The Curious Heart of Ailsa Rae

by Stephanie Butland

  But Hayley says, ‘Come on, they’re waiting,’ and before she knows it, she’s up on the top deck and the bus is lurching them off around Edinburgh. There’s a collective ‘ooh’ as everyone gasps and finds something to hold onto. And then the sound system crackles into life with ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’, and Tamsin laughs, and Hayley and Dennis start a duet. Oh, life is good today.

  They’re waiting at the lights near Holyrood when Emily tops up Ailsa’s glass with Prosecco. ‘Here’s to new hearts, and taking buses, and not getting a hangover because we’re drinking this outside.’

  ‘I’ll drink to that.’

  Emily shakes her head, laughs. ‘Do you remember the Bacardi hangover?’

  ‘Worst hangover of my life.’ Not unlike coming round from surgery, actually. ‘I cannot believe we fell for Jacob saying you didn’t get so hungover if you had a drink outside.’

  Ah, toffee vodka being passed from hand to hand as she and Emily and Jacob sat cross-legged in the quad after the bar closed, in that first term, when Ailsa Rae and Emily Field were inseparable and everything was new, even this city that had always been her home. Although she had her backstory, the blue of her skin and the slowness of her walk, everyone else she met had a story to tell too. The first weeks were late nights of drinking and talking as they understood who they were, and who they belonged with; then it settled down, into the part that Ailsa loved best, the taken-for-granted friendships and the assumptions that they would be there for each other. On her first admission to hospital that term, her mother had arrived, breathless and scared, after a dash from work, to find Emily, Pritti and Tim sitting around her bed, tapping away on laptops or reading textbooks while Ailsa slept, oxygen tubes in place in her nostrils. That term had muted, and then dissolved, the pain of being without Lennox. He’d gone travelling the summer before starting uni; when he came back, tanned and tired-looking, Ailsa saw the beginning of an inevitable growing-apart for them. She wasn’t going to be travelling. She wasn’t even going to be leaving home. She would be the equivalent of an ailing parent, holding him back, tying him down. So she ended it, and oh, how her old heart ached. Her new friends gave her, at first, something else to think about, and then others to love. It wasn’t the same, but it was something.

  In the years since leaving university – though Ailsa was a year behind, having to spread her final year over two – they’ve seen less of each other. Jacob lives in France now, with his fiancée; Pritti and Tim are close-ish in Stirling, but both work full-time, and are doing up their flat at weekends. Emily and Christa are Edinburgh-based still, and Ailsa makes a point of seeing them every couple of weeks, but it’s not often that they are all together like this. And anyway, for the two years between being upgraded to urgent on the transplant list to the time that she came out of hospital, her real-world self had stood still, waited. In the meantime, her friends have found out what they want to do, and where they want to be; they’ve closed doors, and turned away from what they know isn’t for them. Ailsa’s time has been spent wanting to be well – or, rather, first wanting Lennox to be well, and herself too, though for a while after he died she would have turned down a heart if she could, for the sake of no longer having to make her way through the swamp of grief she found herself in.

  Jacob lurches up to Ailsa and Emily, sitting on the front seat, and plonks himself down opposite. ‘Your dancing friends are nice,’ he says. Then, scrutinising her, ‘You look weird when you’re pink.’

  ‘I know,’ Ailsa says. She’s on what is possibly her fifth glass of Prosecco. Life’s grand. Anything goes. ‘I think that every morning. It’s like the wrong person’s in the mirror.’

  ‘What are you doing next?’ Jacob has thickened through the body and cut his hair; he’s abandoned festival T-shirts for crisply pressed shirts, open at the neck. His smile is the same, lopsided and quick. He probably won’t look much different when he’s forty; by fifty, he’ll have added a touch of grey and jowl. It’s hard to believe that they were ever lovers. Though maybe the Ailsa who squashed into Jacob’s single bed with him, laughing and shushing as the student in the next room turned up his music, is the one she should think of as herself, rather than the greyscale version who sat with Lennox and watched him fade.

  ‘She’s replaced her heart,’ says Emily. ‘Is that not enough for you?’

  Ailsa laughs. ‘I can get myself a job now,’ she says. ‘I’m still living in my flat. My mother’s moving out, though.’

