The Curious Heart of Ailsa Rae

by Stephanie Butland

  My eye’s not great, as it goes. Nothing to be worried about, exactly, but the light sensitivity’s not getting a lot better, and I still can’t read for more than about ten minutes, or do more than watch about half an hour of TV. I tried to see a film at the cinema the other day. Disaster. I only lasted twenty minutes and it was raining, so my popcorn got wet on the way home. My surgeon says we’re going to keep an eye on it. I thought it would be better by now, though.

  I’m getting papped again, so I suppose that’s a good sign.

  Are you OK?

  Take care,

  Seb x

  From: Ailsa

  To: Seb

  Dear Seb,

  I don’t know what I could do if I couldn’t use my eyes for more than twenty minutes. There’s only so long you can walk and dance for.

  Did your surgeon use the words ‘keep an eye on it’? One of my consultants used to say ‘pump’ instead of ‘heart’. As in: ‘you have to put your pump into it’. I’m not sure what the point was but it made me laugh.

  I’m OK. I think my mum moving out is what we agreed before my operation, but now it’s here it’s a bit weird for us both. I’ve offered to move out, and I wouldn’t mind, but she insists that we should try it the way we planned. But we can’t seem to talk about it without it getting argumentative. So since Tamsin’s involved anyway, she’s going to – well, mediate, I suppose, though we haven’t put it that way. Wish me luck.

  Is papped good?

  Don’t lose pump.

  Ailsa x

  From: Seb

  To: Ailsa

  You always make me laugh! The pump, not the thing about your mum. I think it’s always hard with parents – even without life-and-death hell as a backstory. When I moved out, it was gradual, because I was away filming a lot of the time. Then I was offered a flat-share, but by that time I was only going back at weekends anyway. My folks don’t like London or travelling, so they don’t often come to things. I went to see them at their place in Hampshire at the weekend. I told them about R&J and they said things like but your sister was always cleverer than you, as though they think I’ve cheated the system. My cheerful face got a lot of practice.

  Papped is good in that it means your career might not have lain down and died after all. But it’s not really very nice. I try not to look at the stories, but it’s not always easy.

  I might give this new cornea a name. Then I could give it pep talks.

  For now I’m watching The Lego Movie, twenty minutes at a time.

  It would be better if we fitted together like Lego. Cornea transplants in two clicks. We could have a zip up the front, and all of our internal organs would be attached to each other with whatever it is that makes Lego click into place. Easy.

  From: Ailsa

  To: Seb

  I now have a vision of you staring at yourself in the mirror in the morning, going, ‘Pull yourself together, Alphonse. It’s only light.’

  And yes to Lego! That would work for sure. As long as surgeons didn’t have Lego hands.

  Ailsa

  From: Seb

  To: Ailsa

  Good point.

  In fairness I should have said that my folks were great when my eye first happened.

  I wanted to ask you a favour. Are you feeling generous?

  Seb x

  From: Ailsa

  To: Seb

  I need to ask you a favour too. I’ve been wondering whether I should – but please say no if you don’t want to.

  Do you want to go first?

  Ailsa

  From: Seb

  Sent: 20 April, 2018

  To: Ailsa

  Subject: The favour

  No, unicorns first. It’s bad luck otherwise.

  From: Ailsa

  To: Seb

  OK. Lennox, who I was close to – he was my first boyfriend, at school, and we always stayed in touch – died last year waiting for a liver transplant. His family is setting up a trust and they want to do a lot of things to raise money and awareness and support research. They haven’t told me all the details but they are good, clever, kind people and I trust them.

  They’ve decided to do a 2019 calendar. They want to photograph people who’ve had transplants looking – well, glad to be alive. They asked me to do it and I said yes – and then they asked me to see if you would do it.

  I almost said I wouldn’t ask you, because we don’t know each other that well, and anyway, people must be asking you for things all the time. But then I thought you might actually want to do it. So – would you be willing to be photographed for a fundraising calendar? The woman who’s organising it will make sure that it’s well done, and it will be a professional photographer, properly produced, etc.

  Please don’t feel you have to say yes. I said I would ask you but I also said I had no idea what you would say. You’re not putting me in any sort of difficulty if you refuse.

  Ailsa

  From: Seb

  To: Ailsa

  Is it a nude calendar?

  From: Ailsa

  To: Seb

  That’s what I said! No.

  From: Seb

  To: Ailsa

  Pity. I’ve seen a lot more of the gym since I’ve been ‘resting’ and it would be good to have my six-pack immortalised.

  We definitely know each other well enough for you to ask me about this.

  Of course I will. I’d usually say if it fits with my schedule, but that’s not going to be difficult at the moment. My agent took the doctor’s orders about rest very seriously. I only heard about R&J because Roz contacted me directly to sound me out. And I’m starting to realise that most of my social life is getting pissed after work, which isn’t much cop if you’re not working. It comes to something when the social highlight of your week is your niece’s third birthday party.

  Put me in touch with whoever’s organising it. They might need to sign some sort of disclaimer/agreement about how the photo will be used. I’ll check with Wilkie (agent). And thanks for asking.

