and glowing. She seemed to sense a tension in our group, looked from me to Andrew and back again and arched a questioning eyebrow.
I’d had a thought, but there was no way I was ready to discuss it until I could think it through. It wasn’t my habit to blurt out ideas without weighing them first, and to be honest, I wasn’t completely sure this was my idea at all. I felt as if my world had been placed on a tilting board and was sliding out of my control. Old Flo and her bloody blackbird were still staring at me. Were they playing with my head? It wouldn’t have surprised me if they were.
No, I’d say nothing about this mad idea.
Min had other plans. “What?” A small smile twitched at the corners of her mouth, and her eyes twinkled.
“Andrew’s nagging Joe about the theatre,” Jimmy said.
Min focused on me. “What is it?”
I wanted to tell her, but I didn’t want to say anything until I had a clear head. But I wanted to tell her. “The guy I got the theatre from planned to convert the building into an apartment block.”
The breath Andrew released through his nose was a restrained but eloquent sigh of concern.
“I only just arrived here and haven’t decided what to do with the place. I’m thinking, could I renovate it? As a working theatre, I mean. Would that help? If you could all perform for a paying audience, would that help keep your community alive?”
“Bloody hell,” Jimmy said.
I could have said the same thing myself. I wasn’t exactly famous for making spur-of-the-moment decisions.
Andrew gave a long, low, interested whistle, while Min and Fliss grinned. Flo kissed Elvis on the beak and murmured something to him.
“I’d need help.” I was talking myself into this and thinking it wasn’t such a mad idea after all. Totally unexpected maybe, but from a business point of view not completely bonkers. Probably not anyway. “You’d have to provide money for materials and as many labourers as possible, especially at first when we’re clearing all the junk out, but I don’t see why not.”
“Wow.” Jimmy’s eyes widened. “That’s very cool.”
Min regarded me with something like quiet pride, and I found myself blushing.
Chapter Three
Enjoying an evening meal with a group of our friends, I look round the living space of my cousin’s new home. It’s a simple dwelling with a well-swept dirt floor and furnished with the timber pieces I’d made as a wedding gift for him and his wife. Through the window shutters we hear the rumble and tumble of our merchant town coming to the end of its working day. Someone says something funny, and we all laugh. Before our laughter dies away, a massive blow bursts the door off its hinges, and a hideous beast springs into the room. Everyone screams. He is man and wolf at the same time, standing on his hind legs, some five cubits high, with a fury of madness in his bloodshot eyes and saliva splattering from his fangs. He charges at me and rips out my throat.
After breakfast I found a public telephone and arranged for a skip to be delivered outside the theatre the following day. By the time I got back, Min, Andrew and Jimmy had turned up with five other residents of the square and started collecting rubbish from all over the theatre.
They’d brought dozens of candle lanterns, and I saw the main arena properly. It was horseshoe-shaped, with two tiers of boxes on the sidewalls and an orchestra pit full of rubble and junk. I’d estimated the place to be about two hundred years old, and the building materials appeared to confirm this.
The only signs of more recent times were the mid-twentieth-century additions backstage: a fifty-foot steel wall ladder up to the roof space and the flush toilet in my bedroom, which suggested someone had once tried to do something with the building but hadn’t got very far.
Andrew agreed with my theory. “I guess the insiders made it difficult for anyone who ever tried to do anything with the place.”
“Insiders?”
“Haven people.”
“I suppose that makes me an outsider,” I said.
He grinned. “Everyone has to start somewhere.”
I bent to pick up another armful of rubbish to move into the open space at the front of the arena.
Andrew laid a hand lightly on my arm. “Don’t worry, son. You’re doing a good thing here. You’ll be on the inside before you know it.” He winked and bent to pick up a pile of junk.
“Hey,” he called over his shoulder, “we talked things over last night after you left. We agreed to help towards the cost of materials.”
“That’s why there aren’t too many of us here today,” said Jimmy. “We’re having a fundraising push, so they’re after taking advantage of the good weather.”
“Not you, then?” I asked.
“Well, we thought I might be more use to you here. I’ve worked on building sites, so I’m your first labourer. And my arm is nearly better.” He threw me a scruffy salute, grinned and pointed to a huge man who was carrying his weight in sawn timber towards a pile in the centre of the stage. “That’s Big Luke. Good as gold. He’ll be our heavy lifter.”
I wandered backstage and peered up into the shadows. The roof space bothered me. I knew there would be nothing unpleasant or scary up there, but I needed to check it out for my peace of mind. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t thank myself every night as I lay in bed, staring up and imagining things. I stood at the bottom of the ladder and struggled with the idea of climbing it.
Jimmy appeared at my shoulder. “You want me to check the loft?”
I should do this myself. His arm wasn’t completely healed.
“Is your arm okay?”
“It’s fine, honest. Go on. I want to take a look.” He adopted a pirate drawl and a wild-eyed grin. “There might be treasure.”
Quarter Square Page 2