  ‘Your mother rocks,’ Emily says. ‘I was talking to her earlier. She’s –’ Her free hand punches the air, as though Hayley is a band and Emily its greatest fan.

  ‘She is,’ Ailsa says. ‘But I want to look for my dad. And that’s not gone down so well with her.’

  Emily shrugs. ‘You’ve got to do what’s right for you.’

  ‘I used to think because he didn’t care about me I don’t care about him,’ Ailsa says, ‘but things aren’t that simple.’

  ‘How old were they?’

  ‘Younger than us. Early twenties.’

  Emily nods. ‘Young enough to not really know what you’re about. I don’t know that I do now.’

  ‘Maybe he just didn’t want to be with my mother forever,’ Ailsa says.

  ‘Like you, you mean?’ Hayley’s hurt is wrapped in laughter.

  Emily catches Ailsa’s eye, an ‘oh shit’ look.

  Ailsa takes a breath and turns around in her seat. The trouble with buses is that you can’t see who’s sitting behind you. ‘I just meant – maybe the heart thing was an excuse. I’m not saying that’s OK, but it’s – possible – that he might want to know about me now.’

  ‘Let’s say that’s the Prosecco talking, hen.’ Hayley’s voice is aiming for lightness, but with a strong undertow of hurt.

  ‘I didn’t mean . . .’

  ‘It’s forgotten.’

  Emily’s eyes widen; Apple flutters, winces. It doesn’t sound forgotten.

  And then Christa saves the day, moving up the aisle to join them. ‘If you really want a job, I can get you a trial. We always need people at the coffee shop. Just let me know when you’re ready.’

  20 April, 2017

  This Time Last Year

  ‘Ailsa.’ Her name is coming from a long way away. ‘Ailsa, you have to wake up. I’ve had a phone call. We have to get to the hospital. Ailsa.’

  Being shaken awake, when Ailsa is this tired, her old heart struggling so hard, only means news of a death or a dying: a heart having become available, or Lennox. She struggles to the surface, and looks at her mother’s face. She sees that it’s the dying that she doesn’t want.

  ‘Lennox?’

  ‘I’ve called a cab,’ Hayley says. ‘Just put your coat and shoes on over those. Let’s wait outside.’ Ailsa is wearing white-and-cherry-striped pyjamas. Lennox says she looks like a candy cane in them.

  It’s gone midnight, so they get to the hospital quickly, the city roads quiet and clear, as though Edinburgh is holding its breath for Lennox too, wishing this moment away. Ailsa thinks about Lennox’s will, his wish that his body go to medical research and that the money left over from the sale of his flat be used to do something good. She had asked what that ‘good’ should be. Lennox had said, ‘I’ll let them decide. It’ll give them something to talk about, after I’ve gone. It might help.’ Right now, in the dark and chill, Ailsa doubts it. Nothing will ever ease this pain.

  Lucy meets them at the door to the unit, her eyes red. ‘He’s sleeping,’ she says. And then she shakes her head and says, ‘This time last year we thought he was maybe getting flu.’

  Ailsa and Hayley nod and keep walking.

  Ruthie and Dennis stand either side of the bed, Libby at the foot, and a nurse stands back, watching. Lucy follows Ailsa in; Hayley stays at the door, just inside. Ruthie puts an arm out to Ailsa, inviting her to stand next to her.

  ‘He probably won’t wake up again,’ she says, and her voice has the calm and watchful tone that Ailsa hears so o
ften from her mother, in their own worst moments of bad news and fear.

  Ruthie hugs her close, and although Ailsa wants to hug back, it’s as though she is a solid mass of fear and sadness, fused to rigidity, a pillar of hopelessness. Ruthie bends in closer, as though her body understands what’s happening to Ailsa, and then straightens. Dennis is weeping, a long, slow keen of a sound that is almost music.

  Come on, Ailsa. You can be supportive.

  She stretches a hand over to Dennis, who nods, and reaches for her fingertips but then puts his face in his hands instead. Lucy, next to him, wraps her arms around him.