  Seb x

  From: Ailsa

  To: Seb

  Thank you. I was really in two minds about it.

  I’ll put you in touch with Libby Douglas. She’s organising it. She’ll probably come over as a wee bit rude. Don’t worry about it, she’s like that with everybody.

  I thought you would go to showbiz parties left, right and centre.

  Your turn – what can I do for you?

  Ailsa

  From: Seb

  To: Ailsa

  OK. Here goes. There’s a bit of background. Don’t feel you have to say yes. But don’t say no straight away either. OK?

  I haven’t been on the stage since Wherefore Art Thou? (and that wasn’t proper stage work – not three hours in one go, just bits and pieces). Learning lines for TV is different to the stage – you’ve only got a scene or two at a time, with time to cram in between, and if you forget something, you just go again. I’m looking at Romeo and Juliet and I’m thinking: I’ll never, ever learn all of these. Romeo’s a chatty sod and if I read for more than fifteen minutes, my eye starts going mad.

  Meredith (Juliet) has done loads of stage work and from what I know of the rest of the cast, they have too. I don’t want to hold them back. I don’t want to look like an idiot. And, between you and me, I’m worried that I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.

  Basically, I really want to be off the book when I get to rehearsals, because apart from looking an idiot, I don’t think I’ll be able to read a script and work. And I can’t see how that’s ever going to happen without some help.

  So – and I know this is a big ask – I wondered if you might come down and help me to learn my lines? A mate of mine, Yusef, has a flat about ten minutes’ walk away from me, and he’s on tour until June in The Wind in the Willows. You could stay there. I couldn’t pay you but I could cover your train fare, and we could have a good time when we’re not working.

  What do you say?

  Seb
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  P.S. Showbiz parties aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. I haven’t been to one since I threw up over a tray of canapés (and the poor sod holding them) at a premiere. I think it was food poisoning but nobody wants to believe that.

  From: Ailsa

  To: Seb

  Hello,

  Sorry for the delay. I had to look up ‘off the book’.

  The first line of that message made me think you were going to request a kidney. Which, of course, you could have had, no question, as can anybody who asks nicely.

  Am I really the best person to help you with this? There must be someone closer? (Physically and someone you know better?) Other actors?

  Ailsa

  P.S. That’s better than my collapsing-at-a-lecture-falling-down-the-stairs story. I blacked out – not enough blood to the brain. It happened a lot back then, but not always at the top of a flight of stairs. People who didn’t know me thought I was drunk too. It was 11 a.m. Though it was the morning after a big night for a fair few people in the room.

  From: Seb

  To: Ailsa

  I could find people to give me a day or two, yes, but I’d rather get it all done in one go, and I think that will take a couple of weeks. I need to go over it and over it until it goes in.

  And the trouble with actors is that they want to act. And discuss. And interpret. It’s really interesting but I don’t want to do that yet, I just need to know the words.

  Most of my friends are people I’ve worked with. They all have their ideas about what I’m like and that might get in the way. And I know we don’t know each other that well, but I feel as though we know each other well enough for this. I mean – we get on. Every time I see you I feel as though we could have talked for another three hours. You’re easy to be with.

  From: Ailsa

  To: Seb

  Let me think about it. When? For how long?

  From: Seb

  To: Ailsa

  A couple of weeks if you can spare them? Somewhere around mid-May? Say, come on Sunday 13th and leave on Friday 25th? Plus, obviously, if you want a morning off to look at bits of history, or whatever, that would be OK. And there’s plenty of caveman food available in London, though it will have to come from a shop, not a forest.

  (I realise that now you might be working, this is a question I shouldn’t even ask.)

  From: Ailsa

  To: Seb

  Ah, I’ve always wanted to visit London’s famous Whatever Theme Park.

  Let me have a think about it, and see how the trial goes and what they say. And I’ll have to check at the clinic – I’m still on weekly visits. Can I email you on Monday, after I’ve been to the hospital?

  From: Seb

  To: Ailsa

  Thanks for even thinking about it. And I hope the trial goes well.

  One more thing – I wouldn’t want to tell Roz. Most directors don’t want you to learn your lines beforehand because they want to shape the way you say them and think about them. Well, that’s not so much the lines, it’s the character. They don’t want you to fix on the way the character is until you’ve worked on it together. I suppose it’s like muscle memory. If you’ve already learned lines in a certain way and it’s not the way the director wants them to be delivered, you have to unlearn. This is part of why I don’t want to work with an actor. I need to know the words, so when we go into rehearsal, I’m not struggling to read them.

  From: Ailsa

  To: Seb

  I’m not big into lying to people. Could you not tell her?

  From: Seb

  To: Ailsa

  I could. But I’m scared she’d change her mind – not because I was learning the lines but because she’d be worried I wasn’t really up to taking part. The thought of doing this play is about all that’s keeping me sane.