  So she takes Ruthie’s hand – the one that hasn’t begun smoothing Lennox’s hair back, over and over, or patting the sheet covering his chest into place – and she holds it, tight. There’s nothing to be said, but she tries: ‘We’re all here.’

  Ruthie nods. ‘He probably won’t wake up again,’ she repeats, her voice shivering with cracks this time. Ailsa realises Ruthie is telling herself this, over and over, trying to learn what seems to be an impossible fact.

  But Lennox is Lennox still, with more staying power than anyone expected, and the sort of strength of will and body that has stretched this death to the point where everyone is breaking. He opens his eyes, the whites like yolks now, and he raises the hand closest to Ailsa, pivoting it from the wrist, his fingers shaking from the effort. It takes a moment for her to understand the question, but then she gets it, and she sits down next to the bed, fits her palm to his, and lets their fingers interlace in answer.

  ‘You win,’ she says, and there’s something like a smile around the edges of his lips as he closes his eyes. In another hour he’s gone.

  18 April, 2018

  ‘We’ve booked the party bus for Guy’s fortieth!’ Eliza says to Ailsa when she arrives at the following Wednesday’s tango class. ‘We thought it was fantastic. I’m amazed you didn’t mention The Thing, though. I cannot keep a thing to myself when I’ve had a drink. Or did you not know about it then?’

  ‘I’m so glad you came,’ Ailsa says, and means it. In her imagination, people who don’t have heart problems have days full of non-stop, heedless adventure, and she was touched by how many people were there to celebrate. ‘What thing?’

  ‘You know! The Thing.’ Eliza winks. ‘I assumed you knew. Because of the radio. Knowing Sebastian.’ She says his name as though her mouth is full of glitter.

  ‘Well,’ Ailsa begins, though she’s not sure where she’s going.

  But then Edie joins the conversation: ‘Eliza! Don’t talk about The Thing. It’s a secret.’

  Though there can’t be more than two years between them, Edie always seems older with a capital O: she’s definitely in charge. The sisters look almost identical – they have the same dark, curling hair and brown-gold eyes, the same peachy pale skin that makes them seem to glow with health. Although the health could also be – well, health. They make Ailsa think of the pairs of horses that once might have pulled the carriages of the gentry down George Street: fast, perfectly matched, and head-turningly beautiful. She doesn’t say so.

  ‘OK,’ Eliza says with a grin to Ailsa, and then walks off, halloo-ing to the others as they arrive.

  Ah, here are Murray and Venetia, with a couple of the others who Ailsa is only on nodding terms with, in a happy bubble of chatter. They sit down and change their shoes, saying hello and smiling. Ailsa has bought some shoes for tango, so she can join in the changing ritual. They aren’t the real thing – £60 seems like a lot to spend when she doesn’t have a job – but they are smooth-soled and feel safe and tight on her feet. When she bends to buckle them, she feels a twinkle of excitement.

  Although Ailsa is still a beginner, she can tell that she’s learning. Each dance sequence lasts for three short tunes, and for the first time, Ailsa gets through two of them without a single mistake, and there’s only one slight misstep on the third, which Guy gives her the chance to step her way out of, and she does, rather than stopping and dropping her hands in despair, as she would have done the week before. More and more, she feels what she thinks of as ‘the tango feeling’ – a lower-belly tingle of anticipation, a spark going up her taut spine, her hands waiting for the pressure from her partner that will tell her feet what to do next. And the more she feels the tango feeling, the more she wants it. She and Apple agree on this. Ailsa thinks that Apple must be new to tango too, because they’re learning at the same rate, tiring at the same time.

  During the break, Edie and Eliza are talking to a woman Ailsa didn’t notice joining the class. The not-noticing is not surprising, because she’s spent the last hour looking at the place where her hand sat on Guy’s collarbone, trying to read the movements of his torso and translate them into the language that her feet are starting to speak.

  ‘They’re plotting something.’ Venetia sounds certain, and Ailsa laughs, because that’s exactly what it looks like. The three heads nod and the conspiratorial knot unties; Edie and Eliza look around, smiling, and Edie steps forward, walking to the middle of the wooden dance floor. Even the way she walks is measured, precise, elegant, her head so high and straight, on her neck, her vertebrae as precisely stacked as the bricks of a tall Edinburgh chimney.