  21 April, 2018

  Tamsin has always claimed she is half woman half witch and Ailsa has always half believed her. It’s partly based on the way she looks – wild russet frizzy hair, big brass jewellery, purple eyeshadow – and partly her bright, raucous laugh. But mostly, it’s her ability to make things happen that seems uncanny. Tamsin has always been able to find the right colouring book, rustle up a lift, turn up with takeaway dinner at the hospital at exactly the point when another baked potato baked eight hours ago feels like the final straw.

  Ailsa doesn’t remember much of her early years, fortunately, because when she reflects on it it’s grim. One procedure within forty-eight hours of birth, another operation at five months, and a third when she was four, all to make her three-chambered heart into an organ that could more or less replicate what a normal heart could do. She knows, from all the reminiscences she’s heard, that Tamsin was there with her mother for every struggling beat of her heart.

  What Ailsa thinks about when she thinks about her illness is not the surgeries and recoveries on her plum-sized heart, but the slow decline that her condition has brought to her life. At seven and eight, she was roughly equivalent to the kids in her class with asthma, not really up to anything vigorous but pretty ordinary otherwise. As she got older, she started to notice that she was always kept off school for a little bit longer than her classmates if she had a cold. When she went on a residential school trip to Aberdeen for three nights, her mum came to school to have a meeting with her teacher about what support she might need. By twelve, the edges of her lips and her nailbeds were a noticeable blue-grey. Over the years the colour deepened and spread, so she was always pallid. By the time she met Lennox, she was spending her breath the way she’d spend money that she knew was going to run out before she’d bought everything she needed. And her budget became less and less limiting her more and more, until it was almost nothing.

  And Tamsin was always there: lifts, laughs, sympathy and sanity.

  It hasn’t all been one-way. Tamsin lived with them for a summer when Ailsa was in her early teens. Her marriage had broken down, and there were months of the living room piled with boxes, the bathroom full of make-up and scrubs and creams for everything, crying in the night. Hayley is often roped in to helping Tamsin at vintage fairs, especially as Christmas approaches, and Ailsa has spent more Sunday afternoons than she cares to remember polishing up old silver forks and spoons that Tamsin will fashion into jewellery.

  But this evening, there’s no doubt that Tamsin is the one helping Ailsa and Hayley out. They aren’t exactly not speaking; it’s more that they are so aware of the tension between them that every word is weighty. So when Hayley had said, ‘How about we sit down, the three of us, and work out how this move is going to work?’ Ailsa had agreed without hesitation.

  Tamsin pours wine for all three of them, without asking if Ailsa is drinking. It’s not even six o’clock, and it’s not Ailsa’s day for having a drink. Paleo is hard. But worth it, she reminds herself. And thrashing out the details of the move will be the same.

  ‘How did your trial go? Was it today?’

  ‘It was a lot harder than I thought,’ Ailsa says. ‘I mean, I know how coffee shops work, but when you’re the one behind the counter, it all seems much more complicated. But the people were lovely. And I liked being busy. The time flew.’ The only place where time has flown for Ailsa lately has been at tango.

  ‘Are they going to give you a start?’

  ‘I don’t know. I hope so,’ Ailsa says, and she means it, because she never would have thought that taking orders and smiling at strangers would be as much fun as it turned out to be. ‘But they asked about start dates.’ She lets herself smile, and she lets herself hope.

  ‘Well, we know what that means! We’re celebrating, then!’ Tamsin says and they clink glasses.

  Hayley, who’s been quiet – she’s heard the news already, by text – says, ‘Who’d have thought, a year ago? You’ve done well, hen. I’m proud of you.’ And there’s just a flicker of the old them – a moment of connection, a sense of being all each other has – before Hayley adds, ‘I didnae think you were drinking today.’

&
nbsp; ‘I wasn’t,’ Ailsa would normally try to even her tone but she lets the petulance out, ‘but now I am.’

  Tamsin looks from Ailsa to Hayley and back again. ‘I think it’s high time we got this all sorted,’ she says, sounding firm. ‘On the agenda is: timescale, money, practicalities. We maybe need to add “feelings”. But let’s get the feelings out of the way first.’

  ‘I don’t know that I’m ready for that,’ Hayley says.

  ‘No time like the present, eh, Ailsa,’ Tamsin says, making Ailsa complicit, whether she wants to be or not – and she doesn’t want to be, not at all. ‘And anyway, you may as well both get it said, because you could cut the atmosphere in here with a knife.’ She tilts an eyebrow at Ailsa. ‘C’mon, sweetheart. Say what you want to say.’

  Apple beats steady and strong. ‘I just want to be normal, Mum. I want to live on my own. It’s nothing to do with you. I don’t want rid of you. And if we hadn’t spoken about you moving out before, I never would have assumed. But that’s what we said. And it is what I want. But if you don’t think you want to or it’s not the right thing, we can think of something else. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But I do want to be me. Even if that does mean’ – she thinks of her biological father, but doesn’t dare risk mentioning him directly – ‘making what you think of as mistakes.’

  Hayley nods. ‘I know what we said we would do and I dinnae think it’s a bad idea. It just feels soon tae me. You’ve dealt with a lot and I’m so proud of you, Ailsa, I really am. But that doesnae mean you’re ready for this.’