  ‘Just before we start the milonga,’ she says, ‘Eliza and I would like to introduce you to someone who would like our help. I’m going to let her explain. This is Rosalind Derbyshire.’

  Rosalind must be about thirty-five, tall and straight, in black trousers, black T-shirt, black boots, with Monroe-blonde hair in a truly messy rather than artfully messy ponytail. The red nail polish on her fingernails is chipped, her smile is bright and full of slightly unruly teeth, and her voice is loud and warm.

  ‘Hello,’ she says, ‘I’m Roz. I’m a theatre director and I’m going to be putting on Romeo and Juliet here, in this space, during the Fringe.’

  There’s a groan, hastily stifled, and then a stricken voice from one of the dancers: ‘I wasn’t groaning at you – it’s just the thought of the Fringe.’

  Roz laughs, and she pulls a chair from under a table and sits, making herself friendly. ‘I’ve lived in Edinburgh for a lot of my life.’ She says. ‘Tell me about it. But this year I’m going to enjoy it, instead of avoiding it, even though it means I can’t rent out my flat for August.’

  Everyone laughs at this. The Fringe festival brings out a mix of feelings in Edinburgh residents. Ailsa has always loved it – the buzz and bustle, the personalised weather forecast on the news and the feeling that she is, for once in her life, where everything is happening, simply by virtue of being where she always is. The girl who could never take part could sit in a cafe and get infected with excitement. She could go to shows at 2 a.m. with her friends, because she could manage being out for an hour, and support fellow students who were brave enough to try out their jokes or their acting or their poetry. She could become a red blood cell being pulsed around the city. Hayley, on the other hand, complains for what feels like every second of every day of the Fringe. She can’t get a coffee without queueing for half an hour; she has to allow an extra twenty minutes to get anywhere; she’s rushed off her feet at work with people wanting the morning-after pill and rehydration remedies because they can’t control themselves.

  Roz starts to lay out her plan. Ailsa leans forward to listen – although every word is clear – and feels the others do the same.

  A production of Romeo and Juliet, in this room, that seats about fifty. Ailsa’s brain is Rubiks-cubing as she tries to remember what, exactly, Seb said in his email. Though every spare space in the city will be having some play or comedian or dance crammed into it.

  ‘The show will take place on this area,’ Roz continues, indicating the dance floor, ‘and the audience will sit around, just as you are. We’ll get some extra seating in, around the edges. There will be a show every night except Monday for the first three weeks of August. It will run from six to eight thirty, and be followed, I hope, by dancing – cast, audience, and anyone downs
tairs in the bar who fancies giving it a go.’ She stands and walks the edge of the wooden dance floor, her cowboy boots clack-clacking as she moves, marking the boundary. ‘This will be the stage, our Verona, and the show will have a dance element to it, so I’ve been talking to Edie and Eliza for a while – and I’m here to ask you to help me out.’

  Ailsa takes a breath, on purpose, because she’s holding it, by accident.

  Roz continues, ‘For those of you who don’t know the play, it’s about two feuding families. They only see the error of their ways when a child from each family, Romeo and Juliet, the star-crossed lovers, fall for each other and eventually die. So there’s love in the middle of hate. There’s tension between the families, tension between love and duty, tension between what feels right and what is right. Which makes it’ – she smiles that great smile again, looks around the room, slowly, seeming to take in each of them in turn – ‘a play about the tango.’

  There’s a gentle exhalation around the room, a sense of ‘of course that’s the answer’. Ailsa saw the play once with Emily. There was no tango on that stage. The main thing that Ailsa recalls is a lot of wailing. But there was definitely tension. And tension is the thing that makes the tango work.

  ‘I’m going to be using professional actors, and with the exception of the leads, they’re mostly from Edinburgh and around,’ Roz says.

  It has to be Seb’s thing. He was really interested in her dancing. Although he would be, anyway, because of StarDance. But when you add the winking from Eliza, and the feeling of conspiracy –

  ‘I’m here to ask you to help me with some parts of the play. First, there’s a party scene, where the lovers first meet, and I’d like you to help with that, by coming up to dance. I have a cast of eight and that’s not what I call a party.’